My Turn- a poem by me.

I am angry with you
Neither of us has right
to have right
to be right or wrong

We are close to equal?
Sharing emotions then, sharing emotions now,
but an emotion of all different sorts

Lack of understanding
lack of want to understand
Selfish? Maybe
Confused? More likely

But who has the upper hand? The hammer?
Who was vulnerable, one moreso than the other?

And, now?
Confusion. Justification.
What is right?
Why wait? Why go?

Can’t stand still.
Physically dull.
Mentally not logical. Productivity stops.

But to move forward.
Which is worse?
More painful?
More dangerous?


There is order in my disorder.


Hypocrisy. With him was one,
but with you another.

Not lies. Not deceipt.
Who is right? Most likely none.

A matter of opinion.
no understanding.

Ideal is not stress.
Not pain. Not tears.
To get to no tears,
must you run out?

Multiple voices.
All helpful, none helping.
Yet we are all so mighty
All so right, so knowing.

We are all wrong.

Have you hurt more than I?
Have you done more damage?

My turn?

White Oleander

I just finished reading White Oleander.

What really struck me about this book, and many of the stories we have read, is how much someone could have gone through at a very young age.

I am very lucky. I have never been homeless, and never without food, and I have two parents who, while they have little money, love me very much.

However, I hear a lot of people say that people "my age" haven't "experienced life" yet.

How do you judge a 12-year-old's life experience? How do you convince yourself that you know someones story because you have seen their face and date of birth?

The book also looks inside the mind of girl who isn't perfect- who is young, very sure of herself, yet confused at the same time.

I really liked the style of writing, from the point of view of a girl who is just trying to survive.

I read Paint it Black last year, and now I just want to get my hands on more work from Janet Fitch.

Works by Melody Charles

I read about 15 different pieces by Melody Charles. The one that really caught my eye was "Heroic Tulsa."

She talks about the only the city I truly know. She speaks in a sort of stream-of-consciousness.

She talks about how she doesn't want to run down eleventh street, and then realizes it's part of Route 66.

I identify so closely with this poem. I love it because it seems like some people try so hard to make their work relatable, when often times there are a lot of people that can identify with your specific situations.

When that happens, I feel like the poetry is a lot more personal.

Into Stillness

Pallant's writing was very thought-provoking. There are so many circumstances in which people are treated as much less than human, and to leave it vaguely as she does allows it to transcend almost all of the different situations.

For my context, I read about Guantanamo Bay. The prisoners of war have a history of being treated horribly, not given adequate food and being deprived of civil liberties.

There are regulations on how prisoners of war are supposed to be treated, and now that the mass media can cover stories about Guantanamo Bay as it currently stands, as well as share the stories of those previously held, the information is easily open to the public.

With artistic writing like Pallant’s and journalistic writing by the media, it is impossible to ignore the problems as they exist.

The more I think about it, the more I think about the “good old days.”

I doubt they ever existed, but if they did, I’m sure it was good only because of ignorance, not because of an actual ideal situation.

Samantha Exstance-a creative journey in style.

Samantha Exstance is an amazing writer. She's also very nice, which is a great added bonus.

We sat down and looked over a few of her pieces, which were arranged so carefully.

Some of her poems were purely stream of consciousness. Others were meticulosly arranged, almost like a word puzzle. You could read them in a variety of ways, all which changed the meaning of the poetry.

It was nice to sit down and talk to her, and I heard most of her story, starting with creating an anthology of all of her poetry when she was around 5 years old.

I find it odd how poetry changes once you meet the person who wrote it. Now you have a face, and a voice, that reads the poetry as you do. I identify her works now with the short blonde hair and glasses.

I haven't yet decided if I think this is a good thing, a bad thing, or neither.

Recitatif by Toni Morrison

Recitatif is a very interesting story.

It wasn't until I was about halfway though that I caught on that Morrison never indicated which girl was white and which was black.

It's an interesting way to call people out on their prejudices: She makes us see it in ourselves rather than telling us.

It calls into question why we have the stereotypes that we do.

Why are a person's actions representative of their race rather than their individual personality?

I think what I took away from Recitatif is that we shouldnt accept our judgements as truth, but constantly question them.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Honestly, while this was a great play, it just made me angry.

I sort of wish there was something to be done about it, right now, because by the time I finished reading it I was ready to take action.

I suppose that's a sign of good work.

The way that everyone played their little role and ignored the actual world-- even ignored rape. It just infuriated me.

It also made me think:
I'm sure a lot has changed since then, but still do we ignore things just because it is convenient?

Do we not believe things because we "just can't," like Stella?

This brought about some major self-evaluation for me.

Hills Like White Elephants: Part Deux

http://www.holysmoke.org/fem/fem0420.htm

This is my context for Hills Like White Elephants.

