Response to "My Papa's Waltz"

      

       I first read this poem in the seventh grade with Mr. Ravin and he told us, well gave us the idea that the poem is about a father abusing his child when he was drunk. Now that I look at it in the way described in class, I think that it about a boy and his father actually doing the waltz. But there is still the doubt in my mind that it is really about abuse because of the title and because of the content in the poem.

       I really like this poem and when i talked about in class with my group at first I agreed with Peter that the dad was hitting him every time he got the dance wrong, or he was just hitting him and the narrator was trying to soften it up. But then I switched to Ruby's side because what she was saying was actually making sense and it made more sense than what Peter was saying.

       This poem is either about a boy and his father doing the waltz or about a father beating his kid because he is drunk. And what I usually witness is that whenever someone is drunk they start stuff with people and then a fight or beat down usually starts. But I could be wrong.

       

    

Poem with Specific Rhyming Scheme

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I love you
You know you love me too.

Poem on important event

The day they fell down
was a day of chaos
The day they fell down
was a day of confusion
The day they fell down
was a day of hardship
They day they fell down
was a day of remembrance
The day they fell down
9/11

Poem on a peice of artwork

Mona Lisa

Straight face
Excited eyes
Simple clothes
Pained memories
A new beginning

The Starry Night Poetry Response

       I didn't even read the poem I only read the title and I thought that Anne Sexton was just going to describe the painting, The Starry Night. But then I read it and saw that it wasn't like that at all.

       She kind of did describe Van Gogh's painting in a way because I remember the thing that our class thought was a tree, castle, or tower and I remember her describing that in the poem. And in our class discussion on the painting we also said that the town was silent and kind of dark. We said that the sky was the real thing we should be looking at and the contrast between the silent town and the active sky.

       In her poem she took that painting and made it into something that she could relate to and something she herself would understand. It meant something to her even if it didn't mean really anything to us. I think she focused on the town more than the starry night because her poem was really dark and she incorporated the dark things of the poem and made it into a poem about death. And how she wants to die. And she put all the things she thought was dark in the painting and put that in her poem and said she wants to die by those things. Also I realized the only reason she put a little bit of the starry night into the poem she even finds a way to make that dark and says she wants to die under the stars.

       Now me I wouldn't write a poem about the way I want to die, I would be writing about the good things in life and a way to live my life. I would not write about death. And even if I were supposed to I would write about the things I want to do before I die, fun things not emo stuff like that.

Analysis On Painting

 I did the Mona Lisa by Leonardo DaVinci.

       This picture doesn't have a lot of bright colors and it looks like Mona Lisa was cut and paste from somewhere else and put into the picture. But she still fits in with her surroundings because she looks kind of dull and so do the mountains and rivers and skies behind her. The only colors he actually uses are a very, very, dull yellow and green, and red. And of course black. The women herself looks like she could be a nun because she is not smiling a lot but looks like she wants to smile even more than that. And she is wearing all black and it looks like the clothes are really old and fit for one of the times where women couldn't express themselves.

Inferences:
       I think that Mona Lisa could be a servant girl in her time and she was really sad in life but then the smile that she has I think says that she is optimistic and thinks that things are going to get better than they are already are. But all of that is contradicted by the clothes that she has on because her clothes kind of look like silk or velvet. And I'm thinking that in her time servant girls didn't have velvet or silk. Barely even now.

Interpretations:
I looked at Gabriel's to answer this and I agree with him. I think the painting is trying to capture one moment of life that is really good and is saying to kind of enjoy that moment while it lasts. But it is a pretty weird surrounding to put it in, if he was trying to capture that moment.

December Reading Challenge

The book I read and the movie I watched for this challenge was, I Love You, Beth Cooper.

       I really liked both the movie and the book because they were both so funny and also really kind of stupid at the same time. The movie is very much like the book up until the very end where they cut out a whole seen from the ending. I watched the movie first and then read the book after so at the end of the book while I was reading I'm thinking this book is so wrong, that doesn't really happen, but really it's the other way around.

       All movies generally cut stuff out because all of the descriptions that are in the book, they show you in just one picture in the movie when it takes like a page to describe it in the book. The movie had almost all the lines that were in the book. All of the characters said what they said in the movie in the book.

       The book was really funny and I like the Larry Doyle's style because it's not like he's trying really hard to make the book sound really professional and appropriate for some people by saying things in a different context. He's says it just how is is and that what I think all author's should do that to. Also some of the words that we had in vocab review were in this book also.

       The movie wasn't as funny as the book because with the book you could imagine in your own way how that characters looked and you could make your own movie in your head while your reading. The movie kind of crushes that imagination and shows you what the author sees but it's not always how you wan't that world to look like. The movie also cut out a kind of important scene but the movie did good without it too.

       I think that both the movie and the book were really good and I liked them both.