Multi-genre Project

I haven't really made a decision yet on what the topic will be on, but I am thinking about doing it on one or more of the short stories that we read in class. Made comparing and contrasting or finding creative ways to represent the stories. If anyone has any suggestions they would be very appreciated and if not I am sure I will figure it out.

Sestina

I really like this poem. I think it takes a lot of creativity and brain power to write a sestina. I really like how all of the lines end in the same word and yet none of the lines mean the same thing. I find it really intriguing that someone can come up with so many ways to write a line that ends in the same word and all of these lines relate to the poem still. I think that Elizabeth Bishop did an excellent job at keeping the poem related and yet it doesn't become boring hearing and reading the same words over and over again.

Ten Poems

For the ten poems I decided to look up poems that have a romance theme because I am planning on looking at them as a school. The ten I found are: "Inspiration", "My Heart", "Because of You I'm Free", "My Reason to Live", Me and You", "The Little Things", The Way He Gets Me", The Fight", Humor is the Start", and "Why". For the my two favorite I choose "My Heart"and "Why". I liked these two because they were very personal and I could feel the emotion in them as I was reading them. They are also very simple and easy to understand.

Poems from class

Potato

If they smell like dirt
Then they’re ripe
Earth’s vegetable


Brown and rough
Eyes staring back at me
The duct tape of food


I CELEBRATE, my soul, myself
And what I loaf belongs to you
Summer grass and perfect health
Every atom of my blood is new

Robert Frost

While I was searching for poems, I discovered that I like Robert Frost's poems. I enjoy how his poems are set in the nature and that they have a really nice rhythm. I chose to read "Fireflies in the Garden", "Fire and Ice", "House Fear", "The Runaway", "Dust of Snow", and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". For my two favorite of these six would by the last two.
"Dust of Snow" was a really nice read. I loved the rhyme of it and how one little crow could change the way a man can precieve and feel about the rest of his day. That crow shaking down the snow changed his whole mood and made him happy. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" was also a poem with a nice rhythm. This poem was also very sad. It made me sad to think that the man was in such a beautiful area and that the woods were so pretty and yet the man was making his trek to his death. I also loved how he incorporated how the horse must be feeling. The last two lines "and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep" make such an impact on how the man must be feeling and on the poem in general. I really like Robert Frost's writing style and how he can bring such emotion to the characters.

Shakespeare

For my critical blog I decided to go through line by line of William Shakespeare's poem "That the time of year thou mayst in me behold". Shakespeare can be a little tricky to understand so maybe this will help a little.

That time of year you can behold me
When the leaves are gone or are yellow
On the branches that shake in the cold
Where birds once sung but no longer do
In me you will see a twilight of a day
After the sunsets in the west
Which shortly the night takes over
You will sleep
In me you will see a fire
That once was his childhood
That has died
His memories are also dead
This you will see will make our love stronger
The love which you must have forever

This is my own interpretation of the poem and might not necessarily be correct.

Poems

If I had to pick one of the poems that we read for today and label it as my "favorite" I would choose "Woodchucks". This poem offered up some mild humor and some relativity to my life. Having grown up on a farm I have seen my fair share of Woodchucks and let me tell you they are not easy to get rid of as the author has stated. The poet did a wonderful job of putting all of the frustration into a poetic verse. The way he describe to process is correct to a tee. I laughed at this poem and it was one of the few poems I didn't mind reading. Life would be so much easier if they would just die by gas instead of making it more difficult for us.

Survivorship

In the book Farewell to Manzanar, there is a large underlying theme of survivorship throughout the entire book. There are many different ways in which someone can survive. In "FTM" many factors influenced survival. From living conditions to hospital conditions to family dynamics. All of these things impacted whether a person survived an internment. If the living conditions were bad than it was easy to get sick, but if the hospital conditions were bad than it was hard to get better. So if both were bad than the results would be fatality. This was often the case in Manzanar and pregnant women. The family dynamics were often a factor as well. Many of the families fell apart while in the camp. This could affect survival rate because the members would often feel lonely and would not want to continue. All of these things affected survival in the Manzanar internment camp. For those that survived it was hard to go back to the outside world. Many wanted to stay in the camp for fear of what would happen to them when the left. Many felt safer in Manzanar. So for the Japanese, survival was not only hard in the camp, it was also difficult on the outside as well.

Farewell To Manzanar

This story is about a young girl's remembrance of a tragic event in her life. She is telling her life story to the readers, painting a picture in our minds of what she went through. This would categorize this story into the non-fiction genre. Non-fiction is the genre in which truth is portrayed. In Farewell to Manzanar, the narrator/author is telling her story to the readers about what happened to her while living in an internment camp during the WWII war. Even though she was very young when this happened she was still able to remember it enough the write a book about. She remembers it all so well. Her book takes you to the camp and while reading it, you get a mental picture of what it was like to live there. She is a brilliant author for being able to do this. The book is a great piece for anyone who needs to read a non-fiction piece.

What is Non-Fiction??

According to 4classnotes.com non fiction is "literature that is true or is based on factual events." Most of the definitions that I found are along the same line as this. They all defined it as being based off of true events and ones that happened in a person's life. It can include biographies, plays, poetry, how to books and autobiographies.

