Saturday, February 25, 2012

Sonnet 27 Shakespeare Response


SONNET 27

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find.





This is a sonnet written by shakespeare and to start it off, on line 13, it is not lol, but lo, An exclamation used to draw attention to an interesting or amazing event. Shakespeare wrote this poem to show the lifestyle he endures, concerning lost or gone love. In my own personal decipher, I will start from the beggining and translate. Tired, I try to go to sleep, to give rest to my body for I travled for long. However i cant rest because i start to think. My mind works when my body can't work anymore. And my brain is eager for a journey to you, but i try to say awake, and lookng into the darkness of my room. Except that my hearts wanting makes your image apear in the night, which in contrast and combination made thedark look beutiful and your old face gorgeuos. Aha! Always I am working physically and mentally, and i never find peace.


The main theme that sonnets usually focus on is love. Shakespeare especially foceses on very complicated relationships about his love, or at least makes it sound very complicated. Specifically I think this one is about a past lover whom Shakespeare can no longer see. It is possible that she has died, which would work with the part where he says "...and her old face new." I chose this sonnet, and really love it because it has such an interesting and involving point, being that the author cannot ever be at rest for his mind and body are always working. I loved how Shakespeare was always using the best of words for what he wanted to say.


For example, he could have easily have said something like "my body and my limbs are so tired" instead of "The dear repose for limbs with travel tired." The difference in quality is painfully visible just from a few words, the main one being repose. I didn't even know what it was and was forced to look it up. It makes me think about the fact that having a wide range of vocabulary might be the key, and main factor to a good sonnet. Even if the sonnet is about your love for Cheese Doodles, I am sure if you spoke the way Shakespeare you could make it sound good. My attempt (first 4 sentences): For have I a deep yearn'ing for my sweet love, That unto thee I use magniloquence. My soul thinks of nothing besides thereof. Cheese Doodles hast i not misrepresent.


I just wrote the first four lines of a sonnet about Cheese Doodles, and no matter how you look at it, The subject of that partial sonnet is awful. However I ornate it with some fancy vocabulary, and it becomes mediocre and slightly amusing. This is taking matters to the extreme however, and with a decent poem, a beautiful piece could be made. I think Shakespeare realized this and chose to sacrifice readability for artistic, creative, and of beauty remembrance for his sonnets.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

A Sonnet Of Meaning


Emotions, emotions, what purpose served?
No practical reason of existence.
A perfect person can now be unnerved.
And oh so very hard for resistance.
In crucial moments cause hesitation.
Causing impossible control of thoughts.
Giving way to annoying sensation.
Relief from this weight is what I have sought.

But alas, it is what makes us human.
For without that I ask, what would we be?
Without the ocean, what would be the sand?
A dessert as far as the eye can see.

There would not be moisture, life just as well.
And what would life be then? It would be hell.


Sunday, February 5, 2012

3 poems

"What is ____" Poem

Poetry
is
whatever.
The earth,
the sun,
the ground,
the sky,
the sea,
everything,
nothing,
all, none,
me.


"What happens to..." Poem


What happens to a world one believed in?
So real, no more.
Imaginative until frowned upon.
Washed up, no more.
The magic fades, darken do the shades.
Alas, no more.
And  what then? Gone, just as made.
What does happen to a world once believed in
but not anymore?
No more, no more.


Art poem


A rabbi cloaked in a veil of light
as darkness has enveloped the surroundings.
An angel in the horizon taking flight,
a worrisome face as the journey arises.
Praying, praying. Giving all to all.
The torah, a violin, a goat, a man.
Praying,
resting,
solitude.



Thursday, February 2, 2012

Art and Solitude


Solitude
by Marc Chagall


A rabbi cloaked in a veil of light
as darkness has enveloped the surroundings.
An angel in the horizon taking flight,
a worrisome face as the journey arises.
Praying, praying. Giving all to all.
The torah, a violin, a goat, a man.
Praying,
resting,
solitude.                              -by jake lester



Marc Chagall was born on july 7th 1887. He was born in Russia, and was the eldest of 9 children [http://www.biography.com/people/marc-chagall-9243488]. He studied art from a very young age and when he was 23 (in 1910) he moved to france. When in France, He started painting the pieces that made him famous, such as Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers (1912), I and the Village (1911),Hommage Apollinaire (1911–12), Calvary (1912), The Fiddler(1912), and Paris Through the Window (1913) [http://www.biography.com/people/marc-chagall-9243488]. He often incorporated his religion and home village in his art pieces. In 1914, he had his first personal art gallery (a gallery entirely dedicated to his art) In 1915 he married Bella Rosenfeld, the daughter of a wealthy Vitebsk merchant. She was also in many of his pieces. In 1916 they had a daughter and named he Ida. When world war 2 broke out, Marc and his family went to seek refugee in New York (for MOMA invited them). Bella (Marc's wife) died 4 years after arriving dying in a hospital. He continued making art pieces of his home and his first wife, painting sets, and other related things till the day he died, which was on March 281985.

I chose this piece because it just looked so sad, yet it also reminded me of hope. I was interested on why it may have done that to me, so i looked at it closer. I noticed that in the piece there is a rabbi sitting on the ground in maybe the nighttime. The rabbi looks as if he has an expression of concern on his face, similar in my opinion to the angels. Maybe the rabbi is praying for the angel, who has a tough journey ahead. If you look closely enough at the man's face (and you must include the mouth in the picture), you can see that he is hoping, and possibly praying.

