On January 10th, 2016 I went with my mom to go see Annie, the Broadway musical, at the Lexington Opera House. Annie is a musical that was based off a comic strip written by Harold Gray titled "Little Orphan Annie". The music for this musical was written by Charles Strouse and the Lyrics were written by Martin Charnin. The executive producer for this particular version of the musical was Randall A. Buck.
Annie is a musical about a group of orphans living in a run down orphanage run by the devil herself, Miss Hannigan. However, Oliver Warbucks, the richest man in New York sends his assistant to the orphanage to adopt a child for the Holidays, and who else does the assistant pick than little orphan Annie herself. Annie lives a life of luxury at Daddy Warbucks' house, and she brings so much joy to not only him but the whole house that when the Holidays are over he asks Annie to let him adopt her. Annie is eager to have Daddy Warbucks as her father but she can't help but think of her real parents and the note they left with her at the orphanage. When they dropped Annie off as a baby they gave her half a locket and a note saying they would come back for her in later years. When Daddy Warbucks hears of Annie's distress over this he does everything in his power to find Annie's real parents. He gets the President of the United States to make a national announcement about it and even offers a $50,000 prize. As that money would be tempting to a lot of people several hundreds of fake couples come in claiming Annie as their own. However, none knew about the locket. Until one final couple comes in Christmas morning claiming to know about the locket and the note and they even have her (fake) birth certificate. Annie is almost given up to these people until the assistant realizes she has seen the man before. This couple is busted as being Miss Hannigan's brother and his accomplice trying to get the reward money. In the end Annie is safe and Daddy Warbucks gets to fulfill his wish of adopting her as his own.
This performance was by far the best performance I have ever seen. It lasted about three hours but I never wanted it to end. The actors and actresses were alive and animated while the songs could not have been sung and choreographed any better. Every single little orphan girl was so cute and did so well acting and their voices sounded amazing all together. It was crazy to look at these young girls of 7 or 8 years old and think that they are this talented traveling the country performing at that age. The character that stood out the most to me was definitely Miss Hannigan. She was played by Lynn Andrews who was a bigger lady with big hair and over the top makeup but this woman really knew how to act. She had the crowd in tears from laughter almost every time she spoke. She was loud and projected her voice while constantly moving around. She made it all look so natural and not pre-planned as if she truly was Miss Hannigan. Annie, played by Heidi Gray, could not have been more perfect. This little girl made the audience believe she was Little Orphan Annie. She was extremely lovable and the whole crowd was clinging on to every word she said and feeling every emotion she fed us. She had the perfect red hair for Annie and was overall the perfect actress for the part. Even the dog, Sandy, was very polished and well trained.
The sets were actually so real looking it sort of freaked me out. They always had quick and smooth tarnsitions yet every set was so much different. They obviously had props to assist in the back drops looking 3D, but one of the last scenes in Daddy Warbucks' house had a back drop with fake windows, but they made what was outside of the windows look so real and the room look like it actually went far back. Then, they would have lighting that would just show out the fake windows that gave the illusion of the sun setting. It honestly all looked so real it was insane how they did it. The costumes also fit the characters all very well. The orphans were obviously dressed in their rags head to toe while Oliver Warbucks wore his suits. The whole show was so incredible and of course the music could not have been better. If I were to change anything about this performance it would've been to include the dog, Sandy, a bit more because in the movies Sandy plays a pretty big role, but he wasn't in this performance very much. Obviously that is not a huge factor though. I would rate this performance a 10/10 due to the fact that the back drops and lighting looked so real at times I got confused, the actors and actresses made me feel what they were feeling, and not once in the three hour performance did I want it to end.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Poetry Collection- Maddie Wheeler
Robert Hayden was born as Asa Bundy Sheffey in Detroit in the year 1913. His parents separated before his birth and he was mostly raised by his neighbors, who gave him their name. Hayden was the first African American to serve the office of what is now the US Poet Laureate. His works largely include content about race, social class, abuse, and other things he was surrounded by since he grew up in a ghetto of Detroit. The poems I am focusing come from his first collection, A Ballad of Remembrance, which was published in 1962. The aforementioned themes are especially prevalent in "Those Winter Sundays," and "The Whipping."
The Whipping
The old woman across the way
is whipping the boy again
and shouting to the neighborhood
her goodness and his wrongs.
Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,
pleads in dusty zinnias,
while she in spite of crippling fat
pursues and corners him.
She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling
boy till the stick breaks
in her hand. His tears are rainy weather
to woundlike memories:
My head gripped in bony vise
of knees, the writhing struggle
to wrench free, the blows, the fear
worse than blows that hateful
Words could bring, the face that I
no longer knew or loved ...
Well, it is over now, it is over,
and the boy sobs in his room,
And the woman leans muttering against
a tree, exhausted, purged –
avenged in part for lifelong hidings
she has had to bear.
This poem focuses largely on the absence of a home. Many poems in this collection can be related to a theme of not belonging, not feeling loved, and longing for a home. This poem is especially sad due to its graphic and horrifying content of abuse. The only evidence of a home in this piece is that the boy cries in his room. He seeks a comfortable and safe place. The theme of looking for comfort and safety in family also appears in "Those Winter Sundays" when the narrator discusses his father being thanked, and not knowing how to behave around someone who is your flesh and blood but who also knows you so little.
If I was to attempt to create good poetry I think I would take a similar approach to Hayden's and write about the struggles that I have faced or witnessed. The struggles I have faced in my life would obviously be a lot different to that of Hayden's since I grew up in a happy home with my own married parents, but the same basic principles would be there. In my own journal I write about what I know, I write about how I feel, and I would take the same approach to poetry.
The Whipping
The old woman across the way
is whipping the boy again
and shouting to the neighborhood
her goodness and his wrongs.
Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,
pleads in dusty zinnias,
while she in spite of crippling fat
pursues and corners him.
She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling
boy till the stick breaks
in her hand. His tears are rainy weather
to woundlike memories:
My head gripped in bony vise
of knees, the writhing struggle
to wrench free, the blows, the fear
worse than blows that hateful
Words could bring, the face that I
no longer knew or loved ...
Well, it is over now, it is over,
and the boy sobs in his room,
And the woman leans muttering against
a tree, exhausted, purged –
avenged in part for lifelong hidings
she has had to bear.
This poem focuses largely on the absence of a home. Many poems in this collection can be related to a theme of not belonging, not feeling loved, and longing for a home. This poem is especially sad due to its graphic and horrifying content of abuse. The only evidence of a home in this piece is that the boy cries in his room. He seeks a comfortable and safe place. The theme of looking for comfort and safety in family also appears in "Those Winter Sundays" when the narrator discusses his father being thanked, and not knowing how to behave around someone who is your flesh and blood but who also knows you so little.
