The Mirror of Dearth

This was a weird one. It starts talking about not looking into the mirror, then has what seems to be a flash back of a fisherman. One day he is fishing and catches the smallest fish ever who talks to him. The fish tells him that if he puts him back and doesnt eat him he will be happy. The starving fisherman wants to eat him though. The fish told him to climb up the shakiest tree. Once he climbed up he found the best kingdom ever. They only had one rule though, dont look in the mirror. Being cocky, he decided to look in the mirror. When he did, he found himself at the river bed. He catches another fish thinking it was the one from before. He has dialogue with it and tries to climb the tree again, this time it is very painful. Getting cut by thorns he makes it to the top and jumps. The story ends with him not dying.

Child's Play

Ichiyo I feel writes in the 'We' culture in this book. All the children are growing up and learning the trait/skillsd of their parents. There is definently a love triangle in this story between Nobu, Midori, and Shota. Midori through out the majority of the book was on  Shota's arm. When the book comes to a close though, she cannot be with him, she has feeling for Nobu. In the midst of the whole story Shota just wanted to fight Nobu and Chokichi to claim their right the the streets. We discussed in class that Nobu's father represents corruption in the church since he is a pastor and drinks all the time.

The world of seven wells

In this poem Storni makes reference to seven wells. She is making reference to the two eye sockets, two nostrils, two ear holes, and the mouth. She uses very vivid wording when describing these parts of the body. She ends the poem with "And there shines on the curve of the forehead, a white desert, the distant light of a dead moon..." I feel that this is a good end to the poem since she was vivid in her descriptions throught it.

Squares and Angles

I found this poem slightly confusing at first. Later, after we talked about it, I can now see how it is about conformity. "Houses in a row" being repeated multiple times makes me think that they are the same exact type of house and that everyone is trying to be the same.

The man who was almost a man

Wright's way of writting was particularly hard to follow at times. He wrote in a very southern type of speech. The story starts off with Dave who is a little black boy. Dave just wants to go down by the woods so no one can hear him shoot off his gun. Dave takes Jenny, who is a mule down there so he can shoot the gun (and not shoot the mule.) While he is so nervously aiming and fires, Wright explains the pain that Dave goes through, feeling as if his entire arm fell off from shooting the gun. He shortly finds out that he shot Jenny. We talked about in class that this could be a sign that he was killing himself, since he probably felt like a mule at times. He has to eventually pay for Jenny. The story ends with Dave on a train leaving.

In Camera

El Saadawi writes a really interesting essay here in which the flow keeps switching from first to third person, and from her, to her mom, to her dad, and finally to the deliberation room at the end. In Camera takes place in a court room. The female who seems to be the main character is on the stand and on trial. The story starts with very vivid, descriptions on what seemed to be how she felt after she was raped. She has whatever was on her head taken off and has an interesting way of describing the people she sees while her eyes continue to regain focus. She later talks bad about her rapists' leader and the judge quotes her in the courtroom. When he does this, the whole courtroom goes crazy, hooting and hollering. Near the end of the story the focus seems to change from this girl being on trial, to the judge being on trial when his allegiance is questioned because he quoted the girl.

Leda

Leda is about the god Zeus taking the form of a swan to rape Leda. Dario uses very vivid colors when describing everything in this poem. Dario writes about how Zeus takes upon the form of a swan and takes to a lake to find Leda. Once he finds her he takes her for himself, when Zeus doesnt think anyone else is watching. The last two lines of the poem though, indicate that Pan was watching. The interesting thing about these lines isnt the fact that Pan was watching, but yet again the color used to describe it, "... the screen of teeming foiage parts and the wild green eyes of Pan stare out, wide with surprise." Now what I wonder is are his eyes actually green, or was this color used to depict jealousy for Zeus taking Leda when Pan wasn't able to?

To Roosevelt

In Ruben Dario's "To Roosevelt" he views president Theodore Roosevelt as a hunter. He uses a lot of 'you' statement in reference to the president. There are some interesting comparisons layed out. For example he states that "You are one part George Washington and one part Nimrod ... You are an Alexander-Nebuchadnezzar" He later goes on to talk about the power of the United States.

T.S. Elliot

For class we read "The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock" I found this one to be rather odd. It was odd in how it was written and its rhyming scheme. I found it interesting though when Dr. Reed told us how Elliot likes to incorporate lines/ideas from others into his writing.

Tonight I Can Write ...

Pablo Neruda's Tonight I Can Write has been going through my head a lot lately. I almost feel like my life right now is this poem. What I mean by that is that I have been fighting a lot with my fiancee and I think this time, things might be over. Neruda writes: "She loved me, sometimes I loved her too" With all of the tension going on between the two of us, these words speek deeply to me, because I do love her, I just don't love the  fights. "Love is so short, forgetting is so long." How true are these words? Love can come and go, but the memories of the times together are what lasts forever.