Tone

Mrs. White I totally forgot to blog one Sunday and I don't know if you will still take it but I am going to blog it anyway!

One of the most exciting moments I have ever experienced would have to be when my mom and dad told my sister, brother, and I that we were going to Disney world. This happened when I was about eight years old and they told us threw a Christmas present!
That Christmas morning I woke with little knowledge that I was about to receive the most wonderful present I would ever get! My parents saved the Disney present last: the best for last! Since I was the youngest I got to open the present. So my mom handed me a card and I opened it and I started to read. When I read it, I started jumping around and screaming. My sister and brother kind of just looked at me like I was strange but that didn't stop me from celebrating. Once they read it they started to jump around with me. Once we were all tired from celebrating we sat down and smiled because that concluded one of the best Christmases ever!

Acquainted with the Night

Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still an unearthy height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.


So I found this poem very interesting. I immediately thought of being depressed.
"I have walked out in rain - and back in rain" When you are depressed it seems like it is always raining and there is never sunshine.

"I have looked down the saddest city lane" Being depressed you think that there is no hope and it is the saddest you have ever been.

"I have outwalked the furthest city light" When depressed you feel like you are detached from everything and you feel like there is no hope or light to be found. It is too far away.

"Proclaimed that the time was neither wrong nor right" Here I thought about when you are depressed you have no idea what time it is because everything is meshed together and you don't really care.

Pie is So Good In the Sky

Pie is So Good

Oh my I love me some pie
I feel like I am floating in the sky
When I eat pie
I am going to say goodbye
So I can go and eat my pie
And float in the sky

Kellie Eastman

Those winter Sundays

Those winter Sundays by Robert Hayden



Sundays too my father got up early
and put is clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.


I'd wake and hear the coal splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,


Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.


What did I know, what did I know
Of love's austere and lonely offices?



So I didn't really get the poem because of the last two lines but after the discussion on it in class I totally understood. After you said that it reminded you of your grandpa or grandma ( can't remember) I immediately thought of my grandma.

Not to long ago my mom and I were talking about my grandma and how everytime our family got together she would say something about my mom or I. I told my mom about how I don't have a good relationship with her mom. Then my mom told me that even though my grandma might not show that she loves me that she would be the first one to help me if needed it. She said that she would find a way to help me. So after my mom and I's talk I realized that I was nieve when it came to my grandmother. And I think that is what the last two lines are saying;
"What did I know, what did I know
Of love's austere and onely offices?"
I was just too nieve to understand that people show love in different ways.

The Coming of Wisdom with Time

The Coming of Wisdom With Time by William Butler Yeats

though the leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.

So when I first saw this poem I had no idea what it was talking about but when I sat down to do my blog I was looking through my choices and read this one more time. It came to me!

"though the leaves are many, the root is one;"
I saw the root as ones character and the leaves as the characteristics that made up the character.

"Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;"
So here I thought of lying as one of the leaves but then this leaf over powers all the other leaves. So really the one who lies lives a lie.

"Now I may wither into the truth."
So now when the truth comes into the life of the one who lies, their life withers. All of their leaves wither to reveal the root or the character.

Ethics

Ethics by Linda Pastan



In ethics class so many years ago
our teacher asked this question every fall:
if there were a fire in a museum
which would you save , a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn't many
years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs
caring little for pictures or old age
we'd opt one year for life, the next for art
and always half-heartedly. Sometimes
the woman borrowed my grandmother's face
leaving her usual Kitchen to wander
some drafty, half-imagined museum.
One year, feeling clever, I replied
why not let the woman decide herself?
Linda, the teacher would report, eschews
the burden of responsibility.
This fall in a real museum I stand
before a real Rembrandt, old woman,
or nearly so, myself. The colors
within this frame are darker than autumn
darker even than winter-the browns of earth
though earth's most radiant elements burn
through the canvas. I know now that woman
and painting and season are almost one
and all beyond saving by children.


I thought that this poem was very interesting. It really made me think of what I would do in that situation. I came to the conclusion that I would save the old woman.
Now actually talking about the poem. At the beginning the author shows that as a young child she didn't care about a painting or an old lady:
"Restless on hard chairs
caring little for pictures and old age
we'd opt one year for life. the next for art
and always half-heartedly."
Then it goes on to the author showing how she started to actually think about the question asked by thinking of her grandmother:
"Sometimes
the woman borrowed my grandmother's face
leaving her usual kitchen, to wander
some drafty, half-imagined museum."
Then it goes on to show that the author is in a museum as an old lady with a famous work of art:
"This fall in a real museum I stand
before a real Rembrandt, old woman,
or nearly so myself ."

