Multigenre Project Proposal

I think what I am going to do for my final project is write a literacy narritive on how I didn't like reading poems before this class, but now it isn't that bad. The only thing is that im not sure if I have enough information to write 5 pages.

Favorites

My two favorite blogs that I have written this semester would probably have to be "How to Ride a Bike" and Denial. I enjoyed writing "How to Ride a Bike" because it was sort of a silly blog that we did in class and I enjoyed writing it. The other blog I wrote was one of my favorites because it I thought it was one of my better non-creative blog entries.

"The Word Plum"

The part of this poem that I like the most are lines 10 and 11, "and reply, lip and tongue of pleasure." It reminds me of eating a ripe plum and it tasting so good. It brings happiness to my mind when I read this poem and picture myself eating this plum. I think the only way a reader wouldn't feel joyful after reading this poem is if they don't like the taste of plums.

Another reason this poems gets a positive reaction out of the reader is that Chasin not only talks about the pleasurable taste of the plum, she writes about the appealing apperance and even the sound of the word "plum". The very first line, "The word plum is delicious", shows how appealing the writer thinks the plum is. You can "see" this plum in lines 6 through 8 where it states, "taut skin pierced, bitten, provoked into juice, and tart flesh". These characteristics of the plum make it seem so glorious.

Nature Poems

These are the ten poems I choose for today:

"Roses" by George Eliot
"Summer Serenade" by Odgen Nash
"Sermon of an Elder Catfish" by Miles Garrett Watson
"The Sloth" by Theodore Roethke
"Lost" by David Wagoner
"Maples" by Judith Pordon
"The Shapes of Leaves" by Arthur Sze
"Fancies" by Lucy Maud Montgomery
"Heavenly Grass" Tennessee Williams
"Leaves Before the Wind" by May Sarton

Again, I have chosen poems that are mostly about things in nature. Two that I have chosen to talk about are "Roses" and "Summer Serenade". I like these two because they are so upbeat. When reading them, it reminded me of the summer and happy times. For instance, "Summer Serenade" ends on a happy note by saying, "If we must melt, let's melt together!" This is talking about a nice summer thunderstorm and these two people are about to get wet from the rain.

In the poem "Roses", Eliot writes, "I wish the sky would rain down roses, as they rain from off the shaken bush." When a reader reads this, they can imagine these nice, soft roses falling from the sky and dancing around in them as they lay on the ground. It seems as if one can feel only happy after reading these poems.

My Poems

“Kitty Litter”

The cat poop
In the kitty litter box
That I scoop everyday



Rewrite of “Song of Myself”

I Love myself, and praise myself,
And what I like, you like,
I CELEBRATE for every belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I and invite my friends,
I lean and at my ease observing a piece of washed up sand.

My tongue, every muscle, from this body,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now nineteen years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to keep it up.

School and work together,
back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original celebration.

Poems I Found

I found my poems in a book of my roomate's called The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry. The poems I found that I like are

"Well Water" by Randall Jarrell
"Evening Hawk" by Robert Penn Warren
"Hamlen Brook" by Richard Wilbur
"Watermelons" by Charles Simic
"Drops in the Bucket" by Kay Ryan
"Fast Break" by Edward Hirsch

I noticed that most of these poems have to do with things in nature. The first two lines of "Evening Hawk" can help me describe why I enjoy these poems:

From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through
Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds,

Here, I like how Warren is so descriptive when writing about the eagle flying. He makes it easy for his readers to picture in their heads what he is writing about. One of the other poems, "Hamlen Brook", is also very descriptive. An example of this is:

A startled inchling trout
Of spotted near- transparency,
Trawling a shadow soldier than he.
He serves now, darting out

Wilbur is descriptive of this trout. The readers can easily "see" this fish swerving and darting through the water.

Marks

This was the only poem that got a response out of me when I got done reading it. After I read the last line, "Wait 'til they learn I'm dropping out", I was like, "Wow". This woman is really getting sick of her family picking her apart. Yeah, it was nice that her husband gave her an A for her cooking, but the rest of the things her husband, son and daughter say about her are just plain hurtful. And actually, when I read that last line, I was rooting her on, because she doesn't deserve those remarks, and she should try to get away from them.

I also felt like this poem seemed more real than the rest of the poems. These kind of things happen to families all the time. I can't personally relate to this poem, but I have seen movies and read about this same occurance.

I thought it was creative that the author thought of this woman's life as a report card. She related each of the things the woman does for her husband and children and gives her some sort of grade for each.

Barbie Doll

This poem is kind of depressing. To me, it is about a girl who grows up trying to please everybody, but doesn't really succeed because she is not good looking. So she kills herself because she is sick of everyone making fun of her. And once people see her in her casket, they think she is pretty because of her fake nose and beautiful make up.

