Final Paper Blog

For my final paper, I think I will imitate the style of Waslawa Szymbroska. Although her poems were translated into English, they still have a powerful and unique style that I would like to mimic. I am not sure which topic I will cover, since she chose powerful ideas such as true love and death, in the poems we analyzed in class. To write the poem, I will copy one of her poems. If I imitate the poem, "On Death, without Exaggeration," I will use the same tone she displays in the sarcastic persona of the speaker to try to show the reader a different perspective on a popular topic. However, I may chose a more light-hearted topic and mimic the poem, "True Love." I like the tone of this poem more because although it has the same sarcastic and slightly belittling tone, the author clearly shows that the image is powerful in itself, beyond examination and criticism, because of what it does for those who have it. I'd like to copy Waslawa Szymbroska because the style of her work is distinct because she has a sarcastic, critical tone in her analysis of sensitive and emotional topics. Unlike other poets, she does not exaggerate topics such as true love or death, but rather she questions them and seemingly belittles them in order to emphasize their inherent power. Szymbroska makes it clear through poetic elements that she truly does believe in the power of such topics. Hopefully I can do a similar topic justice as I mimic her style, the way she uses the elements of poetry, and the persona that she creates for her speaker to emphasize the theme she writes about.

Atnigone Blog

The violence occurring offstage, as was customary in Greek tragedy, greatly affected the audience's reactions. Since it was merely reported rather than shown, the audience had the ability to imagine in their own heads, to whichever extent they pleased, the violence that was described. If, however, the violence were to occur on the stage rather than off the stage, the violence would have affected the audience in their society differently than violence in movies and television shows affect audiences today. I think it was fitting for the Greeks to simple describe it not just because they lacked the special effects and technological abilities that we have today, but also because it created a stronger bond between the audience and the performance. For example, the direct and obvious violence shown in horror movies may be more violent actions than Antigone, but because the movie shows the audience exactly what happens as the action occurs, the audience loses the ability to imagine how such an action would take place and is therefore made into simply a spectator of another's imagination - the writer's - which weakens the bond between audience and performance. This directness also distracts the audience from the horrors of such violence. While it might seem like the opposite would happen, and that watching the violent acts would be more horrific, in fact one becomes jaded by all the violence that is displayed and graphically enhanced, so that we don't take it seriously if the graphics are not realistic enough in stead of paying attention to the actual violence that is occurring, we concentrate on the fake blood to distract ourselves from the murders occurring before our eyes. This also creates a society more accepting of violent behavior simply because it has become jaded in our eyes. While Greek culture may have been quite violent in war and in their stories, there are definitely more reported violent occurrences in today's society. Connection? Maybe.

The Feet and Inches Separating America

The Metric system of measurement has been used in Europe and other parts of the world for ages. Our system of feet, yards, gallons, and inches has been a part of American history since the very beginning…about two to three hundred years ago. It has become an integral part of our culture. We assert our independence through our difference in the measuring system, and still our dominance from the fact that we are unique, and yet still manage to communicate and trade with people who use the other unit, the metric system. We do have experts scattered throughout the country, though, who are familiar with and used to the metric system. Those people are all modernists, though, scientists, doctors, people with extremely high educations and world visions. It’s not their fault they want to break out into the world and act as if America wasn’t the best place in the world and only place you need for basically any job. We have resources, materials, and land galore to support these fields and people, but change is changing to become more common those encouraging it are going out in the world and connecting with the metric system users and getting more ideas. Holding onto the system of feet is one of the only things left in this changing world, making us different from the world that is getting so much closer together and tight-knit through travel and business and sticking to what our Founding Fathers intended for this nation. Even if it troubles in miscommunication can cost an indebted nation millions of dollars, cause troubles among scientists and doctors and even cooks from different nations, discourage travelers from going somewhere they don’t know the new system, and even causing disastrous effects such as the NASA conversion mistake which endanger many lives. But what separates us from our enemies, and even allies, makes us stronger as a nation because we can survive on our own; we don’t need no fancy European ways.

