at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989

The poem I chose this week was “At the Cemetery, Walnut Grove Plantation, South Carolina, 1989” by Lucille Clifton. I have noticed that I have liked a lot of her poems throughout all of these packets, and I think it is because she takes things that people don’t recognize or necessarily want to talk about and she calls people out on them. I think if I met her she would be sassy and I think that would be awesome. :)

In this poem Clifton recognizes the fact that the slaves in South Carolina were never honored for all they did, or received justice for the things that happened to them. The second stanza really is the central idea of the poem, “nobody mentioned slaves and yet the curious tools shine with your fingerprints. nobody mentioned slaves but somebody did this work who had no guide, no stone, who moulders under rock.” That stanza shows that the slaves were such a huge part of the development of this world, only to be dishonored, forgotten, and unrecognized. As the poem continues, it is clear that Clifton’s goal is to give these slaves recognition for all they did, and give them the credit they deserve. “tell me your names, tell me your bashful names and i will testify.”Here, she just wants to show readers that they deserve to be recognized. Clifton’s last stanza was the best out of them all, she begins by saying that sometimes men were honored, but never women. “tell me your dishonored names. here lies here lies here lies here lies hear.” Those final lines were brought together by Clifton to recognize all they did, but also to tell readers to hear what she said because that was her goal all along, to get others to recognize these people and everything they did for our country and they should be honored for it. Overall, I really enjoyed this poem because it is something America is embarrassed about, but I think we need to be held accountable for it and honor them making sure it never happens ever again.

A Poison Tree

The poem A Poison Tree was an interesting way of looking at the idea of forgiving and forgetting and the consequences of holding to bad feelings and grudges. First, I want to look at the structure though. I noticed that the word at the end of each line rhymes with the last word of the line before it. Each word that rhymes is a word that contributes to the overall meaning of the poem and shows its importance. The first stanza brings forth another interesting idea, that idea being that it is harder to let go of bad feelings a person has towards a person they already dislike, compared to having bad feelings towards a friend. “I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.” It is easier to bring forth those bad feelings when it is a person's friend, but when it is not a friend, it is a lot harder to bring up those bad feelings and get over them. I believe that the tree is all the bad feelings and anger that a person has and the more it is built up, the more it helps the tree grow.“And I watered it in fears, night and morning with my tears; and I sunned it with smiles, and with soft, deceitful wiles.” So, as all these bad feelings towards this foe eats away at this person these bad feelings turn into fears and tears and create a bad person hung-up on hate. The hate is just going to grow until it bares something that will look like it will fix it all; something a foe would want because it came from that person. The last two lines really sum it all up, “In the morning glad I see my foe outstretched beneath the tree.” These last two lines represent the consequences of holding on to hate and bad feelings because in the end, they will just end up full of hate and no longer the person they once were. As a consequence, they let hate take them over and change who they really were, and they changed into someone who might be looked at as that foe that the person hated to begin with. So, in the end, it is better to forgive and forget rather than get caught-up in the bad feelings and become like the foe.

Goodbye To The Old Life...

Goodbye To The Old Life...

Goodbye to 13 teammates that I might as well have called my sisters.

To the team that was the closest out of them all.

To the girls that never let me fall.

To the team that had a perfect season.

To our silly inside jokes and crazy laughter.

To our crazy British accents and car noises.

To the sweat stained, stenched filled bags that we vowed we would never wash.

To the drive and determination during every game.

To the cold feeling of the green grass between our toes.

To the biggest smiles after every goal.

Goodbye to the team I will never get back again, but will always be remember as the girls who gave me the perfect season...

Goodbye to the best soccer team, that I am so proud to say I was on...

Questions about Unity...

Questions about Unity...

Where does unity start?

How does unity really feel?

Why does unity make people feel whole and wanted?

Where is unity when I need it?

Why is unity so important, but the world can't unite?

What is something we can all unite against? Or for?

Why can't we get past the wall in order to unite?

Why does unity end but never really start?

When is unity most important in the world?