If I was to attempt to create good poetry I think I would take a similar approach to Hayden's and write about the struggles that I have faced or witnessed. The struggles I have faced in my life would obviously be a lot different to that of Hayden's since I grew up in a happy home with my own married parents, but the same basic principles would be there. In my own journal I write about what I know, I write about how I feel, and I would take the same approach to poetry.
Thursday, January 7, 2016
poetry collection - Emily Cashman
Robert Hayden was born as Asa Bundy Sheffey in Detroit, Michigan in 1913. His parents separated before his birth, and he mostly grew up with the family next door as his foster parents, which is how he took the last name Hayden. He published his first volume, Heart Shape in the Dust, in 1940, shortly before he enrolled in the University of Michigan. This book, Selected Poems: Robert Hayden, was edited by Frederick Glaysher, and it contains poems from four of Hayden's collections. In this analysis I'm focusing on the poems chosen from The Night-Blooming Cereus written in 1972. These selected poems all seem to involve the theme of change. The ideas of moving from one thing to another or evolving based on a new situation are present in Hayden's works. That subject matter is demonstrated in the poems of "Richard Hunt's 'Arachne'," "The Night Blooming Cereus," and "Traveling through Fog."
Traveling through Fog
Looking back, we cannot see,
except for its blurring lights
like underwater stars and moons,
our starting place.
Behind us, beyond us now
is phantom territory, a world
abstract as memories of earth
the traveling dead take home.
Between obscuring cloud
and cloud, the cloudy dark
ensphering us seems all we can
be certain of. Is Plato's cave.
This poem by Robert Hayden deals with the theme of change. It discusses how we don't know what lies ahead of us, and that even the past can be blurred as well. The future is cloudy and obscure, so we can't be certain of what it holds. Hayden suggests that the only thing we know for sure is Plato's cave. This is in reference to The Allegory of the Cave and Hayden uses this reference to draw on the ideas that there is so much in the world that is unknown to us and it's difficult to make decisions that can allow us to "break free from our chains" and move forward in life.
If I were to write a poem, I think I would use punctuation similar to how Hayden has. His poems are filled with long sentences with lots of commas and few periods. I like how he used the period at the end to emphasize his point about Plato's cave, and I would attempt to do something like that as well. I think my style would involve some rhyme scheme, which Hayden rarely uses, because I like the structure it forces the poem to have.
Hayden, Robert. Selected Poems: Robert Hayden. Ed. Frederick Glaysher. New York City: Liveright, 2013. Print.
Traveling through Fog
Looking back, we cannot see,
except for its blurring lights
like underwater stars and moons,
our starting place.
Behind us, beyond us now
is phantom territory, a world
abstract as memories of earth
the traveling dead take home.
Between obscuring cloud
and cloud, the cloudy dark
ensphering us seems all we can
be certain of. Is Plato's cave.
This poem by Robert Hayden deals with the theme of change. It discusses how we don't know what lies ahead of us, and that even the past can be blurred as well. The future is cloudy and obscure, so we can't be certain of what it holds. Hayden suggests that the only thing we know for sure is Plato's cave. This is in reference to The Allegory of the Cave and Hayden uses this reference to draw on the ideas that there is so much in the world that is unknown to us and it's difficult to make decisions that can allow us to "break free from our chains" and move forward in life.
If I were to write a poem, I think I would use punctuation similar to how Hayden has. His poems are filled with long sentences with lots of commas and few periods. I like how he used the period at the end to emphasize his point about Plato's cave, and I would attempt to do something like that as well. I think my style would involve some rhyme scheme, which Hayden rarely uses, because I like the structure it forces the poem to have.
Hayden, Robert. Selected Poems: Robert Hayden. Ed. Frederick Glaysher. New York City: Liveright, 2013. Print.
Poetry - Charlie Grimes
Wendell Berry is an American poet, born in 1934 in the small, rural Henry County, Kentucky. In addition to poetry, Berry has written a number of fictional novels (ex. Nathan Coulter, A World Lost) and has received widespread acclaim for his works, being inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.
The collection I chose to explore is called The Broken Ground from the anthology The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. This particular collection, like much of Berry's poetry, talks of nature and humans' relationship with it, as well as rural life and the interactions that are had in it. "The Plan" is a prime example of these subjects all in one poem: an old friend of the speaker invites the speaker on a fishing trip some time in the future, to which the speaker agrees, but knows that the increasingly busy lifestyle of the modern world will most likely keep them from enjoying this time among nature together. In "Elegy," Berry describes in detail the beauty of nature and how it reminds him of people in his life, saying "River and earth and sun and wind disjoing, over his silence flow apart. His words are sharp to memory as cold rain But are not ours."
"The Wild"
This poem perfectly exemplifies the ways in which Wendell's upbringing in a rural area shape his thinking and subjects in his poems. The speaker observes an empty lot, describing it as the "trash of human absence." But in this same scene, there are birds flying about and singing, reminding the speaker of the beauty that was once present in this certain area. "In them the ground is wise. They are its remembrance of what is." Berry's environmentalist tendencies are displayed in this poem, and clearly show his affinity for the natural world and the creatures inhabiting it.
Nearly all of these poems are free verse, and have a meandering kind of prose that indicates to me the author's stream of consciousness thoughts about his surroundings. There are no set rhyme schemes or meter. Berry's poetry is especially interesting to me because my I am also quite interested in the natural world and our relationship with it. In my poetry, I would be sure to include these kinds of observations of the environment and how it affects me.
MLA Citation:
Berry, Wendell. The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1998. Print.
The collection I chose to explore is called The Broken Ground from the anthology The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. This particular collection, like much of Berry's poetry, talks of nature and humans' relationship with it, as well as rural life and the interactions that are had in it. "The Plan" is a prime example of these subjects all in one poem: an old friend of the speaker invites the speaker on a fishing trip some time in the future, to which the speaker agrees, but knows that the increasingly busy lifestyle of the modern world will most likely keep them from enjoying this time among nature together. In "Elegy," Berry describes in detail the beauty of nature and how it reminds him of people in his life, saying "River and earth and sun and wind disjoing, over his silence flow apart. His words are sharp to memory as cold rain But are not ours."
"The Wild"
| In the empty lot - a place |
| not natural, but wild - among |
| the trash of human absence, |
| the slough and shamble |
| of the city's seasons, a few |
| old locusts bloom. |
| A few wood birds |
| fly and sing |
| in the new foliage |
| --warblers and tanagers, birds |
| wild as leaves; in a million |
| each one would be rare, |
| new to the eyes. A man |
| couldn't make a habit |
| of such color, |
| such flight and singing. |
| But they're the habit of this |
| wasted place. In them |
| the ground is wise. They are |
| its remembrance of what is. |
This poem perfectly exemplifies the ways in which Wendell's upbringing in a rural area shape his thinking and subjects in his poems. The speaker observes an empty lot, describing it as the "trash of human absence." But in this same scene, there are birds flying about and singing, reminding the speaker of the beauty that was once present in this certain area. "In them the ground is wise. They are its remembrance of what is." Berry's environmentalist tendencies are displayed in this poem, and clearly show his affinity for the natural world and the creatures inhabiting it.
