http://prezi.com/xeqzqoyqmdyn/proper-ways-to-use-commas/

Practice, Practice, Practice!

    The main skills that I have learned in this course have been thesis development (which I am still struggling with!) and being able to articulate what I've read in an analytic way. The essay writing have been very important for me. I need this sort of practice in order to become more clear in what I am writing. My goal for the future is to be more aware of my writing and be able to form solid thesis statements. In the past as well, this has been my weakness. I have a difficult time making a clear argument or claim. I tend to dance around the subject. This class has given me the tools needed and the awareness of how to write with a strong claim in mind.
    I thoroughly enjoyed the readings for this course. Last semester, I was briefly introduced to Tim O’Brien and was thrilled to now read his entire book. The other readings and poems for this class were also very good. I appreciate reading material that questions the deeper truths about humanity and is not afraid to delve into the mess of it all.
    I think that I have tried to meet many of the learning outcomes and have paid more attention to the skills that I thought I already knew, but realized was still making mistakes in. I was careful to follow a more organized approach to my writing process and improve the structure of my sentences. I also really benefited from the grammar reviews and quizzes. Also, analysis, analysis, analysis! Ever time I think I got this down, I find myself slipping into summary again. I will never stop needing practice in analysis. The peer review research was a really good practice for me. I struggled at first to find what I really thought fit well for my essays, but began to find good sources as I went on. I think it is important to use peer reviewed articles because It seems that the “facts” on the internet are so varied and in excess, it is hard to know what to trust.
    I don’t think that my writing has changed much yet, but I think that, because of this class, it will. I already have more tools to apply to future writing and the amount of writing I’ve done is a big help to the amount I still have to do in future classes. My biggest challenge was the essay #3 because It was hard for me to focus in on one claim and then feel confident to back up my claim. I also struggled with integrating the sources into my paper; rather I let them speak for me. Again, I absolutely needed this course to gain the writing skills and the practice that I did.
I found this specific page on the Owl web site helpful and reiterates what was learned in this course. Hope you find it helpful as well!
Image Source: socialeyezer.com
   

"An Aching Love For How The World Could Be"

 ...Proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life. After a firefight, there is always the immense pleasure of aliveness. The trees are alive. The grass, the soil everything...You feel an intense, out-of-the skin awareness of your living self-your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by the force of wanting it. In the midst of evil you want to be a good man...Freshly, as if for the first time, you love what’s best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost...You are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not (O’Brien 77-78).

 This passage by Michael O’Brien is about the beauty, love and goodness of creation and humankind residing in the midst of the death and meaninglessness of war. This passage illuminates the whole book because it shows the paradoxes of what it is like to be a soldier. How can one look at a blade of grass and really see and feel its aliveness when so close to dying? What is it about death that makes someone want to be a better person? A more alive person? Instead of giving up in the face of impending death, the body and the mind fight to live. Not only live, but thrive and love and appreciate the beauty all around. O’Brien shows this throughout “The Things They Carried”. His stories are about contrasting things, such as love and hate, life and death, Atheism and a deep belief in God. O’Brien weaves all of these together in a complicated and mysterious way, for he knows that nothing is merely black and white. As he later writes, “There is no clarity. Everything swirls. The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true. Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, love into hate, ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery” (O’Brien 78).
When we survive a war, or famine, a tsunami or the death of a child, we can no longer keep our lives in nice, predictable boxes. We will see life as heartbreaking and through this we will also see the beauty intensified.The essence of O’Brien’s stories is that most of us do not realize the value of life until there is suffering; we do not appreciate life until our world is challenged. We recognize the light as light only when it is contrasted with the darkness.

Visit here to see a complete list of other works by O'Brien

Image Source- www.travelpod.com
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. 77-78. Print.

Hamill and Forche

“We don’t want to know what the world is like, we can’t bear very much reality”
Sam Hamill -The Necessity to Speak

     In Sam Hamill and Carolyn Forche’s articles, they are making a case for the necessity of Poetry of Witness. Hamill is basically saying that it is the responsibility of the poet to show others the reality of suffering; the reality of life. In Hamill’s words, “Writing is a form of human communication expressing ideas regarding the human condition” (546). This is what Poetry of Witness is all about; the emotions, struggles and conflicts of being human. Hamill has been the abused and the abuser and he has chosen to speak. He knows that there are many who cannot speak; or do not know how and he offers them his own voice. He relates with those who know what it is like and he challenges others who refuse to see to open their eyes. Hamill has this to say about poetry, “The “I” of the poem is not me. It is the first person impersonal, it is permission for you to enter the experience which we name Poem” (551). This is echoed throughout the poems of witness. The “I” in the poems is meant to resonate at a deeper level with the reader and become the reader. The poem that comes to mind that does this is “The Woman Hanging From the 13th Floor Window”.

    Forche too understands the extreme importance of Poetry of Witness. She knows that there needs to be a remembering, whether of the survivor or the other who has not yet suffered. Forche states, “Regardless of subject “matter”, these poems bear the trace of extremity within them, and they are, as such, evidence of what occurred” (The Poetry of Witness). Forche also explains how the poems of witness are not only personal or political, but “the social”, a “space between the state and the supposedly safe havens of the personal” (Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness). Many poems in the Poetry of Witness fall into this category, such as “The Colonel”.
    Both Hamill and Forche are aware of the power of poetry and the need to face reality and voice it all, no matter how ugly. I think that both of these articles do well to show the meaning and purpose of Poetry of Witness and are a must read for any writer.

Click here to read Sam Hamill's poem "The Orchid Flower".
Hamill, Sam. “The Necessity to Speak.” Writing as Re-vision. Eds. Beth Alvarado and Barbara     Cully. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. 547-553.
Forch, Carolyn. “The Poetry of Witness.” The Writer in Politics. Ed. William H. Gass and Lorin     Cuoco. Southern Illinois. Up, 1996. Southern Illinois University.
Image Source http://componentsofenthusiasm.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/the-ruins-of-war/

Bear Witness

    “Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting” Kevin Powers
What I first noticed about this poem is the way the soldier describes how he loves the recipient of his letter, “I tell her I love her like not killing or ten minutes of sleep...” (1-2). He is in the middle of a war, exhausted and lonely. When he says “I love you”, it carries a great weight.
 “War is just us making little pieces of metal pass through each other” (10-12). These last lines are so profound, yet so simply put. I was struck by the matter-of-fact and detached way in which Pvt. Bartle describes the killing going on around them, and by them. I felt that the soldier writing the letter seemed to be trying to maintain meaning in the words he was writing amongst all the seemingly pointless killing.
“Woman Hanging On to the 13th Floor Window” Joy Harjo
This poem resonated with me the most. The words are so rich and tender. This intense struggle that the woman is going through is meant to mirror that of everyone’s struggle in life. This poem shows the pain in trying to life a full life while not really knowing what that means. There is a loneliness in this poem, but also a shared connection of struggle. The ending lines of the poem were the most powerful to me-
The woman hangs from the 13th floor window crying for
the lost beauty of her own life. She sees the
sun falling west over the grey plane of Chicago.
She thinks she remembers listening to her own life
break loose, as she falls from the 13th floor
window on the east side of Chicago, or as she
climbs back up to claim herself again (60-66).
I believe that the woman wants to claim herself and live, she just does not know where to begin.
-For information on Joy Harjo and to read more of her poetry, visit http://www.joyharjo.com/JoyHarjoHome.html
Powers, Kevin, "Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting." poetryfoundation.org
Harjo, Joy, "Woman Hanging From the 13th Floor Window." poetryfoundation.org

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