Mother Crocdile

One of the folk stories that i enjoyed was mother crocodile.  It was a story about how children should learn to obey there parents and when they don't listen bad things happen to them. In the story the crocodiles would not leave the resiviors when the mother said it was time because crows had informed her about a war that was coming.  The children stayed any way and then when they stayed a general was injured in the battle and the only way to cure him was to feed him three young crocodile brains.

poetry day

Poetry day was very fun and exciting.  As a class we mad three poems together and the first and third were awesome.  The one poem about tacos however was very interesting considering we were talking about the digestive system turning on himself and having bad poop.  Yet Hannah decided to turn it around and make it pass rainbows. We also wrote poems that were four lines long about  permanent objects like chairs and time.  Our final poems were four to six lines in which people had to guess the objects.  sadly Alex wrote  a beautiful poem about love and i guess diarrheal when he said ,"it burns with the red hot intensity of a thousand sun."

 

when things fall apart

I really enjoyed the story "when things fall apart".  In some ways i found the piece to be very sad, okonkwos internal battle of self was heart breaking in my mind.  The story describe a fire that was inside of him that would swallow him whole and it did.  The weirdness of the piece however came when he did commit suicide.  The author feed you so much about the internal fire that was going to be the end of him and he set you up for his death to be a little more dramatic.  But instead he simply hung himself, he had come to terms with the fact that his country, his village had left their values and traditions behind and sadly that included Okonkwo.

open mic night

Alex and I went to the lumen the other night.  I was surprise don how many people were in attendance.  It was also cool how Mr. Reed noticed that we were there and the waved to us.  At some point he was try to encourage us to go on stage and read something but we had not come prepared with anything to read aloud.  I know that I personally could have tried improv. but would most likely have made a fool of myself.  The people who did read were very talented and their pieces took me aback.  I can only write certain types of poem or pros yet my peers were writing things I have only dreamed of writing, things that never flowed from my tongue with ease.  The faculty and student did an amazing job with the lumen magazine.

the bone by Birago Diop

The bone is a really awesome story that is written by a French writer although the setting reminded me of more of a southern African type of family.  The story is about people who go out and make this awesome kill and then a man named Mor who takes the shin bone and gives it to his wife.  He tells his wife to cook the bone until its soft and the meat was falling off the bone.  His hut brother found out  about the bone and thought he should be allowed to have it to.  Mor did not want him to have any so he faked a sickness and then his death all because of  his greed.  the wife kept warning her husband that it was getting out of hand and that she was was going to loose him.  He told her to let him bury him.  After his death Awa was taken by Musa to be his wife, as soon as they got to the house he said, "Bring it ans lets make and end of it."

Punishment

I loved the short story punishment. I thought its story was very captivating and comical at moments. In the story their are two brothers that live together and they each have a wife. The two wives how ever do not get along by any means.  One day after work the one brother asks for dinner and the elder wife gets upset and asks him where the food is and if she should go out and get a job so they could have food in a very snide remark.  Anger probably shot through him faster than you could blink an eye.  Like how dare she challenge his man hood and his capability to provide for the family, or well thats what he was thinking. He just reacted and plunged the knife into her head.  Freaking out he asks his wife to take the blame and just say it was self defense.  But the wife young round and robust knew she was replaceable, was appalled at this judgment call and decided to beat him at his own game.  So when they officers asked what happened she merely remarked, "i killed her." Denied self defense, there being a fight everything.  Her husband was pissed and made up a story about how his brother killed the wife.  Yet they took his wife to court.  Finally at court he told the truth but the judge just thought it was sweet that he try'd and take the blame for his wife.  She knew in the end he loved her but she wasn't budging.  the wife took the blame and died with a sense of pride.

in camera El Saadawi

the short story in camera was very emotionally straining for me.  Its one of those things that make you think and feel everything possible.  I loved how she brought in all the senses for her short story weather it was a lack there of sense or one sense picking up the slack for another.  Her ability to choose word that are triggering amaze me for example when she said that the light that struck her eyes were searing.  But it is also a very sad piece where they are in a court room and they are putting her on trial for saying that the leader of the pack of men who were raping her and the mend above him were stupid. She said this because he was not making half the impact he wanted to because she was not the type of woman who held her worth by the presence between her legs but by the woman in her head, "  One of them, lying on top of her, had said: This is the way we torture you women—by depriving you of the most valuable thing you possess. Her body under him was as cold as a corpse but she had managed to open her mouth and say to him: You fool! The most valuable  thing I possess is not between my legs. You’re all stupid” (3007)  Sadly however by the end of the story we discover that the poor girl is put back in the prison to be raped and tortured some more until that head strong  woman is nothing but an empty shell.  

Amichai "Of Three Or Four In A Room"

I really enjoyed the poem from Amichai "of three or four in room." The poem however short, is very strong in what it has to say.  My idea is  that the poems setting is in Jerusalem where many religious races are fighting over this piece of land.  I envision four men are in a room,  three of them are in the center just being clam and relaxed, probably talking about nonsense things like the weather.  But there is one man who is by the window, waiting for war to break loose once more and swallow whole the peace thats before them. He is a realist, someone who can see the ominous storm before it hits and tries to take cover unlike his fellow men who stare the storm in its face and call it a rainbow.

   

Neruda "tonight i can write..."

I loved the poem tonight i can write by Pablo Neruda.  It was full of many emotions.  But mostly just how is relationship evolved from one thing into another.  He starts off saying tonight i can write the saddest lines and then repeats himself three more times.  Ins the poem he does this as a means to build up courage and to ensure himself that what he is doing is the right and true thing.  He talks about how he love a girl and how she loved him.  
Every stanza is in couplet form and he does not break the pattern (very rigid).  He is very sad as he reminisces about this lost love, about everything that he once had is now gone.  But eventually he emerges on the other side of the battle and becomes at peace with the last lines saying, "this be the last pain she make me suffer/and these the last verses that i write for her."  He finally comes to peace with his heart ache and is now controlling his life again, he not allowing someone else to dictate how he feels.

Sonatina by Ruben Dario

I feel that the poem is more like a story than anything else.  I find it very visual, i picture everything as they are happening.  In the first stanza Dario sets the mood making it very apparent that the princess has given up, that she has lost faith considering their is dust on her instrument, she has slacked on keeping up her appearance, "...which have lost their smile and their strawberry red." which is obviously referring to her lip stain.  The next stanza talks about all her options for love, "the garden is bright with peacocks."  yet the princess is preoccupied or depresses deep in though believing that no matter how many men their are for her that their is not one that could actually be her soul mate, one to fill that void in her heart.The fourth stanza in the poem blatantly admits that the princess has come to a cross road where she must now choose between, " ...the lilies with the verses of may, or be lost in the wind of the thundering sea."  The following two stanzas talk about the princess and how she is exhausted of current situation, where she has finally reached the point of no return and just wants to get away, to be free and never have to come back again, "oh to be a butterfly leaving its cocoon."  In the last stanza the princesses fairy God Mother interrupts her cries for freedom and assures her that her prince charming is on the way.  but in reality does he?  who knows the author left the poem open ended i guess for us to decide her fate.