Tone Piece Sarcasm/ Overcoming Something

When growing up there are certain milestones in my life and almost every child goes through learning to ride that wonderful bike. You think that everything is on top of the world when you get to take those deadly training wheels off. Nobody realized what great influence that learning to ride a bike is, not just in a positive way. Crashing and burning after so many attempts is just awesome and love feeling the pain of the scabs and road rash marks are just the proof of the awesomeness to learning to how to ride a bike. The learning of getting the impatient when things don't go your way after so many attempts. Then it happens all at once, no crashing and burning but finally reaching the pinancle of rideing a bike all on your own, without those dreaded training wheels off. You feel a sense of accomplishment when coming over that first big obstacle and accomplishing something really big for the first time. Riding a bike can become great fun when you accomplish it on your own and don't give up.

The Gift by Li-Young Lee

While reading this poem all I could think about was my relationship with my mother and how it can be the best at times, but also not the best of times. This poem talks about a father digging a splinter out of the kids foot. I have many experiences with this, but not with my father but with my mother. She is not the most sensitive person in the world and also not the most gentle. Whenever I got a splinter it was usually from my wood play set outside that my mom built herself with my dad. So back to the splinter caught in my foot from the play set she would set me down by the backyard door and get the dreaded tweezers. She would not gently dig for the splinter, no she would dig those tweezers in until she got the splinter, she did not care if I bled. Though she was not sensitive to my feeling she always managed to get the splinter out. This poem is also about growing and how the dad gets into a flashback when taking a splinter out of his own daughter, a flashback to his own father taking out his splinter. Shows that parents will always be there even for the little things like taking a splinter out. My mom may not have been the nicest person about taking it out, but without her who would of taken out my splinter. My mom was there and will always be there to take the splinters out.

Thanksgiving Poem

There once was a pumpkin that sat
Ingraved with a siloutte cat
And after the day of dentists dismay
In a pie crust he sat

The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens

This is the poem that I am presenting to the class. I really enjoyed this poem but could not get that goodof a meaning out of it. At first I thought that the poem was just talking about the season of winter. When reading I could not help but totally agree of what the author says about winter. Where you have to get into a mindset of winter, can not think of the negatives, cold wind, to enjoy the aspect of winter. This is totally true, I am not a huge fan of winter I would much rather be in 90 degree weather, but to get through the winter I have to think of how pretty Colorado is when it is winter and not the aspect of the coldness. Where my confusion is presented is the last two stanzas of the poem, all the sudden it kind of feels that the author shifts from talking about winter but maybe about someone or someplace else. The way the author words the last stanza is hard to read but also hard to understand. This poem interests me, probably because I don't understand completely and very interested in what the class has to say.

Analogy- First Visit to the Zoo!!

The nervousness is gripping the boy, but the excitement is taking over the boy, who looks up at the famous sign that says zoo. This is his first experience of the zoo and does not know what to expect or do. What will he learn and take with his adventure thorugh the zoo. Walking through the entrance the first display we see are the innocent looking monkey, who are all cute and cuddly but turn out to be mischeivious little fellows who like to get in trouble. Your interested but all you should do is look from a far because if you get to close you may get sucked into one of their tricks. We continue on the first adventure where we see see the penguins the ones who are down to earth and don't feel like flying away. Snakes and reptiles the theifs and sneaky little creatures, gorillas who are the gentle giants of the group, who are big in size but would not hurt a fly. Hyenas are the ones to avoid they like to pick on smaller animals. The boy finally gets to the king of the animals, the lions where they rule the other animal, everybody looks up to them. They rule the zoo, but also welcome new friends and visitors as long as they remember one thing that LIONS RULE!!!

Vergissmeinnicht by Keith Douglas

Well the first thing I did with this poem would be that I looked up the translation for Vergissmeinnicht and foud out it meant Forget Me Not, which really helped me understand the poem more. I also found that it is a German word and from the words in the poem i can decipher that this is about World War II. I think that this was probably my favorite poem so far for this packet. Anything that has to do with Germany or WWII i am super interested in so I guess I can be a little biased. This poem is about a soldier who has died on the battlefield, and how another soldier the enemy soldier found him and just by looking at a picture of his girl learned a lot about him. He found out the soldier was not only a killer, but was a lover to that girl in the photo. This poem flowed so well, which made it a little easier to read and understand, but without that translation i don't think i could get what the poem is trying to tell me. In war we never get to know the enemy and don't think of them to relating to us, but when we do learn that we do have something in common it is usually to late. I really loved this poem and will probably always remember it.