Nearly all of these poems are free verse, and have a meandering kind of prose that indicates to me the author's stream of consciousness thoughts about his surroundings. There are no set rhyme schemes or meter. Berry's poetry is especially interesting to me because my I am also quite interested in the natural world and our relationship with it. In my poetry, I would be sure to include these kinds of observations of the environment and how it affects me.
MLA Citation:
Berry, Wendell. The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1998. Print.
Poetry Collection- Caroline Totty
The collection of poems I chose is titled Bury My Clothes by Roger Bonair- Agard. Roger Bonair- Agard was born in Trinidad and Tobago and moved to the United States in 1987. Bury My Clothes is his third collection of poetry and was published in 2013. Bonair-Agard performs his works internationally along with leading workshops. He is writer-in-residence with Vision Into Art and poet-in-residence with Young Chicago Authors. He is also the cofounder and artistic director of the louderARTS Project and teaches poetry at a Juvenile Detention Facility in Chicago. Bonair- Agard's poems usually focus on family and religion. Many of his poems mention protection of his mother, or conversing with his father; as well as faith and God. This collection of poems has been described as, "a meditation on violence, race, and the place in art at which they intersect," (www.cbsd.com).
In his poem "A Time of Polio" he writes about his Uncle's case of polio and how it affected him and his everyday life. He makes religious references throughout not only this poem but most of his poems and several of his poems have the running family theme in some way while also speaking of oppression. http://www.radiuslit.org/2011/04/09/radius-roger-bonair-agard-jeanann-verlee-adam-falkner/
I find most of Agard's poems deep and full of emotion and meaning. It is easy to tell that Agard cares deeply for his family, his faith, and his race and the struggles they face everyday. If I were to express my concerns through verse I would probably focus on similar things to Agard in terms of faith and religion, family, art, and just social issues that are relevant.
Sloan Warner- Poetry Anthology
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni better known as Nikki Giovanni is an African-American poet, commentator, activist, and teacher from Knoxville, Tennessee. She became famous in the 1960’s as one of the first in the Black Arts Movements. Her poems are known as particularly revolutionary and rebellious. Oprah Winfrey has named her as one of the 25 living legends on this Earth. Throughout her anthology of poems named Black Feelings, Black Talk, Black Judgements, the poems are filled with themes of revolution. love for one another, and loyalty. Mixed with those themes are sentiments of vengeance, oppression, bitterness, and rage.
On Hearing “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair”
He has a girl who has flaxen hair
My woman has hair of gray
I have a woman who wakes up at dawn
His girl can sleep through the day
His girl has hands soothed with perfumes sweet
She has lips soft and pink
My woman’s lips burn in midday sun
My woman’s hands--black like ink
He can make music to please his girl
Night comes I’m tired and beat
He can make notes, make her heart beat fast
Night comes I want off my feet
Maybe if I don’t pick cotton so fast
Maybe I’d sing pretty too
Sing to my woman with hair of gray
Croon softly, Baby it’s you
--Nikki Giovanni
This poem in particular has the majority of the themes and sentiments she expresses in many of Giovanni’s other poems. The rhyme scheme in this poem is effective because there is enough uniformity throughout, however, there is enough of a difference to be noticed by the audience causing the audience to perceive the white couple and black couple as similar people on the base level of being a human being, but living starkly different lives and situations. She is essentially commenting on the fact that the white folk have it inherently easier in the world, and the black community has an impediment in achieving a high quality of life. They are being oppressed. The diction expressed throughout the poem also makes it seem that the white community has a sweeter life than the black community’s dreary life. Words such as “soothed”, “perfumes”, “soft”, and “pink” are put in contrast in the first stanza with “burn”, “black”, and “ink”. These words affect the audience in giving the light versus dark comparison for the different lives.
Unfortunately, I don’t have my own style to compare Giovanni’s stylistic choices to; however, if I were to have a style which reflected my personality in any way, I would say our styles are different. Giovanni has a revolutionary style full of intensity and rage, not always paying attention to rhyme scheme or meter; whereas, my style would probably be more geared towards even-keeled thinking, taking more time to get the meter and rhyme perfect. With that said, Giovanni has her own personal style which affected countless people and continues to affect people to this day, which is incredibly respectable and for a great cause in the Civil Rights Movement.
Works Cited
Giovanni, Nikki. "On Hearing “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair”." Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgement. New York: W. Morrow, 1970. 2. Print.
Poetry Collection Jacob Ferguson
Tupac was born as Lesane Crooks, but because of his Black Panthers godfather, and civil rights activist mother, became named after a defiant Incan warlord. He went to a Baltimore art school. He is best known for his rapping and acting. His handwritten poems were found and published as The Rose That Grew From Concrete.
The collection of poems really focuses on things directly related to him, and things he seems to worry about. "Jada" is about the deep, complex love he has for a woman who later became Will Smith's wife. "In The Depths Of Solitude" and "In The Event Of My Demise" both discuss his general existential angst. It all really deals with him and his emotions and thoughts.
The Rose That Grew From Concrete
In that poem, Tupac compares the story of his life to an image of a plant thriving in a harsh environment. This fits perfectly as the flower is art and beauty, and the concrete is an unforgiving and challenging urban setting. He was like the flower and rose to success through adversity. The flower does things that are said to be impossible by "keeping its dreams" like "[walking] with out having feet" and "[breathing] fresh air." By adding "when no one else ever cared" as the last line he emphasizes that all this is possible without support, that you have to be your own motivation.
I think it's awesome how straightforward and open Tupac is with his emotions. I want in my poetry and writing to clearly express the things I feel or think; being this open is an emotionally healthy thing. He uses vivid images and doesn't worry about conventions of grammar or writing, and I think this is a way of just getting his point across in the way that's best for him, which is a really useful idea.
Sources
"Tupac Shakur." Poems. Web. 22 Feb. 2016. <http://allpoetry.com/Tupac-Shakur>.
The collection of poems really focuses on things directly related to him, and things he seems to worry about. "Jada" is about the deep, complex love he has for a woman who later became Will Smith's wife. "In The Depths Of Solitude" and "In The Event Of My Demise" both discuss his general existential angst. It all really deals with him and his emotions and thoughts.
The Rose That Grew From Concrete
Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.
In that poem, Tupac compares the story of his life to an image of a plant thriving in a harsh environment. This fits perfectly as the flower is art and beauty, and the concrete is an unforgiving and challenging urban setting. He was like the flower and rose to success through adversity. The flower does things that are said to be impossible by "keeping its dreams" like "[walking] with out having feet" and "[breathing] fresh air." By adding "when no one else ever cared" as the last line he emphasizes that all this is possible without support, that you have to be your own motivation.