The title, "Barbie Doll", has to do with the end of the poem when she is laying in the casket and everyone thinks she is beautiful. Before she died, she tried so hard to be perfect like a barbie doll, but that didn't happen.

The poem does have an effect on me: it is very sad but very true at the same time. That is sometimes how people treat others which can lead them to hate themselves. It is sad that the people couldn't look past her looks and see that she is beautiful in every other way.

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone"

The speaker of this poem seems to be addressing her whole town. He or she wants everyone to know that their spouse has just died, and thinks that the town should be shut down so everyone can come mourn with him/her. The reason that the poet is displaying this public greif is because he/she is so upset that their spouse died and they want everyone to know it.

Interesting Flow

Not only does Jon Krakauer tell the story of his adventure up Mount Everest, but he also adds in a lot of the history on the mountain. Every few chapters he writes a chapter on the people who have climbed the mountain previously. He writes about the mountain climbers who have gone through disasters on Mount Everest that have caused them to die. By doing this, he is letting us know the details about how dangerous climbing this particular mountain really is. It also helps lead to the big disaster he encounters, because at the beginning of the story, the readers might not understand the dangers of mountain climbing. His method of writing keeps the readers from getting bored or sidetracked while reading a bunch of small details on solely his adventure. By putting history in the book, Krakauer is educating us on mountain climbing.

Surprising

I guess I just can't get over the fact that this book, Into Thin Air, is really a memoir. Some of the events that take place and some of the things that happen to the people in this story are crazy, and it almost seems as if this is a made up story. I mean, normally when you read about human excrement laying all around your campsite, it's usually in a fictional story. No one necessarily thinks that mountian climbers go to the bathroom in one big spot in their campsite on the mountain, but really where else would they go? And it is surprising to read about some person in this guy's tour group that fell 2,000 feet into a glacier. It's just sad that things like that really can and do happen but you don't always get to read about them from a man who witnessed it first-hand. When I read this book, I think about how terrible this accident was and how hard it must have been for Jon Krakauer to write about it in such detail. Props to him.

Definition of Non-Fiction

I would describe Non-Fiction as a type of literature that has actually happened. It isn't a story that the writer has made up. It usually includes characters that were at one point alive in real life and it took place somewhere in this world that actually exists. Sometimes a writer will add some parts of the story that never happened, only to make the story a bit more interesting, but the majority of it is real.

Sad But Funny

Throughout the story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find", Flannery O'Connor uses irony more than once. One part of the story where irony shows up is when the family got in the car accident. It was ironic because they were on the unpaved road because the grandmother wanted to show the kids a house, but the house wasn't even located in the same state they were in. If the grandmother would have remembered what state the house was in, they wouldn't have had to drive down that dirt road. It is also funny that the grandmother caused the accident by scaring the cat, who jumped onto Bailey's neck while he was driving.

The crash was sort of forshadowed in the beginning of the story when the narrator said, "In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady" (366). And after the accident happened, the grandmother's hat was still on her head just like she would have wanted.

Another ironic event that happened was that one person that drove past the family on the side of the road was the Misfit, of course. This is ironic because the Misfit was the one and only person that the grandmother wanted the family to stay away from during their trip and they happen to run into him.

And of course, the last part of the story that was ironic was when the grandmother realized that the Misfit was one of her sons. It is funny that all along, the grandmother was trying to stay away from her son and she didn't even know it was him until he shot her.

All of these ironic points makes this story sad but funny at the same time. It is sad that the family got in a car accident and that one of the grandmother's sons killed his own family, but it is funny because how oblivious the grandmother was the whole time.

A Rose For Emily

While I was reading "A Rose for Emily", I saw all of the townspeople as being one character. The reason for this is because the narrator referred to the townspeople as "we all" throughout the whole story. For example, the narrator said, "So the next day we all said..." (471), when he/she was talking about what the townspeople thought after Emily bought the poison from the drug store. When the narrator does refer to the townspeople as "we all", it is at a point in the story where they are making an assumption about Emily. They try to predict what she will do next even though they dont know her. Throughout the story, they sneak around to spy on Emily to try to see what is wrong with her when they could leave her alone. It seems as though the townspeople have nothing better to do than to spy on an old woman. They even try to eaves drop on her relationship with Homer Barron and they make eachother believe that they are getting married just because someone saw her go into the jewelry store.

"Interpreter of Maladies"

There was more than one emotion running through me when I read "Interpreter of Maladies". At first, I was embarrassed and angry with the way the parents (mainly Mrs. Das) treated their children. When the tour started, Mr. and Mrs. Das were arguing over who should take their daughter to the bathroom because neither of them wanted to. After that, Mrs. Das decided that she needed to paint her nails in the car and her daughter wanted her nails painted as well, but Mrs. Das said, "Leave me alone. You are making me mess up." This nasty remark makes it seem to the driver as well as the readers that she is not qualified to be a mother, and more like an older sibling.

