Story Rewrite

I found this exercise very interesting. It was a nice change in the class and I enjoyed the different plots in the stories. I didn't realize that all of us starting with the same first sentence could go in so many directions. When I got mine back I did not expect my story to take such a turn. It was pretty comical at the end. It was also crazy how just one single person could change up the story so much.

My first story:

She stood at the edge of a precipice, between one moment and the next. Debating which way to jump. Each direction holding a new place to start over. Starting over a whole new life, somewhere to find out the truth in the world. A choice between dark fairs, an endless field, or a world not yet discovered. Too easily she is tempted by a world she doesn't know. Heh, and you thought this was going to be about a pasty, depressed teenage girl who falls in love with another pasty teenager, didn't you? Scared to take a leap of any kind, she turns away from the unknown and goes back to the safe known. It was a Winchester padlock safe that she had named "known." She unlocked it with that trusty combination and removed her rifle, long and cold, and placed it in the  back of her shaking throat. Her lifeless body falling until it tumbled straight down the precipice.

I revised the story and this is what I came up with:

She stood at the edge of a precipice between one moment and the next. Debating which way to jump. Each direction holding a new place to start over. Starting over with a new whole life, one where she could find the truth that she had been searching for. A choice between the safe route and the unknown. The second one tempting her to walk into the mists. Wondering what the unknown has in store for her if she decided to take that first step. Deciding that she is done living on the safe route, her first step into the unknown is exciting. Two more steps and all of a sudden her footing is broken and she's tumbling to her doom.


I changed my first story into something more serious. Even though there are some sentences that I kept, such as the first three sentences. I changed the rest to become more gloomy and sort of dark, maybe something that a person might actually be able to relate too. Choosing a route or path to take their life down. Sometimes not making the right decision but learning from the mistakes.

Maps to Anywhere 2nd Half

For the second half I got a little confused, but for the most part it seemed like a flashback from the beginning of the book. Some new characters were introduced, like Lester and Cora, and also Bernard's aunt. I liked the big story from the part of The House Of The Future. This story starts off with Bernard and his mother and father going to Tomorrowland to see this futuristic house model. Bernard is fascinated and starts to imagine what it would be like to live in this house. How much easier it would be if his family lived in this house. It goes into grave detail about the different aspects of the house and the amazing features that come with this house. One thing that, or person, that isn't at this tour of Tomorrowland, is Bernard's brother Gary. In the first half he is only mentioned once or twice and he is already dead in the first half. This half and especially this story is more about his death and how the family coped. That is what I am going to focus on mostly.

"I pictured the progress of my brother's disease as a gathering of dark clouds that closed off any avenue of light, clusters of heavy, tentative drops, a downpour held in suspension for a year. Below it stood our stucco house, my parents wishful within its walls, Father postdating payments on our car, mother blowing ghostly smoke" (101). Gary's illness is progressing and starting to really effect the rest of the family. I think it is really strange that they compare the disease to a gathering of clouds that close off avenues, right before a thunder storm. This made the disease seem like it was sudden and the family was not expecting it to be this bad or progress this quickly. It hit the family hard, by the line that talks about the Father not paying the car payment and the picture of the mother just sitting in a chair smoking cigarettes repeatedly, starring off into space.

"It rained the evening my brother died. As we drove home from the hospital, another city was reflected in the pavement, its palm trees smeared, its marquees incoherent, its upturned towers sunk in puddles. Father drove the Plymouth slowly, apologizing for every wrong turn. Mother slumped in the front seat, sedated with a dose of Miltown, unable to lift her cigarette, softly asking "Where's my son? Swimming with the stars?" (101). The dreadful feeling that comes after you finally realize your loved one is gone. Not knowing what to do or say to each other so just riding in silence. Every thing around seems so dull and lifeless. Nothing is beautiful anymore. His father isn't paying attention to where he is driving anymore. It seems to just be automatic to him at this point, except he keeps making mistakes. His mother can't even puff a cigarette because it hurts so bad. The pain is almost physical. Mother wondering why it had to be her son, why he had to be taken away from her already.