I think it's awesome how straightforward and open Tupac is with his emotions. I want in my poetry and writing to clearly express the things I feel or think; being this open is an emotionally healthy thing. He uses vivid images and doesn't worry about conventions of grammar or writing, and I think this is a way of just getting his point across in the way that's best for him, which is a really useful idea.
Sources
"Tupac Shakur." Poems. Web. 22 Feb. 2016. <http://allpoetry.com/Tupac-Shakur>.
Poetry Collection--Gabriel Molina
E. E. Cummings is considered "among the most innovative of twentieth-century poets," according to Jenny Penberthy in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. Much of his poetry consists of a minimal number of words, each chosen and placed particularly, in quite an unusual fashion. Here is an example:
!blac
k
agains
t
(whi)
te sky
?t
rees which
h fr
om droppe
d
,
le
af
a:;go
e
s wh
IrlI
n
.g
As you can see he was very experimental, especially for the time period.
Cummings wanted to become a poet since childhood, and he began by writing a poem a day. He eventually went to Harvard where he became fascinated with modern poetry and the use of dynamic language instead of adhering to conventional structure.
The collection I looked at is included in a book of E. E. Cummings selected poems. The collection I focused on is called "The Poetry of the Eye." The clear theme of this collection is experimentation on the part of the poet. The introduction tells us that these poems were written in response to Cummings's discovery of cubism in art, and we can see in the contained poems that they are his literary interpretation of such an art style. Essentially, it is cubist poetry. The poem "Picasso," which describes Picasso's works and their effects on the observer, clearly supports this notion. What we see as we move through the collection is increasingly complex poems, where the meaning is more and more scrambled. In the first few we mainly see experiments with spacing and line breaks. Then we see experimentation with position on the page. Then incorporation of symbols, then capitalization, then scrambling of the letters of particular words, eventually to poems that basically look like a child was dancing on the keyboard. However, it is lots of fun to take the time to try to decipher them.
Another recurring theme I find in these poems are descriptive thoughts of the poet condensed into a short phrase or clause, then broken up and restructured. Many of them are structured similar to the example above: in a thin column, where lines are broken mid-word and syllables or other phrases in parentheses are incorporated in the midst of the text. "l(a," "s(," and "n" are all examples of this.
My close analysis is of the poem "l(a" :
!blac
k
agains
t
(whi)
te sky
?t
rees which
h fr
om droppe
d
,
le
af
a:;go
e
s wh
IrlI
n
.g
As you can see he was very experimental, especially for the time period.
Cummings wanted to become a poet since childhood, and he began by writing a poem a day. He eventually went to Harvard where he became fascinated with modern poetry and the use of dynamic language instead of adhering to conventional structure.
The collection I looked at is included in a book of E. E. Cummings selected poems. The collection I focused on is called "The Poetry of the Eye." The clear theme of this collection is experimentation on the part of the poet. The introduction tells us that these poems were written in response to Cummings's discovery of cubism in art, and we can see in the contained poems that they are his literary interpretation of such an art style. Essentially, it is cubist poetry. The poem "Picasso," which describes Picasso's works and their effects on the observer, clearly supports this notion. What we see as we move through the collection is increasingly complex poems, where the meaning is more and more scrambled. In the first few we mainly see experiments with spacing and line breaks. Then we see experimentation with position on the page. Then incorporation of symbols, then capitalization, then scrambling of the letters of particular words, eventually to poems that basically look like a child was dancing on the keyboard. However, it is lots of fun to take the time to try to decipher them.
Another recurring theme I find in these poems are descriptive thoughts of the poet condensed into a short phrase or clause, then broken up and restructured. Many of them are structured similar to the example above: in a thin column, where lines are broken mid-word and syllables or other phrases in parentheses are incorporated in the midst of the text. "l(a," "s(," and "n" are all examples of this.
My close analysis is of the poem "l(a" :
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
When I first saw this poem, I didn't even attempt to decipher it because all I saw was letters. However as we read Cummings's poetry, we start to learn his patterns and deciphering becomes easier. If we read this poem disregarding what is included in the parentheses, we can see the word "loneliness." Inside the parentheses, if we conquer the strange line breaks, we read "a leaf falls." So the entire text without line breaks would read "l(a leaf falls)oneliness." In the eccentric structure of the poem we see a little bit of the influence of cubism on his poetry. We also see the recurrence I mentioned earlier, where Cummings makes a poem out of just one word, with an interrupting phrase in parentheses. I don't know if there is any significance to the poet regarding a leaf falling, but it at least provides a simple yet powerful image to the reader to accompany the word "loneliness."
Comparing the structure of these poems to what I would create, I don't know if I could write a poem in such a cubist fashion as Cummings does, nor would it be original to do so. However, I deeply appreciate the simplicity of his messages, in contrast with the complexity of his structure. I could absolutely envision writing poetry with just a simple message that means something to me or creates an image of a part of who I am. I feel compelled to explore how to make simple messages like these complex in other ways. Cummings focused on structure, what could I emphasize?
Comparing the structure of these poems to what I would create, I don't know if I could write a poem in such a cubist fashion as Cummings does, nor would it be original to do so. However, I deeply appreciate the simplicity of his messages, in contrast with the complexity of his structure. I could absolutely envision writing poetry with just a simple message that means something to me or creates an image of a part of who I am. I feel compelled to explore how to make simple messages like these complex in other ways. Cummings focused on structure, what could I emphasize?
Works Cited
"!blac by E.e. Cummings." - Famous Poems, Famous Poets. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Jan. 2016.
Cummings, E. E. "The Poetry of the Eye." E.E. Cummings: Selected Poems. New York: Liveright
Pub., 1994. N. pag. Print.
Poetry collection- Andrew Collins
Mark Strand was a Canadian poet, born in 1934. He was appointed as United States Poet Laureate in 1990, and he received the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets in 1979. He taught English at the University of Utah from 1981 until the time when this poetry collection was published in 1991. He died recently in 2014. Some of his poetry collections include "Sleeping with One Eye Open", "Reasons for Moving", "The Story of Our Lives", and "The Late Hour".
I focused on his "Sleeping with One Eye Open" collection, published in 1964. This collection mainly focuses on the Author's fear of death and his perceived lack of purpose. His fear of death is most evident in the first poem, "Sleeping with One Eye Open", when he says "Hoping, That nothing, nothing will happen." His feeling of purposelessness is best shown in "Keeping Things Whole" where he says "Wherever I am, I am what is missing." and in "Make Believe Ballroom Time" where he envies the "calling" of the dancer that he feels he himself doesn't have. The subjects are primarily himself and nature, which he is terrified by and often feels lost in according to "Violent Storm" and "Keeping Things Whole."
https://boldpoems.wordpress.com/2007/03/26/the-tunnel/
This poem is a very clear example of the paranoia experienced by the author. He goes to very extreme lengths just to escape the man, even though the man doesn't seem to be particularly harmful if you can see through the author's bias of paranoia. The very premise of a man being "always there" seems to be more a product of the author's imagination than a true occurrence. And even if it were true, it takes extreme dedication to build a tunnel to your neighbor's basement, which further exemplifies the extremity of the paranoia experienced by the author.
