Forum Responses

I need a 100 word response for each of these short forum posts. Each one is numbered where the new one starts. It doesn’t have to be extravagant just a simple response to each one. Each response should be separated and numbered 1,2,3 & 4.

1.100 word response

Part I

Week 7 is here, and for this weeks forum assignment, I chose to write about Edwin Torres. He was born in 1958 and lived in New York City. His poems were rich in tones that promoted the readers sight and sound according to Poetry Foundation. Of his works, I’ve read “Merely a Poet,” “Mirror Meteor,” and “Oh Yeah and the Eye Stays Open,” and “Soul Story.” These works by Edwin fit within the postmodernist writing style because the works all have a common theme of ambiguity to them. These works have yet to have any serious analysis published about them online, leaving them strictly open to the reader’s interpretation. In the poem “Soul Story” Edwin writes “Let its thinker be the failure. My Thinker is Failure, and I want to teach it how to move in this world.” To me this is to be interpreted as a failing and struggling soul, needs to be guided in the world. If anyone has read this poem, let me know what you think.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53729/soul-…

Part II

This week I noticed that some of the authors were utilizing forms of confessional mode. These works this week showcased the personal nature in which these poems could have blended into experiences within the poet’s life. These poets utilized different writing mechanics to try and shift the focus on their writing away from themselves by using images or nonhuman comparisons to make it seem like the poem isn’t directly paralleling their experiences.

Part III

After reading the work “Somewhere for Everyone,” by John Grisham, I saw how much this man truly cared about the homeless situation. John’s essay seemed fictional in the sense that he uses images such as “small southern towns” and aggressive panhandlers to convey his message. This writing may have elements of fiction minced in with the story to build the readers knowledge or pull at their heartstrings. I believe adding fictional aspects helps readers understand that the homeless population honestly does need help and that the steps that were taken to improve the homeless are somewhat ineffective and will require more attention from the Government and its Citizens if the problem is going to get any better.

2. 100 word response

Part 1:

The author I chose from the list was Charles Bernstein and the four poems I read of his were Design, Me and my Pharaoh, Pompeii, and Two Stones with One Bird. Charles Bernstein is an interesting poet. The poem Two Stones with one Bird has an interesting concept and layout. But my favorite was Pompeii. “The lave flowed and buried the people, So poems such as this could be born.” Charles Bernstein uses good irony in the poem that makes him fit into the post-modernism style.

Part 2:

I think that the way that the poets keep the poems from being completely about themselves by focusing the poem are their experiences or perspective of a situation. In Sharon Olds, “First Thanksgiving”, her daughter is the main focuses but if you look deeper into the poem the actual focus is on how the author felt when her daughter came home from college.

Part 3:

The way John Grisham makes his work seem to be fictional is the connection between him as an author and us as the readers. John Grisham does not only lay out the facts but he gives his opinion and his thoughts to make the reader see his way and be able to make their own conclusion.

Reference:

“Charles Bernstein.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/charles-bernstein.

3. 100 word response

Class,

I chose to go with two of Sharon Olds poems and two of Linda Pastan poems, which they both reminded me of how Americans live a simple chaotic but controllable life. I feel that Postmodernism for you. The first poem by Sharon Olds, “First Thanksgiving” describes how parents feel when their kids come home for the holidays after being away in college or even just from being apart so long, as you can tell by the title this is referring to the thanksgiving holiday. It’s in our nature as parents to be thrilled and give our kids lots of love when they do come home. In her poem “Still Life in Landscape” speaks to me that while the child is scared from this tragic accident a mother still tries to protect and comfort her child from seeing the gruesome scene of the accident “my mother grabbed my head and turned it and clamped it into her chest, between her breasts” (Olds, “Still Life in Landscape”). Which she didn’t want her child to be scorn with the visions of a dead woman laid out on the pavement. Basically tells you about how all mothers love and protect their children. In Linda Pastan’s “I Am Learning to Abandon the World” is telling us how she shuts out the world in her live because she feels abandoned, from the lost of her father and friends. This poem basically is about how hard is for one to move on after loosing a parent or a really close friend. For Pastan’s poem “The Obligation to Be Happy” she describes to me how the woman in this story doesn’t have a fulfilling happiness in her life, she is missing the main part in that fulfillment it could be a partner or even her own family. “But you expect it of me casually” (Pastan, “The Obligation to Be Happy”) she is basically faking her happiness just to satisfy the people around her when they really don’t know what the person is really feeling.

For Sharon due to her upbringing with an alcoholic for a father, sharing a glimpse of her personal experience in “Still Life in Landscape” in the verse “My father was driving—not sober but not in this accident” (Olds, “Still Life in Landscape”). In Linda Pastan case from reading a her bio, in the poem “The Obligation to Be Happy” I took as giving up writing after graduating from college to focus on being a mother was that missing piece of happiness (Pastan, “The Obligation to Be Happy”). As for Larry Levi in “Winter Stars” this basically a reminiscence of the past remembering his father as being invincible “My father once broke a man’s hand Over the exhaust pipe of a John Deere tractor” (Levis “Winter Stars”). Then coming back to reality that his father is near death due to Parkinson’s and series of strokes “My father is beginning to die. Something Inside him is slowly taking back Every word it ever gave him”(Levis “Winter Stars”). He realizes, as maturity catches up he must make amends with his father for the past differences between him and the dad.

In “Somewhere for Everyone” it was how he opened this writing, using the style and tone, elements of fictional writing First it was, Grisham’s opening that set the tone for the audience catching there attention with, “In the small southern towns of my childhood no one talked about the homeless” all caps basically screaming it out. Then the style, the word “homeless” as a description for very poor people was never used. They were called hungry or needy, or they were winos or hobos, but never homeless” (Grisham, “Somewhere for Everyone”). His bio also speaks of Grisham devoting time to the youth in his hometown areas by providing multiple baseball fields and becoming the little commissioner.

4. 100 word response

Part I

The author I choose is Charles Olsen. I read the poem, Maximus, To himself, The king fisher, The librarian, and The song of Maximus song 1. The author fit into post modernism because he right about the reality but it’s not the reality we all expect. We all can have our own version of the interpretation of these post modernism poems because reality has a different meaning for all of us.

Part 2

When an author write about something personal that happened to them often time the reader can relate in one way or another. So this makes it not all about them because they are sharing personal experiences that others might also went thru or is currently going thru as well. By doing this they can share deep stories while connection with their readers on a personal level.

Part 3

John Grisham wrote about fictional in a way that he wrote about things that society is taught to not say or not talked about. He talked about homelessness and people being greedy and he was brave in a sense that these are the issues that wasn’t openly talked about back than. Even though it’s not fictional because homeless do exist it seem fictional since others were not really talking about it.