text:
Linguistics video paper 639W 3P
eccentric intellectually separate piece guess
Ten page paper on Melancholia 10
Coleridge, Keats, and Wordsworth really liked their melancholia because they
were afflicted by problems what gave them their melancholia. John Keats, for
example, was less than five feat tall and died of Tuberculosis at the age of
26 which he got at 19 swimming in the river. His brother died in his arms coughing
up blood and his dad was literally killed by a horse, and he was a virgin who
didn't like his girlfriend, plus he was a cockney and the critics didn't like
him. He was the ultimate carpe diem poet (probably because he was young) and
lived as intensely as he could. The poor guy didn't really do very much in his
life, but he composed more poems in a short period of time than anyone else.
However, he made the most of his short cummings and had a positive attitude about
life and did his traveling by reading. His writing is about the human heart
and its conflict with itself. He was very connected to ferry land. Keats had
very little melancholia compared to Coleridge.
Coleridge was also afflicted by constant
pain and new time was always pressing on him even though he lived a pretty long
time. He wrote in fits and starts and there was urgency in the man's moment.
One of his past times was 'writhing on the floor howling and screaming 'like
a dog because of his pain. There sure was no fluff in his writing. The man
was too hard on himself because he was addicted to laudanum. Too bad he wasn't
addicted to nugs, they probably didn't even know what nugs were. He took his
guilt too far because he was unhappy at love and couldn't forgive himself for
getting divorced and couldn't bring himself to marry Mary Hutchinson. At least
he valued friendship and loyalty above all else. He was so smart he was a bit
of a psychoanalyst with his primary and secondary imaginations; and mind you
this is before Young and Frued One thing that contributed to his melancholia
was his liking for excuses. He dwelled on his excuse on why his Kubla Khan poem
wasn't the greatest ever because of that darn tax collector who ruined it for
everybody. His poetry was subjective and emotional and melancholious. Like the
Lime tree Bower poem. Coleridge almost drowned swimming and got a disease of
the nervous system and was treated with opium and got addicted and was a neighbor
of Wordsworth and was non fined to the city and was a poet of memory and talks
of the dark side of nature unlike Wordsworth. He was preternatural- What is god's
relation to us?
Wordsworth was very melancholious
also because he was an English romantic poet. He was born in Northwest England
300 miles from London which was a long way. He had a decent education and he
was saturated in nature and gets energy from nature and had a successful family
life. His strength in in his simplicity and his innocence maintains itself and
all of Coleridges characters are extensions of his own complex personality.
He had a 'Theory of Creativity' that
was almost like Jung's theory of the subconscious. We have a primary and secondary
imaginations. The primary imagination is the conscious mind, and the secondary
imagination is were the information is stored.
These guys seem to feel a need to
balance negativity with positivity. A slumber did my spirit seal by Wordsworth
is a perfect example. The first stanza he talks of such positive omnipotence
of a human, but counter acts it in the second stanza. I think you can make a
good poem without paying any attention to negative things like weakness. It
seems like every poem of his goes downhill in the last stanza, except for Lucy
Gray. Wordsworth was one of the more positive romantic poets, and he was still
melancholious which is a freaky thought. It is understandable that Keats and
Coleridge were melancholious because of their hard lives. It is interesting that
the popular poets that most people liked were the melancholious ones, or most
all poets were melancholious This must mean that most of England was melancholious,
which actually is an impression that I had of the whole western world at that
time. These poets are so good at saying the most melancholious things, for example,
this is a thing that Keats said about himself that pins the tail on the donkey:
'My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what
blackwood or the uarterly could possible inflict'. It seems like these 'meloncholions'
each thought that 'Their burden was the heaviest', so to speak. My theory about
the inherited creative western thought is that the artists bring to sight the
truth that isn't apparent and needs to be seen. What needed to be seen was the
melancholia of English people as well as the beauty of the earth. The people
of those days were very melancholious and didn't realize it, and they didn't
regard wilderness as beautiful because of the Christian belief that flesh and
other earthly things like witches are bad. These poets were still a little confused
because of their portrayal of witches and netherly spirits as being evil. I
bet children being afraid of the dark came from the same origins. A good example
of Englishmen paying attention to negative things is in Keats' poem about King
Lear. He realized that it was time for Englishmen to come out of the dark ages
of thought and realize the crazy things that they do too much of. The romantic
movement was more anti-fascism than it was pro-nature. A lot of the time anti
fascism requires an emphasis on negativity for a while, but they know this is
just a phase that they are going through. The last sentence of King Lear is
a good illustration of my point: 'Give me new phoenix wings to fly at my desire'.
I appreciate their sensitivity, these
guys would be considered sissies by today's standards, with all of their talk
about weakness and melancholia, but this was probably just a trait characteristic
of the poets of the day, trying to reverse the heartlessness of the common man
of the day.
None of these dudes were very political
either for fear of execution, so they had to get their point across in a subversive
and cunning way; which you can see carrying forth into today's thinking through
writing. The most political poems of these three men were The Ruined Cottage
and Michael. The most subversive are The spirit of St. Agnes, Christabel, and
Lamia. What point he is trying to get across in these subversive pieces I am
not too sure.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge is recognized
as the most melancholious of this trio. Melancholia is not completely negative,
it has a hint of dulling mercy mixed in, keeping it sweet in a painful way.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, is a good example of this romantic phenomena.
The poem is endurable because of the delightful imagination it provokes because
of this splendid journey. But every crewman but one dies, and the hero endures
unspeakable hardships (like getting black lips from dehydration). One reason
it was such a good poem was because of the moral: Don't kill god's creatures
who are trying to befriend you. Christabel was the perfect poem to provoke a
sensed of melancholia because a bad thing happens to a good person.
Another consistent characteristic
of these three authors of stanza and verse is that their characters are frequently
asking for help from beings from the outer realms. One example is in Christabel:
''Mary mother, save me now!'. And in The spirit of St. Agnes, the beadsman
requests help from the fairies. One possible cause for this phenomena was their
feeling of helplessness against sickness, nature, and their dictators. Coleridge
was quite good at making melancholic sentences like this one: 'A grief without
a pang, void, dark, and drear, a stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, which
finds no natural outlet, no relief, in word, or sigh, or tear'. That is the
melancholy that these men are talking about. Here are some more: 'Or the dull
sobbing draft, that moans and rakes upon the strings of this Aeolian lute, which
better far were mute'. 'Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind, reality's
dark dream!''...No wish conceived, no thought expressed, only a sense of supplication;
a sense o'er all my soul imprest that I am weak, yet not unblest... sense of
intolerable wrong, and whom I scorned, those only strong!' 'To wander back on
such unhealful road, plucking the poisons of self-harm!' 'Vain repetition! Home
and Thou are one'.
When Coleridge wanted to be positive,
he was good at it though. The Eolian Harp is a very beautiful poem because of
these lines: 'The one life within us and abroad, which meets all motion and
becomes its soul...Rhythm in all thought..The mute still air is music slumbering
on her instrument....The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main...O'er them
sweeps plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, at once the soul of each,
and God of all? Yet, even this poem becomes meloncholic in the end with this
line: '...A sinful and most miserable man...'. Wordsworths poems weregood but
most of them ended the same. In the last stanza of each one, they turned sour.
This is not true for Simon Lee because it is a long poem and it is one of his
more meloncolious poems. In We Are Seven, the whole poem is centered around
the girls fantasy land, and in the last stanza he returns to reality. In Lines
Written in Early Spring, he speaks about the beauty of spring the whole time
until the last stanza, where he says: 'Have I not a reason to lament what man
has made of man?' Expostulation and Reply and The Tables Turned are his only
poems which I can't classify as meloncolious. In Expostulation he is advising
a person who is meloncolious to not be meloncolious, and with The Tables Turned,
he is doing the same thing. All of his short poems that we read were relatively
possitive until the last stanza, except for Lucy Gray. I find it quite amusing
that in Preface to Lyrical Ballads, he says he wants to write poems that '...relate
or describe them (incidints), throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection
of language really used by men'. Because I can understand the preface, but his
poems seem like a foreign language to me. So I don't know if the way common
people in England of those days talked like his poems, or his Preface. One synynym
for melancholy is pensiveness, which means dreamy thoughtfulness. Which means
that these three men were very sensitive to thoughts and feelings that most
people aren't. When Wordsworth describes what a poet is he says: 'To these qualities
he has added a disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things
as if they were present; an ability of conjuring up in himself passions...the
poet principally directs his attention...and the mind of man as naturally the
mirror of the fairest and most interesting qualities of nature'. Here he means
that poets are mostly concerned with describing menial things as ÒEmotion
recollected in tranquillity', which don't really mean anything to normal people,
but after the poet describes it in his melancolious way, people will see it
differently forever. Because he thinks that people donÕt look at nature
in as a meticulous way as they should, as he says: 'Poetry is the image of man
and nature'. Much more greatly would I appreciate poetry that could convey possitive,
energetic, and chearful emotions, and have a happy ending,
Melancholia is England of that day, and probably even today to an extent more stretched than that of America. I sure am glad I live here now.
5 page conversation from creative writing class 14
bud, do you like your aliens?' The American said to the non American, because
he was in Ireland.
Kids need to think for themselves 215W 1P
I wasn't taught to think for myself. Growing up in class, I felt very suppressed, it shouldn't be that way. Kids need to be encouraged to express their thoughts in school, and the only way to do that with any results is to encourage them to feel totally free. Meaning a complete disregard for their dressing, attitude, language, facial expressions. School is not the place to teach kids about out cultural mores, parents should do that. Have you ever heard the term, spreading yourself too thin? The only thing schools should preoccupy themselves with are: Learning how to learn. Everybody wants to know why it is, but we are tricked into thinking that it is no use, because if we don't learn it in school and at home from our parents why bother. Schools should kick out sentence structure, how to write a proper footnote page, and subjective teacher opinions, and all those other things that patronize kids. If a kid shows interest in head shrinking, help them research it. Research papers should be the primary focus of schools. Kick math out, we have computers to figure all that shit out. Teachers need to be unassuming. Don't let a kid know that you have a negative opinion about them.
How we should handle standard English in our schools 540W 3P
The worlds problems come from people not understanding each other because they
come from different schools of thought, suffering from ethnocentrism. The way
for us to understand and respect each other, is through accurate communication,
and the best way for us to communicate accurately is to speak a language as
similar as possible. Many scholars agree, like Sherwin Cody in 1915:
The possibility to formulate a wold language 315W
The human race really
needs the regular people of the world to forget their differences, and share
with each other their individual and common knowledge and goals. Now, the masses
have more power than ever in influencing how the world works, because of our
ability to communicate with each other. There has been such cultural evolution
in just the last thirty years, from desegregation to the internet, I think it
is possible for most world citizens to know English within the next twenty years.
Indian Professor Yash Pal agrees:
How aggressively should we spread English? 174
Making English the official
language of America, and banning the writing of Spanish subtitles on signs government
documents is wrong. It retards Spanish speaking immigrants from learning our
language and how to cope in America, keeping then separated longer. There is
no danger of Spanish-only sections of America. We are in the age of communication,
and we intermingle with each other too much for total or irreversible separation
to be possible. Note that in the early nineteenth century, American had less
dialectical differences than a much smaller England because of the interaction
of its citizens. James Fenimore Cooper said, 'This resemblance in speech can
only be ascribe to the great diffusion of intelligence, and to the inexhaustible
activity of the population, which, in a manner, destroys space.' (5)(Hel 423)
How should we make people more literate? 205
Other languages should
still be taught in schools, but we should teach our own language more thoroughly.
Not enough people can communicate their thoughts on paper. We need to teach
children how to express themselves on paper before we teach them what the present
day accepted writing style is. Children should be encouraged to be more spontaneous
in their writing habits, even if it means more unintelligible rough drafts.
The teachers job should primarily be to show children how to turn free-form,
raw writing into standardized prose; which means proofreading, proofreading,
and more proofreading. We spend too much time making children memorize grammatical
titles and rules under their own obscure contexts before they are developed
enough to appreciate it.
What kinds of English should be taught in our schools? 245
The standard American dialect should
be used in our schools. Teachers should definitely discourage the use of slang
in writing to an extent; to what extent exactly is hard to define. It should
be teacher's job to formalize our language as much as possible, but we need
to be very diplomatic about it; so as not to discourage the students and make
them feel like bad writers. Correcting rough drafts that have a lot of inventions
and slang should be done in a way that the intended meaning isn't altered at
all. If necessary, there should be an explanation at the end of the paper explaining
why there were so many corrections, reading something like this: 'Your coinages
and creativity are brilliant, but I want to know that you are able to write
in a way that every English speaking person can understand. You will have plenty
of chances to use you cult writing skills later'. We should give every student
who tries an A for effort; bad grades discourage kids.
What kinds of English should students accept? 441
I had a teacher once who said that
it was great to be a good creative writer, but it didn't mean anything it one
doesn't have good grammatical ability. That is like saying, 'It's fine to want
to help the world, but you wont do any good unless you have a college education'.
By saying things like that to students, they just make them forget their special
worth to the world, and discourage them from wanting to share what they know.
Writing is one of the best techniques to allow people to understand what they
know, and share it with others. So teachers first goal should be to make students
WANT to write NO MATTER WHAT. No matter spelling, grammar, language, attitude,
content, NO MATTER WHAT. If I knew the benefits of writing when I was in second
grade, I might have an extensive diary on computer by now, or even be a published
author. My teacher Lillian Lang once said English teachers should band together
and make schools stop punishing kids with writing, because it gives writing
a bad reputation. I agree, make them clean up garbage or sing Christmas songs
or something.
How should teachers treat English spelling discrepencies? 235
If English is going to become the
world language, it has an unprecedented prerogative to stand up to the responsibility
and 'clean up its act'. Therefore, making English spelling purely phonetical
with little or no exceptions must be a priority second only to maintaining cultural
integrity and spreading the language. We should make changes like the Swedish
philologist R.E. Zachrisson's model of 'word signs', and make changes like:
Ph to F, C to K in words like create, sense to sens, years to yearz, bread to
bred, give to giv, through to thru, though to tho, catalogue to catalog, programme
to program, dressed to drest, etc... But this effort should be done by bold
individuals, and not people with language titles.
Standardization in large scale testing 157
Today's standardized tests may be conceptually culturally biased, but they are not wrong in using accepted speech. Even if they don't teach the nationally accepted norm in inner city black schools, it is not the standardized test writers jobs to bend to accommodate minorities just because their schools are doing a disservice for them. Perhaps, if the standardized test givers were perfect, they could accurately analyze the reputations of the schools of each test taker, and make up a different test for each school, but this is impossible. Instead of expanding the language of the standardized tests, we should make sure that each student in American gets a valid inculturating education.
Linguistics Final 1828
This guy has his head so far up his
ass it cracks me up. He has no idea what slack standards are; he thinks slack
standards are skipping grammar, grades, standards, and judgment to focus more on...what? He doesn't
know what because he is such a dumb motherfucker. He is so dumb he believes
a study that says, 'Exactly 56.3 percent were unable to figure out how much
change they should get back after putting down $3 to pay for a 60-cent bowl
of soup and a $1.55 sandwich. (College people: The correct answer is 85 cents.
Take by word.)'. If he is so smart, why doesn't he explain himself? Why do we
have racial problems? Why are we destroying the environment? Why do kids hate
school? He thinks college kids are 'dumb' because they are bad with math; well
we are as good at math as we need to be.
Linguistics Test 1417
1) Conversational Maxims- a) When
Pinker says: '...The act of communicating relies on a mutual expectation of
cooperation between speaker and listener', he is correct. When we informally
speak to each other, we always break grammatical rules. When I say to my friend,
'Shall we destroy this mountain', I don't mean that we plan on exploding the
mountain and sending ashes thousands of miles like with Mount St. Helens, to
leave nothing but a stump; what I mean is that we should merely climb to the
top of it. Many ambiguities in speech come from subconscious connections we make
for things. For example, athletes are like warriors, seeing how sports were
invented to keep their warriors in shape in case of an invasion from the neighbor
city-state. When a snow boarder says, 'That run gave me a hard on', he doesn't
really mean it. Or when a girl says this about her marathon friend: 'I gave
her a Mountain Dew and brought her back to life', she doesn't literally mean
it. The reason a 20 year old Bike racer wouldn't say to his 90 year old grandmother:
'I kicked their asses so hard they were whining like dogs, then we went to the
hot springs', because she simply wouldn't understand that it is all for fun.
When we transcend class boundaries, our ambiguous sentences have to go bye
Take-Home test by Kyle Pounds
Metamorphosis 509
Why did Gregor turn into an insect,
and how is the insect idea carried through in relation to being human?- The
reason that Gregor turned into an insect is really quite simple. If he had turned
into an elephant he would have become mad and stomped everybody on his way out
the door and that would be the story. If he was an orangutan he would have
ripped everybodies arms off, and if he had become a porcupine or a skunk he
would have made the story very gruesome and displeasing to critics. This book
was 'The most dramatic evidence of the power of literature since the Romantic
movement', because turned into something that would make the reader feel very
helpless and sorry for Gregor, stirring emotions. So what are some helpless animals?
Not mice because they have big teeth, and not flies because they spit acid.
A big beetle is perfect.
