A Study of Reading Habits by Philip Larkin

At first the title of this poem presents itself to be a boring manuscript of how to have perfect reading habits, and then the author turns it around to be a humorous poem about the different stages in a man's adolescense. The first stanza:
When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size
This first stanza reminds me of the early ages of a boy. When the boy first learns to read comic books and such to escape his elementary school life and still remain cool in his comic book fantasies. The boy obviously ruins his vision from reading so much and to remain in his fantasies, which will play a bigger role later in the poem.
In the second stanza:
Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my cloak and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark
The woman I clubbed with sex!
I broke then up like meringues.
From this stanza it shows the middle aged man. The reading stages a teenage through early days of a man goes from another comic book-more mature of course, to books about women and sex I am guessing. The man is now learning to please a mate and by doing this it may include learning how to cook (meringues).
In the third stanza:
Don't read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store,
Seem far too similar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.
This stanza is the elder years of a man. The midlife crisis stage. This stage is when the man forgets about stories and reading and is hopeless in his life. Instead he turns to alcohol- "Get Stewed." The midlife crisis man thinks books are a load of crap. Some may assume this is how most men end up, some do some don't.
This poem was interesting, I liked the unusual way the poem was opposite of the title.

The Writer by Richar Wilbur

This poem is about a father-daughter relationship. The poem is about the daughter’s life journey and how the father can only point her in the right direction, but can’t make her decisions for her. The narrator is the father of a girl typing a story. As the father stands outside the shut door of his daughter’s room, listening to her type, he wishes her luck on her journey. The daughter pauses suddenly and the father takes this pause as a rejection of his wish of her to do well in life, the daughter then types again and pauses again. The father at this point remembers a bird that was trapped in the room many years before. The father opened the window in a hope to get the bird out of the room, the daughter and the father both had to leave the room to prevent from scaring it. The bird eventually left the room and that is the end of the poem.
Wilbur uses three separate metaphors to enhance the poem's meaning. The first metaphor is the daughter's life journey being compared to that of a ship's voyage. The daughter's life is being compared to "heavy cargo" and the father wishes her "lucky passage" much like what sailers say when taking off on their journey. These expressions show how a journey at sea is like the journey through life. Another metaphor is “Like a chain hauled over a gunwale” which is what wilbur uses to describe the daughter typing on the type writer. The phrase is referring to when a ship sets sail and lifts up the anchor from the ocean floor, just like how the daughter metaphorically sets sail in life.
The third metaphor is in the title "The Writer". It is obvious the father is talking about the girls journey through life on her own just as she is writing the story on the type writer. The girl stops and has struggles with the story just as she will have struggles throughout her life. The bird is also referring to the girl in the poem. The father can only open the window and step back and hope the bird (girl) flies in the right direction.
That is how the poem ends, the father can only point his daughter in the right direction and wish her a "lucky passage".

The Gift by Li-Young Lee

This poem is about the relationship a boy has with his father and the boy's transitioned relationship he has with his wife. In the poem I think "The Gift" is the father's wisdom. The gift is received when the boy gives his father a kiss, and also the gift is recieved through age and growing up.
The gift is symbolized as the removal of the splinter. Through the gentle tenderness the father figure has when removing the splinter gives the boy the gift of knowledge of removing a splinter. However small that gift may be it is still a gift. When the boy grows older he thanks his father for giving him the gift of being able to remove a splinter- or the gift of wisdom, whether it is recieved through age or through the fathers kiss or both he has this gift and he shares it with his wife. The wife then also recieves a gift, the gift is not the same though it is a gift of relief not wisdom.
The part in the poem about death:
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I do not fully understand. From an educated guess I can conclude that the husband may be boasting about pulling out the splinter from his wife's hand, but I can not be certain.
The end of the poem is simply accepting the gift the boy (now husband) has recieved from his father. The boy has grown and matured. He is able to proudly identify with his giving father, rather than prolong his past identity as a receiving child.