In the 1920's, according to this piece, it is believed that one out of every four pregnancies ended in abortion. While abortions were illegal, they were all too common.

In fact, leading up to this time they weren't all that frowned upon either. Women thought of "quickening" as the beginning of life, therefore as long as the abortion happened earlier, nothing was lost.

It's weird for me to think about this, because it seems like our culture thinks of abortions as unpopular until the past few decades, since it became legal and the few years-to-a-decade prior.

After reading this, it seems to me that Hills Like White Elephants shows the conflict between "common and simple" and the emotion of a mother-to-be.

Hills Like White Elephants

Abortion. This is a sticky subject.

Hemingway avoids using the word, but paints a very vivid picture. The girl in the story sounds very young compared to the man, comparing the alcohol to licorice, and he calls her "Jig." She is very worried about the operation, and very uncertain, and the man doesn't let his opinion go unknown. He is never harsh with her, but still very pushy.

He assures her that things will go back to "how they were," because this is the only thing "that's made us unhappy." He also tells her that he doesn't want her to do anything she doesn't want to do, just that he won't worry about the procedure because it is so simple.

I don't know what Hemingway was thinking when he wrote this, but I know that everything is just too simple.

I've known a few girls who have gotten abortions, and it never stops after the "simple procedure." This isn't a preach on whether or not girls should get an abortion or should have the right to get an abortion, but just an opinion of the weight of such a "simple procedure."

The weight that the man feels in this story is nothing above a physical one. He sees the procedure as just that: strictly a medical ordeal. The girl seems, to me, to think that whether or not she keeps the baby determines whether she stays young or becomes an "adult."

She likes to say "cute" things and have the world in front of her, and also seems stuck between not wanting the procedure yet wanting things to be as they were before.

If I got any sort of moral from this story, it would be this:

You can remove a problem and try not to think about it, but things likely will never go back to "how they were."

Tender Buttons

My Facebook status is now officially "Sugar is not a vegetable."

This piece, divided into three equally confusing sections, seems to make the least sense out of anything I've ever read, yet simultaneously be the most quotable.

Stein plays with language unlike anyone I've ever seen. What really got my attention with her work is how it requires the written language.

Her style cannot be read aloud and maintain the meaning (or lack thereof) and have the same effect, because it plays with how we read and how we associate meaning with specific words with specific spellings.

Since reading this piece (peace), I feel more aware when I hear (here) words that could be written different ways.

The Yellow Wallpaper

Gilman wrote the Yellow Wallpaper in the late 19th Century. Reading this lovely story makes me very, very happy that I am living in the 21st Century.

Why does it make me so happy, you may ask? The main reason is because it seems like everyone was crazy. Just completely mentally insane.

First there is Gilman. She writes a story that confuses the brain and sends it in nonsensical circles. Then, as you start to research the story behind her piece, and look into the ridiculous "rest treatment" she was given, two things happen:

1) Your brain goes in circles that make a bit more sense, but still seem to lead toward a major migraine. The book the Yellow Wallpaper is, essentially, the yellow wallpaper in the book the Yellow Wallpaper. Ouch.

2) You see the root of the problem is this "rest treatment." Wow. The rest treatment. The rest of this blog is dedicated to the "cure" that led to this incredibly important yet painfully hard to read book.

Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell developed the rest cure. It was aimed to cure women with hysteria, depression and anxiety. The cure? Rest. Of course, this isn't the sit-at-home and watch television rest we think of today. This rest is torture.

Many women, in the first days of treatment, were not allowed to move out of their beds. None of the women were supposed to worry their pretty little heads with reading, writing or other simple activities. The women were essentially imprisoned for up to two months with little contact with the outside world.

Gilman writes about the rest cure taking her deeper into the problems it was supposed to fix.

If I were subject to the rest cure, I'm sure I would go crazy, too.

After reading the background, I can't blame Gilman for writing this book.

Well, I can't blame her as much.

Life in the Iron-Mills

Davis wrote about people working in the iron mills. She has a great talent for setting the scene and showing the background. In my personal opinion, she is the type of author that can manipulate and lead you in her direction so well she could make you feel sorry for a mass murderer. Not only that, but she can do it without agreeing with the man and without directly saying he is a good/ valuable human being. One of my favorite quotes from her writing was this: "I do not plead his cause. I only want to show you the mote in my brother's eye: then you can see clearly to take it out."

She shows a fantastic reality: Wolfe is a very talented artist who happens to be stuck in a quite unfortunate life. Each person is so complex that I think she could have framed a story such as this around anyone and shown why he/she is a worthwhile person. But the thing that made this story so memorable was that his talent was visible. It wasn't something hidden beneath the surface, it was in plain sight. Not only that, but it was described so vividly that the image still sticks in my head even though I have never seen Korl in my life. It leaves the impression of the talented artist and the dreaded life in the mills. The one image of that statue sums up the whole story.

