Beauty in the worst

The poem I decided to go with was “Dancing in Buses,” of course, by Javier Zamora. The poem was very intriguing to me due to a matter of factors – first of all, it’s almost musical. The entire poem itself is structured in a rhyming-rap structure. It’s consistent, it doesn’t stop, and it’s almost sung with a ‘jing’ to it, or a somewhat golly tune. However, once looked over, the poem is the complete opposite.

The starting lines start off with the poet talking about music being blasted from a speaker and telling everyone to raise their hands when playing the music, nothing more. He tells us to twist our arms in the air, and look around like so, before bending over and doing the Rump. So far, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing strange. The speaker then tells us to do the ‘rake,’ before sweeping and doing the Pupusa Clap – so on. All in all, a myriad of dance moves. However, by the near end, the poet suddenly tells us to duck underneath the seat, because someone’s shooting. After that, he instructs the reader to put their hand behind their back, look at the ground, roll over, and face the barrel.

After a brief skim, I decided to read closer. When the poet talks about doing a dance, he mentions something called a “pupusa clap”, with “finger dough clumps.” After doing some research about this, Pupusa is a sort of flatbread made through cornmeal or rice flour, which requires the chef in question to kneed and clap at it roughly to give it its texture. This specific food is Salvadoran, the origin of the poet in mind, and definitely as a result something that’s related to his hometown. Same with Horchata, a rice-based item as well, just a drink in this case. He’s correlating actions you would do when eating these specific foods into a personal dance, perhaps this is some sort of remembrance of his hometown? Right after this, we’re immediately once again, thrust into a life-or-death situation, with the poet suddenly telling everyone to drop down, roll over, face the mouth of a barrel (A gun, most likely), and don’t scream. From what I’ve gathered, this could be one of the experiences many of the immigrants attempting to cross the border face. Like all the previous poems, border patrol plays a big part, with them consistently brandishing their guns, and said to shoot on sight without any sort of repercussion. This huge juxtaposition of happy dancing upon a bus to the sudden possibility of death just feels immense, I believe Javier wanted this exact notion as well. To suddenly move from happy dancing and the such to sudden near-death experiences.

I suppose the poet here was trying to convey the immigrants trying to brighten up the terrible times they have while trying to cross the border by trying to enjoy themselves with activities that remind them of their hometown, such as the scooping of Horchata incorporated into their dances, alongside the kneading of Pupusa as well. Yet even then, they’re still caught by their terrible fate at the end of the poem, forced to turn around to face the barrel of a (Unestablished, but hinted at) gun. I’m not quite sure exactly if this is the case, and the one question I have right now is just who exactly are they rolling over for? In a lot of the previous poems, Border Patrol isn’t the only ‘evil’ thing out there. There’s the metaphorical coyotes, and so on. It makes me wonder, just what exactly are they cowering under?

Edmund F-

Haiku poetry – Japanese Americans: Edmund F.

The poem I decided to choose is from Neiji Ozawa, who was the Haiku leader of the Valley Ginsha Haiku club, in Fresno – an established club organized in his own home. The haiku I decided to choose for this is:

From the window of despair
May sky
There is always tomorrow

As for how this imagery captures the daily life of the Internment camps, it’s quite clear from the start that the poet, Neiji Ozawa was facing a sort of anguish in his life. The first line of the Haiku states that he’s staring through a window with despair on his face, a possible connection to the terrible conditions they were in. When looking at the poetic features included in the first line, symbolism comes to find. The window could symbolize a prison, a cell, or a different view because of said window. We can correlate this window to the internment camp he was forced into, and the same window that he was forced to look out of, causing him grief as a result. Diction can also be seen through the usage of ‘despair’, conveying the sense of hopelessness, as he’s trapped in the internment camps.

Next, ‘May sky.’ While short, there can be some connections made here, the first one I thought of was the sky during May. May is commonly known as springtime, a time of hope and happiness, a period of time when the world begins to warm up as a whole, plants begin to spring from the ground, and overall, a swell time. Perhaps during this time, we could make the connection that not only was he trapped in an internment camp that forced him to look outside his window in despair, but it was also during May, springtime, a heavy sense of irony being placed here. It’s the most vivid time of the year, yet he’s caged in a camp of nothingness, conveying that image.

The last part, ‘There is always tomorrow.’ Perhaps this final line could be considered ill-placed hope. Neiji continues to believe that sometime in the future, he’ll finally be able to break free of this. There is a tomorrow that he doesn’t know about, where he’ll finally be free – a flicker of false hope through his despair. To me, it can either mean two things – Neiji keeps false hope no matter what, he doesn’t know when the despair will end in the internment camp, but he’ll continue wishing for it, no matter what happens. The other meaning behind it, is that while the current day was filled with despair, perhaps the next day might be different, perhaps it could be a little bit better.

