Short Stories by Brooke 1020

The first short story I read was entitled, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  I thought this was a great story.  The story was about a man with wings that was found face down on the ground.  He was an old man found by a couple and later put into their chicken coupe.  He was a spectacle to the town.  Many wandered if he was an angle, devil or a just a man.  At the end of the story, he disappeared by flying away.  I will be doing my argument on this short story.  I don't know exactly what it is that I want to do, but I loved this story.
The second short story was entitled, The Yellow Wallpaper  by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  I started to read this one and I thought it was boring.  Started talking about this woman and her husband who is a doctor.  Then it spoke of the different rooms in this house and yellow wallpaper.  I sort of drifted soon after that (just being honest).  Yet, I was full tuned to the first short story that I read!

Incident by Brooke1020

This poem is by Countee Cullen.  This poem is very short but has a great message.  It speaks about about a child's experience in Baltimore.  The experience like so many others, was remembered because of the pain associated with it.  This child got called a 'niggar' by a Baltimorean when he was eight years old.  I too can recall certain episodes from my childhood that were very painful.  Also, it mentions that this memory was all that the child remembered of Baltimore.  This seem very true of painful memories.  It seems that painful memories can be remembered far better than good memories.  It's a sad thing. 

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Brooke1020

This poem is by Robert Frost.  I liked this poem because it seems so simple.  I believe it is talking about stopping for a quick rest to observe and enjoy the scenery.  It takes place in the woods on a snowy evening.  I liked when he mentions, "My little horse must think it queer to stop without a farmhouse near between the woods and frozen lake the darkest evening of the year."  I love the detail there and then later he describes the horse giving a nudge to make sure that it wasn't a mistake that they had stopped.  What is so interesting in this piece is the detail that he puts in (the horse), isn't something that a normal writer would or could use to describe this event so vividly.  This of course is just my opinion.

We Wear the Mask by Brooke 1020

I liked this poem because it can identify with almost everyone.  I believe everyone wears a mask at times.  Some mask ourselves our whole lives.  I like the opening lines, "We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,..."  To me this poem is talking about the hurt that humans face in this corrupt world.  I don't think it's mentioning lying in a bad way as if we were liars.  I believe it presents it in a sad way; that we lie to ourselves.  This has become the norm for most people and it's hard to be anything else because this is what our society has molded and expected of us.

Richard Cory by Brooke 1020

Richard Cory is a poem written by Edwin Arlington Robinson.  I was flipping through my poetry book and decided to read this poem.  I liked it because the ending was unexpected.  I believe it was talking about a rich man that everyone would have loved to be like but this rich man killed himself.  The poem kind of lets you conclude how you feel about it by saying..."And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head."  The ending was so abrupt compared to the rest of the poem.  It kind of gives me the idea that people envy others or notice others but people are people.  This rich envied man that everyone looked forward to seeing every day killed himself.  What a waste.

First Snow by Brooke 1020

The Snow is a poem written by Mary Oliver.  The title of the poem caught my eye because I love snowfall and decided it was a poem that I could relate to.  In reading the poem, I felt like it sped up and slowed down in certain sentences.  What makes this poem flow just amazes me.  I especially like line 14 and 15, The silence is immense...  She is talking about the end of the day when the snowfall has stopped.  I also love the immense silence that a fresh snow gives after dark.  She goes on further to describe the trees and the stars at night.  I appreciate this poem because I appreciate the beauty of snow.

Poetry by Brooke

Poetry is something that is very dynamic.  I think poetry was invented because people were running out of ways to speak creatively.  I'm only joking!  Yet, to hear the different forms of poetry that I have heard thus far makes it hard to give a definition to this subject.  I especially enjoy poetry when it is spoken to me.  Reading poetry is great, but I prefer having it read to me because it sounds more passionate.  I'm never going to be one that buys a book of poems by my favorite author, but I would go to a show that had different artists performing their artistic style of poetry.
Poetry to me is just an art form.  It's expression of some sort of feeling or idea translated by an authors personality.  It can create various forms of translations and responses depending on the person reading it or hearing it.  For some, I believe poetry is an important form of expression of self.

Ars Poetica by Brooke1020

Ars Poetica is a poem written by Archibald MacLeish, and it is poem written about why a poem shouldn't necessarily have a meaning but should just be.  Throughout this poem it uses symbols to show how poetry can be dumb, "palpable and mute", wordless, motionless, and not true.  Some examples of the symbolism's used are: the idea of a moon lurking through leaves and branches compared to memories, a flight of birds having direction but are wordless, and a medallion to a thumb is symbolized for dumb.  Also, he says direct lines like, "A poem should not mean...But be."  Basically, his approach is simple and just allows poetry to be words on a page without having to have a meaning.  I like this idea because I believe certain poetry can create different responses from different people.  Just as in English class when a poem is presented, everyone has their own interpretation.  I think there is a leniency that this author allows in this poem which creates an atmosphere that allows people to be free with poetry.

