The Snow Man

      This poem by Wallace Stevens is very descriptive and visual.  To do this he uses a lot of imagery.  Stevens says, "Spruces rough in the distant glitter,"  This allows the reader to easily see what he is talking about especially if you are familiar with this winter setting.  There is also personification to help the reader see the visual aspects of this poem.  "Of any misery in the sound of the wind," says Stevens.  Giving that human emotion of misery to the sound of the wind helps to imagine what it is like to be there.  This poem is easier to understand as long as the reader has lived or visited a place which has this cold, winter look and feel to it.  If a person has never seen anything like it, it may be more difficult to picture.  Stevens has a very strong emphasis in using imagery and personification for the reader to see what is in the poem.

The Possibility

            This is a poem that seems to talk about a few different subjects but ties them all together.  James Fenton uses personification, similes, and rhyming in this poem.  His use of personification is more subtle that it is often seen in other poems.  Fenton used it while talking about the lizard, "engrossed," and "telling," are some of the words he used to describe the actions of the lizard.  To use a simile he says, "It opened like a crimson hand," while talking about the flower.  Lastly he uses rhyming throughout.  Words such as, "wood, good, be, me, strong and wrong," are all used effectively because they have the rhyming sound to them while still adding to the poem and this still gets his point across.

Plans for Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving I'm going to San Diego.
Flying by myself, I will meet my family there,
Upon seeing the ocean, I will stop and stare.

California is my birth place,
Running a 5K race, setting a pace.
Watching football, and the sun set,
On the beach near the inlet.

The Thanksgiving meal will be like what most people have,
Turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberries, sweet potatoes,
And most importantly, pie.

Toads

       This poem by Philip Larkin, he uses toads as a interesting and clever way to talk about people.  The metaphor in the poem is the toad.  To explain the connection between a person and a toad he uses personification.  Larkin uses frog words such as, "squats," and "it's sickening poison."  He then relates this back to humans working to pay the bills, and provide for their family.  He then uses alliteration of multiple "L" words.  "Lectures, lispers, losels, loblolly-men, loughts."  Not only is this difficult to say, it causes the reader to think about these strange sounding words and what they mean.  This can capture the reader's attention, and makes this poem stand out more due to it being about toads and having funny sounding words.

Vergissmeinnicht

The title Vergissmeinnicht is German for "forget-me-not." This relates to the poem because it is talking about war, soldiers, life and death.  It also has quite a bit of figurative language. I first noticed the use of rhyming, shown throughout the poem, such as, "paid, decayed and mingled, shingled." There was also some use of personification. When the author Kieth Douglas says, "The frowning barrel of his gun," it gives the human characteristic of frowning to an inanimate object. Another thing I noticed was his use of similes. Douglas compares, "my tank with one like the entry..." and also, "burst stomach like a cave." These comparisons using the word, "like," give examples for the reader to better understand the poem.

A Noiseless Patient Spider

         This poem by Walt Whitman is a unique and different topic for a poem.  Talking about a spider is a metaphor to a human in the poem as a whole.  When he talks about building a web, he compares it to building a bridge along with exploring, "oceans of space."  I also noticed the structure of the poem.  It has two stanzas, but only two sentences, one in each stanza which each sentence is only broken up by commas.  Alliteration is used in both stanzas.  When he says, "forth filament, filament, filament, filament..." he also used it in the second stanza with repeating the words, "Till the..."  This poem has various types of figurative language in which the author used it effectively to relate the comparison of the spider to human behaviors and characteristics.   

For the Sleepwalkers

    I found this poem interesting that the author would write an entire poem about sleepwalking.  This is a somewhat funny topic and I have slept-walk many times.  In his poem he often says,"we are leaving our bodies."  This is a different way of looking at sleepwalking because there isn't much control to it.  There must be some thought put into sleepwalking.  He says,"the worn path that leads to the stairs instead of the window."  That shows we are still thinking even though we don't seem to have any control of it.  He uses some alliteration during the poem when he says, "We have to learn," a couple times and he also uses other words such as, "our, darkness, and so much."  This poet displays his respect for sleepwalkers and how they do it in a kind of comical way. 