Short Stories

“The Use of Force” by William Carlos Williams (who would name their child William Williams, I don’t know) shocked me when it got to be so violent. When the girl bit down on the tongue depressor and blood went everywhere I didn’t expect her to be so obstinate. Obviously the child was scared and didn’t want to show that she had the deadly disease of diphtheria. But perhaps the doctor, being overworked and underpaid in these times – $3 for a visit – was the cause of the ruckus, and the character we were supposed to pay attention to. Maybe his impatience with the parents and pitying respect for the “brat” came from his experience with having a difficult job, working with hurting patients, many of whom die. In Eudora Welty’s “A Visit of Charity” I expected Marian to get to know the old ladies, once she finally started talking and asked how old she was. However, when the woman grabbed Marian in the hallway and asked her for money, they kept their scary old image, but also reflected the care they were given. This was illustrated by the nurse’s 3-step process of checking her watch, indicating the impersonal care the old ladies were getting. I didn’t think the apple was a reference to Adam and Eve, but rather a healthy fruit to calm her after leaving a place of such shocking reality. The most shocking reality, however, was in Anton Chekhov’s “Sleepy,” when the girl strangles the baby. When I think back about it, the memories of her father dying may have foreshadowed the sadness in her. Also, the lack of sleep, which had undoubtedly been going on for at least days on end, is enough to drive anyone insane. But by having her kill the child instead of run away or just fall asleep, Chekhov shows the horror in the everyday lives of lower class servants in that time.

Song Lyrics as Poetry?

For the poetry of a song essay, I think I will write about Jason Mraz’s song, “I’m Yours.” This song doesn’t appear to have many poetic aspects at first besides some rhyme, and common colloquial metaphors or slang phrases. However, this song’s lyrics easily become stuck in a person’s head and were pretty easy to learn quickly because it is “catchy.” I’m not sure exactly what makes this “catchy” but when you look closer at the lyrics there are many hidden metaphors, more rhyme that is first noticeable, rhythm markers, and many other poetic elements. Maybe the poetic aspect of the song raises it from being more than just words to accompany lyrics, but a clever use of language as literature. Maybe the poem was written first and the music was then written to enhance it, rather than the other way around.
I picked the song because it was stuck in my head and I generally like the song every time I hear it. Looking into the song’s lyrics as a poem rather than just something you sing along as the melody could provide insight as to how some songs are catchy and successful and others are not very well known. I think that because this song is easy to sing, that means that the language of the lyrics has been created thoughtfully, using poetic techniques, to make it that way. Many times people sing along to songs without really knowing what they are saying just because that is how the song goes, even though out of context of the song those phrases would be awkward and stand out. This makes it seem that the music is more important than the lyrics and therefore it isn’t poetry, and maybe some aren’t, but as I look into “I’m Yours,” in particular, I believe that I will find that the lyrics could stand alone as a poem.

Essay 2 Topic

I decided to write my second essay on the language and imagery used in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Franz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony.” This seemed like a good choice because both of them have extreme topics but aren’t worded in a way that would exaggerate the circumstances in any way. In fact, they use much of the descriptive language and imagery to seem as if they were downplaying the incident, which therefore arises even more tension in the story and emotion from the reader. By using such matter-of-fact tones and language to tell such gruesome stories, Jackson and Kafka first appear as if they are telling a more factual story and letting the reader decide whether or not the incidents described truly warrant judgment and negative reactions. I found this to be creative and interesting because as you look more closely at the pieces, the conservative language is actually used at key points where the author could have built apprehension. Maybe that’s an effective way to create the desired response from the reader when words, languages and images have been too over-exaggerated and overused. Because the simple phrases and tones throughout the gruesome parts stand out more when the exaggeration happens in the reader’s mind rather than in the author’s words. For example, Jackson hints subtly that something is not quite right, but keeps the context of the story more common than sullen, fearful or even horrific, as she could have done. Therefore, when Mrs. Hutchinson starts to argue, plead, and show emotion, it has a greater effect on the reader as it is compared to the empty language tones which reported the beginning of the story. I feel like the two traditions told in the stories are similar in style and context and very comparable in their use of descriptions.

