Bloggin on the new netbook.!

Growing up I had a hand-me-down desk that had newspaper clippings taped all over it. Most of the articles were full of pointless information used for homework for my aunts and uncles. One simple, yet life changing phrase from that desk has stuck with me my entire life.

"Ones life is like a sentence, how important the pauses are."

This is something that since age 5, I have never forgotten. Now a days there are millions of sayings just like the one above, but I believe this one has the most meaning and most value. In literature sentence structure can completely tell a story of its own, in life if one person does not know when to pause and to take a breath then this person cannot live a well structured life. Maybe we all need to start vocusing on the pauses in our life and take into consideration that it is "ok" to take a break in life sometimes. Maybe I can pass on this phrase to others in hope of finding it's definent meaning.

The Book

Miller Williams was born in 1930, and is a poet, author, translator, and editor. He has authored over 25 books and several poems. He is best remembered for writing a poem for President Clinton's 1997 inauguration. His poem, The Book, in my opinion, is written from a veterans point of view. This poem reminds me of the stories and movies about the Vietnam War, and the struggles the soldiers went through. "He had found it in a fallen bunker," this line is what made me believe it was about war, and also "I stared and a horror grew,". Since many soldiers had trouble talking about the war after they served, this expressed how once he realised his life was the story in the book, it scared him. Miller was sesarching for words to go onto the empty pages, and once he figured it out, the story was soon unraveled and captivated. Although I could not find any proof to back up my opinions, I still interpretted the poem this sense and believe that Williams left this poem open for any kind of readers' opinions. The phrase "Human skin" is also used twice to emphazise Williams effert to give the phrase meaning. The way he talks about human skin, and flesh is deadly in a way that war is always described. The structure of the poem is very splattered. There seems to be several thoughts all just thrown into sentences or short paragraphs, i could not seem to find any specific reason for these sentence structures. My favorite part of the poem is the last line, "How beautiful it was until i knew." This line to me seems to explain how Williams thought the book was something wonderful, but once he unraveled the story inside it became more gloomy and real and it frightened him. It frightened him in a way that all reality frightens us.

The Secret

This poem makes me feel hopefull! If i had people telling me they discovered a secret of life throughout my poem, i'd be delighted. Although the girls forgot the secret rather soon, the idea had remained with them forever. If i were the writer i might want to know the secret that way i don't have to be searching for it forever, but i think that is the point of the poem the more i read. The author can be releaved throughout life by pondering about the secret that the two girls had found.

Fall As Autumn Comes

We are all leaves on a tree
waiting to fall as autumn comes.
We hold on trying not to drop too soon,
up high we all have each other,
but we are all alone,
this is true.
One by one we fall,
just another leaf on the ground.
We can never be forced,
we'll never be found.
As the snow melts,
and the fear is gone.
We all blossom again,
into the summer sun.
New fears and guilts,
success and love,
begins another thanksgiving
as autumn comes.

Curiosity

The beginning of this poem is very unique. It starts out with the title, rather than the first sentence itself. But that is one of the few things i liked about the poem. I love poetry and deep meaningful thoughts, but i actually thought by the beginning of this poem, that it was going to be about cats! I am not the crazy cat lady, but it probably would have been more enjoyable for me to read about something simple for once. The poet used great metaphors, but since i had an image of what the poem was supposed to be; it kind of ruined what the poem was. I give the poet credit for using a create way of turning curiosity into a human problem rather than a cat problem since we are born into that believing. Over all though, i did not enjoy reading this poem. I honestly read it 5 times, and still cannot catch the meaning. Maybe it's the fact i put that wall up because it is'nt what i wanted it to be about.

For The Sleepwalkers

I interpreted this poem as if the author was trying to tell the readers that some people just walk through this life carelessly and sometimes those people wake up to be the happiest or most content. Some people live their lives searching for love and hoping and that doesnt always get them far, but with people living their lives without the search of love sometimes life just gently guides them to their happiness. Life guides them with little hints such as the arrow in the floor and faith in their legs. I think this poem was beautifully written and has a lot to do with love when looking at it with that persepective.