15 Day unit plan for English
(Madaline Hunter Format)
Subject Area - English
Grade Level - 7-12 50
My philosophy on how to teach kids how to write
|I think too many people in America
can't write very well at all, mainly because of writer's block. This shows a
need for more creative writing, and research papers in school, which encourage
imagination and creativity more. People also don't know much about grammar,
so obviously our present technique of teaching English needs to change. The
English teaching technique I grew up with comes from an age when the world
was aa lot simpler and black and white, when kids were much more satisfied
with doing what their elders told them; and by judging the apathy of the common
American they apparently weren't asked to think very much. They also had attention
spans that lasted more than twelve seconds.
Everybody knows practice makes perfect, yet I can't recall a single time when a teacher proofread my paper and gave me the chance to correct it for a better grade. Students learn by correcting their mistakes, so teachers should direct their energies to proofreading, and more proofreading for their students. If they don't have the time, they should solicit the help of a local college practicum student or volunteer to help them. The state should even pay people to help teachers.
By making creative writing dominant to grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure diagrams, teachers could teach the math-like aspects in a subordinate, yet relating way to the students own creative compositions. This way they will know their paper inside out, and will be proud of them. People need to learn to communicate on paper at an earlier age, and they need to be able to to enjoy writing papers whether they are easy to read or not, without having to worry about getting red all over then and getting a poor FINAL grade for not complying with the Turabian book. People not only learn to write, but think by putting their thoughts on paper, then making them legible.
In all practical purposes, you don't even need to know what the parts of speech are to be a good author, as you don't need to know how to write French in order to speech it. Teaching these boring aspects of literature so much more important than communication, which really counts.
We could start this more individualized curriculum by reducing the class size.
The Community of Learners middle school, at 12th street and third avenue, works with an %85 budget per capita compared to the standard thousand student high schools; yet they have six teachers and about sixty students, so it is obviously feasible to have more one on one interaction between students and teachers.
The first class I teach, I will explain my belief of education to get them motivated:
''The classroom is where we learn about why and how things happen, in the past and present; so we have a solid context to work from to make the right decisions in the future.
The classroom is also where we first learn how to communicate with the rest of the world.
The classroom is a sacred area, where we should all be doing our best to educate ourselves and each other. Therefore, I really appreciate full respect form you. I don't accept any disrespect directed towards anyone in this class. I will warn each student two times a week before I will take (X#) points from you. Assuming this is the beginning of the term, here is my unit plan-'.
Fifteen practicum hours at Escalante Middle School
The fifteen hours I did at Escalante Middle school reminded me of my Junior High experience because the building and the kids looked the same. Vonnie Walker and the other teachers I met there were a lot better than the Junior High teachers I had. It seemed like she respected them, I was always getting embarrassed in front of the whole class for breaking rules I didn't even know existed. The first couple of days after Vonnie's class I observed a science class next to her. One day they shot off a rocket made by some of the kids in the class, which seemed kind of pointless because they had shot a lot of them before and everybody knew what was going to happen. If I was the teacher I would have said, 'Do we really want to shoot Billy and Susie's rocket today'. I asked some girls if they liked the teacher (who was a semester long substitute), and they said they didn't at all because she wasn't dynamic at all and basically just let the kids do whatever they wanted. I find that response encouraging because it shows the kids think. If I would have been one of the kids in that class I would have said I liked her because she was easy and didn't bother us.
given assignments to complete and let the smart kids help the s lower kids. I think teachers take introductions too far and needlessly bore the kids to sleep.
Day 1
Anticipatory Set
|Explain the importance
of creative writing: We all have something to say, so thinking of something
to write shouldn't be a problem. Getting your thoughts on paper in the first
place is completely different from proofreading, to make the composition coherent
to other people. It is important to write on something we are interested in,
so they will start out by deciding what they want to write our research paper
Objectives and Pupose
|1) Pass out
the syllabus for the next three weeks, and explain what the unit will be like.
2) Read the article titled, Comparison between and rough draft and a proofread version to the class, telling them how I wrote the papers.
3) Tell them how many facts are in each article, showing how I can condense facts.
4) Present information (off the top of my head) on what they might want to do their papers on.
5) Get into a class circle to discuss what we want to write our research papers on.
Input - In this unit, the students will learn how to
|1) Efficiently and effectively take facts from the source.
2) Stresslessly put facts coherently on a rough draft paper.
3) Proofread papers so they are coherent and have good arguments.
4) Describe what the different parts of speech are.
5) Describe what the different parts of the sentence are.
6) Describe the different types of sentences are.
7) Describe and identify what a well composed paper is.
|1) Read some of my condensed
articles, and explain how I made them.
2) Read some other articles that have more side comments in them.
3) Explain that they can be as subjective or objective as they want.
Checking for Understanding - In the
group discussion, I will learn what the kids are interested in, and what I can
do to increase their motivation.
Guided Practice - When I present information
on possible research subjects, and ask individuals what they want to write about,
I will challenging their memories and desires.
Independant Practice - 1) Collect
at least five different sources on their subject.
Key Questions/Discussion Lesson Plan Format
Topic - Research paper.
1) Talk about my papers and interests.
Comparison Between Rough and Final Drafts
Day 2
Students - Label these things on their one page introductions:
Students - Label these things on their one page introductions:
Day 3
Students- 1) Write another page in their papers (sighting the facts),
and map the mechanics in them.
Do not write: We need to go to the Dr.
1) Numbers of more than two words should be written in numerals, not
words: 13 vs. thirty three.
a) Capitalize names: John, Turkey, gulch, etc..
Separate the idea, so it flows better and makes more sense.
1) Separate items in a series.
1) Are used between independent clauses in a sentence if they are
not joined by and, but, or, nor, for, and yet.
These two grammatical tools are
used interchangeably for the same purposes. 1) For titles of books, plays, movies,
organizations, periodicals, and so on.
Mechanics Map For
`cause you don't have to stop reading.
1) Read the material and get the facts down.
Day 5 (Sample Mastery Learning Lesson Plan)
First - Collect their mechanics mapped papers.
1) Explain most of the mistakes that students make, but say that
grammar and clarity isn't important in rough drafts, only getting their thoughts
1) The homework.
Example: Next to the river.
Example: ...has been sitting...
Example: ...about
you and me...
Example: Running through the river,
scruffy made many splashes.
Outwitting the hounds, the fox easily escaped.
Example: Walking is good
Reflexive personal pronouns - These
have -self, or, -selves attached.
Example: ...was running.
Day 6 (From now on, my own format)
1) Collect the labeled Parts of speech, and parts of the sentence in
their Introductions.
Students- Add the last 15 facts to their papers.
Hide Nothing!
This country has so many problems because we don't communicate. One of
the reasons that we don't communicate is because we all write each other
off as lunies and decide not to talk to them; we aren't interested in
each other. This is a side affect of having a one-sided consciousness, only caring
about one sort of thing, for example: People who stay in cities and work all
the time, as apposed to outdoors hermits who never work. Or monks apposed to
politicians. These vast differences in lifestyle is natural and not to be condemned,
but thinking that you way is the best and other people should be like you, is
when polarized (one sided) consciousness becomes harmful. Like certain people
preaching their views to others, and ignoring the common denominator between
them and others, as if other views aren't worth note. Or people who think
getting a computer job for %45,000 is a smarter thing to do than dropping out
of school and being a ski bum, outdoors guide, world bicycle traveler; because
they are too emersed in the financial gain and 'security' (which
really means addiction to warmth, caffeine, sugar, television, clean clothes,
a bed, warm showers, etc..), and laziness. This 'ethnocentrism'
forms barricades because of their disinterest in learning and addiction to control.
This polarized-ethnocentrism is the cause of the environmental, and foreign
relations problems of our country, and our own interpersonal problems.
1) Read the material, and mark with
a pen on the edge of the page (so you can see the mark as you thumb through
the pages) the interesting facts that you find. This is better than using a
high lighter because you don't have to stop reading to note the fact.
Do this with all of your sources, until you have enough of the kind of facts
that you want. Make sure that your sources will give you well rounded information.
Look at your facts as if you are trying to convince your audience as much as
you can that what you are saying is true.
Day 7
First - 1) Return their proofread parts of speech.
Discussion on Sentences
1) Pass out the hand outs titled, About sentences, and Types of sentence fragments,
and explain them.
About sentences
Example: Although Joe made seven dollars that day. Should be: Although Joe made
seven dollars that day, he wasn't able to go to the show.
Example: Kicking the ball. Should be: Kicking the ball, Omar fell in the mud.
Example: The assembly line
was invented by Henry Ford. Who started the Ford motor company, Should be: The
assembly line was invented by Henry Ford, who started the Ford motor company.
Day 8
|First - 1) Collect the proofread first third of their papers.
In class work - 1) They will get into groups of two who they choose, to proofread the rest of each others papers.
Checking for understanding - Traveling around helping them out.
Closing - I will pass out alerts to students who have catch up homework to do.
Homework - For them- Finish proofreading their papers, due the next day.
Day 9
First -
1) Return the proofread first third of their papers.
Educational Kinestheology
1) I will explain what Educational Kinestheology is, and pass out the hand out
titled, Educational kinestheology.
Educational Kinestheology
These exercises will help you integrate your multiple intelligences by integrating
the left and right side of your brain and body. By doing exercises to physically
cross the mid-line of your body helps connect all the aspects of our being.
These exercises will help you access information in your brain that is sometimes
hard to 'pull out of the files'. They will also help you be more creative and
organized by opening both sides of your brain.
E.K. Worksheet
1) Hold your arm out, say you have the color of eyes that you don't, and have
your partner muscle test you. Then tell the truth, and have your partner muscle
test you.
Day 10
First -
1) I will turn their final proofread papers back.
Day 11
First - 1) Collect their final proofread papers.
Evaluation Strategies
How I evaluate this class will be very subjective as to how the class is. Some classes will probably do a lot more work than others. This extended lesson plan will be set up to allow any kid to get an A if s/he wants to, because they will have the chance to re-do every assignment, including the test. The only real due date is the end of the 15 day unit. I will give full credit to each assignment turned in. The proofread final will be a separate full credit grade. Students who can't keep up with the homework could choose to not do certain assignments and suffer the consequences; however they will be required to take the grammar test. They will know how may assignments they can skip and still get a passing grade, because I will pass out the rubric at the beginning of the unit. However, they are required to take the tests. I will also pass out my extended lesson plan to any student who wants it.
Participation - 1 point a day. 15
points. This includes bringing materials everyday, and doing what you are asked.
Day 1
1) Introduction.
1) Collect at least five different sources on you subject.
Day 2- Talk about how to do a research paper.
Due -
1) One page introduction to paper.
Day 3
|1) I will turn your introductions back.
2) Discussion on clarity in writing.
3) Introduction on parts of speech, and parts of the sentence.
Due - 1) Composition labeled one page rough drafts.
Assigment - 1) Write one more page to your paper, sighting facts, and mark the mechanics in them.
Day 4
|1) I will return their homework.
2) Discussion on facts, foot notes, and bibliographies, in research papers.
Due - 1) Page two of your research papers. 2) Fixed introductions.
Assigment - Collect 20 facts on your topic.
Day 5
|1) I will turn your papers labeled with parts of speech, and parts of
the sentence back. and finished introductions.
2) Discussion on types of sentences.
Due - 1) 20 facts.
Assigment - 1) Add first 20 facts to your paper,, and label all the parts of speech and part of the sentence in the new addition.
Day 6
1) I need for more creative writing and papers rage imagination and creativity
teaching ana black also attention punctuation teachers way that relates about
getting red all over them learn to class size. middle school budget for obviously interaction happen
in the past and present, right decisions in the future. It This, so expect full
respect from won't 'which their explaining and how they are different in each
article, showing how to write coherently on a rough draft Explain Explain Explain
what on possible research subjects be memories their interests AC proper
training techniques'.
Day 7
|1) I will return your proofread 20 facts.
2) In class work on adding facts to papers.
Due - Last 15 facts to your paper.
Assigment - 1) Label and fix all the sentence fragments in the first third of your papers.
Day 8
|1) I will turn your proofread re-written one page introduction back in.
2) In class work on inclusion of facts on paper.
Due - 1) The labeled and fixed sentence fragments in the first third of your papers.
Assignment - Final proofread papers.
Day 9
|1) I will return your 55 facts back.
2) In class, group work on writing paper with 15 facts.
Due - Final, proofread papers.
Assignment - Catch up day.
Day 10
1) I will return your final 55 organized facts, and your rewritten one
page introduction.
1) I give full credit for every finished assignment. As long as it is turned
in by the end of the unit.
Example - Back there.of shall have been would have beenE making comparisons.
EParts of the sentence in their iand each other and vice versarink getting a
computer job for $or eir disinterest in learning and habit oftheir false security
in secrets; for example b) Be sure tforgotten as you proceed.3 of the other
persons paper. I will w.Take the dog out.ving Susie there at the corner. Dsinvolving
ingyour how you feely havetheir confidence in what they are thinking about.
Letter to mom
Dear mom, i am here at school and it is fine. I don't have any moey right now but I have credit on my card so I am not strarving. I made a girlfriend named Cathy and another freind named Andy. I hope Bowser is doing good, don't let him eat too many bones. My classes are good and my teachers arae good, and i like the town here. I will call you as soon as they hook your phone up.
Final Draft
Dear mom. I made it and am settled
in. I am out of money already because of all the anitial expenses, but have
credit on my school I.D., so I can eat here at the cafeteria. I already have
a girlfreind, Cathy, and another freind named Andy. Give Bowser my best and
don't let him eat too many bones. My classes are interesting, I like
my teachers, and Durango is great. I will call you on Wednesday when your phone
is hooked up. I love you.
Michael Pounds was born is Austin, Texas, on May 22, 1979, to Winston and Larrain Pounds. He has two brothers, Wyndham and Kyle Pounds, and currently resides in Boulder, Colorado.
Opinions with Facts
I love Amanda so much.
She is the nicest person ever. Whenever she talks to anyone she gives them her
complete and undivided attention. She is beautiful, everywhere she goes people
turn their heads in awe. She is an absolute goddess.
The most important thing to remember
is to have fun.
There are four things you need to do to be a good competitive cyclist:
1) Stretch- If your muscles are docile, they will be less susceptible to injury because they can more stress before ripping fibers; and they can process lactic acid more efficiently.
2) Lift weights and to 30 second intervals- If you aren't powerful enough to hang with the pack during the sudden speed increases, it doesn't matter how strong you are because you will have to break wind for yourself and work %30 harder.
3) Ride a lot of miles- When you have good endurance, not only can you keep your strength to the end on the long races, but your muscles can recover from the sprints that happen during the race, you can recover better after hard days, and you have more confidence.
4) Get plenty of sleep- When your body is working hard day after day, it needs a lot more time to process the lactic acid and rebuild muscle fiber.
5) Have a good diet- A hard working body needs many more nutrients than average to rebuild muscles fibers; and also to keep from getting sick because constant intense exercise weakens the immune system.
6) Have fun- The most important thing is to maintain a relaxed attitude. Emotional stress takes a lot of valuable energy that should be going to recovering the body after intense exercise.
If you are going to be a good competitive cyclist than you need to stretch, lift weights and do intervals, ride a lot of miles, get plenty of sleep, have a good diet, and be happy. A hard working body needs many more nutrients than average to rebuild the muscles; and the most important thing is to have a relaxed attitude, because emotional stress takes too much energy that should be used for recovery. Plenty of sleep is important because the body needs a lot more time to recover from intense exercise. You must stretch because limber muscles can take injury much better and can process lactic acid more efficiently.
WELL susceptible Lift weights and endurance exercise POORLY that should
be used to recover exercise Weights are important because they build valuable
muscle mass to have the power to hang on to the pack. And most importantly miles
are important so that the body may mold into a riding machine.
We should make and make and in a in
their own voices We shin Durango you, and
Being able to write is important because we need to be able to communicate our
thoughts. We need to communicate our thoughts because we need to understand
each other. We need to be able to clearly convey a point view to somebody who
believes the opposite, without offending them and covering all of your points.
If everybody understood each other the way we are supposed to, than there would
be no more injustice, because nobody is evil.
How to teach writing - Rough Draft
Everybody can be a good writer, all
writing is, is a thorough communication of your thoughts on paper. If you are
a good talker, you can be a good writer.
There are two important mistakes my educators made:
1) The spectrum of what I could
write about was too narrow. Too often I was asked to write about something that
bored me (Like the Renaissance), so naturally I wasn't interested in doing
a quality job, because it wasn't my job. Not to say the Renaissance isn't a
good subject to write about, but when we are teaching high school students how
to wright, we need to make it as fun for them as possible; they can write about
the Renaissance in college.
1) The first thing that must happen is you should put your thoughts
down on paper that are raw and come from the heart.
Middlemarch 9
I learned a lot about victorian England by reading Middlemarch. It was a small town where all the upper class people knew each other. It reminded me that the upper class and lower class really lived apart from each other. The rich people lived in a really inefficient way; in big houses with a lot of furniture and servants, when they could have taken care of themselves. Their houses where huge. George Eliot did a brilliant job connecting all of these characters together into a huge book; showing how societies work and the injustices that happen, making us think about how a group of people should work like.
