BA#8

After reading "The Ledge," by Lawrence Sargent Hall I began to think about the series of events that lead up to the final culmination of the deaths of the Fisherman, his son and nephew. It seems as if there were many options that would have taken these characters in different directions. For example, I can't help but wonder how the story's outcome would have been entirely different, if the Fisherman had returned home to retrieve his tobacco when he realized he hadn't brought it along with him. What if he had tied the boat up before they went out to retrieve the dead ducks? It seems as if author's knowingly take the turn away from what is an easy route, to create a "happy ending," and instead opt for the difficult task of writing a tragic, emotionally disturbing peice instead. What makes an author decide a specific ending when writing a peice of literature? How does one seemingly insignificant event lead to a tragedy? How does both a tragedy and a "happy ending" have different effects on the emotions of a reader?

BA#8

I read the short story The German Refugee by Bernard Malamud (BASS page 438). It tells the story through the perspective of Martin Goldberg, an English tutor living in New York City during WWII. Although he has numerous pupils, he becomes intrigued and close with one particular student, Oskar Gassner, a German refugee who fled his homeland to escape the wrath of the Nazis, leaving his wife, a Gentile, behind. He is a man without much hope and purpose, but he happens to get a job at the Institute of Public Studies, where he has to give a lecture in English by the summer's end. He and Goldberg make progress at first, but then, in his frustration, Gassner decides to stop the lessons. However, Goldberg, knowing that Gassner is "aleinated" (Malamud 444) from everyone, with " finiancal insecurities, being in a strange land without friends and a speakable tounge"(444) spends more and more time with the lonely man. However, the more time Goldberg spends with Gassner, the more depressed he himself becomes, and the more worried he grows about the depressed Gassner. However, they start their English lessons again, and Gassner pulls off the feat of the lecture in the I.P.S. But, three days later, when Goldberg goes to Gassner's apartment to visit him, he finds that the refugee killed himself; a letter was found from his anti-Semetic mother-in-law, who tells him that in spite his wife converted to Judiasm and was captured, taken away and shot by the Nazis. This story is interesting in the fact that although he hated Germany and was able to leave it, the memory and beloved he had in Germany ended up getting the better of him. The message of the story would be not to take it upon yourself to save someone that you cannot save, like Goldberg tried to do for Gassner, spending most of his time worrying about the man and becoming just as depressed as him. Despite his efforts, Gassner was already damaged from the memory of his wife he left in Germany, and the occurences going on in Germany itself. This story shows that no matter where you are, you can't really escape your past.

BA #7

B. This is from "The Ledge" by Lawrence Hall

"The boy did for the fisherman the greatest thing that can be done. He may have been too young for perfect terror, but he was old enough to know there were things beyond the power of man. All he could do he did, by trusting his father to do all he could, and asking nothing more."(383)

The fisherman's son is realizing that his father had no control over the skiff's disappearance, and while his father is carrying him across the water, he is thinking this. Even though his father is always in control over things, and always careful, he is not perfect. The son's tone went from excitement to seriousness when he found out the boat was not there. The fisherman's tone was always serious, but the young boy's new that they were in a jam, and so their thoughts changed. Sometimes it is better to just "ask nothing more". The fisherman is always careful, and the one time he slipped, his life falls into danger. It is very ironic that that happens.

BA#7

I read, "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," by William Butler Yeats. I chose this poem from a book called, Western Wind on page 128. This poem's repetition, parallelism, and meter create significance by re-instating the speakers love for adventure, and his reasoning in enlisting in the military.

"Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight,
drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death." (Lines 9-16)

In lines 9 and 10 of "An Irish Airman," several examples of repetition show how law, duty, and glory, did not persuade the speaker to join the military. Yeats wrote this poem in the early twentieth century, so the speaker probably was an airman in World War I. The poet's use of repetition establishes the speaker's enlistment in the military, which was solely for the adventure of flying an aircraft. The words "balance" and "breath" (Lines 13-16) are seen twice in this poem which shows how the speaker found his balance in life to be in the sky. It also demonstrates how his passion for adventure was his "breath", oxygen, and lifeline.

Parallelism is used in lines 13-16. Lines 13 and 16 are parallel because they both show how the speaker found solace in life and death in flying an aircraft. Lines 14 and 15 are parallel because they demonstrate how his life before flying or without flying would be a waste of breath and he might as well be dead if he couldn't explore his love of adventure.

The poems meter is iambic tetrameter. This is meaningful because the poem is about balance, and if the poem was written in free verse, it would detract from it's meaning, as free verse is without balance and consistency.