A Noiseless Patient Spider

This poem uses many metaphors in order to get his ideas across about how everything has more than one vast meaning. A spider is often never thought as a meaningful being of life, we can kill spiders without feeling guilty and never think about it twice. Humans on the other hand, have that ability to know they are meaningful, but people do not usually understand that they are important to others. Many people feel like a part of darkness in space, and nothing more. Mostly people who have experienced a stroke or some other illnesses have the same feeling of not knowing where their bodies begin and where they end. They feel as if space itself has expanded and that is what they are. This poem makes me relate to that feeling that i've been learning about in my other classes. The poet Walt Whitman after resesarching was known for having a stroke and having an amazing medical team and family to help him back to a healthier state. This was an amzing discovery for me because i believe that may have been a motive for writing such an unexplaned poem. Also in this poem the word filament was used in repetition, i looked up the word, and filamentation is anomalous growth such as E. Coli, this definition may not have been what the poet was meaning to get across, but i believe this poem had a complete medical, symbolic message. And Gossamer thread is a spider silk! just some crazy facts that ended up falling together that i wonder if other students figured out this same meaning, because i am 99.9% sure now that this is what the poet was trying to express.

The Coming Of Wisdom with Time

This poem is very unique because it only has four lines, and yet it expresses so much. The way i was this poem was that "the leaves were many. the root is one", was easily related to high school because there are a lot of students, but you are only one person amongst all the others. and the second line kind of says how "the lying days of my youth" is how these four years of being portrayed was who everyone else wants me to be, maybe isn't the truth. And throughout the growth and years it becomes easier to be yourself. In the last line, it kind of relates to as graduation gets closer with everyday, the truth of who we truly are starts to show. And as the years pass we become more comfortable with who we are. We no longer care to be who everyone else wants us to be.

The Possibility

James Fenton: english poet, journalist, and literacy critic. Son of a Biblical scholar.


The poem:
The first line, "The lizard on the wall, engrossed" reminds me of Florida when the lizards would climb all over the house and onto the windows. The seemed to think that we couldn't see them, like they were blending into the background. Even though we saw them, they believed the were invisible. When you take something for granted, or forget the importance of something, you may lose the "good" in that object. The flower that was once so beautiful, he didn't find beautiful at first. Maybe with the first inpression it wasn't as great. Work is beautiful because it is an art, and states the independence of a person. Work may also show pride for some people. He also states, "my solitude was beautiful" was, so now he doesn't think it is beautiful? Maybe the author feels guilt for signs he didn't see earlier. He thought he could handle all of his flaws, but maybe he couldn't handle anything after all. Maybe with time pain may heel, but in this poem i think the poet is trying to express how hardship can be overcome with the simple understandings of life.

Ethics

The poem Ethics discribes the authors memory from school, and the importance of one teachers question. This poem actually made me wonder to myself, whether or not i'd save a human or a painting? Common sense would be to save the lady, but if the lady was bound to die soon, wouldn't you want to save the painting that could live forever? Although many people would have different answers to this question, there really is no right or wrong answer. Even the poet ponders the question over to herself, but in all opinion i believe the old lady should be saved from a fire whether or not she is going to die soon. A painting is juts a painting, and a person is something that you can never replace, nor get back. Ethics are what you believe they should be, fire is mostly named for power and overcoming strength. Maybe with just these two key words the author was trying to get a simple point across that as humans, sometimes we make the wrong decisions daily. Also, maybe our ethics and values are prioritized correctly.

Wallflowers

Wallflowers-"flowering plant cultivated in gardens." -a person wo, cause of shyness, unpopularity, or a lack of a partner, remains at the side at a party or dance.


The poem Wallflowers, was not my first choice of a poem to blog about, for some reason I did not like this poem... i found it rather pointless. but after they taught this poem as a class, reading the poem later on made a lot more sense to me. I believe that Donna wrote this poem meaning Wallflowers was the word she had descovered, and throughout the poem talked about. Wallflowers, just like a lot of other words, was maybe comminly used but know one actually understood the meaning. Its very true with a lot of words that people seem to hear a word then use it a lot in their conversations and soon it becomes a part of who that person is. Sometimes it's the actual meaning of the word, or it is just the reputition of using the word that makes the word "owned" by someone. She is inviting unknown, or uncommon words into her poem, or into her life.

To myself

A little background of knowing, W.S. Merwin is an American poet and was writing during the anti-war movement and studied buddhism. The poem was W.S. notiong to himself all the thoughts going on in his head. "I am sure you were here a moment before..." This quote to me represents when you lose someone, it is kind of hard to understand that they are really gone. All you can think about is that they were there before and you just cannot believe that they are gone. Also this poem comes across as someone just trying to recognize themselves. They were someone, and throughout all the changes life can bring they completely changed so he tries to remember who he was. If he could just remember what it was like before losing himself then maybe he could be happier again.