Tertius Lidgate was the perfect example
of this. He came to Middlemarch because he wanted to bring a revolutionary hospital
there and make Middlemarch a cultural center with a university. All of the citizens
knew that what he was doing was good, but the only person who helped him financially
was Nick Bolstrowd, and that was only because Tertius ran the hospital for free
and the way Nick wanted him to, and Nick needed friends. When Tertius ran into
financial problems because of his working for free nobody cared to loan him
a thousand pounds; as is they didn't really care about the hospital.
This was a very ironic thing to happen to the Dr., seeing how he was such a
selfish person. His wife Rosamond had him in a sticky situation also, because
she was so concerned about what other people thought about her and had to either
live in their big house or else go to another town altogether. Like when she
said, 'It is so hard to live here with disrespect from the people'.
Will Ladislaw was the classical leader of the new movement towards justice. He convinced intelligent but slightly confused Mr. Brook that the poor people deserved the vote, and was a very good public speaker. The author did a good job showing how new thought forms take control with characters like Ladislaw coming into the picture of things. Starting out as a nomadic artist my sponsorship from a rich relative, and then finding his voice by seeing the situation of the world through young eyes. It was good that George Elliot put him into parliament, showing a success of progression.
Nick Bolstrowd was also a brilliantly formulated character, showing the authors views of the old way of thinking. He was a dedicated Christian with obscure religious views who never really did a whole lot of actual good for society except donate some of his money to Dr. Lidgate's hospital. It must have been fairly avant guard for a Victorian writer to write a book that had a religious person embezzle money. I would have thought that religious people would have had more respect. Mrs. Elliot did a good job at humanizing him by having him give his estate to Fred Lindsey and Amy Garth, after Amy's father Kaleb Garth wrote him off as a business partner.
The main theme in this story for me was the relationship between the sexes. They showed consistent personality traits. The women were always (except for Tertius once) the ones who cried. Many times about relatively minor things; like Rosamond crying because Tertius was leaving and she thought they weren't ever going to marry, and Dorothea when she thought she saw Will and Rosamond kissing. The men were always the ones who got sarcastic and showed anger first in an argument. Like when Tertius said to Rosimond, 'Maybe you should wait longer, then I will get my neck broken and solve all you problems'. Also all the times Mr. Cassabaum got angry with Dorothea because she was just trying to persuade him to get going on his book.
Another thing I learned about Victorian England was how much money meant to them. I wasn't fully aware that as a rule poor men and women aren't supposed to marry each other, at least from the upper class way of looking at things. I chose Middlemarch because I heard it was about the plight of women, so I thought it wouldn't be focused as much on the upper class male way of looking at things. But even this book didn't focus very much on the lower classes. There were three good scenes concerning the lower class. For example, the time Mr. Brook went to one of his poor tenants homes and told him to reprimand his son for poaching on his land, and ended up getting reprimanded himself because he charges too much for rent and shouldn't be hogging the hunting grounds. The most amusing scene was when Mr. Brook gave his ridiculous speech to the commoners who didn't like him on his nomination to parliament and got ridiculed, laughed at, and had food thrown at him, because they all knew his real views about the commoners. The third time that had any significant role of the commoners in it, was kind of making fun of them. When they ran off the railroad surveyors and knocked one of them out; all that had to happen for them to feel bad about what they did was for Kaleb Garth to tell them that it was inevitable that the railroad was coming and it would eventually benefit all of society so it was futile for them to rebel. They all acted like little children and admitted that what they did was wrong.
Another thing that was played up
in Middlemarch a lot more than in modern books was the mocking and gossip that
happened. I found it interesting that even though Doctor Lidgate was very educated
and kind he was still very sexist. For example, when he was talking about his
wife Rosimond, 'You can't talk about science and medicine to a woman'. I heard
him say some very wise things though, when he was talking about Fred's illness,
'Grief is a kind of illness'. His religious spiritualism was accused of making
people feel bad instead of good. consistent personality traits. I don't understand
why fathers need to give their permission for their daughters to get married,
why don't both parents have to give their permission? Sometimes I get the feeling
women didn't take control because they were lazy and didn't want anything to
do with responsibility and the stress of working. about I was disturbed
by all the communication problems they had. The couples (the Cassabaums, the
Lidgates) didn't share with each other their goals very smoothly and had a lot
of silly arguments caused by simple misunderstandings. For example, when Rosimond
secretly wrote the letter to Tertius's uncle Godwin requesting the loaning of
the thousand pounds, and Godwin replying with such a sexist tone: 'Don't set
your wife to write to me when you have anything to ask... I never choose to
write a woman on matters of business'. However I don understand Victorian Middlemarch inefficient furniture friends Another
way Doctor Lydgate was mistreated was when he accepted money from Mr. Bolstrowd
even though he gave the money back, and helped Mr. Bolstrowd out of the meeting
hall when he was accused of his past crimes, he suffered more gossip that spread
as extreme as being accused of helping to kill the old drunkard. less people
The love between the two of them is genuine, but she was more concerned that
he was smart and in a good classing than the fact that he was a doctor. The
two of them did have a bit of a communication problem though; like when she
had to beet it out of him how much money they owed and when they both agreed
that they would sell their house and she had a perfect chance to sell it to
Ned Plymdale and Miss Sophy Toller for their marriage but didn't sell it and
didn't tell Tertius. And he said some sexist things to her personally also,
like when he reprimanded Rosamond for asking for money for him, '...To interfere
with your ignorance on affairs that belongs to me to decide on'. It was a tragedy
that Cassabaum didn't ever write his book, but at least he made the decision
to write it and started, so he knew he was going somewhere when he died. Dorothea
isn't to blame for never finishing it, rather she is to be commended for helping
him complete it when she was asked. German's believe Will and Dorothea eventually
got married, which would have made a very interesting story because she was
so caring and helpful to Mr. Cassabaum and they weren't even compatible, she
would have been an enormous help to Will and blossomed into a magnificent woman
with the help of his young fresh mind. the Eliot parliament His not having the
nerve to tell Dorothea that he loved her for such a long time was accurate for
a person like him. It makes sense that he got angry when he found out that Dorothea
was to be cut out of Mr. Cassabaums will if he married her. It shows the honor
that the people of that day must have had; honor wouldn't play itself out like
that by today's standards. The Will Ladislaw of today would have written Mr.
Cassabaum off as a silly old man and would have just been Dorothea's boyfriend
so she could keep the estate. It seems as though the people of Victorian England
live very strictly by a lot of unwritten rules that they feel they must follow
or else they will go to hell when they die or something. Other rules Victorian
English people involved manners, they followed them almost religiously. Even
in the nasty of situations they opened their arguments with, 'May I say...'or,
'If I may ask...' But even his money donations were half hearted; for example
when he backed off on the hospital funding and refused to loan Tertius Lydgate
the thousand pounds he needed even though he knew Tertius was as strapped as
he was. He also showed a moral weakness when he allowed the severely ill Mr.
Roufles to drink alcohol when he knew it would kill him. , showing how he tended
to spread his guilt to others, which is one of the most dishonorable things
to do in my book guard steal Eliot humanizing estate 'Stone Court' Vincy Caleb daughters
relatively weren't Rosamond Lydgates misunderstandings Rosamonde amusing parliament
views surveyors, saying 'You big folks makes money , and the poor get pushed
aside' Caleb inevitable
Caleb Garth was a classical character essential to any good novel about a community.
He played the role of the solidly reliable and good hearted humble man always
did the right thing and never let his emotions carry him away. Among the noble
things he did was to loan Fred Vincy money that he didn't even have to pay off
a debt, and when Fred came and sorrowfully told him he couldn't pay him back,
he showed his understanding and sympathy for Fred's situation rather than scold
him and throw a temper tantrum. Then showed Fred more trust by giving him a
farming job when most if not all of the other people didn't trust him. Not many
people are so trusting. It was also good of him to relinquish his business with
Mr. Bolstrowd and not further his bad reputation by not telling other people.
His humble nature was also controlled by self dignity. For example, when he
told Mr. Bolstrowd of the bad news and Mr. Bostrowd said, 'Well don't you tell
anybody else,' Caleb replied with, 'Why should I have said it if I didn't mean
it? I am in no fear of you. Such tales as that will never tempt my tongue. 'There
was a lot of barstool gossip about Doctor Lydgate because of his dissecting
of humans and the gossip about Nick Bolstrowd after he got in trouble was almost
unbearable to him. Perhaps one reason for all of this gossip about them from
the common people was a symptom of them feeling left out and not understanding.
Like they really didn't understand that Lydgate's dissecting was helping his
knowledge about human sickness. It isn't their fault they feel left out, the
education wasn't as well rounded at that time. After reading this book I am
more glad than ever that I live the life that I live; I don't think I would
have a good time at all if I had lived in England at that time.
Paradigm shifts - Why we must Believe 4
We must believe because belief makes the world go around. Columbus found America because he believed there was land on the other side, Edison made the light bulb because he believed the electricity Franklin discovered could illuminate a house. Those who don't believe don't think, it is the same thing as close mindedness. Look back to the time of the Roman Catholic church, they didn't think about what Galileo was saying, they just KNEW what they knew because they always knew it. It is amazing how easily people can get stuck in certain ways of thinking and not be able to escape for hundreds of years; I think that is the reason we die, because you cannot teach old dogs new tricks. The paradigm of the world has completely changed so many times, from all of the superstitious cultures around the world, like indigenous cultures taking metaphors like that we came out of the earth through four levels literally; to individuals completely changing their attitudes about life. Now with all this technology our society in general is about to totally completely change its attitude about life. No longer will the most powerful and aggressive ones be the people in power, but the gently, networking sociable people who utilize the strengths of all constituents of the population. I am not implying that they will be different souls, but these souls will be working differently. In debates, there won't be winners and losers, just people offering their take on the situation, with a holistic attitude about the whole affair at the end of it with the individuals of the audience to decide; because the relationship between the individual and the society will be different that it is now: People will no longer do certain things and act certain ways just because everybody else does, because the media will grow to such a point, that everyone will have their own internet site, and even TV station, so people will just gravitate to what their particular style gravitates to. To that one might say, "Well I don't want that! We will just all group into our own clicks and become homogenous". But it is not education and exploration that causes homogeny, but rather ignorance, and a small group of people having a stranglehold on just a few channels and newspapers is ignorance of diversity. Just look at what happened to America, sure the Chinese and Indians group together amongst themselves, but they get along much better. People must remember that we are basically good, and the fundamentalist Christians will be forced to realize this as all the new stuff starts to transmute from frustrated rock stars to empowering chanters of freedom, and when we stop hurting the environment because some bodies water powered engine design gets on the internet, thus disempowering the oil companies from suppression (which, by the way, has already happened, GEET engine from some town just west of Colorado Springs). But we ain't seen nothing yet, I have just been speculating on what we see every day. When we really look at the big picture, and bypass our own personal little takes on reality that we have been born with, we will undergo a bigger transmutation in our lives that the man born with slaves and dying with black people running their cities. What I am talking about are the aliens. When you listen to all the stories that people are afraid to tell in fear of ridicule, seriously, and read all the book written by these aliens, and take into account the vastness and the scientific history of the universe; it becomes clear that all of the superstitions in the past came from true stories of people called gods who come from other planets, and those silver discs and red triangles and shooting stars that change direction are actually vehicles driven by these gods who are watching us. When we take this into account the missing link makes sense, and all of the strange cultural similarities like all indigenous cultures having the same story about the Pleiades, that seven sisters came down and wanted to marry the prince of make today, the stories about Pluto and the big planet we can only as of now gravitationally detect, all is explained. We all probably have miraculous stories to tell but we bury them in fear of ridicule. I saw a saucer five minutes after I prayed for it, in the form of lights in the distance of the desert blinking at me from left to right then right to left, them inward in the red green yellow that I was so fond of then. Plus a couple months ago when my huge three foot long windshield crack suddenly disappeared and two days later my gapped teeth suddenly coming together. People can give each other the screw faced evil eye to stories like this until the stories seep into common knowledge and then it becomes a reality, and we all forget the great change we made. Just remember one thing, if you were to drop your great grand dad off in Denver now and show him around he just might have a heart attack or lock himself in a closet or pass out. Moral of the story, until people can say what they please in the land of the brave and home of the free, institutionalized education is nothing more that a variation of the 15 century Vatican, and of no use to people seeking the truth. And with the internet, if they don't start taxing us up the wazzoo for it, we are on the high road to a positive new age, woopty doo.
Romantic Literature Journal 100
Wordsworth- 'Lines from Tintern Abbey'
|I had trouble comprehending what he was saying because of his archaic writing style, I think it will take a little practice. What I think he was saying was how when he goes to Tintern Abbey he feels very at peace and his mind and emotions open up. His feelings open up. Coleridge- 'Work without hope 'It seems to me that he is talking about how all of God's little creatures struggle through the winter, hoping and waiting for the summer. His assumption that critters like the summer more made me think if they really do; or if they also look forward to the winter when it comes'. Keats- 'When I have fears 'This poem is a perfect example of European's fear and paranoia of a higher power doing things to us that are beyond our control; as opposed to other ideas about fate being always in our best interests in order to teach us lessons. I do relate to him though, and wouldn't be surprised if I write something like that one day.
|Mary Shelly's Frankenstein was a
very well written book. You sure do feel what is going through the minds of
the characters. I would like to write like that one day. I sympathize with the
monster more than Victor because he was good. Victor knew what the monster looked
like before he came alive so victor was blind to himself. I like the idea of
a 180 degree turn in emotions in a split second, and that some people may be
like Victor, but nobody I know. Victor's constant horror is very well described
and I guess reflects the times somewhat, how people like to be scarred and stuff.
Those people must have been afraid and/or exited about the future, much how
we are now. One important thing this book did for me was open my mind or emotions
if you will, to how people back yonder were like us and not totally ignorant
and evil like I kind of had the impression since childhood. I find it comforting
how people accept strangers and have sympathy for each other back in those days,
it may sound weird, but I felt kind of arrogant about those old-schoolers. This
idea also helped to make me aware of how monkeys and such have personalities
like us, and of course that monster. That monster was such a great individual,
so smart and strong and durable, if that weenie Frankenstein would have just
trained him right he would have had a very beneficial person or race. I would
be evil and kill also if I was so rejected, after all, he in a lot of ways was
emotionally like a child having not been around for very long, and kids through
temper tantrums. It was the perfect cap to the story showing us the extent of
Frankenstein's folly in fearing the monster when the monster killed himself
when he could have kept killing and looting; what honor and courage to kill
yourself so you don't hurt any others. This was the ultimate tragedy and a bag
of chips because Frankenstein made so many cowardly decisions. He could have
had a hunt down with the monster much sooner but was afraid (Shelly never really
explained why) to let others know the truth. Usually I have sympathy for dumb ass
characters like Victor, but not this time because of all his biffs. I thoroughly
enjoyed this book and read it very quickly (amazing for such an old book) because
of her oh so thorough job of explaining the characters thoughts and emotions.
I really do aspire to write like Mary Shelly some day. Not the greatest story
but the writing style is magnificent. If I could write like that I would have
good stories about smart people and make tons of money and fame and honor and
what not. William Wordsworth- From reading his introduction, I am aware of his
extreme dedication to poetry; seeing how he moved four miles from Coleridge
to discuss his works. He had a hard life, it seems as though a lot of poets
of that day had a hard life. Was it the day or the poetry of my mind? I find
it interesting how he had a 20 estrangement from Coleridge. I could see them
fighting about something totally simple that neither of their big egos would
let up on. I wonder what it was. He definitely was an opinionated man; having
gone to France to help with their revolution even though he wasn't French. His
life had some intense happening also, like having a baby with a French woman
at such a momentous time. Simon Lee- This poem makes me sad. I never really thought
if their was social security or not in those dark ages, apparently there was
none, and people just died when they couldn't fend for themselves anymore. This
is a barbaric system, that even puts us lower that some animals I am sure. If
I was a decision maker of the time I would have been an advocate of social security,
but if I was another Simon Lee I wouldn't complain too much, just work until
I didn't feel like it anymore and starve to death or something. I have a feeling
Wordsworth is leaving something out. Probably most Simon Lees had some assistance
from the surrounding community, at least more than Wordsworth lets on. We Are
Seven- This is another sad and even slightly frightening poem. Apparently it
is about a 'little cottage Girl 'who had two dead sibling here, or maybe this
little girl has clairvoyant tendencies and can see her sister Jane and brother
John. A rule of thumb for me (so far) is when a crazy schizophrenic type of
person tells me tales of such, I act like I believe them. Innocent until proven
guilty. Because it makes them more likely to tell the truth if they are lying
because they get no rise out of me, and if they are telling the truth they know
they have someone they can confide in. That little maid is a strongly convicted
girl and deserves some kind of support. Lines Written in Early Spring- This
is a classic Romantic poem. When he thinks of nature it 'Brings sad thoughts
to the mind 'because he realizes how much his classical predecessors nostalgically
separated themselves to nature. He sees how the spring time smell and sights
are actually something to become one with instead of shut away from. 'What has
man made of man?'he asks, but he can't tell because he is still afraid to be
upfrontly candorous because he hasn't entered the age of Rock n' Roll
yet, or something. Expostulation and Reply- This is even more of a rebellious
poem than the one before. He is ripping at the excessive studier of classical
literature and other things that don't do anything for the soul and good of
society. Maybe he is even cutting at the bible reader. 'William you sit alone...
where are your books?' It seems as though he is talking about the bible reader
with this remark, 'As if you were first born, and none had lived before you!' He
refers to William dreaming his time away twice, meaning he must be saying thought
is not important, but socialization and emotional gratification are important.
