summary about Sweeney's Lit reader

I have complained a lot about some of the confusing stories in the book. Some of them took me long to understand them, and some of them, I still don't understand. However, writing about them on this blog helped me a lot. I didn't care if my understanding made sense or not but I were able to say something about a lot of the stories.
  There were a lot of interesting stories in it too, story that can relate to most of us. over all the book is not my favorite but Prof. Sweeney made it worth reading it, the games and this blog made it fun so I don't regret reading this book.

Dulce et Decorum Est

I have NO idea about the meaning of the title, and I have no idea what language that is but at least the rest of the poem is in English so I am able to figure out that it is about war. Experience is not needed to know how it's like at war, it is common sense however, this poem reminds us more about it the pain, the scream and how they have to handle that.
  I didn't find this poem interesting because it gave me hard time understanding it because I was trying so hard to find if it has meaning to it other than remind is us about the dark side of war. well I still couldn't find any other meaning to it but its good that we always remember how horrible war is.

Aristotle

  This another poem about reality of life, a great summary of our beginning and end and everything in between. According to this poem we start of with something simple, easy, fun then comes the struggle, the real deal of life, time that changes how we think, time that determines our future, our end. This stage makes us different from each other, writes a story about who we are and that story stays or fades depending on who we become. When the end comes we all go to the same destination as if we were all the same. I LOVE THIS POEM, I don't know if my interpretation makes sense but for me, I get the point :)

After Apple Picking

        When I read this poem, I said oh OK he picks apple, probably that is what he does everyday. From what he said he gets tired of it and because of that he is even dreaming about it. It sounds like a regular story a person tells to his friend about his day or week but in my opinion this poem has a good message behind it. It touches our daily life, how we need to see or do new things, do something different and better that just get up in the morning and go to school or work and come back home, sleep and do the same routine everyday. This would be a surprise but I liked this poem this time not for its length but its point.

The road not taken

I don't know if anyone agrees to this but in my opinion, this poem's main point is Trial & Error. According to the poem, he chose the road that no one used and he says he can get back to the other road next time. As far as my understanding is concerned, he chose the road because its different. I agree with the fact that we don't have to do what others do but sometimes there are(right) reasons why people don't choose that road and we have to consider that too. But overall it has a good point, we choose one way, if it is wrong we go back and start over using the other way because life is all about EXPLORATION AND ADVENTURE

Death, be not proud

This is not my favorite poem mainly because of the English. I can never pronounce those words perfectly. The worst part is I miss the main point of the poem trying to ready the (thou, dost , thee, canst...) words. However, good thing I gave up on the pronunciation, now I know that the poem means something, something about not being afraid of death, not making it a big deal.

Poem....We real cool

This is the shortest poem in our book so my blog will be as short as the poem. I somehow liked this poem, it is so true and I liked her closing phrase "We die soon". The poet pretty much wrote about what happened "We left school", what is happening, and what is going to happen "We die soon". All this on one very short and brief poem.

"After great pain a formal feeling comes"

   This poem reminds me of a lot of things, things that happen some time in our life. Pain is something to remember but the victory or lose over that pain is the real feeling we get, either happiness or sadness. Remembering the pain by itself gives us a feeling.
 Like I mentioned in my last blog, I love short poems because they are easier to understand than the lengthy ones. However the main thing I liked about this poem is the fact that it really touches our daily struggles, pains and different feelings.

Poem......Harlem

Let me be honest, I love this poem just because it is so short. If the poem I read is too long, I lose the main point and focus only on the rhythm. In this poem, off course I knew the poem was about a dream regardless of the length of the poem however, its length helped me understand that the poem is about dream that doesn't come true and how we take it. This poem is more of a question to us about how that dream could be interpreted and what is going to happen to it.

The Glass Menagerie

The glass menagerie is an interesting play. In addition to the fact that it has a lot of symbols we have to analyze, it points out our insecurities and how we deal with them.The main points of the play cover things like realities and how the characters try to escape, solutions people come up with to a problem, and how some of the problems shape a person's behavior like Laura is shy and stays at home because she is crippled, Amanda annoys her children because she tries to protect them from what happened to her, and To leaves his mother and sister at last like the way his father because he is sick and tired how his mother nagging him. Those main point we see in the play help us understand the symbols easier than it could have been.

Hills like white elephants

I didn't understand most part of this story until we discussed about it in class. It is about two people's relationship, a girl and American man. Well, the girl is not American and obviously they have a good amount of age difference between them. the girl was pregnant which i found out later in the discussion and the man wanted her to abort the baby which she wasn't happy about but somehow agreed to do it just to make things better between them. The ending of the story was a bit confusing. I couldn't understand whether she keeps the baby or she does what the man wanted her to do.

A good man is hard to find

           I am going to be honest, this story is one of the easiest stories I've read so far in this book. It is straight forward and easy to figure out what it is about, unless you use your critical or creative or whatever smart way of thinking you have to give it some hidden meanings to it. But I am not good at those so I'll go with the simple way. here is how I understood the story , a grandmother led her son and his family (including herself) in a wrong direction to see a house with a secret panel and after a while she realizes they are in a wrong place and they get in to accident, then the Misfit finds them and kills them all.

            Its somehow funny because the grandma was disagreeing on going to Florida but then again she persuaded her son to go to a place she thought has a secret panel. The trip to Florida was safe if it wasn't for the grandma because the Misfit found them in a place she led them in Georgia, not some place else they went to.
          

How To Become A Writer

  I am never good at writing a good paper. There is always something wrong with what I write. I tried so many times to get my thoughts together and write a well organized essay and papers but I never succeeded. I write whatever comes in my mind first, regardless of the order and other rules I have to follow. May be that is why I always get the worst grades on my papers. Now days, I think I gave up on being a writer so I stopped trying. This story somehow reminds me of my struggle but it made me believe writing rules won't make me a writer but being able to put my mind on paper as it is does.