"Wedding Day" By Seamus Heaney

This poem by Seamus Heaney, titled "Wedding Day," is the poem I am doing my oral poetry interpretation on.  I chose this poem for this presentation because I want to get married someday in my future and after reading to it I could imagine myself in this poem.  I wanted to choose a poem that I could relate to somewhat, that way it would be easier to understand and interpret it. 

The poem goes like this...

I am afraid.
Sound has stopped in the day
And the images reel over
And over.  Why all those tears,

The wild grief on his face
Outside the taxi?  The sap
Of mourning rises
In our waving guests.

You sing behind the tall cake
Like a deserted bride
Who persists, demented,
And goes through the ritual.

When I went to the gents
There was a skewered heart
And a legend of love.  Let me
Sleep on your breast to the airport.

This poem has a few sound patterns that caught my attention.  For example, in the second line there is alliteration with the words sound and stopped.  Another sound pattern in the poem is with the words bride and breast.  This is another example of alliteration.  An example of assonance in the poem is with the words went and gents.  There is also alliteration between the words deserted and demented.

The tone of the poem, in my opinion, is soft and joyful.  I think it is joyful in the fact that the title is called Wedding Day and usually weddings are a joyful event in a person's life.  The poem should be delivered kind of slowly because with all the sound patterns you want to make sure you pronounce the words correctly.  Also, I think reading this poem slowly allows the listeners to get a feel of the poem and understand it to a way that it is their wedding day.  I think the very first line, "I am afraid," is a very critical line in the poem.  Many brides on their wedding day are afraid and nervous because this is a big moment in their life.  They are marrying the man who they want to be with for the rest of their life and they want their wedding to be perfect.  Being afraid on your wedding day isn't a bad thing; I don't think it is anyway.  I've been to a few weddings and I can tell the bride is nervous and afraid, but in a joyful way.  They are going to be with this man for the rest of their life so I guess it could be kind of scary.  Making the choice to get married is a big step in a person's life and I think being afraid is expected.

Diversity and World Literature

In my World Literature class, we have read about seven different books and all are from different parts of the world.  The authors of these books come from different diversities and cultures.  In my other Liberal Arts classes we talked a lot about diversity and different races.  We discussed how these different races had leaders who showed servant leadership and how they helped other people.  Learning about all the different diversities and races is a big factor in how a person or the world views the author.  Literature is the element to which we point to know people or the author.  By studying the different races in my liberal arts classes I was able to understand more about the author and where his/her writing was coming from.  If I didn't understand the culture or race of the writer, I would not have understood the book and dismissed the writer as a whole.

Culture

Reading all these different books in this class allows you to get a feel of the different cultural heritages.  For example, when we had to read Masks, I found it very difficult to understand and follow.  The names in the book were very different from names I would know.  Also, the writing and story line was just different than a book written here in the U.S.  I believe this book was a Chinese book, and I had a hard time following it.  In my Liberal Arts class, LAS 201, we learned a lot about different cultures such as Hmong, African Americans, and others.  We looked at how they were treated and discriminated against and ways to help stop the discrimination.  This relates somewhat to the theme in this class, World Literature, because here we are reading books from different cultures and getting a feel for how their writing is compared to books here.  Different cultures have different ways of writing and what they write about.  If there is a lot of fighting or discrimination going on in the country, maybe the book an author writes is about that.  Having learned a little about some of these cultures before taking this class has helped me a little bit in trying to understand where the author is coming from and also understand the story itself. 

"Masks" By Fumiko Enchi

"Masks" was a difficult book for me to understand.  There were a lot of characters to keep track of and their names were ones I was not familiar with.  With this book being a Japanese narrative it made reading difficult.  "Masks" is about a woman, Mieko Togano, and her widowed daughter-in-law, Yasuko.  Mieko manipulates the relationship between Yasuko and the two men who are in love with her. 

"You and I are accomplices, aren't we, in a dreadful crime - a crime that only women could commit."  This quote comes in at the very end of the book.  I found this quote very interesting because it is said after the fact that Yasuko and Mieko find out about Harume's pregnancy.  I think this quote is referencing to the idea of abortion.  Harume has a mental disability and with her being pregnant there is a chance she could die giving birth.  So when Yasuko says this I think she wants Harume to have an abortion, that way she will survive.  Women are the ones who can only have an abortion and I think that it what is meant by "a crime that only women could commit." I think Yasuko is the one who wants Harume to get an abortion more than Mieko because she doesn't think it is right for a woman with so many "physical and mental handicaps" to risk childbirth.  By getting an abortion Harume would survive, but by having the child they would be able to carry on the blood line of Akio, who is the dead son of Mieko.  I think having an abortion is wrong, but I am not going to get in to that debate. 

