EN 111 – Rhetoric II November 2, 2010 “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost – Response I have personally enjoyed this poem since the sixth grade. Many have seen this as in inspirational message and even placed on greeting cards. Often this poem is associated with pictures, because of the great descriptive use of words that Robert Frost uses. Frost uses a four stanza format with the perfect use of rhyming to convey his message. He also twists in some tricky order of word use to make it difficult to read through without having to stop and re-read a line.
Nostalgically wonderful author and narration of this poem and poet. Gary Soto’s Bio, is very interesting and written in a decade of with I can understand. Gary Soto is also the protagonist as well as the narrator in this simple poem of Oranges and a girl. The cool days of winter, and a road, the chocolate, the coin and oranges of California in his pocket. This poem is one of his many poems in his first collection of poems, would include, “The Elements of San Joaquin”, (MrAfrica@Akoot.com), just to mention one for example, in which he went on to win the United States Award for international poetry in 1976.
Chris loved books and found company in the characters in the books he loved, his favored author was Jack London who also hoboed around the country and returned to school at the age of 19. Mr. London became a writer because he wanted to escape from the horrific prospects of life as a factory worker, just like Chris who doesn’t like the
Another way that Malcolm X inspired me was when he taught himself to read by just using the dictionary. This was an inspiration to me because I have a dictionary with every word in the English language and instead of using it I just kept it under the bed, but after reading this it has a new spot. Not only did he inspire me but we also shared some of the same viewpoints in our lives. For example on the first to second page of the story he says “from then until I left that prison every moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk.” When I read this quote it made me think about myself because I’m the type of person that likes to keep every moment of my life busy, I don’t like letting my valuable time to go waste. Another idea that I agree with of Malcolm
``She began to doubt whether Steven would come in such a storm even a mile was enough to make a man hesitate. Especially Steven, who, for all his attractive qualities, was hardly one to face a blizzard for the sake of someone else`s chores`` (233). She was starting to believe she was going to have to fight the storm herself. This put fright into the story because she had no idea what she should do to keep herself safe and the animals at the same time. “No matter how blinding the storm she could at least find her way back to the house” (233), this demonstrates how violent it was.
I had the biggest response to this poem over the others in this week’s readings because I could relate to the little boy in a few different ways. One of the ways I related to the poem is that feeling of first “love” that is portrayed. When you have a crush on someone at a young age you feel like you are on top of the world. You would go out of your way and do things that you would not normally do for the other person. This is seen by them walking in the snow in the beginning of the poem.
Spending his life on the open roads as a hobo, this wasn’t his dream but it worked for him. Later on in his life he learned folk songs which he performed in front of various audiences for any money he could get. Later that year he went back to his home town and entered Lombard College, and started supporting himself as a call fireman.Sandburg's college years shaped his literary talents and political views. While at Lombard, Sandburg joined the Poor Writers' Club, an informal literary organization whose members met to read and criticize poetry. Poor Writers' founder, Lombard professor Phillip Green Wright, a talented scholar and political liberal, encouraged the talented young Sandburg.Sandburg honed his writing skills and adopted the socialist views of his mentor before leaving school in his senior year.
Omar Zaid Professor Sievers English 1118 4.2.2012 Explication of “Because I could not stop for death-“ Death is not something thought about very often, for many different reasons. The main reason probably being fear of it, and not wanting to leave the life of this world. Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for death-” not only talks about death, but also in a very unique way. Dickinson uses aspects of many different poetic elements including the speaker, setting, theme, personification, and irony to help create meaning in this poem; essentially that death is not something to worry about or be afraid of, and is just a normal part of life. The speaker plays an important role in the poem in that he/she is the one who has or is facing death.
It was not difficult at all to know what was going on without having to read and reread the poem. Like for instance the first two lines “The first time I walked / With a girl, I was twelve” (as cited in Clugston, 2010, section 11.1) seems like adolescent language. I think it was very constructed because the tone of the speaker allowed the reader to connect with the adolescent being in love. Through the experiences of a poet can a reader exhibit the power of emotion. With a few elements like symbolism, tone, and imagery allowed me engage in a truly interesting poem about young love.
My favorite part of hiking the AT was all the great and interesting people I got to meet and talk with. I hiked with Surgeons, former police officers, homeless people, ex military, nurses, auto mechanics, and even a congress man at one time or another. So just about everyday you are hiking with someone and you go back and forth telling each other stories, life experiences, advice, and I did my best to soak up as much knowledge, as I possible could. That's why the next line in Visiting Mountains brought back the most memories to me, “Climbing, we pick our way over the skulls of small talk”. Although the one thing I can't figure out about this poem is why Kooser says “skulls” of small talk, because skulls usually signify death or lose and the small talk for me was the best part of the whole experience.