Answer ONE of the following; please refresh your memory about how I grade these by reviewing the criteria on the syllabus. If one question has been completely answered, do NOT repeat others' answers. Go on to another question or raise a question of your own and/or write a response to something else Alexander wrote or said,letting us know what you are responding to.
1. Cite one example of a defamiliarizing image in an Alexander poem. Quote the image, with a parenthetical reference to the poem and line number, and explain exactly why the image is defamiliarizing. Now, write your own defamiliaring image for the same object/concept/thing that Alexander wrote hers for.
2.Cite one example of a surprising statement Alexander makes in one of the four interviews with Gates. Why is her statement surprising to you? What did you expect her to say and why?
3. Select a poem or a line of Alexander's and write a four line poetic response to it, using the five senses, defamliarization and metaphor. Write which poem and/or line you are responding to.
4. Take a phrase in the inauguration poem and respond to it.
Ask Elizabeth Alexander a question about the inaugural poem? Why are you raising this question? Explain.
question 1: I chose the poem 'Autumn Passage'. The defamiliarizing line I chose was from the fourth stanza: "larger
ReplyDeletethan vanished skyscrapers," (line 11 and 12).
this defamiliarizes suffering and makes it more physical like a sky scraper. Everybody knows that sky srcapers are huge and comparing grief with them bring out a physical aspect of emotion, and that serves to defamiliarize it.
my defamiliarization: grief more potent than the smell of fresh onions.
-nate cooney
4. Take a phrase in the inauguration poem and respond to it. Ask Elizabeth Alexander a question about the inaugural poem? Why are you raising this question? Explain.
ReplyDelete"I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see."
After reading the inaugural poem several times, the phrase that stood out to me was the one above. I felt this was an important part of the poem because in line 22, "..I need to see what's on the other side," flows into the next stanza perfectly. It influences readers to take risks and to always see what's on the other side of every situation. Especially in hard life conflicts, people must remember that there is something better down the road waiting for them. But the phrase I chose from the poem explains to take the risk of seeing things on the other side even though it may not be visible.
My question to Elizabeth Alexander is why did you choose to begin the poem talking about citizens going about their everyday lives and then slowly approach the idea of an inauguration? I am raising this question because when I first began to read the poem, I was confused as to why it was discussing the noise that surrounds us each day. I felt that the inauguration of our President wasn't mentioned until the very end and it wasn't as specific.
Question 3: Poetic Response to Alexander's Poem
ReplyDelete"Knowledge"
It wasn’t as if we knew nothing before.
After all, colored girls must know many
things in order to survive. Not only
could I sew buttons and hems, but I could
make a dress and pantaloons from scratch.
I could milk cows, churn butter, feed chickens,
clean their coops, wring their necks, pluck and cook them.
I cut wood, set fires, and boiled water
to wash the clothes and sheets, then wrung them dry.
And I could read the Bible. Evenings
before the fire, my family tired
from unending work and New England cold,
they’d close their eyes. My favorite was Song of Songs.
They most liked when I read, “In the beginning.”
My Response:
Today's American Teen-aged Females think they know-it-all.
But really just a bunch of shop-a-holics.
Spending their money on the hottest clothes to look sexy at the clubs, just to bare a little too much skin.
With just a flick of the hair gives off a sweet aroma that puts their targeted pray in a trance, giving the pray a punishment - feeling the predators silky skin against theirs.
4. Take a phrase in the inauguration poem and respond to it.
ReplyDeleteAsk Elizabeth Alexander a question about the inaugural poem? Why are you raising this question? Explain.
"We encounter each other in words, Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; Words to consider, reconsider."
This phrase stood out the most to me. Although people have said that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me," words have the most meaning for anyone. Words are what make a person. They could either speak their mind, or just nod their heads in agreement with everyone else. Sometimes, either too many words are spoken, or not enough.
My question to Elizabeth Alexander is why did you bring up the concept of love? I ask this question because i feel as if that isn't a common topic that comes up in such a high honored poem. I was a bit confused why it was brought up.
Question 1
ReplyDeleteThe poem I chose from Elizabeth Alexander’s is “I Believe”.
“Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.
Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,” (Alexander “I Believe” l.9-18)
Elizabeth Alexander is able to de-familiarize the concept of poetry. No one would ever think of poetry as being found in dirt, or something you hear on a bus ride. She de-familiarizes it from the concept of poetry as being consistently known as a composition of words put together in a sort of verses and lyrical rhymes. Instead, Elizabeth Alexander de-familiarizes it to being everywhere and anything, even the most ordinary or unexpected. To her, voices or conversations on a bus ride can be considered a form of poetry.