BA #7

C. After discussing in class today the conflict within Eudora Welty’s “The Hitch-Hikers”, I am still left wondering about Tom Harris’ overall detachment from the events in the story. We addressed several conflicts, most notably helplessness/control, friendship/anonymity, no connection/connection. There was also the conflict of silence/noise that was present between Sobby and Sanford, which was concretely shown by Sanford’s insistent plucking of the guitar. But what is hidden in Tom that is the root of his conflicts? Is he doomed to forever be disconnected—and if so, why? He has the opportunity to be with Carol, to blend into the town and finally become connected, but why does he resist it?

BA #6

I read "Perfect Dress" by Marisa de los Santos. The poem can be found on page 444 of our Intro to Poetry book. This poem is full of both tropes and schemes to help create meaning.

"the girl in the photograph, cobalt-eyed, hair puddling
like cognac, or the one stretched at the ocean's edge,
curved and light-drenched, more like a beach than
the beach. I confess I have longed to stalk runways,
leggy, otherworldly as a mantis, to balance a head
like a Faberge egg on the longest, most elegant neck" (lines 5-10)

The rest of the poem is about a teenaged girls diary entry where she wishes she could just wake up beautiful, super-model beautiful, the girls in the magazines beautiful. She seems to have an unrealistic view that somehow the perfect dress would reveal her inner, hidden beauty.
The author, Marisa de los Santos uses a rhetorical question, at the beginning of the poem to get us thinking, she also uses a similie in lines 7-8 and 9-10 above; comparing the body to a beach, and her head to a Faberge egg. Santos also uses imagery when describing the fabric of and the dresses the speaker tries on and looks at at the time she wishes she would just step into her "perfect evening".

BA 6

I chose the two poems "A Route of Evanescence," by Emily Dickinson, and "Reapers," by Jean Toomer to look at for the sixth blog assignment. The first poem describes a "resonance" and "rush" of colors as flowers die, signifying death. The first line, "A route of evanescence (line 1)," is a reference to the path of dying, with evanescence meaning "soon passing out of sight, memory, or existence; quickly fading or disappearing (American Heritage)." The symbolism all involves the end of something, flowers wilting, colors reaching the end of a resonance, except the spinning wheel, which symbolizes the circle of life. Because of all of these things, I believe this poem is about the path of death, and how it is natural and a part of existence. The second poem, "Reapers," Addresses death through metaphors, telling the story of "reapers" who sharpen their scythes to begin "their silent swinging (line 4)." While cutting grass, they hit a field rat and continue, ignoring it and moving on. This poem describes death as a way of making the earth cleaner. The poem is different from the first because it does not describe death as a path, instead as an action. You do not journey to death, you just die by the hands of another. These poems compare different beliefs on dying.

 Dickinson's poem: http://www.earlywomenmasters.net/dickinson/ed_1463/index.htm

Toomer's poem: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/reapers/

BA # 6

I read the poem "A Different Image" by Dudely Randall (page 499 of IP). It pertains to re-shaping the image of the black community during the Civil Rights Era, as it was written in 1968. The first stanza talks about shedding the past image that the black community had; "This age/requires this task;/create/a different image;/re-animate/the mask." (lines 1-6). I believe the last two lines in particular advocate acticvism in creating a new image and identity, for 'animate' is an active rather than a passive word. The second stanza talks about letting go of the standards, practices and sterotypes born during slavery, and replacing it with black pride and nationalism; "Replace/the leer-/of the minstrel's burnt-cork face/with a proud, serene/and classic bronze of Benin" (lines 8-12). Here, Randall is stating that the beliefe that blacks are subnordinate must be shed by its own people first and foremost, and replaced with a proud image of Benin, a southern Nigerian people known for their craftsmanship with bronze and ivory. This last line of the poem suggests a rediscovering of African roots, as Harlem Renaissance pioneer Marcus Garvy introduced to black Americans in the 1920's. In short, the basic message of the poem is that black people must let go of the negitive social sterotypes and images they are labeled as and gain a sense of pride, worth, value and community by rediscovering their African roots.

I read Emily Dickison's "Hope is a Thing with Feathers"(http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/hope.html). The poem is about the emotion of hope and comparing it to a small bird, which in literary terms is called allteration;"Hope is a thing with feathers/That perches in the soul" (lines 1 and 2). The first stanza states that hope lives inside the human sole and although it doesn't tell one what to do, it guides one's conscience in a benefical way. The second stanza states that it would take a lot of bad occurances or something really tramatic to shatter this hope that dwells in the human soul, and how it provides solice for so many people; "And sore must be the storm/ That could abash the little bird/ That kept so many warm"(lines 6-8). The last stanza says that no matter what the situation, there is always hope, and it doesn't ask for anything back, although it gives much; "Yet, never, in extremity,/It asked a crumb of me" (lines 11-12).

