Fiction Packet - But What Was Her Name?

Giving such a large amount of information in such a small amount of time is not an easy task for anybody, but these short stories in the poetry packet proved otherwise. I chose to read the story "But What Was Her Name?" by Dawn Raffel which is a prime example of that. This story is about a women that we are not given much detail about, only that she was lucky to of been born by "some trick of oxygen." Throughout the story you do not receive much more information about the women, only what she goes through in her life. This story was very life-like in the aspect that this story could be very similar to that of many women in the world. This was also a very sad and dark story which really got you to think deeper about the women and her life.

The story tells us the women is married late in her life, and "bore live descendants" which is a very uncommon way to say she had kids. It almost portrays the idea that either she doesn't have a connection with her kids or doesn't think of them as her children. The women is also a house wife and is said to be in the kitchen cooking for most of the story. She does her cooking and over time she grows old and fat and the years just fly past her. This is the life of many women in the world and not a very happy storyline that usually comes with a fiction story.

The ending of the story does not seem to get much better as all the others stories do in this packet. The women's husband is now dead and she will not take off her wedding ring. I feel like this is because the majority of her life was dedicated to serving him and now she is lost without him. It can also be inferred that she is a religious women as she calls out loud "Father?" which could be seen as her referring to asking help from God. Then the final line of the poem is basically her dying so there was an entire life of this women described in about 20 lines of writing, and after you know this women's life story you still don't know her name, as if she was forgotten rather than not mentioned.

Writing Down the Bones - Baking a Cake

This section really stood out to me among the rest. I really liked the analogy the author used to compare one's writing or product to a cake, and the ingredients are the details of the writing. Without the correct amount of ingredients then your "cake" will not come out right, or the reader will not understand what you are trying to say. Also, having all the right ingredients plays a big role in the process as well. If certain details are left out then you wont have the "cake" you wanted and everything will not come out right.

I also liked how the author talked about having a connection with your "cake". This is because it's not just any old cake, it's YOUR cake. It's a part of you whether you like it or not. You put time and effort into it and it will represent your thoughts and ideas. I am someone who really likes to put a piece of myself into my writing and call it my own. When I put my name on a piece of paper it represents me and I stand by it. Maybe it doesn't represent everything about me, but I wrote it for a reason and want it to reflect a piece of me.

I think the reason I liked this analogy so much is because I could relate it to anything I do in my life. Sure it worked well with writing, but to me it was more than that. When you bake a cake you make a goal, prepare your steps, and work hard to get there. The ingredients are the steps along the way that you want to put into your goal to help you reach it. Nothing good comes easy and you have to keep working on it to perfect your "cake". 

Tocqueville

Tocqueville is not like any other poem I have ever read before. I've read poems in the past with multiple meanings, different narrators, and hidden messages, but this one takes the cake. The endless possibilities are mind blowing after reading this poem because you are never quite sure which road to take. Everything seems to be so interconnected in one way or another that it almost sets you up to pick up all these different points of view and different meanings. This seems to be multiple poems hidden within each other, that also connect to a bigger idea while also having their own smaller picture.

One aspect that I questioned while reading this poem was how many different narrators had input throughout the reading. "I am 18, married with 3 children" (Pg 38) "I am 22 years old" (Pg 40) " I am 24 and have four children" (Pg 28) The reason these three passages stood out to me was because they almost seemed to be new introductions of narrators. Two of the three introductions mentioned some type of children or marriage with the speaker. However, one of them did not and it was odd to me that the one that didn't was the middle age and not either the first or last introduction. I also tried to compare the different introductions for any contradicting information that would lead the reader to believe that someone else was speaking but all three did not conflict with each other in any way. Another aspect I thought was very interesting was that the ages revealed in the introductions did not come in chronological order. In fact the ages revealed was in the order of oldest, youngest, and then middle.

Another clue that lead me to believe that there are multiple speakers was the fact that the poem contained multiple re-occurring themes spread out through the poem. This included war, a murdered child, the speakers wife, and the idea of portraying impressions of a certain people or idea. The speaker would almost jump back and forth from these different themes and switch his voice when speaking about them. This could be a result of different time frames in the speakers life or represent some kind of aspect the narrator is trying to get across to the reader. This was discussed in class that the poems were placed in this order to get the reader to see how ideas are portrayed to us in the news or to give the wrong impression to people about a certain topic.

Tocqueville - Ecclesiastes

Tocqueville was not the kind of book I was expecting it to be. I was expecting a more novel type book than these poems, but I was still mind struck once again. The poem "Ecclesiastes" was the one that stuck out to me the most. I really enjoyed the set up of this writing and I noticed I was on the edge of my seat the whole way through. The double lined writing set up was very appealing to me, and the simple yet clear writing style painted a solid image in my head.

The words "trick" and "rule" played a very big role throughout this writing. This led me to begin to think of my own personal definition of the words to try and better understand the writing. I perceived "trick" as something deceiving, or a way of not abiding by the rules, and I saw "rule" and this sort of set way of doing something or expected routine to follow. "The rule is to make them feel they've come too late. The trick is that you're willing to make exceptions." So if I used my own person understandings of these words than to me this would mean that no matter what happens you need to make them feel this certain way. At the same time, I need to sort of deceive that rule and regardless make an exception for them anyway.