What I got from this poem is that as we grow older the more we learn about what kind of person we want to be. Only with experience will we really know what choice we would make.

Halloween

I took my niece out trick-or-treating!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Even If You Weren't My Father

Even If You Weren't My Father By Camillo Sbarbaro

Father, even if you weren't my father,
were you an utter stranger,
for your own self I'd love you.
Remembering how you saw, one winter morning,
the first violet on the wall across the way,
and with what joy you shared the revelation;
then, hoisting the ladder to your shoulder,
out you went and propped it to the wall.
We, your children, stood watching at the window.


And I remember how, another time,
you chased my little sister through the house
(pigheadedly, she'd done I know not what).
But when she, run to earth, shrieked out in fear,
your heart misgave you,
for you saw yourself hunt down your helpless child.
Relenting then, you took her in your arms
in all her terror: Caressing her, enclosed in your
embrace as in some shelter from the brute
who'd, one moment since, yourself.

Father, even were you not my father,
were you some utter stranger,
for your innocence, your artless tender heart,
I would love above all other men
so love you.

When I read this poem I thought of my father because he has these qualities that make a loving person and father.
" And I remember how, another time,
you chased my little sister through the house
(pigheadedly,she'd done I know not what.)
But when she, run to earth, shrieked out in fear,
your heart misgave you,
for you saw yourself hunt down your helpless child.
Relenting then, you took her in your arms
in all her terror: Caressing her, enclosed in your
embrace as in some shelterfrom that brute
who'd, one moment since, yourself."
This shows a qualtiy of a good man and father. The author show this because even if this man wasn't he would still love him because of the person he is. What I got from this poem is that even if he is not your father but as good qualities that you would love him just the same.

Unveiling

Unveiling by Linda Pastan


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 walkng beside
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 ready yet
to learn.


I like this poem. So the author starts off by talking of walking throught the cemetery and just looking at the graves. Then after looking at the graves the author realizes that she does not feel sorry for her family but instead she feels left out like when she was young and they were talking about grown-up stuff, things that she was not ready to learn yet. So I think that it is not her time to die just like when she was little and it was not her time to learn about some things that adults in her family were talking about. She might feel left out but she knows that it is not her turn so she has to wait. I also thought of how when someone grows up they learn things through experience and and through experience we are more ready to die and leave everything behinds us.

1943

1943 By Donald Hall

They toughened us for war. In the high-school auditorium
Ed Monahan knocked out Dominick Esposito in the first round

of the heavyweight finals, and ten months later Dom died
in the third wave at Tarawa. Every morning of the war

our Brock-Hall Dairy delivered milk from horse-drawn wagons
to wooden back porches in southern Connecticut. In winter,

frozen cream lifted the cardboard lids of glass bottles,
Grade A or Grade B, while marines bled to death in the surf,

or the right engine faltered into the Channel silt, or troops marched
-what could we do?-with frostbitten feet as white as milk.

What I got from this poem is so they were fighting during high-school and then tens months later they died in war. People back in America were living their lives like nothing was happening at all for they couldn't do anything about it.

"frozen cream lifted the cardboard lids of glass bottles,
Grade A or Grade B, while marines bled to death in the surf,

or the right engine faltered into the Channel Silt, or troops marched
-what could we do?-with frostbitten feet as white as milk."

So here he describes frozen cream lifts lids and while this is happened soldiers marched to death. Then he asks a question "what could we do?-with frostbitten feet as white as milk." Maybe he is referring back to the frozen cream and that cream can't if it is not unfrozen.

So I think that this poem is saying that even if young boys are dying we have to go with our lives because no matter what we do we can't save them.

Beginning Again

Beginning Again By Franz Wright

"If I could stop talking, completely
cease talking for a year, I might begin
to get well," he muttered.
Off alone again performing
brain surgery on himself
in a small badly lit
room with no mirror. A room
whose floor ceiling and walls
are all mirror, what a mess
oh my God-

And still
it stands,
the question
not how begin
again, but rather

Why?

So we sit there
together
the mountain
and me, Li Po
said, until only the mountain
remains.

