as i have mentioned before, i have dancing the dream by michael jackson, but i have not analyzed any of the poems yet. i figured why not do it as a post. please do not take my analysis as an end all be all. art is subjective and many things can influence how you interpret it. i have no credentials in english or literature other than taking a creative writing class in college. i just do this because i love literature and i am a nerd.
before we start, this is what michael had to say about dancing the dream when a fan asked if he planned on writing another book in 1995.
I wrote a book after Moonwalker called Dancing The Dream. It wasn't full of gossip and scandal and all the trash that people write so I don't think people paid much attention to it. But it was a lovely book and it came from my heart. It was full of pictures and essays and things I've written down thru [sic] the years. But I'm not planning on writing another book any time soon. If you want to hear my feelings and thoughts, it's in "HIStory". It's a musical book.
i also apologize for my handwriting. i spent much of my life writing in cursive only.
𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐞𝐦
𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐬
background
the best thing about this poem is that michael has a recording of him reading the poem. you get to hear how it was intended to be read, all the pauses he takes, and all the words he stresses. it was supposed to be the intro to "earth song", but it was scrapped. luckily, it is on the this is it album. you can listen to it here or here (i prefer the second one because it has the "earth song" instrumental in the background). side note, i love michael's accent, especially the way he pronounces "uh" sounds.
annotated poem and interpretation
i read through the poem around five times and listened to it three times. the last time i read through the poem, i highlighted all the words and phrases that stood out to me.
1. "capricious anomaly"
michael describes earth as unpredictable and abnormal. this could be due to humans and scientific and technological advancements. this could also be due to the symbiotic relationship humans and animals have.
2. "Planet Earth, are you just / Floating by, a cloud of dust"
on the first read, the enjambment on the third line stood out to me. i took a natural pause, and it sounded like michael was asking if earth is fair instead of asking if earth is only a small, meaningless thing. i thought it was that way both times. when i listened to it, it was correct but only for the first time the line occurs. the second time he reads it, there is no pause, maybe because he that question no longer matters. he doesn't feel the need to ask because, at that point, he and earth are one.
3. "haunting"
this is one that i still haven't really figured out. i stood out to me because the verbs and adjectives in the lines before it are soft and comforting. i thought the music that haunted him was maybe destruction in the world like starvation and the murder of animals. but "haunting" may not exactly mean frightening if it's paired with the other words.
4. "Your misty clouds, your electric storm / Were tempests in my own form"
michael is saying that him and the earth are one. he feels everything earth feels.
5. "In your beauty I've known the how / Of timeless bliss, this moment of now."
he enters a meditative state when in nature.
6. "With all my heart, I love you"
the love michael feels for earth is unconditional. despite the flaws and the harshness of earth, he accepts it for all it is.
thank you for reading this analysis! if you have any other thoughts about the poem, let me know! <3
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The "Amy likes spiders" poem in doki doki literature club (Natsuki's second poem) just makes me think of being closeted with internalized homophobia and I think it works really well for her
There's the poem if you haven't seen it!
(This is just me analyzing the poem and it's probably my longest post yet. I've been overanalyzing all the poems but this is the only one I've typed out atm lol)
It specifically makes me think of four things - Yuri liking different things and her disliking her for it, Natsuki being so far in the closet that she'll take any excuse to avoid the pretty girl™, Natsuki's self projection onto "Amy" and most importantly internalized homophobia, like I said earlier
It generally makes me think natsuri but I'll get to that later. So if we go from the internalized homophobia + closeted perspective (more like raised homophobic and doesn't know she's gay but ykwim), it reads as "a girl I know is a lesbian and Im meant to hate her for it. She's pretty and she makes me feel things but I can't be friends with her because she's a lesbian"
'The narrator' (Natsuki) heard a rumor that a girl, "Amy" (the lesbian), apparently likes 'spiders' (girls) and is repulsed. And that's why she isn't friends with her.
"Amy" sings the narrator's favorite love song, her voice is cute and it's making her heart pound. But she still likes 'spiders', so she can't be her friend.
She hurts her leg and "Amy" helped her get to the nurse. She tried to avoid touching her because her hands might be gross due to touching 'spiders', so she still can't be her friend.
