The Gift

I really liked this poem. I thought many people could relate to this, since most times when I was a child I would run to either my mother of my father when I was hurt, pleading with them to make the pain go away. The parts where it talks about death such as at the end of the first stanza, "the iron silver I thought I'd die from." or in the fourth stanza, "christen it Little Assassin," seemed over dramatic, which made sense, because a lot of times with children they over emphasize things. The part where the man removes the splinter from his wife's finger was like the way his father had done so for him. I thought it was interesting that it focused on the tenderness the father had towards his son and how the son learned that tenderness and used it later on in life. There it that stereotype that a father shows his son how to become a man, and was interesting that the poem focused on such a tender moment when usually a person might think of moments between a father and son as playing catch, working on a car, building something, etc.
I don't really have much else to say on this poem, I thought it was pretty straight forward.

The Snow Men

"One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold along time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is."

I really enjoyed this poem because I love winter. I felt that for the most of the poem it was saying that to enjoy winter, something many people dislike, a person must have a different perspective of it then their own. "True wisdom has two sides." For people who only think of winter as a cold, barren season that brings death to all the trees and flowers probably wouldn't aprreciate winter as those who like winter. I love winter because everything is dead and dark colored while the snow that covers it is so white, it creates a beautiful contrast. I love it when my nose and cheeks and hands get cold and then I go inside somewhere warm and can feel the contrast of the cold on my skin and the warmth in the air.
The poem talks about the sound of the wind which is like a howling sound and describes a landscape of winter with the trees covered with snow. In the beginning of the poem it says, "One must have a mind of winter", which made me think that perhaps for someone to like winter they have to have a certain way of thinking, maybe a colder, darker way than a person who loves the warm, sunny season of summer and spring.

The Coming of Wisdom with Time

"though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth.
This was a really short poem but I liked it. I felt like it was one of those things that you read and you immediately try to see the deeper, philosophical meaning to it but as I read and thought about it, I thought the meaning was pretty simple. I figured that Yeats was just talking about the cycle of life and how a person grows and gains knowledge over time. He begins his poem with life and ends it with death. I believe the first part of the poem before the first semi-colon is talking about how a person may learn many different things but essentially they are still that person, who was once born knowing nothing. The next part is talking about how as children we learn many things unintentionally because our purpose is not to learn things but to just live and have fun. The last part is about dying, when we are younger we often cover the truth to make ourselves happy or to protect ourselves but I believe when we do we uncover many of those things and see certain things as they are. I read a couple analysis' of this poem and one pointed out something really interesting about the leaves and withering into truth. They said that they thought of the world as the tree and that each human being is a leaf on that tree, and they only have a certain amount of time to live before they wither away.

Disillusionment at Ten O'Clock

This poem was really confusing and I didn't like it all that much. I looked up some analysis' of this poem online to get an idea of what other people thought it was about and I agreed with some that said Wallace Stevens was talking about people are losing their ability to dream and to imagine. People get so caught up with their every day lives they forget about the dreams they once had and they forget to their goals to fulfill them.
The part where Stevens talks about the different colored night-gowns with different colored rings, he says the house is haunted by simple, plain white night-gowns and white is just ordinary, it's not exciting or imaginative, just plain. He also says, "None of them are strange," which is just saying once again that normalcy that many people accept.
I think the sailor, is a traveler that goes out and fulfills his dream. He uses a sailor because maybe not as much as today, but in earlier times, sailor's traveled the world, exploring and creating adventures. So the last part, "Catches tigers In red weather." is showing how a person willing to go out and accomplish their dreams are imaginative, and a little strange.

Unveiling

"In the cemetery a mile away from where we used to live my aunts and mother, my father and uncle lie in two long rows almost the way they used to sit around the long blanked table at family dinners, And walking beside the graves today, down one straight path and up the next, I don't feel sad for them, just left out a bit as if they kept from the kind of grown-up secret they used to share back then, something I'm not quite ready yet to learn."
When I first read this poem I pictured it as a young girl walking in a cemetary looking at all the graves of her past family members and thought it was weird when it said she didn't feel sad but as I thought about it more I thought it could have been an old woman who has lived most of her life already and has a family of her own. Her walking in the cemetary, just visiting the graves of her already passed family members not because they died too early but because it was there time and she is just remembering the family dinners when she was a little girl and how when your little and your family won't tell you certain things because you're too young. So the last line, "I'm not quite ready yet to learn." It is talking about death, she is not quite ready to pass on and be with her family members but just like when you get older and you learn those things that your family wouldn't tell you when your younger, she will eventually die.

