Live Fast Die Young

"We Real Cool" by author Gwendolyn Brooks is a simple yet profound poem exploring the mindset of our wayward youth. "We real cool. We left school" (1,2) this is a accurate statement of the mindset felt by the youth. Many kid's do consider themselves cool while displaying unacceptable behavior based on society standards, also the word we as opposed to I is relevant here; because when bad or confused kid's run rampant they are more than likely to be in groups thus allowing their negative energy to feed off each other. "We strike straight"(3,4) is a passage indicating this may be some type of violent gang. This poem speaks volumes on how many kid's feel powerful, even eurphoric running around causing trouble, and also how they feel a sense of physcial invincibility; because of their age they think "nothing can happen to me i'm too young to die" why would one live so reckless unless they truely felt nothing can harm them? What is really important here are the events that take place with decisions we map out for our lives,mainly the bad decisions. The young people are being destructive and thinking they are having a grand ole time, live for today and damm tomorrow, never once considering the repercussions of their actions. Then one day their world of good times comes crashing down; and it's time to pay your dues, karma comes knocking at the door,the inevitably of such an lifestyle is at your feet.The tragic stories vary but the end result is always the same "We Die soon"(7,8)

Real Life Connection

The poem "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke was a poem that really stood out to me. At first like many other poeple who have read the poem I saw this poem as an abusive relationship between a father and son. The image that you get when the speaker paints the picture of whisky lingering in Papa's breath would make many people think that the father has a drinking problem. The battered knuckles of Papa also make it seem as though he is a hard and harsh man. Once you look deeper into the poem though you can see that the speaker is just trying to paint an image of his father that he can hold on to. He is using the smell of whisky as a smell that reminds him of his father. The roughness of the fathers knuckles just shows that he is a really hard working man to support his family. This really reminds me of my own father. He was a really hard working man to do the best for his family. He worked in a factory during the day and when he came home he ran the family farm. His hands were always rough from all the work that his did for us. And for that I appreciate him ever so much.

Torn

A dislike for poetry is unfair. So, I would not say I do not like poetry, but I also would not say I love poetry either. Poems are a short and sweet story that are sometimes understandable to me. A short story limits an authors word choice; crafty words are used to complete the message being sent by the author. Because of these crafty words, I often times come across words I do not know the meaning of which creates confusion to the poem. Sometimes the words make an entire stanza hard for me to decipher. I use a thesaurus when I come across these crafty words to help me better understand the story being told.
Poems that do not relate to me or poems that just do not make sense are boring. I tend to loose interest and forget poems with these characteristics."Digging" is an example of a poem I totally did not relate to or understand. When a poem comes along that does make sense and that does relate to my life, I will not just like this poem, but I will love them poem. An example of a poem such as this would be Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz". Memories of my father and I come out of this poem, great memories of dancing with my father. In conclusion, poems for me creates a love/hate relationship; I would not choose to bore myself to death with pointless, confusing poems, but I would love to discover more poems of interest to me.

Poetry

I have read poems before, many times. It wasn't until last week that I realized that some poems have a deeper meaning. I always just read them at face value. I do not really like the poetry we have read so far. I never know if it means what it says or if it has a deeper meaning. It confuses me sometimes, something I am not a fan of. I have not read, nor do I understand, much poetry. I do really like Robert Frost's "The Road Less Taken." I like it after having it explained to me that he doesn't really mean he took the road less taken and that you take the path you take. You never know if the path you took is the one less taken because he can't go back.

Degeneration X

Sometimes a generation improves itself based on seeing the faults the previous generation had. In Raymond Carver's "Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year" the writer continutes his fathers habit of alcohol abuse and maybe even is a worse addict. The writer has the benefit of seeing the way alcohol took so much away from his fathers life and still he allows it to become a problem in his life. He actually is mad at his father not because of this trait that was passed on to him but rather that he "didn't even know the places to fish...(15). The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

My thoughts On Poetry

Back in the day, I used to truly loathe poetry; I used to read through the poem, motivated by mothing more than the fact that it was a class assignment, and think about nothing more than the how much time I wasted on reading it. I saw no message within the stanzas, and criticized the authors for even thinking that there could even possibly be a message within their work. There was one thing that woke me up to the message that poets send, that one thing is something we call "life".

During my teenage years, I've experienced a lot; love hate, pleasure, pain, and an incredible amount of events what could trigger these feelings. There was one time when I decided to against the conformity of everyone else and wrote a song. There was a sadness I had bottled up, and I simply wanted to let it out the best way I knew how. After that one song, I wrote more and more, and after a few more songs, I truly saw the power of what poetry can do. If you have experienced a traumatic event, and you manage to stumble across another person who just so happens to write a poem about it, you realize that there is someone out there that can relate to your struggle. That someone is also constructing a way of relaying that struggle for a world to understand, poetry can be a powerful tool.