My de-familiarizing example of Elizabeth Alexander’s concept of poetry would be fire, a flicker that turns to a warm, soothing ember to the soul or one that turns to a fierce, destructive blaze.
3. Select a poem or a line of Alexander's and write a four line poetic response to it, using the five senses, defamliarization and metaphor. Write which poem and/or line you are responding to.
ReplyDeleteArs Poetica #100: I Believe
Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.
Poetry is a waterfall of juice crashing into a cup, watching the sunset, the only route to a specific place. Poetry is a bittersweet memory. It is happy then suddenly pain and despair.
2.Cite one example of a surprising statement Alexander makes in one of the four interviews with Gates. Why is her statement surprising to you? What did you expect her to say and why?
ReplyDeleteIn her interview about her grandfather Clifford Alexander Sr. It became a shock to me when she talked about how when her grandfather got off of the boat coming from Jamaica that he already had a home and jobs for choice lined up. Elizabeth Alexander states that he had helped out many people, his wake was packed with people who he had helped and how community oriented he was.
The shock was that she only mentioned he may have gone through which may have been leaving his mother for good and starting a fresh life. Even with this struggle I would have expected Alexander's grandfather to have gone through many more struggles as he came into a new country not knowing anyone. He may have not told her the struggles as she said she was young, but even so he became so successful upon his entry into the United States.
3. Select a poem or a line of Alexander's and write a four line poetic response to it, using the five senses, defamliarization and metaphor. Write which poem and/or line you are responding to.
ReplyDeleteStravinsky in LA
In white pleated trousers, peering through green
sunshades, looking for the way the sun is red
noise, how locusts hiss to replicate the sun.
-my response-
looking through the shut window listing to the mur murs an orchestra of the hard shelled creatures,
I ponder if my snow white uniform is formal enough
Am I? Or is this just another ball gone flat?
All I know is that this piece of nonsense in front of me is about to spontaneously combust
Shannon Armstrong
4. Take a phrase in the inauguration poem and respond to it.
ReplyDeleteAsk Elizabeth Alexander a question about the inaugural poem? Why are you raising this question? Explain.
"Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking."
This part of the poem made me think of the time in class where we were talking about how people don't really care about other people anymore, only themselves. Like people will say hi, or ask how are you, but they don't care about how you answer, so everyone just says things like "I'm fine, and you?", but when someone tells the truth when somethings wrong, rarely anyone does anything to try and help. They either just ignore it or say "I'm sorry" when they really aren't. I feel that more people should actually care about people besides themselves and try and help out friends or other people in need, even if it means going a little out of their way.
My question that I would ask Alexander about her poem would be if she is talking about life for most people throughout the majority of the poem because she is trying to everyone that if you work hard, you will achieve your goals? It seemed to me that she was trying to talk about that if you work hard enough, or experiment with things that you could be able to do what you would like to do. Like she talks about people making music with homemade instruments, and taking tests, and I see it as if you work hard, you will get what you want.
Steph Slonski
ReplyDeleteQuestion 2
Alexander talked about what it was like to be an American and how everything is radically mixed. That America is like a bason that so much is poured into. That we dont know half of what is out there and that we as people dont understand it nearly as much as we should. She mentions that its sad all of these amazing things happen through Europe but to know the lines that take us back through African history would be great to have for so many black people.
This surprised me because she knows so much insight on our culture and her culture that when you sit down and think about it, she is right there is so much more out there that we dont know and that we should learn more about. There are many things in our history today that arent seen and that no one knows about but we could find it through research. I expected her to give more of an insight on the background of her grandfather and his experiences of coming and having a job set up for him and more of his life of coming here and how she has gotten to where she is today. She did put some insight and I feel that she has a great knowledge of things that have happened in our world today.
4.
ReplyDelete"In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,"
This stanza saddens me. It obviously refers to the historic event of the nomination of America's first black president, but the emphasis on race in the past election angered me so much. All over, the articles, the pundits, the radio shows, people were saying "is racism dead?" "does this election mean the end of racism in America?" Just the fact that this question is mentioned shows it is not dead, and never will be.
Earlier in the poem Alexander alludes to the "melting pot" that makes the nation, referring to the many languages spoken in this nation (lines 7-8). The tone of the poem then switches to concentration of the legendary American spirit and ingenuity and motivation that runs through everything used by the public (lines 28-29). She then begins to talk about love, the everlasting kind that crosses all boundaries (lines 39-41). You know, the kind that can never exist in everyone. I would ask Alexander, then, why is the last full stanza in this poem, the one I posted above, emerge from your concentrating on the might of the colorless and mute American spirit? People need to erase themselves of pride of what makes them different, and concentrate on what makes them the same, ESPECIALLY Americans. Emphasis on race, anytime, anywhere, pro or con, is a problem.