This section was a little bit of a debby downer. Especially the future home section. It was so detailed that I could picture the progression of his brother, getting worse and worse as time goes on. Bernard trying to ease the pain by keeping his brother distracted, but in the end realizing it was a lost cause. Mother scrubbing and disinfecting Gary's room, almost as if he was contagious, which in turn probably made Gary feel even worse than he already did… She tried to get him help but also made him feel like he was alienated by disinfecting his room like he was a germ himself. I think Bernard was affected the most because he did spend so much time with Gary. They would swim together and play board games or  guessing games. Like Gary was gone in physical sense but never in mental sense.

Maps To Anywhere First Half

When I read anything; nonfiction, fiction, or poetry, I like to find parts that I can relate to or parts that really interest me. I think that is why I like novels more because I can pick out situations that appeal to myself and my life. It doesn't have to be my whole like, it could just be a situation that I am in or even something that has happened to one of my family members or a friend. That might be why I enjoyed some parts of this first half of Maps to Anywhere. While I started reading this, snooze fest! Normally if I get bored within the first few pages of a book then I stop reading it. Since we are required to read this, I decided that I must force myself to move on. And then it got interesting!

On page 4 I really related to a section that was half way down the page. "My own name was problematic. While Jeff and Mary could go to the five-and-dime and find cups and wallets bearing their names--evidence that they belonged to a vast and accepted subset of humanity--Bernard was always out of the question, however much I'd spin the racks and dig in the bins with hope;  Andy, Art, Bill, Bobby, Charles." I always had this problem when I was smaller. Whether it was a keychain, a fake license plate cover for a bike, or anything else that stores decided to put names on, there was never one with my name on it. Of course they had Bobby, with a 'y' but none with the correct spelling. I can relate to this poor kid that just wanted to find one thing with his name on it, but manufacturers just seemed to skip right over his name. With this passage I started to get interested in the book and felt that there was some hope after all.

There was another line that really caught my attention. On page 8, "...when love sought justice, they were both blind." This section in the book talks about his dad becoming a lawyer and how he had his own office. His dad had a over the top attraction to the other sex that it lead his dad to cheat on his mother multiple times, or that's what it sounded like in the book. But those certain words caught my eye. It made it seem like love and justice can't coexist. There is either one or the other, which I don't think is particularly true. Love and justice can go together just fine just depending on the people involved and the situation. There are certain situations, such as a courtroom, where justice must come before love. It seems like in society now there is a division between the two, love and justice. You can either have one or the other.

I'm excited to keep reading more and more from this book and trying to keep relating to it in ways that make me think back in time!

Essay Packet 1/ Goldberg Packet 3

I have always been taught that essays had to be about facts, you needed data and raw materials to write one... and don't forget to source everything! Leave no details out and it must be at least 10 pages long, double spaced, 12 pt font, and times new roman. This was imprinted into my brain from the start of high school. When I started reading into the essay packet, that's kind of what I expected. To my surprise the so called "essays" seemed just like stories. I enjoyed reading them, instead of feeling like I'm just reading about facts, there were deeper meaning behind theses "essays" and I enjoyed trying to figure them out.

One essay I really enjoyed was Naomi Shihab Nye's Mint Snowball. This essay was about a great-grandfather that invented something called the Mint Snowball. People drove from miles and miles away to come enjoy this recipe. It was kept a secret from everyone, even his own family until he decided to sell it to someone in town for $100. At first I thought this was suppose to have a tear jerking feeling about how people grow old and give up on something that use to be important and pretty much throw it away for chump change, but the end involves the  great grandson and how his mom explains this story from her point of view to him. How she use to eat the concoction and swivel around on the chairs. She even tried to recreate the recipe long after it was sold, but could never get it quite right. The ending is what really caught my attention and drew me in. The great grandson explains how he is like the recipe. Lost, not understanding where his place in the world might be. Everything has changed in this small town and he wants to be like a small, traditional town. He is knowledgeable in the daily routines in life, but feels like he needs more, or he is missing something.