For the Sleepwalkers by Edward Hirsch

From the beginning of the poem I was excited to read about sleepwalking because I have some good memories of people I know sleepwalking. I could not tell you if I ever slept walk. I really like how the author approaches the subject of sleepwalking, not by saying really the dangers of sleepwalking but looking at the positive influence it can have if we see what sleepwalking really means. The poem does take a positive kind of  approach, but I know that sleepwalking can be very dangerous. While at lake powell one time with family friends, Wes who was about 19 at the time decided to sleep on the top deck of the house boat which was a mistake. We find out the next morning that Wes went sleepwalking right off the side of the boat and jumped in the water. Where he jumped was shallow water and rocks, Wes got lucky with only a scrap on his back, but he could have died and it was a very scary thought, that sleepwalking was the reason for it.

I think that the poem brings out a really neat message about trusting ourselves completely with no doubt. That is very hard to do, but what I got from the poem was that with trusting our heart, maybe sleepwalking is the first step to doing that.

Skipping This Week

Skipping this week on my blog because it has been a very very long week, and weekend. Also celebrating Katie and Kayla's 18th birthday. LOL oh also a halloween party!!!

On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High by D.C. Berry

I enjoyed this poem a lot and it actually made me laugh a little bit. I can just imagine me in the authors place in front of out AP Lit class and suddenly my classmates turn into fishys. What I got from this poem is something I will think about everytime I know present to the class about how we are all fish. From the poem I think that the author shows a good example of what a classroom turns into when a student is presenting a poem. It is always harder to control a class and keep the attention of the students when a fellow student it contrilling the class. The third stanza shows what I am talking about perfectly about how maybe a student is reading a poem to a class, but all the class is doing is talking and drowning out the person presenting. But when they do get the class to pay attention the presentation of the poem is great and they go and swim in the aquarium together and learn together. I really enjoyed how the author kept the fish metaphor all throughout the poem even until the very last line where the cat licks the gills away. I have never really read a poem like this where students are considered fish and I thought is was reall weird that I have something in common with those students. HAHA I am a fish!!!

Unveiling by Linda Pastan

Oh a new poem from newm packet equals excitement. I decided to do the poem Unveiled by Linda Pastan because it looked interesting, but also because it is mostly short and my brian is kind of dead right now. But I also liked her poem too. I thought it was interesting on how the author is not grieving for the loss of love ones, but jealous that they are all dead together and she feels left out of the picture. I don't necessarily think that she wants to be dead but mostly wants to be with her family again and she misses them, but in the process of missing them she is thinking of the memories of them. I do not understand why the title is Unveiling. Maybe she is unveiling old memories of the times of her family. I enjoyed the simplicity of this poem and this is a good start to the new packet of poems.

Inoculation by Susan Donnelly

This poem was read in class earlier this week and was very confused about what this poem was trying to say. The structure just doesn't make sense to me which in turn makes me even more confused with the poem. Even with the class discussion I did not understand what the purpose of the poem was. The only thing that I only really did understand that the author was talking about a histrorical event and people, but I never understood why this was specific and why the author wrote about those poeple and event. There was the end of the poem that I actually I did enjoy. I can't really explain why I like it some much, but I think the poem would be incomplete if the last stanza was not their. I just don;t understand the purpose of the poem, all I know it has something to do with small pox, which is a deadly disease and some sort of slaves.