So in this present day, my opinion on poetry has changed. Whenever I feel the need to vent, or even express creativity, the one thing I used to hate is now the one thing I turn to to express myself.

Why poems?

Poems are definitely not one of the easiest things to understand. You may think you understand what you need to know from the poem but when talking in class there is so much more to it. In my opinion I think poems are too complicated and maybe a bit overrated. Why not just say what you want instead of beating around the bush and adding more into it that isn’t necessary.
Remember the good old days of Dr. Seuss. They were easy to understand, rhymed a bit and were just fun to read. That’s what all poems should be like. Once they become hard to understand and aren’t being very clear with what they are saying is when I loss all interest. Most of the time I dislike poems even the ones I write myself. It may just be the format and the way they come off most of the time that makes me not care for them a whole lot. I also don’t like that I have to read one poem a few times just to understand it. Why are poems even that great? Maybe to show feelings but that really about it. Otherwise a short and sweet story will do just fine.

Reflection on Poetry

Poetry is a very unique type of writing. It does not always make sense, it does not always rhyme, and it is not always straight forward. Readers interpret poems in different ways and often times it is not the way the writer intends. In a poem, the writer only has so many lines to express the feeling or story they are trying to get across. Each person that reads the same poem could get a different meaning from the poem. Poetry can be hard to understand at times because of the limited stanzas writers can use in poetry. Some are just written in dialogue that is hard to understand. Poems that readers can relate to are going to be more easily understood. I am not very good at discovering meanings of poems, but this poetry section is helping me get better. After breaking down poems into smaller sections and looking closer at them, poetry becomes a lot more interesting. Poems are not always what they seem, which I think is one way poetry is different from other types of writing. The hidden meanings are what make readers think and decide what the writer is trying to portray in their work. Often times poems will not be interpreted the same way by readers, but this is what makes poetry more interesting. Everyone can use their own opinion to decide what each specific poem means to them.

Poetry Blog Casey Laub

So far I haven't minded reading poetry as much as I used to. I've honestly only read two poems so far, I only enjoyed one of them. I read My Papa's Waltz and Photograph of My Father In His Twenty Second Year. I liked My Papa's Waltz because after talking about it in class you can see how our society hears whiskey and we immediately assume somthing bad is happening. Then I read Photograph of My Father In His Twenty Second Year and don't know what to think: which is usually what happens when I read poetry. I don't get it there are so many angles you can take on poems. The thing that makes it unnapealling to me is that you never know which angle is the absolute correct one unless the author explains it afterwards. For example in My Papa's Waltz, in class we came to the conclusion that either he was abusive or he just drank casually when he got home from work. Who even knows which one actually happened and caused the poet to write the poem. I think: the poet that writes the poem should have a page after the poem that says what exactly he or she meant just to make it clear.

Reaction to Poetry

Poetry is something that I am not too familiar with. This is the first time I have really had to sit down and read poems. I already see that I was wrong thinking that poetry was primarily rhyming and really created without deep meaning. From what we have done in class I already understand that there is a lot of information that needs to be uncovered in a very small space. For me poetry is hard to read and fully understand without classroom discussion. I catch myself reading the words and thinking very basic much of the time leading to my misinterpretation of the poem. I look forward to reading more poetry and seeing what I think about it after I can relate to it a little better.

Poetry is More Than Ryhming Words

I was never really interested in poetry before I started this class, but I never really disliked it either. What I've learned about poetry in this class, so far, is that it is much more than just rhyming words together. Poems have so much depth and emotion to them and it's up to the reader to really scope out what the writer is portraying in such few words.
It's been enjoyable to read the assigned poems and analyze them. They're all so different in nature. Some are straightforward, while others have hidden meanings behind carefully selected words. It's also nice to find a poem in which you can relate to, which can also make it easier to interpret. With many poems, the reader can interpret it in many ways, but only the author will know the true message of their words. This combination of mystery and emotion is what makes poetry so powerful.