In the Goldberg Packet, there is a section called use loneliness. You want the reader to be able to relate in some way to the writing. Using loneliness helps the reader understand, "it's ache creates urgency to reconnect with the world." Everyone has had feelings of loneliness. Let the loneliness guide you to something that will help you express yourself and reconnect back with the world. In the essay Mint Snowball, the great grandson feels lonely. He knows something is missing but doesn't know what yet. He misses the old town and disagrees with what it has turned into, missing the local feel of a small town. Not being able to try that mint concoction that his great grandfather sold for $100. He's trying to find that place in the world where he belongs but he doesn't know where it is yet.

Fiction Packet 3

I found these stories a little bit easier to understand than some of the previous ones we had to read. Even though they were easy to read for the most part, every person could have their own interpretation of each different story. The authors kind of left that part up to the reader.

The section I paid the most attention to was the Peter Markos section. There were three different stories technically but the same theme ran throughout. I took it as since they were from the same book that these individual stories were kind of like chapters in the book. I noticed in the first story  called When it Rains it Rains a River, that the word us brothers is used a lot. "Mud, us brother, we can't get enough mud." Through out the story the brothers are always referred to as us brothers. I think the author is trying to create unity between the brothers, making it seem like they are almost one person instead of multiple. Another theme that starts in this one and runs throughout the others is this idea of mud. In this one it is almost like we are made out of mud, "When Girl looks down to see the mud that she is made from.." Mud may be a metaphor for something else, which I have not yet discovered.

The second story, The Singing Fish, also continues on with the theme of mud. In this one I was reminded of cavemen and how they would communicate, since there wasn't really any spoken language yet. "Us brothers, what we see, inside this cave, we see pictures --stick-figure fish--on these mudcaved walls." This reminded me of hyderglifics and how cavemen would draw pictures on the walls of the caves to express something or to try and communicate with one another. In this story, mud is a shelter, a need for survival, which makes it very important in this certain story.

The third and final story What Our Mother Always Told Us, depicts mud in a negative way. The brothers love to play in the mud but, "What our mother always told us was, Don't, don't go, don't go get muddy, don't walk into this house with mud..." In this story mud is suppose to  be a bad thing. The mother doesn't want it in the house, she doesn't want the brothers to go get muddy. While in the second story mud was how we build our shelter and it was needed for communicating. Throughout the stories the meaning of the mud and the significance changes drastically, from the brothers needing it to create and survive, to it being a negative quality in life.

Douglas Kearney Writing

When I first started to read Douglas Kearney's writing I immediately believed it was some form of racisim. There is one full page of just the word "Negro" with little sayings about each letter in the word. The very first suppose ably short story is called Radio, and it talks a lot about blacks and the radio. This one actually really confused me. The second stanza says, "the first black to speak the word radio knew it meant the same as blood." These lines made me think of how competitive the music industry is. Kind of like the saying, "you either sink or swim." The music industry is very competitive which could be why Douglas compares being on the radio to blood. You have to be tough and ready to work in order to music industry.

A couple pages down from the first line I picked out is another line in the story The Voltron Communiques, "monsters are coming to tear you into yourself. black lion, take that key out your chest, the screaming wind on your  back bumrushes you off your pedestal. see how it lifts your foes, too." The first part of this passage about the black lion, reminded me about the Wizard Of Oz and how the lion is going to the great Oz because he doesn't have any courage. So this part talking about take that key out your chest, meaning to me that you need to have courage even if you're ready to become a coward and chicken out. The second part of the passage talking about your foes. Everybody wants to be your friend when you're high on top and have everything going right, but when you're "knocked off your pedestal" then you find out who your true friends are, and if some of your foes are the ones who knocked you down than they may begin to rise and capture the spotlight.

