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.