#11

Original Sonnet

Love is the ability to love inspite of
Unless that love is anything like us
They'd have no clue of the sacrifices it took to get here
of pain, of misery, of brand new wounds
Wounds that will never heal and leave a ugly scar
But I am still beautiful in my dreams
Sitting gracefully on my pedestal
I look up to you in a crazy way
So say your prayers and come along now
down the river where we can splash loud
water runs down, inking over dirt faces
We washed and washed to remove our stains
still foul, dirty creatures of God

Revised Sonnet
Love is the ability to love in spite of.
Unless that love is anything like us,
they'd have no clue of the sacrifices it took to get here
of pain, of misery, of brand new wounds.
Wounds that will never heal and leave a scar
but still I am gorgeous in my own dreams.

Sitting gracefully on my pedestal,
I look up to you in a loving way.
High above the clouds and the clear blue sky
So I said my rightful prayers and went down
the peaceful river where I splashed aloud,
water runs down, inking over my face.
I tried desperately to remove the stains
but I was still foul, dirty creatures of God

#10

Mary's Argument
To lead the uncommon life is not so bad.
There is an edge we come to count on
when all the normal signs don't speak,
a startled vigilance that keeps us waking
to watch the moon, the peculiar stars;
the usual, underfoot, no more a solid comfort
than a rock that might move as a turtle moves,
so slowly only the nervous feel the sudden bump
of the familiar giving way to unrequested astonishment.
And for a small time, the sheer cliff of everything
we never knew can rise in front of us
like the warm dark, where the starlight
has its constant conception, where the idea of turtle
blinked and was: a wry joke, an intricate affection

What I got of this poem is that the author accepting that things in life for what they are. She realizes that life is not perfect and it okay to deal with problems and complication that may arise. She is walking through life paying close attention to the sign that the nature gives her. She uses the star and moon as metaphors for guidance that might help her through the obstacles life may bring. The author is already in her comfort zone dealing with the normal aspects of life. Then in the line 6, she says the usual, underfoot, no more a solid comfort. It shows how she has to step out of what she is used to and deal with things that are not planned.The author uses a turtle to create a imagery about life. How slow life seems to appear and unclear to her. She has to take things slower than usual and find new ways to be successfully.

I don't know if I'm right or not but a can also see this poem from the aspect of Mary being a virgin and comparing it to life. How in the beginning she was indeed a virgin and could basically predicate everything that will happen in her life. Then, unfortunately things change and she is force into a unfamiliar view of life and she writing this poem to remind herself that you can make it through any situation that may occur. You just have to think it through thoroughly and know you are going to make the right decisions.

#9

Water Lily Pond

The white lily splashed with pink coloring
floats smoothly in the lucid blue pond
(Inserted a word change here. original poem was clear now lucid)
without any purpose, free as it can be. (inserted comma after purpose)
The lily intentions is ( emphasis the lily instead of flower)
to float while time passes. (added es to pass)

The white lily filled with loneliness and wanted desire
has the reflection of clear water, to remains
the lily of its own beauty.
The sallow bulging clouds appear above
(Inserted another description. original image white puffy clouds now sallow bulging.)
protecting the helpless lily from drying out.


I decided to do a critical review of my own poem that I submitted in class last week. After, looking over my poems and comments; I took many of those into consideration and really appreciate the feed back from my classmates. When I beginning reading over the poem and looking for the errors that I over looked. I do very much agree with the punctuation errors and feel that they can be improved. However, as far as the images that thought of, I knew they were very common but I couldn't really think of anything else to say besides that. I would also like it I could you guys had any suggestion or ideas to help assist me that would be great.

#8

Why does it take a world crisis to occurr for people to realize other people are in need besides our on? There are many people across the world that goes to sleep every night with a empty stomach, wake up in the morning not even having clean water to drink, or even having a place called "home". As an Americans, We take these luxuries for granted at times and I may be one of those people. For some home is a two room house, barely have electricity, and running water inside the house. We Winn about not having enough cloths to wear or even the most expensive things in life. But for some people, they only have two shirts and one pair of pants, and consider that a life long dream. I say as Americans we should look past our overly excessive luxuries and help people who are in very desperate needs of necessities. Of I am referring to the earthquake that hit Haiti which torn the country literally into to pieces. This was a major devastation to them and the world economy. This incident is very dear to me because I have a cousin that works for CNN and was over there for twelve long days. I got to see first hand pictures and hear stories about what was and was not been doing to help these people. So I say to all lets keep the people in our prayers and continue to assistance them on rebuilding their country.

#7

Laying soundly asleep thinking about
not ever having to do anything, but
look spontaneously at a screen and fill my gut to capacity
not having to wake up everyday to the real world
jobs, responsibilities, and commitments

The only critical thinking you have to do is
am I going to do laundry
cook and clean
or even iron and put on cloths
besides my pajamas

What a great life that seems
rising up and facing reality
taking accountability for yourself
going the distance to be a better person
is what life suppose to be

#6

I decided to post some information about four-line stanzas. As mentioned in our packet "The History of form", four-lined stanzas are most popular form in the European literature. The most common type of quatrain is the ballad stanzas and thats what i'm going to post information about.
Ballads have strong associations with childhood much children's poetry comes in ballad form, and English poets traditionally associated ballads with their national childhood as well.

Ballads emphasize strong rhythms, repetition of key phrases, and rhymes; if you hear a traditional ballad, you will know that you are hearing a poem. Ballads are meant to be song-like and to remind readers of oral poetry

Ballads do not have the same formal consistency as some other poetic forms, but one can look for certain characteristics that identify a ballad

• Simple language.
• Stories. Ballads tend to be narrative poems, poems that tell stories
• Ballad stanzas. The traditional ballad stanza consists of four lines, rhymed abcb (or sometimes abab--the key is that the second and fourth lines rhyme). The first and third lines have four stresses, while the second and fourth have three.
• Repetition. A ballad often has a refrain, a repeated section that divides segments of the story. Many ballads also employ incremental repetition, in which a phrase recurs with minor differences as the story progresses.
• Third-person objective narration. Ballad narrators usually do not speak in the first person (unless speaking as a character in the story), and they often do not comment on their reactions to the emotional content of the ballad.

I got this information from this address:

http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~simpsone/Connections/Poetry/Forms/ballad1.html

#5

My favorite poem is Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost. I like this poem because it is very straight forwarded. When I read this poem for the first time. I took it very literally. I was thinking that he was sad about being stood up by a girl or just taking a walk and reminiscing on his past relationships. I think he writes this poem to show his frustrations. But after reading this poem a couple more times I see that he is really writing about a community in the city. How unhappy and miserable he is. And how everyone view the city as a wonderful and exciting place but unfortunately in he case he feels the loneliness of being isolated and not knowing/having someone to talk. The second stanza influenced my opinion because it says "I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat. And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain." He uses the words saddest city lane as a metaphor for his loneliness. The last line dropped my eyes unwilling to explain is a symbol of depression not wanting to talk to anyone.