"The Icarus Girl"

"The Icarus Girl" is a novel by Helen Oyeyemi.  It is about a young girl, Jessamy, who has an extraordinary imagination.  She has a hard time fitting in at school, but makes a friend, TillyTilly, who understands her.   TillyTilly's visits soon become more disturbing and Jessamy realizes she doesn't know her friend at all. Jessamy comes to the realization that she is in her imagination or in the spirit world.

A few quotes stuck out at me and got my attention.  One is from Jess's grandfather.  He says, "two hungry people should never make friends.  If they do, they eat each other up.  It is the same with one person who is hungry and another who is full:  they cannot be real, real friends because the hungry one will eat the full one" (248-49).  I think Jess's grandfather is talking about Jess and her friend TillyTilly.  I don't think Jess and TillyTilly should be friends because Tilly is a bad influence on Jess and makes her do bad things. TillyTilly gets Jess into a lot of trouble at school and influences her to do bad things to kids at school. By the word hungry in this quote, I think it means that Jess really wants a friendship and she wants it so bad that she would be friends with anyone.  Jess is in need of a friend and doesn't want to be lonely anymore.   I think Jess's grandfather knows that TillyTilly is not a good friend for her to have.  That is what he could mean by the statement "two hungry people should never make friends."  Both Jess and TillyTilly want a relationship or friendship so bad that they don't realize how much their friendship is not working.  I don't think their friendship is working because Jess used to be a well behaved girl who didn't get into any trouble at school.  After meeting TillyTilly, she turns into a completely opposite person.

"Catgut" By Anna Gavalda

This short story is a very graphic story, I thought.  It is about a doctor, Dr. Lejaret, who gets a phone call from the Billebaudes farm, which is down the road from her.  She ends up going over there and the two men who live there rape her.  She then goes and kills the men who raped her by drugging them and very gruesomely killing them.  With the first guy, she took her surgical blade and took out his testicles.  For the man who telephoned her, she grafted his balls below his Adam's apple.  Yes, this is a very gross story, but I think it is trying give the readers a message. 

"They seriously hurt me.  That's what happened.  I really don't want to say it again, but I'm going to repeat it for those of you who didn't hear me:  they seriously hurt me."  While reading, I found this passage to be the most interesting.  In this passage you can tell how bad the doctor is hurting almost to the point where you can feel her pain.  These two men took advantage of her and "seriously hurt" her.  Reading this passage gets the reader to feel sympathetic towards the doctor.  I know while I read it I felt sorry for her because I don't think anyone should go through such an awful thing like that.  The fact that she repeated they seriously hurt her twice really caught my attention.  She wants to make it known how much she was hurt, both emotionally and physically.

I think the reason the author wrote this story is to allow readers to be exposed to rape and show them that it is okay to open up and talk to someone about it.  I thought this story was important because it actually had a purpose to it.  I say this because it had a strong point to it which people my struggle with today - being a victim of rape.  Many people who struggle with this are afraid to open up about it until many years later.  The author may have struggled with this herself, we don't know that for sure but it is possible.  While reading this story, I was wondering why the author wrote this? Is it a story about herself or someone she knows? Many questions come to mind from reading this story and we may never know the answers. 

A little about myself

If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_sports.html#iq0fH7ZJgWETTTwV.99

"If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?"  Vince Lombardi


I consider myself a very athletic person, who hates to lose.  Sports has been a part of my life since I was little.  I grew up in a small town called Kellnersville, Wisconsin with a family who have been big sports fans all their life, especially Milwaukee Brewer fans. My name is Lyndsay Holschbach and I am a senior at Silver Lake College located in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. I am majoring in accounting and play on the women’s basketball team here.  I will be graduating in May and shortly after graduation I am hoping to find a job within the area of Manitowoc. I want to work for a large corporation and eventually become a manager.  I am still debating if I want to take the CPA exam, but I will make that decision later on in my future.  Along with having a full time job, I also want to become a coach.  I have wanted to be a coach since I was in middle school.  For the past 3 years I have been an assistant varsity softball coach at Reedsville High School and am hoping within the next few years to become the head coach.  Doing this would make my dream since middle school come true. 
 
I am writing this blog as part of my World Literature class.  I did not take this class because I wanted to, I was kind of forced to.  See, I am in my senior year of college and in order to graduate I needed one more English credit so here I am.  I think this class is going to be tough for me because I really don't like English classes and struggle with poetry a lot.  In this class I want to gain a better understanding of poetry and all other readings from around the world.  I want to enhance my reading skills so that I am able to get a better feel of where the author is coming from and why they are writing the poem or short story.  So far the readings we have read were very confusing to me and hard to understand what the point of the reading was.  By the end of this class I want to have improved my reading skills so that I will be able to grasp the writer’s purpose and understand them more.