10,11,12,13

The Guitarist Tunes Up
I felt like this poem describes the passion of a musician very well. The carefullness before strumming a note. It ads a love theme that could be taken either as a love between a man and a woman or a lvoe the man has for his instument. It also shows the power he has over his guitar. "Command both wire and wood". That line was very powerful. Cornford shows the bond a musician has with their instument very well.

A Poision Tree
I found this poem very interesting. It talks about emotions we can all relate to, such as anger and fear. People may not want to admit they have these emotions, but it is a very common occurance in all of us. Blake talks about being angry with a friend but eventually getting over it. Also a very relatable subject. We have all been mad at a friend. Most of us dont take it to the extreme that Blake descirbes, but we have been mad none the less. I felt that this was a very dark poem but a very deep one as well.

Turning Pro
This peom really hit home because I grew up playing sports. Everyone who has ever plalyed a sport has a dream of seeing their name on a scoreboard. People cheering you on, in awe at your success. All througout sports you will also have people who doubt you. The moment you prove them wrong is the best feeling ever. This poem really describes how important it is to never give up. I really enjoyed this poem, even though I have never played baseball.

The explosion
This poem paints a picture to me. It paints a picture to me on a mine explosion and all the things that came along with it. It talks about the wives that lost their husbands. It also talks about all the men going to heaven in "beards and moleskins". This poem really makes me sad because you can almost feel the emotion of the mourning people. Yeats did a really wonderful job on this poem.

Poetry blog 7,8,9

You fit into me by Margaret Atwood is a very confusing poem. I cant tell if shes meaning "you fit into melike a hook into an eye" positively or negatively. A fishing hook lodging itself into an open eyeball is not a pleasant thing at all. (not that I would know) If she is trying to describe love. I would reccommend love, even at it's negative points,  with a better picture. Rather than a hook getting stuck into an eyeball. Just my opinion though.

Writing by Jan Dean is a very witty poem. She uses many examples I'm sure many teachers see on papers today. Selling errors, punctuation, grammar, every mistake you could think of. I picture Jan being a teacher venting  about her student's writing mistakes in poem form. I'm sure seeing the same mistakes over and over again on assignments gets really annoying. Jan is expressing her anger in a unique way.

Even though the lesson of the falling leaves is a very short poem, it is a very powerful one. Lucille uses such a simple thing such as falling leaves to represent love, then faith, then grace, and then the most important, God. It's funny how an everyday thing that none of us even pay attention to can represent so much more.  This is a poem you could just sit and think about all day.

Poetry blog #6

In backwater woods is a very interesting poem. Mary Oliver describes the woods and fee experience so detailed it's almost as if you are there. You can picture the lake. I live by a lake so these visuals are very real to me because I remember the cattails. The line about cinnamon makes me think of the cinnamon sticks you get around Christmas time that you would sometimes stir your tea with.  I feel that this poem is about her reminiscing about her childhood and growing up in the woods. I feel that it's unclear what the meaning is though. Could you maybe explain this to me Mrs. White?

Little Apocolypse Response

This poem is kind of hard to interpret. It is a sad poem, mentioning death. Yet it is also very moving poem with lines such as "the robin, great warrior, above". The line "Coffins and sugar bones awash in the sudden sun."  was very interesting to me. Was this trying to say dead bodies? What are sugar bones? I also got the vibe that this poem had a religious meaning to it. "Then, from the black horizon, four horses heave up, flash on their faces." This is where the religious meaning of this poem struck me. Charels Wright paints a picture very well. You can picture the destruction and you can almost feel the distress of the situation. I reall enjoyed how real this peom was.

Evening Concert

This poem is very relatable to me.  I have played he viola since middle school up until this year. The visuals that the author displays paint a very vivd picture in my head. I can just picture the lights dimming on the stage. The feeling you get when you are about to play. The moment he describes the beating hearts, and the black lines. You can picture and feel the nervousness of the musicians , looking at  the notes on the page. I believe this poem would touch the heart of any musician or anyone that enjoys music.

Poetry Blog

I chose Still Memory by Mary Karr.
This poem I feel is about an adult who has a dream about memories from her childhood. She describes the smells that she remembers from her chilhood such as "coffee's smoky odor" and the "crude oil and solvent" that her dad smells of when he comes home from work. She describes the dream so deep, these memories she probably hasn't thought about in a very long time. I feel that the author uses imagery very well. You can almost picture being in the house. Smelling the smells, and seeing the things she sees. I believe every adult has these moments where they look back and remember the little things. Most of the time, it's the little things that we remember the most. Such as the smell of a certain meal your mom would always cook, or the smell of the cleaner your mother uses. Or the sounds and sights of growing up. Certain traditions will always stick with us. For the author, these certain things came in a dream. Things she may have thought she had forgotten.

