"Turtle Soup" - Miralyn Chin

                                         FOR BEN HUANG

You go home one evening tired from work,
and your mother boils you turtle soup.
Twelve hours hunched over the hearth
(who knows what else is in that cauldron).

You say, "Ma, you've poached the symbol of long life;
that turtle lived four thousand years, swam
the Wet, up the Yellow, over the Yangtze.
Witnessed the Bronze Age, the High Tang,
grazed on splendid sericulture."
(So, she boils the life out of him.)

"All our ancestors have been fools.
Remember Uncle Wu who rode ten thousand miles
to kill a famous Manchu and ended up
with his head on a pole? Eat, child,
its liver will make you strong."

"Sometimes you're the life, sometimes the sacrifice."
Her sobbing is inconsolable.
So, you spread that gentle napkin
over your lap in decorous Pasadena.

Baby, some high priestess has got it wrong.
The golden decal on the green underbelly
says "Made in Hong Kong."

Is there nothing left but the shell
and humanity's strange inscriptions,
the songs, the rites, the oracles?

Explorations of the Text

1.      Notice the author’s choice of the word “cauldron” in Line 4. What images or connections does this word evoke? Why might the author have chosen “cauldron” rather than “pot”?

The author chose cauldron instead of pot might because she felt that her mother cooking the turtle was an action just like the witch. This can be explained as the cauldron was normally used by the witch to prepare the potions.

2.      Chin refers to “the Wei,” “the Yellow,” and “the Yangtze.” Why does she reference these rivers in China? Why not include the Nile, the Amazon, or the Mississippi?

She reference these rivers in China instead of the other rivers is because her mother was from China and she took examples that were familiar to her mother, and not something that strange or unfamiliar to her.

3.      What is the tone of this poem?

The tone of this poem is some kind of ridiculous. They both were debating on the turtle and some other tones might emerge in their debate. They both had their own view, and madness can be shown through their debate.

Ideas for Writing

1.      "Sometimes you're the life, sometimes the sacrifice." Write about this quote within the context of an immigrant family. What might a family gain or lose by moving to a new land?

When you grew up in a place for a long period, you will have adapt or familiar with the culture itself. Regarding the quote above, it can be explain in the context of an immigrant family are everything including culture they had familiar or knew about the place that they had lived for long. But when they migrate to another country or place, they have to re-adapt the culture and everything that are strange or unfamiliar to them, and the most important is they have to abandon all the culture they knew. But is it easy for you to forget or abandon something that you had familiar with? For sure they can practice their culture in new land, but is it possible for others to accept it?

They will gain something better for sure, like the opportunity of getting better jobs, and the chances to live in better way when they moved to new land. But all of these must depend on the opportunity they got, if they fail to have opportunity, it must be a terrible situation. We always hear about the “American Dreams”, and it seems so beautiful and wonderful, and is something that became the target for everyone to achieve. But recently the fact told us that it was just a dream because there were too much of immigrant, and the percentage of unemployed is increasing. If so, what is the point to migrate to the place that only will make things worse? Is it worth to sacrifice something that is so precious just to get something that seems so uncertain?

The quote “Sometimes you’re the life, sometimes the sacrifice” that relate in the context of immigrant family can be explained as new hope and new life they gain when they moved to new land but the sacrifice will be the culture and everything regarding their motherland. They need and must sacrifice the culture about their motherland in order to survive or to be accepted by others in the new land. There will always be sacrificed something to get something in return. As in the poem “Turtle Soup”, the author’s mother was from China and migrated to The States, but it is hard for her mother to practice the new culture and forget the old culture simultaneously. It will have been a challenge for her mother to do so and that is why her mother was cooking the turtle soup even she had migrated to The States. 

Group Leader: Farid

"Preface to Twenty Volume Suicide Note" - Amiri Baraka

Lately, I’ve become accustomed to the way

The ground opens up and envelopes me

Each time I go out to walk the dog.

Or the broad edged silly music the wind

Makes when I run for a bus…

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.

And each night I get the same number.

And when they will not come to be counted,

I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up

To my daughter’s room and heard her

Talking to someone, and when I opened

The door, there was no one there…

Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands

Explorations of the Text

1.      What is the mood of the speaker in the opening lines? What images suggest his feelings?

The speaker has no any willingness to continue his life; it feels a kind of sentimental. “Lately, I've become accustomed to the way”, this suggest that the speaker feel boring and numb with his life, felt desperate.