In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver

This poem was probably one of my favorite poems of the bunch. I enjoyed the imagery to the put of you can visualize everything the author is trying to describe. The way the author approaches the poem with such imagery is awesome. What I get out of the poem is that everything is connected in someway or another. She uses the woods, trees, ponds as the metaphor to compare to humans. Where we as humans can always connect in a way, we have a nose, eyes, and ears. She describes this metaphor up through stanza 6 then the poem kind of transitions. From the metaphor feeling the author starts giving advice about life. That even though you can connect with all people, you will always be able to meet that someone that you connect with the most. You will find the person that you love, hold, and let it go. I love how she approaches this poem and with the way she does I am able to understand and enjoy the poem more. Probably the one thing I do not understand about this poem is the reason for the title for the poem. What is significant about the title? I just don't get how it is connected to the whole connection thing going on throughout the whole entire poem. So just with that little misunderstanding I enjoyed reading and understanding the poem and I didn't exactly get death out of this poem just lost.

The Halo That Would Not Light (Poetry Response 5)

This poem I would have to say is very depressing, not really a suprise, but also very good. I like the way the author makes everything so visual, and I love it. The whole entire poem I think is a metaphor for something. The title being that the halo would not light, and the poem being about death or sadness where there really is not light, or they cannot see the light. This poem was probably the best poem in our packet and I am really excited to present this to the class. I have a feeling this poem is about some type of abuse. First you have the raptor who is like the monstor who is unleashes upon them, and you know that he is not going to do any good. Then the author talks about the child and the raptor coming after that said child. These are just my thoughts on the poem, I do not quite understand the whole thing quite yet, but I think that the more I read and think about it the more I will begin to understand the poem. The way the author uses so many visual pieces that you can connect to is just awesome, and can't wait for what the class has to say about the poem.

Beginning Again bb Franz Wright (Poetry Response 4)

When reading the poem "Beginning Again", I could not quite understand what the author is getting at with the poem. I thought the poem was about beginning, but that is not the vibe I got from the poem, I actually don't know what vibe I got, but it wasn't beginning. Even though I did fully quite understand the poem, I do believe that the poet was trying to say something very meaningful, like most poets do... :) Even though I do not quite understand the poem I do kind of like it. The words and style of writing he uses is very interesting. Me favorite line throughout the poem is the whole entire first stanza. I think what the first stanza is trying to say is that the man does not have an illness, but is maybe annoyed with the world and sick of all the talking, and if he didn't talk there would be nothing to worry about. And what I think about when he mentions the man performing brain surgery is just the man thinking, thinking, and over thinking things. Picking and proding at certain things mentally, not literally performing brain surgery. Other than the first stanza the rest of the poem does not really make since. I just don't think that th poem flows really well together, I am probably incorrect but it seems like after the first stanza he starts talking about a totally different thing than in the first stanza. I like this poem, I just don;t know how to interpret the poem and can't wait to hear other peoples thought on the peom in class when presented.

To Myself by W.S. Merwin (Poetry Response 3)

To Myself

Even when I forget you
I go on looking for you
I believe I would know you
I keep remembering you
sometimes long ago but then
other timesI am sure you
were her a moment before
and the air is still alive
around where you were and I
think then i can recognize
you who are always the same
who pretend to be time but
you are not time and who speak
in the words but you are not
what they say you who are not
lost when I do not find you

-W.S. Merwin

When I first read this poem, just the beginning part I believed that this was someone trying to find their true selves and their true potential. Now that I have read it once I believe that it is not talking about someone finding themselves, but someone losing someone, a close friend, relative, etc. I enjoyed reading this poem and I actually can connect to this poem, i think everyboody can who has lost a loved one.
Towards the end of the poem, I think is where all the pieces of the poem fit into place. I feel that the end of the poem. Which to understand you have to read carefully cause the words kind of pile together reading it the first few times. The end of the poem explains the lost of a loved one more clearly. Talking about the person in detail, waiting for them to show up, but they never do.
Out of all the poetry responses we have done, this poem was my favorite. It made you think analytically about the poem was actually saying. It also brought up memories of a lost loved one, which makes you think of the loved one, of how you knew them well, but will never see them again.

Still Memory by Mary Karr (Poetry Response 2)

Still Memory
The dream was so deep
the bed came unroped from its moorings,
drifted upstream till it found my old notch

in the house I grew up in,
then it locked in place.
A light in the hall—

my father in the doorway, not dead,
just home from the graveyard shift
smelling of crude oil and solvent.

