Writing

Writing
by Jan Dean

and then i saw it
saw it all all the mess
and blood and everythink
and mam agenst the kichin dor
the flor all stiky
and the wall all wet
and red an dad besid the kitchen draw
i saw it saw it all
an wrot it down an eer work of it is tru

You must take care to write in sentences,
Check your spelling and your paragraphs.
Is this finished? It is rather short.
Perhaps next time you will have more to say.

First off I would like to say that this poem or account of a murder is probably one of the darkest poems i have ever read. I really like the way she wrote this though. I like the structure a lot, which has being appearing more and more throughout this new packet; the structure that is non-capitalized at all, it emphasizes the student and teacher dynamic that is being portrayed. I say this because at the end it seems like a teacher is editing her work. I also like the ebonics in the poem. One can really get a sense that they are listening to her talk about what she has seen and not just readin another poem. This is great because she is telling a story about her parents apparantly being killed. The thing that really throws me off is that the teacher is not paying attention at all to what the story is saying at all, the teacher is simply looking at all the grammatical and tecnical errors that she has made, she doesnt pay attention to the meet of the story, and she doesnt pay attention to wha the gurl is reely trying to say. It just goes to show that sometimes students are right about the teachers not paying enough attention to what we are really saying instead of just grading papers and labeling us with an a or f. Sorry that was a bit of a venting session right there, and you are not one of those teachers Mrs. White. :) Till nest time.

The Guitarist

The Guitarist Tunes Up Frances Cornford With what attentive courtesy he bent Over his instrument; Not as a lordly conqueror who could Command both wire and wood, But as a man with a loved woman might, Inquiring with delight What slight essential things she had to say Before they started, he and she, to play. As a guitar player myself I really really enjoyed how the author, Frances Cornford, portrayed the interaction between man and guitar. I like the structure of this poem the way that it is all one giant stanza makes it seem like Cornford is telling the audience a story. I would now like to break down the poem line by line. The opening line is used in a way that makes it seem as thought the man is bending towards a person, like taking a bow, but then the second line states that he bends over his instrument, slightly personifying the guitar. The then he puts in the semi-colon after the second line in order to establish a relationship between the man and his guitar. The lines after the semi-colon describe the relationship as one of love and endearment not of a "conqueror." The man cannot command the strings and the wood but rather speak to them softly as he might to a woman. I really like the personification because if one really does truly love music and love instruments they will treat them as a loved one, or as a romance. People love the music that an instrument can produce and therefore love the instrument. The poem is a beautiful depiction of a relationship many never realize exists.

Many red devils...mine?

Many red devils. . . by Stephen Crane Many red devils ran from my heart And out upon the page. They were so tiny The pen could smash them. And many struggled in the ink. It was strange To write in this red muchk Of things from my heart. This poem by Stephen Crane was quite interesting and very vivid. I like that the poem is one stanza. I think that the author did this because the poem is told like a story and a story doesnt really require stanzas because it is told in one linear direction and all at once. The way that the author broke up the one stanza was also very interesting. The poem was broken up by periods and breakings in lines. The author did this in order to emphasize certain lines. For instance, in the first line there is a break in between "heart and "and," and this was used to emphasize both lines which described the situation: the fact that there was little devils and that they were out on the author's page. This technique is used throughout the poem in order to emphasize different points of discription just like a person would pause inbetween different sections of a discriptive section of a story in order to highlight key points. Now lets look at interpreting the poem, or how i interpret it. From what i can gather it seems like the little red devils are the demons that we all deal with and the fact that they are out on the page means that the way he deals with his demons is by writing. Another part of the poem that supports this is when Crane states that " they were so tiny the pen could crush them." This describes the destruction of his demons or problems through his writing. Then he goes to describe that it was strange to write in the red much that was the mixture of the devils blood and his ink because it was writing of things of his heart. Maybe this is to show that it is hard to put your problems out there and try to deal with them and that is why it is so hard to write in the "red muck," that is our raw nature.