Alexandra Cruzado
ReplyDeleteQuestion 2: Cite one example of a surprising statement Alexander makes in one of the four interviews with Gates. Why is her statement surprising to you? What did you expect her to say and why?
In Elizabeth Alexanders interview with Henry Lewis Gates, Mr. Gates asks her about her history and says that she found out about most of her history through a paper trail, this to me is amazing because it is part of where she has come from. She talks about her grandfather and how he came over with nothing, and how he made a legacy in the United States, and also how he had to leave his mother. She knows so much about her own history but she also knows a whole deal about Americas history, especially the history of African Americans.
This is surprising to me because she knows so much about all of the history of America, and she only talks about the African American history and not about the white, and other ethnicities of America, I expected her to talk about all the ethnicities in America since we are such a melting pot of cultures and she really only talked about her own history and the African American history Another thing that I found very interesting was when she said that her grandfather left everything to come to the UNited States, someone above me already talked about this topic but I wanted to raise a question would she have done the same thing in his situation or would she have stayed, knowing everything she does now and how would it have effected her life in the long run? I think it would be interesting to hear her answer that question.
Question 3
ReplyDelete"A women and her son wait for the bus"
-Inaugural Poem
Standing, waiting on the sidewalk like ants waiting to enter a nest. fumes of diesel sprinting up their nostrils in the cold bitter winter evening. the screeching of the brakes approaches as the cold, hard, metal bus makes its last stop and begins a new journey with new faces aboard for an adventure of their own.
Oskar Dean
2/21/2011
"Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day. Praise song for evert hand-letterd sign, the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables."
ReplyDelete*I was interested in these small lines because it made me think of the past that slavery was the way many african americans lived. But it also made me think about their strenth and willigness to endlessly look for ways to escape. We usally learn in history class about the songs they would sing, and even quilts they would sow with messages within the symbols of a quilt to help their family and friends escape.I thought she wrote this because of her past and it was her small connection to the president through her ancestry. I also considered that since we were at the epic point in history when a African American was becoming president that she decided to intergrate african american history. In stanza nine she also seems to relate back to slavery times with such lines as "Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,
picked the cotton and the lettuce, built..." I thought these lines just made the poem that much stronger and powerful to take history and related to the present moment that the President was embracing.
*A question I would like to ask is Why did you choose to relate history with the present and was this a way to add your personal history and ancestry into the poem? Was this a small way to embrace your past? I would ask these questions because I definitely thought it was a amazing poem but what if she would've wrote just about other thoughts besides the past would it have had the same impact.Did she ever think of taking a lighter tone with this poem.
Question 2
ReplyDeleteIn her interview Alexander talks about her grandfather coming to this country and not knowing a single person. He got off the boat and met up with people who showed him where he could live and where he could look for a job and brought him to a whole new community.
It surprised me when Elizabeth Alexander talked about her grandfather coming to this country and the whole process he went through. I did except it to be hard, especially with him not knowing a single person in the whole country, but it still amazes me how people manage to get by and figure it all out. What was the most shocking to me though was that they had people helping them showing them where to live or where to find a job. I thought that once they got off the boat it'd be every man for himself and they'd have to find their own place to live and their own jobs. It also surprised me that he was so well known in his area and helped and so many people without even knowing them him whole life. That he just helped out his community.
4. Take a phrase in the inauguration poem and respond to it. Ask Elizabeth Alexander a question about the inaugural poem? Why are you raising this question? Explain.
ReplyDeleteIn today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
I just don’t like the fact that even though she is looking at Obama being elected as a good thing, she means it’s a good thing because he is black. It should have nothing to do with the fact that he is black. There is a new day because he has promised change from a political group that ran the country into the ground for the past eight years. Obama is a brilliant man who is capable of helping a country back to his feet if he does it right. My question to Elizabeth would be, why does our country continue to see men like Obama as a color? Why can’t he be accepted as a man who has accomplished a lot through his life? This is why he was elected to our country’s highest office. People want true equality and I don’t see that being possible until we stop seeing each other as a color and view each other as equals. That is the view that Martin Luther King Jr. had. Our country needs to get back to that vision before we deviate too far. This moment is without a doubt significant, but our country didn’t view it correctly. He wasn’t a black man elected to office, he was a man elected by the people to make the change that we desperately wanted.
4. Take a phrase in the inauguration poem and respond to it. Ask Elizabeth Alexander a question about the inaugural poem? Why are you raising this question? Explain.
ReplyDelete"We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side."
