my last blog post

After being stuck for a while and not knowing what story I wanted to choose for my second and final special entry. I ended up picking the short story we read in class titled, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. I really enjoyed reading this poem in class and had an idea of what the author was trying to say. After reading it a couple more times, I started to get a different interpretation than after my first time reading it. This might seem to be a weird choice for a special entry because it seems to be easily understood and seem to have only one interpretation.
The main part of this story that I thought needs the most looking over to get different interpretations is the conversation between Mel and his wife Terri on true love. This is a story about two couples sitting around a coffee table talking, with one of the couples named Mel and Terri telling the other couple about their previous love or lack thereof. This story is mainly about Mel and Terri showing their two very different views on what true love is and what it is not. It starts with Terri and her husband Mel telling their friends about her last relationship before she met Mel. “Terri said the man she lived with before she lived with Mel loved her so much he tried to kill her”. In her eyes this was an act of true love by her boyfriend, even though it would have caused harm to her. I believe she thought this to be him showing love because she knew he was insane and had a very different view on what it meant to love someone. While Mel disagrees later in the story, he states “I don’t know what you call it, but I sure know you wouldn’t call it love”. After my first time reading this short story I would have to agree with Mel, being that Terri’s boyfriend obviously had something messed up in his head. His mental problems were the main reason in me not agreeing with Terri’s point of view that he was in love with her. Later in the story it goes on to tell you that he used to stalk them and make numerous threats, to both, then later he tries kills himself. This shows that he had many mental issues and maybe didn’t even love Terri at all.
Then they start to talk a little about Mel's ex wife and his angry thoughts about her. After all of the things he says to Terri about her previous relationship not being true love because the guy tried to kill her, then goes on talk about his last relationship. He states that she is allergic to bees and then goes on to talk about how he has contemplated getting a lot of bees to let them lose so they can kill her. This shows that maybe Mel also has some mental problems just like Terri’s ex boyfriend. This is also a very hypocritical thing to say since he just said her last boyfriend did not actually love her since her tried to kill her. Then he goes on to say that his relationship was true love even though he also has contemplated trying to kill his last girlfriend. After finishing this short story what I find very interesting is that Mel said he truly loved his ex wife and made me rethink my view on who actually loved who.
So after I got done readying this short story and took all the text in to account to make a solid interpretation. I started to think maybe both of their previous relationships were actually true love, even though both men thought of evil things about their wife. My reason for coming up with this idea is that I started to think, how can someone not in the relationship be able to say if they actually did love each other or not. I know that they both did or thought about doing some stupid stuff, but that doesn’t mean neither man loved their woman. This short story makes me think of the saying “love makes you do crazy things” and what are some of these crazy things that they mean. Does this mean love drives people crazy, or that you will do crazy things for the people that you love? It sounds like the same thing but if you think about it is two very different ideas. The first part saying “that love drives someone crazy” means that someone who is in true love will then be driven to do crazy things, like in the story maybe for instance trying to kill your girlfriend because he can’t see himself without her. The next part is saying “it drives you to do crazy things for the people you love”, meaning that you will do things that make no sense in doing but you do them anyway because you love her.
The last thing I started to think about is that Terri believed through everything her last boyfriend did to her, that he still did truly love her. This made me think that maybe love has many different meanings and ways for people to show their love to others. I know that someone doesn’t love their dad and mom the same way they love their wife, but this caused me to think is there different forms of love in marriage. For example, if a man lets his wife boss him around all the time, is this true love. What if the roles are changed and the man is the one that bosses his wife around all ways telling her what to do. Are both of these relationships examples of true love, is there a difference in the love between the two relationships?

This was a fun and tough text to get a solid interpretation for this blog. I know a lot of this interpretation is all over the place, but I think that is because deciding which last relationship was actually true love is a hard topic to make a yes/no judgement.