Stereotypical Gender Roles

Both the speaker of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” and the speaker of Susan Minot’s “My Husband’s Back” fit perfectly into what I would consider stereotypically male and female roles, respectively. These roles coincide with typical stereotypes of male and female images and their ideal love. Love plays a key role in both poems as an ideal view of both speakers’ love is seen as the only thing that makes their bleak worlds worth all the troubles. The masculine aspects of “Dover Beach” fill the poem with diction like “Listen!” and words of manly anguish such as “grating roar” and “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,” “edges drear,” “alarms of struggle and flight,” and crashing armies. He also uses the calm constants of the earth, tide, moon, land, and wind, to represent “the turbid ebb and flow/ Of human misery,” and the “eternal note of sadness.” These miseries are lined with the undertone of inevitable acceptance, another typically masculine quality to simply endure the pain he cannot change. Although this clearly makes him angry, noted by exclamation points and repeating the theme of sadness being as uncontrollable as forces of nature, he also sees the beauty, even if just as “light/Gleams and is gone.” He shows that beauty, light, and admiring femininity of something so miserable can be seen by those with love in their hearts when he compares it to the “Sea of Faith…round earth’s shore/Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.” He also does this by describing how love makes the world seem “To lie before us like a land of dreams,/So various, so beautiful, so new” after he had spent the whole poem portraying the world’s continuous misery. Using the word, “lie,” here could also have a second meaning that the dangerous world lies to the eyes of the happy, making them falsely believe there is good in the world. While Arnold uses worldly descriptions of general pain, Minot uses household descriptions to explain her sorrows. The poem begins with the speaker “Weeping into/a pot of burnt rice,” representing female emotional struggles when challenged by unfulfilling chores. She compares the sunset to a “light bulb gone out” to fit in with the problems of a fire to warm the air not catching, burnt dinner, and a sick baby. She then sits helpless on the couch and becomes not only grateful when her husband arrives to save the day, but she admires him as a supreme, ageless being. By focusing the poem on his back, something she can “crawl on” as he carries her to a better place, she also compares it to her own back: “my spine/collides with all its bones” using the spine and back as a symbol for strength. She finds the strength she needs in her husband’s muscular strength, another feminine quality, which she uses to demonstrate the adoration she has for her husband and how that love is worth having “traveled everywhere/to get to.” The speaker is stereotypically dependant on her husband, and his love, to be the pinnacle and savior of her hard life. As Minot uses examples of domestic troubles and Arnold uses larger problems, both constitute the failures of humans; the males need to save the world while the females need to make it warm, fed, and healthy. Both speakers, having failed in their assumed roles, turn to a greater, idealistic view of love to save their lives from complete misery.

Putting Rivers and Birds into Poems

Mary Oliver opens her poem, “Singapore,” with a stark visual of something we’ve all seen before, but which remains unfamiliar to most: an airport worker cleaning in the bathroom. The “darkness ripped from my eyes” to see “the light that can shine out of a life” at the beginning and end of the poem symbolizes the blindness of not seeing the worker as a person in the speaker’s view as reality forces her to reexamine the person in front of her. The woman doing her job is first associated with the dirty connotations of both the ash tray she is trying to clean and the toilet bowl in which she is washing it. Both things we commonly group under a negative tone of being poor, dirty, and to be avoided. Then the speaker seems to force positive thoughts into her head, mimicked by the almost side-note mention of the poem within the poem. The speaker must refocus her eyes to see a lighter picture and the mention of needing birds and rivers foreshadowing her simile of scrubbing the metal with a blue cloth like a river and comparing her dark hair to the wing of a bird, implying that like a bird’s wing at rest, her beauty is waiting to be set free. The tone becomes lighter and lighter, speaking of beauty, birds, rivers, allowing the speaker to indulge in our common American happy-ending thoughts of rising up beyond her dirty life and “fly down to the river,” as if to wash away the past and travel somewhere better. Finally, in the last stanza, the two tones coincide to form the tone of appreciating the beauty in the reality, “the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,” emphasized by repeating the phrase “the way” uncapitalized at the beginning of the last lines describing a person’s need to see the light in darkness.