"Amy" is very popular, but "she probably talks about spiders" (being gay). "What if her friends start to like spiders too?" (This entire verse rlly speaks for itself)
The next verse is shortest and even more repetitive than the rest of the poem (to emphasize her point) "it doesn't matter if she has other hobbies, it doesn't matter is she keeps it private, it doesn't matter if it doesn't hurt anyone" because to the narrator - she can't be "Amy's" friend, no matter how bad she wants to, because she's always going to be a 'spider lover' (lesbian) and she won't be able to ignore that.
And then the final nail to seal shut the door to the closet - "it's gross, she's gross, the world is better off without spider lovers. And I'm gonna tell everyone" because she needs everyone to know she hates 'spider lovers' to make sure no one knows she is also one. It's so gross because she was taught it was and now she can't stop thinking it's gross, no matter how nice/pretty/kind "Amy" is.
Onto the natsuri part so if you don't like that ship feel free to skip the rest of this (if you're still here lol)
Yuri and Natsuki like such different things (creepy and complex vs cute and simple) and they reach the point where they've argued so much that Natsuki doesn't want to admit she doesn't dislike Yuri. Even if she likes her poems, she'd never tell her because she feels like she can't at this point.
Natsuki couldn't see past their differences for a while, when she finally does, she's too embarrassed to apologize and too uncomfortable to befriend her without apologizing.
Nearly every verse of the poem will talk about how great the girl is. How she has a cute voice, she helped her, she has lots of friends, she makes her heart pound. But every verse she will still come back to "but she likes spiders. That's why I'm not friends with her". It feels like her gradually warming up to Yuri but still reminding herself that she can't be her friend, they're too different, Yuri likes creepy things (Yuri probably does like spiders so that's a bit more literal but it's also that spiders seem to symbolise everything she likes that Natsuki doesn't) and she couldn't be friends with someone so different.
And lastly, Natsuki's self projection (this is what the meaning is said to be in-game), meaning "Amy" is Natsuki herself. Natsuki likes manga and her friends won't believe it counts as literature. Her manga is the spider in this interpretation, she doesn't want people to judge her based on what she likes. She's had to be so defensive about what she likes, she may even judge herself for liking it at this point. She doesn't want people to judge people by their interests.
I keep seeing people say that Amy is a real person but that's one of the only interpretations that makes no sense to me. Because Natsuki may be a bit judgemental but even she wouldn't make an entire poem about disliking her classmate's love of spiders. She said herself that anyone that agrees with the narrator in the poem is a bad person. It's far more likely that "Amy" is a made up idea, she's barely even shown as a person. She's seemingly meant to be symbolic of Natsuki's flaws and insecurities, whatever you perceive those insecurities to be.
Portraying Amy as an actual person kinda cheapens the poem, at least in my opinion, because she was talking about how people should be given a chance no matter what (or who) they like and if Amy was a person it wouldn't make sense
Doki Doki Literature Club Day 1: Natsuki Poem Analysis/Close Reading
I just finished playing this game with my roommate (they've played before but I knew nothing about it) and wanted to analyze all of the poems in the game cause I'm an English major and it's kinda what I do.
I picked probably over 15 Yuri words and 0 Natsuki words for this first day so I picked Natsuki first for reading the poems when I played:)
‘Eagles Can Fly’ by Natsuki
'Eagles Can Fly' is certainly the simplest we get on this day but I don't think that makes it bad by any means.
Here, Natsuki uses a couple different rhymes with 'leap' & 'seek' as well as with 'fly' and 'try'. She also repeats the 'r' sound with the words 'race' & 'run'. Though this poetic form doesn't create any set traditional rhyme scheme, it helps a lot with the flow/melody of the stanza. Her repeat of the word 'can' also has the intended effect of an ongoing repetition before being broken/taken away in the last line.
Syllables are used in an interesting way here as well, with line 1-7 following a 4 syllable structure and line 8 breaking this with a 5 syllable line. Though simple in content, it's obvious she put quite a bit of thought into the poetic format and how it might connect to the main thesis of her poem.
Her use of animals is also very distinct, with mammals at the start of odd lines and non-mammals at the beginning of even lines. Her using the word 'But' at the end both adhers to this format and breaks it down. If you can't tell by now, she's put a lot of effort into separating the first 7 lines from the last line. By only using punctuation on the last line as well, she's equating this poem with a single sentence- which I find very interesting.