I think Strand has a drastically different approach to poetry than myself. I can't even really begin to sympathize with his extreme feelings of paranoia, and I can't say I've ever written about something as depressing as a lack of purpose. Overall, I feel that I have a much more positive outlook on my life than Strand, especially in my writing. I do think that a slightly more negative outlook would be an interesting addition to my repertoire, possibly making my writing more realistic.
I focused on his "Sleeping with One Eye Open" collection, published in 1964. This collection mainly focuses on the Author's fear of death and his perceived lack of purpose. His fear of death is most evident in the first poem, "Sleeping with One Eye Open", when he says "Hoping, That nothing, nothing will happen." His feeling of purposelessness is best shown in "Keeping Things Whole" where he says "Wherever I am, I am what is missing." and in "Make Believe Ballroom Time" where he envies the "calling" of the dancer that he feels he himself doesn't have. The subjects are primarily himself and nature, which he is terrified by and often feels lost in according to "Violent Storm" and "Keeping Things Whole."
https://boldpoems.wordpress.com/2007/03/26/the-tunnel/
This poem is a very clear example of the paranoia experienced by the author. He goes to very extreme lengths just to escape the man, even though the man doesn't seem to be particularly harmful if you can see through the author's bias of paranoia. The very premise of a man being "always there" seems to be more a product of the author's imagination than a true occurrence. And even if it were true, it takes extreme dedication to build a tunnel to your neighbor's basement, which further exemplifies the extremity of the paranoia experienced by the author.
I think Strand has a drastically different approach to poetry than myself. I can't even really begin to sympathize with his extreme feelings of paranoia, and I can't say I've ever written about something as depressing as a lack of purpose. Overall, I feel that I have a much more positive outlook on my life than Strand, especially in my writing. I do think that a slightly more negative outlook would be an interesting addition to my repertoire, possibly making my writing more realistic.
Poetry Collection - Aislinn Langley
Margaret Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, and essayist. Her work has been awarded numerous awards such as the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. Her body of work includes The Handmaiden's Tale and the poetry collection in question: Morning in the Burned House. Many of the poems of this collection are rather dark or introspective. "A Sad Child" expresses a childish loneliness, fear, and disappointment people find in themselves while "Red Fox" describes the isolation and dogged survival of a starved vixen in the winter.
Atwood also explores the inevitability of death, a common theme of hers, in "Red Fox." The speaker stands in a cemetery, an old and obvious symbol of death, and observes an old red fox crossing the ice. The speaker contemplates the desperation of the starving fox, reasoning that its cunning and capacity for deceit will not save it from death itself. The speaker moves on to contemplate how hunger and threats to a person's life makes them drop any ideals or morals they hold dear, saying "Hunger corrupts, and absolute hunger / corrupts absolutely," shattering the image of a mother ready to give her own life for her children with the image of Hansel and Gretel: "dumped in the forest because their parents were starving." The fox seeks only to feed itself, even if it means robbing a creature of life to maintain its own.
Atwood's poems are moving in their own respect, but somewhat deadening. Reading them creates a weight on a reader which pushes them to contemplate their world, but also makes them weary. It's good poetry, too depressing for my tastes during first hour. It's too early in the day for that level of muted sadness and cynicism.
"Red Fox"
from
Atwood, Margaret. Morning in the Burned House. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. Print.
Poetry Collection- Brandon Castillo
Jack Ridl has written multiple books including Practice to Walk Like a Heron, Losing Season, Broken Symmetry, and Against Elegies. He has won multiple awards including "Michigan Professor of the Year" in 1996 by the Carnegie Foundation, one of the 100 most influential sports educators in America by the Institute for International Sports, and had his book Broken Symmetry selected by the Society of Midland Authors as the best book of poetry in 2006. More than 75 of his former students have become published authors. He is son of the famed Pitt Basketball Coach Buzz Ridl.
The collection titled Losing Season describes a high school basketball program in which nothing seems to go right this particular season. Ridl uses every aspect and perspective to get his point across. In "Manager", Ridl describes the dream of a student manager on the team dreaming of being able to get off the bench and score a game-winning shot. Another poem describes how an assistant thinks of taking the head coach's job and how much better he would be at it. Ridl talks about the views of so many people during this losing season including the referees, players, teachers, band directors, barbers. The theme throughout is losing and how people deal with it. He is able to relate to a multitude of people because of the variety of perspectives that there are and the truth in which we are able to see in each of these poems.
In the Last Seconds
Coach tries to press another loss
into the back court of his brain.
The players feel their blood quiet,
return to its common wander.
The fans, shaking their heads
like tired dogs, put on their coats,
hats, gloves, leave the bleachers,
go back to what's always there.
The cops shrug, step outside.
Vendor starts counting the till.
In the snow, the parking lot attendants
pierce the darkness with their flashlights.
Coach's wife looks at her hands.
Coach's daughter stares into the rafters,
listens to the words, pretends
they are dead leaves caught in the air.
Manager sacks the towels. Assistant
thinks of being the head coach.
Custodian waits at the locker room.
I thought this was the poem that best showed the collection as a whole because it was able to show the actions of some many different people. You can feel the emotion of the whole gym and can imagine what the coach is thinking. It enables us to see what everyone thought of the losing seasons- the coach trying to put it behind him, the fans disappointed, the assistant ready to take the bigger role, and the others preparing for the end like usual. There isn't any happiness in this season and the feeling of the gym created by this poem exemplifies that.
Ridl's style is truthful about what everyone really thinks about the games. He is able to capture the essence of every single feeling that people feel when there is a losing season. I think that this raw honesty is cool because it enables the author to engage better with his audience and connect with them more. I definitely want to be able to do that with my style of writing and I think that I want to incorporate the multiple perspectives, like he does, as well; I think that this helps create the whole picture rather than having only one view of the things.
The collection titled Losing Season describes a high school basketball program in which nothing seems to go right this particular season. Ridl uses every aspect and perspective to get his point across. In "Manager", Ridl describes the dream of a student manager on the team dreaming of being able to get off the bench and score a game-winning shot. Another poem describes how an assistant thinks of taking the head coach's job and how much better he would be at it. Ridl talks about the views of so many people during this losing season including the referees, players, teachers, band directors, barbers. The theme throughout is losing and how people deal with it. He is able to relate to a multitude of people because of the variety of perspectives that there are and the truth in which we are able to see in each of these poems.
In the Last Seconds
Coach tries to press another loss
into the back court of his brain.
The players feel their blood quiet,
return to its common wander.