Inoculation

The Inoculation was actually one of the first poems i read throughout our packet. I never wanted to blog about this poem because i found it so confusing. This poem seemed to be about a slave and the disease holding down his freedom even more. I believed the poem was once again a poem about freedom and all the different ways that it was possibly taken away in the time of slavery. Once i heard Jeff talk about the poem to the class i completely understood the poem when spoken to me. The entire class saw it from the eyes of the bible, and slaves. They saw it in the way i did when i first read the peom. Obviously for me not to write about the poem it wasnt because i didnt like it, but because i knew there was more meaning behind the Inoculation. Inoculation means to affect or treat in the medical world. As being a student devoted to learning more about medicine, i realized that this poem about small pox was not only relating to freedom, but also the way the disease was becoming controlled. Small Pox was around for many years killing people of all ages, as the poem was saying, people would find someone already infected with the disease and try to scratch a part of their skin to inject the infectious disease. Although this theory of treatment seemed a little extreme it was rather an experiement that would change the way we control diseases for the rest of our lives. This poem was talking about the beginning fight for freedom amongst slaves, as much as the fight for freedom against killing diseases. Vaccinations was the thought i got out of this poem the more i began to read between the lines. This is my favorite poem it is something that im completely interested in, and its something that most poets dont want to write about. If you dont know the history, most readers wont understand the point of the poem. I think more poems should be history related, rather than love or life or death.

The Halo That Would Not Light

The Halo That Would Not Light, was a brilliantly written poem, but it was hard to understand why she structured the poem the way she did. Some of the sentences were aligned differently than others. Im not sure if there was any significance to the structure but it was something that I noticed. Also it really helped once Elena talked about how the author wrote this poem, she wrote it in memory of a young child that had past away. When i read this story i viewed it as a child who was abused, i thought that the "halo that would not light" was the child that couldn't smile, or "live". i didnt view it as someone who past away i thought it was someone being robbed of her childhood in conclusion to the abuse. Either way it was viewed i thought it was the best poem within our packet. Not because it was sad or anything but it had more meaning, and not so many pointless metaphors like the others.

A Gray Haze Over The Rice Fields

When I read this poem I thought it was written directly for me, because if i look back on when i did live in Ohio that is how i feel. I used to live with my grandma in the middle of nowhere in Ohio. I would always look beyond the fields and our long road to the city. My grandma was always a bitter lady, although she is still with me unlike the poem, i feel the same pain now that i am away from her. My mom was around, but probably not as much as she wished, so "the soft dampness of my tears when my mother didn't notice me..." also kind of matched my life. This poem to me was just a young girls cry to a past life that she missed, she missed the people and the place. She was having trouble letting go of her childhood but knew she had too in order to continue living. I think that Jayanta did a good job of writing this poem and had a creative way of putting all of the words together.

Lost Brother

This poem was hard for me to grasp what the author was trying to get across. I think the author jumped around to much on the topic of his poem. The only thing he did well on was keeping the idea of nature alive and going. I thought the "tree" was going to be a metaphor for something with a little more meaning. The one thing I do really like about the poem though is how he used such amazing literature words to describe all of the different parts relating to the tree.

My Fear

"...He keeps track. Each day his lists are longer. Here, death, and here, something like it." (first stanza) This poem grabbed my attention because of all the fears life can give. Life can create scary images that keep us from going on with our daily routines. Recently i've become consumed with death and it seems life no longer exist in the outside world. Lawrence Raab's poem to me was more the nightmares that we can also become consumed with. The nightly fears of anything at all. Maybe not every night but only when we are next on "his" list. "Mr. Fear" can create stress amongst us and like said in the poem, we can only pray the fear is something small enough to forget and shrug away. Larger fears are harder to let fall. Maybe the way Lawrence is describing the nightmares in his poem are really relating to death. A common fear as death can build a lot of tension and have us wondering when our time is to go. We are also more likely to believe in something when it is we who want to live, but not in fear. If we feel at risk, we appreciate the smaller things later on such as a crickets churp. We take sleep for granted, and when sleep goes wrong, it too can become a fear.