What I feel about poetry

Peotry is a special form of telling a story or a particular time in life. The author may know what the poem means but the reader may misinterpret it in many different ways. For example, the reader may just read the first to stanzas and just assume that the poem is about something because it's mentioned in those first stanzas. This is how our society is these days; we judge the poem and don't look into depth. Poetry can also be a form of music, such as bob dylan. Bob Dylan's songs are mostly based on poems. These are the kind of poems that I'm mostly interested in. I think it's pretty cool when a poem has a different meaning and can be told through reading and listening. Poetry is very different than short stories or novels, because the poets don't have a lot of room to get all there information in and they have to write it all in a certain format. The poetry I mostly dislike is the kind that use really big words that I don't know the meaning of; and that just making interpreting the poem a lot more difficult. The poetry that I can stand would be something that I can relate to, such as sports or family. This would catch my attention and maybe because I can relate to it more, I would read more in depth with it. Overall my thoughts on poetry is that, to understand the poem you have to really read it over and over and think about why the author would say whatever has been said. Personally I like poetry and I think that writing it can be fun at times, but obviously reading most of the more difficult ones can be confusing for me.

Brennan melts Frost

I'm not very good at deciphering poetry and uncovering the hidden meanings about bad childhoods or a secret life a speaker may have had. However, the poems I do love to read are about love, very girly I know. But I think if a poet is great then he should be able to express a love in a few lines that can take writers pages to do so or a singer an entire song. My favorite poem is "Because She Would Ask Me Why I Loved Her" by Christopher Brennan. The poem makes you think about love and has a certain flow to it; while the final few lines truely express his feelings for her. It's one of the few poems that make me smile by just reading it. However, there is an entire collection of poetry by Robert Frost that I dispise. He contridicts what he says and tells lies to the reader. As if reading a poem isn't hard enough. Also the stories of his I have read are lame and pointless. They weren't funny or held some deep emotion that moved me. I think he should of had a day job and stuck to it.

Doe Season

In the short story "Doe Season" Andy is treated differently because she is a girl. Charlie and Mac would not have a questioned her coming if she had been in boy. Andy goes out to fetch firewood and when she returns she says she saw a deer. Macs response was "I bet you really didn't see no deer, did you?"(pg 515). Were she a boy he wouldn't have questioned her. In this story hunting is something the men and boys do so they treat her like she can't do the things they can, like she is less then. The one thing that would have been the same is the shot Andy took to kill the deer. The feelings would have been different. Being a boy, she would not have felt so horrible about killing something and joined in the excitement of shooting her first deer.

All For A Queen

John Updike gives the description of a woman's body in a very class way, he was a man of a classic time. In the short story "A&P" Updike displays his writing skills by doing carefully thought out description of a teenage boys thoughts without making it sound like a romance novel. Sammy admires the girl from a far, describing her looks and ending with the simple statment of, "I mean, it was more than pretty" (225). Sammy begins to take more notice of Queenie and thinks of her body in a more respectful and loving way. He describes how her neck looks so stretched out from her shoulders but is quick to say, "The longer her neck was, the more of her there was" (225). It's clear Updike or his characthers don't want to be preceived as a sexist person but one that is appreciative of a woman. In the end of the short story Sammy does gutsy move and quits his job in an attempt of being Queenie's king but he falls short and learns a life lesson (228). One he has her to thank for.

No "Andrea", just "Andy"

In the short Story "Doe Season", written by David Michael Kaplan. The protagonist of the story, Andy, has her fair share of prejudice to put up with. Not only does she endure the constant badgering of Mac throughout the sroty, who doesn't know any better, she also must put up with the over-inflated, "manly" ego of Charlie Spoon, who should know better. With all of this in mind, one may realize that there's a possibility that if andy were a boy, the trip might have been a little bit easier on her, then again, it also might have been harder.

For being a mature adult, Charlie Spoon sure has a bias toward young, innocent Andy. And he made it quite obvious that he doesn't want her with on the trip. "Charlie spoon was driving. "I don't understand why she's coming," he said to her father. "How old is she anyway -eight?"" (Kaplan, 512) Charlie is obviously bitter about Andy's presence on their guys day out, and Mac feels the same way; he felt the need to tease her the entire trip. ""That's about your size," Mac said to tease her." Kaplan, 512) as she gets a measly day pack handed to her as the men, and boy, get large backpacks. In the other hand, if Andy were a boy, Charlie might be more accepting, maybe even willing to have Andy tag along, and Mac would have a fellow young guy to play around with that is cootie-free. However, since Andy would also be 'one of the guys' She would also need to live up to their rough-and-tough image; Andy would need to prove to the others that he was manly enough to be on this trip. If Andy got as emotional as she did in the end of the story, Charlie, Mac, and maybe even her father, would think that he (andy as a boy) was too emotionally weak to live up to their tough-guy image, and Andy may be rejected even worse.