Only a couple more blogs left

I have had a lot of fun doing my previous two blogs, where I took different poems and tried to get an understanding of what the author was trying to get across. So I decided to keep going on the same idea as my previous blogs and take a new poem and try to see what understanding I can get from it. The poem I chose was “Fast rode the knight” by the poet Stephen Crane.

Fast rode the knight

Fast rode the knight
With spurs, hot and reeking,
Ever waving an eager sword,
"To save my lady!"
Fast rode the knIght,
And leaped from saddle to war.
Men of steel flickered and gleamed
Like riot of silver lights,
And the gold of the knight's good banner
Still waved on a castle wall
.. . . . .
A horse,
Blowing, staggering, bloody thing,
Forgotten at foot of castle wall.
A horse
Dead at foot of castle wall.

I found this poem to be very interesting and an easy read compared to the ones we are given to read in class. I say that not just because it is a very short poem, but to say that the poet doesn’t try to be confusing with the way he talks in the poem like most other poets. This is nice for me the reader because not every poem should be confusing and tough to understand. I like to be able to read a poem and right away get what the poet is trying to say to the reader of this poem.

My understanding of this poem may be wrong but it is what I comprehended when I first read and then after the many times of rereading. What I think the poet is trying to say is that the knight is the hero, but what about the horse. The horse is the reason why the knight was able to ride fast into battle. So the poet is trying to say that the horse is important just as the knight, but doesn’t get the credit like the knight. By the author saying forgotten at foot of castle wall, as if trying to say that not enough credit is given to the little guys of this world.

This was my understanding of the poem “Fast rode the knight”. This shows that poems don’t have to contain such tough wording and be so hard to understand to still have a great meaning behind it.

Messy Room

I had so much fun writing my last blog that I thought that I should write another just like it. In my last blog I wrote about how I was going to read a poem and try to get what the author really meant. The poem was “A dream within a dream”, it really tough at first, but then I felt like I got a good understanding of the message of the poem.

This time I chose a different famous poem to try and get an understanding of what the poet was trying to say. The poem is a very interested one, it is called “messy room” by Shel Silverstein.

Messy Room by Shel Silverstein

Whosever room this is should be ashamed!

His underwear is hanging on the lamp.

His raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair,

And the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp.

His workbook is wedged in the window,

His sweater's been thrown on the floor.

His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,

And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.

His books are all jammed in the closet,

His vest has been left in the hall.

A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,

And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.

Whosever room this is should be ashamed!

Donald or Robert or Willie or--

Huh? You say it's mine? Oh, dear,

I knew it looked familiar!

My first time reading this poem I started to think it was about a kid with a really dirty room, then I read it a couple more times and got a couple different views. I think this poem is open, meaning that people can come up with many different understandings of what the poet is trying to get across. One of my understandings after reading this poem a couple times is that the poet is trying to talk about how we judge everyone else without realizing that it is actually us that have the same problems. What I mean is that people are saying how wrong something is without realizing that they themselves are the ones that are in the wrong.

The next understanding I got from this poem after many times of reading it was about the earth. Saying how someone could talk about all the problems that others are doing to the earth without realizing what they are doing to it.

This was a fun poem to read and try to get an understanding of what the author meant. The different tools I have learned in this class have helped me a lot in forming understandings of different poems.

A dream within a dream

After struggling to understand most of the poems we have read together as a class, I thought I would go and find a famous poem off of the internet. My plan was to read a very popular poem off the internet and see if I could understand the meaning the author was trying to get across. Just like we are taught in class, I will read and reread many times to try and get different ideas every time I go back to read. The famous poem that I chose was:

"A Dream Within A Dream" by Edgar Allan Po


Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

I found this poem to be difficult to understand just like the ones that we have read together in class. But I didnt give up and I kept rereading till I came up with what I thought the poet was trying to say through this poem. After like the third time reading this poem, I came up with what I think the poem is about. I started to think this is about a man that loses the one that he loves to death and becomes very sad. The way he says”kiss upon the brow”, makes me think that he is giving her a kiss goodbye. The other thing is the way he talks about how the sand running through his fingers and there’s nothing he can do to slow it down or stop it. I find this to be the poet trying to explain how time keeps passing by and there’s nothing anyone can do to slow it down or to stop time. This is why I believe the poem is about how a man loses the woman that he loves after she dies and how he wishes the time they spent together would have slowed down.