All in all, the imagery invoked in the Haiku, essentially painted a portrait of a poor man whose life has been caged inside an internment camp for so long, that he keeps a timeless notion of hope due to the extended length of time he’s been in it. It’s caused him so much anguish, that whenever he looks outside the window, he’s only able to feel despair, thus labeling it as the window of despair. The May sky tells us that the biggest irony is the fact of it being the most beautiful season of the year, springtime, during the start of May. Even during such a beautiful time, he’s forced to deep into a timeless despair, that all he can do is peer out the window of despair.

Which poem is most effective in challenging the traditional symbol of the rose and why? Edmund F.

After analyzing the two poems, I came to the quick conclusion that both of them have a very similar, yet different Comparison between two different symbols. Both of these poems don’t just talk about a rose, but rather, they speak about the parallels of the Roses. “Sea Rose” compares two different roses in two different situations – and “The Rose and The Poppy”, compare the Rose and the Poppy.

Now, when we move to which one challenges the traditional symbol of the rose, I assume this is about going against the original idea of Roses being beautiful, delicate objects – usually an item for love, proposals, and so on. First, Doing a rough annotation on the first poem, “Sea Rose.” Sea Rose starts off with a four-line stanza, We’re given imagery, and heavy details about a Harsh rose with little to no leaves, marred, ugly, and stinted. We know it’s wilting, a far cry from a beautiful rose. We proceed onto the second Stanza, and suddenly we’re told this Rose, although harsh and ugly is more precious, and is caught up on a drift – perhaps water, or the wind? Third, we’re once again told that the Rose is ugly, it’s stunted, and it’s thrown across like trash on the sand. However, it’s lifted once more, and continues moving, surviving the last Stanza, we’re told that it’s a Spice-Rose, which I can only assume is the most basic beautiful rose one can find in gardens. However, she decides to take a turn and says that even the spice-roses scent isn’t as enticing as the previous rose, the ugly one, drifted, gone. The Analysis I got out of this specific poem, is that while Beautiful Roses exist, their simplicity is simply overshadowed by the acrid scent of the Rose that’s been through terrible times, by the Rose that is Harsh, stunted, meager, and sparse.

The next poem is “The Rose and the Poppy.” The first Stanza states a rose that is not a beautiful red, or a pure white. It’s not the conventional rose you give to someone you love (Once again, the traditional overview of a Rose), nor is it one that’s for someone in pain (Also another traditional symbolism for Roses, pain/loss). However, in the sixth line in the first Stanza, the poet quite literally states that this item, most likely a flower, is not a symbol of romance in the first place. This flower is not beautiful, but it’s simply something set aside, upon a bed of flowers, most likely. The second stanza gives us a clearer imagery of what this flower is, giving her a simile of a tangerine with an orchard of trees, before giving us imagery of this individual during a summer breeze. The third stanza tells us that while this Flower isn’t chosen for any purposes related to love, it’s its own flower. The last two Stanzas are an allusion to the fact that all flowers are the same, that they’ll all wilt, and their scent will release, before they all rot into umber.

Now, as for which Poem is the most effective in challenging the traditional symbol of a rose? I would have to say the first one. To me, it almost feels like the second poem is trying to allude to the fact that all roses are the same at the end of the day. It challenges the idea that the poppy in this case, or the flower amongst seas of tangerine orange is just another flower like the Rose, the first poem actively portrays two roses in different situations, one symbol with two parallels. We see the Rose that has been enduring hardships, and struggles, only to emerge victorious and more enticing than a plain rose. Instead of being just a basic symbol of love in a Garden, it’s a Rose that’s gone through the ocean and desert. To me, this feels like the poem is actively showing us the differences between the traditional “spice-rose” utilized for the poetic traditional love, and a rose that’s stunted, wilting, struggling, yet still more complex and interesting.

No More Spotlight

When challenging a traditional symbol there is still some of the original meaning of it left. Yet, these two poets H.D. and Adrianna Puente try to challenge the original symbol of a rose with their poems. H.D.’s poem “Sea Rose” did a better job of challenging the idea of a rose. The idea is a rose is tarnished from going through so much that its spotlight is being taken away by a single leaf. H.D. uses diction and imagery to try and get this idea across.