Blog #8

The powerful idea behind each of the images in the ad comes from historical, idealistic, and visual implications. For example, the symbol of an atom symbolizes the scientific discovery of the atom, the innovations of science, and the familiar complexities of the smallest known particle of matter. The Mona Lisa represents many ideas, from the Renaissance ideals of realism and beauty to the artistic technique of her eyes and the secrecy of her smile. The wedding topper of a male and female represents the idea of heterosexual marriage, a monogamous, lifelong union. The eagle is the national symbol for America, freedom, and power. The telephone represents the communication era and technology’s widespread advancements. A rose symbolizes love, sex, and romance. Santa Clause represents gifts, giving, and the Christian holiday of Christmas. The dollar sign represents money, capitalism, wealth, and power. A light up light bulb shows an idea, as it was invented along with electricity, an idea that changed the world, time, and culture. The sign of a sick figure woman, usually shown on a bathroom door, represents the idea that women, depicted by a skirt, may enter, just as the male, a straight stick figure, allows males in this designated area. All of these images in the ad tell the audience that this product is for everyone, who can be represented by each symbol. Fit for a family of a bride and groom and pink softball mitt and safe traffic light, an athlete represented by the cup of a champion, a king, an artist, a rich person represented by gold money, or a poorer person represented by a small piggy bank; this car is made for every type. The happy face represents just what it shows, a happy, smiling feeling, with open eyes and no other distracting senses or cares in the world. Four-leaf clovers represent luck, in Irish myth and recognized in societies everywhere. Since the Mercedes-Benz symbol is a peace sign, the contingent ideas of peace, love, and passivity are also associated with the nice, lovely, and safe car. In this ad, one can reasonably infer that the Mercedes-Benz automobile carries all of these traits and ideas from the “powerful ideas” associated with them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfMPLfgtwws&feature=related

blog #7

At first glance, there is a sweet teenage girl with a touch of attitude taking a cute picture of herself by holding the camera in front of herself. But if you look closely, although her countenance mimics almost every online self-picture we have seen all too much, only the slight wrinkles around her arms really suggest that she took the picture, but with her arms cut out of the picture, no one can definitively know what her arms are doing. The second thing one would most likely notice in this picture would be the perfect pink ribbon tied over the girl’s mouth. It may look like she is holding it in her mouth, but that could also be gagging her. It is difficult to tell. By tying a pink ribbon in a bow over a girl’s mouth, the author of Image #1 claims that she simply follows the norms of beauty and has no say in what she does as she mimics others. This can be seen through the colors, textures, and individual aspects of the picture.
The colors, namely a pink ribbon and pink shirt, stand out from the black hair and background, suggesting youth and naivety against a harsher reality. The blue eyes suggest innocence in what she sees, especially as she is facing away from the blackness and yet there are shadowy figures reflected in her eyes. This could symbolize that although she sees the world with innocent blue eyes like rose-colored glasses, she physically sees more than she realizes. Therefore, the theme of distinguishing between what is seen and what is noticed appears in this aspect of the picture as well. A smooth pink ribbon over her mouth could symbolize that she did not struggle to be silenced and the simple cotton T-shirt suggests that she represents anyone from lower to middle class young and teenage girls. The pale skin against smooth, neat, dark, and slightly damaged hair also represents something mysterious, as does the car-window-like dark shape in the background. This seems like a normal, bored-in-a-car picture, but could also be a kidnapping (although not a very violent one) and this once again emphasizes the severity of taking away a person’s voice and parts of her in order to conform. Even though her other senses seem alert, eyes open, nose close to the camera with nostrils visible, arms probably out touching or doing something, she is missing her ability to speak her mind, notably a vital part of individuality.

