lena vasylak

The book I chose is called The House of the Spirits and it’s by Isabel Allende. Originally when looking for a book I googled “Ap Literature Books” and scrolled through huge lists of books. After a week of looking I couldn’t find a book that interested me. So I asked Mr. Kreinbring if he knew of any good books, and he recommended this book!

Poetry Post # 6:

For my last post I decided to use the poem Prediagnosis. Immediately what stood out to me was the first line “when I was born I felt nothing”. In all of his other poems it’s obvious that he feels a lot of emotions daily, and so this line made me think about what could of possibly changed? While reading this poem, the first thing that came to mind is, overall this poem deals with the intensities between feeling nothing and feeling everything. The few lines that really highlighted that for me are “when I was born I felt nothing but life ripping open before me” (in the first stanza) and then “but life ripping open before me led to me ripped open before life” (in the second stanza). Just alone in those two sentences it shows Sam Sax is addicted to feelings. And possibly that addiction is what centers around the title of this poem. One line that made me stop after reading it is “anything can be a drug if you love it”. After reading that I just paused, because that line is nothing but true. That line plays perfectly with the theme of this overall poem.

One thing I noticed with most if not all of Sam Sax’s poems is that the last sentence normally ties back with the very first sentence of the poem. And in this case, the sentence “when I was born I felt everything” ties with the first sentence. From the beginning to the end Sam Sax went from not feeling anything, to feeling everything. Which is exactly what the theme of this poem is: the intensities between feeling nothin and feeling everything.

For my 5th Poetry Post I decided to post the poem #mania. Just from reading the first sentence I wanted to know who he was talking about. “We’re not on speaking terms”, who is the we? After that I noticed his use of literary techniques (personification and imagery), which is something I’ve noticed he does heavily in all of his other poems. Something else I noticed is his use of triple spaces in between words and I’ve noticed that’s consistent in a lot of his poems. That makes me wonder if there is an actual reason as to why he does that. This poem like his others seem to be structured in very unique ways, and I also wonder if there is a specific reason as to why he does that as well? I also find the title of this poem very interesting as mania is also known as the manic syndrome. Mania seems like a common theme in all of his poems, and with all of his poems sharing a similar theme that leads me to believe that throughout Sam Sax’s whole book, there is one single underlying theme.

For my 4th poetry blog I decided to chose the poem “Theia Mania”. The title immediately interested me since I wasn’t sure what that meant. When I looked it up I found out it meant loss of self and sanity, which I immediately connected to every other poem he’s written. It seems throughout this book, Sam Sax’s main theme is the loss of himself and his sanity. And that theme escalades and increases as the book goes on, so it makes sense how this poem is titled, where it is placed in the book, and how it is written!

I’ve been talking to Lauren and reading some of her poet’s poems, and I’m intrigued by Sarah Kay. As I’ve stated before I originally looked at Sarah Kay and I really liked her poems a lot. I chose to cheat with Lauren’s poet because I loved how she writes about very personal topics, and those topics it seems as if anyone could relate to them.

This is a poem that Lauren annotated. From reading this poem it makes me think this poem is told in the mother’s perspective. I really like the whole basis of this poem, as I like all her other poems as well. I agree with what you put in the first stanza with it being a guide. But I also slightly disagree as it’s most likely not an exact guide. I believe the mother is just stating that she wants her kid to be able to come to her with anything and that no matter what she’ll always support and care for them. I also really love that this poem is about the mom talking about life lessons she is going to tell her kids. Overall I just really like the whole message being given in this poem!!

The poem I chose for my second Poetry blog is Postdiagnosis by Sam Sax. This poem interested me with the way it was written. All of Sam Sax’s poem’s are written in a very unique way, and it make’s me wonder if they’re written in that way for a reason? A certain quote that stood out to me was near the end of the poem. It states “the drowning dogs painted for the gods to rage & riot & rot the vacant parking lot knives do what some cannot.” This instantly stood out to me because of the rhyming theme this whole chunk has. On top of the rhyming chunk it also sprinkled alliteration throughout. Something I have seen in his other poems are that weird double/triple space randomly in the poem. I still am unsure of why he does that, and the fact that this poem has it makes me think that there is a deeper meaning to that extra space.

I didn’t originally pick this up when first reading it, but a friend was reading it with me, and she noticed that you can read the poem in two different ways. It seems as if it doesn’t matter what way you read the poem (down the column, or across the page) because either way still seems to make sense. There was a section in the poem that references some sort of religion and faith, which makes sense to me considering Sam Sax is Jewish. One part that also confuses me is the “reason” and “unreasoning” part of the poem. The “reason” section doesn’t seem to have any rhyming to it whatsoever, but the “unreasoning” part does.

When I first looked at the list of all those poets I was so overwhelmed and didn’t even know who to choose. I decided to go through the list randomly picking random poets. After about 10 minutes I came across Sam Sax. I was immediately interested in the poem he had called “On alcohol”. The one quote that interested me was “every time i drink I lose something”. I thought that quote was very deep and I was also curious as to why there was a big space between “drink” and “i lose”

The structure of the poem was very interesting because of those 4 dots after every stanza. I was interested as to what those were for and when I looked at more of his poems I found many other poems with that same format! The theme of his poems seem to be personal so I thought maybe there was a bigger reason as to why he used that structure... but can’t seem to figure out why. I also was drawn to all his poems because they’re very personal. I think it’s interesting when people write about things they’re first hand passionate about or something they have first hand dealt with.