"Beginning Again" Poetry Blog.

Beginning Again
"If I could stop talking, completely
cease talking for a year, I might begin
to get well," he muttered.
Of alone again performing
brain surgery on himself
in a small badly lit
room with no mirror. A room
whose floor ceiling and walls
are all mirrors, what a mess
oh my God-

And still
it stands,
the question
not how to begin
again, but rather

Why?

So we sit there
together
the mountain
and me, Li Po
said, until only the mountain
remains.
-Franz Wright

Antecedent Scenario- Before writing this poem, Franz Wright was probably thinking about new beginnings and why people feel the need to start over again. Maybe he felt like he needed his own fresh start, but questioned why.
The Climax- The climax of this poem seems to be when he says, "Why?" Here he gets to the point: that it isn't about how to begin again, but why we should do it in the first place. It is structurally significant as well; he puts the single worded question by itself for impact.
Tone- The tone of "Beginning Again" was a mixture of exasperation, bitterness, contemplation, and sarcastic. The words "muttered," "brain surgery," "oh my God," and "Why," led me to the conclusion that, in regards to beginning again, Franz Wright's poem had those tones in it.Meaning- This poem is all about how to begin again- to start over. It says that to do so, one must stop talking, look into one's own mind ("brain surgery") in a place without distractions, but with mirrors everywhere to see and criticize oneself. It asks, "What's the point?" Why should we sit there trying to create a new beginning for ourselves as things change around us?

"The Halo That Would Not Light" Poetry Blog.

The Halo That Would Not Light
When, after many years, the raptor beak
Let loose of you,

                         He dropped your tiny body
In the scarab-colored hollow

                         Of a carriage, left you like a finch
Wrapped in its nest of linens wound

With linden leaves in a child's carboard box.

Tonight the wind is hover-

Hunting as the leather seats of swings go back
And forth with no one in them

As certain and invisible as
                         Red scarves silking endlessly

From a magician's hollow hat
                         And the spectacular catastrophe

Of your endless childhood
                                                  Is done.
-Lucie Brock-Broido

     My first observation of this poem is its structure and arrangement of the lines. There are many indentations and spaces that create a certain drama. The spaces put an intenstity in between the sentences and adds to the sharp and somber tone.
     As to the meaning of the poem, I like to go stanza by stanza or, in this case, line by line. To me, the beginning seems to be replacing the idea of the stork that drops off babies with a raptor; this creates already a sad idea. The raptor dropped "you" into the hollow of a carriage as if "you" were wrapped in a nest-like thing of linden leaves like a finch. This example of the helpless bird wrapped up and stuck in a child's cardboard box is a vivid image that helps enhance the tone and main idea. Then, it goes on to describe the swaying of empty swings in the wind and how there are similar to red scarves coming out of a magic hat. These empty swings being "hunted" by the wind adds to the somber and slightly cold tone of the poem. Finally, it says that the "spectacular catastrophe of your endless childhood is done." I'm not exactly sure what that last line means, but I think it has something to do with the end of the magic that goes along with childhood and innocence. It is a very strong ending with the impact of the "is done" at the very bottom right of the poem.
     I'd like to understand how the title relates to the poem, but I can't think of how it does.

"Inoculation" Poetry Blog.

Inoculation
Cotton Mather studied small pox for a while,
instead of sin. Boston was rife with it.
Not being ill himself, thank Providence,
but one day asking his slave, Onesimus,
if he'd ever had the pox. To which Onesimus replied,
"Yes and No." Not insubordinate
or anything of the kind, but playful, or perhaps
musing as one saying to another:
"Consider how a man
can take inside all manner of disease
and still survive."
Then, graciously, when Mather asked again:
My mother bore me in the southern wild.
She scratched my skin and I got sick, but lived
to come here, free of smallpox, as your slave.
-Susan Donnelly

   First I looked up the terms I didn't know:
1) Cotton Mather- He was a New England Puritan minister in the late 1700s and early 1800s. He was a very important person both socially and politically; he was also very well educated.
2) Inoculation- taking a vaccine as a precaution against contracting a disease.
3) Onesimus- This is a biblical name for a slave that fled after robbing his master and was then religously converted.
   With this, the first two lines make more sense: Cotton Mather was a minister, but he studied small pox instead of "sin" for a while. He wasn't ill himself so he was researching the disease because so many others had it. He asked his slave Onesimus if he had ever had small pox. Onesimus says "yes" and "no." Technically, Onesimus had the pox when he was young, but he lived through it and in that way did not have the pox.
   The last stanza is in italics to emphasize what Onesimus is saying; he was born in the "wild," got deathly sick and survived, and then came to be Cotton Mather's slave. Instead of quotation marks in the previous stanzas, this one stands out gramatically and in meaning. It seems to be more than just an anwer to Mather's question, but an idea and his life story. He survived something major, but then became nothing more than a slave.
   As to the title, "Inoculation," it seems to just be referring to the medical need to get a vaccine to protect oneself from a disease like small pox. But, in this poem's time, there wasn't a vaccine for small pox, so maybe it's not a vaccine that one needs to protect from small pox, but something less material.