A Chinese Bowl

    This poem by Katha Pollitt takes a few minutes to understand.  After reading each stanza slowly, it allowed me to understand it was about memories and reminiscing of the past.  One thing that stuck out to me was the capitalization of different words.  The word at the start of a stanza would not be capitalized, but later on a word would be capitalized at the start of the next sentence, even though it had moved on to the next stanza.  Rhyming was used some in the poem such as, "move so far away, just living day by day."  The poet also uses some similes and alliteration,  "a feeling gathers, heavy as rain about to fall," and, "part love, part concentration, part inner solitude."  This allows her to refer back to her childhood and write it for the reader to understand through a descriptive language.

Mr. Fear

To try and understand this poem I looked up some information about the poet.  He was born in 1946 in Massachusetts.  Is an American poet but also has written screenplays.  This also said that his poems sometimes talked about human doubt.  I didn't really understand what that meant but I'm guessing it is kind of a negative way of looking at life.  In the poem the main thing that sticks out to me is that he used a lot of personification.  To use personification he adds it in a few different places such as when he gives human characteristics to fear, dreams and crickets.  For example he says, "...a purse of crickets like the ones I heard singing last night."  By doing this he creates a more lively and interesting poem to read.  

Alternate Ending Heart of Darkness

"And you admired him," she said. "It was impossible to know him as well as it is possible for one man to know another."
The day was dark and dreary, lightly raining as it was in the jungle. Marlow thought for a second, "Kurtz was a remarkable man, but with the wrong intentions. he used the tribes against each other so they would make more money." As Marlow looks up at her she avoids eye contact in disgust that he would say such a thing. Marlow continues, "He never mentioned you, I just found a picture of you one day." Her face grew more sorrowful as Marlow finished telling her Kurtz's last words. "He died a lonely death with his final words being, "The horror, the horror." By the way Marlow said these words it was apparent he did not know the meaning, but he somehow saw she seemed to know what it meant more than he did. Marlow got up and left the house of Kurtz's intended as she wept, with the light rain falling from the sky. The Kurtz she once knew was now lost in the heart of darkness never to be seen again.

Evening Concert, Saint-Chapelle

       John Updike's poem, Evening Concert, Saint-Chapelle, has many literary devices in it.  He is describing a concert hall and the stained glass windows in it.  To do this he uses alliteration such as, "blazing blue," and "...violins vaunting Vivaldi's..."  He frequently uses colors to paint the picture in the readers mind of how this place would look.  He also has references to people named Vivaldi and Brahms.  These people were both composers and musicians.  This relates to the poem because it is describing the concert hall.  This also helps to create the picture of the setting.  Updike uses a few types of figurative language in this poem, but mostly uses alliteration to give the reader an understanding.  

To Myself by W.S. Merwin

     In this poem the author uses diction by saying "you," at the end of many lines, along with the word "I."  Once I thought about the meaning of the poem, I realized that it meant of reflections into the past.  He talks about his own past in a way which makes the reader think of their own past.  He does this by making it sound as if he is writing a letter to himself.  That makes sense because it ties back into the poem title "To Myself."  This poem has no stanzas, so it shows it as one thought rather than breaking it down into smaller pieces, so it is more like a letter.  Where he says, "I am sure you were here a moment before..." could mean how time seems to fly by.  This poem is a reflection of the authors memories and the purpose of it is for the reader to remember those times that have passed and reflect on them.

For a Duro

         A duro is a coin which is discussed throughout the poem to explain the benefits and what can be purchased for a duro.  The author, Philip Levine is very repetitive by using "for a duro," numerous times during the poem.  He does this because it emphasizes what the poem is about as a whole and even is the title.  The first half of the poem states what can be bought. "For a duro you could have it all, the cars, the women, the seven-course meal and a sea view." (which sounds pretty good to me.)  To create a structure the author then discontinues writing, "For a duro," and shifts towards talking about a soldier in uniform, a pet hospital overseer, and a few animals.  I wondered what these people and animals had to do with the duros?  Then I figured it out because the author says, "For a duro I bought a pack of Antillanas and gave one to the only traveller..."  This meant you can help others for a duro rather than just benefiting yourself.