BA #5

Jack Kerouac: "The Railroad Earth"

“It was the fantastic drowse and drum hum of lum mum afternoon nathin’ to do, ole Frisco with end of land sadness—the people—the alley full of trucks and cars of businesses nearabouts and nobody knew or far from cared who I was all my life three thousand five hundred miles from birth O opened up and at last belonged to me in Great America.” (Kerouac 38)

This passage comes from a collection of short prose works describing Kerouac’s life in San Francisco as a writer. I’ve always enjoyed “The Railroad Earth” because of Jack’s cunning use of language and sound and the way he swam through made it poetic beyond prose. Within the first line, Jack uses first alliteration with “drowse” and “drum”, then switching to assonance with “hum” and “lum mum”—only to then be topped by creating a slant rhyme to “afternoon” with three words, “nathin’ to do”. All of this happens in a beat and may go unnoticed or appear disorderly to the untrained eye. The whole “nathin’ to do” bit really gets me, as I struggle to recall any other writer using such creative authorial intuition to complete the machine-gun effect in line one with a slew of well rehearsed rhymes. Kerouac, having learned English as a second language, had the ability to step back from words and use them in such a way that made each one a key on a piano. His vision of an alley “full of trucks and cars of businesses nearabouts” is enhanced linguistically by the use of cacophony to create the sense of visual raucous with verbal raucous. This passage is just Jack having fun with language, not caring to stick to any poetic form.

Kerouac, Jack. “The Railroad Earth”. The Lonesome Traveler. New York: Grove Press, 1988.

The Railroad Earth

BA #6

B. "You fit into me" by Margaret Atwood

Atwood, Margaret. "You fit into me." Introduction to Poetry. 12th ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007. 122.

"you fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye"(lines 1-4).

As simple as this poem is, it has a whole lot of ambiguity going on. There is the repitition of the word "eye" in lines two and four. "Hook" is also repeated twice. I assume the speaker is a woman, since Atwood was a lady. In the first two lines, the speaker is describing how well her lover fits into her life. We could also assume that the speaker wants us to think that this other person is not even a lover, but maybe an enemy. The way I see that is because when one thinks of the word "Hook", you most certainely think of something sharp that is piercing the "eye". The eye could be the eyeball on your face. It could also be a button that hooks perfectly into your jacket. When I read this poem I automatically thought of the sharp hook going in to the eyesocket, but when I looked up the words hook and eye, I believed the speaker was trying to say that her lover fits into her life. The repetition of the word eye is meaningful because you must imagine that the eye is delicate and fragile, just like your heart.

BA #5

B. "Triolet" by Robert Bridges

Bridges, Robert. "Triolet." Introduction to Poetry. 12th ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007. 211.

"When first we met we did not guess
That Love would prove so hard a master;
Of more than common friendliness
When first we met we did not guess.
Who could foretell this sore distress,
This irretrievable disaster"(lines 1-6).

This poem is a triolet. Its two opening lines are repeated according to a set pattern. It is usually used for a lighter poem, but Bridge's poem carries heavier material. The rhyme scheme is [a b a a b b a b]. At first the speaker explains that he/she did not guess at first that the love relationship would be more than friendship. The first line is repeated in line four to show meaning that the speaker was clearly not thinking that something could go wrong later down the road. The speaker does not talk about the sweet things involved with being in "Love", but instead focuses on the negatives such as the "sore distress"(5). At the end of the poem, the first two lines are again repeated. The meanings of these lines have changed from the beginning of the poem. At the end, the speaker is saying those lines with regret.

BA #4

1. Datlow, Ellen and Terri Windling. Snow White, Blood Red. New York. HarperCollins, 1993.
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?isbn=9780380718757&atch=h&utm_content=You%20Might%20Also%20Like

AND

http://www.rambles.net/windling_snow.html

2. The text, in short, is amazing. Snow White, Blood Red is a collection of Fairy Tales that defies everything you know – or what Disney has led you to believe. These collections of short stories tell you the real fairy tales that you and how cruel or odd they really are. They almost take on a kind of Brothers Grimm aspect as some of them are so dark. This book I would say does fall into fantasy minus all the fairy godmothers and glamour.


3. The most intriguing part of this whole book for me was that these are Fairy Tales the way they are meant to be told not just Disney cover-ups for little tots.