How classically romantic. The Tables Turned- This poem is grand dragon master
o.g. mac daddy of all the Romantic poems if I do say so myself. The whole thing
shows so much emotion I read it as if Mr. Wordsworth is right here spewing his
preach like a red faced minister spitting out words of charged emotion. 'Quit
your books.. let nature be your teacher... truth breathed by cheerfulness...
sweet is the lore which nature brings; our meddling intellect mis-shapes the
beauteous of things.. enough of science and art. 'I never really realized
that revolutionaries existed in any other time than mine, how oddly encouraging.
Strange fits of passion have I known- I like this love poem about his love Lucy.
He incorporates the moon in a well descriptive way: 'Upon the moon I fixed my
eye'. Another place that I can relate to is: 'The sinking moon to Lucy's cot
came near, and nearer still'. I can relate to the feeling of getting more excited
as I get closer and closer to something. The last paragraph is good, going from
one extreme to the other. At first saying how he love to dream of his lover,
and then thinking how awful it would be if his lover would die. Sometimes you
have to experience the horror to get a firm grasp on the extent of how much
you actually love your lover. She dwelt among the untrodden ways- I like this
poem because it expains a most exquisite person who doesn't live in the limelight
because of either her social situation or perhaps becaue she is beautiful in
such an eccentric way that the enculturated people who can't tell what real beauty is don't notice her. The sentence, 'Fair as a star, when only one is
shining in the sky'is a good description of a unique individual. I think this
is the perfect kind of lover to have if you happen to be the same way. The last
sentence puts a nice little tragic cap to it if you think that it is a tragedy
that she wasn't noticed more during life. Or it can just be a sad ending to
the poem showing how everything must die no matter how beautiful and we must
go on. Three years she grew- This is a great poem because it beautifally describes
a most beautiful girl: 'A lovelier flower on earth was never sown'. It describes
a young woman who knows no death: 'She shall be sportive as the fawn that wild
with glee across the lawn'. I like this sentence: 'Even in the motions of the
storm, grace that shall mould the maiden's form by silent sympathy,'because
it tells how if you are with a top notch person, no matter how bad things get,
you are still it good shape. Because Lucy's beauty outweighs or equals all other
beauty's, so her beauty also outweighs all bad things also. This sentence is
very visual, 'And vital feelings of delight shall rear her form to stately height',
because I can picture an erect beauty with utmost pride, like the statue of
liberty. Unlike the previouse poems, the last sentence is optimistic: 'The memory
of what has been, and never more will be'. Showing how he accepts the inevitability
and absolute truth of the situation, is a kind of objective manner. A slumber
did my spirit seal- This is a hyporcritical poem, no matter how good it is.
In the first paragraph he talks how the spirit can over come the slumber and
earthly years. But in the second paragraph he says of how she is in the earth
not doing anything. As if he thinks that her sould is stuck with her body. The
first paragraph I liked, but not the second. I travelled among unknown men-
This is a good poem because it describes why and how he loves England so much.
Sometimes you can't truly appreciate your homeland until you leave it for a
while. 'Tis past, that meloncholy dream!' means that his travels weren't as
exciting as living a simple life at home. I like how he relates his mountains
with his 'English fire'and his woman. Home being a mix of all these things.
The last sentence: 'And thine too is the last green field that Lucy's eyes surveyed'
was kind of spooky. I could picture him looking at that feild and thinking what
she thought and remembering her to the core. Lucy Gray- This poem is about Lucy's
life and the story of her death. It is kind of scattered, talking about many
things in the same poem. Like her life and her last moments and her parents
looking for her. I like the visual effect 'Her feet disperse the powdery snow,
that rises up like smoke'. And the visual effect: 'And many a hill did Lucy
climb: but never reached the town'. It is sad to think of her crying and hiking
on and on. It is neeto how he included a little bit of a legend in it: '...That
you may see sweet Lucy Gray upon the lonesome wild'. The two April Mornings-
I had trouble understanding this poem, it seemed to be about too many different
things. There were a few lines I like though: 'With hair of glittering grey'made
me imagine a noble old man. Glittering relates to angelic divinity. He describes
his beloved England, but the paragraph: 'Yon cloud with that long purple cleft
brings fresh into my mind a day like this which I have left full thirty years
behind' kind of confuses me because I couldn't imagine clouds reminding me of
something that happened thirty years ago. Clouds aren't that dynamic. Another
sentence I liked was '...It was fpuure delight'. That sounds so good.
|This is just about the most scattered poem I have ever read in my entire life. But there were indeed some good lines: '...Eagerness of boyish hope'. As he left his cottage about to embark on a splendid journey through the WILD. 'Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung a virgin scene!'This shows how Wordsworth loves the wild and untouched nature, kind of like Thorough. 'Voluptuous, fearless of a rival' is a good line. The combination of voluptuous and fearless is good, shows power and beauty. What more could you ask for? '...Weary expectation...'are two more words that go well together. 'The heart luxuriates with indifferent things' is a good line; it makes me feel like he loves everything, not putting everything above anything else. I think this is a classical dismal English line: 'I felt a sense of pain when I beheld the silent trees, and saw the intruding sky'. It shows how they can get depressed easily. But his 'Dearest maiden' made him feel better. How romantic.
The Ruined Cottage
|I had some trouble following this long poem about a woman who had a hard life and died in a cottage that for some reason nobody wanted to life in. Wordsworth was trying to made a tragic sounding story, but to me just sounds kind of annoying, not really making me feel any sympathy. It was designed for people who needed to hear a story like this so they will work for a welfare reform bill or something. The same holds true for the poem Michael. He did have some good meaningful sentences: 'Of some huge oak whose aged branches make a twilight of their own...' Attempting to convey a somber mood. There where some parts that made me question Wordsworth's views on life: '...And prized in his peculiar nook of earth dies with him or is changed, and very soon even of the good is no memorial left'. This is depressing to think about, like if you aren't remembered after you die then all is lost; like he doesn't believe in reincarnation or the interconnectedness of everything. And this sentence: 'For them a bond of brotherhood is broken: time has been when every day the touch of human hand disturbed their stillness, and they ministered to human comfort'. How could a human bond be broken when human hands give each other comfort? And this one: 'She is dead, the worm is on her cheek...'As if her soul is still with her body; why is he so preoccupied with her corpse? His sense of passing time is also annoying: '...Was gone and every leaf and flower were lost in the dark hedges'. That doesn't make me depressed to think about. An abandoned house with flowers around it would be more erie than one with hedges; it is only natural for that to happen. I am glad he sees, '...This multitude of flies fills all the air with happy melody...', I would think he would associate flies with death, I kind of do. I like his sentence, 'There was a heartfelt chillness in my veins'. He is good at describing horrific moments with, 'I cannot tell how' and 'Unutterably helpless...'And 'He had not heart to take a farewell of me...'. There were some sentences that were just too incomprehensible: 'The careless stillness which a thinking mind gives to an idle matter...'This was kind of a week sentence, but had good visual effect: 'I took my staff and when I kissed her babe the tears stood in her eyes'. I like how he used natural occurrences to signify a change is attitude: 'A thrush sang loud, and other melodies at a distance heard, peopled the milder air'. Over all this poem was too melodramatic and shallow for today's standards.
|I like this poem because it instills sympathy and respect for the main character. A man who can work hard everyday until he is 91 in the 18th century is a total hardcore badd ass legend. I like this guy Michael, seems like a good hearted man, loving his fellow men just because they are neighbors: 'Whom I already loved;-not verily for their own sakes but for the fields and hills where was their occupation and abode'. One sentence I didn't really understand, maybe he thought he would become one with the land when he dies: 'Of youthful poets, who among these hills will be my second self when I am gone'. I like this term, '...With vigorous steps he had so often climbed'. I can picture an aggressive old man hiking all the time. I don't really understand this one also, it give me the impression that he is superhuman if he can save even the wild animals: 'Of the dumb animals, whom he had saved, had fed or sheltered..'. I don't understand 'Blind love', maybe you could elaborate on that. It is neat to know that 'One foot in the grave' is a shepard's phrase. I like the description of the old lamp as an 'Aged utensil' because it complements his hard core nature. I like this description: 'He had rocked his cradle with a woman's gentle hand'. There is nothing more honorable than a tough brute who can be gentle to his children. I like: 'Michael exercise his heart with looks of fond correction and reproof bestowed upon the child' and 'Receiving from his father hire of praise.'. Fond correction and praise are things that this world doesn't get enough of, probably especially is those days of darkness. Half pennies cracked me up, I didn't even know they existed. It is too bad that he had to give his son Luke (a good name for a tough guy to name his son) away to keep his land. I love this part: 'When thou art gone away,, should evil men be thy companions, think of me, my son, and of this moment; hither turn thy thoughts, and god will strengthen thee: amid all fear and all temptation..'. He is a noble poor man and he knows it. 'He kissed him and wept...' was good; also '...And all the neighbors, as he passed their doors, came forth with wishes and with farewell prayers that followed him till he was out of sight'. It makes the reader wish he/she lived in a neighborhood like that. It is too bad that the boy didn't bring enough honor to his father. This is a good sentence: 'There is a comfort in the strength of love; 'twill make a thing endurable..'. I like how Wordsworth had Michael never finish the sheep pen, it shows how he knows about the timelessness of it all and will fight until he can't even stand anymore like the wild animal that he is.
Ode: Intimations of Immortality
|Wordsworth seemed to believe in reincarnation but wouldn't admit it. Is this because he was afraid of being castrated from society or put in jail? He rather pointed out that Plato believed in it. Maybe he pointed out the ills of a society that doesn't believe in reincarnation by saying that we lose our 'freshness and biance' as we get older because we are afraid of death. Ode- I really like this poem, it must have been very revolutionary at the time. 'The glory and freshness of a dream' is interesting. I don't look at dreams in that way. Dreams to me aren't more optimistic about life than my conscious life, actually less so. However, I am invincible in my dreams. I like this stanza: 'Look round her when the heavens are bare, waters on a starry night re beautiful and fair; the sunshine is a glorious birth; but yet I know, where I go, that there hath past away a glory from the earth'. It eloquently shows how nature is beautiful and we just ignored her. I like how he got so jubilant about his dreams, as if he was high on drugs or something: 'The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, and all the Earth is gay; land and sea give themselves up to jollity..'. It is so much more refreshing to think of nature as something that loves us instead of not caring and wrathful and indifferent, which is what our society and religion imposes on us. 'Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd-boy!'is a good sentence. The man isn't forthright enough though, when he says, 'Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now the glory and the dream?', he should be telling us that it was filtered out of us by the murdering of five million earth women accused of being evil witches. He would have been a better man to be a martyr. He points this fact out in a very subdued way: 'Forget the glories he hath known, and that imperial palace whence he came'. Here he is saying that we forgot the glories about nature because of Christianities imperialist nature. 'Endless imitation.. Haunted for ever by the eternal mind.. Thou, love whom thy immorality broods like the day,, a master or a slave. 'was good, showing how the eternity of loving nature is what will prevail in the end. Another good place where he tells of the ills of his society: 'And custom lie upon thee with a weight, heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!' Here he shows us of the peacefulness of nature: '...Our noisy years seem moments in the being of the eternal silence: truths that wake, to perish never'. This sentence probably reminded educated people of Greek Hade's Elusion fields; and how it is a good thing to strive for. The last sentence far perfect: 'Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears'. Our grieve will be overcome by the joys of nature no matter what, how optimistic! Ode to Duty- This poem is a subdued way of saying how the church has taken too hard of a grasp on our lives and made us feel shame about ourselves and our natural tendencies, and it should just let go and trust that our joy alone will guide us to do the right things. We must be atheists! he says. We don't need moral cops: 'To check the erring, and reprove.'. We can be 'Happy will our nature be, when love is an unerring light'. There is nothing wrong with us: 'Through no disturbance of my soul, or strong companion in me wrought'. This sentence pretty much sums up the message of the poem: 'Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear the godhead's most benignant grace; nor know we any thing so fair as is the smile upon thy face..'. Our natural tendency is proven through our 'Self sacrifice'. So: '...In the light of truth thy Bondman let me live!'The Solitary Reaper- This poem reminds me of the Greek nymphs dancing and singing for the passers by to appreciate. But when he talks of a 'Meloncholy' aspect of it, I wonder. Are most Englishmen melancholy or what? Do they like dwelling in black bile of depression? He must have just experienced a bad occurrence, 'Some natural sower, loss, or pain that has been, and may be again?'This poem relates to sometimes in a weird way melancholy music makes us feel beautiful in a lethargically painful way, as if it could be beautiful if it was just a little bit different. I like this rhyme: 'The music in my heart I bore, long after it was heard no more'. Elagiac Stanzas- This poem had a lot of power for me, because he pounded in me the beauty in quiet until I finally realized what he was talking about in this paragraph: 'A picture had it been of lasting ease, Elysian quiet, without toil or strife; no motion but the moving tide, a breeze, or merely silent nature's breathing life'. I love that feeling of absolute quietness of the mind that I so rarely feel. When I don't have to worry about caring to smile. This paragraph: 'And this huge castle, standing here sublime, I love to see the look with which it braves,'made me remember how noble and pure things look when it is just them in the picture. Like the fortress on top of mount Olympus. This sentence seems contradictory: 'Such happiness, wherever it be known, is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind'. Blind to what? But he ends on a high note: 'Not without hope we suffer and we mourn'. Another reference to Greek mythology with Pandora's box.
Composed upon Westminster Bridge
|I love this poem. It is so English. Reminds me of how pompous and self indulgent English are. How they don't care to travel and like imposing their culture on others more than learning about other cultures. There are negative aspects to this thought, but this poem brings up the positive ones more. This sentence especially: 'Neer saw I never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; and all that mighty heart is lying still!'It is a Beauteous Evening- This poem shows Wordsworth's wisdom in spades. He must have studied Buddhism because of these sentences: 'Listen! the mighty being is awake, and doth with his eternal motion make a sound like thunder-everlastingly.. If thou appear untouched by solemn thought thy nature is not therefore less divine. This line seems prophetic relating to the problems TV put on us: 'God being with thee when we know it not'. Because we are too preoccupied with menial things that do us no good.
London, 1802
|This is his bravest statement against the rich evil men who could help the poor but choose not to. It really got me thinking. 'She is a fen of stagnant waters' made me think of the shit ridden rivers in the cities. I love 'of inward happiness', it illustrates their selfishness and causes of their melancholy depression beautifully. I love this sentence, it would be sung well: 'Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the se: pure as the naked heavens majestic, free'. I like how he illustrates his remedy: 'In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart, the lowliest duties on herself did lay'. He loves the simple folks way towards life. He would get along well with Thoreau.
The world is too much with us
|I don't know why he used the word world to describe how it is too much with us. Maybe he should say society is too much with us. 'We lay waste our powers' is good, saying how we good do such great things if we just did it fairly. This illustrates his views nicely: 'Great God! I'd rather be A pagan suckled in a creed outworn'. What an insult to the English church. He seems to be a classical pagan though, with his references to Greece mythology. Surprised by joy- This is a poem about his loathing of the loss of his loved one. He expected to me depressed by remembering the face and being of the dead one. The poem doesn't convince me that he was surprised by joy, I don't know if I could get joy from remembering a loved dead one, but i haven't really experienced that. The title contradicts this sentence: 'That thought's return was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore'. I don't think it is healthy to be so preoccupied by thinking about a loved corpse rotting in the ground, it would give me nightmares.
|This seems to be a ripping on the church. How they could have done such great things, but instead: 'Sink from high to low'. With 'Which royally did wear His crown of weeds', I think is supposed to have reminded us that Jesus was a peasant, so the clergy is no closer to god than the peasants of England. The title I think means that people who REALLY want to preach the truth about peace and love can't because of the 'Over-anxious care' to shut people up taken by the clergy.
Steamboats Viaducts, and Railways
|This is very prophetic. Again showing Wordsworth's great wisdom. He states how these new technologies ...'Mar the loveliness of nature.' Here he tell how the future will change unimaginably, and how we have mastered nature by Sublimely subduing Time and Space: '...And time, pleased with your triumphs o'er his brother space, accepts from your bold hands the proffered crown of hope, and smiles on you with cheer sublime'. I like how he says that nature smiles on us even though we are marring her. Extempore Effusion upon the death of
James Hogg
|This is a poem about the death of a poet friend of his. He addresses his feelings about the tragedy of his death, but weighs it against things more tragic to put it in perspective. I like his complement: 'The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth'. this paragraph makes me think how poets look to each other as if gods, and work together to guide the word and be an elite group: 'Like the clouds that rake the mountain-summits, or waves that own no curbing hand,, how fast has brother followed brother, from sunshine to the sunless land!' It seems like they consider themselves to be saints trying to put right a world that is 'Crowned in darkness'. It is neat how they give each other nicknames and further their deification of themselves: 'Ettrick Shepherd Border-minstrel.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
|He had a classical poets life, having problems all the time and what not. He seemed a little misunderstood like Einstein, like he was too smart for his schoolmasters. I don't think it would be very hard for someone to stand out in those day, just don't be afraid to think and speak your thoughts. It is good he got married, or else he would have been a pathetic loner, Aye? Apparently he had 'indolence capable of energies' but didn't act out on them enough because of his illness that was never defined in the book. Apparently he had pains all over his body all the time, that sucks! He was very self critical, which is good. Only great people are self critical, there is nothing wrong with that as long as you don't beat yourself up too much. I don't understand what Conservative intellectualism is however. Maybe you could clarify that for me.