Those Winter Sundays

I did some antecedant scenario for this poem.
Some of Robert Hayden's best known poems can me found in his collection A Ballad of Remembrance. Hayden was also the first African America to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
In my mind this poem was of realization. The narrator in the first stanzas does not realize that all the things his father does for him is out of love, he views the father as bitter and stern. The father does not ever show signs of affection and the narrator thinks that this means his father does not love him; moreover, he loves his work. The narrator then realizes in the very last stanza that the father shows his love for him through all those times he works in the cold and bitter days. The affection the father has for the narrator is shown through his actions not his words.

On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High

This poem was a great analogy. The water is symbolic of the inspiration that comes from poetry. One can immerse themselves in water, just as they can immerse themselves into the "depths of poetry." If you simply look at the ocean, you cannot fully grasp the wonders that lie below the surface. However, even looking below the surface does not even give you the real experience of the ocean-you must become part of the ocean just like the speaker becomes a "part" of the ocean: "licked my fins, till they were hands again".

The speaker's initial reaction to how the students are going to react reminds me also of when you are presenting in a classroom. You hope as the teacher that students will be interested and engaged, but usually you think of the worst reactions-naturally.

This poem reminded me much of our ap literature class. When we get into the depths of the poems and when everyne expresses their opinions and veiw points its like we were at first packaged fish sticks and then we are all swimming together in the words of the poems. We all try and understand eachother's viewpoints as well which is a cool experience. Thanks for planning that Mrs. White :)
(even though it is a little scary getting in front of the class).

p.s. last week was supposed to be my "week off"
      I didnt know we were supposed to let you know until now so thanks :)

Disillusionment at Ten O'Clock

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green.
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings,
None of them are strange
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

This poem is crazy. I don't exactly understand much of it at all. The title kinda gives away that the poem is a dream or a confusing form of imagination during the night (Ten O'Clock). I think it just shows imagination at work within a writer's mind. Its a very strange poem though I will give it that...

Unveiling

In the cemetery
a mile away
from where we used to live
my aunts and mother,
my father and uncles lie
in two long rows almost the way
they used to sit around
the long planked table
at family dinners.
And walking besides
the graves today, down
one straight path
and up the next,
I don't feel sad
for them, just left out a bit
as if they kept
from me the kind
of grown-up secret
they used to share
back then, something
I'm not quite yet ready
to learn.

-Linda Pastan

This poem struck me as though a child was thinking. When a child learns about death they don't think of it the same way as an adult, but also to recover for that a child is not given the same explanation as an adult would receive. A child usually thinks of death as a "trip" or a "journey" that the person who has passed is going on. That is what I see in this poem. The author speaks of their deaths as though they are in a secret place and the author feels "left out a bit" speaking of death as a mysterious secret. The secret is preventing the author from understanding the true concept of death. But, earlier in the poem the author talks of her previous life with these people as a child, so that is what I am confused about. If the adult is looking back on the childhood then why is the adult still viewing death as a child would? That's puzzling...

Evening Concert, Saint-Chapelle

This poem reminds me of a church. The discription of the array of colors showed to me the different stain glass that surrounds an old chapel. The "Thick black lines, in shapes of sheild and cross" shows to me the perfect example of the different bible versus come to life around you while you are in church. I did not know what Saint-Chapelle is of the different composers until research, but I figured these were the names of several different churches...I was obviously mislead. It is cool to see how a poem can show several different points of veiw though, that is cool.

The Hollow Men

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

                     For Thine is the Kingdom

-T.S. Eliot

In this part of the poem the author is making the point about how disfunctional the human mind is. The author is envisioning the world as a wasteland; the prickly pear is a cactus showing a desolate world man exists in. No people can live or thrive in a desert, making the point that no people can live and thrive in the world now with sightles minds and bad judgement. The hollow mind of man can not thrive in humanity fully or in peace with God, "For Thine is the Kingdom". Eliot repeats the lords prayer several times after the one written above; repetition of song and prayer showing the cultural differences in the mind of hollow men, and the division within social hiearchy. The ironic thing is that truly the social instances barely matter in my mind because Eliot is making the point that we are hollow men so our social being is not significant anyways.

