Blog Post #13

Cassie Sloan

To Myself by W.S. Merwin

     This poem was very odd the first time I read it. I honestly hated it. I had to read it about 8 times! The way to stanzas are organized is so odd, you have to really focus because when you think the idea of the sentence is over it just keeps going. I personally feel like the theme of this poem is that he is trying to find himself again. For example look at the poem carefully and try to point out one word that is repeated. When I look at it I notice the word you. At first when I read it I thought it may be about a loved one but then I realized it's about himself. As the poem goes on it talks about how he used to remember someone who he used to know. Then the 11th line down there is a clear split between the theme. After that line you start to see the author remember that old person he used to be. For example to line ,"..who pretend to be time but you are not time and who speak in words but you are not what they say who are not lost when I do not find you." This line specifically tells us that he remembers that old person but can't find him. This poem really makes you think and at first I didn’t like that but by the end of the poem I liked how I could solve the mystery of the poem.

Blog Post #17

A Poison Tree By William Blake

The first time I read this poem the first stanza really stood out to me. It made me think of when you don’t talk to someone and you just get more and more mad. The first 2 lines in stanza 1 pretty much talks about how he is angry with a friend, he tells his friends about his anger and now he is happy again. Then in the last 2 lines of the 1st stanza the scenario changes and now he is angry with a foe but doesn't tell him so he just gets angrier and angrier. Now we go to the 2nd stanza, in this stanza he treats him anger almost like a plant. We see this when he uses figurative language such as " And I watered it in fears". As a plant grows it needs sunshine to survive, in this stanza smiles is representative of the sun. In this stanza we see the author compare growing of life(plant) and the growing of anger and I thought that was odd. Now we go to the 3rd stanza where we see his anger growing and growing until it turns into an apple. Now what does the apple represent? I say it represents happiness, the author is slowly getting happier. Lastly the 4th stanza, the first line of this stanza we see the enemy understands that the author is mad. One word that really stood out to me was "stole". This word is in the past tense form and I think there is significant meaning. It's almost like the stealing had happened previously. Lastly the word, "glad" interested me because is the author saying he is glad for my his enemy or is it more of a happy morning where he happens to see his enemy lying beneath a tee. I feel the overall theme for this poem is Anger. The one line that I think sums it all up is " I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end." Overall this poem is about getting over anger with each other.

Blog Post #23

Cassie Sloan

The Coming Of Wisdom With Time

 

For this poetry response I was looking through by book and thought why not challenge 

myself to a short poem. I knew that it would be hard but actually it was so easy. I read The 

Coming Of Wisdom With Time by William Butler Yeats. I loved this poem; even though it 

was so short the poem has so much meaning within it. Essentially this poem is talking about 

the foolishness of our youth. It is saying that when you are young there are endless 

possibilities of things to do, you believe you can do anything because that is what we are 

told. Our parents tell us stories of the easter bunny and santa claus painting a mystical 

world in our head, with good intentions of course. But it sucks when you grow up and 

realize the world isn’t as mystic as they told you. One day you have to go to college, get a job 

and become an adult. In the second line it says, “Through all the lying days of my youth”, 

which alludes to all the times youth are lied to growing up. The way Yeats uses flower the 

represent the beautiful lies we are told and then uses roots as a way of telling us that is how 

we grew up. In the last line Yeats says, “ Now I may wither into the truth”, this is 

representative as the sad reality of adulthood isn’t as far as you think. The poem as a whole 

shows us that there is a stereotype that adults must be smarter than children.

Blog Post #11

Throughout The Dead and Dark Rosaleen we see the idea of love. In Dark Rosaleen the man says he will do anything for her.

He uses imagery almost to identify how he will do anything for her. For example, "at its highest flood, I dash'd across unseen" and there he is saying that he would travel wherever just be with her. In the poem you also see thoughts of, "Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope, shall give you health, and help, and hope.." The author of Dark Rosaleen shows us how he will do anything for her.

Now within The Dead Micheal and Gretta love is kind of the opposite. But at the same time they are the same by the fact that Micheal is willing to die for Gretta even though she may not love him. In both of these loves is he ultimate sacrifice even if that means dying for it. 

Blog Post #10

In class essay number 2 was a struggle.

When I first read he prompt I was like okay I got this. But then it all disappeared. Its like I never even read the book even though I did. I sat there for awhile just thinking what to write. After I turned it in I was disappointed because I know that I could have done better.

When I got my essay back I was very surprise to see that I got a 5. I was expecting like a 3 or 4. After that we learned in class about analysis and I clarified a lot of things. One of the notes he wrote on my paper is that my analysis was shallow and underdeveloped. I went home that night thinking about that and realized I had no idea how to write an analysis. So that night I went online and looked it up. I realized that I had ideas in my head but I never really finished them off with an analysis, I just stopped after the examples. This reminded me of a softball bat swing, it won't be a good hit unless you finish your swing. The next in class essay was a question 2. When I got that one back I got a 5 again, I was disappointed. But then I looked at Mr.Allen's notes I saw that it said my analysis got better. That made me happy because I was really focusing on improving my analysis.

Even though I got 5 on the next essay I was still proud of myself for improving. Now I just have to get a little better each essay.

Blog Post #9

http://startedfromthebloggin.blogspot.com/2015/09/blog-post-7-college-essay.html#comment-form




Today I am going to reflect on my good friend Lily's blog. What I really want to talk about is her college essay.
Can I just say wow? Because wow.
I have know Lil for awhile now and as getting to know her, I truly believe I got to know her. 
This essay was eye opening because I feel bad for people who didn't know her like I did.
I love the way she used her morning routine to help introduce what the whole essay is about. This essay isn't just for her to let out the truth but its to be able to reflect of herself.

Overall this essay was truly inspiring and if I had the choice of whether to let her into a certain college then I would be proud to have someone of that quality that my school.

Blog Post #8