The fans, shaking their heads
like tired dogs, put on their coats,
hats, gloves, leave the bleachers,
go back to what's always there.
The cops shrug, step outside.
Vendor starts counting the till.
In the snow, the parking lot attendants
pierce the darkness with their flashlights.
Coach's wife looks at her hands.
Coach's daughter stares into the rafters,
listens to the words, pretends
they are dead leaves caught in the air.
Manager sacks the towels. Assistant
thinks of being the head coach.
Custodian waits at the locker room.
I thought this was the poem that best showed the collection as a whole because it was able to show the actions of some many different people. You can feel the emotion of the whole gym and can imagine what the coach is thinking. It enables us to see what everyone thought of the losing seasons- the coach trying to put it behind him, the fans disappointed, the assistant ready to take the bigger role, and the others preparing for the end like usual. There isn't any happiness in this season and the feeling of the gym created by this poem exemplifies that.
Ridl's style is truthful about what everyone really thinks about the games. He is able to capture the essence of every single feeling that people feel when there is a losing season. I think that this raw honesty is cool because it enables the author to engage better with his audience and connect with them more. I definitely want to be able to do that with my style of writing and I think that I want to incorporate the multiple perspectives, like he does, as well; I think that this helps create the whole picture rather than having only one view of the things.
Will Mathews-Poetry
Nessa Rapoport is the author of the novel, Preparing for Sabbath. Her short stories
and essays have been published widely. With Ted Solotaroff, she edited the
anthology Writing Our Way Home. She lives
in New York with her husband and children.
In the collection A Women’s Book of Grieving, Rapoport
walks hand in hand with the reader through the pain and struggles that
accompany the heart when it losses someone. In her poem, “Drowning in Remembrance” we see the rage felt by someone who is grieving,
she writes “I surrender, you have left me, and I hate you for it.” She continues
this theme of a person in grief in her poem, “The Body in Greif”writing, “Now pleasure tastes like ash, your
nakedness is in the grave.”
“From The Darkest Place”
“From the darkest
place, base of the shattered stairs, the stony voice says: Never, and: No, and:
Unforgiven, but I, volleying against despair, still cry out in the habit of
hopefulness. Find me, lift me up, bathe me in forgotten grace.”
This is another poem in which the deeper emotions felt
during grief are displayed to the reader. The lines “From the darkest place” can be inferred
to mean the worst stage of grieving, the hopeless, what do I do now stage. But then
the poem shifts and the darkness is hit with a “volley(ing) against despair.” Even
though what the writer yells at despair may be futile, it shows that she has
not totally lost hope and may one day be lifted up. The poem is similar to the
common theme of grief in the other poems, shown through the discussion of the “darkest
place”, however the ending as discussed shows a different voice then that of
one in total despair.
The poems in this collection are mostly free verse and deal
with the pain and depression of grief. This theme for the poems, gives them a
darker side. While I am in no way a poet, I have dabbled in writing a few just
for the fun of it. As odd as it may sound, I have found that they come out to
sound rather dark as well. So it is something that the author and I have in
common. In difference all of Rapoport’s
poems somewhat connect, while any that I have written have very little to do
with each other. So when I write again I may want to try and connect my poems through
common themes and ideas.
- Rapoport, Nessa. A Woman's Book of Grieving. W. Morrow, 1994.
Poetry Collection- Jacob Young
Owls and Other Fantasies
By Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is an American poet and the winner of a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Oliver has taught at multiple colleges and has written five collections of poetry. She is currently 80 years old and lives in Florida. The New York Times referred to Oliver as “far and away, this country’s best-selling poet.” Oliver’s verse focuses on the quiet of occurrences of nature: industrious hummingbirds, egrets, motionless ponds, “lean owls / hunkering with their lamp-eyes.”
"Mary Oliver." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 06 Jan. 2016.
The over-arching theme of this collection is to envelop the reader in the natural world. Humans play a small role in the “family” of nature, as expressed in the opening poem “Wild Geese.” The collection goes on to reference a zen-like nature, to express the tranquility of all that the birds represent in the world. In “Some Herons,” one heron is described as a blue preacher, and another an old Chinese poet. However, as Oliver wrote this in the later days of her life, a portion of the poems reference the finality and understanding of death and the cycle of life. In “The Dipper,” Oliver talks about a bird that she saw half a century ago, but is now merely a pile of crumbled bones. There is quite a lot of text devoted to owls as well, as the title of the collection would suggest. The wise owls have special significance, as they are a symbol for the understanding of death and the wisdom that is gained throughout the course of one’s life.
Hawk
This morning
the hawk
rose up
out of the meadow’s browse
and swung over the lake –
it settled
on the small black dome
of a dead pine,
alert as an admiral,
its profile
distinguished with sideburns
the color of smoke,
and I said: remember
this is not something
of the red fire, this is
heaven’s fistful
of death and destruction,
and the hawk hooked
one exquisite foot
onto a last twig
to look deeper
into the yellow reeds
along the edges of the water
and I said: remember
the tree, the cave,
the white lilly of resurrection,
and that’s when it simply lifted
its golden feet and floated
into the wind, belly-first,
and then it cruised along the lake –
all the time its eyes fastened
harder than love on some
unimportant rustling in the
yellow reeds — and then it
seemed to crouch high in the air, and then it
turned into a white blade, which fell.
This poem is centered around the core theme of the collection, coming to terms with death and the cycle of life. The hawk represents death, as it is even referred to as “heaven’s fistful of death and destruction.” It is not a painful process, however. As horrible as we think death may be, the hawk shows us that it is still a peaceful, beautiful occurence, as the hawk is “exquisite,” with “golden feet.” Oliver also tells us that death is not the end of all things, it is indeed a cycle. When one thing dies, another is born anew. We know this from the allusion to resurrection, through “remember[ing] the tree, the cave, the white lily of resurrection.” This is a reference to Jesus and Mary. Death is just another piece in the natural cycle of things, and it is not something we should be afraid of, it is not “something of red fire,” or from hell. No, according to Oliver, life and death both come from heaven, therefore they are equally as important and beautiful.
Oliver’s style in this collection is very precise with sharp imagery, while still maintaining a sense of zen and inner-monologue-esque verse. As if in a daydream, Oliver peacefully yet clearly expresses nature and the birds that fill its skies. This is an aspect of my writing that I wish to further develop, being able to be precise with my language yet be indirect about the subject of my verse, just talking with sincerity and awe. Oliver also uses the birds, owls in particular, as a symbol for the cycle of life. Many poets use life and death in symbol form, yet using birds consistently yet still remaining original is something about Oliver’s writing that I admire.
Losing Season - Jack Ridle - Walt Finch Poetry Collection
Jack Ridl is an American poet, who coached basketball at Westminster College and the University of Pittsburgh. He won, in 2002, the Say-the-Word Poetry Award from The Ellipse Art Center in Arlington, Virginia. In 2001 Chapbook Award from The Center for Book Arts in New York City.