For A Duro

For a duro you got a night out of the wind.
(A duro was a five-peseta coin bearing
 Franco's profile, the hooked nose tipped
 upward as though he anlone recieved
 the breath of God. Back in '65
only he did recieve the breath of God.)
For a duro you could lie down in the hallway
of the Hotel Splendide in your Sunday suit,
sleep under the lights, and rise in time
to bless the Son's first coming. For a duro
you could have a coffee and a plain roll
that would shatter like glass. For a duro
you could have it all, the cars, the women,
the seven-course meal and a sea view,
with the waitress bending your check
to ask reverently, "More butter?" for a duro
I bought a pack of Antillanas gave one
to the only traveller in the deserted terminal,
a soldier in uniform. When he bowed
to receive a light I saw the milky nape,
unlined. He must still be there, waiting.
The hotel is gone, the building remains,
a pet hospital and animal refectory
overseen by Senior Esteban Ganz arrayed
for work this mornig in white coat,
dark tie, and soiled sneakers. Modestly
 he shows me three lobo pups, pintos,
saved from slaughter, the striped feral cats
pacing the big cage like tigers, the toucan
levelled by an unknown virus but now
alert and preening. Riotous colors:
reds, greens, and illuminated golds
suitable banners proclaiming inter-
galactic peace  the moment it arrives.

Philip Levine

This poem was very hard to relate to. I interpret it to be showing a time period in Spain or Mexico which was very dark. I researched what a duro was and the explanation was that of a surrency used when Spain joined the Latin Monetary Union in 1869. By the words in this poem it sounded like this time in history was very dark and poor. Levine says "for a duro you got a night out of the wind". When I think about this line I get the impression that not many people lived in luxury and lots were poor, almost like the Great Depression in America. The poem was also talking about an "animal refectory" I researched this term as well. The word refectory came to be defined as a dining hall in a church or monestary. There is a new meaning to the poem that has come to veiw, I believe now that the author is talking about politicians or leaders as animals- "the toucan levelled by an unknown virus but now alert and preening. Riotous collors: reds, greens, and illuminated golds." The use of the word riotous gave away a new meaning to me showing me what he thinks of the government and forms of leaders as animals with viruses spreading everywhere. Obviously this was a very dark time in history for Spain; filled with the poor and rebellious leaders.

Blackberries for Amelia

Blackberries for Amelia

Fringing the woods, the stone walls, and the lanes,
Old thickets everywhere have come alive,
Their new leaces reaching out in fans of five
From tangles overarched by this year's canes.

They have their flowers, too, it being June,
And here or there in brambled dark-and-light
Are small, five-petalled blooms of chalky white,
As random-clustered and as loosely strewn

As the far swtars, of which we now are told
That ever faster do they bolt away,
And that anight may come in which, some say,
We chall have only blackness to behold.

I have no time for any change so great,
But I shall see the August weather spur
Berries to ripen where the flowers were-
Dark berries, savage-sweet and worth the wait-

And there will come the moment to be quick
And save some from the birds, and I shall need
Two pails, old clothes in which to stain and bleed,
And a grandchild to talk with while we pick.

Richard Wilbur

                This poem was very relaxing for me. It was as if summer was set into motion again and all the worries of school, friendships, and stress were eliminated. When the author writes "I have no time for any change so great" I was struck into jealousy of how the life of this poem will always be the same the words always representing stressless summer days and summer nights.
               When I read this poem, at first, I imagined a child living in a place much like Colorado; the nature of the world always around. This child always living in harmony with their parents farm or garden of some sort exploring around and being in complete awe of the world around them. In the last line it states "And a grandchild to talk with while we pick." I realized that the poem was not about a child at all but about an elderly person who is probably retired. This elderly person always tending to their garden waiting for the days their grandchildren are out of school and are ready to come spend the summer in their beautiful garden.
               The elderly are waiting and making memories for years to come of all the great times their grandchildren and themselves spent outside. When I think of this it reminds me of how technology and media are destroying the traditions of the past and making a new. Things like computers, gameboys, xbox, and facebook are preventing children from experiencing the world and appreciating nature. New ages prevent beautiful things like this poem coming true...