The Eolian Harp
|This is a good one. He had the same ideas about peace that Wordsworth did. It seems as though it was kind of a recollection of a dream. There are good lines in here: 'How exquisite the scents snatched from yon bean-field! and the world so hushed!' Smell is said to be the most spiritual sense, when I smell things I stop and recollect. This line evokes my emotional imagination: 'How by the desultory breeze caressed, like some coy maid half yielding to her lover'. It is interesting he is into fairy land like Shakespeare was. I wonder if people believed in ghosts more then than now, probably a lot more so. This line makes me think of paradise: '...Like the birds of paradise, nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing!' This line shows how he knows that all life is connected like the Indigenousness people know: ''! the one life within us and abroad, which meets all motion and becomes its soul'. 'Rhythm in all thought' makes me feel like harmony in a new way. This line eloquently describes how no sound is sometimes better than music when you get to a super high point: 'Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air is music slumbering on her instrument'. There are a lot more good lines: 'The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main'. 'Full many a thought uncalled and undetained'. This sentence skillfully illustrates how sometimes all our thoughts can melt into one beautiful song: 'Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, at once the soul of each, and god of all?' This sentence makes me think of how English mainstream clergy like to suppress thoughts of people, and in Coleridges dream that is not so: 'Nor such thoughts dim and unhallowed dost thou not reject, and biddest me walk humbly with my god'.
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison
|This poem is about how he feel like he is in prison because he can't roam the country side with his visiting friends, but later realizes that he doesn't have to be roaming to be happy. Coleridge was obviously a nature boy, probably to the dismay of a lot of people of his day, wow, i'm a poet and I didn't know it; just read: 'And hungered after nature, many a year, in the great city pent'. Here is were he describes his optimistic realization of his situation: 'A delight comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad as I myself were there!... And I watched some broad and sunny leaf and loved to see the shadow of the leaf and stem above dapling its sunshine!'I like how he recognizes the benefits of using all five senses: 'Each faculty os sense, and keep the heart awake to love and beauty!'How esoteric! He probably blew right over the heads of some stuffy Christian priests. Do I have a bad attitude about the rulers of that day? Or am I right to an extent?
Kubla Khan
|This is an interesting one. The first time I have ever read of a dream professed as such by the author. It is interesting he said how his visitor made him forget most of it, because of course this is true to all who even remember their dreams in the first place. I like how he describes how his dream comes back when he writes about it, for this is true and is nice to hear it from the pen of another: '...And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms come trembling b like a dream, with all of its gothicness and visions which are unrealistic except in la la land or the future. He had a good dream time taste, with '...Many an incense-bearing tree. 'and 'Forests as ancient as the hills'. Everything in my dreams are more developed that real life also. 'A savage place!' is good to hear because he seems to see that word as good and not bad. 'A woman wailing for her demon lover!' is intense. And so is 'Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst huge fragments (of water) vaulted like rebounding hail'. I like how he termed his huge canyon: 'then reached the caverns measureless to man,' no poet in his/her right mind would say that today, nothing is measureless to us. It is interesting he saw a woman singing of mount Abora. I would have seen a woman talking fast and cheerfully, not 'Music loud and long'. Maybe this has to do with our shorter attention spans. It is too bad he got scarred: 'Beware! Beware!'I don't get scared in my dreams. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner- I really like this poem. It tells of a man who went on a great voyage and made mistakes that costed the life of all his shipmates and nearly his own, but he came out of it a powerful and wise man. This is a realistic poem in the respect that voyages make you powerful and wise from hardship and mistakes; but it was (to me) insipidly fundamentalist concerning superstitions and fear. Why can't people just do things because of the kindness of their heart? And see the consequences of their karma in a much more subtle manner. I think people of those day were actually that superstitious, where they? How silly and sad. This has a lot of good visual effect on me: 'By thy long gray beard and glittering eye'. I know when I get done with I huge bike ride I have glittering eyes. Sometimes glittering enough to make people 'Listen like a three years' child'. I like how he described how the sun changed its vantage point as they moved farther south: 'Higher and higher every day, till over the mast at noon'. These Romantics are so melodramatic: 'The wedding-guest he beat his breast'. I don't understand 'Still treads the shadow of his foe', was he in a race or what? How did Coleridge know what the icebergs are like if he has never seen one? 'It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, like noises in a sound!' He must have been educated on adventurers. I like how he included an Albatross into the story following them and being their friend. This poem probably opened the mind of a lot of nature hating English punks, maybe even causing some of those unspeakable fox hunters to retire. He has a lot of good visuals: 'Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, glimmered the white moon-shine. As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. We could not speak, no more than if we had been choked with soot. Black lips baked. Life in death was she, who thicks man's blood with cold. The sun's rim dips; the stars rush out. I looked upon the rotting sea. And still by body drank (I have been that thirsty before)...Swiftly swiftly flew the ship, yet she sailed softly too. Laughed loud and long, and all the while his eyes went to and fro'. What are these slimy things he sees crawling on the sea? Was he hallucinating? That is weird how he saw the spirits of his dead companions, at first I thought they were still alive and just got up when the wind came. Why didn't he eat them or through them overboard? There were a lot of references to him hallucinating, sometimes it got a little confusing. How could his ship just sink for no reason? And how did he make it back home when he never went around the tip of South America again? This is a good descriptive paragraph: 'And now 'twas like all instruments, now like a lonely flute; and now it is an angel's song, that makes the heavens be mute' . Apparently he saw Jesus too. Did he die and is telling his tale to a couple getting married in heaven? If he lived, which I assume he did, he did get his powers: '...Strange power of speech'. It is neat how he said that he suffered until he told people of his tale, and only after sharing it could he feel better: 'Since then, at an uncertain hour, that agony returns: And till my ghastly tale is told, this heart within me burns'. And he is glad to be among people again, he doesn't even have to know them: 'Tis sweeter far to me, to walk together to the kirk with a goodly company!'And he learned his lessons: 'He prayeth well, who loveth well both man and bird and beast...For the dr god who loveth us, he make and loveth all'. What an intense trip: 'He went out like one that hath been stunned'.
|This is a good poem about past karma coming back to haunt him. The poem is about an old knight who's daughter, Christabel, came across an abandoned kidnapped and nearly dead Geraldine under an Oak tree. At first Geraldine thought Chrisabel was Mary coming to take her to heaven: 'Mary mother, save me now. Praise we the Virgin all divine who hath rescued thee from thy distress!'. Chistabel took her to her castle and if I am reading correctly had some sexual relations with her: 'But now unrobe yourself; for I must pray, ere yet in bed I lie. And on her elbow did recline to look at the lady Geraldine. Collects herself in scorn and pride, and lay down by the maiden's side!-and in her arms the maid she took'. These two women obviously had a strong connection to each other nevertheless. The next morning she brought her to her father Sir leoline. When he heard that Geraldine was the daughter of his good childhood friend who he had a bitter falling out a long time ago, and he saw how the two girls were so well connected; he became very excited and thought this the perfect chance to re-connect with his old friend. So he told the girls the story and told his servant to summon his old friend and tell him that Sir Leoline had Geraldine and to come and party. But when he told his daughter, though she was ignorant: 'She nothing sees-no sight but one! The maid, devoid of guile and sin', she knew that there was no chance that the two old friend would ever make up, it had been too long, they don't know each other any more. So she said to her father: 'By my mother´s soul do I entreat that thou this woman send away!' She had had visions of possible fowl energies: 'Upon the soul of Christabel, the vision of fear, the touch and pain! She shrunk and shuddered and saw again'. Maybe she said this because of the sexual relations they had would resurface and bring sinful energies to the relationship between the two families: '...To the wronged daughter of his friend.' Sure I have sinned!' said Christabel'. When she said this he knew she was right and felt a horrid feeling knowing that he would never see his friend again for sure: 'Within the Baron's heart and brain if thoughts, like these, had any share, they only swelled his rage and pain, and did but work confusion there'. He has a good conclusion, saying that no matter how optimistic you may be about rejuvenating an old bitterly lost relationship, if it has been too long, there is no saving it: 'Such giddiness of heart and brain comes seldom save from rage and pain'. The baron's dream about the dove symbolically bringing peace to his old relationship but then being killed by the snake, related nicely to the girls painful to look on eye's looking like snakes themselves as they subvertly told him that there was no hope. This poem points out the subtlety psychic powers of women, no matter how innocent and uneducated they may be, they still see some things that men don't. And tell men in very subtle ways: 'Softly gathering up her train, that o'er her right arm fell again; and folded her arms across her chest. A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy'. This line shows how women get emotionally affected easily by weird feelings: 'But Christabel in dizzy trance stumbling on the unsteady ground'. There are some good visuals in this poem: '...With eyes upraised, as one that prayed. And loud and loud to Lord Roland call thy daughter is sake in Langdale hall!... That I repent the day when I spake words of fierce disdain. And both blue yes more bright than clear, each about to have a tear. Large tears that leave the lashes bright! And oft the whole she seems to smile as infants at a sudden light!... That saints will aid if men will call: For the blue sky bends over all!'. Another interesting part is when the Baron is praying and counting beads, '...Who duly pulls the heavy bell, five and forty beads must tell'. Buddhists do this when they pray. Overall this is a well written poem, but I think it is never too late to reunite old friendships no matter how long it has been or how bitter the last conversation was.
Frost At Midnight
|This poem is about Coleridge reflecting on his life and envisioning his baby's. He relates the quietness of things he observes. Like the film, fire, and the owlet's cry which doesn't get any quieter. I don't like 'Inaudible as dreams!'because dreams are audible, like when people scream. What this man is trying to say is that they are private to only to themselves. Little does he know that's not true at all. Silly man. These victorians views on thoughts crack me up. 'Echo or mirror seeking of itself, and makes a toy of thought'. Thought IS useful, and these inanimate objects don't have to be seeking anything. When he thinks of his own past, and looks at his babies like he realizes how time just zips by. 'Great Universal Teacher' seems to be pretty anti Christian, but 'He shall mold thy spirit' pisses me off. Its not a he, and stop implying you have no power over yourself Coleridge! I bet he would consider this an optimistic poem. What's up with this preoccupation with needing all seasons to be good? Why can't he just accept that some will be bad so se la vie, and stop praying like a God fearing fool. Dejection: An Ode- He talks of the paradigmic relationship that we have to nature and our fates. He laments his suffering that is mild though persistent. But it is all worthwhile because he has the gift of life and his lady. This is a good sentence because it states how we deserve life: 'O lady! We receive but what we give, and in our life alone does Nature live'. He seems to be accusing some people of being cold and ever-anxious; but the light in his soul makes everything OK again. He is able to drink the 'Sounds of life and element'. In, '...Spirit and power, which wedding Nature to us gives dower'. Amused me because of his apparent belief that a higher power gave us our power, Ha Ha Ha! He redeems himself when he says '...All melodies the echoes of that voice, all colors a suffusion from that light.' At least he is acknowledging that everything is connected. 'Shaping spirit of imagination', how liquid. Too bad he thinks snakes are evil, 'Hence viper thoughts, that coil around my mind', he should go to China. He may think this is an optimistic poem, but the perpetual melancholia is all that jumps out at me. The Pains of Sleep- He touches a lot of psychological truths here. The poem is about his problems with insomnia, and all the thoughts that comfort and haunt him. He thinks he is haunted because of the guilt he feels from the times he was mean to people, and that is his punishment. As time goes on he realized what he really needs is love: 'To be beloved is all I need, and whom I love, I love indeed'. He needs love so his lover is his God, creator, sustainer. When he says, 'It hath not been my use to pray'. He is saying that fantasizing and praying are different things. Which I disagree, when you fantasize you are thinking about how you will make things happen. If praying means bringing good fortune to you, than why can't charity work classify? Ha Ha Ha, silly man. At least he knows that he doesn't have to worry about tapping out his strength and wisdom that doesn't disappear when he dies. 'No thought expressed'. There they go again on their seemingly displeased feelings about thought. To them thought is bad because they are too melancholia creative. Phantom- All right, I know this is a poem about a ghost. But since I have never seen one I will just relate this to a real girl who has such a strong aura that I could recognize her from the corner of my eye. It also reminds me of smiling children in 4th world countries, prettier than Jon Benet Ramsey. OK, next. Why does it have to be an accident thought? Isn't god smarter than that? To William Wordsworth- Here he talks goodness of William who is a ´´Friend of the wise! and teacher of the good!'. This is an optimistic poem, stating how Wordsworth is a good motivator telling his friends to not fear the future because goodness is growing: 'In surges now beneath the stars...yet swelling to the moon'. I can detect some of the societal ills those reforming poets were talking of. They couldn't smile without comparing themselves to others and making sure it was OK And fears of external things, shows how much of a choke hold the church had on them. 'The light reflected and bestowed'. Here Coleridge acknowledges that the light doesn't come from Wordsworth, he just reflects it. 'Milder hours of youth'?! My youth wasn't mild. This is prophetic: '...Of the Social Sense, distending wide, and man beloved as man'. Just be yourself, you have the right, he says. This is good: 'When from the general heart of human kind, hope sprang forth like a full-born deity!' He says how Wordsworth can look at the status quo view of the world being able to transcend to angelic realms that are already developed. Does this show how English hack at each other?: '...Hope afflicted and struck down,... from the dread watchtower of man's absolute (false vision of God) self'. This is rad: 'The truly great have all one age, and from on visible space shed influence! they, both in power and act,, are permanent, and time is not with them'. It makes me feel like if I were to be a revolutionary artist or activist for the poor people and the earth than I would be on the same level as all the saints of the past. A member of a special club, who's main job of existence in to make things better no matter the situation. More allusions to hacking one another: 'To wander back on such unhealthful road, plucking the poisons of self harm'. Yea, he's cleaning up the shit (gossip, witch hunting, etc.). '...And when I rose, I found myself in prayer'. What a good motivator Will is. Recollections of Love- This poem is about recollections of love. Apparently, Greta is the natural muse that reminds him of his love. And love makes him remember the past most vividly (I heard it was smell that did that). Love lasts forever, what more can I say?
On Donne's Poetry
|This is a pretty ambiguous poem about an esoteric poet. There are many ways of interpreting this. One way is to see the Dromedary as a woman who has power over her suppressors, the Iron pokers (Camal pranders). And wacky people with all their interpretations press and screw with their forging fire-blasting even though they are branded.
Work without Hope
|This is about how he thinks nature just works and has no hope but is mystical and beautiful nevertheless. Do they not have hope because they can't think. I disagree with his last line. 'Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve'. Is he saying the nectar will never be used because there is no hope? But the nectar is used. Constancy to an Ideal Object- This is a poem about how people get preoccupied with heaven. They want to live forever on earth and can't imagine reincarnation because of John Q Bishop. So they just 'Call to the fairy people of the future day'. But then again all he really needs is his lovely Sarah. 'Nor he knows the shadows he pursues'. He means he is the ideal vision of himself. As soon as he becomes a King his reward will be to just want more, to be the richest king.
|It this poem he is kissing peoples asses to give him a little of their time and pray for him. He just wants peace, not for people to feel reverence for him. By him just saying that he is admitting that he thinks about it because of his hyper-comparative society. How good of him to entreat us to follow the same goals. I wish he would be more specific on the forgiven part though. John Keats- John Keats was a Cockney and suffered class discrimination, so he knew the importance of writing for ones self. He wasn't after fame or money, just Love and imagination. He contradicts himself though; when he wrote of a 'Happiness beyond earthly possibility', but then says, 'The poet and the dreamer are sheer opposite'. What? His 'Posthumous existence' in his last months are not uncommon. Usually people just loose interest in the world as they are dying. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer- This poem is about the great explorer Cortez; Cortez being the narrator. He is talking about how peaceful it would be to see both of the Oceans at the same time, knowing that you came a long way and are at the dividing point between Europe and the Ocean that leads to China. Cortez must have felt like a hero he says.
From Sleep and Poetry
|This poem is about his regretful feelings about his coming death. Dying at 26 and being an active person is rough and unnatural, at least it would feel that way to a person like John Keats. He still has the youthful passion, and for poetry. 'That my own soul has to itself decreed'. Is a wise statement concerning a person who knows that is what he wants to do; almost no matter what. All he wants to do is hike around and soak up nature and write poetry. The nature feeds his mind and motivates his senses. 'A lovely tale of human life we'll read'. Means that he believes that you can make people aware through poetry of how beautiful the ideal life is. When he talks of the chariot I will assume he is turning supernatural; but of course you never know anything for sure with these writers. The charioteer is the heavenly angel who is getting the most oust of life with his 'glorious fear' . 'Oh that I might know all that he writes with such a hurrying glow.
