Home learning LA lesson 2

Choose a poet by going online to a couple of the internet sites such as Poets.org (Academy of American Poets website) or American Poetry Online. Blog on your favourite poet. Your entry should be approximately 400 words

Carol Muske-Dukes was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1945. She received her M.S. in 1970 from the State University of California at San Francisco. She has taught in the graduate writing programs at Columbia University, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of Virginia. She is the founding director of the PhD Program in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California.



An Octave Above Thunder
She began as we huddled, six of us,
in the cellar, raising her voice above
those towering syllables...
Never mind she cried when storm candles
flickered, glass shattered upstairs.
Reciting as if on horseback,
she whipped the meter,
trampling rhyme, reining in the rein
of the air with her left hand as she
stood, the washing machine behind her
stunned on its haunches, not spinning.
She spun the lines around each other,
her gaze fixed. I knew she'd silenced
a cacophony of distractions in her head,
to summon what she owned, rote-bright:
Of man's first disobedience,
and the fruit...
of the flower in a crannied wall
and one clear call...
for the child who'd risen before school assemblies:
eerie Dakota rumble that rolled yet never brought
rain breaking over the podium. Her voice rose,
an octave above thunder:
When I consider how my light is spent--
I thought of her light, poured willy-nilly.
in this dark world and wide: half-blind, blind,
a widening distraction Getting and spending
we lay waste our powers...Different poem, a trick!
Her eyes singled me out as the wind slowed.
Then, reflective, I'd rather be / a Pagan
sucked in a creed outworn / than a dullard
with nothing by heart.
It was midsummer, Minnesota. In the sky,
the Blind Poet blew sideways, his cape spilling
rain. They also serve! she sang, hailing closure
as I stopped hearing her. I did not want to
stand and wait. I loathed nothing so much
as the forbearance now in her voice,
insisting that Beauty was at hand,
but not credible. I considered
how we twisted into ourselves to live.
When the storm stopped, I sat still, listening.
Here were the words of the Blind Poet--
crumpled like wash for the line, to be
dried, pressed flat. Upstairs, someone called
my name. What sense would it ever
make to them, the unread world, the getters and spenders,
if they could not hear what I heard, not feel what I felt
nothing ruined poetry, a voice revived it, extremity.


Like This
Maybe it's not the city you thought
it was. Maybe its flaws, like cracks
in freeway pylons, got bigger, caught
your eye, like swastikas on concrete stacks.
Maybe lately the dull astrologies of End,
Millennium-edge rant about world death
make sense. Look. Messages the dead send
take time to arrive. When the parched breath
of the Owens River Valley guttered out,
real voices bled through the black & white.
The newspaper ad cried, We who are about
to die salute you. Unarmed, uncontrite.
Gladiators: a band of farmers, entrenched.
And how many on the Empire's side recognized
the bitter history of that Bow? Greed drenches
itself in a single element, unsurprised.
Like strippers, spotlit. Tits and asses
flash red-gold, while jets shriek above.
Rim-shot. History, like a shadow, passes
over a city impervious as a bouncer's shove
to dreams. Images tell you what's imaginable.
Here comes another ton. We bathe in
what's re-routed from the source: a fable
of endless water in a dipper made of tin.


http://www.poemhunter.com
http://poets.org

Home learning LA lesson 1

The Grave Of Shelley by Oscar Wilde

Like burnt-out torches by a sick man's bed
Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;
Here doth the little night-owl make her throne,
And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.
And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red,
In the still chamber of yon pyramid
Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,
Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.

Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb
Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,
But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb
In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,
Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom
Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.

1. How are the figurative language used in the poem? Give the specific word(s), explain what type of figurative language it is and why the poet chose to use this figurative language?
Similes: In the first two sentences, the "Gaunt cypress-trees" are "Like burnt-out torches" around "the sun-bleached stone" which is like "a sick man's bed". This makes it seem that the the trees are enshrouding the 'sun-bleached stone'.
Personification: " the little night owl make her throne" This makes it seem the owl is a queen or king, watching over the 'sun-bleached stone'.
Symbolism: The blue cavern is like the sea, where many have died due to drowning.
2. Tell us why you like this poem in no less than 100 words.
This poem invokes a somber and mysterious mood. Which gives out a lot of some emotion.

My HW

Well, this is my homework for the June Holidays.
First up philosophy;
Q1: "I am lying."True or false?'
If I say that it is false then I would be lying in which case it would be true, but if I say that that It is true that I am lying then it would be false, thus this question can not be answered truthfully in my opinion.
Q2: How do you know that you are not dreaming right now?
Well for starters I don't really know.But then if I was dreaming, would the world not be better(for me)? If I was dreaming wouldn't I be able to choose what i dream to a certain extent? Thus I feel that it is safe to assume that I am not dreaming.
Q3: How do you know who your friends are?
You never know when someone may betray you. You may consider someone your friend but does he/she? For all we know he/she may be a 'spy' waiting for the right moment to stab us in the book. So I say trust them till the day they betray you, for only then will you know. Or you could "trust no one, including yourself."
Q4: Should you criticise people or the opinions they have?
In my opinion we should criticise ourselves before we even attempt to criticise others. Some times it really is the person but sometimes it is their opinion but their opinion comes from them selves. So the root cause is them, people.
Q5: If many people think something is true , is it true?
Some people say that a lie repeated a hundred times is a truth. It leaves a sort of imprint on the face of the earth. People believe in what they want to see, so in certain ways, what they think is true, may be true to them.