Even after reading this over a few times, I am still not sure what to make of it. My mind wants to put a stamp on this poem and declare that I know what point they are trying to make but I'm stuck in this cluster of different meanings. One meaning I will get is that the author is a therapist and trying to help someone, but at the same time is also tricking them behind their back. They are portraying the illusion of helping but in reality they do not care about the other person at all. I really get this feeling from the lines "The rule is to create a commission system. The trick is to get their number." I find this to be a very greedy and not caring description of the author. The bigger hint to me was to pair this line up next to "The trick is to make it personal: No one in the world suffers like you." I feel that these two were placed next to each other on purpose to display this idea of false rescue.

Langston Hughes - Children's Rhymes

  Langston Hughes was a very respected poet and he was mentioned in just about every literature class I have ever taken since high school. After looking at some of his poems in class, his poem "Children's Rhymes" caught my attention the most. The reason this poem stuck out to me was the fact that it involved children. The racial discrimination of the of the early 1900's had a huge impact on all children and imprinted certain ideas in their heads at the time. "By what sends the white kids I ain't sent: I know I can't be President." this was in the minds of many young teens that they were inferior to white children and could not achieve the same dreams.

Hughes also portrays the idea that the worries of different races would also be very different from one another. "What don't bug them white kids sure bugs me: We knows everybody ain't free" This was to me the most powerful line in the poem. I think he is trying to say that the law will protect white people and black people know that there will always be discrimination, and they wont get the same treatment as white people. This is why they have more things to be worried about than white people because they don't have the same rights. I also found it very interesting that Hughes added the extra "s" to the end of "know" even though he was very educated in writing, but makes this error to possibly portray some kind connection to his community of people and culture.

However, despite how much I liked this poem, there was also a few aspects I did not. Hughes says "When I was a chile we used to play, "One-two-buckle my shoe!" and things like that. But now, Lord, listen at them little varmints!" and he goes on to state the other two quotes in this post. I was obviously not in his shoes and did not experience the same events as he did in his life, but I have experienced a high amount of racial discrimination where people have been killed, and the kids did not act the way he is portraying them to act. To me, kids are kids no matter the circumstance they are in and find ways to have fun. They don't fully understand the situation and are not singing the blues day and night about racial discrimination. This is a very powerful and sometimes truthful image, but I feel Hughes overplayed the depression of the children to create a better image for the reader.

Ted Berrigan's Sonnets

A collage is a mixture of various pictures, objects, or words put together to express either some type of emotion, idea, or tell a story. I chose to read Sonnet XV by Ted Berrigan and not only do you get a poem but a collage as well. This poem has easily become my favorite I've read thus far in class and will be for a long time. The way this poem is set up was mind blowing to me. I had always heard about poets talking about "breaking the rules of writing" and having your own style, but this took the cake for me.

After reading this sonnet for the first time I did not have the same feelings toward it that I do now. I was very confused and didn't see what was so great about it at all. I didn't understand the pop culture references, the sentences did not flow, the ideas were jumping around and I couldn't get a grasp of the poem as a whole. I assumed it must of been special in some way or I would not be reading it in my class right now, but I thought it was just out of my time and I had nothing to gain from it... And thankfully I was incredibly wrong.

After another student mentioned that if you read the sonnet in a certain way it would make much more sense, I had to see for myself. I began matching up certain lines with their counterparts or continuations and it started making some sense and I felt as if I was solving a puzzle. I thought it was just for about four lines of the poem but then soon after I realized that the entire poem was setup in a certain order to where the first line would match up with the last line and second with second from last and so on. I truly got excited because I had never seen something like this in poetry before. Once I had read the entire poem the "correct way" everything had made sense! (except for the pop culture references haha) This was the first time I had ever seen a poet really step out of the box and I was happy we got to read this in class.

First Poem Reading - Geology of Water

Water is a common symbol used by many writers to grasp the imagination of their readers. The poem I chose to write about is "Geology of Water" by Marianne Moore (Not sure if this is the correct author, the paper did not print well). This was the first poem read by the class and it grabbed my attention from the beginning. The vivid images and use of detail had me hooked and really gave me a good vision of what the author was attempting to describe. Out of the first couple poems assigned to the class this was my favorite one.

"If I bend closer I can hear him drown, a man made out of water whose words arise like bubbles to the surface: something survives in every carbonaceous molecule" (Lines 14-18). This means to me that when we are dying, we make the most of our last breathes and the meaning behind our words will survive even after we are gone. This also sparked a question to myself as I was reading this poem because how can a man drown if he is made out of water? I loved this small passage and really enjoyed thinking about the meaning behind it.

"Evolution croons its single song, come out of the sea, my love, to me, and never adds, and drown knee-deep in air." (Lines 24-27). This was by far my favorite line in the entire poem because it has so many meanings and just sounds awesome at the same time. One interpretation was that humans in a way evolved to get out of the water, but still drown and die in the air. It also has a darker feeling to the way it is portrayed. As if "Evolution" is tricking the human race to come to this glorious place and evolve, but when they get there they see it is not what they expected.