Overall, I'm not sure if this is meant to be short stories. They all look like poems, more than stories. There doesn't look like there is much structure to any of the sections. Even though there appears to be plenty of punctuation throughout the whole thing, but there are rarely any capital letters, which would mean the start of the new sentence. I didn't find any flow in the story and often found myself reading it like I would a poem, not by punctuation but by the line breaks. I believe his writing has a lot of meaning but in my mind they are not short stories, but in fact poetry that may be trying to impersonate short stories.

Juice

When I first started reading this book I thought I understood what was going on. I thought it was about this person that was left in his society by himself. He left his town and when he returned the town was deserted, as stated on page 13 "I am not concerned about how the townspeople will express themselves upon their return; they could come in happiness or in extreme anger and it would not bother me. The point is that they return." As I kept reading throughout the story the theme changed. Now I started thinking that maybe the beginning was the present of the main characters life, and throughout the book he was reminiscing of past experiences he had had with people. He was so set on the townspeople returning and on page 19 he states, "In the appearance of any species there is an element of its disappearance and within its disappearance a particle of return." So while everything disappeared, he also said that many of the plants and all the fruit has disappeared, there is always that hope of them returning.

There are certain parts in this book that reminded me of other things that I have either read for the class already, or a movie that I've seen before. One line is on page 9 and its says, "The town took a child from every family, plus each child's third eldest cousin, and started to call us a gang." In the movie 300, which is all about Sparta and the wars they were in, in the beginning it shows that any couple who had a baby boy would have to give him up for training when he was very small. If the child was weak or diseased he was thrown off a cliff to face his death. The others were turned into fearless warriors to help protect the civilization. The line from the book reminded me of the movie. Another line from this book reminded me of the short story we had to read for class, Internal. "You get to a point in isolation where you have to grab the reins; you can't let the silence get to you" (Page 15). The point in the Internal when the interns are starting to lose their mental state because of being in silence for so long. This line in the story reminded me of that because it says that you can't let the silence get to you. The main character is alone in his society and still finds ways to keep himself occupied somehow. If he didn't keep himself occupied he would have ended up "going nuts" to say just like the interns in the Internal.

Overall, this story just confused me. It jumped around a lot and did not hold a constant theme all throughout. At one point he is by himself in his society, another part towards the end he is with his neighbors and one of the neighbors goes missing and nobody can find her. Some point during the story he is on a train, just people watching. Other points hes talking about his lovers. I had to closely take mental notes of where the character was during the part that I was reading at any given moment, because the setting changed so much and so rapidly. I'm very confused as to if he was actually alone or if others were around him, and one final thought, how did Juice actually play a part in this? Since the title is Juice, I figured it would've had a greater effect on the story, but it only shows up a couple times explaining how much he loved juice at one point, and at other points he just couldn't bring himself to drink more juice. What is it about the juice?!

Writing Stories

In the Lamott packet, there is one so called 'chapter' all about characters. It goes into detail about how to make a character in your story and how to make others enjoy reading about your characters. One point he made is "a person's faults are largely what make him or her likable." It may be hard to remember to make your characters have some type of fault. No human is superman, we all have faults of our owns, and characters should display some of these faults. This also helps the reader relate to the character when they are reading about them, which always makes the reading more enjoyable to read. I believe when characters seem to invincible it makes the story seem very unrealistic. With my writing I will have to remember that characters are to portray real humans, and real humans have many faults.

One section I really found interesting in the Lamott packet, still in the character section towards the end was when he said, " One final reminder: you probably won't know your characters until weeks or months after you've started working with them... just don't pretend you know more about your characters than they do, because you don't. Stay open to them. It's teatime and all the dolls are at the table. Listen. It's that simple." When I read this passage it made me think that once you start writing, never think too far ahead in the story line. Let the thoughts and ideas just come to you as you write. Let your characters change throughout the story, don't even have a set schedule for them because it may not turn out the way you first planned. Be open to your characters and allow yourself freedom to have your characters change. When I would write stories in high school I'd try to figure out the whole story line before I even started writing instead of letting my mind wander while I wrote. Lesson learned, always give your characters freedom to change and develop throughout the story.