One of the most obvious subjects of this collection is basketball, and this can be applied to sports in general, which can be seen in almost every poem. One theme is how when people are involved in a sport, that is all they think/care about. This can be seen in several of the poems from the "First Quarter". The poem, "The Coach's Daughter" is one example of this, showing how his whole family has become involved and basketball is all his life is about at the time. But the game ends, and life moves on, and this can be seen in many of the poems in the "Fourth Quarter", and in particular the poem "All He Does". The player will go to college and then get a job in this poem, but they also say how basketball will still be a part of him. It is also shown in "Coach Reflects with His Wife on the End of the Season", when they are thinking about stopping with the team, and moving on in life.
The poem I am going to provide a close analysis of is "Scrub".
Last night at practice,
my man slipped by me
for a layup, and Coach
threw down his clipboard,
ran right up into my face,
slapped me behind the head,
and yelled, "What the hell
are you doing? Get in front.
Take a charge. You
on this team or not! How
are we gonna be ready if you
don't play tough defense?!"
Some mornings I wake up
wondering about tough defense,
and wind sprints, and running
up the bleachers twenty times.
Two hours every night
I'm on the other team.
I've heard it a thousand
times: "You're key to
this team. Without you
we'd never be ready." But
I know I do what you do
when you're never good enough.
Someday I'll come back
and point at that place on the bench.
Someday I'm gonna sit back,
watch TV, take a vacation
every summer, have a dog,
and never miss a game.
"You get in tonight?" my father asks
when I come in after the game.
I knock the snow from my boots.
"No." "Close game?" "No,
we lost by twenty-three." I
listen to the empty air, see
the slow shake of my father's
head, know he's been sitting
with a beer letting one sitcom
roll into the next, sneering at
the ads and laugh tracks, waiting
for the news, sports, and weather.
I go to the refrigerator, look at the line
of Budweiser cans, take out the milk,
pour a glass, go in with him
to watch the scores.
Sometimes, after practice,
I walk home slowly, and I
think about letting the ball
bounce away. Then I'd
sit down, let my mind
open up wider and wider,
so wide the sky would
come inside, the stars
would light it all.
Last week, after school,
my kid sister said, "I'm
scared the sun will go out."
"That's ridiculous. Can't
happen," and I took her hand,
looked out the window, up
into the sky, watched
the snow clouds cross.
"But it's fire," she said.
"Fire goes out."
Four wind sprints to go.
"Let's see what you have left.
Run. Run like I'm after you.
Run. Run now, or after the next
game, I'll run you till you drop.
Run, goddamn it, run."
Once last summer I lay in bed
wondering if somewhere hidden
in my cells was something good
enough that I could do. But
the cells were mute. The days
since then have been the same,
even their names dissolving
like the Host upon my tongue.
There is no continuous meter in this poem, which is common in modern poetry. It is mostly a free verse poem. He has his sister ask if the world will end, which would happen if the sun went out, and he says it is impossible. This might be a question to Scrub about if the world did end, what had he done? The reader is lead to the conclusion that he had done nothing, wasting his time with basketball. He has invested all of his time into it, even though he really doesn't want to but sticks with it for some reason. He points out how life goes on, how one day he will move on and have a family and a dog and go on vacations. But he will still go to games, showing how basketball will always be a part of him.
I do not feel like I can compare this to my own poetry, considering I have never written any. But I can compare ideas. I feel like I could use a lot of these ideas, since I've had similar experiences, but I really do not want to. I'd rather talk about the world and what the point of life in general is. Not talk about sports, because that is just a game that ends, and it is also cliché and overplayed.
Ridl, Jack. Losing Season. Fort Lee, NJ: CavanKerry, 2009. Print.
One of the most obvious subjects of this collection is basketball, and this can be applied to sports in general, which can be seen in almost every poem. One theme is how when people are involved in a sport, that is all they think/care about. This can be seen in several of the poems from the "First Quarter". The poem, "The Coach's Daughter" is one example of this, showing how his whole family has become involved and basketball is all his life is about at the time. But the game ends, and life moves on, and this can be seen in many of the poems in the "Fourth Quarter", and in particular the poem "All He Does". The player will go to college and then get a job in this poem, but they also say how basketball will still be a part of him. It is also shown in "Coach Reflects with His Wife on the End of the Season", when they are thinking about stopping with the team, and moving on in life.
The poem I am going to provide a close analysis of is "Scrub".
Last night at practice,
my man slipped by me
for a layup, and Coach
threw down his clipboard,
ran right up into my face,
slapped me behind the head,
and yelled, "What the hell
are you doing? Get in front.
Take a charge. You
on this team or not! How
are we gonna be ready if you
don't play tough defense?!"
Some mornings I wake up
wondering about tough defense,
and wind sprints, and running
up the bleachers twenty times.
Two hours every night
I'm on the other team.
I've heard it a thousand
times: "You're key to
this team. Without you
we'd never be ready." But
I know I do what you do
when you're never good enough.
Someday I'll come back
and point at that place on the bench.
Someday I'm gonna sit back,
watch TV, take a vacation
every summer, have a dog,
and never miss a game.
"You get in tonight?" my father asks
when I come in after the game.
I knock the snow from my boots.
"No." "Close game?" "No,
we lost by twenty-three." I
listen to the empty air, see
the slow shake of my father's
head, know he's been sitting
with a beer letting one sitcom
roll into the next, sneering at
the ads and laugh tracks, waiting
for the news, sports, and weather.
I go to the refrigerator, look at the line
of Budweiser cans, take out the milk,
pour a glass, go in with him
to watch the scores.
Sometimes, after practice,
I walk home slowly, and I
think about letting the ball
bounce away. Then I'd
sit down, let my mind
open up wider and wider,
so wide the sky would
come inside, the stars
would light it all.
Last week, after school,
my kid sister said, "I'm
scared the sun will go out."
"That's ridiculous. Can't
happen," and I took her hand,
looked out the window, up
into the sky, watched
the snow clouds cross.
"But it's fire," she said.
"Fire goes out."
Four wind sprints to go.
"Let's see what you have left.
Run. Run like I'm after you.
Run. Run now, or after the next
game, I'll run you till you drop.
Run, goddamn it, run."
Once last summer I lay in bed
wondering if somewhere hidden
in my cells was something good
enough that I could do. But
the cells were mute. The days
since then have been the same,
even their names dissolving
like the Host upon my tongue.
There is no continuous meter in this poem, which is common in modern poetry. It is mostly a free verse poem. He has his sister ask if the world will end, which would happen if the sun went out, and he says it is impossible. This might be a question to Scrub about if the world did end, what had he done? The reader is lead to the conclusion that he had done nothing, wasting his time with basketball. He has invested all of his time into it, even though he really doesn't want to but sticks with it for some reason. He points out how life goes on, how one day he will move on and have a family and a dog and go on vacations. But he will still go to games, showing how basketball will always be a part of him.