After this I thought of someone who is trying to become a better person.
"If I could stop talking, completely
cease talking for a year, I might begin
to get well," he muttered."
So when I read this I thought of how when I say something stupid and only if I had thought about it maybe I wouldn't have said something mean. I also thought of just thinking helps solve certain things.
"Off alone again performing
brain surgery on himself
in a small badly lit
room with no mirror."
So this made me think of how can you fix a problem without seeing it. First to need to realize the problem before you can start fixing it.
"So we sit there
together
the mountain
and me, Li Po
said, until only the mountain remains."
So during our class discussion I was have trouble understanding what this part meant then Dustin said something really interesting. So mountains are formed by two plates colliding and so maybe the author is talking of a man who faces and collides with his problems until only the "mountain" remains. I found this very interesting.

A Fool's Advice

These four years are very complicated
yet we cannot escape them for we are mated
so just hop on board and join the ride
just remember that when lost the answers are inside

You will have friends and you will have foes
don't worry that is just the way it goes
but no matter what happens treat people with respect
remember to forgive quickly and be tentative to reject

You will be tested on your personal character
it will be hard and sometimes seem unfair
but in tough times just remember who you are
and trust me my friends that you will go far

You will have stress if balancing a sport, school, maybe even band
at times it will seem that it is more than you can stand
but remember that you are surrounded by people that care
and will help you and make sure that you get there

You will have an easier time if you write out your goal
at first it might just seem like a bunch of bull
but if you know what achievement you are striving for
you are more likely to achieve and maybe even more

You will be tempted to change so that you can fit in
but let me tell you if you do that you will not win
so stay yourself and you will find a true friend
and no matter what happens you will win in the end

You should not think that these years are so bad
for there are many great moments waiting to be had
these are some of the happiest and best times of our lives
just take the advice given for it is how one survives

You do not have to listen to what I have to say
for I am more than sure you will find your own way
but at least listen to this: I might be fool
but guess what? I finished high school

Still Memory

Still Memory by Mary Karr


The dream was so deep
the bed came unroped from its moorings,
drifted upstream till it found my old notch


in the house I grew up in,
then it locked in place.
A light in the hall-


my father in the doorway, not dead,
just home from the graveyard shift
smelling of crude oil and solvent.


In the kitchen, Mother rummages through silver
while the boiled water poured
in the battered old drip pot


unleashes coffee's smokey odor.
Outside, the mimosa frond, closed all night,
open their narrows valleys for dew.


Around us, the town is just growing animate,
its pulleys and levers set in motion.
My house starts to throb in its old socket.


My twelve-year-old sister steps fast
because te bathroom tiles
are cold and we have no heat other

than what our bodies can carry.
My parents are not yet born each
into a small urn of ash.

My ten-year old hand reaches
for a pen to record it all
as would become long habit.

So with this poem I didn't really understand it until I learned the background information on the author. After learned about her the meaning of the poem was pretty straight forward.
The different parts of the poem represented many different memories of the people in her life.
So "my father in the doorway, not dead,
just home from the graveyard shift
smelling of oil and solvent." just showed the image of the author's father in her memories. She did the same with her mother:
"In the kitchen, Mother rummages through silver
while the boiled water poured
in the battered old drip pot".
In the last stanza she writes:
"My ten-year-old hand reaches
for a pen to record it all
as would become long habit." So during the classes discussion we learned that she had started writing about that age.

To Myself

To Myself by W.S. Merwin

Even when I forget you
I go looking for you
I believe I would know you
I keep remembering you
sometimes long ago but then
other times I am sure you
were here a moment before
and the air is still alive
around where you were and I
think then I can recognize
you who are always the same
who pretend to be time but
you are not time and who speak
in the words but you are not
what they say you who are not
lost when I do nit find you

When I read this poem I thought of my childhood and how life is changing for me. I am going off to college and will be starting my life. I feel like this poem is talking about a lost childhood in a way.
"Even when I forget you
I go on looking for you"
So even when we forget our childhood we still go looking for it. I thought that the reason we look for it is because our childhood has helped make us who we are so when we are stuck we look to what we have learned in the past to get unstuck.
"other times I am sure you
were here a moment before
and the air is still alive
around where you were"
This made me think of a moment or event that triggers a memory in your past.
"and you who are not
lost when I do not find you"
So even when we can't find our past it is not lost; it will always be a part of us for ass long as we live.