Questions:
1. What is your understanding of this Edgar Allan Poe poem?
2. How many times did you have to read this poem till you came up with this interpretation?
3. Did you like this poem?

Dr. Horrible

Yesterday’s class started off looking like it was going to be no fun, but turned out to actually be a time. The Dr. Horrible movie didn’t start out as funny as I thought it would but then it took off and turned out to be really funny. The movie did a good job of building the main character as a ruthless, evil genius that wanted to take over the world. Once the movie watcher starts to believe this is the main character, he turns out to have a crush on a girl at the local laundry mat. He turns out to be too shy to even approach her and even speak to her. This makes you start to think that maybe the main character is actually really nerdy and not the angry man that wants to take over the world.
It turns out that all of Dr. Horrible evil plans to take over the world end up back firing against him. For example, when he tries to get the suit case out of the van, he ends up having his arch nemesis named captain hammer to show up and save the girl he is in love with. Thus causing her to fall in love with captain hammer and make Dr. Horrible to become upset. Then later in the story he actually starts to talk to the girl that he has been in love with all this time. Captain Hammer comes to the laundry mat and tells Dr. Horrible about his relationship with the girl. This causes Dr. Horrible to become very upset and make up his mind that he is now going to kill Captain Hammer. When he tries to kill him, it ends up that the gun explodes and kills the woman that he has been in love with all this time.
This movie did a great job of characterization, by making the characters very round and having great depth.

Lake Bonny Park

"I went to Lake Bonny Park for this assignment, and I stayed there for at least 20 minutes." This is my first time walking around a park in a couple years. As I walked around, I started to think about how so many people take it all for granted. This caused me to look around and see how many trees and other parts of nature that had to get cut down, so they could build a baseball field for the local people. It made me think about how nobody seems to care about nature, till they hear about something like global warming. Why does it take a bunch of people giving information about something, to finally get people to appreciate the stuff that has been the all around them their entire life? I have no answer for this question, but I can say that I haven’t sat around and appreciated all of nature around me like I should. Ok now let’s get back to talking about me walking around Bonny Park and all the different things I saw around. I went to the park with Neil from our class and walked on the side walk till we got to the bridge. As we walked on the bridge, we saw a couple people and started they started talking to us. The man was telling us how there was a 10 foot alligator that used to chill under the bridge, but it was getting to big so someone a wildlife person came and shot it. I don’t think this was a true story that the man was telling us, but it got me thinking, what if he is telling the truth. What if someone thought the gator was getting to big and was considered dangerous to the people that come to the park? Thinking about this made me upset, true or not true, this was the gators home and we are the ones that cut down all the trees without thinking about the wildlife that already lives in the area. All in all this was a great experience, being able to read a poem and take in all that nature has to offer.

State of the Planet

The State of the Planet is a very creative poem and fun poem to read. This Robert Hass poem gave me some trouble my first and second time reading I read it. But finally on my third time reading and taking a minute to think back on it, I got an idea of what the author was trying to get accross. Atleast i hope it was what he was trying to say in the poem. The author was to tell us that all life is actually like a dream, meaning that there is a beginnig and a end for everyone. As the author said in the poem, "It is easy for us to feel that our lives are a dream". The way the Author talks makes it kinda obvious to me that he is not a religious person, "we know we're going to die, to be submitted to that tingling dance of atoms once again". I think he is trying to say that of course everyone is going to die, but when we do die and get burried our bodies are just going to disolve back into the atoms that formed us.

At first this article was tough for me to understand, but once it started making sense I found it to be very interesting. I do not agree with the authors views in the story, but I liked the story a lot.