A Work of Artifice

"The bonsai tree in the attractive pot could have grown eighty feet tall on the side of a 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:". I really liked this poem, I thought it was a great metaphor for women in time periods such as the fifties or before then. Like the bonsai tree a woman could become a great neurosurgeon, a forensic anthropologist, or a writer but in those times periods men or society told them they had to be the housewife and be, "domestic and weak," just like the gardener made the great bonsai tree into something small and weak.
The next line in the poem I felt continued with the metaphor of how women should be, "how lucky, little tree, to have a pot to grow in. With living creatures one must begin very early to dwarf their growth." Such as in the book we are reading, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God', a husband, the provider for his wife felt that she should be grateful and happy that he has provided a place for her to live in. He provided a house and food so why shouldn't his wife be happy? Just like Janie's husband Jody expected her to be happy with the things he provided her and to just grow in her little pot and he would trim and prune her until she was the way he wanted her to be. The second sentence about dwarfing the tree's growth early is how a woman's mother taught her how she was supposed to act and be just like Janie's grandmother did. Girls learned from an early age of how they were supposed to be and how the were not supposed to question it.
"the bound feet, the crippled brain, the hair in curlers, the hands you love to touch," the bound feet in this part of the poem reminded me of that old Chinese tradition of bounding a girl's feet to make them small because small feet was seen as beautiful which is another example of how women were forced to look and be a certain way. The crippled brain and hair in curlers represents that mentality that beauty not brains or be beautiful not natural because a woman will only be happy and loved if she is beautiful. The very last part I wasn't too sure about. I thought it might still be talking about a woman, and perhaps dancing, when she is dainty and beautiful then men would love to take her out and dance. I also thought it might be representing how a woman was dependant on a man so much, so, "the hands you love to touch," is the woman reaching out and looking for that man that will support her and provide for her.

Happy Halloween

I'm taking this Sunday as my free post Mrs. White :)

Those Winter Days

I really like this poem, it's tone was a little different than the other poems we have read and I liked that. The tone was guilt-ridden or regretful and almost scolding or forewarning. The first stanza really shows this. It talks about her father getting up early in the morning, "in the blueblack cold." Blueblack just made me think of frostbite, it was describing that it was cold enough that a person could develop frostbite. The last line of the stanza, "No one ever thanked him.", shows that regretful or guilty tone.
The second stanza talks about how the father worked to get a fire going to get the house to warm up but the last line of this stanza confused me. It says, "fearing the chronic angers of that house." I'm not sure what this line means, I thought perhaps there was a family feud going on or the father was strict in disciplining. Perhaps the father even beat his children.
The third stanza shows more of that guilty tone and the third stanza was where I thought was that forewarning because it asks a rhetorical question. I also thought it was kind of like forewarning because it tells us all the things the father did and how unappreciated he was so it's like a warning to love and appreciate your father and family.

I thank you god

Shelby and I chose this poem to present in front of this class, we really liked it because it was really religious and we were able to relate to it very well. We thought the punctuation, capitalization, and even some of the wording was kind of strange but figured that it was to help put emphasis on certain things. For example in the first line it says, "i thank YOU God for most this amazing day:", the capitalization of you emphasizes God and instead of saying, for this most amazing day, puts an emphasis on thanking God.
In the first stanza we thought it was mostly about thanking God for all he has done for us, and everything he has created, the, "leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;". The line after this is somewhat confusing, "and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes." We agreed that the author was excitedly thanking God for everything and he is listing of all these things and then stops and just breathes for a moment.
The next stanza we believed was talking about baptizing since it says, "i who have died am alive again today," When a person is baptized they allow God into their heart and all their sins are washed away, they have a clean slate or a new beginning. So we thought this was like their old self died and was reborn in a way. The lines after that is like the celebration or appreciation of earth and the reawakening the person had with God. The stanza after that was like a reminder for people to count their blessings because God was the one that created everything even their senses like tasting and touching.
The very last two lines, "now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened," was like what we related to as when you have that light bulb moment and everything suddenly makes sense. The author is seeing things with a new awareness and it's like everything just clicks into place for him. He sees the earth and himself as a creative and wondrous thing God created.

To Myself

I know we have talked about this poem in class and the class had discussed what they thought the poem was about but I came up with a different perspective of the poem. As I was reading this poem it made me think of someone that has lost themselves, such as when a person experiences a tragedy in their life or a change in themselves they can become lost. A tragedy such as loosing a loved one can make someone so depressed that they drop out of their normal routine and feel lost in life because they are consumed with that sadness. They no longer feel like the person they once were before the incident. A change in themselves, I pictured as someone developing an addiction problem to alcohol or drugs. When a person becomes an alcoholic or a drug addict, sometimes they remember the time before they became addicted and they feel like they lost that person they were before the drugs or alcohol. This especially pertained to the part in the poem, "I keep remembering you sometimes long ago,".
I think we might have discussed this in class, that the poem might have been about that theoretical journey people take to find themselves but because the poem kept talking about remembering, looking for, and forgetting it wasn't about finding themselves.