I think the reason that so many people could stand for others to be treated as these workers were was because they never really saw them as "people." Sure, they were alive, but they were so one-dimensional. Davis puts the people, the ideas, and the injustice in such sight that it can no longer be ignored.

While I think it is easy to blame the citizens of the time for allowing the horrid truth to go on under the surface, I don't think we are blameless now. Personally, I try to avoid animal rights information and writings because I like eating meat and, being a poor college student, go for good price over good ethics. Let's just put it this way: if Davis had written about chickens, I would probably go vegetarian.

Response to a lecture: Old vs. New

We had a long discussion in class about looking at texts (and writing texts) in a new style vs. an old style. As a communication major, I often have to study theories, past and present, on how media affect people. I saw a lot of similarities in this lecture, which is based on something I know little about, to things I know about the communication field.
Media critics, in the early days of television, had a theory called the hypodermic needle theory. According to this theory, media directly influenced audiences. Once the message was shown, it was accepted and perceived as truth. Of course, this theory is no longer accepted but it lays on the same lines as old texts that didn't give the reader any credit.
What really stands out about the authors we have read in this class is that they give their readers the benefit of the doubt. They trust people to have the intelligence to differentiate between true and false, right and wrong, and fantasy and reality. Based on this assumption, the writer develops a relationship with the reader. There are things that can't be put into words but they set the stage and put the reader down their path of thought. They believe that their audience has enough humanity to follow their line of emotion, whether they agree or not. In "Life in the Iron-Mills," a recurring emotion that I feel is put on the reader is guilt. In Wheatley's poems, she leads the readers to understanding and empathy.
Trusting the reader to comprehend the writings and be human enough to be capable of emotion is the most distinct reason I can find why these texts will be around for a long time and treasured as classics.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Stowe's writing greatly intrigues me. She writes using the accents of her characters. She writes sympathetically about the family that sold the slaves into horrible lives. She writes religiously about those seen as property. Truly, she writes like an insider who went to the outside to observe. By this I mean that she has a deep knowledge of both circumstance and intention, and can write it in a simply here-is-what-happened way while leading the reader to higher understanding.
She shows that the "flaw" with Uncle Tom near the end of the book was that he was "too stupid" to simply give in and give away the girls' position. Really, the line that separated most of the people from the Uncle Tom in this story was that characters almost always made decisions based on logic and numbers, while the Uncle Tom did things based on conscience and religious beliefs.
Reading this around the same time as "Civil Disobedience" was very revealing, seeing that the slave was the one who stuck to his beliefs and ideals as a Christian, when doing so hurt him much more than it would have any slave-holders who chose to do the same.

Response to Civil Disobedience by Thoreau

"I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward." Thoreau has the opinion that our system of government is flawed. Majority rules, but what if the majority doesn't care about morals, values, and decency? We share a like mind on this subject, though I don't think you'll find me skimping on my taxes anytime soon.
Thoreau notes that the country was founded on rebellion. We are supposed to challenge the government if we find they are doing things wrong. It is our duty as citizens.
What is seen now as "patriotism" is the actual opposite. Patriotism would be to want your country to be as good as possible, rather than to blindly follow what others in positions of power tell you to do.
I find it odd how well this writing relates to today. He talks about armies: "The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies." He talks about the idea of patriotism and what it is to support and follow your country.
But, aside from how we can relate today, I would say his writing shows how others should have thought about slavery, and can show us how to avoid making the majority mistake in the future. We shouldn't decide what to do as a country based on profit and majority opinion of what is desirable, but rather conscience and the knowledge of right and wrong.

Phyllis Wheatley

This writer has a constant double-tone in her work. There is an inherent sarcasm-- she is not happy to be looked down on, to be a slave. Yet she truly loves America, her family, and her religion.
Her writings, in large part, are about deaths in families. She has a comforting yet strong idea that people are better off when they leave earth. It is comforting because people like to think that others are in a better place. It is strong, however, because she accuses those who cry and wish them back as being selfish. This is also an example where you can see her opinion of the physical world-- not the best place to be, in her opinion.
The most notable thing I found about her book, however, was the opening letter "proving" that the work was her own. Even though it was supposed to be complimentary to Wheatley, even the note is offensive (as are many of her poems). They talk about rising above her beginnings, implying what her fate would have been. She talks about her savage land. Really, they all seem to agree that she is the outcast in "her kind;" at least it seems that way to me. The intelligent and gifted girl was not seen as a regular possibility out of a slave. Of course, a lot of this is found in Wheatley's sarcasm. It certainly makes me wish I could go back in time and talk to her in person to find out what she was really thinking.