So... after our class today and our review session... I've decision that this final is going to be far too hard. Using an entire fifty points on quotations is ridiculous, and fifty on true and false is awful. Definitions would not be that bad if the list of words was reduced a bit. The fact that he gave us the options for the essay was nice but letting it be worth fifty points is a little wicked... 

I'm just saying...

I found this video about Anansi the spider. Anansi shows up in many African folktales. We read Dadie's The Mirror of Dearth with this character in it. Although these stories are far beyond our time, it is still being taught in our education systems now. And not only at a college or even high school level, elementary school students are exposed and influenced by the stories. By using a spider, a small creature that all children are familiar with, to show a moral in the tales. Teaching students at a young age these morals sets them up for a solid foundation in their futures of right and wrong. This is just one example of the student body showing their understanding of the stories. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSK-1Uu6QTo&feature=related

Emily Dickinson wrote the poem, "The Bustle in the House", and I think it fits in with our discussion of feminist theory.Dickinson was open with her views of feminism and it caused her some grief over the years of her writing. This being a men dominated world, many women were challenged with trying to get their name recognized at all. Emily Dickinson did though. In this poem, she describes  a woman's experience with a death, most likely her husband. The view is seen as from a patriarchal society through using the metaphor of cleaning the house up after the death. By holding the position in the house as if nothing has really changed.  Any other writer, especially a male writer, would have the women mourning so terribly that they can't continue with life. Which is highly unlikely in any culture. most responsibility with family issues, household chores and financial support come from the woman. They balance things so much better then men. So, Dickinson had it right since the start.

The Bustle in a House

The Morning after Death

Is solemnest of industries

Enacted opon Earth –

The Sweeping up the Heart

And putting Love away

We shall not want to use again

Until Eternity – 

 

This is a reading of this poem. Just thought hearing it aloud would help understand her point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRBU3aX4t5k

 I'm going to talk about the first section of the poem, "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot. I'm only going to talk about the first section because I believe it has enough to say and it has a great opening to a very strong and dominate poem. I actually prefer this poem over the one we read for class. It's almost more realistic then the love poem. Anyways, this poem's opening is about these men that stand together and pose as scarecrows. They are dry in every way, attempted humor, voice, looks... everything. It almost has a slow start due to the dryness of their nature. Not only are they dry, but their purpose in life is very dry. What they say and do is completely useless and meaningless. Which, is boring but it grabs your attention because as the reader you want to know if they change. I wanted to know what came of them. Their lives were like hell in many ways. But not actually hell because they were too coward to commit the violent crimes they needed to for admittance to hell. They were stuck in a state of not hell but not heaven. They can't cross the river Styx for the decision. This is why they are called Hallow Men. I just thought the execution of their characters in so little words was captured greatly. The rest of the poem is incredible but I particularly like the introduction.

I revised my poem that was previously posted and I was wondering if I could get some feedback on it. It would highly appreciated.
 

The artwork screams controversy

Between acceptance and rejection

Betrayal of the expected

Or self satisfaction

Hiding the truth will challenge

This living picture will forever be mine

Wiping the surface clean of flaws

Examine for perfection

The piercing touch revives the art

Crimson reds and solid blacks

Curving round and round and round

Crisp edges and the illusion of life

Stems and petals created and

Allows the scent of iron to the air

Knowing the sweet aroma

Lacks from the hallucination

It distorts the imagination

This living picture will forever be mine

Left bloody and bruised, the pain remains

Knowing soft, smooth, delicate feelings

Should reach your fingertips

Worried the thorns will stain your skin

With blood and ink as is mine

You avoid the intentional pain

Being permanently bloomed

The beauty is completely lost

Yet found only within my eyes

This living picture will forever be mine

All of the poetry we've read so far is more versatile then any I've read before. Most of it is Western or Poe... Not that any of it is bad but I'm not sure which is better. I like the mystery of the cultural differences but it also causes a barrier between the meanings intended. The short stories on the other hand are not favorable to me because without a proper cultural background it is easy to confuse the meanings of the stories.  One of my favorite poems is by Edgar Allen Poe. It talks about something that everyone, in every culture, does. Nothing separates in this poem for anybody; due to religion, race or status...

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

I absolutely love this poem 

Neruda wrote "Tonight I Can Write..."... this poem stood out to me more then any other poem we've read so far. The style in which he writes, the content in which he writes, even the simplicity of the vocabulary blows me away. Every couplet grabs your attention and captures a different emotion about the same thing... his lost lover. He says, "Tonight I can write the saddest lines./To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her", and this just touches anyone who has had someone or something they love leave them. He speaks of the pain he in enduring and the emptiness that is overcoming him for her absence.He is as lost as she. The misery in which is captured in lines 15 and 16 are incredible.  The suffering is almost reached out to the reader and you feel his pain.

Tonight I Can Write

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

 

 

 

Inspiration

After reading "I Seek a Form..." by Dario, I wrote this poem....

Please feel free to comment on it and how it relates to the work we read.

The artwork screams controversy

Of dead and alive

Red and black

Bloody and bruised

Curving round and round and round with crisp edges

Knowing soft, smooth, delicate feelings

Should reach your fingertips

Worried the thorns will stain your skin

With blood and ink as is mine

You avoid the intentional pain

Knowing the sweet aroma is lacking in this piece

It distorts the imagination

Permanently bloomed

The beauty is completely lost

Yet found within my eyes

The piercing touch as the stem and petals are created

Allows the scent of iron to the air

This living picture will forever be mine  

Alfonsina Storni

We all read her work in class. Her poetry is touching to no end. I wrote my first paper in World Classics on this woman's poem,"I'm Going To Sleep." It was about her suicide and how she prepared herself for the earth excepting her. But her work touched some people even more then just us... Stoni influenced other writings all over the world. The one particular person she made an impression on that caught my attention was an artist. He is a Latin American artist that fifty years later used her influences in his wok. He liked to paint her face in his pieces as well as try to catch the emotion in which she preached so strongly in her own work. He appreciated her views and thoughts on life and that's why he felt it necessary to keep her name alive through his artwork. Hopefully she has influenced us as deeply as she influenced him. 

What I think about blogs...

Personally, I have never done anything like this blogging business and after this class I don't think I ever will again. I don't post on Facebook about my feelings,I don't like to discuss what's on my mind with a shrink, in fact, I don't tell most of my friends what my feelings are so why would I put them on the internet for everyone to see?... I don't like it. But it must be done.I completely understand why Dr. Reed is asking us to do this and it makes sense but I just don't feel it to be necessary for us to put it online. Having us dig a little deeper into our thoughts on the literature and extending our discussion among and outside the classroom will broaden our knowledge of the work.  I feel that keeping a weekly journal, or even a small paper about every piece we read would suffice to what's he's asking though. Actually, I feel that writing what our thoughts are on this literature through an online site is restraining us from fully understanding what others think of it. It restricts our discussion because it is not live. Interactions between peers verbally enhances social skills, conversation techniques and with a live, ongoing conversation the views can be more deeply discussed. Discussion through paragraphs on a computer is very limited. Thoughts are not flowing, words are not moving through the air, they are stagnate on a white page stuck inside a box. Open oral discussions would be best for the sake of the discussion itself. Well...this is what I believe anyways.