P.S. Sorry this was so short, this was just all I had to say. It might have been because the poem was short.

The Halo That Would Not Light

I might be taking this poem the wrong way, but I think it's about a child dying or the murder of a child. Then again one of my favorite poets is Edgar Allan Poe and he tends to have really dark, gruesome poems so I could be missing the symbolism of this poem and taking it too literally.
The first part, "When, after many years, the raptor beak Let loose of you," I took this as a decaying body and the raptor beak is the beak of a bird such as a crow or vulture who eats decaying flesh. The next part, "He dropped your tiny body In the scarab-colored hollow Of a carriage," I thought it was unusual that the author specifically addressed, "He", which made me think that some man had taken this child, killed him and left him somewhere out in the open where the birds got after the body. Scarab-colored would be blue and gold so I think it means that the man put the body into some old time carriage. The part, "left you like a finch Wrapped in its nest of linens wound With linden leaves in a child's cardboard box." The comparison to a finch was confusing because a finch is just a small bird that was introduced to North America and the Hawaiian Islands and I didn't find anything about a finch leaving it's young so perhaps it used the comparison so the nest of linens would make more sense. The nest of linens is just what the body was wrapped in along with the linden leaves. I also looked up linden leaves and it is usually used to help with anxiety and a few other medical purposes so perhaps the leaves are just to decorate the body. Cardboard box I think is just the coffin, it is a child's cardboard box because a small child would be able to fit into it.
The part about the swings going back and forth with no one in them to me is just to show the emptiness of life without that child. I also thought it could be a ghost of the child swinging on the swings.
"As certain and invisible as Red scarves silking endlessly From a magician's hollow hat And the spectacular catastrophe Of your endless childhood." I just pictured this as a magician pulling endless amounts of red scarves out of his hat that are 'invisible' when you look directly into the hat. I also view the red scarves as representing blood. "Spectacular catastrophe Of your endless childhood." This part is what made me think it was a murder instead of a death and then a funeral procession because it was a catastrophe, an event that ended horribly. Also the endless childhood, I see as the child as a ghost. The child was never able to grow up or finish his full time in life. Also since he was never able to grow older, the child will forever be a child, like the poem said, and endless childhood.

Mr. Fear

"He follows us, he keeps track. Each day his lists are longer." I liked this poem, it had a darker vibe to it and delved into subconscious stuff. I think this line means that our fears never leave us and as time goes on we develop new fears which makes that "list" longer.
The second stanza was about nightmares. Mr. Fear's sack of troubles are things that frighten us in our dreams even though in real life we may not be afraid of it. In the third stanza, the author asks whether Mr. Fear is happy when he reaches into his sack and finds something or sad. When it said happy, I imagine a sinister smile, Mr. Fear would be happy because he's about to cause us that fear and because he is evil and dark he find pleasure in it. The sad side of it, I imagined as he's sorry that he has to cause this fear but he has to do it.
"Tell me, Mr. Fear, what must I carry away from your dream." I see this line as when something from a dream haunts you. Frightening things from a dream really sticks with you and sometimes you never forget it. The next part in the poem about where the author begs fro Mr. Fear to make whatever he is pulling from his sack to be small, so that it can be easily forgotten and won't haunt him. Near the end of the poem about the crickets and the author listened to them before he slept. I thought it was interesting because often we dream of stuff we saw right before we went to bed or of stuff that's on our minds. So hearing the crickets and then dreaming about them at night was a correlation I had because even a minuscule thing like crickets can scare you when they become something frightening in a dream.

On a side note I was thinking of this when I was writing this. When I read a poem I automatically think a woman wrote it and then I look at the author's name and realize it was a man who wrote it, it sometimes changes my perspective on the piece. So I wondering does everyone automatically think a piece of literature is written in their gender's perspective if they don't know who the author is?

In Blackwater Woods

In the first stanza of the poem it said, "the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light." This line stuck out to me because I think it means the trees are timeless, they have turned into these stone pillars that will never die. The, "of light", part means they stand for something good or pure. The next line, "are giving of cinnamon and fulfillment," is like smelling a familiar and nice smell that the author might familiarize with fulfillment. Such as the smell of burning wood is a comforting and nice smell because it reminds someone of a camp fire which usually has fond memories.

