Round Three= Mary Moriarty

From reading One Art by Elizabeth Bishop, I can see that a villanelle has a strict rhyme structure. " The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master." The last word of the first line is used as the last word of the last line in the second stanza. The second lines all rhyme with each other, and the first and last lines of each stanza rhyme.

My Villanelle:
Joy

It is not a feeling felt by all
but one that makes you feel the best
and felt the least by those who fall.

A competition, like playing ball
 knowing you're better than the rest
 knowing that you're the best of all.

 Joy, like many things, can stall
 and leave you feeling stressed
you hit your peak, and then you fall.

Joy is lost, and you start to bawl
the feeling of defeat on a test
joy can be lost by anyone at all.

It will make you feel small
 if you fail in a contest
 all the others stand, but you fall.

 It can be crushing as a stone wall
 To me it is clear
 a feeling liked by all
 but eventually we will fall.

 From reading The Backseat of My Mother's Car I notice that it is a free verse, and is very descriptive. " we nearly touched hands in that vacuous half-dark." It uses this descriptive language to describe the scene to the reader. There are many literary devices that are used in this poem. " I was calling to you – Daddy! – as we screeched away into the distance, my own hand tingling like an amputation." It uses vivid memories, and a metaphor to show the situation to the reader.In the poem Orchard, which is a concrete poem in the shape of an apple, and is a little more structured, it says, " I remember that day, I remember the relief when you spied me". It describes the feeling to the reader, so they can experience it for themselves.

When I read I Go Back to May 1937 I saw that she also uses very descriptive language in this poem. "

I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch, the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head,". She describes the color of the tiles by using a metaphor. She also says what she would do if she were living when the picture was taken " I want to go up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it." It gives us perspective on how someone would react differently if the picture was taken now. Also, in the poem Fatherland by Mary Moriarty, she uses figurative language to express the memories from the photos. " he flicks away the simplest memory", is a description of these memories from the photos.

 My Picture Poem:

The old camp, the family vacation spot.
It may be old and run down, but it is still loved
like the family dog.
If I could go back once,
and see the camp the way it used to be,
 and just appreciate all the memories
 that this old house has given us.
 I would appreciate the cool sound of the waves,
and the calming feeling it gives you, and I would appreciate
 the yard where we played so many games, and the shore, where we
 were always entertained.
 I will never get this opportunity,
 so I appreciate the memories I already have,
 and know that those will always be there.

1/10 Speaker= 3 stars

Round 2= Marilyn Kemp

I read an excerpt from the book Death of a Dancing Master. One technique M.E. Kemp uses to create mystery in her stories is by creating dim settings. " The next section of the room flickered with candles in wall sconces.  The candles illuminated wall hangings of bewigged ladies and gentlemen lounging in country gardens.  Two gilded armchairs were placed against the wall." (page 1). These types of settings create an intensity in the piece. Another thing I noticed in M.E. Kemp's writing, is that she often uses the characters' thoughts instead of the narrative to show the situation. " There seemed to be a limb sticking out behind the foils.  Could Perkney be hiding there?  Foolish man – hide from his sins he could not.  Hide from the eye of God?  Yea, even unto the belly of the whale did not the Lord spy out the sins of Jonah?  And he, Jacob Joyliffe, servant of the Lord, was only come to offer Redemption to this sinner.  He felt a moment’s pang that he had failed to make clear his mission; that was a sorry fault of his own. He’d been swept away by the spate of angry words from the dancing master; he’d answered in kind.  Yet his mission was to reason with the man, not to argue with him." (page 2). This puts the reader in the character's shoes, and makes it seem more real to the reader. This adds to the mystery of the story, because you only see what the character sees, instead of knowing what happens before the character. This style of writing tells you a lot about the characters, because you see their perspective throughout the entire piece. You learn that Jacob Joyliffe is very observant and very moral, because he wants to apologize.


 Two Questions: 
1) When writing mystery, how do you use language to recreate the scene so that the reader fully understands what is going on for the people involved?


2) Do you think that narrative is more effective in telling stories, or a character's perspective would be more effective for telling the story?


1/6 Speaker = 4 stars

Round One= Susan Cominos

 Sources Used:
 http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/138168/
http://m.triquarterly.org/bios/susan-comninos
http://m.triquarterly.org/poetry/deconstruction-workers
http://www.forward.com/articles/113731/


I learned that Susan Cominos is a journalist that also writes poetry. " She lives in New York, where she works as a freelance journalist." I learned that she uses religious influences in her poems a lot. " for a girl
who plans to hang mezuzahs by the bed, ". She uses these to represent herself, and how the religion has influenced her.   I also learned that she uses foreign words in her poems, like the poem: Pecan, rodef, clam.     " like a clam’s clipped momser, the locked maw talked open by fire,". In the title, she uses the word rodef, which is a Hebrew word for a child that is a threat to its mother's life. In the poem, she uses the word momser, which is a Yiddish word for an illegitimate child. She uses these different words to add effect, and add some of her voice to the poems she writes. I also learned that, like many poets, she talks about nature a lot in her poems. " Green’s the grace most of us would like." This line from Deconstruction Workers shows how she uses nature in her poems. She is saying that people like nature more than the things and objects that destroying the wilderness brings. Susan Cominos uses many techniques in her poetry that come from her own life, and her own experiences. She is religious, so she uses religious symbols to represent things in her poetry. She may have learned different languages when she was a child, so now she uses them in her poetry. She uses her poetry to reflect her own life experiences.

