Class Reflection

I cannot believe that this English class will be over in thirteen hours! Time flies and I will definitely miss this whole class, professor Crowther’s long dress, and miss the feeling of going to a class on Tuesday and Thursday when the campus is still in its dreams. Sorry to be emotional at the beginning, but throughout the semester, I really enjoyed it. I also learned a lot during the semester and among those I learned, the most important is that I become more aware of the fact that everybody has the equal right to read and write.

Originally from China, I have only seven years’ experience of learning and using English. Even after staying here for several months, I still feel weak in reading and writing. I used to keep English literature far away from me. One reason is that I am afraid my insufficient knowledge of the new language and culture will hold me back from understanding the works. I feel even more inferior when it comes to literature criticism. I always have the idea that I am be the last person on earth who has the authority to criticize those native articles and books written by well-known authors. I used to read literature only for appreciating, or as a good way to learn English. With that kind of idea in mind, I never tried to be critical when I read English works. I always think unconsciously that “Those writers are far better than me. How can they be wrong? How can their arguments lames?”

But now, after the semester of training to be a critic, I find myself more and more confident in critical writing. And once I begin to write like that, I become a more critical reader too. It is so true what professor Crowther said the other day: “It (the critical reading) is like a pair of glasses you take on, and once you take on, you wear it all your life, it is hard to take it off.” I began to feel myself questioning the writings of CNN news when I read every morning. I become more and more aware of my own right of reading and writing.

At the beginning of the semester, I wrote down several goals for the course, which includes to have a more complex and diverse knowledge of vocabulary, strategies of critical reading, how to give critical comments on the reading material. At the end of the semester, after writing four critical reading papers, I can proudly say that I achieved the goals I set earlier. Yet even more proudly I can say, that I have conquered the inferior feeling of reading and writing. Now I truly believe that everyone has the equal right to read and write and of course to criticize!

A Private History of Awe

The lecture given by Scott Russell Sanders tonight was really inspiring one for me. During the talk, he read four stories in his book A Private History of Awe. None of them was special enough to be a published story, honestly. One was about his childhood memory of lightening and his father, which he said was the very beginning of his memory. The following two were about his witness of his wife Ruth’s delivery and his experience at his daughter’s wedding. The close story was a part of a letter he wrote to the future children. However common and routine these things sound, I was surprisingly moved to tears when he read the feelings he had when at his daughter’s wedding. I was totally amazed by this old man in front of me when he expressed in words how his heart pounded and thus made him too emotional to function during the wedding and how his steps were out of control while walking her to the groom. From those words alone, I know how much Scott Russell Sanders loved his life and treasured it. He did not take happen moments for granted and was not beaten up by the boredom generated from all the chores in life. Instead, he saw things with a grateful heart, a loving kindness.

Later on at the answer-questions section, when he was asked of his views of the relationship between art and sentimentality, he gave his own interpretation. He believed that all the art works do not give people feelings, but rather appeal to the readers. He quoted somebody who I did not take down to claim that our lives have already filled with highs and lows, all those printed words do is to tag certain moments and leads us to pick up a feeling to experience. “The novel sets everything up and appeals to its readers very much like a test: please feel sad now or lease feel [depressing] now”, he explained. He said that art should not be limited to sentimentality though. There are many good things that happen in life. He admitted that harmonious humanity was harder to write and that explained why novels and films stop at romantic love instead of a durable marriage. He does not like this intendancy of public publishing. The lack of advocating for a durable marriage misleads people to not believe things like a good marriage actually happen. People do not believe in marriage any longer. He insisted that the harmonious humanities are hard to write but it is not because they are rare. Therefore, he encouraged young people to hold fast to the belief in good things. This concern of him also shows in his closing story which is a letter to encourage people to care each other, care the earth.

In terms of internet publishing, he talked about his way of seeing it. He thought that it is much cheaper to publish online but it will be harder for readers since once it publishes on the internet, the work will be surrounded by a group of distractive ads or other information which is not a good reading environment for the readers. He warns the young generation to be aware and mindful about what we see on the internet. He said that the internet was full of data. There are three levels of achievement that people can get from reading those data: information, knowledge, and wisdom. These three aspects are increasingly difficult. The best stage of reading data will be wisdom which you have the ability to turn tons of information to knowledge, and then use the knowledge to make important decisions.

I really got a lot from the lecture, both on literature and personal values. This positive experience actually makes me think to anticipate next year’s writers’ festival. What do you guys get from the lecture? Do you mind share your piece of thoughts? Hope you guys enjoyed his lecture too!

On Photograph: Ice Storm 1971

Untitled
by Lola Song

I do not know what makes people recall
Their sealed memories. But I know
for Natasha Trethewey, a simple photograph
of a woman will do:
A picture
taken on a morning of 1971,
when there was a woman standing inside
a clean yet plain house looking at the camera frowning,
and when behind her there was a big window,
showing a glimpse of the outside world.
A storm just passed
Or still passing.


