First Paragraph

In the poem “Digging” by Seamus Heaney, the idea of culture and heritage is explored through the use of figurative language such as simile, metaphor, and alliteration.
He is exploring his ancestry and the roots. This is a poetic memorial to those who came before him and it is also a new form of oral tradition. He “digs” up all the story of his ancestors. Although he is no longer able to follow the family’s tradition to be potato farmer, he is creating a new, better way to follow the family’s legacy.
Heaney uses a lot of figurative language in his poem to illustrate his view.
In the first stanza Heaney’s uses a strong similie in where he describes the pen snug as a gun.
”Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.”
In the next stanza:
“Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down”
He uses alliteration and assonance to point out the harshness of the type of work his father does without actually saying he is digging. The words gravelly, ground, sound, and down all contain alliteration and assonance.
He uses personification in the second to last stanza to describe his family roots awakening in his head. Something inanimate as his families roots are awakened by his writing and remembering.
“The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.”

My Very Short Thesis Statement/Sentence

In the poem “Digging” by Seamus Heaney, the idea of culture and heritage is explored through the use of figurative language such as simile, metaphor, and alliteration.

While trying to construct my thesis I tried to make my thesis sentence into a thesis statement but I did not accomplish it. I just could not figure out how to add another aspect to my thesis. I believe that the cause of this is the training and instruction given to us by our teachers that the thesis had to be one sentence. That is like the model set for the thesis statement.

I do agree that it should not have to be a sentence and by the thesis I just commented I can tell why it will be better to make the thesis more than one sentence. It allows more space to elaborate on your thoughts and what you are trying to say.

A Rose for Emily

In the narrative "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner introduces us to a very round, dynamic character, Emily. She is a well-developed character with varied and complex traits. Emily definitely changes during the course of story. Although the story is not told in chronological order, we conclude that at the beginning of Emily's life her father was very protective of her. By the end of her life, she is not the same person she used to be. She is not sheltered or child-like. This narrative is told in third person point-of-view. We concluded that the narrator might be a man, an older white man. From the descriptions of the narrator, the picture I can imagine of Miss Emily is from the first description of how she looks-“ a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.”

This will be her profile picture.
Her privacy settings will probably be set as very high. She was very secluded. She only stayed in her home all the time. She did not talk to anyone therefore she would have no friends. Her page layout would be very gothic; modeling the oppression and southern gothic theme Faulkner wanted to point out in his narrative. This profile picture would be the only picture she would have available to view only by her friends. Since she does not have any, no one will be able to view her picture.
Miss Emily’s home would look something like this:

State: Mississippi
County: Yoknapatawpka
Faulkner wanted to point out the oppression in the south by his use of language and his setting of a southern gothic town. Miss Emily’s house definitely exemplifies a typical southern gothic setting. The house surrounded by plants as a source of isolation and the color of the house inspired a gothic, dark sense. The smell that came from the house can also be inspired by the old, ancient house depicted above.

Dig for the Present

Digging


Culture is an important aspect of our lives. We have to remember were we came from and who our ancestors are. Our roots tell who we are and what our strengths and characteristics are but it does not tell what we are capable of or what will become of us. For example, I am a daughter of Mexican immigrants who was born and raised in an economically challenged neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles. For most people I was not destined to succeed what they saw in me was a young Latina without a future. “She might end up pregnant at 16 with no high school diploma and no one to care for her and her baby,” that is what most people would think. That is not the case, I am here at UC Davis and I have accomplished a lot. I managed to get in a prestigious high school and graduate. I have a lot of experience under my belt and I have a lot of goals to fulfill. I come from a strong race with strong will.
In Heaney’s poem “Digging” he is exploring his ancestry and the roots from where he
was brought up. This is a poem memorial to those who came before him and it is also a new form of oral tradition. Oral tradition is a way to transmit mostly history and literature, across generations without a writing system. Nowadays, the most eminent way of communication of culture and stories is written tradition. What he wants to do is use his pen to write the stories of his ancestors. He wants to “dig” up all the stories of his ancestors. Although he is no longer able to follow the family’s tradition to be potato farmers he is creating a new, better way to follow the family’s legacy.
Heaney uses a lot of figurative language in his poem to illustrate his view. He uses figurative language such as simile, metaphor, alliteration, and he also switches verb tenses to create an appeal to our senses like sounds, sight, touch, smell and taste. We can smell the potato mould and we can hear the squelch and slap Of soggy peat.