The next part about cattails is just a description, the top of a common cattail is brown, soft feeling, and oval shaped. When it blooms all of it's fluffy seeds emerge and are carried away by the wind or water. "Blue shoulders of the ponds," means to me just the color of the water, when ripples are created it's kind of like tiny waves that could be seen like a blue shoulder. The part where the author talks about how every pond is nameless now I think means that people never remember or know the name of a pond because it's just a pond, nothing big or great like a lake or river.

"The fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know." I visioned this line like heaven and hell. The ,"fires", is hell and the, "other side", is heaven. "The black river of loss," is that journey everyone takes that will either lead them to heaven or hell. It is a river of loss because people go through life not knowing if they will go to heaven or hell or if there is a heaven or hell, they are unguided. "Whose meaning none of us will ever know", is referring to the salvation part because no one knows what happens after death or what heaven or hell will be like.

The last two stanza's about the three things everyone must do is talking about finding something in the world like family, friends, or something you choose to believe in is the mortal thing a person must love and a person has to hold it against them like they're life depends on it is because of that river of loss. A person is unguided so they need something or someone to believe in and to hold on to, to help them through life and then, when the times comes part, is about death, when a person is about to die they have to let go of that person or thing and just let death come.

A Gray Haze Over The Rice Fields

I really liked this poem, the author used a lot of descriptive words such as, "long-legged, little kisses, and soft dampness" as well as many other words phrases in the poem. I also liked this poem because it had a gloomier side to it.
One line I was confused with was in the first stanza, "I am looking out in search of memory, not death." I think the author meant that she was writing about past memories and she wanted to point that out so people wouldn't confuse it with her seeing her life flash before her eyes before she died.
I found it interesting as well how the author started out with nice, fond memories and then she transitioned into those gloomy ones. In this part though another line confused me, it was at the very end of the first stanza, "my mother didn't notice me from beyond the closed door of her youth." I'm still not sure what this line means but I thought maybe it meant that when her mother was young she had many dreams and hopes that she never accomplished and now she wallows in those lost dreams and closes herself off to the rest of the world, especially her daughter.
In the next stanza where it begins talking about the thread, I thought it might symbolize things that she can not accomplish or attain or perhaps people she can not connect with or reach out to. Many things are passed down from parent to child so perhaps this means that she now shuts out loved ones like her mother did.
The next line, "It's not that I wait for judgment.", could connect with my previous idea that she knows that what she is doing hurts other or what her mother did, shutting people out, hurts others but she is not waiting for someone to judge her or for God to judge her. The lines about the shadow I think represent redemption, she is freed from those past memories that emotionally scarred her and now she can just think about the happy memories she has and forget about the bad ones.

Little Apocalypse

In this poem, I noticed there wasn't a particular rhyme scheme, it used a lot of personification which made it sound elegant and flowing. The personification was mostly in the beginning of the poem, "The ground shudders," was the beginning of the second stanza. "the clouds assemble and mumble their messages," came a few lines after and, "the earthworms huddles, " came a few lines after the line about clouds.
The author also used a lot of knowledgeable words like rapt, and avaricious, and he even made up a word, dragononing. I found this helped the poem sound elegant and pretty.
I thought about trying to find the deeper meaning of this poem but I think the poem is about what's right in front us, nature. The line, "Afternoon's ready to shove its spade deep in the dirt," and, "the clear-out's begun," I think means exactly what it says. It's talking about how all these organisms are living in this habitat and then a human caused disturbance disrupts that cycle. The clearing of that environment with the spade going into the dirt. Then some of the last lines talk about fire and fog which could mean smoke is talking about man made fires that kill all those organisms and their habitat. The poem then ends showing how life begins again with the line, "from the black horizon, four horses heave up, flash on their faces." Although flash usually means something sudden light a flash of light, it can also mean a sudden outburst of joy. So perhaps the author shows that although nature is destroyed it will grow back again and the things living there will be happy again when their habitat is restored.