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
|This is obviously a poem that a young man would write. What he is talking about is that he doesn't want to die by correlating metaphors, by the way. The rhyming works: '...Spirit too weak ... unwilling sleep...' and what not. Sick eagle looking at the sky, sounds intense, I sure hope he wrote about all the things he wanted to do as an old man, he probably didn't have the heart or perseverance though. 'A gentle luxury to weep'- He probably did weep, those 18th century people seemed a lot more emotional, were they? Circle the answer PLEASE, yes no. Point being, I don't see a modern rock star saying that, but of course that's just me. Lines 9-11 bring home the feeling of a tragic reality that is very WRONG, which I can't understand, too bad its 'indescribable'. From Endymion: A Poetic Romance- This fine poem is about the wonders and beauty of bountiful life with love. I think it is very strange that he dedicated this poem to an imaginary poet who lived hundreds of years ago; at least its creative.
A Thing of Beauty
| 'A thing of beauty is a joy for
ever', boy aint that tha truth, Amen Hallaluia. Its loveliness sure does increase,
won't never pass into nothingness. A lot of things that these guys say makes
me remember how they are human just like me. This poem is about the universal
truth that can't be forsaken, how light ALWAYS over powers darkness. Have you
ever seen a shadow in the light? Of course not! 'Some shape of beauty moves
away the pall from our dark spirits'. Some shape huh? I would envision it more
like a breeze of light, but if he wants to call it a shape I guess he can call
it a shape. 'Endless fountain of immortal drink' is very correct in its infinite
suggestion but the visuals are too archaic for homies tastes. I would say something
more like, 'An endless hammering of beautiful rainbow colored sunshine compassionate
energizer droplets'. This poem is very, Chantoric or honest and straightforward,
more like a letter to someone or 'prose' than ambiguous poetry; definitely a
characteristic of a young author. For example: '...That, whether there be shine,
or gloom o'ercast, they always must be with us, or we die'. There is no argument
on what he is saying. It is like his is right here now telling me, instead of
a man who has been dead for more than a hundred years, dig? Too bad the poor
chap had to speak of an imaginary place Endymion. It isn't good for the soul
to speak of something that will never exist on planet earth. He should have
been speaking of Warchester valley or something; but of course he is terminal
and probably part ways is la la land. you know, THINKING about it, I do remember
my own recollections of Atlantis and relate it to Deep Breakfast's 'Tangerine
Dreams', and certain smells remind me of my childhood. And some of those feelings
are much more beautiful and strong than simple imaginings of more 'realistic'
hallucinations. So his being in wacky land is good for his soul and not bad.
Boy do I change my mind a lot. The 'Pleasure Thermometer'- As far as my highly
unstable focus of consciousness can behold, this poem is about soul's osmosis
from animal world to the heavenly spheres. 'Full alchemiz'd, and free of space.
Behold the clear religion of heaven!'is very, shall I say, New Agy, or ahead
of Victorian times. The jokers of those days would have never related science
with religion, as Keats does'd. And its like that too, the Angels don't got
no negative particles in them, and if they do it is like one part per million
just like pure gold. Is folding a rose leaf round your fingers a ceremony of
chastity of those days? 'Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs'. I don't
know if he knows this, but what he is talking about is when you dream and remember
dreams like keeping a dream journal, you re-enliven your dreams, remember dreams
you had when you were very small. Enclouded tombs are very liquid, there is
no reason to entomb anything you may want to retrieve in stone, it must be clouds
like in heaven. Very soft and warm, as clouds are warm and not frozen solid
and impenetrable. 'The crown of these is made of love and friendship,' Have I
heard this before from a romantic poet? Yes I have! 'Life is nourished by its
proper pith'. Amen! About time someone tells them priests we don't need no Jesus
Christ or God to have juice. Juice is our RIGHT not our privilege. Here is another
candorous remark I was talking about earlier: 'And, truly, I would rather be
struck dumb, than speak against this ardent listlessness.' I can understand
what he is saying with out squinting my eyes and shaking my head. '...To brood
so long upon one luxury, unless it did, though fearfully, espy a hope beyond
the shadow of a dream'. He is brilliant to press the importance of well roundedness
and seeking for diversity at such a dark age of human consciousness. (As you
can probably see by now I think white people of those days are totally full
of shit, except for a lot of these poets, at least some of the things they say).
` On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again- I like this poem. 'Golden-tongued
Romances' are the most motivational and useful of stories. It is better to pay
attention to the + than the -. This poem is about his visions of a past time
that is ideal and turning it into a vision of the future for himself, a very
healthy thing to do. 'Adieu! for, once again, the fierce dispute betwixt damnation
and impassion'd clay must I burn through; once more humbly assay the bitter-sweet
of this Shakespearean fruit'. Here he is talking of the paradoxical battle between
evil and good, satan and god, the 'flesh' and spirit, on its way to an alchamized
perfection. 'Give me new phoenix wing sot fly at my desire'. Now I'll be god-dammed
if this doesn't mean: 'After I die God, give me a new life to start fresh'.
This is a very optimistic poem. When I have fears that I may cease to be- Already
did it. To Homer- In this poem in which he tells (I can only assume) after he
dies or when he dreams all the exquisite places he visits. He keeps pumping
out the lines like a poet possessed; I like Keats. Line 6, flying though the
stars, line 7 adventuring the ocean depths. 'And precipices show untrodden green'-
I think untrodden green, like in the mountains with snow surrounding it, is
a monument straight from heaven cherishing life on earth. 'There is a budding
morrow in midnight'. It is true. A lot of the time the savior comes just when
you need it. Light comes right after the darkest of dark. One second you are
just about to die, and the next you are in heaven. 'There is a triple sight
in blindness keen'- Yea go Keats! Way to be optimistic buddy! Appreciate life
because you are dying. The Eve of St. Agnes- Eve of St. Agnes is the day when
young virgins, with the help of a holy man, can have a vision of her future
lover. I am assuming that this is a pagan tradition, perhaps Celtic; I wish
they would have said where it came from. All the rituals and sacred tools of
the trade seemed just as indigenousness to me as any native American, African,
or Aboriginal tradition. As the story line goes, the leader of the ceremony,
the Beadsman (who's bead counting relates to Buddhism), makes the traditional
preliminary prayers; and then secures the area with the help of a maid. This
ritual is very similar to a Buddhist ceremony I have heard of when people secure
an area for a person, with the help of holy people, go on trips to other worlds.
The annoying western story of battles with demons ensues later on when the young
girl's lover, Porphyro, comes, and because of his sensitive and vulnerable heart
is attacked by evil spirits and has to retreat. Then the girl got mad at him
for being weak which I thought was lame. I don't know for sure, because of my
entirely western education, but I don't think most other traditions involve
so much battling between good and evil. I have a hunch it is a western addiction
to dwell on enemies and negativity. The way he describes some things give me
a picture of how he thought about stuff, for example, when he is talking about
the holy man preparing for the ceremony: 'He passeth by; and his weak spirit
fails to think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails'. It seems like he is
developing such a compassion for his client, that he gets symptoms not unlike
courtly lovers. And: '...All night kept awake, for sinners' sake to grieve'.
It seems as though he is helping sinners instead of himself by praying, which
is a very vague. I think he means that he helps people by setting himself as
an example to others. The girl apparently sinks into a half sleep, half awake
state where the spirits come but she is conscious enough to deal with them rationally
and awake with the help of the beadman; which I assume Keats has experienced
himself; I have a couple of times. However, I don't have nightmares like this
poor girl is experiencing. Her lover, Porphyro, seemed to be there also, which
is hard to comprehend. Was he is a dream also? Or was this just a part of him
making the journey? I think it is uncharacteristic for a poet to refer to a
mortal as a Seraph (line 275). I don't understand the end; did the girl die?
Ode to Psyche- This is an ode to a goddess who Keats worships. Throughout the
whole poem he is talking about how much he loves and respects her. This poem
leaks some peculiar beliefs: '...And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
even into thine own solf-conched ear'. I don't like suppression of truth. It
seems like they thought secrets were good. Keats loves astrology; is this characteristic
of Christians of that time? Or just poets? 'The shadowy thought can win'. The
subtle feeling has the power? This was a hard one. Ode to a Nightingale- This
poem is about how much he reveres and learns from a worry-free bird. At the
beginning, his heart is aching from something, and then he sees the bird and
'envys' (line 5) it; and thinks it: '...Too happy in thine happiness'. When
he describes the scene: 'Of beechen green, and shadows numberless'. I think
his relationship with shadows is that they are the doorway to other way of experiencing
the world; where he gets his spiritual flavor so to speak. It is a complement
when he said: 'Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards'. The nightingale is sufficient
enough to give him a satisfactory imagination. After his induced altered reality
form the nightingale, he started thinking about his impending death and came
to a reconciliation with it. 'I have been half in love with easeful death....to
cease upon the midnight with no pain...pouring forth thy soul abroad in such
an ecstasy'. The last sentence; 'Fled is that music:- Do I wake or sleep?!'
seems to be referring to his experience as being like the dreamlike experience
of the woman in The Eve of St. Agnes. Ode on a Grecian Urn- In this poem he
is describing the grecian Urn, which captures intense experience. He describes
it as an eternally happy place, where the 'Heard melodies are sweet, but those
unheard are sweeter'. I can't understand how secrets can be sweeter; totally
beyond me how someone could think that. He seemed to be very comfortable with
his life on earth: 'Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know'; which is admirable,
considering he is dying. Ode to Melancholy- This is a poem about Melancholy,
which is basically depression. He refers to Melancholia as a she. Ode on Indolence-
Indolence is laziness. I think he may be talking about three figures he saw
in a daydream while he was being indolent. 'Pain had no sting, and pleasure's
wreath no flower'; is a good description of dream land. The three beings is
his dream were Love, Ambition, and Poesy. I wonder why Poesy is a demon who
has no joy. I would have thought he would enjoy writing poetry. Lamia- This
is a poem about a Lamia's adventures. It is interesting they have no evil intentions.
'Where either sex is formed of softer earth', is a good sentence. Less rough
around the edges, more refined. Part 1- Oberon, I remember him from Shakespeare's
Midsummer Nights Dream. So the Lamia is a subject of his and Lamias are a kind
of nymph. And Hermes sent her on a mission for a boy named Lycius. I was surprised
that the Lamia was moaning: '...Miserable me'. I thought people had a more enigmatic
attitude for them. His description of her sounds like a Hindi goddess: 'Vermilion-spotted,
golden, green, and blue; striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, eyed like
a peacock'. Hermes lost her: 'Too frail of heart! for this lost nymph of thine'.
People don't refer to a loss of love as making you frail anymore. 'Free as the
air', good. The rest of the poem is just a description of the Lamia, I can't
follow any story sequence. He has a good description of how she looks like:
'Hot, glaz'd, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear'- Like a Japanese doll, with
the slit eyes, and earnest look? When he says: 'And sometimes into cities she
would send her dream, with feast and rioting to blend'; makes me think that
maybe pagans of those days actually believed that, maybe it is true that spirits
travel around and know how to start big things by making one small thing happen
like starting an avalanche with one small snowball. On this sentence: '...Roam
over these hills and vales, where no joy is, empty of immortality and bliss'.
Is he saying that the world is empty of immortality and bliss? If he is he is
contradicting himself. Part two- ities she Part two is about the love between
the Lamia and her boyfriend Lycius. This is too archaic for me to decipher any
kind of a plot, but there are some parts that spark my interest: 'Love in a
palace is perhaps at last more grievous torment than a hermit's fast'. Means
that the lovers should be traveling instead of being like Keats. I guess after
the love affair the Lamia, even though she loved him, ate him, because of the
part, 'Had Lucius lived'. He loved her so much her soft voice didn't hiss:
'... That make the soft voice hiss'. Here he is talking about the visions of
love that Lycius had when he was halfway between sleep and consciousness. '...That
they might see each other while they almost slept'. When he started to sober
from her love she got mad at him, like in that Kathy Bates movie Misery: 'Have
you deserted me, where am I now...you have dismissed me'. and their rompings
in Corinth She was very sensitive and he kind of mistreated her, which may have
caused her to eat him. '...Against his better self, he took delight, luxurious
in her sorrows, soft and new. His passion, cruel grown, took on a hue'. Lamia's
are apparently very eccentric reclusive creatures: 'I have no friends'. So she
wanted to marry Lycius so she wouldn't be lonely. But, 'Knowing surely she could
never win'. But as it turns out she isn't as alone as she says because she had
a lot of people at her wedding. '..In honor of the bride missioned her viewless
servants to enrich'. Maybe she doesn't consider her fairy friends real people
worth considering as friends. Lamias are like really strong people who have
tempers like two year old: 'Shut, shut those juggling eyes, thou ruthless man!...
around his demon eyes!' So when they started to not get along on their honeymoon
night she breathed the death breath and killed him; but didn't eat him because
his friends were there. Mary Walstencraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman-
This was an amazing piece of work. Her line of thinking was so close to mine
Mary Woof thinking was so close to mine (unlike the other poets) that I felt
like I knew her or she is one of my peers. There were only a few parts that
I could tell that she lived at a different time. 1792 is a really long time
ago and was literally in the dark ages of human consciousness. I was shocked by what she said but I knew what she said was true before reading this. It sure
did solidify it for me though. She was very sarcastic: 'My own sex, I hope,
will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering
their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual
childhood, unable to stand alone'. And she made a lot of intense powerful statements
that were probably dangerous to make: 'I wish them (women) to... endeavor
to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft
phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste,
are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those being who are
only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister,
will soon become objects of contempt'. And: 'I presume rational men will excuse
me for endeavoring to persuade them to become more masculine and respectable'.
'(Men) thanks to debauchery, scarcely men in their outward form, and if the
blind lead the blind, one need not come from heaven to tell us the consequence.
And some of the things she charges men of saying were mind blowing: 'Educate
women like men', says Rousseau, 'And the more they resemble our sex and the
less power will they have over us'. And Rousseau is a well respected man!? This
piece reminded me of Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham jail. Explaining
to very dense oppressors why oppressed are the way they are and the very simple
reasons that they are mistreated. I have thought about how women act childish
in those days, and this article confirmed it, with these passages: 'One cause
of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education' Trying to
make them mistresses instead of actual people with brains. The same problem
exists in Hollywood but is a greatly diluted way. She mentioned that our culture
comes from the bible which is very sexist. Stemming from women being viewed
as a part of man, with Eve coming from Adam's rib. She mentioned how the Arab's
book says that women don't even have souls, and she has to stoop to explain
how that is not possible: 'Supposing, for a moment, that the soul is not immortal,
and that man was only created for the present scene'. Some of her observations
on the nature of women of the day that has been caused by men: They are trained
to only judge and not create or be individuals making new rules like men do.
They can only give comments on how something is but have no power over it. She
thinks that women should become more masculine and take control. She thinks
the upper classes are the ones causing all the troubles: 'I pay particular attention
to those in the middle class, because they appear to be in the most natural
state'. I would like to read the whole manuscript, because in here she makes
a lot of blanket statements and I wish she would give some examples: 'I shall
try to avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into novels,
and from novels into familiar letters and conversation. She mentions that women
are trained to be cunning, getting what they want in a tricky sort of alluring
way, but not having the power to just take it. I would like to have some examples.
One example I can think of is how girls would say, 'Call me', instead of 'I'll
call you'. I never considered the extent that they were weakened until she
wrote of how women get weak muscularly and inside their guts from being penned
up all their lives. The fact that an unmarried woman over 30 is useless just
broke my hart. I sure am glad I am an American. I don't even want to go to Europe,
Boycott Europe! I heard women are more subordinate over there than here. How
men instill fear (as Rouseau says) in women to make them the way they are, and
they turn and try to scare others into conforming; reminded me of people who
were beat on as children turn and beat on their own. It is amazing how they
could be suppresses so much without apparently realizing it. Another part that
appalled me was how she had to explain that a man would rather have a woman
with a brain than a dumb hoe: 'That rare as true love is, true friendship is
still rarer'. And this bullshit: That great women were just 'Male spirits, confined
by mistake in female frames'.
'Liberty is the mother of virtue', amen. She says it is unfair that marriage is the only thing women can look forward to. I would like to know the reaction from the critics she got for this. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't like it. It is sad she had to so repeatedly admit that women actually are inferior to men at this time: '...This is not an unfair supposition; of the present mode of education does not tend to enlarge the heart any more than the understanding, is jealous of the little kindness which her husband shows to his relations'. Yikes.
Dorothy Wordsworth
| I didn't really get into Dorothy
Wordsword. She just talked about her daily comings and goings. It was interesting
to read her stuff right after Wolstoncraft, because she is the perfect stereotypical
woman of that period of time. She seems to have no control over what she does;
just reports what she sees happening to herself. It seemed like every day someone
was dying or getting sick or injured. I was flattered how she was as close to
William as a wife, doing everything together and whatnot. And it is wild they
lived 80 together, that is twice as long as the average person of those days
even lives. I think it is very sweet that William married her best friend and
they all lived happily ever after together. I wonder what made her lose her
mind. It seems as though there are all sort of diseases back yonder. With Dorothea
not being a published poet, hearing all her Romantic descriptions of things
really hit home how incredibly descriptive those artists were. They pounded
it as though they were making up for hundreds of years of completely neglecting
it. It was insipid how much they did it. That's cool she watched the Simpsons,
I didn't know they were on that long ago. Anna Laetitia Barbauld- This woman
really lucked out to have a father who devoted his life to making her a walking
library. Not only was she a popular author at a young age, but she was political.
Definitely one in a million for a woman of that time. Life- This poem is powerful
because she is explaining the plyte of women, and not being soft about it: 'Life!