Poem Post due yesterday

 Mr Fear by Lawrence Raab was a very strong poem in my opinion. Being a worrier myself , it especially struck me as a relatable poem.  It is talking about "Mr Worry" the man who gives our fears at night, always giving us new fears to trouble us.  "He follows us, he keeps track" This describes how our owrries grow with each day.  We all seem to have that one, irrational fear that gets to us the most. Raab describes this very well in this passage "Maybe he smiles when he finds the right one. Maybe he's sorry" I felt that this poem could aslo be about nightmares."Fear, let me have a small brown bat and a purse of crickets like the ones I heard singing last night out in the stubbly feild before I slept and met you." This reminded me of having nightmares about things that scared you in the day or things you saw that day. I really liked this peom. It gives a great perspective on worries. A very different, almost folk tale like vision on fear and or nightmares.

Stomach Flu

Unfortunately i've had the stomach flu this weekend so I promise i'll do my poetry blog tomorrow when I feel better. Thank you for understanding!

Scene of my life.

Setting: Jeffco Stadium in May for the Colorado State Track Championships
Moriah, Alyson, Kacey, and Ashlee were preparing to run the Sprint Medly Relay Finals.

Written from Moriah's Point of view.


I could hear the crowd cheering until right before the official tells us to "Stand by your blocks" The moment he says that, my heart drops. The nerves really start hitting me. "This is really happening. We have a chance of being state champions. Here's my chance to prove ( The person I am talking about shall not be named) wrong. Show her that she was wrong about me. "

"To your marks!" Says the Official. "Set!" I'm shaking with anticipation by this point. Then the gun goes off. The race had begun. Kacey starts it off by running her hundred meters great. Then Alyson takes the baton from Kacey for another hundred. Alyson pulls us up a couple spots.

"We have a chance" I'm thinking in my head. "We could actually win this." Screaming at the top of my lungs, I am a combination of nervous, anxious, excited, and motivated to run my leg of the relay (Which was the final leg of 400 meters) Alyson hands us off in a great place. Only one more leg until my turn. Ashlee is handed the baton and runs her best in the 200 leg. We are tied for first at this point. I couldn't believe the opportunity and the incredible pressure that was about to be handed into my hands. I was scared. But I had to suck it up and run my heart out.

The time comes where Ashlee hands me the baton. As soon as I get the baton, I take off. Running for my life. All I can hear is Ashlee screaming "Go Moriah!!!!" I couldn't let my relay down. I had to win this. For the first 200 meters, I took a nice seat in the middle of the girls. Many people were confused by what I was doing. But i knew how to run my race.  However, the other girls running tried to box me in. Trying to make it so I couldn't move past them. There was no way I could let this happen. "No." I say under my breath. I make my move. I broke through the box and started to start my kick. (I never have a kick, but somehow today I did. ) I pass one girl, and then another, and another. Suddenly I passed the girl in first.  "I can't let her pass me. I've got to keep going. " I thought. I gave all I had left till I crossed the finish line. I had finished first.  I was exhausted. The girl in second ran up next to me, put her arm around me and said "Good job girl, you did it, you are such an amazing athlete." That was an unreal moment for me. That a girl that had almost won a state title congratulated me. I stand up, look to the bleachers to see my coach smiling. I couldn't believe this had just happened. We were state champions. My relay ran to me smiling and screaming. This was the moment we had been waiting for. We went to the podium and took our pictures. Still half out of it, my smile was less than perfect. Oh well. They hand us our medals. I head to the bleachers to talk to my boyfriend, Mario and my parents. Mario congratulates me with a kiss. "Good job, I love you. " he says. So sincerely, yet he was in the zone. He was serious because he had his own relay to run. The families exclaim and rejoice in our success. We were on top of the world until we received the worst news of our entire state meet....

To be continued....

Kite Runner Response

I was really impressed by The Kite Runner. I wasnt expecting me to like this book because  I usually hate the books we read in school! No offense!  :) Hamlet and Hedda are just not my thing...

Anyway, I think this novel gave me a really new understanding of culture in the Middle East and how our culture is so different. Like you said in class, kite flying is like our football. I also enjoyed how you got really attached to the characters through out the novel. I really felt for Hassan.  I also wasn't aware that there was still use of servants. That shocked me! It also gave me a better understanding of their friendship.


I believe this novel would open a lot of people's eyes on how good we have it in America and realize the little struggles we have everyday don't even compare to most of the struggles that kids around the world face everyday.

Next time you assign a book, I'll make sure to read it on time :)

Poetry 1 1/13/13

To Myself Response

 The poem I chose was To Myself by W.S. Merwin because I thought it was a personal poem. I believe that Merwin is talking about the time in everyone's life where they are trying to find themselves. "Even when I forget you I go on looking for you I believe I would know you I keep remembering you " This quote describes this process perfectly. No matter how hard you try to find yourself, sometimes it feels like you just can't. You feel like you have, but something about yourself just doesn't feel right." other times I am sure you

were here for a moment before"   This poem stuck out to me because I feel that high school is a very common time where people find themselves. Find what they like, what they don't, who your friends are and  find out who isn't, find out what kind if person you want to be in a relationship with, and most definitely find who you REALLY don't want to be in a relationship with. Beong a high school senior, I know that these four years are filled with all of these things.  I believe this poem describes the struggle of finding yourself very well. Obviously, I could be wrong about this poem, everyone takes things differently. I have read analysis's(?) online and some believe it is a letter to a former lover or a previous friendship. I guess it just depends on how you read it.