Week of 06/21

Goldberg
The part I really enjoyed about Goldberg was on page 154, the whole first paragraph really stands out. He talks about people reading writing, even their own writing and how they don't comment on the quality. People don't know the quality of their work and how extraordinary it is. For me, it reminded me of the day we shared our fiction with our groups, and most people left really good comments on one of my pieces called What seemed like freedom. The comments were really genuine, (even you said it was a good story) barely any corrections. And it just made me think I never think my writing is good! Kind of like I write and then hide my face, kind of thing. Even as a little girl when I used to do far more writing, getting writing awards in elementary and middle and high school, I still always thought people were exaggerating. So it made me think, I need to give myself more credit and when I read other great writing do the same!

Week of 06/14/2012

I really enjoyed The Falling Girl from Fiction Packet 3. I think the woman falling from the skyscraper building was symbolic for growing up too fast. There are a few reasons why I thought this. For one, I thought it was strange the conversations she was having as she was "falling." One person she caught an attitude with because he questioned why she was falling saying, "you've got your whole life ahead of you." She also talks to people who are trying to invite her to a party but she says she can't because she's in a hurry. Also, in the story, she refers to a woman who is a couple meters above her, falling off the skyscraper but she'd be the one to make it to the party. The language of the story is very descriptive, almost poetic and very pretty. There's a lot of talk about the sun illuminating her beautiful dress and the dark windows of this skyscraper building that can give you a visual picture of a beautiful building in the city, very lavish as well. There were a couple things I thought were confusing or rather I wasn't sure what to make of. The conversation between the couple that enjoyed living at the bottom of the skyscraper. They liked it because they could see the women hit the ground, and also made a reference for the prices being so high because people were jumping off. That was strange I wasn't sure what the symbolism could be for that. There's another part where Marta, the main character who was falling notices other girls jumping and they're saying it's a contest. I thought that was confusing because on one hand I thought maybe she's saying life is a contest between those beautiful girls, which was how she described them. But was she apart of that contest as well? The text talked about her being beautiful, but why did she pass those people trying to invite her to a party if she was too in a contest with the beautiful ones, living a lavish life.

Week of 06/05

I always tend to write about the stories I thought were weird, or confusing. I thought Field's writing was peculiar, but in a good way. I loved the format of the story. I liked the way the quotations were in the center of the page, away from the rest of the story. It made it stand out. Since the main character in the story is silent, I believe the dialogue was placed there because it was important. I'm a bit confused by the italicized text in the story. There is an italicized paragraph that starts, "I surveyed the ceiling of my prison..." and I'm wondering if that was a flashback? I believe the italicized text is important as well since it is in a different format than the rest of the story. At first, I perceived the main character to be a young woman, sitting in her therapist's office. She was silent because she was perhaps sent there, or decided she needed therapy but didn't know what to say. And the girls, were maybe just people she saw on the street that she used as distractions. But after further reading, I believe the main character is a man, perhaps some sort of serial killer. I came to that conclusion after reading, "too bad you have to die in here, sometimes I feel bad and want to disrupt the killing spree." Also there is a line that alludes to him (or her) being a criminal, "I am really the criminal you won't say I am."

What I liked about her writing is how it just grabs you. As I said, I thought it was a bit weird at first but I just kept reading and found myself asking more questions. From the descriptions of several cats, I'm assuming the therapist maybe had a few cats in her office. And I think they were placed in the story to see the true nature of the main character. There is a lot of ___ that serial killers being sociopaths, probably hurt animals in their childhood. I'm wondering if the man was fixated on the cats because he wanted to hurt them, since he did say he was planning to ask if the cat was dead or alive. I'm still a bit confused about the significance of the cats. At the end of the story, it left me wondering if he killed his therapist, or if he just left, or maybe if he was a killer at all.

I did enjoy the Edgar Allen Poe bit, it once again alludes to the fact the main character might be a bit mad, seeing as Poe was seen as mad and also wrote strange short stories.

Fiction Packet 1

Survivors 
As I read through this story, I was still stuck on the first couple sentences. I kept thinking, what kind of person wants to die first just so they don't have to deal with that person's family? If I were sick, and my lover died that would be all I thought about. I liked the way the author brought in details to introduce the relationship between the lovers, and his family. I also wonder if one wanting to die before the other was just an example of perhaps a real life defense mechanism, focusing on something less worse than your lover dying. The more I thought about it, I felt like that was a realistic reaction.

Sharon Krinsky, Mystery Stories
I thought some of these stories were a bit weird, and there wasn't anything mysterious about them. What I did like about the author is just her use of details, it helps paint a picture in your mind. I'm wondering if she really knew all these people she wrote about (The Indian, the Japanese man) or if they are just stories.

Resident
I liked the connection of the wind from his childhood to now, in his residency days. It's interesting that in both scenarios, he was alone, enjoying his time outside, I'm wondering if that means something as well.

The Letter from Home
This was my favorite although I found it confusing by the end of it. What I liked the most was the style of writing Jamaica uses. I love writing that is free spirited, that just kind of flows, doesn't have typical punctuation because I feel like it sucks you in and you can't stop reading. At first, I thought this story was about your typical Mom and wife who is extremely busy and exhausted, hence the format of the story and talking about various household chores. But as I continued through the next two paragraphs I don't really know what to think. I'm wondering what it meant by, "are the children ready yet? will they bear their mother's name?" And who was the man that was asking? Because to me it implies that perhaps the woman is pregnant or why else would there be a question if they bear their mothers name? I'm assuming this means last name. And why is it called a letter from home? Is it a letter? This will be a good story to discuss because there are so many questions and interpretations you can pull from it.