This phrase in Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem holds great meaning. It is talking about people being curious and wondering what else the world has to offer them and their families. A reference to this could be Western Expansion when people would ride in covered wagon trains in search of something new. This relates to the part of the poem that says “I need to see what’s on the other side”. This phrase depicts the willingness to find new things and how curiosity and the desire to start a new life drove people to leave their homes and find a new kind of life. If I were to raise a question to Elizabeth Alexander about her inaugural poem I would ask would be why did you chose to entitle this poem “Praise Song for the Day”? I am interested in knowing this because I want to know if she picked this title to symbolize new life and reaching goals.
3. The poem i chose to take a section out was "Autumn Passage".
ReplyDeleteLine 1-3 "On suffering, which is real.
On the mouth that never closes,
the air that dries the mouth."
I stand on the marchig grass, breathing in the dry brisk air, inhailing through my mouth and ex-hailing out my nostrils. The air tastes of burnt french fries. The heat of the burning orange in the sky makes my skin feel like im in a deep fryer. As beads of sweat fall down my face i think, "when will this suffering end?"
1. The poem that I chose by Elizabeth Alexander was 'Neonatology."
ReplyDeleteIs
funky, is
leaky, is
a soggy, bloody crotch, is
sharp jets of breast milk shot straight across the room,
is gaudy, mustard-colored poop, is
postpartum tears that soak the baby’s lovely head.
Then everything dries and disappears
Line 4 and 5 uses defamiliarizing when it's describing the force of the breast milk coming out of the breast to the child's mouth. The poet could have easily said the "the breast milk shot into the baby mouth,' yet this line is very vivid and you can get the visual of how forceful the milk ejected out of the women's breast.
My defamiliaring example is:
numerous rounds of hot bullets of a white creamy nutritious waterfall like substance.
"love that casts a widening pool of light" line 36
ReplyDeleteIn this poem Elizabeth Alexander describes love as a widening pool of light. This is an example of defamiliarizing an object such as love by describing it in a non typical way. A widening pool of light portrays a beautiful widening of someones life. Love has said to have brought light into peoples worlds and this is a great way to defamiliarize love.
My own defamiliarization of love: love that unlocks every door.
Question #4:
ReplyDelete--From the Inaugural Poem
"Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself, others by first do no harm or take no more than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?"
This phrase caught my attention, because I feel it's something many people can relate to, in regards to upbringings. In my case, my mother has always taught me these morals. I am a very big believer in karma; Although I've been raised with these manners/morals, that doesn't mean that my 'next door neighbor' so to speak, has been brought up the same way as me. You cannot assume that someone else is going to have the same background as you, everyone is different. It is very rare to see people looking out for each other in this 'dog eat dog' world. The only thing we can hope for, is for good hearted people to exist in this cold world.
My question to Elizabeth Alexander would be..
What do you mean by "What if the mightiest word is love"? I've read the poem a couple times, and I still find myself trying to figure out what that short line means. Are you referring to everyday people, or people in politics?
Question 3: Select a poem or a line of Alexander's and write a four line poetic response to it, using the five senses, defamliarization and metaphor. Write which poem and/or line you are responding to.
ReplyDelete"After all, colored girls must know many
things in order to survive." - Knowledge
Survival is knowledge.
Knowing how to turn yearn into a shirt.
Knowing how to be the mother and father.
There are lessons learned on the way.
The sense of who you are, of where you came from.
This knowledge is molded and made into your own.
Knowledge is survival.
I am calling time on this posting now. I will see you tomorrow. Have a good night!
ReplyDeleteA farmer considers the changing sky.
ReplyDeleteA farmer has to know the earth and how it is ever changing
He can smell the wind bringing rain for his crops,
as the sun turns into the moon.
He has to get the animals, and family ready for the changes he sees coming
Question 1: I chose the poem “Neonatology”
ReplyDeleteThe defamiliarizing line I chose is from the tenth stanza:
“The midwife presents it on a platter.
We do not eat, have no Tupperware
to take it home and sanctify a tree.”
This line defamiliarizes the phenomenon of birth, but mostly the act of when the midwife or doctor hands the newborn to the parents. Rather than describing the act literally, in a way that we all are familiar with, the poet decided to describe the child like a piece of food that is not eaten or kept as leftovers.
My defamiliarizing line:
A wriggling, screaming, pink object of terror, responsibility, and a forever-changed life.
1. The example of a defamiliarizing image in an Alexander poem is in her poem Penmanship. In lines 13-19 she writes "Long before teacher-training school, Grandmother's friends made miles and miles of m's with camel humps that grzed the middle, dotted line, humps swelled with plenty of water to go across deserts and deserts of vast first halves of alphabets, each uppercase q a perfect backward 2. Commas swam off the page."
ReplyDeleteShe describes the letter m as a camel that is able to travel across the desert. The rest of the first half of the alphabet is the desert that the camel travels across.
My defamiliarizing image:
tinted movements on the white plane speaking a secret from me to you.