In the first stanza Heaney’s uses a strong similie in where he describes the pen snug as a gun.
”Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.”
In the next stanza:
“Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down”
He uses alliteration and assonance to point out the harshness of the type of work his father does without actually saying he is digging. The words gravelly, ground, sound, and down all contain alliteration and assonance.
He uses personification in the second to last stanza to describe his family roots awakening in his head. Something inanimate as his families roots are awakened by his writing and remembering.
“The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.”
The last stanza, he switches tenses from present to future progressive tense which “describes an action that will occur in the future before some other action. This tense is formed by using will have with the past participle of the verb.” (http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/grammar/tenses.html)
“I’ll dig with it.”
I feel that this is a very strong quote that illustrates his will power and desire to keep on his family’s legacy.

Heaney does a magnificent job at communicating his ideas. My image is perfect and it only enhances what is he is stating in writing.

Free Write: Week Three

The set of poems we read are really different from what we have read. I could not imagine reading these poems separately and trying to combine the techniques and style such as Andrew Hudgins did in 2001. I really would not imagine anyone combine this two very unlike poems. I enjoyed them separately but together they do not make sense to me.
I enjoyed William Butler Yeats, “The Wild Swans at Coole" describes a young man's disappointment about love. He walks down Coole Park in Galway, Ireland. Through the introduction in the beginning of the poems we learn that Coole comes from an Irish word meaning "a niche" or "a retreat." That is exactly what he was doing retreating from his daily routine. He came to reminisce about his rejection of the lady he loved. He compares the 59 swans to himself. He says that the swans travel in pairs but the 59th swan is left without a partner just like he has. This is a strong metaphor comparing himself to the swans. This poem also illustrates what is happening around him and how he feels. In 1916 World War I was occurring. We can infer this from when he says "All's changed since I, hearing at twilight" The swans will go some place else but he stays there by himself like always. "But now they drift on the still water"...."To find they have flown away?"
The only similarity that Yeat's and Brooks's poem, "We Real Cool" have in common is the resemblance of "Coole" and "Cool." In this poem there is a different message from the first. In Brooks's poem we find a more promising idea, lets cease the day because we will die soon. Although they only play pool all day and lay back but at least they are not depressed like in Yeats's poem.

Free Write: Week One

T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" are dramatic monologues. While the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is composed by free verse, My Last Duchess follows iambic pentameter. When you read "My Last Duchess" it aloud it does not follow that rhyme. So although it follows the standard form, when read aloud it loses that form. Using iambic pentameter Browning reveals the horrifying story of the murder of the duke's previous wife through the duke's conversation with the agent. The conversation gets interesting when the duke loses control. For example, when he says:
“This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
the company below, then.”
He loses control and he notices he told the truth to the agent and he sees that the agent wants to go down stairs so he says “we’ll meet the company below, then.”
The duke’s loss of control is depicted through the rhythm of the poem that is also when the iambic pentameter form of the poem is lost. The enjambment in the poem, reveal the duke’s uneasiness when he tells about his wife’s murder at the end of the poem. The duke's desire for control is made evident by the structure of the poem. He is very manipulative shown by the frequent use of caesura throughout the poem emphasize the duke's control over the conversation. Although the duke was unable to control the duchess when she was alive, he could control after she was dead. I think that that is one aspect that the duke hates and he cannot get over, his duchess was very independent, flirtatious, and prosperous. In a way I believe he hated her outgoing personality. The only way he could have her just for him was by killing her "none puts by the curtain I have drawn for you, but I," revealing that now he is able to control who views the portrait by a curtain covering the portrait.

