Poem 4: Poetry Response

The World Is Too Much With Us

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

I really enjoyed this poem it's crazy to see a poet from that time to write about how we need to stop being sucked in to technology an appreciate the natural beauty around us.(Boy would Wordsworth be pissed about how the world is just a bunch of consumers now!)
It honestly gave me the vibe of that time eras hippie or more modern definition of a tree hugger, these are the ones going against the social norms and have a greater appreciation for things than us consumers. To me I read this more as Wordsworth's message to society to wake up and stop taking our planet for granted before it's too late. In line three to four Wordsworth is saying we no longer have that deeper connection with nature or are planet and because of this we won't have an emotional connection to it as we destroy it. He is also saying that we are selling our souls to these objects and praising them as though they are gods, and he wants no part in this. Our generation now most young adults can't even interact with one another or even put down their phones for more than a few minutes, so since we see the consciences praising this technology does we have a much easier time understanding Wordsworth's point of view. But in those times I feel as though he was probably made fun of for his views or thought to be ridiculous or crazy (Probably going to look that up after I finish this). 
In a weird way this poem also reminded me of Korea. In Korea their economy is skyrocketing and they are beginning to become global leaders in such a short amount of time. Since they went from being a rather poor country to now a high class society, they crave more power. Instead of wanting more power of more land or things that other countries usually want power over they started to become huge on plastic surgery. Now they are number one in the word for plastic surgery and just shows since they finally made it on top and couldn't find anything else to take control of why not change something we all have no control over. 

Poem 3: Poetry Response

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State, 

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. 

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, 

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. 

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. 

Just like most of the short poems on the list this poem is straight to the point but at the same time has a deep impact. After reading I assumed this poem is taking place during World War 2 since Jarrell was alive during the time, as well as the line that spoke about the dead gunners 'wet fur froze' which made me think that the battle that he was fighting in took place in Germany or in one of those European countries. It was interesting that Jarrell decided to use mother in a poem about death, when mothers represent life and fertility. To me that line showed me two things. First that it showed how he has lost his innocents and second that he went from life to death. But then in the second line he says "I was hunched in its belly" I knew he was talking about the turret.

I was actually having a really hard time writing about this poem and decided to talk about talk to Eva to spark some ideas. As I was going through each line with her and explaining the ways that I was viewing it, as I spoke about the mother part she began explaining how the gun turret is a womb and as we started connecting this idea of the turret being a womb he finally clicked. The Gunner could be seen as an aborted baby *mindblown*
So first when they spoke about how cold and dark it was made me think of the baby starting to die in the womb. Then they spoke about being six miles from Earth meaning that the child was going to be born in 6 months OR THAT CHILD WAS GOING TO BE SIX FEET UNDER * mind blown even more*
The nightmare fighters can be seen as the doctors that are doing this procedure and when it says "I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose" THAT'S THEM TAKING THE BABY OUT OF THE WOMB **EXPLOSION**

Poem 2: Poetry Response

I really enjoyed this poem, it was warm yet sad. It was ironic that the title is The Youngest Daughter when it's about how the daughter is getting older with her mother. Since I'm into asian culture and Song said what the mother and daughter were eating I knew the story takes place in North Korea. What gave away that is was North and not South was when it said "She knows I am not to be trust, even now planning my escape." The beginning of the poem really intrigued me. "The sky has been dark for many years. My skin has become as damp and pale as rice paper and feels the way mother’s used to before the drying sun parched it out there in the fields. Lately, when I touch my eyelids, my hands react as if I had just touched something hot enough to burn. My skin, aspirin colored, tingles with migraine." This showed that the daughter has been kept inside where there is no sunlight while her mother goes and works out in the fields. In Korea the paler your skin the more attractive you are, since that means you have money and don't do labor out in the fields, as tanned skinned makes you unattractive since that shows you are a peasant. Knowing this made me wonder between the difference of the two women. Is the mother sacrificing and working long in the fields so her daughter did not or is her daughter forced to be cooped up like that and that's why she is planning on fleeing.

Poem 1: Poetry Response

Surprisingly I liked this poem, it was short, sweet and to the point. I like how even though it was written years ago that it is still relevant today. It reminded me of that group of kids in high school who think they're all cool because they smoke weed all the time and get drunk. Ironically those are the same type of people that think that they're better than everybody else and feel the need to show off as though the rest of will really care. When I see these teens brag about doing any of these things I so get annoyed at the stupidity and ignorance of these people. I never understood the need to feel popular and do these things, where are these people going to be later on in life? When you surround yourself with these things you only end up lonely and lost. Or you end up ruining your life since you worried so much about those things that were never really important.

One of the 21 Poems

Mending Wall by Robert Frost



I had sort of a hard time understanding this poem. I got that the wall separates the two neighbors and that the one neighbor is being sketchy since he doesn't want his neighbor to tear down the wall or even see what he has on his side of the wall, but the big idea just wasn't clicking for some reason. The one part that I was really trying to analyze was when the man's neighbor kept repeating the phrase "good fences make good neighbors." It seems as though the man's neighbor is isolating himself from society and finds a comfort in nature. I found the wall to be very ironic, the neighbor uses it to separate himself but that's the only thing keeping the two men from never speaking to one another.  After reading I looked up what good fences make good neighbors really meant, to me it was only the neighbor's excuse to not have the man come over or to have the wall knocked down.

Diagnostic Exam: Othello Reflection

Out of all three readings I felt the most confident reading this one. When I read it the first time I focused on repeated words and tried to get the literal mean out of each line. After that I read it the second time, this time I focused on detail, the relationship between Othello and the other characters as well as Othello since he's the one speaking to us. After I did both of these readings and wrote down what I got from each way, I read through the TP-CASTT paper and then read through it a third time will filling the chart out. Once I finished filling out the TP-CASTT I compared my notes of my first two readings to what I had written in the TP-CASST. I realized that after doing the TP-CASST I understood the play so much better and found it easier to answer the questions.
The questions that I found that I need to study more are the ones that have to do with rhythm, vocabulary and the paraphrased lines (question 37). When checking my answers I noticed that the answers that I got wrong for this section were always that one answer that's there to F you up. The right answer was always the one I marked as my second choice, only one of them was marked as my third. Seeing this made me feel a lot better about this poem/play unit we're doing now. I felt I was going to do the worst this unit and that I wasn't going to be able to understand the poems/plays, but when seeing what I got right and wrong it showed that I'm looking for the right things, that I just need to brush up on my terms so that one answer that seems right will stop tripping me up.

Spring and Fall Reaction

Picking apart a poem and analyze it line by line like that was pretty hard for me. When reading we are always asked to read the whole story and just get to the main points or a sort of summary. When looking at the big picture it's okay if you didn't understand a sentence or two here and there, more than likely as you read on it will become to make more sense to you. When you reading something line by line like that, it makes it harder to go off as a whole. But I can also see how reading a poem like this can help, especially when trying to find parts to talk about in your writing or just the multiple ways you can analyze something when all the pieces you broke down are put together. I'm not very good when it comes to poems, but going through different poems and alternating between this method of reading or doing the TP-CASTT a few times a week I know I will become a lot more confident in poems in no time.