How does Outliers connect to MY life?

The book Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, was very interesting to me. The book describes how people seperate themselves from other people. He describes many things that start out as a slight advantage, and turn into huge advantages. Many of the things in this book connected to my life.

The first way this book connected to my life was when he talked about sports. In the book, Gladwell says,    "The professional hockey player starts out a little better than his peers.And that little difference leads to an opportunity that makes that difference a bit bigger..." (30) I play baseball, and I have found this to be very true in sports. When I was cut from modified baseball in middle school, there were some kids on the team that I thought I was better than, or at least even with skill-wise. When the spring season started, those kids looked much better. The tryouts ended in March, and the spring baseball season starts in mid-April. That month and a half of extra practice made them a lot better, and their edge got bigger.

The second way this book connected to my life was the parenting styles of different families. In the book, Gladwell describes an experiment by Lareau, and he says, " the middle-class children learn a sense of             'entitlement' " (105).  I am normally a quiet kid, but if there is something wrong, I feel comfortable speaking up and fixing the problem. I think this has a strong relationship with how my parents raised me. My parents may not have pushed me as hard as Alex Williams' parents did, " ...his mother and father- in the manner of educated families- have painstakingly taught them to him, nudging and prodding and encouraging and showing him the rules of the game..." (108), but they did push me to become more social and assert myself when something was wrong when I was little. This parenting style has caused me to be able to assert myself in a situation, and has helped me a lot in school and even at home.

The third way this book connected to my life was the part about academics and the chapter Rice Paddies and Math Tests. The part that I felt most connected to myself was the part about the Renee tape. When he is talking about why the Renee tape is Schoenfeld's favorite example, he says, " Twenty- two minutes pass from the moment Renee begins playing with the computer program to the moment she says, ' Ahhhh' " (245).  This applies to my life, because when I was taking Integrated Algebra in 8th grade, I had a lot of assignments that were challenging to me. Instead of taking one look at the problem and giving up, I tried to look at the problem from the different perspective to help myself solve the problem. I personally have never spent up to twenty-two minutes on one problem, but I worked for a long time to solve one of these challenging problems. I think that this patience may be what allows me to excel in math. I received a 97% on the Regents exam that year, and I believe my patience played an important role in that.  Gladwell supports this in the book, when he says, " What if coming from a culture shaped by the demands of growing rice also makes you better at math?" (232). When Gladwell says this, he means that the patience from growing rice leads to the patience in learning, which leads to better understanding. This is how the chapter Rice Paddies and Math Tests connects to my life.

This book makes many valid points, but these three examples are how the book best applies to my life. I thought this was a very interesting book, because not only does he connect all of the stories to one main point, but he uses all true stories. Gladwell put a lot of effort into researching and putting facts together for this story, and it shows in this book. Outliers does a great job of showing how people who are very good at things get to where they are, and uses many examples that people can relate to.

   

Perspective Poetry Prompt: APPLE: Describe an apple as seen by a young woman who has just lost her husband to cancer. DO NOT mention the husband or the word cancer.

Decay

A lone apple
sitting on the ground
under the tree where it once grew
slowly decaying, as it is eaten away from the inside.

A once bright red apple
is now in horrible condition.
Everyone wishes that it was still bright red,
and everyone could enjoy it.

Only a few traces,
of what it used to be.
Now brown and rotten
the apple is soon gone.

Microfiction: The lights appeared out of the darkness.

The lights appeared out of the darkness. The taxi pulled up, and I got in. I told the driver where I wanted to go, and off we went. After a couple of turns, I was completely clueless as to where we were. The driver seemed to know where he was going, so I didn't worry about it. The driver was going over the speed limit, so I wasn't too surprised when a police car pulled up behind us. The driver turned the wheel to pull over, but instead, he floored it, and turned back onto the road. Clearly there was something this man was hiding. I was shocked. The man who seemed like an ordinary cab driver had turned into a convict in a split second. I thought I was just going home, now I was stuck in a criminal situation. I had no idea what to do. I had never been in a situation anywhere close to this intensity. Next I saw the driver pull out a gun. I knew that I had to get out of the cab. I opened the door, and jumped out. My head hit a brick building as I was landing. I hit the sidewalk hard, and felt like I had jumped out of a plane. I reached back to see if my head was bleeding, and I could feel the blood. I didn't care, the wounds would heal. I was just happy that I had escaped the situation, and I could return to my live as usual.

TU Tuesday- Editorial

http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/EDITORIAL-Schools-can-celebrate-Christmas-with-2373608.php

Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, identifying any fallacious reasoning or exaggerated or distorted evidence.


The editorial says that Christmas should be celebrated in multicultural schools, and that nothing about the holiday should be changed. I agreed with the fact that the vacation should not change, because that is a time when many families get together, but some of his reasoning is flawed. " Thus schools should not hesitate to promote, say, the Christmas message of peace and goodwill or student choirs singing Christmas songs. And yes, those songs should include the traditional lyrics instead of secular alternatives... Yet schools should be careful not to go too far in these efforts." I disagree with this part of the article, because if he is taking the stance that beliefs should not be censored, he can't go back and say some beliefs should. He should stay firm on one side of the argument, instead of trying to please everyone by saying something that makes everyone happy. This is a good editorial, but the flawed arguments leave some questions.