The first writing assignment we had was to change the words in one of the short shorts that we read and then add on to it. When I first started I just let my mind wander and went along with the first words that came to my mind. I didn't have a certain path that I wanted to take, and honestly didn't know what the topic was until I was already halfway done. Instead of stressing out about trying to pick a topic and then choose words to fit that topic, I just picked words that popped into my head first and then when I got farther along in the writing I stopped and reread what I already had. After I did all that I finally decided to pick a topic. I felt that this was much easier to do because I wasn't trying to find words that fit a certain topic, instead I picked a topic that matched the words I already had down.

Short Short Stories

Most of these stories all had great meaning and I could have chose any number of them to write about. It was difficult to decide which one to write and analysis about. Some of my favorites were The Wallet and Walking The Baby To The Liquor Store, but I decided to write this blog about one of the stories that we didn't discuss in class. This didn't leave me very many options but in the end I chose to go with Morning News by Jerome Stern.

In this story, the beginning line gives way to the whole story, "I get  bad news in the morning and faint. Lying on tile, I think about death..." I take this line as the main character gets news that he has some illness that is causing him to die sooner then he thought. He reminisces with his wife about a tombstone that they saw a while back that said Peace at last. That makes me think that this guy did not know about his illness, or possibly thought it was getting better, and then the doctor hits him with the bad news. But the saying on the tombstone makes me think that his illness has caused him to be in pain and he just wants peace from it all.

When people find out they're going to die soon they start to think about what they did during their life and what they still would like to do. In this story the man thinks about what he wants to do, and states, "I feel a failure of imagination. I should want something fantastic-- a final meal atop the Eiffel Tower." He can't think of anything that he wants to do that is spectacular like that, and he blames it on not being brought up religious. The thing that I find kind of funny in this story is that at the end he says him and his wife drive to the discount warehouse and they pick out the largest television set in the store. It makes me laugh that that's all he can think of to do when he knows he is going to die soon.

In the end this story makes me actually think what I might do if I was in his situation. I can't imagine knowing that I was going to die soon and possibly be relieved because I wouldn't be in pain anymore. Wondering what I might do to go out with a bang. Something fantastic maybe. Makes me feel a lot of emotions towards this man in the story and his wife even, because as much as the man is going through the illness his wife is right along for the ride with him.

Finally (Short Stories 1)

First, I would love to say how happy I am to be done reading poetry! I love reading fiction, and can comprehend it so much better, but now with my reaction to one of the short stories. Even though it wasn't that short, I read Internal, which is part of Contagion by Brian Evenson.

While reading this I became very interested, and came up with multiple questions. At the beginning this intern works for a Doctor Rauch, which raised the question of what kind of doctor was he? I assumed he was a psychologist because of the section that explained the books he wrote and also he sends his intern to study the behaviors of his brother. Sending his "irregular intern", which brings up another question of why is this intern so irregular? The intern seemed like any other intern, doing their job and following directions. When the intern gets to the apartment to study the brother, it reminded me of a horror flick. The imagery was so vivid, I actually thought of the movie 1408, which is a horror movie about a person getting trapped in a hotel room. One thing that I don't quite understand about this section is why Doctor Rauch would send his intern to an apartment for his brother to be studied when clearly no one has lived in the rooms on either side for some time. Was he trying to study his intern, and just told them that they were doing some research for him?

The second part caught me off guard a little bit. I thought it was going to end the same way the first half did, with the intern going to observe some one and then coming back empty handed, but it took a turn. The apartment seems to be a lot like the first apartment that the intern had to go to to observe. What really through me off was that instead of the intern observing, they in turn are being observed. Which makes me think that Doctor Ragan set his intern up to be observed by his brother, or maybe it wasn't even his brother...   The ending left me wanting to know more about what happened. Who was actually observing the intern, and what part did Ragan have in the whole set up? UGH! The ending is too abrupt, I want to know the whole story!