Introduction
This poem describes a picture in which a woman stands inside the house and outside there is an ice storm. When I first read the poem, “1971” as specific information attracted my eyes. I realized it might not be an appropriate approach to do a research about the author before reading and analyzing a poem. However, since Native Guard is a collective work of autobiographical poems by Natasha Trethewey, I felt compelled to have several important facts about the poet and her mother (one of the most repetitive figures that shows up in Native Guard) at hand before getting started to read the poem.

Here I did my little calculation: Natasha Trethewey was born in 1966, so by the year the photograph was taken, she was only five years old. And since her mother remarried her stepfather before she went to grade school, this picture was taken not long after the remarriage. This stepfather killed her mother fifteen years later. Bearing those facts in mind, when I read the poem, I imagined that I was listening to a CD of memories that had been recorded by a five-year-old girl. That helped me to stand in five-year-old Natasha Trethewey’s shoes and feel the way she felt.

Estrangement

Why the rough edge of beauty? Why
the tired face of a woman, suffering,
made luminous by the camera's eye?
(1-3)

At the very beginning, Natasha Trethewey is very careful to guard her feelings. She is going to talk about her dead mother, whose death seems to be a grief that she will take forever get over. Saving the emotion for the rest of the poem, Natasha starts the lines in a quite unattached way, instead of pointing out that the tired and suffering person in the photo was her mother, she simply puts “rough edge of beauty”, “a woman”(1-2). This seems simple and normal.

Later in the poem, we still can see her purposeful usage of this estrangement. For example, in the forth triplet, when she is giving the setting information—the front yard, she describes it as “a beautiful, strange place” (12).

An Equivoque-- Ice Storm

Or [why] the storm that drives us inside
for days, power lines down, food rotting
in the refrigerator…
(4-6)

The ice storm does not arrive until the second triplet, following the image of the middle-aged woman. Literally, it was a real storm swept the whole area. The storm was severe since evidence such as “drive us inside for days”, “power lines down”, and “food rotting in the refrigerator” (4-6) are provided. But not only that. To the five-year-old Natasha Trethewey, the storm meant something more terrible, a storm inside the house—the family violence. Since the storm kept them inside, there was no running away from that.

Outside, everything seemed to be coated with ice.
the landscape glistens beneath a glaze
of ice[…]
the iced trees, each leaf in its glassy case
(7-10)

Words and phrases such as “glaze of ice”, “iced trees” and “leaf in glassy case” (7-10) are delicately used. All together they contribute to a picture that everything has a slim layer of ice over it. This gave me a cold and fragile feeling. Since ice is everywhere, everything then is so easy to break. Does that also point out the chronic angers of her stepfather? In that sense, the storm will be a real disaster for the girl and her mother: it bring the “‘mother” and the “stepfather’s fist” closer.

Superficial Happiness
(a comparison of inside storm and outside storm)

Another thing I thought would be interesting was the different emotional colorings of the inside and outside world. Let us compare these two descriptions:

Or the storm that drives us inside
for days, power lines down, food rotting
in the refrigerator, while outside

the landscape glistens beneath a glaze
of ice? Why remember anything
but the wonder of those few days,

the iced trees, each leaf in its glassy case?
(4-10)

When picturing the inside, all words indicate a sick feeling: “drive us inside”, “power lines down”, and “food rotting”(4-6), while talking about the outside, scenes turn out to be much prettier and more decent: “landscape glistens beneath a glaze of ice” (8-9). Why is there such a huge shift? Why is there such a wonderful outside when there is an ugly inside?

We probably will get a close answer if we would like to compare it with the other storm happening in this house—the family violence.

why on the back has someone made a list
of our names, the date, the event: nothing
of what's inside—mother, stepfather's fist?
(13-15)

In this in-house storm, “the list of our names, the date, and the event” written by “someone” (13-14) are all false, nothing real in them. The superficial happiness is a lie, a lie that hurts mom and “I”, and a lie that “we” did not dare to debunk.

Just to make this statement more fully developed. Here I reference Nadi Nuhu’ idea about extending this theory to a larger sense: superficial happiness or peacefulness is not enough for understanding history. For example, in African American history, the most famous picture of the five men standing together representing first Louisiana Native Guard does not tell anything about the cruelty of discrimination they faced. When we want to really know the history for sure, we will have to go inside the storm and see what was going on there.

In Terms of Rhyme
The poem is made up of five triplets, with each following an aba scheme. One of the interesting things I came up with was that all the central lines end up with ing. It made me feel that her painful feelings towards her mother were still ongoing. The story happened in the past is still happening. I guessed that it could be related to Natasha Trethewey’s time and space theories, that there will always be a piece of memory that is hard to forget, and it will stay no matter what.

Someone will take your picture:
The photograph—who you were—
Will be waiting you when you return
(18-21, Theories of Time and Space, Native Guard)