In the kitchen, Mother rummages through silver
while the boiled water poured
in the battered old drip pot

unleashes coffee’s smoky odor.
Outside, the mimosa fronds, closed all night,
open their narrow valleys for dew.

Around us, the town is just growing animate,
its pulleys and levers set in motion.
My house starts to throb in its old socket.

My twelve-year-old sister steps fast
because the bathroom tiles
are cold and we have no heat other

than what our bodies can carry.
My parents are not yet born each
into a small urn of ash.

My ten-year-old hand reaches
for a pen to record it all
as would become long habit.

—Mary Karr

This poem by Mary Karr is a very good and interesting poem. Even though I have read in multiple times I do not quite understand the whole poem yet. Why does she mention it as a dream not, even though the title is called a Still Memory. What I though that was interesting about this poem was that even though the poem is called Still Memory there is actually a lot going on thorughout the poem and around the author. These were my first thoughts when I first read the poem.
Then as I contibnued reading and thinking deeply I noticed that the title of the poem is called Still Memory because the narrator of the poem is the one being still, while everthing else is moving on around her. The author does a good job with this peom and I actually enjoyed it more as i started thinking more about the poem and the meaning around the words. Even though the meaning of the poem is pretty obvious it is still a good poem because it makes me think of my own personal memories. I also liked the writing structure of the piece because it is a unique way of describing a memory with interesting word choice.
I enjoyed this poem more than I thought I would, and I am kind of liking poetry more now that I am starting to understand it better, but still dreading about having to write poetry. :)

Wallflowers (Poem Response 1)

Wallflowers by Donna Vorrey

I heard a word today, I'd never heard before--
I wondered where it had been all my life.
I welcomed it, wooed it with my pen,
let it know it was loved.

They say if ou use a word three times, it's yours.
What happens to ones that no one speaks?

Don't they wait bitterly
hollow-eyed orphans in Dickensian bedrooms,
longing for someone to say,
"yes, you... you're the one"?

Or do the wait patiently, shy shadows
at the high school dance,
knowing that, given the slightest chance,
someday they'll bloom?

I want to make room for all of them,
to be the Wllis Island of diction--
sive me our tired, your poor,
your gegenshin, your zoanthropy--
all those words without a home,
come out a play--live on my poem.





This poem was one of my favorites out of the entire poems given. This poem just popped out to me just because I think everybody can relate to the poem every once in while. Everybody feels out of place in their life and feels they don;t belong, but with this poem it doesn't matter cause eventually you will boom into the person you want to be. I just thought if how it was interesting of how the poem talks about “words”, but the meaning is completely different. From what I gathered from the poem it is about those people who are not necessarily the most popular people, most specifically in high school like the author mentions in the poem, but will someday grow and be who they want even if they are not the most popular. Popularity does not determine our future, choices you make do.
For me it was the 4th stanza that really stuck out to me. Specifically the last line where she talks about the a word not being used or paid attention to at a high school dance but someday they will bloom just it is not their time. With this she is talking about people and how they will bloom and just need to be patience and this step in your life is not at important and other.(At least that is what I interpret from the poem) When she expressly says “someday they’ll bloom” I also think that this line is a reference to the title because the title is called Wallflowers and wallflowers are actually noticeable because they do stick out. (I don’t really know how to explain my thinking in this paragraph, so sorry if it is confusing.J)
The parts of the poem I did not understand would have to be the second stanza, just because I have never heard that if you use a word 3 times it is yours. Also the title of the poem is also something that I really don’t understand also just because I don’t really know anything about wallflowers and really have know idea why she put that as the title. Especially when she is talking about “words”, but actually means real people in real life. The poem is a huge metaphor between unknown words and people, so why is it called Wallflowers.