Poety blog 1: 1943

        At the beginning of this poem it sounded like it would be about boxing because it talks about a person knocking out someone in the first round and also mentioning heavyweight finals.  It then changes and talks about the war.  I knew this was World War Two because 1943 was when much of the fighting was taking place.  The fourth line of the poem says, "...Dom died in the third wave at Tarawa."  This leads me to believe Dom was an American soldier because Tarawa was an island in the Pacific, where the U.S. were fighting the Japanese.  The poet then goes on to talk about memories back in southern Connecticut.  After reading through a second time makes it sound as if this is a journal kept by a soldier who is overseas fighting a war.  He is thinking of home and  wishing to be back, but knows that he has to continue to suffer through the difficult times and conditions even if survival doesn't seem likely.   

Heart of Darkness

          After getting about ten pages into this story I was more confused than I had ever been.  Frequently I was having to re-read and slow down to try and figure out what was going on.  This surprised and disappointed me because after reading the back cover of the book made it sound as if this would be a very interesting story.  Even though this book had the fewest pages, it definitely took the longest to read just as Mrs. White's note said. 
          One of the most exciting parts of the book was when some indigenous people tried to attack the riverboat and the pilgrims returned fire.  This would have been scary knowing you can be surrounded on both sides of the river banks and there is not many ways to escape. Even scarier would be being on a ship with cannibals aboard.  To the crew's relief the loud fog horn scared the natives away since it was even louder than the gunfire and the natives were very primitive.  To me finding Kurtz did not seem like it was worth all of the danger, time and money spent just to get there. 
          Joseph Conrad has a writing style that was extremely difficult for me to keep track of.  Even with annotating his writing style was difficult to pick up on.  As I would be reading I would often find my mind wandering to something else which then caused me to take even longer on the book and read through the page or selection a second time.  By the time I was at the third section of the book I think I was starting to pick up on his writing because it was gradually making more sense.  This book has an interesting story, but it was very difficult for me to get used to the author's writing style.  

The Great Gatsby

         This book was a fairly quick read but at times had some slow and boring parts where not much seemed to add to the story. 
         What I had to do was make a list of all the characters just so I could continue to understand who is who and how they were related.  As mentioned in the title, Gatsby was a major character along with the narrator.  Making notes on each of the characters seemed to be helpful and allowed me to keep reading through the story while understanding it.  I found myself imagining all of the events in the story such as the parties at the mansion to help comprehend each event and what order they happened in. 
         Since this book was written quite a while ago, the authors style of writing somehow seems different than modern books and harder to understand.  While taking some time to annotate the book and making notes of key events helps to realize what is going on and makes it much easier to go back and see what happened in a certain part.  Some parts seemed sort of clustered such as when Wilson was hit by a car, seemed to have a lot of events happen quickly and all at once.  Upon the conclusion of the book after Gatsby had died and the narrator meets Gatsby's family seems to wrap up the book in an unusual way.  Overall the book wasn't one of my favorites because a lot of times being difficult to understand, but there was a story that for the most part I was able to follow.   

The Kite Runner

        When I first started reading The Kite Runner it started off slow and confusing but gradually began to pick up speed.  As I figured out what was going on and understood the story it became more interesting and easy to get through more pages at a time. 
        I didn't know that Afghanistan was actually a peaceful place before being ravaged by war and corrupt governments.  Knowing what Afghanistan is like now it was hard to imagine how it used to be.  It used to seem like nuking the whole country was a good idea because of all the terrorists being housed there had no benefit to the rest of the world but this book showed me that the whole country is not out to kill us.  Afghanistan actually has many good citizens just like in the United States.  They have their own traditions, families, friends, games, and ways of life.  It also makes it seem as if the war we are fighting in Afghanistan is not pointless, and it does serve a purpose. 
        Kite running is a sport I have never heard of and sounded very interesting which is what a lot of the book had to do with.  When Baba was trying to give the same compassion to Hassan as Amir received it did not make sense until towards the end when it was explained to why he did that.  Although I never understood why Amir avoided Hassan, when Hassan chose to forgive him after that winter morning in the alley when Amir did nothing to help Hassan.  That seems as if it would haunt him for life after making a bad decision and now that Hassan is no longer alive.  By adopting Sohrab is a way to make things right and I was glad that worked out in the end after some very close calls with death.
        After finishing this book it was actually a pretty good story and I learned much more than originally expected.