Simplistic: A Poem

Although I was really ill for the cemetery field trip, I still read the poem and following the prompt:

My first favorite line before I even began the reading the poem was the title "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd". Whitman's genius shows through simply through the title he chose to give his lengthy poem. I really liked in the second stanza when he writes, "O powerful western fallen star!..." I thought it was an amazing rendition towards the loss of a president such as Lincoln. In stanza six when he talks about "the coffin that pass[ed] through lanes...through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land," I felt like he was talking about how the whole nation felt as they saw President Lincoln's body being hoisted away from the country's capital where he was once standing as an able, ready man who helped our country stay together. You can tell in this line it was almost too much for Whitman to keep his eyes on such a site as Lincoln's coffin.

My personal relationship to this story I would have to say is through two different historic tragedies. The first one would be the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I've done so much research on him that he is almost like a living, breathing person in my own mind. Everytime I watch the Zapuder Film of that fateful day in Dallas, Texas, I sometimes hold the same emotions that this poem exemplifies in detail. The second would have to be Septemeber 11th. I feel like it was just all a bad movie, even 8 years after the fact. I remember where I was that day and how I felt. When I read Whitman's poem, it's clear he wrote it to leave an impact on the American people and not allow them to ever forget Lincoln's death.

Here is a song lyric that was written in the early 1980s nearly 20 years after JFK was killed:

dreamed I was the president of these united states
I dreamed I replaced ignorance, stupidity and hate
I dreamed the perfect union and a perfect law, undenied
And most of all I dreamed I forgot the day john kennedy died

I dreamed that I could do the job that others hadnt done
I dreamed that I was uncorrupt and fair to everyone
I dreamed I wasnt gross or base, a criminal on the take
And most of all I dreamed I forgot the day john kennedy died

Oh, the day john kennedy died
Oh, the day john kennedy died

I remember where I was that day, I was upstate in a bar
The team from the university was playing football on tv
Then the screen want dead and the announcer said,
Theres been a tragedy
Theres are unconfirmed reports the presidents been shot
And he may be dead or dying.

Talking stopped, someone shouted, what!?
I ran out to the street
People were gathered everywhere saying,
Did you hear what they said on tv
And then a guy in a porsche with his radio hit his born
And told us the news
He said, the presidents dead, he was shot twice in the head
In dallas, and they dont know by whom.

I dreamed I was the president of these united states
I dreamed I was young and smart and it was not a waste
I dreamed that there was a point to life and to the human race
I dreamed that I could somehow comprehend that someone
Shot him in the face

Oh, the day john kennedy died
Oh, the day john kennedy died

I'm a bit sad that I was not able to go the cemetery. I'm sure it would've deepened my experience about the poem. But to replace that I had to think hard on some of my own grief while reading the poem. It helped to understand the deeper meaning behind Whitman's words. Not only was he stating that he missed the president, he was stating that he literally felt like a part of him and his patriotism died along with Lincoln.

It's really difficult for me to read depressing poems. When I write poetry it's usually sad things about my own life. I have a really hard time writing happy poems. Part of me thinks that sometimes in our of depression or sadness in life, we find ourselves. After everything else is taken away we can focus on what God really wants for us. In this poem I could feel that Whitman was angry and unhappy. You could tell that he was struggling with what to feel as a famous poet, but also as a regular man that witnessed the tragedies of war and what it almost did to his country. Whitman was a brilliant mind when it came to poetry. I think that his love for President Lincoln certainly showed and this poem deserves so much honor and praise as not only an artistic work, but also as a fundamental piece in American Literature.

Tuscana Trip

The experience at Tuscana was half what I expected it to be. I know what the atmosphere is like in Tuscana, but today it seemed to get pretty heated at our table. The five of us started out talking about different texts that we had brought. One person brought a book by Tony Dungy, another brought an Erwin McManus text and another student brought more of a theological book. My book in particular was "A Man Named Dave".


If anyone has ever read "A Child Called It" or "The Lost Boy", this is the third installment to that series. It talks about a boy that goes through abuses by his mother and how he's unable to tell anyone and what tourture it is for him. In the third book, he reflects back on his life and all that he came through and how much God was there for him the whole time and how much he's grown from such a horrible past.

After about half of us shared our books a bit of a theological argument started about "The Shack". It got pretty heated. I must say, I did not say much because I have not read the book, but with that said, I was really proud of my group. The reason is because they were passionate about literature, if only for a moment. It was an amazing experience to be able to sit back and watch everyone have their opinions about this particular book. I didn't feel the need to be apart of that particular part of the discussion, but I found it very eye-opening.