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby was a great story written about the newly rich living in one of the most socialized eras. The 1920's are remembered for the woman becoming more lively and the old rich differing from the new. Nick a single man living in New York realizes his neighbor, jay Gatsby has a mysterious was of living. Jay is a part of the new rich and throws huge parties every Saturday night. Some of the people who come to his parties don't even know him. The more you read through the book, you learn that the parties have more of a story. The neighborhood was full of reasons. Jay fell in love with a young girl, Daisy, several years before he gained his fortune. Daisy lived with her own new family in a house close by Jay. Jay planned the parties every Saturday night in hope that Daisy would one day appear at one and realize how rich he has become. At the time when they were deeply in love, Jay did not have enough money for Daisy to wait on. Throughout the story you follow Nick try to understand more about his hopeless romantic neighbor. Jay and Daisy soon start hanging out again and become a little sinful. Once they all go "to town", Jay lets Daisy drive back and it resulted in a young womans death. But behind Daisy's perfect family, you also learn that her husband has many encounters with other woman. The young womans husband, George, is determined that Gatsby is the one who ran her over. In result, George shoots Gatsby. The story is overall an amazing tell of an hopeless "American Dream". Nick tried to follow through with all of the drama but it was all happening so quick, and too soon they all lost control in the story.

The Heart Of Darkness

Reading the Heart Of Darkness was very difficult for me at first. After annotating by studying the authors way of writing, it made the reading a lot simpler. The author's sentences were a paragraph long sometimes and had so many details. After awhile, the sentences became fasinating to me because this is the first novella that i've read that i can actually visuallize everything. The imagery words are so extreme that you can almost imagine yourself being at the same place that Marlow, the story teller, was talking about. The author also used the "N" word that really put it in perspective that it was written long in the past. Along with being written so long ago, Joseph Conrad talked about slavery and ill workers. I think the way Joseph wrote was very interesting, it encourages me to make my stories pull in more listeners! Marlow, the story teller, reminded me of my grandpa, the way the other crew members could sit and listen to his stories for hours at a time. Marlow's journey was full of adventure and it took many risks. Traveling around the country to meet a man you've never met before and trusting him to be able to help you. I thought it was very weird that after Marlow heard that Kurtz was viewed as a "God" that he still took everything as seriously, even though everyone else around him was ill or suffering. That was just very ironic for me that the world can work like that still today. At the end when Marlow lied about what Kurtz last words were really surprised me because throughout the story Marlow looked up to seeing Kurtz so I figured he wouldnt had lied, even for his mistress.

The Kite Runner

Before reading The Kite Runner, I decided to investigate what other people thought about the book themselves and did some research. I was not interested in reading this book at all and put all my reading to the side. Finally when I started reading this book I could not put it back down, although the first few pages went by kind of slow to me. It wasn't until all the trouble Hassan went through that I became seriously glued the book. Amir and Hassan's unique relationship made me question why Amir wasn't willing to stick up for Hassan, and why he would treat him the way he did. As I kept reading, I became more interested in how their relationship was torn apart and it started to frustrate me because I wanted Amir to react the way I would have. My life growing up it was a lot different from how life was for Amir and Hassan, so the way I value friendship was never a matter of religion like in Afghanistan, but a matter of trust. I was so eager to finish the book to find out what happened to their friendship. This book was a lot like a movie with a bad ending, it just left me wondering and asking questions.



Since The Kite Runner took place in another country it was difficult to understand the political point of views in Afghanistan, whom is still struggling today and that's what I have been raised to know. Only with reading this book was I given the chance to actually think about the way the people view their own home land. Baba was a proud working dad, and did well for himself. Before the war struck, it seemed like Afghanistan was a decent place to be, especially for Amir. Amir had lived in higher class his entire childhood life. It just didn't make sense because usually wars are intended to fix a problem, and this war seemed to take Afghanistan to the ruins.



I think Khaled Hosseini did an amazing job at writing this novel. It really had me thinking about things in a different perspective. For annotating I think I did very well although this was my first book ever annotating it seemed to be simple for me. I used the second example shown on the website, and summarized each chapter, so if I ever need a quote it will be simple for me to find. I also created a glossary and index. The annotating really helped me get more hands on with the book & i feel it helped me understand it easier. Since this book has a lot of different languages mixed in, I used little hints for common words that were used often so I would know what they ment.