"Night" by Elie Weisel [Part II]

I cannot speak about Night. I talked to a friend trying to find the words, but it wass impossible. We spent the night talking, and still it did not happen. It is so hard to say something that does not sound stupid. We probably think too much. I mean, what is war? What is peace?  What is to be mentally sane? Not knowing? And to be mad? Is being mad perceiving what others do not?

When was the last time you saw yourself in the mirror and looked at a normal person there?
I would like for you to give me a definition of a weird person, please. 
Everybody lives a Night. But I gues that some people that could seem to understand that, just won't.


And now, go here and watch: http://vimeo.com/1965247

"Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou

I was listenig to a song, and I listened to a part that says:

What a feeling.

Bein's believin'.

I can have it all, now I'm dancing for my life.

Take your passion

and make it happen.

Pictures come alive, you can dance right through your life.

Now I hear the music,

close my eyes, I am rhythm.

In a flash it takes hold

of my heart.

       (Flashdace, what a feeling - Irene Cara)

I know it might not sound anything related to the Phenomenal woman poem, but as I listened to it, it caught my attention for the way I instantly realted it to the poem. This is like the explanation I could give to the poem with another one. What Maya Angelou is proud about is for the fact of being herself, the feeling she gets about her. 

There is still so much discrimination against women all over the world. They are not taken into account in political decisions, they are used as means of pleasure, according to a misinterpretation of religion. Ancestral traditions, even since primitive people, women stay at home, men go to work.   Having made so much progress in human thinking, in human perspective, there are still many things to be aware of. Like these. Women's situation in the world. This song is what every woman should think, want to think and still want to be. 

It is achieving a high position with ourselves, defeating what others think and having all at the palm of our hands. It is fighting for the right to be free: "Take your passion and make it happen. Pictures come alive, you can dance right through your life". It's a matter of being proud of what we are, not taking into account what we must be. Women and men are not the same, but it is that special characteristics, that "secret that lies inside us" that make us so special, but not so "discriminable". Human beings after all. "Close my eyes I am rhythm. In a flash it takes hold of my heart." I believe that is a beautiful image. A woman closing her eyes feeling the pride emerging, knowing that she is worth it, and then she feels it all over her heart. 

I believe Maya Angelou is quite right about feeling proud of being a woman, and to feel everything that define us as our identity, as our common factor that make us indispensable in the world. But what is more, is that she feels very deeply great for her being African American, which was difficult to bear in those times. She was a very brave woman that clearly shows us that definitely, a world without women would not be the same.

"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker

This is a short story that tells the story about a mother and her two daughters. One is very humble, nice and shy. The other one is proud, vain and at least, physically nicer. One day, Dee, the vain daughter goes to visit her mother and sister. She had changed her name to Wangero. She asked to have the old quilts that Maggie owned, to exhibit them. The sister would say yes, but the mother would feel it was Maggie's right to keep them. In the end, Wangero (Dee) did not keep them and said good-bye to them. 

I came to know today that the reason African-Americans changed their names from the "European" ones they had, was to recover their roots and feel more proud about them. I believe Wangero, even though she seems to be the evil one in the story, has arrived to the new world of freedom for this people. The African-americans now had rights, she would be receiving College education and the freedom to travel. Besides that, she was a woman, and women rights were also beginnig. So at the new freedom that she found in front of her eyes, she could not feel anything but pride of her roots and the success they had achieved. "She would look anyone in the eye", she would not feel less in front of white people, she would stand and be proud of who she was. 

On the other side, yes, she had a problem with leaving simple stuff as it was, and not stopping herself from wanting to own everything. She was already free, but she did not realise she had some responsibilities, for example, to make her shy sister proud of who she was. Maybe Wangero just wanted her to realise it, or maybe she just found her stupid for acting like that and expected her to already be proud. But that would not happen. I think Wangero has a point where she says "It's a new day for us. But from the way you and mamma still live, you'd never know it." Of course I believe that was a good advice, in the sense of being free as African-americans. But then again, she could not difference between social comfort and family and personal comfort. Maggie and her mom already had the family comfort. Maggie may have needed more self-esteem, but she had a simple, happy life beside her mother. She was happy, she was going to get married, and she did not complain about things. She was comfortable with life and really did not expect to have a life like her sister's. Maybe she envied her body, as she was burnt, but in soul, she was simple. And this we can see with the quilts she makes. She thinks family is important, and personal heritage is too. Wangero thought it had to be for the world, to show the traditions of the people. 

