Requirements?

"Wild nights-Wild night!"

The poem runs away from gendered pronouns. Dickinson does not explicitly identify what genders are addressed in the poem but she is very saddle and  lets the reader decide what gender the poem is talking about. Also, the comment about the idea of "needing a guide", or that the person (talked about in the poem) needs some sort of direction/guided into this night makes me think about dependence. The idea of "why Dickinson would want to be lost at sea" made me think about The Awakening and the meaning of the sea. It meant freedom, inmencity; something that Edna could escape to, to be by herself and do as she liked without being judged. This idea is also present in Dickinson poem, the idea of being lost in intensity/immensity but having the capacity to choose in what direction to move. The idea that Dickinson is "restricting herself" and "escaping" the desire, also could be linked to the idea of restraining ones real feeling and wishes because of the role in society woman held. 

"She rose to His requirement" 

Amplitude and awe, as the pearl and the weeds in the sea, are things that you cannot "look at the surface and know where they are, like marriage". So, with his, the speaker is saying that you cannot exactly know what the act of marriage is bringing you but you will never know if you don't look at the details. Some of it will be unknown. The sea to Dickinson might extend to her own life, what "Dickinson experiences between herself and the outside world that is not interior and private. The sea night be her own consciouncenes-not explicit". This really made me think about this common idea that woman and people in general should submerge their feelings and private life because some of it might be inappropriate or looked down upon by societal rules. This later is expressed by one of the speakers as the "repressing" presence and power of men ("the sea is male"). This repression is seen without all these poems. 

"Gender tragedy, limitation of her own form and of her gender". This is the key to what happens to woman in the nineteen century. They are dying to go express their feelings and go outside of the societal norms but they restrain themselves most of the time because they realize they have no use or that they cannot really let go of what their roles are. Marriage makes them slaves to their role as woman, not only to their husband. 

Paper Reflection

In the feedback left in my Turnitin, there were several useful suggestions. In the initial paragraph, there where some capitalization errors as well as the use of underlining the titles of the books rather than italicization. In the next paragraphs, there were a couple of sentences that would have been better if I had used a colon or divided the sentence in two. In the conclusion, there were some new ideas that drifted away from what I had discussed earlier and it would have been more interesting to continue with the original train of thought and not diverge into a generic conclusion. I appreciate these suggestions and I will take them into account for other papers and in the exam.

Reading over my paper again, I completely agree with Mr. Tangen suggestions and I will be especially careful to apply what he talked about in the future. I will especially try to proof read my paper several times to avoid long sentences and capitalization errors of this sort. 

The Chicken President

While listening to the podcast, I was initially distraught by the performance. I felt that the performer was gagging and suffocating. I agreed with several of the critics... they described the performance as dramatic and intense. The feeling that the performance transmits really leaves the listener with a vibe of the ferocity of Tracie Morris physical presence (as commented in the show). The discussion of poems and how some of them say and some of them really "say and do" was interesting. One of the persons said that everything does something, and even though one reading might "say and do", another might "say and do something" else. The impression I got from this comment is that depending on the performer  the reading itself might generate something in the audience, but in other performances of the same poem the preformer might have a different effect on the audience, leading them to do other things themselves, or generate stronger feelings or greater emotions; the exemplification of the sounds really make a difference. The patriotic music to the "bla bla" that sounds like a "chicken" really narrowed down my listening to the performance. The fact that the president is questioned politically and what he will "say and do",later becoming a chicken-like  reading really made me think that to some extent, the president really doesn't do or mean anything, he is degraded to a chicken, that seems to be suffocating. The words of politicians loose meaning because they talk so much and do so little that their legitimacy really wavers. All this was demonstrated in the reading. 

Video Blog 2

https://youtu.be/s-zXsPh27Rg

Video Blog

http://youtu.be/BDlxpLmx8Lc

Children of the Sea

Angels and Drifting Dreams

One aspect in the story "Night Women" that really stood out to me was the  feeling of fake mending of the reality the characters live in. In this particular reading, a prostitute describes her lifestyle and work habits. She hopes that her son can grow up with aims and greater dreams. She tells her son that the men who come at night are angels and that they will stay for some time, but he never wakes up to see them. She "[wants] him to forget that [they] live in a place where nothing lasts"(86). In these stories, everything disperses and the future is unknown, this is why she has "grown to learn"(85) that the only thing that is certain is that she must satisfy with what is available that day. 

The truth about her state is that the only aspect of her life that is consistent is the men who come, but their company does not last because they leave in the morning. That is the only thing she can truly know. This is why she makes them seem as divine creatures that come from another world that are difficult to comprehend, so that her son "...dreams of angels skipping over his head"(87) . She creates a reality that is hard to comprehend by creating "angels" so that her son does not look to the unlashing and inconsistent reality that they live in. 

In the end, she says that the angels have "a lifetime to come to [them]"(88), so that the not lasting transforms into hope that one day her child might wake to see the truth in a good way and to see her suiters as angels and not as what they truly are. 

The Song in Literature

In this weeks reading of Knik? Knak?, by Edwidge Danticat covered two different short stories. The overall setting of the book is Haiti, where in the first story, a boy is immigrating illegally to Miami in a small boat filled with other people. He writes letters to his girlfriend who is still in Haiti. She writes back. They both use informal language and tell what they are feeling and express some detail about their surroundings. One song that I would consider appropriate for this part of the text would be "My Heart Will Go On", from the Titanic. I feel that the lyrics and the way the two lovers in the book talk about their eternal longing and reaching to "move on" into a better world relates to the song. The lyrics also talks about distance "near, far, wherever you are". In this story, the magnitude of their separation haunts the letters constantly, but their love seems to be eternally strong, no matter how far away they are from each other. 

The second story is about a family, where a little boy has to recite some lines that he would present in a school play.  He learns his lines considerably well and really fast, which make his parents proud. They go out to see a big air-ballon and the father expresses his longing to go up to the sky and go somewhere new, where he could start a new life. He finally decides to set off this ballon and sets off alone. His wife and son go out to the yard when he is already far off into the sky. Suddenly, he jumps out of the machine and lands a few feet away from his family, covered in blood and killed by the fall. They cry and the boy recites his lines, which were rebellious since he had taken the character of a famous rebel. A song that would add meaning to the story would be "Freedom" by Pharrell Williams. The lyrics of this song evidently is about freedom and the impulse to "use your wings" to fly away to the place where you want to be. The song also has a suddle "mocking like" attitude towards the way to obtain your path and how much of it is suppressed by the thought of "believe<ing> in everyone". The story talks about a suffocated dream, to be free and to create a better life for the family. The boy has the potential to succeed, but does not have the resources to walk away from his current situation. The belief in the people that surround you and having faith, in this case, will not give you what you need; the family has to work hard to get enough to eat due to a corrupt system and a low amount of good jobs.The theory of relying on others will only take you where that person wants you to go, not where you want to end up.