Eating Poetry by Mark Strand

In Strand’s poem, “Eating Poetry,” he expresses the ways in which he loves poetry by using an extended metaphor of him eating poetry and becoming a dog hungry for poetry. While in the library, he literally eats all the poetry and the librarian gets upset: “ When I get on my knees and lick her hand,/ she screams./ I am a new man./I snarl at her and bark.” In these lines, Strand creates the image of becoming desperate for more poetry. So desperate that he acts like a dog, barking and licking the librarian’s hands. He depicts haunting images of snarling dogs and crying Librarians, therefore giving the sense that Poetry has a frightening power. Strand depicts the power that poetry has over him and how poetry can literally transform you.

I enjoyed this poem and the metaphor within in to help create an image in my head. Can't believe that this is the last blog of my high school career. Its been great!!

Many Red Devils... by Stephen Crane

While reading this poem I really enjoyed the imagery. I like to picture things in my head and I could imagine exactly what was going on in the poem. Stephen Crane is fabulous at telling a story through imagery.

 I believe that the poem is about many different things.  I interpret it to be about expressing oneself honestly and truly, and maybe they're devils because they're the things about ourselves we've never had the courage to face or admit to, but to struggle to put that "red muck" into words releases, names, and conquers those facets of our self. What a shame to not enjoy this, to miss out on all it says. One would have to know nothing about honest personal writing. I think the poem has a feeling of relief attached to it. While the speaker finds writing that way strange, he also is happy to put his thoughts on paper, or out into the world. They may not be the best of thoughts, but they are his. 

Perhaps this was a telling of when one is beginning to write on a subject, but the words that flow out are reflective of a state of mind the writer was unaware of and was suprised by the change of attitude as he was writing. The mind can become freed as an idea grows while it is being examined and expressed; an idea can also be crushed during examination and expression. The devils could be an idea he wanted to disagree with at the start.  This happens to me when I am writing a timed essay sometime. I start writing one thing and then another idea pops into my head interrupting what i am already writing.

I really liked this poem and it put a new twist on writing and the red devils involved.

A Poison Tree by William Blake

I remember doing this poem during the AP Lit make up session. I really enjoyed this poem and didn't know my exact thoughts on the poem were exactly, but I think I understand the meaning of the poem.

William Blake has also shown that be they friend or foe, harboring a grudge only makes things worse. Imagery was portrayed and has connected with the reader by discussing the deep feeling of a victory over an enemy. He states that the only way, at the time, to releive that pain is by hurting someone else. Many lines have the same basic meaning. One of these shows his anger growing whilst keeping his anger bottled up inside him. \"I was angry with my foe, I told not, My wrath did grow\" Throughout this Poem, Willliam Blake has discussed a situation where a person has had a foe, he has portrayed the \'foe\' as some sort of bully obviously he has been bullied by the same perosn for a long time.
Not only has William Blake portrayed the wrath inside of this person growing on a tree, he has shown that by adding a apple on the poison tree this makes the reader beleive that the boy has made some kind of lure for the bully, for when he is at his weakest, the boy will get his sweet revenge. \"And it grew both day and night, Till it bore an apple bright. And my foe beheld it shine, And he knew that it was mine.\"



My thoughts were kind of jumbled while trying to explain hopefully you can pick your way through them.

This is my Kafkaesque cartoon. The cartoon is based off the movie Twelve, which is very senseless in a way. The movie if kind of all over the place and becomes confusing at times and the cartoon shows pretty much what the movie was about. Pretty senseless!