 Also, there is not only black in the background. Nice shades of blue are starting to sprout, most likely giving to a new day. A new day, a sunrise very much symbolizes hope. When looking at the center of the painting, and looking at the buildings covered in darkness, you notice how sad it looks. However, directly to its right are some buildings covered in brightness, making it look a lot more joyous and less sorrowful. I believe that this means that there is hope for a "brighter tomorrow" by definition of how the sun is rising.

Concluding this, Marc Chagall incorporates almost all that is dear to him. He puts his village in the background, puts the torah in it (the red scroll that the rabbi is holding) (Definition: A scroll containing the law of God as revealed to Moses and recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures) [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Torah], which is a major part of his faith, Judaism. He also places a goat in it, which has a very deep significance to Marc because almost all of his works have a goat in it. These three things might be his definition of hope, or of what reminds him of it.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Would be hilarious if it wasn't so dreadful

Wow, I stop at page 260 in Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. The characters are about to watch an air show and nothing important looks like it is going to happen. I write a blog about how my suspicions of ice-nine are true and i take a break from the book. When I come back to page 261 one of the planes have crashed, "Papa's" dead crystalized body has fallen into the sea, and pretty much an apocalypse happens. The whole sea freezes, all the locals have committed suicide because of their playful "Priest," and tornadoes are raging 24/7. The person the main character loves commits suicide 1 week after the tornados start, and meets the mysterious Bokonon. This book has 287 pages and the first 260 pages are an introduction to an exciting story. This book only takes place within a certain amount of months and then it just ends in twenty pages.

Just twenty minutes before writing this i was talking to someone about  how there were some good books with non conclusive endings. I can't believe how true that was. This blog post will be short, because there is just too much for me to summarize within a single post. anyone who wants to question humanity, or why they exist, or about God and religion just read this book. I don't even know what to tell myself in my mind about this book. I give the book a 8/5. in comparison i give the first book of the hunger game series a 4.5/5.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Cats Cradle Suspicions Comfirmed

                                            READ PREVIOUS BLOG BEFORE READING THIS

To start this off, I knew it. Ice-nine has made its appearance, and none too shabby either. In Cats Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, Ice-nine has successfully killed two human beings, on pages 235-239. "Papa" was the president/dictator of san Lorenzo, a poor, sad, third world country, and he was dying. He was about to die of cancer, when he decided to commit suicide. He committed suicide by putting a chip of ice-nine in his mouth. This froze all the moisture in his body, causing almost everything in his body crystalize with ice-nine. Then, the doctor who was treating him went to wash off his hands, which had ice-nine crystals on them. The doctor was bewildered when the water he was washing his hands with froze and he touched it with the tip of his tounge. He died the same way "Papa" did.

The main character witnesses the doctor die, and you hear hints of what the three children did with their crystals. the book is nearly over, and on ice-nine matters, nothing else has happened besides 3 countries having control of it. San Lorenzo, USA, and soviet russia.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Cats Cradle and Ice-nine

Ice-nine. An object that is frequently mentioned in the main character's past with an unrelenting distaste. I believe that this crystal will be very important to the story itself, and the whole world (in the book) quite possibly. Ice-nine is a crystal developed by a deceased father of the secondary characters and to the first nuclear bomb. It freezes any liquid it touches and turns the liquid into more ice-nine. The drastic feature of this crystal is that it never stops, and if unleashed onto a body of water that in someway connects to the ocean, all rivers, the entire sea, and even "rain that drops to the ground" would become ice-nine. It has the capability to become the most malicious weapon of mass destruction. The father, before he died, split up the ice-nine between his three children. The same children whose path intertwines with the mainn charactor's so much, that it leads me to have a faint suspicion that he himself might come to be in possession of some of this dreadful mineral.

The first time ice-nine is mentioned is on pages 42-43, when the main character talks to an associate of "Father" about "Father." The main character is at this time trying to write a documentry on "the human aspect" of creating the nuclear bomb. The associate tell's a story of when a marine general interupted "Father's" lunch break to ask him if there was a way to solidify mud so that the marines could trek across it with more ease and efficiency then wadding through it. This is where "Father" makes up the idea of ice-nine to get the general to go away. After that, "Father" decides to make ice-nine. The associate does not know that "Father" made it. The only people who do know at that current time are his three children who become very important as the story progresses. The main character of the future (the one who is supposedly writing the book, aka the fake author) dedicates two pages talking about how ice-nine is real.

The next time it is mentioned is when the fake author is on a plane to San Lorenzo, and he meets Newton and Angela, the youngest son and eldest daughter of "Father." They talk and chat of thing irreverent to ice-nine, but at the end the author mentions "that the son of a bitch had a piece of ice-nine in his thermos bottle in his luggage, and so did his miserable sister, while under us was God's own amount of water, the Caribbean Sea [pg. 111]." The main charecter does not hate Newton at all. Newton is a friendly 20-something year old midget. He said the words "son of a bitch" most likely in either a playful, or scoldful way (scoldful being because he was so careless with it, the thermos was all that was protecting humanity, and all living things on earth).

The main character would not speak of ice-nine with such anger and passion if it was of no significance. I expect ice-nine to make its grand appearance, threatening all of humanity soon.