Taste of Temptaion

English 1020

Essay 1 Poetry

Taste of Temptation

Poetry is often a way for the writer to express themselves, feelings or a thought they have in a way that can make any reader understand what they are trying to say. Most poets indulge on the power of love, hate and death; however, others tend to lean more towards the emotions of temptation such as in X. J Kennedy’s “In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day,” Dorothy Parker’s “A Certain Lady” and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “ I will put Chaos into fourteen line.” We see the cases of dancing with temptation and the scars it can leave.

“Rose a lady in skunk with a top heavy sway” (2) Kennedy leads us to believe we are being lead into a story of nothing but a drunk. As we read through the poem we learn that not only is this women a drunk but a junkie “If it wasn’t, my dears, for the high cost of junk”(8) and a prostitute as well “Now im saddled each night for my butter and eggs”(27). The women in the poem seems sad about her days, but tells a story in a high sung note of when she was a goddess among men “All the gents used to swear that the white of my calf/ Beat the down of the swan by a length and a half” (9/10). With his playful words we learn that this skunk of a woman once had a life that most women dream of but with one taste of temptation she lost it all, but was still proud of what she once was.

Dorothy Parker gives us a different look into the world of temptation. In the poem “ A certain Lady” we are hearing of a women who is so consumed by her love for a man she is will to do anything for him. Even as he describes his rambunctious encounters with other women, “Oh, I can laugh and listen when we meet/And you bring tales of fresh adventurings/ Of ladies delicately indiscrete”(13-15). Parker describes the man in the poem as someone who is scandalous and never intends to settle down yet the woman has been tempted by his words of love to her to keep giving in although...