4. Since there are so many stories in this book, I am going to only focus on one called, “Like a Red, Red Rose” by Susan Wade. It’s about a beautiful girl who happens to be the daughter of the town witch. All in all, the prince falls in love with her and they make love in the forest. After this, the prince dies. I am relating this to “What lips my lips have kissed” by Milay. Even though the poem and story are very different, what I found similar is that in “what lips my lips” the speaker is almost lamenting over past lovers and how they no longer come to see her and then in “Like a Red, Red Rose” after making love to the prince and having him die from that the girl takes no more lovers and is constantly reminded of him through a child that was conceived that night.

I chose to write about Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken' (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/frost_road.html or page 245 of I.P.). The persona is the author, or the author writing as another. It tells a story of a person who is traveling in the forest and comes across a break in paths, and chooses to walk the one not traveled. He walks down this path for a long while, and he knows that if he lets curosity take control, he will keep traveling and eventually become lost. He ends the poem by saying how when he is older, he will look back on this experince and be glad he took the road less traveled. Although this may seem like a simple anecdote about a man roaming the woods, I believe it conveys a deeper message. I think Frost is trying to imply that although it is easier to conform and do what everyone else is doing, one should stride against the norm, or perhaps even an injustice, for it will pay off in the end. The lines "Yet knowing how way leads on to way/I doubted if I should ever come back"( "The Road Not Taken" 245) are an important part of this message, implying that once you start to fight against something, it is impossible to be re-accepted by society and its current standards. In the last stanza, the lines "I shall be telling this with a sigh...I took the one less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference" ("The Road Not Taken" 245) implies that tackling a wrong in society will make you remembered, because it is so difficult to do, and an important part of history to future people. This poem adovcates the strength and power of one person to mobolize change.

BA #4

A.

1. Whitman, Walt. "When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer.” Poetry; an introduction. 5^th ED. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. 629

< http://www.bartleby.com/142/180.html>

2. Walt Whitman had already become a well-known spokesman for the lonesome travelers of the world by 1865, the time of this poem’s creation. So it’s no surprise that the poem is essentially about casting away institutional understanding for his typical “nature is beautiful and not to be understood” mantra.

3. I’ve always enjoyed Walt Whitman, beginning with my introduction to Leaves of Grass in an earlier poetry class. There’s nothing especially intriguing or exemplary within the poem itself to warrant much discussion. Rather, there is the lasting affect Whitman has upon me that cannot be shaken and is only embellished when re-reading his work or discovering something new of his. It’s like listening to the Beatles: they’re simple and actually not that great if you pull apart the tracks of the song, but they deliver the listener to a different place, time and time again.

4. What better person to compare to Whitman’s stylistic prose than Shelley, specifically “Ozymandias”; written in 1818. Where Whitman emphasizes on the individual and his limitless place in the world, Shelley strikes the reader’s aspirations down. Ozymandias is belittling the individual, the seemingly colossal, where as Whitman glorifies the possibilities of discovery and exploration. Bringing nature into the discussion, Shelley considers the shattered visage in the ground as laying “boundless and bare”(13), where “The lone and level sands stretch far away”(14). It’s not much of a stretch to compare the infinite universe as a desert, so why does Whitman consider his desert “mystical”(8) and in “perfect silence”(9)? It seems as if Shelley investigates the dour attitude of the seemingly insignificant where as Whitman looks to find beauty and enchantment.

BA#4

"The Whipping" by Robert Hayden

Hayden, Robert. "The Whipping." Introduction to Poetry. 'Ed'. X.J. Kennedy. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007.

"The old woman across the way
is whipping the boy again
and shouting to the neighborhood
her goodness and his wrongs."


"The Whipping" by Robert Hayden uses imagery to show how a child abuser can consider herself to be the child's owner because of the power she wields over that child. The word "whipping" (line 2) is primarily used when discussing the horrors of slavery, and also in reference to the training of horses and other animals. Because of these disgusting and painful acts performed on slaves and animals by their "owners", the word "whipping"(line 2) has extremely negative connotations attached to it. The paradox in this poem can be found in line 4, when the old woman who is abusing the boy, is screaming at him and telling him he is bad and that she is good, which is clearly contrary because she is an adult beating a young boy with a stick. The meter of this poem is iambic trimeter, which is effective because the reader focuses on main words like, "woman," "whipping," "boy," "shouting," "goodness," and "wrongs." (lines 1-4)

BA #4

A.

1. Stevenson, Anne. "The Victory." An Introduction to Poetry. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 92 http://www.anne-stevenson.co.uk/poetry.htm

2. Anne Stevenson's "The Victory" was written in 1974. The poem is about a mother who is having thoughts of regret towards her son. She does not say nice, kind words about him. Instead, she refers to him as mean and abusive. It seems as though the son is not older yet. He is still a baby and is consitently crying like all babies do. I presume the the mother did not intend to have this child. Maybe that is why she asks, "Why do I have to love you?" ("The Victory" 15)

3. This text was something different than everything I have ever read which made it interesting. My view of babies entering the world from their mother's bodies is something beautiful. The mother in this poem is not referring to her son as a beautiful creation. It intrigued me to read this because I have never heard of someone describe their child like this.

