Sunday, February 22, 2009

"The Seasons of Our Lives"

Spring time, bring out the capris. Summertime, start trying on some flip-flops. Autumn time, get ready for the sweaters. Wintertime, bus out snow boots. Whenever he seasons change, everyone’s attire changes. Well, the same thing happens, as we get older. As the years change, our whole personality changes because of maturity. Let’s say that the seasons are like different stages of our lives. Spring, the young, immature stage; summer, the getting mature stage; autumn, the mature adult stage; and winter, the old dying stage. Right now my stage is late spring/early summer. I still act silly and laugh at immature thing, which shows my late spring, but I also listen to music more and hang out with my friends, which shows me coming into early summer.

I find myself in my early summer/late spring because I do things that I didn’t do as an adolescent. When I was younger, I used to go in my toy chest and put on my dress up clothes, pull out my dolls, and set up a tea party. Now, I enjoy being in my room alone, listening to my i-Pod with the volume up so loud that you have to call me with a megaphone to get my attention. I also enjoy going out shopping with my friends or just hanging outside with them until our eyes become so heavy that we can’t even stay up another second.

Secondly, my maturity shows early summer/late spring qualities because of me being more grown-up. I can do things now at age fifteen that I couldn’t do at age eight. At the age of eight during the summer time, I could only stay outside until 7:30 if my supervised me. Now, I can hang out with my friends until 11:30-12:30, without adult supervision. This shows that my maturity is getting better because my mom knows that I’m responsible enough to be outside without her watching over me.

Lastly, even though my personality is late spring/early summer, I still have “spring-like” qualities, I still laugh at dumb immature things as if I became eight or nine years old again. Last month, I laughed at a police officer as they fell down three steps, which shows my late-spring qualities. But just a couple of months ago, my friend laughed at a man that fell going up the steps of the SEPTA bus. I told her to stop laughing because I became more concerned if the man was hurt or not, which shows me coming into early summer. This relates to the story Marigolds because one of the main characters, Lizabeth, is also in late spring transforming into early summer. Stomping on Ms. Lottie’s flowers and laughing at her shows her late spring and seeing her father crying was like her “wake-up call” to get out of spring and go into summer.

As we grow up, we mature more and more in our lives. The older we get, the more our seasons change. We start out in spring, move into summer, hop on into fall, and slowly end in winter. The way we act shows which season our personality is in. Which of the four seasons are you in?

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

"The Bean Eaters" Essay

Short. Weird. Confusing. Some readers might feel these emotions if
they read the poem “The Bean Eaters”. The poem doesn’t really make much
sense, which draws the reader in. “The Bean Eaters”, shows great imagination, rhythm, dialect, and rhyming. You can say that this poem really makes the reader’s mind go into a fantasy world. You get the feeling that Dorothy felt when she entered the Land of Oz When reading “The Bean Eaters”, you just feel like you’ve entered a whole new world.
First, the poem “The Bean Eaters” can be read in less than one minute, which shows the short length of the poem. When I first turned to the page, the title caught my eye. When reading this poem, short, weird, and confusing came to my mind. It had me wondering what the author meant by bean eaters. One of the sentences that confuses me starts at line ten and says “ Remembering, with twinkling and twinges, As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases, and fringes”. This quote doesn’t make any sense, which is why I love it so much.
Lastly, “The Bean Eaters” has great dialect. It blew me away when I read the poem and saw so much imagery, rhythm, and rhyming. Readers should look forward to these qualities when reading a poem. One of the sentences in the poem that really stood out to me says “They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair. Dinner is a casual affair”. This quote stood out to me because it had good rhyming and it left me trying to figure out what the author said.
Furthermore, “The Bean Eaters” becomes very difficult to understand, which makes it a great poem. The poem shows great imagery, rhyming, rhythm, and dialect. Seeing that it has all of these great writing qualities, how could anyone not enjoy reading it?