I sauntered up to the door of his Intended, and it reminded me if the trees along the river. The fog closing in, suffocating me and my thoughts of the Intended. The horror.
Three knocks, an eternity to wait for a crack in the door that would never come. I rumaged through my pockets for my pen and pad. She had wanted to know to know about Kurtz in his final days, his final breath, and his final words.
Upon that piece of paper the lingering words:
The horror, the horror.

In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver

In this poem, Oliver spends the first five stanzas describing the beauty of a forest: “Giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders.” She then goes on to talk about fires which leads me to believe the antecedent scenario was a forest fire that destroyed the woods. She makes the point that humans will never know the true meaning of salvation because we can’t save everything from harm, including forests. 

In stanzas eight and nine, Oliver describes what humans can do to make up for not knowing salvation. “You must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” The last task she states humans must be able to do to live in this world has a strong impact over the entirety of the poem. Throughout it, you feel the sense as though she loved the forest very much, but when it was destroyed, it was a terrible loss. In order to recover from the loss, you need “to let it go.”

Evening Concert, Saint-Chapelle by John Updike

Even without a picture in front of you, John Updike’s vivid descriptions of Saint-Chapelle display the beautiful image of a Catholic chapel – the stained glass windows with brilliant colors and the images upon the windows that make the chapel so unique. The descriptions used to depict the concert pull together the chapel’s beauty mixed with the music. The music seems to match the fantastic colors and style of the windows and the beauty of the church as a whole: “That held the holy glowing fantasy together.”

When we were presented the picture in class, it was actually climactic of a sight than what Updike’s words had put into my head. To me, the picture didn’t do the poem’s illustration justice. Maybe I was just in a bad spot to see, but the way Updike put together his words in a specific way and used alliteration made the image of the chapel so real and fantastic – “Then violins vaunting Vivaldi’s strident strength, then Brahms, seemed to suck with their passionate sweetness, bit by bit, the vigor from the red, the blazing blue…”. Saint-Chapelle sounds so beautiful.

Blackberries for Amelia by Richard Wilbur

Blackberries for Amelia by Richard Wilbur is a simple poem to go along with a simple pleasure:  picking blackberries with a grandchild. The descriptions leading up to the picking give the simplicity incredible imagery, but they seem feel endless; as does the time it takes for the berries to ripen. “Dark berries, savage-sweet and worth the wait.”

The structure of the poem is interesting:  it is a timeline for a blackberry bush – not something poets commonly write about. It is not original in the sense that it is a small detail in life that had a major impact on someone’s life, but the fact that the majority of the poem is about the process of blackberries ripening gives it the aspect of being original. 

The antecedent scenario for Blackberries for Amelia is a grandparent picking and talking with their grandchild. The time affected the grandparent so greatly, the story of the bushes blooming and the berries growing and the grandparent and grandchild picking needed to be told.

A Gray Haze Over the Rice Fields by Jayanta Mahapatra

A Gray Haze Over the Rice Fields by Jayanta Mahapatra was written to point out the message that there is always new life, even in the eeriest of times. The use of adjectives such as “gray” and “haze” and “unsteady” gives a negative connotation to the poem. But the scene of a cow with its new born calf perceives new life in the midst of the ugly.  Also, in the second stanza, the lines, “But at times I see a shadow move slowly over these, a shadow freed from the past and from the future…” also shows that there is always good in something bad. 

The reference to the speaker’s grandmother, “Such things only claim that I am looking out in search of memory, not death. Those little kisses on my cheeks my long-dead grandmother gave me…” make me believe that leading up to the poem, the speaker’s death was near, but instead of looking at the bad situation, dying, she chose to look out in memoires, the good. The continuous theme throughout the poem just repeats the message that good is in the bad, but good should also trump bad.

The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner didn’t seem like a fiction novel to me. The details and specifics Khaled Hosseini included made the story feel incredibly real. The dates and accuracy of war really added to the book.

In the beginning, I detested Amir for how he had treated Hassan. I detested him as much as Amir detested himself. Hosseini created Amir’s character very intensely and carefully. He made sure the reader would know Amir did not like himself as much as the reader shouldn’t.

The biggest turn around in the story, for me, was not when Amir decided to save Sohrab, but when Sohrab was in the hospital and Amir prayed for the first time in fifteen years – When Amir realizes there is a God. “I see now that Baba was wrong, there is a God, there always had been.” So much detail went in throughout the story about how Baba did not believe in God. And finally, in the end, Amir believes He exists. It seemed to sum the story into a whole. That God exists and forgiveness can be found and one can be good again.

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby was a very mysterious book; though, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The ways in which F. Scott Fitzgerald built up the characters and the character relationships was impeccable and highly amusing. When describing Mr. Carraway in the beginning of the story, Fitzgerald goes into long details that take his character in depth. In fact, he used details thoroughly to explain everything in the book, from the characters to the scenery at the Buchanan’s house to the view of the ash heaps.

Throughout the book, the relationships between the characters continued to grow, and that, for me, is what made the story interesting – the way in which Fitzgerald built the relationships. When Daisy left neither a letter nor flowers for Gatsby’s funeral, I felt angry and disdain, for she had admitted to loving him, but obviously not enough to care in the end. The arrogance of the characters in the book evidently turned me away from every character except Mr. Carraway and Gatsby, and once in a while Ms. Baker.

What was most amusing were the relationships between characters. “’Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” Mr. Carraway is probably the most down to earth character, as he tries his best to follow his father’s advice and does a fantastic job of hiding how he truly feels about other characters. It is very curious that he comes to love Ms. Baker when in the beginning he described her as a very dishonest person, and didn’t seem to enjoy her lies. Also, Mr. Carraway shows his true friendship to Gatsby as being one of three people, not including servants, to attend his funeral – Mr. Carraway wasn’t even very fond of Gatsby:  “It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end.” To the end, Mr. Carraway stayed true to Gatsby. “I found myself on Gatsby’s side, and alone.”

In the beginning, Fitzgerald describes Mr. Carraway as being alone; alone to where even his dog ran away. As Fitzgerald built up the relationships throughout the book, it is strange to me that in the end, Mr. Carraway was once again alone. In the end, I think this is what made the book so powerful.