I know not what thou art'. She is saying how hard it is to be a woman, how she
is useless even to feed the weeds. It is as if she never even existed: 'Where
bend unseen thy trackless course'. Like she barely deserves to live. But she
calls for a healing of this sickness: 'To break thy trance and reassume thy
power?' '...But in some brighter clime bid me good morning'. Charlotte Smith-
She seemed like a fairly normal woman of the time, with an abusive husband and
12 kids. Written at the Close of Spring- In this poem she describes what fall
is like in a typical melancholy fashion: '...Are the fond visions of thy early
day, till tyrant passion, and corrosive care, bid all thy fairy colors fade
away!' She is talking about fairies again, does she see them or what? To Sleep-
Here she talks about sleep. - Here she talks about sleep. She makes the usual
references to classical mythology: 'Bid gay dreams, from Morpheus' airy court'.
I find it refreshingly interesting that we have a woman having dreams about
men: 'Clasp'd in her faithful shepherd's guardian arms'. I feel a different angle
about dreams with this woman than with the men. The charms of the dreams and
the love, and liberty being stressed was nice. To Night- This here poem is about
night. She likes night because it brings freedom and refreshes her. The men
have melancholy, but the women must have a lot more because of their suppression.
So it is no surprise to hear how the dreams relieve her of: 'Embosomed grief,
however vain'. 'While to the winds and waves its sorrows given'. She, like the
other females here, has hope: 'May reach-tho' lost on earth- the ear of Heaven!'
William Lisle Bowles- I didn't really party that much with Bowles. To the River
Itchin, near Winton- I wasn't surprised to hear him talk about melancholia:
'Why feels my heart the shivering sense of pain?' The rest of the poem he Romantically
describes this river that I assume is near his house. Languid, and sad, and
slow- What a classic title for a Romantic English poem. 'Their sad spirits beat
to tread that fairy ground'. I am starting to wonder if fairies were flying around all over the place back then for people to see and they just don't do
that no more. ''Till cheerless on their path the night descends'. That is a
sad image; when you don't feel like you had a good day when it ends because
of your languidity and you do it many days running. 'And soon a longing look':
What a lot of Languid people do, expecting someone else to dig them out of their
rut. Joanna Baillie- This girl lived a long time, longer than how old I am right
now anyway. The successor to Shakespeare? Nice! Tough for a woman to do. And
she was Scottish to boot.
Up! Quit thy Bower- This is a poem about a woman getting married. In those days women only left the house to get married, and then lived in a new home without leaving. It seems that maybe she is mocking the life of a woman in this poem instead of praising it. Because she says: 'Braid thy hair'. Which is a metaphor for tying your creative side down, acknowledging weakness. 'And rose thee in breezy air': As if she is never in the breezy air. 'The friar's bell, its service sound hath chimed well': Is another allusion to women being controlled by men. Up when the bell rings you bitch (you know, female dog obeying the bell). 'May bring good fortune ere the night'. Never have I heard one of these ladies not speak of dreams. Song: Woo'd and married and a'- This poem is anti-male. This seems like it could be a song. She talks of not being wooed by a rich man but a man what loves her. 'Her mother then hastily spak'. Women probably hastily spak so their men wouldn't say 'Dumb bitch talks too slow'. This part could mean some different things: 'The gear that is gifted, it never will last like the gear that is won'. Is she talking about women needing to take what they want in the world, or must take men who take what they want. Probably the latter. 'The chiel maun be patient and steady that yokes wi'a mate in her teens'. Because young girls are weak and fragile? Joanna's dream is for a man to say this to her: 'I'm rich, though my coffer be toom, wi'the blinks o'your bonny blue een'. Walter Savage Landor- The longest living yet. Seamed to be a very energized man, probably good hearted. Never heard 'Lionized' before. He was probably irascible because of some kind of sickness he got swimming in some shity river as a child. Seems to be the ultimate Romantic, too hard core to be poet laureate: '..But they are written in a style so elevated and remote that they sometimes suggest dialogues between heroic-size Greek statues'. Mother, I cannot mind my wheel- Classic melancholy: 'If you felt the pain I feel!... Men may use deciet...He always said my eyes were blue'.
The Three Roses
|This is an Ode to his three female relatives who are roses to him. Past Ruined Ilion- This poem is about his dreams about Helen of Troy: 'While lovers hail these many summers you and me'. He relates pain with love, like a lot of Romantics do: 'The tear for fading beauty check'. Maybe Ianthe is his wife in real life. Dirce- This is about a fairy girl, Dirce. Who is at the river Styx, and Charon wants her, but she is a shadow; not real enough for Charon. Twenty years hence- This poem is about his vision of himself in twenty years. 'Too sadly sigh Alas': He doesn't like getting old; not surprising. Well I remember how you smiled- This poem is about his lovely Ianthe teasing him for writing her name in the sand because it will wash away and thinking he didn't know that. Now his wife is dead and he is telling her that he is writing her name in a poetry book which will never wash away, so he got the last laugh (or smile). George Gordon, Lord Byron- He was a pathologically irascible man who was raised by a woman of a similar temperment and a murdering uncle. He was apparently one of those people who would get in knock down drag out arguments with people and then go out to lunch with them. He was a typical Englishman of the time in that he was eccentric and outspoken, but he broke too many of their Victorian rules and ?as kicked out of England for two timing his wife. English people of that day seemed to be very emotional, I wasn't surprised to read that he went into convulsions when he heard a girl he was in love with got married. I wonder if they are still like that. Mary Shelley's description of him: '...Gloomy and yet more gay than any other'. Suggests a man who is very in touch with his emotions, a classic poet. Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos- This seems like an uncharacteristic thing for an Englishman of those days to do, and he did it in December. I don't understand how he could pity Venus, while he is swimming in freezing water, he must have been in one of his hyper moods. In the last stanza he is sort of making fun of and sympathizing with those poets who aren't as strong swimmers as he. She walks in beauty- In this poem he is praising (I assume) his girlfriend. He relates night time with love. 'One shade the more, one ray the less': Is a nice complement, a fancy way of saying she's perfect. And: 'A heart whose love is innocent': Is about all you can ask for. They say that Hope is happiness- Here he is talking about how people imagine love in the past and future. How it is more real in the past: 'Love must prize the past'. And it is only going to get worse: 'The future cheats us from afar: Nor can we be what we recall, nor dare we think on what we are'. He is obviously really ashamed of being an Englishman. I wish he would be more specific. I think he is saying English people don't know how to respect and love each other. When we two parted- Here he is talking about his divorce with his wife. In the end he admits that he messed up and probably regrets causing her to leave him: '...And share in its shame'. 'A shudder comes o'er me'- Goes back to how in touch with emotions these poets were. 'How should I greet thee! With silence and tears'. Tells how the 'Heart could forget'. Stanzas for Music- In the first stanza he is talking about how the synchronicity between all the things in nature is like music. Darkness- This poem deals with his idea that English people don't communicate and can't trust each other. 'And all the hearts were shill'd into a selfish prayer for light'. How the homes of people just served to separate people. He talks of how people of power live unjustly: 'They were slain for food. a meal was bought with blood, and each sate sullenly apart gorging himself in gloom: no love was left'. This is definitely a pessimistic poem how our civilization is crumbling into darkness instead of coming into the light. So, we'll go no more a roving- Here he is describing his jont in the woods with his lover. Because: 'The night was made for loving'. He feels the moon magnifies loving; he doesn't say why, but the stillness of its brightness has something to do with it.
When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home
|This is a simple poem explaining the virtue of fighting for freedom. This sentence, 'When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home, let him combat for that of his neighbors', he is saying that if you are free, you have the moral responsibility to fight for the freedom of people who are oppressed elsewhere. This is a powerful thing to say and do. When you realize the importance of freedom without having to be oppressed, and have the compassion to fight for strangers; you are a very special person. Stanzas Written on the Road between Florence and Pisa- I liked this poem a lot because he is explaining why men shouldn't go to war because of laurels they might win, but to please their girlfriends; because what your lover thinks of you is the most important. Not only that, but to know that you did it for love, it makes love that much stronger: '...The bright eyes of the dear one discover she thought that I was not unworthy to love her'. 'The day of youth are the days of our glory', shows an important believe they had in those days. War was a bigger part of their lives in those days, so it was still more important for a man to be a good fighter than a wise old men. Wise old men where out in those days. I assume with this statement: 'What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled?', he means that old men don't care for garlands and crowns because they have already proved themselves. But it could also have a more pessimistic meaning; that old garlands don't mean anything anymore. January 22nd. Missolonghi- This is an interesting poem because of the message he gives that (I assume) we are too preoccupied with reputation when we judge each other, that the feeling of communal love is lost. In this poem he is also lamenting the fact that he doesn't have any children: 'No torch is kindled at its blaze a funeral pile!'. 'The fire that on my bosom preys is lone as some Volcanic Isle', tells that English people are alone. This sentence, 'The hope, the fear, the jealous care', says that Englishmen are jealous of each other, afraid of failure, and think of hope as something negative along the same lines as fear and jealousy. When he says: 'The sword, the banner, and the field, glory and Greece around us see! The spartan borne upon his shield was not more free!' He says that England is too influenced by the warrior mentality that came from Greece. The warriors like the Spartans were no more free than English people. With this stanza: 'Tread those reviving passions down unworthy manhood- unto thee indifferent should the smile or frown of beauty be', he declares that beauty has nothing to do with the idea of honor that comes from killing other people. The last two stanzas tell how quick life is, so do what you want to and not because it is the socially accepted thing for young people to do. I might be misunderstanding him here, because he went to another country and died in a war that he wasn't socially required to do.
Childe Harrold's Pilgrimage
|This poem is from his diary when he traveled around Europe. It mostly deals with his observations of the histories of the places he visits. His hero, Childe Harold, is an imaginary young knight's travels. The first Canto, 'Sin's Long Labyrinth', explains where he first went wrong, when he disrespected his native land: 'Who soon had left her charms to vulgar bliss, and spoil'd her goodly lands to gild his waste, nor calm domestic peace had ever deign'd to taste', describes when men started conquering other lands, which is bad. In the third Canto, he describes how something went wrong when he was young: 'Since my young days of passion- joy, or pain, perchance my heart and harp have lost a string, and both may jar'. Perhaps he is saying that his passion could have been used for something other than war. 'Still unimpair'd, though old, in the soul's haunted cell'- He is refering to Childe as still having motivation, even though he is going is circles. This sentence: 'In soul and aspect as in age: years steal fire from the mind as vigour from the limb; and life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim', explains how his culture is designed to only foster violent energy that is in young people, without valuing the wisdom that comes in old age. 'Secure in guarded coldness' is a good description of English peoples tendency to be cold to others and at the same time fortify them selves against the coldness of others. This line: '...The very knowledge that he lived in vain', tells how Byron considers a traveler without a cause is worthless to even himself. Which is an interesting view to have because it is such an unconditionless thought; as if you can't learn anything from just traveling. The Child needs a purpose: 'Ambition's life and labors all were in vain; he wears the shattered links of the world's broken chain'. In stanza 41 he explains how, 'Men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne, their admiration thy best weapon thrown'. Peer pressure. This sentence explains how warrior societies aren't evolving properly: 'Their breath is agitation, and their life a storm whereon they ride, to sink at last, and yet so nursed and bigoted to strife'. He admits a fowl truth: 'He who surpasses or subdues mankind, must look down on the hat of those below'. Here he explain how he is a part of his society and can't escape it: 'I live not in myself, but I become portion of that around me; and to me, high mountains are a feeling, but the hum of human cities torture, I can see nothing to loathe in nature'. He asks for us to become peaceful by going to nature. This is an interesting line, because it has to do with ugly things seeming pretty: 'The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew how to make madness beautiful'. This line is interesting because it refers to how only the young is respected: 'He is an evening reveler, who makes his life an infancy, and sings his fill'. He isn't entirely melancholic, stanza 116 gives an answer, describing a proper childhood: 'To aid thy mind's development,- to watch thy dawn of little joys,- to sit and see almost thy very growth,- to view thee catch knowledge of objects,- wonders yet to thee! to hold thee lightly on a gentle knee, and print on thy soft cheek a parents kiss'. Here he describes his ideal place: 'There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, there is a rapture on the lonely shore, there is society, where none intrudes'. He thinks that people shouldn't intrude and control others, and trust each other. The last few stanzas get very negative; starting with stanza 179: 'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; man marks the earth with ruin-his control with the shore...etc.' This whole stanza explains how humans are so concerned with controlling everything, but they can't control the sea, and are nothing to it. This conveys an attitude of separateness from nature that humans have. He kind of implies that nature doesn't even care about humans. Here is another sentence along those lines: 'Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee- Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?...Has dried up realms to deserts'. I had a hard time following this poem, but he had a lot of lines.
Second Romantic Literature Journal
|ems all the time and what not. He was a conspicuously precocious young school boy, just don't be afraid to think He was very melancholic, and it is good he got married. He said , Apparently which, but; because he didn't seem like a conservative for his time. recollection matched from yon bean-field! andre
That's Don Juan. Canto 2
This is a tragic love story about
a young man named Don Juan, his lover Haidee, and her Father Lambro. The poem
starts out describing Don Juan's childhood. This line interested me: 'Dunces
where whipt, or set upon a stool: The great success of Juan's education spurr'd
her to teach another generation'. This line sounds like Byon thought that whipping
kids was good education. Then Don Juan (and I think Lambro also) in a pyrat
ship that sinks. Byron wins the grossest Romantic prize for vividly describing
the dissection and consumption of the dead sailors. Because Juan is a good swimmer
and he was lucky enough to have an oar to hold on to, he thinks he is the sole
survivor. He is found by Haidee (the princess of the island) and her maid, and
nursed back to health. Haidee and Don Juan fall in a love unbeaten by anyone,
which Byron does a good job at explaining: ´´He woke and gaed, and would
have slept again, but the fair face which met his eyes forbade those eyes to
close...and she would softly stir his locks so curly, without disturbing her
yet slumbering guest...thought daily service was her only mission...and saw
each other´s dark eyes darting light into each other-and, beholding this,
their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss...concentrating like rays into one
focus, kindled from above...each kiss a heart-quake...as if their souls and
lips each other beckon'd..as if there were no life beneath the sky save theirs,
and that their love could never die....they were all in all to each other..they
thought a language there...Juan and Haidee gazed upon each other with swimming
looks of speechless tenderness, which mix'd all feelings, friend, child, lover,
brother, all that the best can mingle and express when two pure hearts are pour'd
in one another, and love too much and et can not love less'. Haille thought
her evil pyrat father, who owned the island, was dead because she hadn't heard
from him in a long while. And when he came back, she had finished her mourning
and had started her new life with Don and wasn't expecting to see her father.
When he woke her up, she screamed and Don Juan woke up and the crazy father
grabbed his daughter so Juan wouldn't shoot him and shot Don Juan, who was carried
away wounded in a ship back to Europe. Lambro is definitely a nut-case because
of this line, where he talks about his feelings about finding his daughter in
bed with a man after she thought he was dead: 'Few would bear such outrage,
and forbear to kill'. That is a bit of an exaggeration. Hailee was so heart-broken
that she died twelve days later. This is an unusual poem because the poet diverges
on a few occasions to philosophize about what is going on with the story, and
defend and explain why he is diverging. Here are some sentences that describe
his personality: 'As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow, and wish'd that
others held the same opinion; they took it up when my days grew more mellow,
and other minds acknowledged my dominion...This is a liberal age, and thoughts
are free. Meantime Apollo plucks me by the ear, and tells me to resume story
here'. There are some lines in this poem that got me thinking; like this one:
'The love of women!... Their revenge is as the tiger's spring, deadly, and quick,and
crushing; yet, as real torture is theirs, what they inflict they feel. they
are right; for man, to man oft unjust, is always so to women; one sole bond
awaits them, treachery is all their trust'. Here he tells how women are treated
unjustly by men, yet have powers to make men feel very bad, as bad as men make
them feel. Here is another interesting line: 'That wisdom, ever on the watch
to rob joy of its alchymy.' Another degrading line to wisdom and old age.
say By not having music sometimes you realize you like not having it, dig? Yea,
thoughts don't have to be called.