A Chinese Bowl

In this poem I did not really understand the significance of it I do not think because I am not related to the idea of junk being special or small tokens of things. I do not think junk is very special because I do not have many compilments of those types of things in my life so it was hard to relate to this poem. It was interesting though how the author used the different things to explain different importances in his life. For example, when the character asks a question to the reader that says, "what could I drink from you...that would renew my fallen life?" This quote really got to me and showed me how so many small instances in your life and small impressions other people put off affect you and other people. It proves the point that small insignifacant things in your life actually do make a huge impact.
Maybe I should try keeping small tokens...

Poetry Response 2

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein


There is a place where the sidewalk ends

And before the street begins,

And there the grass grows soft and white,

And there the sun burns crimson bright,

And there the moon-bird rests from his flight

To cool in the peppermint wind.



Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

And the dark street winds and bends.

Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow

We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And watch where the chalk-white arrows go

To the place where the sidewalk ends.



Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,

For the children, they mark, and the children, they know

The place where the sidewalk ends.
 
 
I feel like this poem is very straight-forward. I feel like the author is just talking about the ways of life and walking through it like its a sidewalk on the side of the street. On the sidewalk in your life your have arrows as to where your parents and friends are pointing you to go like the children draw on the sidewalk. In your life you have sunny patches where the grass is greem and your life is beautiful. Also you have bad patches of rough times in your life just like how the poem says in stanza two, line two, "and the dark streets wind and bend". This poem is just making a point about your life and the travels a person goes through.

Poetry Response

For the poem "My Fear" by Lawrence Raab I am going to break up the meanings stanza by stanza. The poem will be written out on the left and my interpretations of the stanzas will be at the bottom of the page.

My Fear

He Follows us, he keeps track.                                
Each day his lists are longer.
Here, death, and here,
something like it.

Mr. Fear, we say in our dreams,
what do you have for me tonight?
And he looks through his sack,
his black sack of troubles.

Maybe he smiles when he finds
the right one. Maybe he's sorry.
Tell me, Mr. Fear, what must I carry

away from your dream.
Make it small, please.
Let it fit in my pocket,
let it fall through

the hole in my pocket.
Fear, let me have a small brown hat
and a purse of crickets

like the ones i heard singing last night
out there in the srubbly field
before i slept, and met you.

-Lawrence Raab

In the first stanza when Raab says "he" I think of the he as being a person or an entity that has control over everyone's death and the time for them to go, kind of like the grim reeper or god. When he says the "he" has a list I think of all the names on that list that the being must visit so he can end their lives.

In the second stanza the person is talking about having nightmares. The being now is "Mr. Fear", and Mr. Fear is looking through his bag for a nightmare for us to dream about.

In the third stanza it is a continuation of the Mr. Fear who is picking out nightmares for the narrator to dream about. Raab is writing about how the entity reacts when he finds a nightmare for the narrator. The narrator also asks what must he carry, and I think this is referring to a journey as in what must the narrator carry through his journey to get out of it, and in good condition; the "journey" is going back to the dream.

The fourth stanza is a continuation that is saying what must the dreamer take out of the experience or the dream in order to learn from it and go through life with more wisdom. The dreamer is saying to have it fit in his pocket or stay with him at all times or not stay with him at all.

In the fifth stanza the dreamer does not want fear to stay with him at all times but to have something better like a small brown hat or a purse, something cheerful.

