Witness to Poetry

     After reading the eight available poems, two proved to evoke an emotional response in me. The first of those was "Charlie Howard's Descent" by Mark Doty. This piece was a bit disturbing as well as comforting in some strange way. "I imagine he took the insults in and made them a place to live"(doty). This simple statement struck home with me, forcing me to think about all the "outsiders" that I have known in my life, all the individuals who refused to conform no matter what it cost them. I have seen a grown man made fun of for the way he acts, to the point that he began to call himself a "faggot" just to silence others. He was not gay, nor did anyone truly believe he was. I could not help but remember the way he began to use these words as a type of shelter or "place to live". This thought made me feel a kind sadness for those who are forced to retreat away from being themselves just to appease the masses.

     Charlie Howard was not one of those people. Charlie accepts that he is different and somehow also understands that the transgressions against him are not truly aimed at him but at his difference. The idea that he would tell them "it's all right, that he knows they didn't believe him when he said he couldn't swim, and blesses his killers in the way that only the dead can afford to forgive"(Doty) is mind blowing. It is hard for me to understand the idea of true forgiveness of ones killer in death.

     I also felt great emotion reading Kevin C. Powers "Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting". This particular poem caught my attention simply because of the fact I have been in the situation and I understand well what the character is witness to. "I tell her I love her like not killing or ten minutes of sleep"(Powers). These first two lines are very powerful, and full of meaning. The speaker, a Marine, is expressing in the only way that he can, the love he has for his wife. He does not choose these words so that she will know that he is working long hard hours killing the enemy and that he is over due for a nap. He uses these words because these are the thoughts that fill his mind, his wish for the killing to end, and for sleep uninterrupted by fear of death.

     "I tell her in a letter that will stink, when she opens it"(Powers). This was by far the most important piece of the poem to me. Often letters from home would come laced with my wife's perfume as a way to feel as if she were there. Letters home never had that quality. The stink that he speaks of has nothing to do with the oil or burnt powder, the only thing that matters are "the things it says"(Powers). The letter may stink of the things he tells her he has done, or even worse, the lies he tell to protect her from thinking him a monster. His letter will not remind her of when he was with her, it will only stink of his absence.

     Lastly is the comment that "war is just us making little pieces of metal pass through each other"(Powers). The only way to cope with the things one is forced to do in war is to down play the seriousness of his or her actions. Adding this to his letter is proof of his fear that his wife may begin to think differently of him knowing the things he has done. If he can believe Pvt. Bartles simplified view of war, maybe she can too.

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to learn more about helping our war fighters go to http://anymarine.com/

Works Cited

Doty, Mark. “Charlie Howard’s Descent.” Angelfire.com.  Angelfire,

2011.  Web.  16 June 2011.

Powers, Kevin C.  “Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting.”  Poetryfoundations.org.  Poetry Foundation, 2011.  Web.  16 June 2011

Summarizing analysis

     To analyze or summarize, that is the question. Some would say they are one and the same. This, as was made very clear in Mrs. Cline's video on the subject, is not the case. These two, though similar, have several subtle differences.

     Summary, simply put, is a re-telling of the story in fewer words. When a writer summarizes they do not add any personal thoughts on the story and its meaning. They simply re-state key points of the story so that the reader of the summary is able to understand the plot of the story with minimal details. By staying away from personal opinions of the writing the individual doing the summarizing is able to keep away from any incorrect details or criticism of their thoughts. Analysis does not have this problem.

     When analyzing, the key is not to tell what was read, but rather what was gleaned from the reading. Without analysis of the literature, it is simply a story with only one point of view. Analysis requires that your readers question the validity of your thoughts on the true meaning of the text. This being said, a good analysis no matter how far fetched, has enough well thought out points to create a belief in your ideas even if they do not coincide with the readers own opinions.

     In my opinion summary and analysis are the inside of a cave. Summary is what you would see walking inside without a flashlight. On the other hand analysis is what would be seen walking in with a single flashlight. While you could simply summarize that the cave is large and dark maybe even damp without a flashlight, when that light of analysis turns on the details truly begin to emerge. A single analysis, like a flashlight, can not show all there is to see inside the cave or the literary work. It takes many different points of view to show all the possibilities there may be for the true meaning of any work.

     To learn more about summary and analysis follow this link.

Me, "A Good Reader"?

Reading Nabokovs' work I began to understand the fundamentals of being what he refers to as a "good reader". Before reading his speech I, like many of you would have agreed that good readers simply read all the time, read super fast, and easily understand everything they read. This is obviously a fallacy. We are not born readers, none of us come out of the womb already understanding every word in the dictionary, or reading 500 words per minute. This is a sad fact of life, it is also the reason that what Nabokov teaches rings true. Imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some amount of artistic sense, these are the traits Nabokov claims make up a "good reader". I believe the most important of those are imagination and a dictionary. Imagination is foremost, without it there can be no understanding of the text. Imagination allows us to move past the simple lines connected together to create the text, it gives us a sense of being, within the story. When we imagine and visualize what is happening it tends to draw us into the world the writer has created for his or her characters as if an omnipotent god looking down from above, we are able to see the inner workings of these characters and their environment. Next comes the dictionary. Though this sounded at first to me like the last thing a good reader would need, I thought about it and actually used it myself in reading his speech. The moment I read the definition of the unknown word it was no longer just a word on the page, it was not just a word I would normally just skip over and forget, now it had meaning, now it was real. This simple act of opening the dictionary (A.K.A. Google define: ?) gave me greater appreciation for the work, not because of what it was saying but because of what I learned from the authors unwillingness to settle for a second grade vocabulary. The dictionary is not just one of his choices so you can figure out the word, it is a choice so you can learn.

As for being a "good reader", am I? I really can't say whether I am a truly good reader. I try to use imagination when reading, but it is not a skill that comes easy to me. And the dictionary, that is something that I would have scoffed at in the past. Now on the other hand, I plan to stop jumping over words just because they are not familiar and try to expand my own vocabulary to match the author I am reading.

http://100bookninja.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/a-little-reading-inspiration/
Feel free to leave unfiltered comments, I personally love some good criticism...

Intro Video