"Evening Concert, Saint-Chapelle" Poetry Blog.

Evening Concert, Saint-Chapelle

The celebrated windows flamed with light

directly pouring north across the Seine;

we rustled into place. Then violins

vaunting Vivaldi's strident strength, then Brahms,

seemed to suck with their passionate sweetness,

bit by bit, the vigor from the red,

the blazing blue, so that the listening eye

saw suddenly the thick black lines, in shapes

of shield and cross and strut and brace, that held

the holy glowing gantasy together.

The music surged; the glow became a milk,

a whisper to the eye, a glimmer ebbed

until our beating hearts, our violins

were cased in thin but solid sheets of lead.

-John Updike

Before reading this poem by John Updike I looked up Saint-Chapelle and learned that it is an old, restored building in the heart of France that has an extensive stained-glass collection. I believe that the stained-glass has much to do with this poem. In the first line, Updike calls the windows "celebrated" and describes the light they shine onto the French river Seine. A few lines later, the colors red and blue are mentioned along with the phrase, "...shapes of shield and cross and strut and brace...." These sound like stained-glass windows in churches which makes sense because Saint-Chapelle was a chapel. It seems that Updike is saying that the "vaunting," or boasting, violins playing the compositions of Vivaldi and Brahms sucked the intensity from the colors in the windows so that all one could see in them were the lines and shapes- the skeleton. In the evening concert "music surged" until the windows' glow slowly disappeared and all that was left was the solidity of the music.

Heart of Darkness

I used the annotating technique number 2: bracketing, underlining, circling, summarizing, and defining words and parts of the text. This was the best annotation to use for Heart of Darkness because it was easy to get lost in the older writing style and unfamiliar vocabulary. The glossary was very hepful and nice to go back to when I would see the same unknown word more than once. It was much easier to keep up with what was going on while using this annotating technique.
Even though it could get boring or tough at times, I really liked Heart of Darkness. It had so many great messages and ideas in it. I also liked seeing what it was like in those times when people would go to "undeveloped" countries and settle them as their own. Most of the characters I didn't like, but Marlow and Kurtz were like the two rays of sunshine among all that "darkness."

The Kite Runner

I used the reading-to-writing annotation (type 3) while reading The Kite Runner. This annotating style was really helpful; keeping notes on the writer's style, tone, patterns, rhetorical devices, and so on kept me engaged in the book and more aware of many things. It helped me to see how certain things sounded a certain way and how the plot, conflict and tone (which was usually self loathing or nostalgic) came across.
I loved the storyline and his writing style. I liked learning about Afghanistan and the Muslim culture. It was interesting how Hosseini used Farsi words and phrases and metaphors to bring meaning and tone across.
Even though the storyline was sad, I really enjoyed seeing how Amir coped and reacted to all of the awful and great events in his life.

The Great Gatsby

     I read The Great Gatsby using the "Text-to-Self Connection" annotation type. This form of annotating was simple and usually just symbols, pictures/organizers, and comments/questions, but it helped me stay connected to the text and alert while reading.
     I was initially surprised by the recurring racist and sexist remarks and observations throughout the book; however, it was true to the time period the story was set in and helped form that decade in my mind. I kept a running character list while reading this book to keep track of all of them and their unique characteristics. I found that each character, even small ones such as "Owl Eyes" and Dr. Eckleberg, were well defined and developed by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
     This book vividly showed the '20s using a simple, yet controversal, romantic situation between Jay Gatsby, Daisy and Tom Buchanon, and Myrtle Wilson. There seemed to be a connection between the theme and tone of each event in the story with the weather. For example, when Tom and Mr. Wilson finally find out that their wives have been involved with other men and everyone becomes angry and pushed to their limits, it is the the last and hottest day of the summer.
     I enjoyed this book and Fitzgerald's writing. He seemed to write at least one poetic assertion in each chapter that was incredibly simple, yet honest.