1943

1943 was an interesting poem. It was somewhat of a narrative poem because it told a story of a soldier going from the life he knew at home to war, specifically War World II. It mostly transitioned from one setting to the next, telling something about the soldier's lives before the war and then a detail about the war. In the first two couplets of the poem the theme was mostly about Dominick Esposito and in the last three couplets the theme was about milk.
The author created Dominick Esposito as an example of how Dominick's life transitioned from his normal life as a boxer to a solder in World War II. He especially described his life in the war with the line, "and ten months later Dom died in the third wave at Tarawa."
We considered milk another theme because it was frequently mentioned in the last three couplets.
As for the structure of the poem it was made up of entirely couplets and had no rhyme scheme. We considered the poem both an ode because it was written about a dignified subject and an elegy because it wt mourned the loss of the solder's previous lives before they went to war.
The last line of the poem, "with frostbitten feet as white as milk.", was the climax of the poem. It tied in the author's reference to a soldier's previous Mamore of getting milk delivered to his home in Connecticut. then in the winter how the milk froze and, "lifted the cardboard lids of glass bottles." The words before the last line, "-what could we do?-", builds up to the climax line because it is the soldier seeing the deaths of his fellow soldiers, how they got frostbitten feet, and thinking that he could do nothing but continue on with his tasks and think of better times from his life before the war.

What an amazing book...

This is the second time I've read The Kite Runner and I loved it even more than the first time. I love the detailed way Hosseini writes, it really draws you in and he creates the entire scene for his readers. He created personalities for his characters and built relationships between them so well it made his characters come to life. Throughout most of the book he kept adding these memories from Amir's childhood that really developed how Amir wanted his father's affection and love and Hassan's undying loyalty and love for Amir. It really tugged at your emotions and drew you in to the book.

I never noticed this the first time I read this book but it has a lot of foreshadowing which I really liked because it made so much more sense reading it again and I knew what was going to happen. I also noticed that when Hosseini really appealed to his reader's pathos he would use short, uncomplicated sentences to amplify his point.

As for the story of the book I really enjoyed how Hosseini took you through the stages of Amir's life. In the beginning after all of Amir's attempts to win his father's attention and affection and when he finally get's it he cannot even enjoy it because of his guilt for sacrificing Hassan is such an interesting perspective. Many times in life people are in situations where they would do anything to attain that one thing and in the end it's not even worth it. Hosseini puts life lessons like these in the book that catch his reader's attention because although it may not be the exact same scenario as Amir his readers can still relate to it. I gurantee there are many people who have wanted something so bad they would do anything for it, or they have had power over some one else and used that power in a cruel way and in the end Amir finds redemption which isn't exactly a happy ending but more of a, it's finally over or Amir finally found some peace. It seems like in most of the stages of Amir's life he is going through a life lesson or just a scenario that other people might have gone through.

The GREAT Gatsby

The Great Gatsby was an interesting book. Reading it from Nick's perspective was interesting because it was like he was more of an on looker than a main character. I do not ever remember the author describing how Nick was feeling or his inner thoughts, he was just describing what was happening around Nick.
This book also reminded me of the movie Crash, all these random events that tie things and people together and then it all comes together in the end.
For annotating I attempted to make a glossary of words I didn't understand. I would underline the words and come back to them and put them in the glossary but I think like I mentioned in my post about Heart of Darkness that looking up the words immediately and writing the meaning of the word in the margin works best for me. Not only does looking up the word tells me the meaning but writing it down kind of helps it really sink in to my brain.
I tried highlighting certain things that I thought were important but I think writing important things on a separate piece of paper is better so I can quickly look through the notes instead of rifling through the book trying to find something.
Another things I tried was summaries in the margin which did not really work all that well for me. I think the reason being that after I read something it's hard to come up with a summary on the spot. I think it's better if I let it sit with me for a little bit before I attempt to make a good summary.
Mostly this book reminded me of a soap opera, it wasn't exactly one of my favorite books but it was interesting none the less.

Finally got around to it...

For the summer reading I started with Heart of Darkness.

As for my style of annotation, there wasn't a lot of consistency throughout the book. I tried writing notes in a separate notebook of things I found significant or words I didn't understand (there were plenty of those). I wrote down the page numbers the words and comments came from so if I need a reference it would be easy to find.

Writing down the words I didn't understand in a separate notebook didn't really help. I think the best way for me to deal with words I don't understand is to look them up immediately after I read them and write the meaning in the margin of the book.

On the other hand writing down lines or words that stuck out to me really helped. It reminded me of some things I read in the book and helped me make connections or think about the author's purpose of the line or the tone they were trying to set. I think writing the comments in a separate notebook helped me so much because I could look back over them quickly and it reminded me of a certain part in the book.

For example, from page four, I wrote down, "They were men enough to face the darkness", as well as, "your strength is just and accident arising from the weakness of others". These lines really stuck out to me and when I was reading back over my notes before I decided to finally get around to posting something, I read those lines again and it reminded me of how people went crazy after so long in the Belgian Congo and all the imperialism taking place and the struggles with the boat and the natives, etc. Reading books for me is like riding a bicycle, if I like the book I never forget it, and reading over my notes is like getting back on the bicycle, once I get going, it all comes back to me.