Cottonmouth Country

The poem “Cottonmouth Country” was kind of weird… When reading it I got this weird sense from it. I didn’t know where Hatteras was and I also wondered why the poet chose that place to put in the poem. I found that Hatteras is a place on the east coast of North Carolina and it is called the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” because of such dangerous shipping conditions there. Then the next thing I didn’t know was what a cottonmouth was? I knew that it definitely not that nasty dry feeling like a cotton ball is in a persons mouth, so I looked it up and it is actually a snake, and a kind of dangerous one at that. The cottonmouth is not the typical snake, this snake lives on the east coast, and it goes in water and even the Atlantic Ocean. From that, this place Hatteras sounds like a not very fun place at all. All the description such as fish bones, death, cottonmouth, and pollution, etc. that makes the reader feel like this isn’t a happy place. The author obviously doesn’t like it there. The last two lines bring things together a bit more, “Birth, not death, is the hard loss. I know. I also left a skin there.” From the build up of the description of Hatteras and what it is like there, with the death of many in the ocean, the snakes, the fish bones, and the pollution, this place sounds horrible and I think that is where the “birth, not death, is the hard loss” comes in. I think the author was trying to say there that being born in a crappy place is harder than dying in a crappy place. When a person is born in a place like that they usually stay there all throughout there childhood without a choice and have to kind of suffer there. Then death on the other hand, if they are dying in a place like this they must have made the decision to stay there. I kind of look at it the opposite from the poem. I look at being born there a person has no control and they just deal with it a leave when they get older, but then I look at dying there and I would think it would be harder to look back with regret that I didn’t leave a place like that? The last line reveals that the author lived there and left there… leaving only skin behind like a snake; they shed their skin as a symbol that the place is no longer a part of them, and that they are starting fresh somewhere new. Looking at the poem as a whole, I noticed that it is only one stanza and it only has eight lines, and think that it contributes to the meaning, showing that the author doesn’t see the place as something important to them and just dreary and boring. In the end, I thought the poem was kind of interesting and I liked how the author described the place where they were born in such a different way than many would have expected.

The Book

I think we did the poem “The Book” by Miller Williams last class, and since then I have thought about it quite a bit. One of the ideas I liked quite a bit was the thought that it was a person living in someone else skin rather than his own, or that he had become a different person. I felt the poem came from a war because the book was found in a fallen bunker. The part that revealed that he used it as a diary and a sketchbook means a lot. When a person uses something like that, they let their guard down and show who they really are. Finding out what that book really was―a book bound by human skin, and knowing what it held I think maybe made the soldier question himself and who he had become. The last lines describe it perfectly,“I stared at the changing book and a horror grew, I stared and a horror grew, which was, which is, how beautiful it was until I knew.” From that, there is that sense that the soldier is now lost, and he is questioning all that he thought he was and what he knew. Maybe that book allowed him to change and become a different person after the war, and then to find out that the place that his new self was, was not what he thought it was, it made him question his new self altogether. So, then the question comes would it have been better to have not found out at all? There is no clear answer, but I am not sure even what I would want? Find out my changed life is based on a something else from what I thought, I don’t know if I could overcome that? The book alone was not the only horror, the thought of where does he go from here only added even more to the overall horror…and that what was once beautiful and good was not anymore...

Alone

The poem Alone, by Edgar Allan Poe, is exactly what we all expect from Poe― sad. One of the first things I noticed when reading the poem was the rhyme of the last word in every two lines. It is a pretty interesting structure to the poem, and it is kind of strange but it makes the poem seem a bit matter-of-fact? So, obviously the poem is about being alone. The reason for him being alone is said in the first line, “Form childhood’s hour I have not been as others were.” So, he was always a different from the other kids when he was a kid. Next he said, “I have not seen as others saw,” and that makes me think that he had unusual things happen as a child that a normal child would not have seen, and for that he was maybe more mature than the other kids, making him be alone. It seems that no matter what he did he could not find joy in others, “I could not awaken my heart to joy at the same tone― And all i lov’d―I loved alone―” The last two lines really sum everything up, “(When the rest of Heaven was blue) of a demon in my view―” From that it makes me think that it doesn’t bother him that he is alone, and that it is something he has learned to deal with. When everyone had happy images like heaven he always had those different and unhappy dark images like demons. At the end of the day, the poem is seen sad to someone like me, but to someone like him it seems like something he has just learned to deal with and it doesn’t faze him anymore which is even more sad.