The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner was my favorite book out of all three of the summer books. No suprise there. This book was probably the hardest to anotate just because I didn't want to annotate just wanted to read the book. And annotating was difficult for me in the first place just because I think it is wrong to write in a book, but I got used to the idea. For the annotating i did text-to-personal, which was kind of hard for this book. I think i did most of the text-to-world comparison with comparing afghanistan to america and how similiar they were at that day and age. For such a long book it went so fast. The beginning I already didn't like Amir and how he treated Hassan. He treated him okay in public but when other friends were around he treated him like his servant. There are so many things that happened in this book that just made me want to strangle Amir, one was setting up Hassan with burglery. But with the way Amir acted I don't think his father helped with that either. Baba had so many expectations of Amir that Amir didn't meet was dissapointing to Baba.
I also though it was interesting how Amir and Baba came from being this rich family in Afghanistan to being this low middle class family in America it just showed the standard of living in different countries. I enjoyed how the author showed that in the book. When it came to characters I really felt bad for Hassan it seemed he was deemed with all the bad luck in the world which led up to his death. And it alwas seems that Amir is in the backround of this bad luck or the cause of the bad luck. I also fet bad for Hassan's son Sohrab for also he seems to also have some bad luck like his father.
Rahim Khan was probably one of my favorite characters. Even though he reall didn't know what a jerk Amir was he still defended him against his father and was always there to give advice. Assef never even changed thorughout the book and was the little turd he always was even till the end of the book.
This book was fabulous and one of those books that I could reads over and over again and still be suprised and enjoy it throughout the years and I also think everybody should read this book just because of the plot and how awesome the book is.

Heart of Darkness

Oh what to say about the Heart of Darkness. I really didn’t enjoy this book that much, but it was not the worst book I have read, but not the best either. For the annotating in this book I did the text-to-author comparison, so pretty much looking at the authors writing style. This was a bad choice to look at the writing style of the author because to understand the writing style you have to know what the author is trying to say. And lets just say I did not always know what the author was trying to say which led me to not quite understanding the authors writing style. The one thing I did notice however would have to be the repeating of the same thing just in a different wa. Like he would say the sun was setting in one paragraph three different times and that was just a little annoying.
I think my problem with this book the most was that I didn’t understand the book completely and didn’t quite understand what the author was trying to say or what the big picture of the book was. Even with reading slow and annotating I still did not quite understand what exactly was going on, not to mention that everything happened really fast.
I would have to say the characters were interesting. Each one of the characters had a very distinct character trait which also I noticed in The Great Gatsby. I noticed Marlow is a very good storyteller and Kurtz has away to attract the people around him no matter what he does. I also noticed Conrad never really said the names of certain people in the book even though they played some role in the book. Like the Brick maker of the General Manager, he never says their name just leaves them as a general title. I wonder if he does this for a purpose?
So I surprised myself with what I had to say about this book even though I didn’t quite understand or even like it for that matter.

The Great Gatsby

The first thing that I noticed about the book was all the characters within the book. They were all distinct and each one had a very unique personality. Jordan Baker was the character I liked the least. Her attitude really bugs me. She is stuck up, cynical and self-centered and those are the qualities I do not like in a person. I don’t know why anybody would. My favorite character would have to be Jay or Nick. They are first witty and all around just interesting character traits. Right from the beginning you see Nick’s character come out in the very beginning of the book. Just talking with Daisy and Tom you see he is a very sarcastic character, but at the same times a very curios character. Nick always seems to be the one character that got the story from the characters. He also finds out about all the affairs going on within the society they live in and the real story to all the gossip that goes around town. Then there is Jay Gatsby who is also an interesting character. I really can’t explain in words what I thought about him for some reason I can’t get my thoughts on paper.
When reading this book, for the annotation I did compare the text to the world annotation. For the annotation I had compare a lot to the 20’s and my background knowledge of history in the United States that I learned last year. I kind of compared the book to modern day America, but only with the characteristics of the characters and how we still have some of the cynical and selfish people.
One of the most surprising things in the book, okay maybe not totally surprising, was Jay’s death. I actually expected Tom to shoot him not George. I mean Tom was screwed twice by Gatsby. Once by taking Daisy and then another time by Myrtle dying in the car crash who was his lover. I thought Tom would be more revengeful than George.
The great Gatsby was not the best book I read but I did enjoy reading the book. It had an interesting plot to keep you interested but also had a good plot that kept me interested. I expect to learn the more about this book as class goes on and I know there is more to this book then I am seeing.