“Sea Rose” did a better job with diction using “marred” which means disfigure or impair the appearance to describe a rose. showing the impurities this rose has and the distortion of its beauty. This showed the opposite of the beauty that a rose usually symbolizes. It was used to say that the rose is inadequate even to a leaf and is of no use. Where roses usually symbolize love, lust, or confessions, so by using this word it shows how bad it is to be a rose and the harsh ruin it goes through when it’s a synecdoche of a leaf. Whereas Puente used more lovely language such as “fragrance” and “wild” which both show the pretty scent of a flower and the similarity with a rose that symbolizes love. So, it kept the idea of love throughout the poem instead of following a different idea. Even though it drifted to a flower and not a rose it still showed the same signs of the symbol a rose usually holds. 

The vivid “You are flung across the sand” uses a great amount of imagery that tells the reader the rose is being abused in the wind and thrown in the sand which is known to cause scratches if you fall or get bruised by it. By using a word like flung we can see there is no love or passion but the pain the flower is going through from it being, so small and frail compared to a leaf. It is a basic call that says the rose is insignificant and holds no meaning even when floating through the sky. With this imagery, we are forced to visualize the rose being thrown in the sand like it means nothing. “The Rose and The Poppy” compares itself to a rose and has good uses of imagery like “we each wilt between dried petals”, it still holds the idea of how it is still important in some context even though it’ll die. It will still smell good and bring a sense of joy, but roses hold that original symbolized meaning which makes this poem not as effective in challenging the norm. 

“Sea Rose” uses the comparison between a leaf and a rose in her poem. Yet, she uses the rose to symbolize the leaf and the leaf to symbolize the rose which is called a synecdoche. By using this type of figurative language, we can see how usually the rose outshines a leaf and yet, we see it being played in a role where it brights more than the rose. The rose is being stunted around and doesn’t hold any sort of resemblance of love but is tarnished and hopeless to become a rose once again.

Kelly Flores

Life is a riddle – Ode 487 – Edmund F.

Right from the start, we look at the poem and understand that the main setting of this poem takes place within a Tavern. A man is clearly drunk from the day before and is wandering back into the tavern once more. We’re asked to describe what sort of love there is between two individuals, and right away. we’re able to skim through the poem quickly, and get one name from it, called Hafiz, who is very similar to the author of the poem. Looking at the first section of the Poem, we’re greeted with the poet swinging himself towards the nearest tavern, even after getting terribly demolished by it, his head “singing”. Right when he wakes up, and while “half the world was still asleep in bed,” the man is up and drinking, with a “wine-up on the wing.” He is then off to the Holy city of Intoxication, which I can attribute to some sort of personal journey, but to what? From what I gathered in this first section, I once again attribute love to the obsessive, intoxicating feeling wine has. Perhaps the man is simply so drunk on love, that he’s willing to go through so much for it, waking up before anyone else does, dedicating his life to it, have it ring throughout his head.

We move on to the next section now. The man leaves for a new tavern and spies a lass he fancies. Yet, even with his sweet talking, she rejects his advances, eyeing him with annoyance, or a “scornful-eyed” gaze. The woman mocks him talking him down, being called the “shafts of evil tongues,” unrelenting. However, at the near end, the poet mentions, “see but yourself in the center and the end,” which feels like a self-reflection journey almost. To see yourself at the center and the end, to understand your own reflection. After some googling, it’s very similar to self-discipline, and reflection. We can see this entire section as a self-reflection of love. It’s terrible, it’s horrible, and it dwells on his mind. There’s a conflict going on inside him, yet in the end, he reflects on it, and tries to understand it.

In the end, he takes shelter from that stormy sea, which we can attribute to love once more. Saki can be attributed as one of the love interests in this, as she is the maiden, perhaps the one that holds the wine? Going on, we’re shown the tavern daughter once more, perhaps similar to the tavern-wench from before, but instead in better lighting. Perhaps this is attributed to pleasure now, the carnal desire of love. The last part, a fairy figment made of clay and water, could be considered this: Everything beauty and lust is like clay. It’s beautiful at first but crumples fast. Perhaps this is a self-reflection of himself, an understanding of love? OF beauty? To truly understand how everything truly is?

With everything hand in hand, this poem is very much a poem of spiritual and physical reflection. We’re given carnal desire, love, intoxicating love, and so on. Yet, at the end of each carnal, drunk, love, is the poet himself understanding what it truly is. He reflects on it and understands himself as well, a key trait in Islamic spirituality. He accepts it after the ordeals he goes through.