2.      What is the significance of the daughter's gesture of peeking into "her own clasped hands"?

Her daughter was praying and talking to the God in order to convince her father towards the meaning of life, and not give up to live.

3.      What does the title mean? How does it explain the closing line?

A “preface” is always seen in front of any books, and the title “preface” mean that the speaker plan or write something to commit suicide. “Her own clasped hands.” explain that there is always a hope and don’t give up life easily.

4.      Why does Baraka have three short lines, separated as stanzas? How do they convey the message of the poem?

The first line “things have come to that” and the second line “nobody sings anymore” mirror that the speaker had loss his hope towards life and to emphasize his unwillingness to continue his life. The third line “Her own clasped hands” suggest that his daughter still pray to the God and still have hope towards life.

5.      Why does Baraka begin stanzas with "Lately," "And now," and "And then"? What do these transition words accomplish?

These transitions were used to describe the speaker’s feeling and emotion towards life and to show he saw her daughter was praying to the God.

6.      How does the speaker feel about his daughter? What does she represent to him?

From the way he wrote, we can see that his daughter was a sign of hope and new life for him and this was why the speaker stop his poem until he saw his daughter prayed.

Poem inspired by "All Things Not Considered" - Naomi Shihab Nye

Unknown

In an unknown world

Dead bodies everywhere,

In lurch people are.

Cruel. Helplessness, sadness, hopeless.

A poem with an amazing poet.

Vividly the images emerged,

how empathy I feel

with thrill and anger.

The world being so strangely to the people, that everywhere can be found dead bodies and people were in plight. With the cruelty, people felt so helplessness, grieve and hopeless.

This poem makes me admire the poet deeply. The way she wrote, made all the images in the poem emerged so vividly till I can feel the situation myself with thrill and even anger.

Incident by Countee Cullen

Incident

BY COUNTEE CULLEN

Once riding in old Baltimore,   

   Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,   

I saw a Baltimorean

   Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,

   And he was no whit bigger,

And so I smiled, but he poked out

   His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore

   From May until December;

Of all the things that happened there

   That’s all that I remember.

Explorations of the Text

1.      What is the nature of the interaction between the two boys?

Prejudice between white and black people during 1925 in American.

2.      Why does the speaker remember nothing more than the incident, even though he stayed in Baltimore from “May until December”?

“Nigger” called by that Baltimorean gave a big impact to that boy till his memory was just left this.

The Reading/Writing Connection

1.      In a paragraph compare your experience of prejudice with the persona in the poem.

My sister is a physically disable and people used to look at her with different sights. This is not something she wants and all humans are imperfect. This prejudice makes me mad and sad because she is human too, and her appearance is also normal, not that she looks differ from human, so there is needn’t to look disable people with different sights.

Ideas for Writing

1.      What do its form and rhyme add to this poem?

The form of this poem is 3 stanzas and each stanza is with 4 lines and the rhyme of this poem is ABCB.

2.      What is the power of language? What are the effects of the use of term nigger?

The way we control the language and the tone we use when we speak the language, either soft tone or harsh tone. The term nigger is a type of insult that when the Baltimorean poked out his tongue and called the boy nigger, this is a type of prejudice and it leave a deep impact to the boy, made him felt hurt and remember forever.

First Exploratory Draft and Notes on "All Things Not Considered"-Naomi Shihab Nye

               “All Things Not Considered” is a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. The poet used the true story that happened in Palestine to describe the situation faced by the Jewish and Palestinian. The poet used of diction, repetition, and imagery to show the torments suffered by Palestinian and Jewish cause of religion matter.

            Through diction, we can see that Palestinian and Jewish were in a battle because of religion. Throughout the poem, people misuse “holy” since it refers to pure and plain. But those Palestinian and Jewish tried to make themselves the “holy” one and controlled the land. As the consequences, many people were killed innocently no matter what age they are.

               Imagery throughout the poem gave readers the picture of killing during the war. The killings were just like “Massacre” that happened during the Reign of Terror in British Romantic period. The people were hopeless and tortured. The poet portrayed how the killing happened by using two people as instances. “Asel Asleh, age 17…” and “Mohammed al-Durra…” were killed during that time and was a true story.