Would I do this experience again? Sure. I felt that it was nice to get out of the classroom and engage each other as classmates in some other ways other than just simple reading and talking about it. It was simply, a breath of fresh air.

Readings from "Howl"

While reading the poem in class I felt somewhat ignorant. I felt that Howl was a hard poem to figure out. The man that wrote this poem was odd. He interviewed jazz musicians, psychiatric patients and drug addicts. He was expelled from Columbia University for writing profanities on a dorm room window. He was a bit crazy himself. So I suppose that this poem not only talks about a world gone to the dogs, but also about men falling into horrible habits that lead to worse and worse things.

I looked on some websites to find out how I should've read it during class and there were a few ideas of pronounciation, but I choose to do it with a jazz beat behind the words. I thought that it would be appropriate because the poem itself had to do with the 1940s and the jazz age. When I found out that this poem was a beacon in the "Beat Generation" it caught me off guard. I decided to look the entire poem up online and after reading it, I couldn't believe that "Howl" would affect so many people in either a positive or negative way.

Some of the cool aspects of the poem were his use of uncommon words/phrases to describe very common feelings among men. Words like: Mohammedan, El, angelheaded, and dynamo. I had to look up many of these words to find the meanings behind them. But the words fit the poem well.

Be your own Theme

I asked myself a question and that was: why do I read? Do I read to merely learn? No. I read because sometimes I have to step into books and ideas more grandiose than myself.

I went through several websites and looked into our text book about the definition of a theme. In my own words I would describe theme as being an action put into words. Themes could include things like: believe in yourself, overcome challenges, accepting others' differences, show teamwork, be a legacy, be kind to others--the list is endless. All of these "themes" have one main thing in common, they all start with an action--believe, overcome, accept, show, etc.

One particular theme I would like to reflect on is C.S. Lewis': The Chronicals of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The main theme throughout the Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, it's their destined place as Kings and Queens of Narnia. There are other underlying themes such as legacy and love for one another despite what is going on in reality, but the truth is that some of us try to see the deeper meaning in a theme and some of us like what is right on top of the surface.

I guess what I get from reading the stories I do is that as much as there is a theme to all of those stories we should be our own theme to our own stories. I really appreciate during literary classes when emotion and timing are pointed out in poetry and different passages because that is definitely what life is all about. Sometimes I think of english classes as "life" classes. Sometimes we learn emotions/themes of life from parents and other people in our lives, but I love when I can read or sing something and be able to understand that someone wrote that out of a someone else's "real life" situation or overall theme, or a creative theme developed by themselves.

Themes in literature allow us to question ourselves. What we believe; what we think; why we think the way we do; why we have the opinions we have. When I think back to books that have been turned into movies such as Harry Potter, My Sister's Keeper, and the Secret Life of Bees, I think about how I felt about the theme of the book and try to reflect it back on myself. I've learned many valuable things through books, but some of those themes have been even more valuble because I've thought about them and worked them into my own life.

The Things They Carried

First off, wow. I have seen war movies and read about the Vietnam War enough to actually feel like I was living during that time period, but this passage is different. Tim O'Brien certainly has a deep understanding into the minds, feelings and actions of soldiers. While reading it, I began to understand that these soldiers carry more than can openers, Kool Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, love letters, pistols, bullets, food, rations, plastic explosives--they carry the mental and emotional idea that they may die.

The long list of material things that the men carried does not begin to compare with the emotional baggage of shame, guilt, death, and cowardliness. Why did I put those four emotions in that order? Well, in the text the men seem to experience trauma in that order. For example, Lt. Cross felt shame in Ted Lavender's death, then he felt so guilty because his "daydreaming" about Martha caused Ted to get shot. After that he the realization had set in that Ted died. It wasn't an initial reaction. Lt. Cross had seen many men die, but this particular man, he felt died because of his negligence. The final emotion that is somewhat detached from this particular incident between Lt. Cross and his emotions about Ted is cowardliness. All of the men in this particular platoon were afraid to experience being a coward.


Why? Well, the same question arises for us. Why wouldn't we want to be cowards? Is there a difference when war is involved or is it all the same? I would have to say that the feeling is the same whether or not someone is in war, the only difference is during war...if you let the emotion become you, whatever that emotion may be, you may very well be the cause to your own undoing.

I'm usually able to put myself in the place of the characters I am reading about, but I couldn't do it while reading this text. The men all experienced such different things, but the one thing they all had in common was that they were all human and experience human emotions. They all hurt. They all joked about some aspects of the war in order to not go insane. They all tried to stay level-headed. If I had to put myself in their place, I don't think I could. I could not imagine even a fragment of my life being put in their position or being put through that kind of harsh emotional anguish.

Drawing by: Brittney TM Perez