The Beauty in Art

The poem that is most effective in representing the nature of art would be Herrick’s “Delight in Disorder” mainly because of how its title brings significance to the poem. Just by reading it, it could be immediately concluded that Herrick wrote about a woman, but is he? That’s where the poem gets effective. The title may be questionable, especially in the aspect of how it connects to ‘disorder’ and “delight’, however by scanning its metrical and rhythmical side, its connection can be found. The poem begins with an Iambic Tetrameter, this is cut short when the word “Kindles” is introduced. It is a trochee. At first, while scanning the poem, I started to think more trochees would appear, which another did on line four, “Into”. This may seem like that’s how the metric feet are meant to be, but closely scanning through, I noticed the trochees were set as a distraction. The trochees were inputted on purpose to make the reader scan through the entire poem and not realize the poem’s prosody is an Iambic Tetrameter, which was answered on the first line. The way the trochees stand out reflects how it’s a disorderly poem overall, and the way the poet expresses it is quite interesting since he could have simply expressed it with words, but instead he hid the message with meters.

On the other hand, though Jonson’s poem also has a dominant iambic tetrameter, and his sound pattern is more organized and straightforward, his poem is generally suspicious. The meters and rhythm fit rather too perfectly with the words Like “Give me/a look, give me/ a face”. The tone and the rhythm sound like a heartbeat. This is where I believe he did very well in expressing his main idea. But overall, I was still left with many unanswered questions about his poem. Like what was his motive to make his poem so neat? Why make readers suspicious? Is he trying to purposely have readers overthink his poem’s intent? This is why I chose Herrick’s.  I believe Herrick was more precise on the nature of art than Jonson.

Claudia Dominguez

Imagination Is my Vision.

 

I would always hear the phrase “eat more carrots” and your vision will improve or I was told, “Read a book”. Somehow, my gut always told me this was true. If I ate more carrots, my vision would get better and if I kept reading books, my vision would improve. I’ve learned many visualizations in my life, but one thing I knew for sure was my vision did not defy who I was as a person. 

My right eye always struggled more than my left eye. I would always think to myself if both of my eyes visualize the same things, why did only my right eye get affected? That’s when I stopped believing terms like “technology messes with your vision”. If technology messed with my vision, why weren’t both of my eyes messed up? I always enjoyed reading a book. I wasn’t the typical person who would rather play outside, but I would rather enjoy a book because I can use this special term called “Imagination.” Imagination is a big part of who I am and I believe without my vision, I wouldn’t have my imagination. Imagination is a vision of me. I can imagine all the fantasies in my world. I grew up in LA, but I was born in Mexico and that was always hard for me since I was not treated the same. 

Because of that, I had to use my imagination a lot. I had to imagine myself working; I had to imagine myself being a detective, or I even had to imagine myself voting one day. Imagination was all I had because my vision tends to lie to me from time to time. I remember viewing all the discrimination that my family had to go through and now today, I can say that imagination is the reason I am now working hard to earn an English degree and my vision will always view things but It will not always view the right things. Helen Keller said, “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” To me, vision is imagination and the only thing worse than being blind is not being able to imagine what I can accomplish. 

www.marveloptics.com

-Ana Munos

Blog post 4/ Reflection on research

Writing class has been very interesting throughout the semester and honestly, I did not expect to be working on a research paper or research project throughout the entire semester. I expected to be writing tons of essays and tons of papers, but honestly, it was nothing like that. Instead, we got to research about something that we wanted to do which made the class interesting. My research had to do with undocumented immigrants and how somehow medical is way more expensive to undocumented immigrants than to those who were born in the United States. During my research, I did not find any good reason medical is more expensive to undocumented immigrants. Instead, I just kept finding reasons it is very expensive towards them. Many articles that I read explain to me why undocumented immigrants have to pay way more medical bills and that is simply to them not having a document that states that they were born in the United States. I think that the main thing that I got from this research is information and how to teach others about the information they don’t know. I get why so many undocumented Immigrants are afraid to go to the doctors or are afraid to go to their daily dentist appointment. That is because they are afraid of getting deported. Deportation is a big reason Americans have a higher rate of going to doctors and going to the emergency room. That is because many undocumented immigrants don’t know their own rights and think that by sharing their publicity, they would end up getting deported. Which is why I’m thankful that I am doing this research because now I can educate people like me and teach them not to be afraid because in my community they are many of us who don’t have papers and are afraid to seek for medical help. For Hispanics cases like diabetes or cases like high blood sugar are high on rate with people because they simply don’t go to the doctors, there have been cases like undocumented immigrants get injured at work and they ignore it and many of them have broken bones. For example, I’ve experienced that because my father works in construction and he is a man who is undocumented and since he is afraid of paying all the medical bills that he will have to pay he ignores his health a lot and that is a terrible thing. After learning all this research, I now can teach my father not to be afraid. All the articles that I’ve read have taught me that medical is one reason undocumented immigrants struggle so much with money. There is a reason a broken bone is more expensive to undocumented immigrants than to immigrants. There is also a myth going around that I read in one article that I’ve read that says that the reason undocumented immigrants have to pay so much for bills is because they’re paying for other people’s taxes and how is that fair. Simply because Americans don’t want to pay for their taxes or they don’t want to pay for the taxes we have to suffer the most? Another thing that I’ve learned about articles is that Immigrants are one of the most hardworking people here in America and they are the reasons why poverty is so high.