as a corpse As if , read about; eat to tread that fairy ground'- '-, An impressive role have this poem instead of praising it; b As if he is saying,''- This poem is anti-male and about her dream of , the blinks o' your bonny blue yet ,her He had a very stupid wife, I wonder what percentage of the women were that dumb. he was eccentric and outspoken;s kicked out of England for two- with got married. I wonder if English people and thinks other people should be like that also, seems like an uncharacteristically badd ass understand how he could pity Venus frantically with love:and the more, one ray the less', i is how the 'Heart could forget'a love. neighbors',s and The last two stanzas, in a very sarcastic way, thing for young people to do. wasn't socially required to do; maybe he actually means what he says.tion, even though he is going inward way of looking at competition down on the hat of those below'. I would say: 'He who surpasses or re-influences mankind, gets to make the new rules'. Herman Hesse- I like Herman Hesse. What an eccentric individual. Trying to commit suicide, having to spend time in the insane asylum. I very melancholia man with a good heart. Narcissus and N and G was a very good book. I learned a lot of things from it. It was very good. I liked it a lot. Yes. I liked Goldman, as far as I am concerned he is the perfect person. He loves everyone and tries to make their life better: 'He (Goldmund) would have liked to become the personal servant of this pious man'. He tried to help Rebecca, he let Robert follow him around, even though he didn't really like him. He helped bury bodies in the plague. He didn't do anything selfish, he was a good man. Narcissus and Goldmund were polar opposites. Narcissus was the scientific minded scholarly priest, and Goldmund was the creative artist. Hesse brought to light the gifts and weaknesses of these two different kinds of people. Narcissus couldn't create, and Goldmund couldn't judge. Narcissus could find the relationships between things, and Goldmund created new paradigms. Goldmund's life was much more exiting, and painful; very intense; while Narcissus was very controlled and monotonous, but easy. These two men become friends with each other in the beginning of the book because they are so different and they thrive of the the fascination they have with each other. At the end of the book they completely realize how they are the embodiments of the two great opposite personalities who live symbiotically in the world; and they realize they aren't as different as they thought they were. Narcissus admits that his life is hard, and Goldmund admits his life is pointless. At the beginning of the book Narcissus is portrayed as the more knowledgeable, explaining to Goldmund how he isn't as good of a thinker as he is, which is a condescending and overly simple thing to say. But in the end he admits to Goldmund that he kind of envies him: 'My life has been poor in love; I have lacked the best of life...You give me your love in this moment when I have nothing left'. Goldmund especially loved women, and it was a love that greatly transcended sex. He was very spiritually connected to women. He had visions of his mother his whole life, and thought seeing her when he dies is like seeing god. He always thought of Rebecca, and he only talked to her briefly and never even touched her. He stayed with Rene until she died even though she was deformed with the plague and exposing him to it. He bent to the wishes of women, which men never did in those days. If everybody would have respected women the way Goldmund did, the world would have been a much better place. One point Herman Hesse may be making in this book is that the perfect person has the gifts of Narcissus and Goldmund. We all need to be able to create new paradigms for each other by doing new things nobody has done before, but we also need to be able to relate things together and judge and classify where we are at compared to each other so we don't bring things out of proportion and become excessively depressed or dangerously manic. Another point he could be making is that the different people of the world need to respect each other for their differences, because they show them a side of the world that they don't see very much and need to become aware of. That it is OK be fascinated with someone who is different, instead of looking to your own kind for support and entertainment. The world at that time definitely needed such a message. Goldmund is far closer to the human ideal than Narcissus because he is free and loves and lives hard. Narcissus is penned up in the cloister his whole life and is a domestic animal. Hesse doesn't paint a favorable picture for anybody in this book. He portays Goldmunds life to have a lot of pain and near death experiences, and Narcissus to be like a stagnant caged animal. Hesses' melancholy temperament does a good job of conveying the story in an objective light; so the reader can see the facts of the situation of themselves, and independently come to their conclusions about Hesses messages. I think this book did a good job at opening people's mind's to each other. The dynamics and societal rules and artistic and analytical, were brought up. The fact Arson. He loves everyone and tri he let Robert follow him around plague scholarly between's These two men beca friends beginning embodiments symbolically knowledgeable briefly before to someone definitely, very portrays Goldmund's stagnant caged animal.
Second ten page paper on the precarious balance between affirmation and despair
There was deffinitely a precarious balance between affirmation and despair in
Victorian England. One reason there was a lot of despair was because of all
the technological advances coming for people who are understandably not prepared.
The population increase coming before sewage systems is a perfect example. Another
reason is a basic misunderstanding between the different classes and sexes.
Women were in such a disrespected position for whatever reason, that have of
the population was in a rut that they couldn't get out of. It was a time of
as much turbulence as today, except there was a lot more evil. The five million
witch massacres is a perfect example of this prevalent evil.
This man was well aware of the weaknesses of his culture, and cunningly reflected
his knowledge. He came from tormented roots, so he had a first hand experience
of life gone awry. He like to write tragedies, like Cain Sardanapalus, and
Marino Faliero. He was a good man because he wrote about women in a positive
light. She walks in beauty is a good poem because of these lines: 'And all that's
best of dark and bright, meet in her aspect and her eyes. One shade the more,
one ray the less, had half impaired the nameless grace'. But he still can't
escape a line that could be classified as sexist: 'A heart whose love is innocent!'
This is sexist because if you are innocent you haven't experienced life. He
definitely is a melancholic poet, but he has good techniques to bring affirmation
in with his statements that make him seem like for of a god than Venus; for
example in the poem Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos, he says: 'Fair
Venus! How I pity both!'And another affirmative sentence: '...And swam for love,
as I for glory'. In this sentence in this poem: 'Sad mortals! thus the gods
still plague you!' He is making a command for us to stop revering gods as all
powerful, and start seeing ourselves as the ones in control. In his poem Stanzas
for Music, there is no last sentence or stanza that brings us down, which is
refreshing. His poem Darkness has a lot of lines that enlighten us to the ills
of the society, like this one: 'Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light'.
This isn't the first time I have read about an English Romantic using the word
selfish to describe his people. He means to say that they don't have shoulders
to lean on with these lines: 'But with a piteous and perpetual moan, and a quick
desolate cry, licking the hand which answered not with a caress-he died'. When
he says: 'They slept on the abyss without a surge-the waves were dead; the tides
were in their grave, the moon their mistress had expired before; the winds were
withered in the stagnant air, and the clouds perished; the darkness had no need
of aid from them-she was the Universe'. He is saying that nature isn't getting
her fair share of love from men that she is giving to them. He declares the
remedy to the problem, saying that it is love for each other in his poem So,
we'll go no more a roving: 'Though the heart be still as loving...though the
night was made for loving, and the day returns too soon'. I find it delightful
that he uses the moon.
Study of the theory of displaced myth
The book that I am studying is The French Lieutenant's Woman, By John Fowles. This book has a lot of mythic motifs, as do most English novels. This was a classic courtly love story, because Charles was infatuated with Sarah the same way the moon was with Lycius. A lot of the courtly love rules were there. Women are purer than men- She was very innocent. Woman is spiritual teacher- Charles learned a lot from Sarah. Woman leads man but remains cold- Sarah made Charles fall in love with her, and then disappeared. And she wasn't exactly flirting with him when she first met him. By suffering, he becomes pure, gets thin, can't eat, worries that she doesn't like him, has fits, wears ring or scarf in her honor- When Sarah left him, he lost his life in England and went on a trip around the world. In the movie, he grew a beard and became jobless. The replacement for the scarf, was his constant search for Sarah. What Charles did for Sarah, is like what Jesus did for St. Teresa: '...By becoming weak and little, for love of me, he made me strong and brave; he put his own weapons (money) into my hands so that I went on from strength to strength, beginning, if I may say so, 'to run as a giant'. The sailor was like Jason and the Argonauts. Sarah not being allowed to walk in the same place every day relates to the Hebrews not being allowed out of Egypt. Sarah is like St. Teresa because she said: 'I have reached the point of not being able to suffer any more- because all suffering is sweet to me'. Sarah is so melancholic that she likes it too. This book has a lot of classic Catharsis in it, with this woman being treated so bad, and Charles losing his reputation. One way of looking at Sarah is like yeast. The small amounts of yeast that makes
that makes the bread rise is like Sarah being just one woman who shakes up an entire town by just being herself. This story fits to a tragedy pretty good too:
1) A tragedy is about a man/woman who is potentially great and good- Sarah would have been a good lover because she was so sensitive about it. Charles had compassion, so he would have been a good lover also. and also a good businessman with the tapestry shop, helping all the pilgrims.
2) The man/woman holds or achieves a high position in society- Charles was to be married into a very rich family and to be made a partner in a big tapestry company.
3) The man/woman has a downfall- Charles lost his reputation and partnership with the tapestry company.
4) The downfall is partly caused by a supernatural force over which he/she into conflict with an established law, taboo, moral code or custom- When Charles breaks his engagement to Tina, he breaks the taboo of breaking engagements. He loses his reputation, with Tina given the permission to print his acts in the local newspaper.
5) The downfall is also caused by a weakness or excessively strong character trait whoever which he/she should have control- Charles' excessive character trait was his infatuation with Sarah. Seeing what a good deal getting married to Tina was compared to Sarah, any normal man would have married Tina.
6) The downfall has magnitude (causes many other people to suffer too)- The other people who go down with Charles are all of his servants like Sam, because they have to get new jobs. Tina was shocked into a temporary sickness, and her father was disgusted into extreme discomfort. Also, all of the nosey townspeople who hear about this strange occurrence. And Mrs. Poultry and all of her subjects who new Sarah.
7) The downfall brings about wisdom or insight in either the main character or other characters or both.- The person who benefited the most was Sarah, because she got a paid ticket out of her monotonously melancholies existence, and learned that love is a reality and she could get it whenever she wanted. Charles benefited from the experience also, because he went on a trip around the western world and learned a lot of things. When he was reunited with Sarah, and excepted her, he proved to the both of them that he was true enough to make their love last.
8) The downfall rouses fear and pity for the main character (a mixed reaction) in the audience.- I felt a lot of pity for Charles, because he gave up everything for Sarah and she ditched him. I felt pity for Sarah because of her loneliness and traumatic reaction she had from the incident with the sailor. Main characters parallels with mythic gods and goddesses All gods have light side and dark side, like Artemis- The two main characters had dark sides. Charles was compassionate for Sarah, but was rude to Sam. Sarah was sensitive, but stood Charles up. Sarah's daily trips to the Ocean relates to Persephone's annual trips to the living world. Visiting the Ocean was like Persephone visiting the living world. Sacrifice- The parallels of sacrifice are as follows: The lamb was honored for its sacrifice: 'Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory'. Charles sacrifices himself, and ended up winning a true, trusting, relationship. The ancient tendency for archaic religious people to be harsh with sinners, like St Leodegarius: 'Never having been softened by the joys of the flesh, he was strict in his treatment of sinners'. The word was very strict with Sarah and Charles. Similarities with water- Water was important in the bible and in the Book. From the bible: 'God's spirit hovered over water...Let their be vault to divide the waters'. Sarah's church was the ocean. The wanderer- Cane was the wanderer of the bible as Charles is the wanderer of FLW. Attitudes that Sarah has that are similar to biblical figures: - Paul said: 'You are not justified by observing the law, but faith in Jesus Christ Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the law'. Sarah would agree with him, because she doesn't abide by any rules. Paul and Charles- Charles changed from a typical Victorian man into a humble lover of truth and honesty. Paul turned from a zealous Jewish man who persecuted the church of god, into a preacher for Jesus. Attitudes characters had about biblical stories and rules: Mrs. Poutney- 'As she lay in her bedroom she reflected on the terrible mathematical doubt that increasingly haunted her; whether the lord calculated charity by what one had given or by what one could have afforded to give'. This relates to Jesus saying that a rich person has the same chance to get into heaven as a camel has in fitting into the eye of a needle. Loyalty to your group- The Hebrews circumcised themselves, as the cockneys deliberately spoke a certain way: 'But his wrong a's and h's were not really comic; they were signs of a social revolution, and this was something Charles failed to recognize'. The relationship between high classes and low classes- In the bible, the Egyptians were condescending and evil to the Hebrews, and the same is true for the rich people of England: '...The frigid barrier so many of the new rich in an age drenched in new riches were by that time erecting between themselves and their domestics'. The Egyptians didn't let the Hebrews out of Egypt, because they needed them to sustain their lives, as Charles did: 'He could not have imagined a world without his servants'. The Hebrews and the English have a lot of rules- With Charles' case: '...The methodically of the Victorians Where, one wonders, can any pleasure have been left? How...cn any pleasure have been left? How, can he not have seen that light clothes would have been more comfortable? That a hat was not necessary? That stout nailed boots on a boulder-strewn beach are as suitable as ice skates? Paul explains the same problems that can happen by blindly following cultural laws: 'Again i declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law might ave been alienated from christ; you have fallen from grace'.
Mrs. Poultny was like
I'm the teacher, but humble. I just say what I gotta say. I'm jot special, I just want to know just like you, wanna help you help me, I know things, not everything, tell me tell me, secrets suck! I studied hard I care, I'm happy and good. Yea love! love! Everything. But not non love. How could you love non love? Everybody loves me everybody loves me, everybody loves me everybody loves me. I'm frantic? fervent! Yea! Ooah ah! Savior of the Universe! I'm Humble! No?! Then slap me down, if it makes you feel any better, but it won't. No all that'll make you feel better is lovin me, loving me, everybody, everybody loves me. i love your hair glistening in the wind I love being with you I love talking to you I love looking in your eyes, I love you jokes, songs. 'Oh lal la I like preaching religion because its the one thing we all get emotional and have opinions. I could never get used to it. I'm a teacher, full on preacher, not so special, just a everyday wrestler with tha truth, baby were in our youth helpin me help you I got knowledge want to use it, full fledge , so what's up secrets Hard core I got tha score, ain't no bore 4 4 on tha floor, give more more, 1 2 3 4 open the door
Teachers lives
I was fortunate enough to do my practicum
work in many different settings: Durango high, Ecalante middle school, that
focus school on third street, and New Vista high school in Boulder. The teachers
in all these places seemed to enjoy their jobs more than average, and most were
I asked four teachers what their
life was like outside of school. The oldest of whom, a 13 year veteran named
Susie, said that she didn't really do any work away from school and feels she
has enough time for her children. She said she usually goes home around five
Vonnie Walker said she never likes
to take her work home, so she is usually doing it at school until five.
Fifteen practicum hours at Escalante Middle School 7
The fifteen hours I did at Escalante
Middle school reminded me of my Junior High experience because the building
and the kids looked the same. Vonnie Walker and the other teachers I met there
were a lot better than the Junior High teachers I had. It seemed like she respected
them, I was always getting embarrassed in front of the whole class for breaking
rules I didn't even know existed. The first couple of days after Vonnie's class
I observed a science class next to her. One day they shot off a rocket made
by some of the kids in the class, which seemed kind of pointless because they
had shot a lot of them before and everybody knew what was going to happen. If
I was the teacher I would have said, 'Do we really want to shoot Billy and Susie's
rocket today'. I asked some girls if they liked the teacher (who was a semester
long substitute), and they said they didn't at all because she wasn't dynamic
at all and basically just let the kids do whatever they wanted. I find that
response encouraging because it shows the kids think. If I would have been one
of the kids in that class I would have said I liked her because she was easy
and didn't bother us.
given assignments to complete and let the smart kids help the s lower kids.
I think teachers take introductions too far and needlessly bore the kids to
I was fortunate enough to do my practicum
work in many different settings: Durango high, Ecalante middle
school, that focus school on third street, and New high school in Boulder. The teachers
in all these places seemed to enjoy their jobs more than average, and most
were veterans.
I asked four teachers what their life was like outside of school. The oldest
of whom, a 13 year veteran
named Susie, said that she didn´t really do any work away from school
and feels she has enough time for her children.
She said she usually goes home around five o'clock.
Susie´s assistant teacher Kim, who is in student teacher status but is
getting paid for taking responsibility
for a multiple sclerosis child, said the same thing. Kim was in the process
of getting her masters and had
previouse teachers to work under and said one teacher put all of the responsibility
on her which was stressfull
and unpleasant.
Vonnie Walker said she never likes to take her work home, so she is usually
doing it at school until five.
The most interesting interviewee I had was a woman who was substituting a class
that I was observing. She
said she quit teaching after three years because she voluntarily took on too
many responsibilities and burned
out and got too emotionally involved in the lives of her students, so she started
a store. When I asked her if
she ever intended on taking up teaching again, she said she might but in a small
mellow school. I told her I
heard rookie teachers are in danger of being fired if they don´t take
up the loose ends; and she said they are
encouraged for the sake of experienced, but aren't irresonably threatened.
It doesn't seem like teaching is as hard of a job as it is portrayed
by my teachers at Fort Lewis. I
expect to be up to my ears in work seven days a week for my first year, but
after that I think I could get away
with having the evenings and weekends to myself.
The main thing I learned from my practicum work is that I want to study all
the things that I have wanted
to learn but haven't had the chance because of school. I don't
want to be another teacher who can't answer the
non academic questions that students ask. I want to be a teacher not just for
the paycheck and three months off,
but so I can preach my mind to young innocent minds. I plan to ride my bike
accross Tibet and then be an ultra
distance mountain bike racer, spending my spare time reading and writting on
what interestests me: Health,
politics, history, cutting edge things, tecnology, etc., not to mention my grammar.
Kids need to think for themselves 215
I wasn't taught to think for myself. Growing up in class, I felt very suppressed, it shouldn't be that way. Kids need to be encouraged to express their thoughts in school, and the only way to do that with any results is to encourage them to feel totally free. Meaning a complete disregard for their dressing, attitude, language, facial expressions. School is not the place to teach kids about out cultural mores, parents should do that. Have you ever heard the term, spreading yourself too thin? The only thing schools should preoccupy themselves with are: Learning how to learn. Everybody wants to know why it is, but we are tricked into thinking that it is no use, because if we don't learn it in school and at home from our parents why bother. Schools should kick out sentence structure, how to write a proper footnote page, and subjective teacher opinions, and all those other things that patronize kids. If a kid shows interest in head shrinking, help them research it. Research papers should be the primary focus of schools. Kick math out, we have computers to figure all that shit out. Teachers need to be unassuming. Don't let a kid know that you have a negative opinion about them.
Victorian literature final 378
cheat sheet
1890- Agnostic and Christ.