something really nice

 Bilingual Sestina

1. As the title tells us, this poem is written in a form called a sestina, first used by a French troubadour in the twelfth century. In describing the prosody of Alvarez’s poem, you will be describing a sestina.

Well, considering I’m not quite sure what exactly to do here, this is going to be a complete guess. Based on what a sestina is, a fixed poetic form of six, six-lined stanzas and a three-lined envoy which is unrhymed but has a fixed pattern in its ending words. I’m assuming the prosody of this poem by Alvarez, is that the ending words of the each line in the first stanza are repeated as the ending words of each of the following lines in each stanza. The words are “said, English, closed, words, nombres, and Spanish.” (Lines 1-6)

2. In the first stanza, what is the effect of personification and allusion? What is the Spanish counterpart to each? Sum up the meaning of the stanza.

In the first stanza, language itself is being personified, particularly the English language. Alvarez states “. . . in this snowy, blonde, blue-eyed, gum chewing English/ dawn’s early light. .” This creates an image of those who speak English in the United States are kind of “ditzy” and fit a certain molded image of a bubble-gum chewing, blonde hair blue-eyed individual speaking in what sounds to her as an ignorant language. You can tell she is specifically referring to people in the United States, and not the rest of the English speaking population because of the allusion to “dawns early light. . .” which is from the United States national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner.” The Spanish counterpart to this is that the poet, Julia Alvarez, uses a stereotypes of Spanish speaking people with “. . .dark-skinned girls. . .” Which with all this, the meaning of the stanza is that for some language can have a deeply emotional meaning, especially when names of some things “fit” better when said in other languages.

3. What mood or feelings are evoked in stanza two? How does language create this mood?

The mood of stanza two is an emotional stanza, with the author’s attachment to the names of words in Spanish. When Alvarez is referring to her childhood, she speaks of how certain words were more emotional and eloquent rather than the standard “harshness” of English vocabulary. She states “. . . learning the nombres/ of things you point to in the world before English/ turned sol, tierra, cielo, luna to vocabulary words–/ sun, earth, sky, moon. . .” (Lines 10-13). Julia Alvarez is pointing out that before Spanish had more mood and emotion, rather than the standard regularity of English words.

4. What do we learn in stanzas two and three about the difference between names and vocabulary words? How does the example of the plant called the morivivir help illustrate this gap? What does the metaphor of the genii in the bottle tell us about the nature of language?

Words are meant to have a specific meaning, and when they become the names of other things, they begin to lose their importance. The example of the morivivir, which is a plant “. . . whose leaves closed when we kids poked them. . .” is to demonstrate that when a words originally meant to mean something, becomes the name of something (an object) the word becomes “closed” and loses its original importance.

5. In stanzas four and five, why does the speaker invoke Gladys and Rosario from her childhood? How is her childhood sensitivity to words inextricably bound to Spanish, her first language? What is significant about the allusion to Adam, the first man?

The speaker invokes Gladys and Rosario from her childhood to bring a depth of reality to the poem. With the mentioning of names, especially from one’s memory or past it makes the point you are trying to prove more convincing. In this case, the speaker is talking about the emotion she feels toward her first language, Spanish, which mentioning names of people from her childhood add to her emotion because of the nostalgia it adds. Her childhood sensitivity to words inextricably bounds her to Spanish, because like everyone, their childhood is their “root.” You always have ties to your childhood, despite how far you get from where you may have been in your childhood you still fundamentally are still attached to your roots. “Gladys, I summon you back. . . begin first with those first words” (lines 19-24). In this case, of the poem the speaker may be referring to being far away from her childhood’s location, but she is also talking about her childhood language. Despite now speaking English, her roots still remain and always will remain with Spanish. The significance of the allusion to Adam, the first man, is that it wasn’t someone as recognized or revered as Adam or God who taught the speaker her first words, but rather it was a country girl.

 Death Be Not Proud

1. In what ways does this poem conform to a common sonnet form? What variations are notable, and what is their effect?

This poem conforms to a common sonnet form because it follows a sonnet rhyming scheme. Lines 1-4, it follows A-B-B-A, and lines 5-8 C-D-D-C, and lines 9-12 E-F-F-E, and the last two lines are a couplet, which does not rhyme. This is noticeably different than a typical sonnet because there are no separate stanzas, and the entire poem flows as one whole piece.

2. Describe Donne’s use of apostrophe and personification. How do these devices enhance our experience of the poem?

The use of apostrophe is when the author refers to an absent or imaginary person as if the being were actually present. Within this pome the author refers to death, and personifies it as though it were an actual being. By referring to death, as though it were human, makes for an eerie mood of the entire poem.

3. Paraphrase each of the sonnet’s three quatrains, preserving the clauses but simplifying the syntax. Do the same for the paradoxical couplet. Retain the apostrophe and personification.

You should never be proud of death, despite some people’s belief that they really are proud to be dying. Death is a mighty and horrible thing, for anyone. And for those people that want to die, usually have their wishes granted. Death itself does not die, nor can you avoid it.
Even when we are peacefully asleep we can die. In our happiest moments and even our best friends all die. We are all slaves of our fates. Death can come in the form of poison (murder), war and violence, or simply illness. No spell can make us invincible from death, and it is better to accept it rather than live thinking it will never come.

To Death

1. Describe the form and structure of the poem.

The poem is entirely made of up of rhyming couplets. These rhyming couplets help to create a quick rhythm of the poem, and in my opinion, creates a sense of satire to the topic of death.
2.Which details personify death? What is their effect? With what attitude does the speaker apostrophize death? What does she request of him?

An example from the pome which personifies death is the last two lines, lines 15-16, “Gently thy fatal scepter on me lay,/ And take to thy cold arms, insensibly, thy prey.” The speaker of the poem is referring to herself as prey, and death is her predator. This allows the reader to think of death in a different metaphor, the image that comes to my head, is the speaker is an innocent rabbit being hunted by a fox, or rather “death.” The use of the line, refers to death as though it were an actual being, and could actually hunt for someone.
3. Paraphrase each of the three sections of the poem: lines 1-6, 7-12, and 13-16. Use one sentence for each couplet. This time, change all figurative language to literal rather than retaining the apostrophe and personification.

Death, does not discriminate from anyone; everyone must die eventually. Even those of nobility and high-levels of spirituality all die. Even our very own names are on the list of those to die. It is a dark inevitable fate for each one of us.
Although we live knowing this, we learn to accept it an move on. We die by violence, murder, sicknesses which all take our spirits. Death not only affects those who die, but also makes those close to those who die feel tremendous grief.
Please death, take your time. I understand we must die, and your job is to kill. Let me die easy, with little pain, and you can take me as your prey.

Task: Write a post on your page that describes your experience of making your blog. Be honest; share the good, the bad, and the ugly.

 Response:This process of making my blog has personally been rather interesting, and I can’t that is a good thing. Whenever more than two people are trying to access edublogs at the same time, it moves extremely slow; thus preventing you from getting anything done during one class period. It felt as though just the process of making my blog took a long time. Just to get my site the way I could be at least content with it took two days. Then, I could just be weird, but I find navigating your way through edublogs kind of inconvenient. Once you are on someone elses’ page, you can not access your dashboard (so you can post or change something), without having to use the back button, to get all the way back to it. I suppose the intentions behind this “experiment” are clever and modern, however as far as practicality of this, I am still indifferent. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I would ever use anything like this outside of this assignment. Other than that, have an awesome day.

 peace. Justin.

Hola.

So this is my sweetbox new blog. I’m really posting this just to see what happens, because this will officially become my very first blog post. =]

peace. justin.