4. I chose to compare this poem to "First Poem for You" by Kim Addonizio. This poem can be found on page 204. Although the speaker in Addonizio's poem is not referring to a child, he/she is talking about a close person to their heart. The mother in Stevenson's poem is afraid of making a commitment to her child, just like the speaker in Addonizio's poem is afraid of making a commitment to his/her lover. The tone of both poems is dark. The mother in Stevenson's poem speaks as though her child is actually stabbing her with a knife. The speaker in Addonizio's poem speaks of love as a frightening thing, referring to it with words such as lightening, a dragon, and a serpent.

BA #3

B.
Drayton, Michael. "Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part." 1619.

"Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou mightst him yet recover." (lines 9-14)

These six lines of the poem bring the message that the persona portrays from its previous statement of the closure of a relationship to a desperate plea for a change of heart. This poem (and specifically these lines) adhere to the form of an English Sonnet, with the exception of the final couplet. Each line in the couplet has one extra syllable, as if the final lines of the sonnet are struggling to outlive the "end" of the lines (where the iambic pentameter of the poem would have them end); this is representational of the emotional situation in which this last quatrain and the couplet are presented. The author uses the personification of intangibles such as love, passion, faith, and innocence to express the fragile vitality of these emotions which the persona is striving to save. I find it interesting that sonnets are usually about love, because it seems contradictory for something as chaotic and random as love to be organized (in poetry, no less) in such a structured fashion as a sonnet. It seems that in traditional sonnets, this contradiction either serves the purpose of contrasting the disarray of love with this strict form of poetry, or the structure and order that come with a sonnet act as a counterpoint to the disorder of love. I believe the latter is the situation in this sonnet; the stress, sadness, and hope in the voice of the poem seem to be soothed by the secure structure of a sonnet. Though in the first two quatrains of the poem, the persona tries to be strong and secure, the expression of fragility and the reliance on the security of structure show that the true point of the poem, though it contradicts the title and earlier lines, is an imploration for a sign of hope when there seems to be none.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/all-day-i-hear-the-noise-of-waters/ (page 158 IP)
I choose to read and analyze James Joyce's "All day I hear". I believe the poem is about a person who is sucidal, comparing his montone and depressing state to the cold wind and the ocean. The persona is the author speaking as himself or someone else, and the tone is saddening. I believe it is about a sucidal person (who wants to drown himself), reason being the poems says "The gray winds, the cold winds are blowing/Where I go./I hear the noises of many waters/Far below". ("All day I hear" 158). The lines "Where I go" and "Far below" imply a sense of leaving ("All day I hear" 158). Also, even the title itself, 'All day I hear', implies a dull, monotone, constant routine of something negitive. I think the person lives by the ocean, as the whole poem is about the 'moaning' water and the 'sad' seagulls; even by these adjectives, one can tell the speaker is of a somber state of mind. As a side note, lines two, four and six all have exact end rhymes, of which two and four are masculine. Lines 8, 10 and 12 rhyme as well, with lines 8 and 12 being masculine. The poem has an imabic pentameter.

BA #3

I. Brooks, Gwendolyn. “We Real Cool.” Backpack Literature. Ed. 2. X.J. Kennedy, Dana Gioia. Pearson Longman: New York, NY. 2008. pg 434.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15433

II. Gwendolyn Brooks wrote “We Real Cool” in 1960, and it’s about seven youths hanging out at a pool hall, enjoying themselves. The poem is very rhythmically structured, possibly in part to the reference to jazz in line 6.

III. I especially like this poem because of the players’ attitude towards themselves. They’re obviously social deviants, maybe even a gang, but the poem reads arrogantly enough to make the reader believe they’re good at whatever it is they do. It reminds me of when my friends and I used to hang out at a pool hall and drink underage and get into fights and believe that no one could touch us.

IV. I link Brooks’ poem with David Mason’s “Song of the Powers” by the shared tone of the personas in each. Both share a confident tone that escalates in the persona’s voice until the final few lines. The similarities end there, as in Brooks’ poem the speaker never has a doubt about the subjects’ actions, maybe even inferring that they do not care they will die young. In Mason’s, the speaker shows in the final lines that the game of rock paper scissors is useless in the end, that it is played in vain because no matter what happens, you’ll “all end alone”(22).