Lost Brother

Lost Brother by Stanley Moss

I knew that tree was my lost brother
when I heard he was cut down
at four thousand eight hundred sixty-two years;
I know we had the same mother.
His death pained me. I made up a story.
I realized, when I saw his photograph,
he was an evergreen , a bristlecone like me,
who had lived from an early age
with a certain amount of dieback,
at impossible locations, at elevations
over ten thousand feet in extreme weather.
His company: other conifers,
the rosy finch, the rock wren, the raven and clouds,
blue and sliver insects the fed mostly off each other.
Some years bighorn sheep visited in summer -
he was entertained by red bats, black-tailed jackrabbits,
horned lizards, the creatures old and young he sheltered.
Beside him in the shade, pink mountain pennyroyal -
to his south, white angelica.
I am prepared to live as long as he did
(it would please our mother),
live with clouds and those I love
suffering with God.
Sooner or later, some bag of wind will cut me down.

When I read this poem i didn't really know what to think because I didn't whether or not it was really talking about trees. But after reading it a couple of times I sort of thought of mother nature and the trees and how they are getting cut down faster and faster.

The line "I am prepared to live ass long ass he did (it would please our mother)" made me think of how mother nature would be happy if her trees would stop being cut down. Then "he was entertained by red bats, black-tailed jackrabbits, horned lizards, the creatures old and young he sheltered." This made me think of all the animals that lose their homes when forests get cut down.

The last line is the one that confused me the most "Sooner or later, some bag of wind will cut me down." This was confusing for because I don't know if the poet meant that wind would push it down or it was get cut down by a human.

Mr. Fear

Mr. Fear by Lawrence Raab

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 on. 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 bat
and a purse full of crickets

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

When we read this in class I thought that it was talking about dreams or nightmares and how sometimes we wonder what kind of dreams we are going to have that night. Whether it is a nightmare or a wonderful dream. We can only hope that our dreams are not filled with death and major fears. We can only ask for crickets and small brown bats before we fall asleep because we are not in control of how how fear effects our dreams.
"He follows us, he keeps track." This line i felt like it was saying that we can not escape from our fears because it is constantly following us and keeping track. "Each day his lists are longer." While he follows us he learns more about us and what our fears our. "Mr. Fear, we say in our dreams what do you have or me tonight?" So now fear comes to us in our sleep.
What I mostly got from this poem is that we can not escape our fears not even in our dreams. So all we can do is live with what we hand we are dealt and make the best out of it and live to overcome all of our fears.
I noticed that sentences were cut off in the middle and made into a new stanza and for me that made me think about what was coming next.

Wallflowers

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 you use a word three times, it's yours.

What happens to ones that no one speaks?

Do they wait bitterly,

hollow-eyed orphans in Dickensian bedrooms,

longing for someone to say,

"yes,you...you're the one"?

Or do they 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 Ellis Island of diction──

give me our tired, you poor,

your gegenshein, your zoanthropy──

all the words without a home,

come out and play──live in my poem.

The first time that I read this poem I had no clue what the author was trying to say! After reading it a couple more times I started to feel that I wasn’t about words but about people that are not necessarily popular or have a family or somebody to that loves them. The second stanza is the one that stuck out to me the most so I am just going to focus on that.

“They say if you use a word three times, it’s yours.

What happens to ones that no one speaks?

So I see the “words” that people speak represent the popular or normal people in the world and the “words” not spoken are the people that are different from us. Words that are not spoken maybe are not understood or we don’t think that we need to use them and I think that the people that are different than us we don’t try to understand them, therefore they are not important to us. The second line in the second stanza is my favorite in the whole poem because it makes you think of what you are missing by not using those certain “words”. I believe that the author was trying to say that if we try to understand different kinds of people we will become a stronger person and he does by using the example of words.