Poetic Form and more

For our assignment this week we read and discussed an array of poems that consisted of different form and style. For example, Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 is formulated by a strict form while the Love Song of Alfred Prufrock is composed by free verse. Although both have different styles of writing, both poems serve a similar purpose.
In my opinion for poems to serve a good purpose, poems should vary in form and style. For example, in My Last Duchess although Browning follows iambic pentameter, when you read it aloud it does not follow that rhyme. So although it follows the standard form, when read it loses that form.
In Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, the poem is arranged in three quatrains with a rhyming couplet at the end of the poem. The rhyme scheme for this poem is in iambic pentameter following an ab,ab,cd,cd,ef,ef,gg pattern. The rhyme scheme helps to convey the three stages in the poem: seasons, days,and fire. Shakespeare begins by describing the seasons with words such as behold, yellow leaves, boughs, cold, birds sing. In the next quatrain, he describes the days. He uses words such as day, sunset fadeth, black night, death's second self to describe the characteristics of a days progression. Finally, Shakespeare ends his sonnet with a description of fire in which he incorporates the idea of youth and the progression to death. He uses words such as fire, ashes, youth, deathbed, expire, consumed, nourish to convey this idea of the ephemerality of youth and the progression to death. In this poem he urges a young man to live his life to the fullest because the end is approaching. In poetry, word choice is the agent to figuring out the theme of the poem and also the meaning, style, and form of each stanza.

Paraphrase of Sonnet 73
First quatrain:

You can find in me the best time of the year
When yellow leaves hang or none at all
On the branches that shake with the cold
Bared ruin choirs where the sweet birds sing

versus Shakespeare's Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

As I mentioned before this stanza is discussing the seasons. In my "2008 edited" paraphrased prose version, I feel that it is easier to understand the main idea of the stanza. While in Shakespeare's form you get a more sophisticated word choice.

Final La Parodia

To say SORRY

Is not enough
but I
wanna tell you
I used

your shampoo
felt so refreshing
while the bubbles
where running

down my back,
But don't worry
I only wasted a buck
worth




Analysis:
In my parody, I tried to keep the form but it ended up having a different form. My poem has four lines in each stanza, but it does not have the same number of syllables in each line as Williams's poem: "This is Just to Say." My poem has a total of three stanzas like Williams's poem. In his poem, he had four lines each stanza and a total of twelve lines. I also tried to keep the style of his choppy sentences (incomplete sentences) that constructed each line of the stanzas. For example, the first line of his poem "I have eaten" is then followed in the next line by "the plums.” I have eaten is not a complete sentence. He completes his thought in the next line. Instead of having long lines in each stanza, he constructed his poem to have short, incomplete sentences per line.
My poem also follows this technique in a mocking manner. Some of the ways I do that is by using a similar subject matter he writers about a plum while I write about shampoo. Also, he mentioned the value of the plum which he estimated was very expensive (that is pretty funny because a fruit is not going to be very expensive). On the other hand, I mention the amount that I used of the shampoo which was a little because I only wasted a buck worth. By mentioning that I only used a buck worth is how I tried to create my parody of Williams's poem, "This is Just to Say." While Williams tried to make a big point about the expensive plum, I tried to make fun of the expensive plums by saying that I only wasted a buck worth of shampoo.
Also, I tried to incorporate some imagery and a tangible feeling like he did by writing "felt so refreshing
while the bubbles
where running
down my back,"
He wrote:
"Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold"
The word refreshing and the description of the bubbles running down my back were suppose to create a sensation.
The title also has a big emphasis on the word SORRY is suppose to create a sense of great
importance just like he did with his poem. It is suppose to be mocking his form. You do not need to apologize for something small like eating someone’s plums and using someone’s shampoo. Finally, the title of the poem serves as the first lines of both poems.

Free Write: Week Three

The set of poems we read are really different from what we have read. I could not imagine reading these poems separately and trying to combine the techniques and style such as Andrew Hudgins did in 2001. I really would not imagine anyone combine this two very unlike poems. I enjoyed them separately but together they do not make sense to me.
I enjoyed William Butler Yeats, “The Wild Swans at Coole" describes a young man's disappointment about love. He walks down Coole Park in Galway, Ireland. Through the introduction in the beginning of the poems we learn that Coole comes from an Irish word meaning "a niche" or "a retreat." That is exactly what he was doing retreating from his daily routine. He came to reminisce about his rejection of the lady he loved.
The only similarity that Hudgins and Yeat's poem, "We Real Cool" have in common is the resemblance of "Coole" and "Cool."