Week Three Readings.

I really enjoyed this period of transendentalists and Gothic writing some of my favorite. I really love Walt Whitman. I feel with his writing, especially in Song of Myself, is so powerful and timeless. It sounds like something I would hear from a poet of today's time period. in the section 24, its like a celebration of himself. I quote, " I dote on myself, there is a lot of me and all so luscious, Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy." I love these lines!!! I know in class we discussed a little bit about whether he might have been gay or bi-sexual, but I don't think when he was alive that there was even a term for that. So, maybe he was just a person who loved without limits. There was no limitation on gender or feelings, so his writing was free; without boundaries that defined him. I also love Emily Dickinson for the same reason why we all love her. She is the queen of illusiveness. WHO is she? Her use of dashes are, to me, one of her most distinct writing quirks that sets her apart. in her poem 448, she uses the dashes and it made me feel like the people in the tombs were gasping for air to chat before their mouths were covered up with the moss. I quote:

"And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night-
We talked between the Rooms-
Until the Moss had reached our lips-
And covered up- Our names-"

One poet from this time that I find intreguing, but not a favorite is Edgar Allan Poe. He is too gothic for my taste. I do appreciate his writing and do like it, but I wouldn't say he's in my top ten. I feel that his poems are dark and full of beautiful imagery. In The Tell-Tale Heart, his discriptive words makes the reader feel the intensity of the situation. I quote, " When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing the old man lie down, I resolved to open a little- a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So, I opened it- you can not imagine how stealthily, stealthily- until, at length, a single dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell upon the vulture eye." I just enjoy when he helps me, as the reader, picture this in my head by describing the scene with dark- mood inticing words and dark- mood inticing images.

week two readings and my thoughts

I really enjoyed the weeks readings becuase it helped me better understand the Puritan ways of thinking. In school you are never really taught that much about it, so it was refreshing to read Anne Bradstreet. Also, she was a sucessful woman writer and at that time it was rare. I enjoyed the images from her poem "The Author to Her Book". I found it refreshing in a time that I feel seemed lacking in interesting writing. I liked her writing more so than Mary Rowlandson even though I respect them both for being early female writers. Mary Rowlandson dipicts the Indians as a savage tribe, but I do think it is ironic that they also got along with them. In trading and buying and selling. I feel that each had their own ideas of what is right and wrong, both different and similar to eachothers. I find the speech of Tecumseh a point against the savages that were painted in Mary Rowlandson's account. In his first lines, "Brothers we all belong to one family; we are all children of the Great Spirit; we walk in the same path; slake our thirst at the same spring; and now affairs of the greatest concern lead us to smoke the pipe around the same council fire," I find they are wanting to be a peaceful people. They don't go around killing just for the heck of it, and the Puritan view is to make it seem that way. Later in the speech when he talks about the white people bascially pillaging THEIR land he is telling us why they are going to wage war.
I REALLY like Benjamin Franklin's writings. His autobiography and moral virtues are really great. I do want to kind of make a positive affermation in my everyday life to try to follow them.He was very successful as a person spiritually as well as publicly, so it must have worked for him. Although i feel that Socrates was a woman hater which I really don't want to immitate him at all! LOL!

-Rachael-