So I do not think that Wangero was a diva or a mean girl, she just saw things from another point of view, and both sisters and her mother, just for being human beings, were not perfect.

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early

And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he'd call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house.

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love's austere and lonely offices?


This is a very clear poem that gives us a very good idea of what the life of this boy was, specially during Winter. He was poor, living with his family and living in the routine. His father would take care of him, but the fact of beeing poor made him be cold in his treat, not meaning he was in his heart. No, he would polish this boy's shoes and made the fire burn to warm the house. But this was taken for granted by the boy and the family. "No one ever thanked him." And because of the coldness of his dad and the hard work he had to do, there would be argues in the house, and the boy would be indifferent to his dad, to avoid a possible anger from him.

It is a sad passage. It tells us about this poor family who do not have a comfortable life and have to face it every day, trying to make themselves as comfortable as possible, but with the fact that they have to work and take care of each other. A unite family for keeping each other safe, but not very united in the meaning of heart. The kid would not run to neither of his parents to talk or laugh. They had a serious reletionship between them. Maybe the Winter Sundays did not only refer to the season...

What is Poetry?

After seeing all that poetry could be, I can honestly say I still do not know what it is. It sounds ilogical, but this art, usually in the form of words, I cannot describe with them. It would be defining it with itself. I could say poetry is the art of putting words together and creating images, feelings and experiences... but that is Literature in general. Maybe a definition to me would be "Poetry is how we put words together to form everything but them". Quite unclear, but maybe I could make something out of there. I also liked the definition seen in class about the third level of how to say things. 

It is said that poetry in life does not have to be exactly what poetry as a literary genre is. And then I say, why not? Somehow they have to relate from each other, otherwise, they would not be called the same. A poetic life, is it a life full of exaggerations? (And I am not meaning only the bad exaggerations) Maybe. But can it also be the way a person feels and tells their life? Yes, but that anyone can do. So poetry is nothing? Nothing but a mere nice arrangement of words put together so that a situation, an image, or whatever it describes sounds nicer, more powerful, and so on? Yes, maybe. So what I can say is that poetry is not staying in the middle, it is not being in where the water is liquid. It is choosing a side, a side in which either the water will boil or will freeze. It means not to be in the steady part of whatever situation, but going deeper into it, telling it, giving meaning to it, put the situation in the right place so that it can fit many others in its meaning. It means not only to describe, but to put a layer of words that can tell better and at the same time worse what we want to say.

 I believe it has to be that unclear, that it comes out together completely clear. Maybe I am not making myself clear trying to define poetry, but I guess that is the trick. And as I said, I just cannot describe precisely what poetry is. Dictionaries, who wants a static thing to define another thing that is not at all static? They do not understand each other. 

Maybe with another example. What happens when you mix dirt, water and a seed? Many things, but then the perspective in which a poet sees it, can change the whole context and not only make a plant grow. 

As in cooking, poetry can have many recipies. And I have my favorite poetry dish. It can be baked in endless combinations, but still, the ingredients are what make the dish special to me. I rather prefer poetry that has a lot of figurative language, metaphors, similes... I like it to be like a code, a code that can be desciphered, not only by imagining it, but also by living it as you read it. "To read between lines", I do not like it. I prefer to read under lines in poetry, because there is a hidden meaning, and then when you can feel the meaning and know the feeling, that is when you get a poem and say "Wow". That is what I like. 


And form. I believe poetry can be found in so many ways, that a line in the middle of a novel can be poetry. It can also have the traditional form of lines, but then again, we have examples of poems making shapes or drawings. Everything but steadiness. So as a conclusion, I do not know what poetry is.