I do not feel like I can compare this to my own poetry, considering I have never written any. But I can compare ideas. I feel like I could use a lot of these ideas, since I've had similar experiences, but I really do not want to. I'd rather talk about the world and what the point of life in general is. Not talk about sports, because that is just a game that ends, and it is also cliché and overplayed.
Ridl, Jack. Losing Season. Fort Lee, NJ: CavanKerry, 2009. Print.
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Humor--Gabriel Molina
One scene from The Importance of Being Earnest that I found particularly funny was the conversation between Jack and Algernon, immediately following Lady Bracknell asking Jack to provide proof of his parents. Consider this witty exchange, for example:
Jack. I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.
Algernon. We have.
Jack. I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about?
Algernon. The fools? Oh! about the clever people, of course.
Jack. What fools!
I think what I find funny about this specific exchange is first of all how both characters entertain a short conversation from Jack's comment "I wish to goodness we had a few fools left," which the audience would interpret as rhetorical. The irony of Jack's final comment is also funny because it is ironic that he would exclaim "What fools!" after just wishing that there were more fools left.
One of my favorite examples of modern humor is the show The Office. Absolutely one of my favorites. https://youtu.be/kr-OXclAt60
The humor of this show almost entirely consists of farce humor, where situations are presented that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, and thus improbable. The setting being the office of a paper company, the writers are able to come up with countless situations like this. If interpreted as a societal critique, it probably is intended to comment on the behind-the-scenes of the relationships in a typical office job.
Jack. I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.
Algernon. We have.
Jack. I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about?
Algernon. The fools? Oh! about the clever people, of course.
Jack. What fools!
I think what I find funny about this specific exchange is first of all how both characters entertain a short conversation from Jack's comment "I wish to goodness we had a few fools left," which the audience would interpret as rhetorical. The irony of Jack's final comment is also funny because it is ironic that he would exclaim "What fools!" after just wishing that there were more fools left.
One of my favorite examples of modern humor is the show The Office. Absolutely one of my favorites. https://youtu.be/kr-OXclAt60
The humor of this show almost entirely consists of farce humor, where situations are presented that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, and thus improbable. The setting being the office of a paper company, the writers are able to come up with countless situations like this. If interpreted as a societal critique, it probably is intended to comment on the behind-the-scenes of the relationships in a typical office job.
Monday, January 4, 2016
Two Minute Thank You --Jacob Young
When I was but a whelp, my father taught me to always finish the job. My mother taught me to stay humble and kind. As I matured, Yoda taught me do or do not, there is no try. Robin Williams taught me to seize the day and make my life extraordinary. Andy Dufresne taught me to get busy livin, or get busy dyin. Rhett Butler taught me not to give a damn. Clint Eastwood taught me to make someone's day. Humphrey Bogart told me that here's looking at me. Matt Damon taught me to like them apples. Hannibal Lecter taught me that the best meal is liver with fava beans and a nice chianti. Malcolm McDowell taught me that I'm cured, alright. Liam Neeson taught me the special set of skills that I needed to take back what's mine. Derek Zoolander taught me that there's more to life than being very very really extremely good looking. Dory taught me to just keep swimming. And above all, the most important lesson in my life came from Mr. Miyagi, when he taught me that a man who catches a fly with his chopstick can accomplish anything.
Performance Review- Jacob Young
Performance Review
Jacob Young
The Producers
The Producers is a musical written by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan, it tells the story of two theatrical producers who scheme to get rich by overselling interests in a Broadway flop. Complications arise when the show unexpectedly turns out to be successful. The humor of the show draws on ridiculous accents, caricatures of homosexuals and Nazis, and many show business inside jokes. In New York in 1959, Max Bialystock opens "Funny Boy", a musical version of Hamlet. It is terrible, and the show closes after one performance. Max, who was once called the King of Broadway, tells a crowd of down-and-outs of his past achievements and vows to return to form. The next day, Leo Bloom, a timid accountant, comes to Max's office to audit his books. When one of Max's "investors" arrives, Max tells Leo to wait in the bathroom until she leaves. The investor is a little old lady. She plays a sex game with Max, who eventually persuades her to give him a check to be invested in his next play, to be called "Cash". Leo reveals his lifelong dream: he's always wanted to be a Broadway producer. After a panic attack when Max touches his blue blanket(a recurring theme in the musical), Leo tells Max that he has found an accounting error in his books: Max raised $100,000 for "Funny Boy", but the play only cost $98,000. Max begs Leo to cook the books to hide the error, and Leo reluctantly agrees. After some calculations, he realizes that "under the right circumstances, a producer could actually make more money with a flop than he can with a hit. ... You could've raised a million dollars, put on your $100,000 flop, and kept the rest!" Max proposes the ultimate scheme: to find the worst play, the worst director, and to raise 2 million dollars for it to flop, pocketing all the leftover money. Max finds the sure-fire flop that would offend people of all races, creeds, and religions: Springtime for Hitler: written by Franz Liebkind, which Max describes as "a love letter to Hitler". Ex-Nazi Franz is on the roof of his tenement with his pigeons reminiscing about the grand old days. The producers get him to sign their contract by joining him in singing Hitler's favourite tune ("Der Guten Tag Hop Clop") and reciting the Siegfried Oath, promising never to dishonor "the spirit and the memory of Adolf Elizabeth Hitler", if broken means 'death'.
Next, they go to the townhouse of flamboyant homosexual Roger De Bris, the worst director in New York. After much persuading and invoking the possibility of a Tony award, Roger agrees. Max and Leo return to the office to meet a Swedish bombshell who wants to audition for their next play: Ulla Inga Hansen Benson Yansen Tallen Hallen Svaden Swanson.The producers are impressed, mostly by her beauty, and hire her to be their "secretary-slash-receptionist". Max leaves to raise two million dollars for "Springtime for Hitler" by calling on all the little old ladies in New York. Hilariously, Springtime for Hitler turns out to be a satiric hit on Broadway, causing Max to lose his money and go to jail. Leo and Ulla journey to Rio, having pocketed the 2 million dollars.
Having previously seen the 2005 rendition of this musical, I had premonitions about how the performance would go. However, it exceeded my expectations. The performers were not only engaging and convincing, but they were equally as funny and even included some original comedic content. The set was moved well, and in particular, Max’s house looked exactly as it did in the movie. Also, the way that the accountants were set in their own cubicles at the bank was very well done. Also, the costumes were dead on with the movie. Max’s large, flamboyant suit and Leo’s stern, conventional attire were well represented in the production. Nathan Lane’s Max Bialystock was boisterous and crude, just as he is displayed in the movie. Matthew Broderick’s Leo Bloom was timid and skittish, just as he is displayed in the movie. I saw this performance on November 14, 2015 at the Lexington Opera House.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)