City Eclogue Part 2

So just like the first half of the book, the spacing is a little weird. In some poems it would have two lines and then without completing the thought until the next stanza, the author would put a lot of space. I noticed that in this half Ed Roberson used a lot more punctuation along with the odd spacing, unlike in the first half of the book when he rarely put any punctuation and just used the weird spacing to help the reader gather their thoughts before they continued on reading. I also felt like in the first half the author was more direct about the subjects of each poem. It was easy for the reader to tell what the poem was trying to say, while in the second half, I had a hard time trying to understand the subject of some of the poems.

One poem that I found particularly interesting was on page 121. The title of it is Escape Training: Instructor's Flying Rappel. At the beginning I thought it was related to somebody who taught rock climbing because of the first few lines, "I jump backwards off the cliff to show how it's done: one   two footsteps hit off the face of the rock then I land.." When I think about this line, I can picture an actual rock climbing instructor demonstrating how to use the rope and trust the rope while doing this activity. Towards the end of the poem my thinking took a turn. "You can't hold a note forever you run out of breath   you run out of rope    There's a limit to all of our maneuvers." This line reminded me of human life. We can't live forever, eventually our "rope" will run out, so there is a limit on what we can do in that lifespan.

There was also a second poem that I believe I understood. Not Brought Up on page 123 was about racism. "..was the numbers of people we wanted justice brought down upon --- that many gone along keeping silent kept in office for---" Even though people knew that bad things were going on towards African Americans they didn't take any action against it. Possibly in fear of being hurt themselves or even killed. Instead of putting them and their families in danger they stayed quiet and just let the torture happen. "The lynchings each   of the thousands of times it happened the whole white town come down  to a smokey picnic.." Many African Americans were lynched just because of their skin color and some whites would even burn their houses down just to run them and their families out of town.

City Eclogue Part 1

Ed Roberson talked about many issues in society through his poetry. Some issues he explained in different ways through the poems were the issue of segregation and pollution of the land. In most of the poems he didn't use a lot of punctuation, excluding just a couple in the first half. Instead he used odd spacing that had the reader pausing. I believed that the spacing was to add emphasis on the part that was to come after, or it could have been for the reader to think through what they had just read. Another thing that I realized is that he doesn't always put a title on the poems, but instead uses a number or doesn't use anything to recognize what poem it is. As we discussed in class, some of the poems were hard to tell if they continued onto the next page or if they ended, and the two pages were different poems.

The song that I looked into further during class was titled Height and Deep Song. I believe that Roberson was trying to explain child birth and the process of in this certain poem. This poem also contained the weird spacing that had the reader stopping and processing what they had just read and anticipating what was to come next. There was no punctuation at all throughout the whole poem, which could be why the spacing is present. 

One line that describes part of the child birth process is when it says, "with the wonder the words can come up with stripped   in the scramble of birth spill--        the speechless" This reminded me of how when the women goes into labor, the pain can leave her speechless. Not being able to bear the pain, but also not having words to explain the pain she is experiencing at the moment, leaving her speechless. Another line that refers to the birthing process is "the body arrives screaming    written all over it" I believe that this refers to the child being born, and already having "things" written on it by the society and family values. The second that a child is born society and values start to develop that child into the adult that they will be in the future. The process starts the second that child is born and the parents start shaping their child. 

Poems, Poems, Poems

And again this week, there were many poems that still didn't make any sense to me. Some of them just seem like the author decided to put random words together and call it a poem. I don't get it how some people can actually get certain meanings out of those poems. One poem that we went over as a class, which I didn't even know where to start when I read it on my own, actually made sense to me during the discussion. This poem was the scattered one with words all over the page, literally. The author was Susan Howe. When I first looked at this poem I thought the ink exploded, or the typewriter went crazy while she was writing this, but come to find out she set it up like this on purpose!