The Lame Shall Enter First

The main character of this story is a man named Shepard. Now what is there to say about Shepard? Shepard is the kind of man that goes above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to helping complete and utter strangers. However, he is very slow to react when his own son is calling out for help. Shepard decides that it is his duty to take on a young boy named Rufus Johnson. Now Johnson has had quite the life. His mother is in jail, his grandfather beats him and he himself gets in trouble with the law. Shepard sees the boy has potential and decides that he should come and stay with him and his son Norton at his house. Johnson does anything he possibly can to get Shepard to hate him, but Shepard keeps on giving him eternal love. He treats him "better than his own son". Shepard cant even take two seconds to look around at his own life and see that there are other people in the world other than Johnson. Shepard says he is doing it to take his mind off of his wife's death. He wants his son to be just as generous as he his. He says it will help his son to forget his mother. Shepard actually tells his son to forget his mother and to move on with his life. Johnson takes full advantage of the situation in order to build Shepard's trust. He breaks into houses and because Shepard is so trusting Johnson gets away with it. This is just what Johnson wanted, but Shepard soon catches on and in the end Johnson gets what he deserves. Through all of this effort to help an ungrateful child, Norton only wishes his father would pay more attention to him. Norton tells his father that but Shepard is to busy to notice. In the end though it is too late. Shepard is too late to give the same eternal love to his own son. Everything he did was for nothing.

"A Rose For Emily"

A Rose for Emily was a story that I will never forget. It was one that will haunt me forever. Never in a million years would I have guessed that she just left Harmon to rot in a bedroom. That is one of the most disturbing things I have ever read. But why? I think she did it because she didnt want to be alone anymore. He was one of the only human beings that payed any attention to her and when he died she didnt want that feeling to go away. She wanted him to be with her forever. Which was probably why she didnt want them to bury her father. For the same reason. She didnt want to be alone. The neighbors werent the most neighborly people. The only time they payed attention to her was when something weird or new was happening. They didnt care about her on a daily basis. She really had no one so no wonder she wanted to keep those who loved her close. Dead or alive.

Culture

I really liked reading all three of the stories we read for today. I enjoyed reading them because I like stories that incorporate other nation's culture into them. I enjoy to read and learn something new at the same time. Most of the books I choose to read in my free time are books about other cultures and religions or even about the past. When I read, my mind takes me to those places and I learn through the characters. I really love it when the stories contain a foreign language because I love it when I can throw random languages into a conversation and actually know what I am saying. Most of these words I learned through reading books. Books truly are a great way to learn about another's culture.

"How To" Ride a Horse

First things first....
1. Catch the horse. That is the most necessary thing.
2. Tie them up so they dont get loose, but if they do, repeat step one. Hint: Carrots or grain should do the trick.
3. Brush them down good paying close attention to hair growth direction. DO NOT skip this part or else you will probably get kicked off because they will be uncomfortable.
4. Put on the saddle blanket and saddle or else you really cant ride without them.
5. Tighten down cinch doing it slowly and in several increments.
6. Put in bit or you will have no control.
7. Get on. Hint use a step stool.
8. Now comes the FUN part.
9. Keep reins even and your heels down. Sit up straight and sit on your back pockets.
10. Warm up for at least 5 minutes first.

The Cask of Amontillado

While reading The Cask of Amontillado, a few questions arose to me. My first question is what made Poe want to write a story like this? I also wondered why did he name the guy Fortunato which sounds like fortune when the guy dies in the end? That is not a fortune I would like to inherit. I didn't understand why a jester would be so influenced by such a rich and royal habit of wine collecting. Were they even jesters or did they just dress like them? I also didn't understand why the man killed Fortunato to begin with. Weren't they friends? If he was going to kill him all along why did he keep asking him to go back? Did he feel guilty? Or was he trying to seem worried so Fortunato wouldn't suspect anything? I really didn't understand this story, but I did like the way it was written. It was almost poetic. But I like a story where I don't have to play twenty questions just to understand it though.

Character Analysis

For my critical blog I chose to do a character analysis for "Sonny's Blues". I will be doing this for both Sonny and for the narrator who was left nameless in the story. The narrator was Sonny's older brother. Throughout the story, the brother's personalities develop into a completely different personality. This is because both of the brothers are able to see each other from a different perspective.

Sonny is the kind of person that would come across as rebellious and challenging. He becomes rebellious because his father dies and his brother goes away to war so he is left to grow up without any masculine role models to model his life after. He gets mixed in with the wrong crowd and ends up in rehab because of his heroin addiction. He is a musician and has a different perspective of the world. Sonny in the end replaces his heroin addiction with an addiction to music. Drugs and Music does the same thing for him. That was something his brother couldn't understand without going and personally listening to his brother play.

Sonny's brother on the other hand is responsible and caring. He cares about his brother's future and wants the best for him. He does have a problem with making promises that he does not or will eventually fulfill. He needs a lot of prompting in order to fulfill his promises. In the end he becomes more understanding of the reasons why his brother behaves the way he does and begins to respect his brother as a musician rather than treating him like a child.

About Me

Hi my name is Kirsten and I am a Freshman at Western Michigan University. I am a Biomedical Science Major with the hope to eventually become a Dentist. I am from a small town outside of Battle Creek and I know just about everyone that lives there. I enjoy riding horses and show at the local 4-H. I love to read in my free time along with other things. Thats it for now.