            Symbolism is used to show the Palestinian and Jewish hope for something that can help them escape from torments.

·         The calm bucket waiting for water

·         The baby’s graceful ear

·         Palestinian and Jewish women standing silently together

Thesis and mini-outline on "All Things Not Considered"-Naomi Shihab Nye

All Things Not Considered
By Naomi Shihab Nye

You cannot stitch the breath
back into this boy.

A brother and sister were playing with toys
when their room exploded.

In what language
is this holy?

The Jewish boys killed in the cave
were skipping school, having an adventure.

Asel Asleh, Palestinian, age 17, believed in the field
beyond right and wrong where people came together

to talk. He kneeled to help someone else
stand up before he was shot.

If this is holy,
could we have some new religions please?

Mohammed al-Durra huddled against his father
in the street, terrified. The whole world saw him die.

An Arab father on crutches burying his 4 month girl weeps,
“I spit in the face of this ugly world.”

*

Most of us would take our children over land.
We would walk in the fields forever homeless
with our children,
huddle under cliffs, eat crumbs and berries,
to keep our children.
This is what we say from a distance
because we can say whatever we want.

*

No one was right.
Everyone was wrong.
What if they’d get together
and say that?
At a certain point
the flawed narrator wins.

People made mistakes for decades.
Everyone hurt in similar ways
at different times.
Some picked up guns because guns were given.
If they were holy it was okay to use guns.
Some picked up stones because they had them.
They had millions of them.
They might have picked up turnip roots
or olive pits.
Picking up things to throw and shoot:
at the same time people were studying history,
going to school.

*

The curl of a baby’s graceful ear.

The calm of a bucket
waiting for water.

Orchards of the old Arab men
who knew each tree.

Jewish and Arab women
standing silently together.

Generations of black.

Are people the only holy land?

Notes on “All Things Not Considered” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Diction: Repetition – “Holy”

“In what language

Is this holy?”

“If this is holy,

could we have some new religions please?”

“If they were holy it was okay to use guns.”

“Are people the only holy land?”

 Imagery

“A brother and sister were playing with toys

when their room exploded.”

“The Jewish boys killed in the cave

were skipping school, having an adventure.”

“Asel Asleh, Palestinian, age 17, believed in the field

  beyond right and wrong where people

           Come together

 to talk. He kneeled to help someone else

  stand up before he was shot”

Thesis: The author used of diction, repetition and imagery to show the torments suffered by Palestinian and Jewish due to religion matter.

Additional Notes:

Killing is normal

Religion is the main reason for the killing

This poem is full with sadness, torture and hope.

Symbolism

“The calm of a bucket

  waiting for water.”

“Jewish and Arab women

standing silently together.”

-          -Something feels like hope.

Women in Poetry

           Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet that born on 10 December 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. She has been proven as the most famous poet until today. She felt that she has the freedom to write anything about her feelings if she published it anonymously.  Her unique writing style makes her poetry resonate today. She used of dashes in poems to replace other punctuations and this make it look distinctive with others. Her writing style consists of rhymes, personifications and imagery. She normally wrote about nature, the relationship between individual and God or death, religion, and beauty. She used to write hundreds of poems to express herself by release her emotions in her poems. One of her poem that show the extent of dashes is “The Soul selects her own Society”. She had been regarded as a Transcendentalist because of its optimistic characteristics of her poems.  She wrote: “The Soul selects her own Society — Then — shuts the Door — To her divine Majority — Present no more —” (Dickinson 303). As we can see, she used dashes in every line to show how unique her poem can be, and read in the way she desired. She wrote about death in “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”.  “He kindly stopped for me -” (Dickinson 712). She personified [he] (death) as a gentlemen that who leisurely gave the poet a ride to her grave and immortality too. In the poem, she begins the death’s journey with the slow movement, which can be seen in line 5: “We slowly drove – He knew no haste”, but in Stanza 3, it seems like the movement towards death had speed up as they passed [the school, the fields of grain, and the setting sun]. The poem continued to get faster and faster till Stanza 5, everything got slower and gave readers a feeling like her life was came to the end as she wrote “Were toward Eternity –” in the last line of the poem. She wished that there is no Eternity and live forever.

Dickinson, Emily. “The Soul selects her own Society (303)” http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20283 . October 21, 2007.

Dickinson, Emily. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death (712)”

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15395 .