Either way one may look at the situation, there could be prejudice. If Andy were a boy, Charlie Spoon and Mac may me a bit more hesitant to judge a book by its cover, but if Andy fails to live up to their standards, it might just be the same unnacepting situation. Either way, there is that presence of rejection.

Girly girl vs. Tom boy

If David Michael Kaplan were to make Andy a boy in his short story, “Doe Season,” I believe things would be different for many reasons. Being a girl, Andy has a lot of pressure from her dad’s friend, his son, and her dad as well. She is a daddy’s girl and probably feels more pressure to please him than a boy might feel in her situation. The ocean intimidates Andy and even though her mom was in the water, Andy cannot find the comfort in the area her mom was in. Her father stayed closer to shore and “held his white arms above the waist-deep water as if afraid to get them wet” (514). This is one of the instances that hints at Andy’s stronger bond with her father than her mother. The pressure she feels from her father pushes her to be what she believes he wants her to be. After her father tells Mac and Charlie how good Andy is at spotting deer, there is even more pressure on her to live up to her expectations. Andy tells the boys she has spotted a deer and only “caused them to spend the morning there, cold and expectant, with nothing to show for it” (517). This is another instance building up to Andy finding her true ‘girl’ self. If Andy were a boy, she would not have had the dream about the doe she felt forced to shoot, and she would not have the guilt after shooting the doe that her dad gave her the privilege to shoot.

Doe Season

This story wolud have been different had Andy been a boy based on the way she was treated during the hunting trip. Early on her fathers friend Charlie made it clear that he was not too keen on Andy's presence, enroute to the hunting trip he states "I still don't understand why she's comming"512. Charlie would not have said this if Andy were a boy, also during the trip at some point All the men start teasing Andy making her feel uncomfortable in the process. Charlie starts off by saying "so what are you going to be Andrea a boy or a girl"?517 implying she was a confused little girl and had no business on a hunting trip with a bunch of men. Charlie makes another remark concerning his displeasure of Andy's gender "That's what the woods are about anyway it's where the women don't want to go"517. Centinly none of the comments and teasing would have been made if Andy were a boy because the men would have far more accepting of Andy. What would have been the same in the story is Andy looking up to her father and trying her best to please him throughout the trip like Andy did.

This is Now 'Buck' Season

In David Michael Kaplan's short story "Doe Season" the protagonist in the story is Andy, a young female on her first deer hunting trip with her father and his friends, Mac and Charlie. Throughout the story it seems as though Andy struggles with the relationship she has with her father compared to her mother. The woods in the story are a place that is familiar for Andy and a place that she spends time with her father. On the other hand there is the scene where Andy had visited the ocean, during the visit she is uneasy and this time was when she was with her mother. "That was the first time she'd seen the ocean and it frightened her" (514). This shows that she was not close to her mother and she was scared of the 'feminine' part of herself as well as pushed her mother away. The story would have been different if Andy was portrayed of a boy because the hunting trip would be seen as more of a right of passage into manhood. Also, if Andy were a boy there would have been little teasing and tormenting from Mac and Charlie. Such comments that came from Charlie such as "So what are you gonna be, Andrea? A boy or a girl?" (517) would not happened. There also would have been more emphasize on the actual masculinity of the hunting trip other then on the feelings that Andy had when she had shot the deer. Andy as a boy would have needed to prove that he was a man and confirm that he was able to hide his feelings, showing no empathy for the deer's life.

Goodness Gracious

There are many passages where John Updike conveys wonder in his physical descriptions in "A&P". Sammy, the narrator, describes one of the young ladies as having a "good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it.(224)" He also uses the terms "chubby berry faces(225)" and "long white prima-donna legs.(225)" The girl called queenie is wearing a swim suit with the should straps down and he describes what he sees as "this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the should bones like the dented sheet of metal tilted in the light. I mean it was more than pretty.(225)" He doesn't stop here. As the story progresses he has more colorful descriptions of the girls physical features. He speaks of "the plump one in plaid, that I liked better from the back--a really sweet can--(227)" One of the girls pulls money out of her swimsuit, as he describes as "having come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla(228)."
In this day and age, the way women and girls are portrayed on television and in movies is in such a sexual light that I feel Sammy could get away with his take on the girls physical appearances. He never speaks of wanting to do anything physically to the girls and his comments seem to be very normal for a boy his age. He could have observed the same girls in the same outfits and made some very crass and demeaning comments, as many boys or men might, and this would have changed completely how i viewed Sammy. However, he is a normal boy with normal interests and he handles himself much better than some would in his situation. The passages are very descriptive but not overboard.