Ornithology

Ornithologies was a very different section of the book from the others. It was something about the language, that drew me in. Even we discussed nature, the preservation of the Earth being one of themes of the book, I feel he really used language pertaining to nature more in this section. You see words like; petal, garden, blossoms, butterflies and the 4 seasons. I also gotta admit I didn't know what the hell ornithologies was. But thanks to handy dandy google, I learned an ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. I'm wondering why Roberson used that as the section of this book.

Before I touch on that, I have to talk about Urban Nature which was a poem I really enjoyed. I thought it was a very fluid poem. The tone of the poem felt soft to me, it didn't have the same roughness or compassion as some of the other poems. He compares the city to New Hampshire and the Midwest saying the city is "not that nature." He describes the city's urban nature as, "just a street, pocket park, clean of any smells, simple quiet, not the same as no birds sing, definitely not the dead of no birds sing."What I'm definitely curious about is the context. Because at first when I read it, I thought he was saying that he disliked the lack of nature. But reading again, I'm wondering if he's trying to suggest maybe there is something beautiful about urban nature as well, despite the fact that the poems  in the book talk about what the city is lacking.

Back to the subject of ornithology, you can see Roberson talks a lot about birds in the poems in this section. But what kind of ideas is he trying to convey? How does he use the birds to tell a story? In the poem ornithology, at first read I thought he was comparing the way birds to travel to humans. He talks about how the birds meet up with one another"as if over a schedule they post and change their perch patterns." Then when he gets to the part about flipping metal panels, I thought he was talking about those leg bands the birds wear. He goes on to describe the panels as, "numbers and letters, arrivals and departures, track numbers times and destinations." Perhaps he was bird watching and noticed how they interacted.

City Eclogue

Okay, I have to say that when I first started reading this book I had the complete whale face on (-______-) I was thinking how in the World am I going to analyze this? It was very intimidating. I wasn't even sure what an eclogue was! But after reading through the first half a couple times I started to get the understand what he was trying to say. I was also really impressed by his creativity in how he used poetry to explain the problems going on in his city which I'm assuming is New York because he talked about Washington Square and Harlem. His language was very raw and descriptive, "what kind of bastard son wishes his son had won the election to eradicate his sister for the fuckers birthday?" is a good example. To me, he's just trying to evoke the anger or rather just compassion.

As we discussed in class, there are several key themes in his poems one of which I noticed was his use of history, specifically enough African American history. On page 43, "still in our habit Colored Only) and on page 45 he says, "that powerful level of segregationist the civil rights movement never reached." I truly believe what he is trying to stress here is that although these things happened, not much has changed. He doesn't speak of these movements in a way that conveys he believes that was the start of a revolution. It's like he's saying I know this happened, but there is still work to do. Also on page 50, the poem, there was no gun is used to explain a more current event relevant to African American history. He writes, "did he see forty one times the forty one shots end his life in forty one deaths in time to understand what he already knew about black people looking like to whites with guns." Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times by the NYPD with no weapon on him because he fit the description of a serial rapist. He introduces one of the problems of racism in the city by talking about White officers killing Black men based upon their preconceived notions about them.

There were two lines that I really liked enough to share with a few of my friends. I really enjoyed the there was no gun poem not just because I understood the history behind it. My favorite line out of the first half is in it. It reads, "we blink our eyes to erase what we see or to clear the eyes to see what we don't." It just really explains the beauty of perspective so well. It's amazing how powerful the eyes are if you really think about it. If we just open our eyes we can see what's really going on and try to fix it. Another line I really enjoyed was on page 31, "we are so fused with communication we all happen at once." I just thought that was so brilliant! Something I always talk to my Dad about is all the social networking and ways we have to communicate but talking to each other face to face is still difficult. Everyone is so busy tweeting or updating their facebook status or what have you that we don't really take the time to talk to each other or maybe that's just part of the city life, everyone is just too busy to care.

Week of 05/15/2012

I enjoyed the poems this week. The most interesting poem was "And What Do You Get" by Heather McHugh. I thought she was had one of the most clever poem. She says, "excise the er from exercise," which is cool because excise means take out, and when you take out the er from exercise you actually get excise. Another example of this is, when she writes, "example, take the ex out: now it's bigger." The remaining word would be ample, which means big or a lot. I thought that was cool how she makes you think and involves you. 

When I was in high school, I took English AP and we read a lot of Shakespeare mostly just plays, and I used to dread reading them. But after reading some of his sonnets in class I actually have an appreciation for this style of his work. I have a few favorites, the first one being 116. It seems the sonnet is about love and discussing the false claims of what love is. He says, "love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove, o, no! it is an ever-fixed mark," so to me he's saying love is permanent, and doesn't go from place to place (or person to person.) The last four lines of the sonnet are very powerful, "love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but it bears out even to the edge of doom. If this be error, and upon me proved, I never writ, nor man no man ever loved." I deciphered it as, love is extremely powerful and lasts forever, and if I'm lying then that means no man has really ever loved.

Sonnet 127 was a bit confusing to me because I could not tell if Shakespeare was referring to Black women or perhaps dark haired women. I could relate to the ideas in the poem about not fitting standards of beauty which he explains in the first two lines and last two lines, "yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe, that every tongue says beauty should look so." Also, overall I found that I really enjoyed the last two lines of most of the sonnets, I felt like they were very profound and thought provoking and helped understand the sonnet better. In 129, a sonnet which to me is about the dangers of lust Shakespeare ends with, "all this the world well knows,; yet none knows well, to shun the heaven that leads men to this hell!" I think that's something most men should read :)