Now to the meat/meaning of the poem! For the first 6 lines, Natsuki is specifically describing instinctual actions done by wild animals. When she says that 'insert animal' can do something, it's meant to be read as a fact. When she gets to people however, she says, 'People can try'. This is meant to call out the non-instinctual nature of humans and how the actions she speaks of when describing animals is not wholly natural to people.
She confirms this with the last line, 'But that's about it'. These last two lines 'People can try- But that's about it.' go really well together and I think they do a really good job of describing the 'trying'/non-instinctual nature of human actions. 'Eagles can fly' also lends to this meaning, with flying being the only thing humans cannot do without their own inventions.
This poem feels like the beginning draft of a larger/finished piece which makes sense because she is the youngest and least experienced in the club. That being said, she certainly knows how to connect poetic form with the meaning of her work which I think definitely shows her practice with the form.
Omg I’m already overanalyzing Romeo and Juliet and we’ve only read the prologue.
“Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”
But this could mean so many different THINGS. Blood as in physical blood of family lineage? Is this literal, symbolic, or both? My English teacher is gonna absolutely hate me
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I'm bored and I really like this poem from my english lit book so I'm gonna talk about it
A Work of Artifice
The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of the mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you
love to touch.
— Marge Piercy
The next few lines tell about how a gardener regularly prunes the tree. Never letting it fully grow. You'll see this in things like how women get relentlessly compared to each other in the music industry. If a female artist puts out a new album its compared to an album few weeks back by another woman. They are used to put down or uplift other women. They are reduced to their looks and a box of labels they decidedly are and never let fully grown.
Firstly I love the description of how it could've grown eighty feet tall on the side of a mountain till struck by lightning. I interpret that as saying that being a women in general is not easy. You would have failures, heartbreaks and setbacks. But it would be your own chosen/made path that you followed through with, not one forced upon you. Freedom and free will is much more important than people realize on a daily basis. But for women going out at night is still a safety concern.
Think of the many female artists who would have so many more fans or recognition for their art if they weren't falsely accused of supporting ideas that they have continuously fought against.
And this isn't limited to people in the public eye. Its in the way colleagues might say that the new employee "slept her way up" and how they never question the man for his lack of self control or workplace ethic. The woman might even leave because of the undeserved humiliation and critique but the man stays.
I also take the line "whittles back the branches" as pushing the growth back.
The next few lines are about how the tree is told its meant to be small and cozy. Its presence made small to let the people with egos and insecurities bigger than the rooms they command with "leadership" live in a comfort of knowing it can't grow past what is palatable to them.
This is made to seem normal, harmless and just cruel bosses used for jokes that you never fully laugh at. Its supposed to be your version of "perfect" the dream and what not. The viciousness presented something that is a "price" and you should learn to take graciously.
The last few lines remind me of some stuff that I'm pretty sure isn't what the poet was referencing at all but its what I think of when I hear those lines.
There's this tradition from ancient China that I've heard still continues in some parts of the country that basically is to bind young girls feet, literally. Its a beauty standard which is down right creepy. Its harmful biologically speaking, of course it is with the feet bound for so long, but I don't remember all the reasons why.
Crippled brain reminds me of lobotomies that were performed on women with depression, schizophrenia and many other mental illnesses, from the 1930s to as late as the 60s. Depression was seen as un-lady like. Expressing want for freedom was seen as a woman gone mad. In many cases the patients lost their ability to see, their memory got bad, some even died if I'm not wrong.
I don't quite get the last line but thats just me. I love this poem a lot and thanks to my boredom I wrote this whole thing.
(This poem is about Donne’s devotion to religion. Donne was born a Catholic, but later converted to Protestantism. He struggled with religion, as he wished to become a dean at St. Peter’s Cathedral but had committed scandalous and erotic affairs during the reign of Puritanism - where poets had been targeted for their supposed hedonism. This poem conveys how far he is willing to go to commit himself to God, it is portrayed as an addiction. The ways in which others submit to God have not worked for Donne, he must be ravished. By accepting God entirely, Donne loses the burden of existence and can follow his love blindly. Temptation will always be there, but with God as his guard and witness, Donne shall resist. The title is in reference to the Holy Trinity.)
