Improving Your Personal Narrative #2 (Due Friday, 3/7)

Effectively employing simile and metaphor can be a challenge for any writer. Cliche or obscure attempts can fall flat, leaving readers disheveled and as a result, disinterested. That being said, a quality simile or metaphor can enhance writing immensely. The following poem, by Pablo Neruda, uses copious amounts of figurative language in an effort to depict the speaker’s love for words. In your response, please identify:

-One simile

-One metaphor

Upon completion, write one of each, to be used in your personal narrative. If you chose either simile or metaphor for the last blog post, please provide a different example in response to Neruda’s work. Attempt to avoid cliche or overly obscure comparisons; use the Pablo Neruda poem for guidance!

You can say anything you want, yessir, but it's the words that sing, they soar and descend . . . I bow to them . . . I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down . . . I love words so much . . . The unexpected ones . . . The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop . . . Vowels I love . . . They glitter like colored stones, they leap like silver fish, they are foam, thread, metal, dew . . . I run after certain words . . . They are so beautiful that I want to fit them all into my poem . . . I catch them in mid flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives . . . And I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them, I let them go . . . I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves . . . Everything exists in the word . . .

From Memoirs by Pablo Neruda (NY: Penguin, 1974), p. 53.

Improving Your Personal Narrative (Due 3/5 or 3/6)

The following poem, "After a Death," by the Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer, utilizes multiple pieces of figurative language and a handful of sonic devices to vividly depict life after a death. Please choose one facet of this poem that interests you and write a three to five sentence response discussing how you might incorporate this technique in your personal narrative. Finally, write an example of a sentence (or group of sentences) that makes use of the specific device you have discussed, in the context of your personal narrative. Feel free to offer respectful feedback to your peers!

For example:

If I decided to focus on personification, I might discuss how Transtromer compares a shadow to a man standing beside an "armor of black dragon scales." I would then attempt to use personification in my personal narrative, and include it as part of my post.

After a Death

Once there was a shock
that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.
It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy.
It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.

One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun
through brush where a few leaves hang on.
They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.
Names swallowed by the cold.

It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat
but often the shadow seems more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant
beside his armor of black dragon scales.

Poetry Out Loud Memorization Activity

Due by midnight on Sunday (2/2/2014)

This is one of the ways I memorize poetry (or just about anything, really); it may prove useful to some of you, too! Please follow the steps exactly and write a short (3-5 sentence) blog post on your experience. Was this method useful? What did/didn't you like about it? How did this compare to other memorization techniques?

Step One: Read the poem to yourself (not out loud)

Step Two: Now read only the first line of the poem out loud. Take your eyes from the page and immediately, out loud, say the line again. Glance quickly to make sure you got it right. If you made a mistake, do it over. Now move on to the second line and repeat the procedure- one out loud reading followed by one out loud recitation of the line from memory. Do this for every line in the poem, in order.

Step Three: Once you have completed going through the poem, go back to the beginning. This time read the first two lines aloud, look away, and repeat them aloud. Check briefly that you got it right. If you make a mistake do it over. Now move on to the next two lines and so forth going through the poem two lines at a time.

Step Four: Repeat the process three lines at a time, then 4 lines at a time, then 5 and then 6. I have found that by the 6th pass, no matter how long or short the poem, you will have the whole thing committed to memory. At some point in this process you will find that you are able to recite the whole poem without hardly a glance at the poem. I recommend doing all six passes even if you already seem to have the poem down before then.

Step Five: Recite the whole poem, preferably just before you go to bed at night.

Step Six: (IMPORTANT): Stop thinking about the poem and just sleep on it. Your sleeping mind is very important for memory- it sort of saves to your brain’s hard drive the information that has been floating around in its RAM while it worked through the poem.

The next day you should find (perhaps with a little glance at the first line of the poem to kickstart your memory) that you can recite the whole poem. You have mechanically memorized the text: now is your opportunity to explore the poem, its hidden meanings and connections, without needing the text in front of you!

 Compare and contrast three pivotal choices or decisions made by Jamal and Salim.  How do their choices affect their respective paths in life or “destinies”?  Do you think that such choices we make as non-fictional characters (you know "real people") create a path of destiny? 

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress." (Frederick Douglass)

Describe how loss, chance, luck, suffering, and street smarts are also characters behind the scenes. The film explores gain and loss side by side. Triumphs are tempered with loss. Where do you see this evident?  Do you see these balances in real life?  If so, where? 

"Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence." (Henry David Thoreau)

  Compare and contrast three pivotal choices or decisions made by Jamal and Salim.  How do their choices affect their respective paths in life or “destinies”?  Do you think that such choices we make as non-fictional characters (you know "real people") create a path of destiny? 

"There is one that makes himself rich, yet has nothing: there is one that makes himself poor, yet has great riches." Proverbs 13:7

In one exchange of dialogue in the film during the interrogation of Jamal, the police inspectors discuss the impossibility of what Jamal knows.  

Police Inspector: Doctors... Lawyers... never get past 60 thousand rupees. He's on 6 million.

[pause]

Police Inspector: What can our slumdog possibly know?

Jamal Malik: [quietly] The answers.

Discuss the irony in the film that Jamal “knows too much” and is suspected of cheating. Discuss the irony

that in the end, his poverty may make him rich. What point is the film making? What is real wealth and what is its measure?