The last stanza is saying how the dreamer wants a dream that is happy like before falling asleep and hearing the sounds of the night. The dreamer does not want his mind to wander into something scary and wild but calm and joyful.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

This book was a very difficult read for me. Conrad had a very extensive vocabulary and I did not understand the ship lingo very well at all. For a small understanding of the book what I did understand was the fact that Conrad was using the river as a way to represent society (a capitalistic society), and every detail of the story had some sort of heirarchy like the deck hands who have a captain down to slaves, and how every one seemed to look up to Kurtz. The story also seemed capitalistic oriented because the people at the bottom of the ladder always seemed to want to work up to the top of the ladder (who was Kurtz) and the people at the top of the ladder would knock down others coming to meet up with them. No matter how horribly seck Kurtz was he did not want to leave his position in the jungle finding ivory.

I annotated this book by using the writing style as a way to better my writing skills as well. I need to work on extending my vocab in my writing. I also liked how the writing style was different in this book; this book was a story within a story. Conrad used Marlow and the deck hand as the opening story and then developed another story using Marlow's capability to tell stories very well. I liked how the author would randomly jump from Marlow's story to the deck hand and crew waiting to set off into "the heart of darkness" or also known as the river. I also want to add into my writing skills the ability to make objects with supposidly no meaning to them have symbolism to the bigger picture.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner was a good book. This book showed off more facets of human nature then The Great Gatsby; which only showed the strive for money, and Heart of Darkness; which also only showed off the capitalistic nature of people. I believe the Kite Runner allowed people to see forgiveness, love, hatred, guilt, courage, and many more sides of a person's true personality. In this book Amir shows so many different characteristics that a true human has it allowed me to connect more to the book and understand the full meaning of all the characteristics listed above. For example Amir loved his father, his half-brother Hassan, and his wife Soraya so much he even overlooks there flaws- his wife being unfaithful, his father lying to him, and he even loves his servent when he was a child. This book also shows so many different levels of forgiveness and guilt it makes the story more like a reality.

The characteristic the author displayed the best was courage. How Amir went into dangerous parts of the world to save one little boy was very courageous. Sohrab was very courageous when he saved Amir from Assef just how Hassan saved Amir back in their childhood. Soraya and Amir adopting Sohrab was the best part of the book as well. I liked how the author did not make courage more glamorous like authors who write books about heros and knights. This author used courage in the most subtle ways and it still made the biggest impact on the entire book.

I annotated this book by creating a trail between the past and the future throughout the book, and I also looked at it as a way to better my writing. The author caught a perfect light when it came to personality traits in a true human being and I really liked that.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I have already read the book the Great Gatsby during my junior year for Mr. Lowndes, but since it was assigned again I re-read it and still had the same opinion about the book. In my opinion the book gives views about human nature in being pointless, alone, and to contemplate no other meaning in life then to strive to have money. In this book these views are pointing directly at the American life style and not so much the entire human nature, but my feelings about that being the only motives for living are completely off.

This book conveys the ideas that American people will only strive to the ideas of having money and being as rich as possible to make you happy. I believe that it is completely false. American people live not for money but for their beliefs, love, honor, and justice. In this book it repeatedly shows how all the characters care for is what others think about their image and how much money they can attain throughout there lifetimes. For example Daisy, the woman stuck between Tom (her Husband) and Gatsby (her lost lover), merely marries Tom because he is rich and with complete incompetence stays with the man after being able to choose between her lover and Tom. She stays with Tome because of two reasons- self-image and money. Its quite pathetic how these people deal with their lives and quite frankly does not reflect over fifty percent of the real American people. This book, in my mind, reflects not the common everyday American people but the celebrities that take over TV talk shows and tabloid gossip. This book has so many twisted scandals and fake love that my opinions of it are very low.

Well, this post seems very negative, but this is how I feel about the book. I annotated the book by just keeping trails on the signifigance of Gatsby and why he was such a big player in the book. Obviously he was the most important character considering the book is named after him. I think he was such an important person in the book because he was more true then fake. Even though he lied about his profession and such it was great to see his motives were not self-image and money but merely love.

-Devyn