Ana Munos

Bells Hooks, Audre Lorde, Cherie Moraga

All the authors are related because they’re all women of color. That they’re women of color makes them more powerful and makes their articles more interesting. The reason that I say this is that usually when I read any article that has to do with white poverty or white enforcement, I can’t seem to get it because it is not remotely close to being interesting as reading an article of people of color. I pay more attention, especially if it’s my race, because as time goes by, we hear about all the different things that white people have done and how history repeats itself and it is still repeating itself today. Another thing that makes Audre, Cherie, and bell hooks related is that they all have a strong definition of feminism and strongly believe in feminism. Another thing that makes them related is that they all say a powerful message when writing and they’re all known for their writing and their race, because I believe that their race makes their writing powerful. Audre Lorde is a powerful woman because not only was she a colored person but she was also part of the LGBTQ community and she addressed racism powerful. Another thing that all three authors have is that their writing caused them to win different awards, which just proves that their writing is actually powerful and tells us a powerful message. Their life and the way they lived play a big role in their writing because it was their personal images that made them the writers that they are. Let’s be honest here, if they were born a different way or had it “easier” like society likes to label things nowadays, their writing wouldn’t be as powerful as it is and many people wouldn’t be able to relate to them. When another color person reads articles from the same skin color they are, they understand the writing a lot better and if it wasn’t for their lifestyle, then they wouldn’t write about the struggles they faced every day. The gender also plays a big role here because males don’t have to struggle how women do, especially if you come from a unique background. Which is why I believe that if they were born differently that they wouldn’t have gone through the way they went through and they wouldn’t have to write about defending feminism so much. Reading all three articles made me realize how powerful words can be and even if they don’t explain to you what they went through, you can hear it in the tone of the articles, especially if they use rhythm and similes. I learned that the more information that you add in an article or a story, the more deep that you go. It is most likely that the readers will understand you better. I learned that for my research project I should be as descriptive as possible, especially if I want to show a strong message like how healthcare is more expensive to immigrants than people who live in the United States even though immigrants tend to work 2x harder than Americans in my opinion.

Ana Munos

Documentary 13th

While watching the Documentary in class I had many questions and many thoughts about it. We’ve been learning more about racism during class and being completely honest I did not expect my writing class to be about racism. This brings me to find the class even more interesting because you assume that you’re going to learn about grammar and etc but instead here we are watching documentaries on people’s rights, especially color people. You think that back then segregation was worse and you would think that everything was worse back then based on the history you learn during class. Once you actually sit down and learn more about the history of other people’s rights then you would actually understand it a whole lot better. There was a video we watched during class where a lady was telling us about how people tend to treat others differently based on what skin color they are and the sad part that is the truth. People tend to treat you differently, for example, you’re at the bank and if people see that you are a color person it is most likely they’ll be more afraid of you than being afraid of a white person. That is just the way society is nowadays and it’s sad. It’s sad because people who are white have more privilege than people who are colored and that’s just reality nowadays. The thing that I am mostly disgusted by, and I saw that happened in the documentary is that cops think that colored people are always looking suspicious. A color person could just be walking around and would get called being suspicious and they will get arrested but if it was a white person stealing it is most likely they’ll be held off with a warning and it makes me disgusted that today we see this happening a lot. It gets me disgusted knowing that the thing you are supposed to be protected by is the thing that ends many color people and that is society’s fault. I always question why does god let these types of things happen I always question why did god bring in racism how is it fair that we are treated the way we are through something that we cannot even pick when we are born. This is the way you’re born and you have to deal with it but if you’re colored people if you are an immigrant being born will bring you consequences just because of the way you look. I want people to stop being afraid I want people to stop putting labels on other cultures because labels shouldn’t exist in this world just like racism. Yet I find it so funny how America grants freedom to all Americans which was something that was said in the Documentary and it is the truth. Another part that I could relate to in the documentary is the part where they said those who were born white do not know the struggle of colored people and that is true. I could relate to this because being an immigrant is not easy either we don’t have many opportunities like Americans. It’s hard coming from a background that we can’t choose from.

Ana Munos