I found out that this poem was about a battle and how writing can become a battle. I know it's about a battle because of certain lines, such as, "Parted with the Otterware at the three Rivers, & are Gone to have a Treaty with the French at Oswego & singing their war song The French Hatchet Messages. This shows some battle going on with some country or army going to have a treaty with the French. Another example about a battle is "Of the far nations over the lakes Messengers say The War Belt & singing their war song The French Hatchet Messages." This is about some soldiers singing a war song while marching.

The author ties this into writing by having some sections of the poem about writing, such as, The Frames should be exactly fitted to the paper, the Margins of which will not per[mit] of a very deep Rabbit." Oddly she states that the frames should fit the paper, while her poem is very scattered all over the pages. There are also more examples of both the way writing should be and of a battle. The two things are linked in this poem because the author is trying to state that writing can be chaotic like a battle, and writing can be a battle within itself. Some writers may even go crazy trying to write a poem, or a story when they can't come up with ideas. The structure of this poem shows the craziness and chaos that can occur while writing and also during a war.

This poem stood out to me, not only because it was crazy, not structured like the others in the packet, but also due to the meaning. I understand what it is like to have writer block. Every time I'm asked to write a poem I end up sitting,  staring at the blank page for ten minutes, just trying to think of something to write down. I often get writers block, even when writing a research paper. I really liked this poem due to the fact because it wasn't structured and writing sometimes has no structure to it.

Poetry of Torture?

The first thought that came to my mind when the class was told that we had to read not one, but two packets of poetry, was you have got to be kidding me! This will be absolute torture. In high school I never understood how simple words all grouped together could come together to make a story with so many meanings. There was always that one kid in class that would come up with an "off the wall" meaning to the poem and I never understood if we were actually reading the same thing, or if I was just missing something. So lets say I was not excited to have to read a bunch of short poems in a row...

To be honest, some of the poems made absolutely no sense to me, but there happened to be one that was more mysterious to me. In the first packet of poems, the poem Where it Passes, Untouchable really stood out to me. I'm still not to certain who the author is referring to in the poem but I really enjoyed the imagery that appeared in it. There are a couple lines that popped out to me. One of them was in the first stanza ending in the last line. "Stubborn as a mirror's tain, that gives nothing" I find that this was clever due to the fact that the tain is the back of the mirror, which is normally a solid color and doesn't give any reflection away. So with this object or person being stubborn as a mirrors tain, meaning they don't give anything away.

The next line that I found quite interesting is at the end of the second stanza into the third one. "Blood powdered my fingers, speckled my cuffs." When I first thought of blood I thought of the red, slimy, liquid form of it, so I didn't really understand how it could speckle the cuffs of his shirt. During the classroom discussion it was brought up by one of my fellow classmates that he thought the same thing I did, until he thought about when blood dries. When blood dries it creates a powder like substance, which then could speckle the cuffs of a shirt. 

I still don't completely understand the poem, I don't understand if he is fighting with himself or if he was betrayed by someone else. The imagery within the poem is powerful though. I can picture almost every single part of this poem. This was the poem that really stood out to me out of all the others. I still may not like poetry and I probably never will, but at least I understood some concepts in this particular one.

A little about me (CRTW 201)

My name is Bobbi Menke. I'm a sophomore here at Eastern, and I graduated from Marine City High School in 2012. I'm here studying accounting and minoring in communications. In high school I was actively involved in the tennis program, receiving two consecutive All- Conference medals, and a first place at the divisional tournament.

More into my personal life; I'm an only child to a single parent. I'm very family oriented and am always up to just relaxing with my family. I have two older cousins that serve more as siblings than cousins, and they have always helped me with obstacles that I have come across. My aunt is one of my role models and has been my motherly figure since I was young.

I'm a very independent person. I'm not somebody who will willing ask for help, I'd rather find a way to do it myself. Naturally I am very strong willed and goal driven, nothing is out of reach in my mind. I don't let the little things in life get me down and I have realized throughout my life that there is always something more important then the useless drama. I overreact about a lot of things, and stress about the little things that come up.

So that is me in a nutshell!