blog #6

Amy Tan and Stanley Crouch took different approaches in describing the cultural assimilation into what is considered to be the American norm. Amy Tan’s description of her family’s Christmas Eve dinner in “Fish Cheeks” depicts the aspects of her culture that clashed with or were noticeably different than typical American cultures. The main character was embarrassed of her culture and wanted to seem like a “normal” American girl, not one who enjoys the meat from under a fish’s eyeball and whose father burps “rudely” after each meal. Stanley Crouch’s list of diverse American practices demonstrate the broad spectrum of what can be considered American and how assimilation into American culture is more of a contribution of ideas and traditions rather than abandonment of one’s culture. He also discusses how time and people influence the culture around them, especially by using the example of a little girl in 1945 wanting to grow up to be a mother, teacher, or nurse, while another little girl in 1981 a little girl said she wanted to be an astronaut, police officer, fireman, doctor, etc. Both Crouch’s list of American practices and Amy Tan’s family Christmas Eve dinner, however, analyze race as it affects the American lifestyle and ideals. They both emphasize extreme differences between cultures and time and how they influence the culture and ideals of different people in America. The setting, as in background language, cultures, and time of events, greatly affects every aspect Tan and Crouch address. Therefore, both of their backgrounds can be seen to have influenced their works. For example, Amy Tan was born in 1952 when girls and women still had designated societal roles to fill and therefore desired to fit in and was ashamed of the traditional Chinese food they ate that was never shown on Leave it to Beaver or I Love Lucy. Stanley Crouch, on the other hand, was born in L.A. in 1945, witnessed vast cultural varieties and different types of people as well as the Watts riots, leading him to the black nationalist movement, thus the Malcolm X theory on sticking to one’s roots and being “Americanized.”

extra credit

Dr. Killingsworth's presentation reaction:

The lecture on rhetoric and Walt Whitman's use of animals was very interesting; I admit it was much better than I had expected. I entered the room not knowing much aobut Walt Whitman and barely recalling what type of poet he was. About a third of the way into Dr. Killingsworth's lecture, I could remember lines from Whitman's poems that we had to memorize in middle school and half way through I thought about those lines differently, in terms of rhetoric and underlying implications. By the time his lecture was over, I had stopped thinking about Walt Whitman and had moved on to thoughts of rhetoric in everyday life and even of becoming a rhetorician one day...or at least reading some essays or books by them. Dr. Killingsworth gained my curiosity by talking about the purpose of each detail from a "yahonk"ing animal to something as simple as a name and how these details are what makes or breaks any good piece of literature. His excitement about the topic was easily noticed, enhanced the atmosphere, and probably added to my level of interest. Side comments and examples relating to rhetoric such as calling civilization "syphilization" and referencing popular movies such as Enchanted also added to the lecture's attraction. Overall, the lecture opened my mind to a different way of thinking, I learned a lot about animism, animation, language, wording, religion, life, and Walt Whitman, and I am definitely glad I went.

Blog #5

In Nikki Lee's photos, the people are always positioned front and center, whether they are posing or candid. They are each also clearly in the middle of doing something that is important in their lives. Either they are hanging out at home protecting their property and way of life, talking on a well-used stoop, having a good time at the beach, taking work seriously, or standing on a street corner (maybe having just successfully crossed the street without a young man’s help). The positions of each individual character also projects stereotypes or roles of the subjects. For example, the “punk” kids are slouched over sitting on a curb while the old ladies are standing frail and proud, close together. The office picture has people looking relaxed in their chairs, while The Ohio Project (7) subjects look relaxed, but ready for action at any second. Each picture’s positioning makes sense for the people in it, and helps the reader project his or her stereotypes onto the group. It also makes the pictures look more “natural” so that it takes the audience a while to notice that the same person is posing in each one. They all in some way gave the audience a sense of judgment towards the “norms” of that social subculture’s stereotypes by highlighting the recognizable themes.

The first picture looked somewhat off with an Asian woman casually in a picture that at first seemed to resemble a white supremacist attitude. Then as the pictures went on, I noticed they were all with the same woman when she posed in The Hispanic Project (27). Nikki Lee then looked like she was trying to assimilate into each subculture but also slightly projecting the stereotypes surrounding them with the settings, positioning, and objects in the pictures. By doing this in each picture she creates a purpose that is self contradictory. She shows how easy it is too change your image and fit different categories and yet how typically we stereotype certain people. Overall, it was definitely a statement about judging and superficial appearances, but what exactly she was trying to say about them I could not decide. That was probably left for the reader or audience to decide individually.