How to Read a Poem by Brooke1020

After reading this instructional about how to approach a poem, there was a sense of relief for me in my approach to poetry.  I have always understood poetry as a form of art using a creative style to say something.  I'm sure that some successful poetry comes in this form, but not all.  In reading this instructional on, How to Read a Poem, it mentions that "sometimes the job of the poem is to come closer to saying what cannot be said in other forms of writing..."  I agree completely with this quote because poetry can take you to an experience or feeling that wouldn't otherwise be able to put into words. 
The piece goes into understanding poetry further with ways to approach certain poems: grammatical tendencies, text and context and talking back to the poem.  I thought this idea of talking back to the poem was a little strange but it can reveal an avenue in which you may be able to find out more about the poem.  Once you can go further than the poem and understand who the author is, a certain time era, etc., then your better able to guess the meaning.  Although, you don't always have to know the meaning of a poem to appreciate it.  Sometimes a poem just is.

Where I Lived and What I Lived For by Brooke 1020

Okay, I must say to blog on this I had to re-read certain parts of this piece.  There was so much detail and different tangents and directions that it was hard to keep in line with where the author was going.  Granted when the author did stick with one part of the piece and described it in detail, he did a great job of catching my attention.  It's just when he moved around so much I tended to loose track of the storyline somewhat.  From this piece I gathered that this author definitely enjoyed nature, imagination, beautiful scenery (nature), ideas of taking advantage of life and not in a hurried some way, didn't like post offices, and thought we should take the approach to life like nature does and not be "thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails."
My favorite line of the piece is, "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms..."  The line goes further on, but I love the depth of the first part of the sentence.  The author of this piece is great at illustrations, but still I get lost sometimes on his tangents. 
I can't say I would or could handle too many of the authors stories, but perhaps I'm not an advanced enough reader.

USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky by Brooke1020

After reading USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky by Norman Maclean, I first have to mention that without the uniqueness of this author, this narrative story couldn't have grasped my attention.  I remember when I first started this reading and thinking to myself that this story was going to be very long.  The first passage that directed my attention to the style of writing was on page 131, when the author describes how the horses had no saddle sores and described it as "one wet satin back after another..."  The narrator was describing the beauty of unpacking the horses after a long ride up treacherous terrain and keeping the horses healthy.  This was the first visual that struck me.  Even though I had never packed horses or thought about the beauty of not getting saddle sores,  I could appreciate and connect with the piece from this point on.  Basically, it was at this point, I comprehended the rest of the reading as a story truly reflective of this individuals life and could appreciate the authors in-depth writing.
Through this story, the narrator is seventeen and he takes us on his journey in Montana during the summertime when he worked for the forest service.  The language and ideas are very consistent with a seventeen year old thinking.  For instance, the narrator hated the cook in the story,  he looked up to the Ranger named Bill, and is the only person I know that can go about 30 miles on foot without a sip of water.  Also, I will mention that there many ideas he had that were hilarious along with visuals that were beautiful. 
To give a brief summary of this story; it starts out as the crew is heading up to the fire station to watch for fires.  Then we are taken to the lookout spot where we get a great visual and explanation of how the clouds look when there is a fire after lightening.  After receiving a few bumps and bruises up there, the narrator then takes us back to Hamilton where he has forgotten to drink any water on the way but tells of hunting for mountain goats and envisions his father and one of his ex girlfriends watching him.  He is headed to Hamilton, ahead of his crew who were following behind with intentions to take the town in a card game.  The cook was an excellent trickster with cards and they were going to play his hand and win.  Once in Hamilton, he got really sick because after dehydration, he chose sodas instead of water.  When the crew arrived, they ended up playing the card game and winning.  A fight broke out, but the crew took their winnings.  After it was all said and done, the Ranger Bill headed back into the canyon, and the narrator thinking that he would see this man again, did not.
What I realized from this writing is that it is relatively close to real life situations.  In life there are sometimes lessons learned and sometimes not.  The narrator was young and he looked up to this Ranger and maybe, for a moment, thought his life course was going to be much the same.  Yet, he never returned to see Bill ever again.  At the end of the book he mentions; "Everything that was to happen had happened and everything that was to be seen had gone.  It was now one of those moments when nothing remains but an opening in the sky and a story-and maybe something of a poem." (page 217).  This allows me to conclude that this was just a story that was a glimpse into this young seventeen year old life for this certain time.  Really, I didn't take anything more from it.  Yet, I was inspired and appreciative of the in-depth and creative sharing (if you will) style of writing.