When the tour guide, Mr. Kapasi, started to take interest in Mrs. Das, it made me uncomfortable especially because her husband was right there with them the whole time.

It was sad to see the kids so excited to be on the tour, when the parents obviously didn't care at all. Mr. and Mrs. Das were not very nice to their children the whole time until after Bobby was attacked by the monkeys. After that happened, they seemed to act as if they cared more for eachother as Mrs. Das offered a bandaid, Mr. Das brushed the dirt off Bobby, and Ronny gave him a piece of gum. It was like something bad had to happen to one of them for the parents to show affection towards the children and realize that they love them.

How to Ride a Bike

You might want to start off by putting training wheels on the bike. You will probably also want to grab a helmet and a spotter, or someone who can be a witness to what happened when the paramedics come. After that has been situated, you can safely hop onto the bike, place your feet on the pedals, and press down in a circular motion, one foot at a time. If you want to go faster, simply press the pedals harder. If you are going too fast, and you are worried that you might crash into that upcoming mailbox, grab the metal brakes located on the handlebars and squeeze them toward you. You will probably need to ride around the neighborhood a few times until you feel comfortable. Once you do feel comfortable, you can take the training wheels off and practice riding that way. Then ride around your neighborhood a couple more times and if you haven't fallen off or crashed into anything, you will have mastered the skill of bike riding. Keep practicing and have fun!

Obsessed

The woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is secretly obsessed with the wallpaper that surrounds her bedroom. She doesnt realize this completely, but she does more toward the end of the story. When she first notices the paper, she felt hatred towards it as she exclaims, "I never saw a worse paper in my life." (514). After a while of studying the paper, she notices that, "There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down." (516). At this point, it seems as if the wallpaper has humanistic features and she almost considers it an aquaintance. When she was younger, at night she would think of a chair in her room as a strong friend. This makes it seem like she likes the wallpaper because it keeps her company while her husband is away all day.

Having to stay in that room almost all day and night is like being in jail. The bars on the windows act like bars in a jail cell, and John, her husband, won't let her take down the wallpaper while they are staying there. It doesn't seem like a good place for a sick person to stay especially since she can't stand something that surrounds the whole room.

Another metaphor in this story is how alike she and the wallpaper are. They are both sickly looking and they are both run down. This is another reason why she is secretly obsessed with the paper, because they have things in common.

Denial

In "Sonny's Blues" James Baldwin uses the term 'denial' as a theme throughout the story. Only one character attains this trait and he is the narrator. There are four main parts of the story where the narrator shows us that he is in denial. The first time is when he first reads the newspaper which tells him the bad news about his brother. After reading the article a couple times, he says, "It is not to be believed and I kept telling myself that..." (88). Here, the narrator doesn't want to believe that something so horrible as his brother being in rehab could be possible.

After reading about his brother, Sonny, the narrator has to go straight to the school where he teaches algebra to young boys. As he stares at his students, he starts thinking that whether he knows it or not, these kids could be doing drugs in the bathroom right behind his back. But again, he doesn't want to believe that these kids would ever do the things Sonny did to get himself into trouble.

Later in the story, the narrator flashes back to when him and his brother were younger and his Mama tells him a story about how his father's brother died. His Mama was telling him this because she wants him to look out for his brother if she dies. After she tells him this, he says, "I guess i didn't want to believe this." (97), which proves that he is in denial about his brother being a troublemaker. The narrator ends up promising his Mama he won't let anything happen to his brother, but deep down, he still didn't believe that anything bad could possibly happen.

When the Sonny had almost finished school, he told the narrator that he wanted to play jazz music to make money. The narrator doesn't believe that Sonny can play the piano and make enough money to support himself because he had never played the piano before. Even though he is trying to look out for his brother like he promised his Mama, he doesn't believe that Sonny could play that kind of music without getting himself into trouble.

Throughout the story, denial is written all over the narrators forehead and he doesnt realize it until the end. Not only did he deny to himself that anything bad could happen to someone he loves, but he also didn't believe that Sonny would succeed in playing the piano. Lucky for him, he finds out how good Sonny is at playing jazz music and how it made him feel.

First blog ever

Hey, I am Brittany Damschroder and this is the first blog i have ever written. I am a freshman and i live in the dorms with my best friend from high school. I am from Saint Joseph which is only about 50 minutes from kalamazoo. I havent yet declared a major, but I am considering one that deals with animals because i love animals. I generally dont enjoy english classes, mostly because im not the best at writing, but I am excited about this class because I love to read.