The Heart of Darkness

On The Heart of Darkness I used the annotating style of reading-to-writing (pick up the author's style). I didn't really like this annotating process because it didn't allow me to enjoy the book fully. But I am glad that I tried this style on this book because out of all of the different authors i thought that his style was the most interesting. I thought that it was interesting because it is so different than mine. I like reading pieces that have a different style than mine because it helps me become a better writer. The characters were are very different in this book but the main characters all seem to be intelligent. They just use their intelligence in different ways. Marlow is very independent when it comes to thinking, he doesn't think the way everyone else does. He has seen many parts of the world so he has many opinions on the places that he has seen. Marlow is also very good at telling stories because he gets his listeners engaged and interested in his stories. Kurtz on the other hand is a man that knows how to use words to make people hear what they want to hear but also telling them what he wants to tell them. By doing so he has got what he has wanted but at the same time is being the target of all his fellow white men. This book is full of violence whether it is the Company towards the works or the natives towards ships. It is just sad to think that people around the world have to live like this and can't really do anything about it. I also think that it is crazy how Marlow;s journey up the river turns sort of turns into a big fight for survival on everyones part. I didn't really get into this book as much as I did The Kite runner but I enjoyed it more than The Great Gatsby. At first it was hard for me to get started but once into the story it came togehter more and was easy for me to read.

The Kite Runner

When I read The Kite Runner I used the self-to-text (interact with the book) style of annotating. So I pretty much just wrote what I was thinking while reading the book. I really liked using this style for this particular book because it was a very interesting book so it just let me focus more on the book than other things: tone, writing style, and indexes and glossaries. I really enjoyed reading this book because it tells a very good but sad story. I found that this style of annotating was the easiest for me because all I had to do is share my thoughts and it kept me more interested in the book, making it easier for me to read. What I thought made the story so strong is the characters. All of them were different and came together to make a big impact. Baba was definitely the most intriguing to me because he was the most complex. At first he comes across like he sort of rejects he son because Amir is not what Baba wants he to be but as the story goes on you learn that Baba sacrifices a lot for his boy. He really loves him and will do anything for him. What I also find interesting is that he does all of the work on his own and likes to prove people wrong: he is a hard worker. I really like the character of Amir also. Amir seems to struggle with his past all through the book and he can't forgive himself even after the people he hurt had. At first he had tried to impress his father because Baba didn't seem like he had approved of Amir. He went from a normal boy to a complex man living in the past. Later in the story he comes more of the son that Baba wanted when he went after Hassen's son. Hassan's character was interesting too. He was like a brother to Amir (literally was). He was always there for Amir: always faithful. At the beginning of the story he was more like the son that Baba wanted. Even when Hassan and Amir separated Hassan seemed like he was still a big part and reasoning to everything that Amir did. Sohrab was a lot like Hassan. At the end of the book he became like a substitute for Hassan to Amir. Sohrab was the only of Hassan that Amir had and was practically a son to Amir. I thought that is book was very very good. Not only because of the story line but because of the characters.

The Great Gatsby

While reading The Great Gatsby I used the annotating style of text-to-world(learn what the book teaches). So what mostly did was create an index and glossary and then within the text I summarized passages so that when I went back through the book it would be easier for me. I actually thought that this annotating style was good for me while reading The Great Gatsby because there were quite a few words that I did not understand. Then there were some facts that needed background knowledge to really understand. As for the book I didn't really enjoy the book as the other ones because I just couldn't get into it: I guess it didn't catch my interest. It was very slow moving and I prefer books that move at a faster pace. To me the book seemed to have no point. What stuck me the most is how the women acted. During that time in history I didn't know that women spoke to men as they were equal to them. I thought that they were more just stayed in the house take care of everything but in the book the women were more outspoken and they had servants to do all the house work. The characters were all very odd in an interesting way. Life was a lot different back then. Nick Carraway is a very quiet man who tended to keep to himself. Although he did tend to keep to himself he got himself mixed up in the drama. In the first chapter he says that he is a very open minded person so he is extremely easy person to trust. He can get people to tell him secrets: which is why I think that him and Jay Gatsby got along. Jay Gatsby just seems to be the opposite of Nick. He throws wonderful parties every weekend with many famous people that attend. There are many rumors that go around about him(secrets to tell Nick). He does this to find the woman that he loves: Daisy Buchanan who is married to Tom Buchanan. Gatsby will do anything to get Daisy back. Tom Buchanan is a very powerful man physically. He is rich and is cheating on his wife. Jordan Baker is Nick's lover in this story. I think that I find her character the most interesting because of how strong of a woman she is and that she plays golf and is famous for it. She speaks as if she is equal to men and doesn't care about what people think. Daisy Buchanan is a woman that cheats on her husband with a man that is has loved ever since they had parted. What I find very odd is the way of life that this story portrays. Everyone is cheating on their spouse and everyone drinks all the time. It just seems that no one has any morals during this time in America.