Creative Poetry Project / blog 63

https://youtu.be/WxAJxhshL5A

Poem Analysis of "Poem For My Twentieth Birthday" / blog 62

Lillian Xu

English II

Ms. Guarino

May 26th, 2016

Poem Analysis of “Poem for My Twentieth Birthday”

            Every year people experience a special milestone in their lives which is their birthday. This day marks their journeys of life and represents the growth and maturity they gain during the passing of time. The poem “Poem for My Twentieth Birthday” by Kenneth Koch, is written for his twentieth birthday, describing the thoughts and actions of him, and showing his transformation from a teenager to an adult. This is an important milestone that he must pass in his journey of life. In this poem he wrote about his feelings, emotions and reflection of the past from previous birthdays. The poem shows how the speaker forgot many of the people he met during his life as time went by, also about how he missed his childhood and how suddenly adulthood came upon him which came from his determination to become a man during his childhood.

            As a free verse poem, “Poem For My Twentieth Birthday” has no rhyme scheme or corresponding meters. Different types of figurative languages are frequently used in the poem to give the readers a deeper understanding of it. The poem has three stanzas in total: the first stanza of the poem was a little bit depressing and sad when the speaker was walking through the graveyard, the second stanza of the poem was describing how he thought of his childhood, how he would leave them behind and move forward, and the third stanza of the poem is about his dream of being a man in his future adulthood. The poem "Poem For My Twentieth Birthday" by Kenneth Koch describes the thoughts and actions of the speaker, which shows his transformation from a teenager to an adult on his twentieth birthday.

            In the first stanza, the speaker was “passing through the American graveyard”(Poem, Koch). At first, I was wondering why did he walked through a sad place like that, because people usually go to happy places and have parties with their friends on birthdays, but when I read it for more and more times, I realized that the speaker might be trying to cherish the memory of his childhood and bury his childish innocence. He observed many things that he had not noticed before, such as the tiny dandelions on the grass on the gravestone, which was described as “white on tropical green”(Poem, Koch) in the poem. This detail shows his carefulness after getting older both physically and mentally. He even imagined that the crosses on the gravestones were trying to talk to him as if they were “stuttering” like human, which infers that the speaker thought they were trying to tell him something but were not able to “talk” as they wanted. The speaker used personification here to make the readers feel the resonance with the dead old people. “The years quick focus of faces I do not remember”(Poem, Koch) signifies the long way the speaker had been through. This quote also tells how quickly the time went by in his life, just like the blink of an eye. He had met too many people, and walked by too many people in his life, so he could not remember everyone he had seen in the past.

             “The palm trees [were] stalking like deliberate giants”(Poem, Koch) in the start of the second stanza. Palms were sour when they were not ripe yet, but they became sweeter after they grew riper. This is a similar progress of human growth too. When kids were young, they were often naughty and not mature, and they were often hard to communicate with. After they grew older, they would usually became more understanding and tolerant, which easier for others to communicate with. The speaker of the poem used personification and simile to compare the palm trees to “deliberate giants” “stalking” him. It is showing the tree’s wisdom and matureness comparing to the speaker’s immaturity and youth. When the speaker was walking on the street, the palm trees made him felt like adults staring at him, which might be reminding him his childhood memories when he was young. His tears started to come up to the rim of his eyes while recalling, which made him “seen through a screen of water”(Poem, Koch). Even if the childhood memories are hard to leave behind, the speaker had still made up his mind to go forward.

            The author expressed his determination of what he wants to be in the future in the third stanza. Even if his adulthood had came quicker than what he expected (“thrust into the adult and actual”), he still expected himself to do more actual things (“expected to perform the action”), and not to think too much about anything other than the reality. There must have been an idol that he wanted to be while he was younger, so he was then determining to be the man in his childhood dream (“the man standing upright in the dream”). As what the speaker wrote in his poem, he wanted to be a realist rather than an idealist. It is a significant change from a teenager to an adult, because younger kids were usually thinking about unrealistic stuff and imagining for many things, while adults were always thinking about real life problems like jobs and money because they have different aspects of reading their lives. When the speaker was thinking about his future, he was pumped with hope and energy, determined to become a better person, which significantly shows his change made by his growth.

            We are all going to be twenty years old when we grow up. We are going to be forty, sixty, eighty, and possibly die after that. Our childhood memories could be fading, our childhood innocence might disappear, but our mindset will always stay with us. The poem “Poem For My Twentieth Birthday” demonstrates the speaker’s experience of growing up from a teenage boy to a young man who needs to take care of and be responsible for himself. Not only for the speaker of the poem, all of us are going to experience the growth in our lives, and walk pass the milestones one after another. We are going to have the different tastes of our lives, no matter if they are sweet or bitter.

Poem Recitation / blog 57

https://youtu.be/6SqzrXzIwhk

Thesis for Poem Analysis / blog 61

The poem "Poem For My Twentieth Birthday" by Kenneth Koch describes the thoughts and actions of the speaker, which shows his transformation from a teenager to an adult on his twentieth birthday.

Poem Analysis Peer Review (Nancy) / blog 60

What went well:

Nancy's poem analysis is written in an organized structure, with an introduction paragraph, three body paragraphs and a conclusion paragraph. There's an topic sentence in each paragraph that clearly explains the main idea of it, and the analysis part (evidences and opinions) are logically organized. I like the hook in the start of the introduction paragraph “Have you ever learned about the magic of the nature? Have you ever been a friend with a tree? A tree may be able to be your soulmate”, because I have never imagine to have a soulmate like a tree, and I have never expected a tree to talk and share ideas with me. She successfully used the hook to catch my attention, and gives me the desire to read the rest of the paper. In the analysis paragraphs, she organised them logically with the meaning of the poem in the first body paragraph, and how the form of the poem helps understanding in the next two paragraphs. She briefly talks about the meaning of content, and spends more words on the literary techniques the poet used in the poem. She did a really good job on listing the figurative languages used in the poem. Every sentence in the paper is clear to read and understand for me, and I really appreciate the organization. Her concluding paragraph is paraphrasing the whole paper.

Even Better If:

The paper is in a very organised structure, and in my opinion it will even be better if she could add some more analysis about the meaning of the poem and to have more connection between the figurative languages and the meaning of the poem. I think it is important to let the readers of the paper know what the poem is about, and how did the speaker used writing techniques to express it, rather than how well the figurative languages were used in the poem. It is an analysis of the meaning of the poem and not simply just listing the techniques. It might be better to have a brief summary of the poem in the first body paragraph, telling the readers what is going on, and then some deeper explanation of what the author want to express based on your own understanding after reading it for a lot of times. In the second last paragraph, she said that “ In the last stanza, the rhyme scheme is the "er" sound”. I think “rhyming” is a better word choice than “rhyme scheme” in this sentence, because a rhyme scheme is a pattern of rhyming words at the end of each sentence. I think Nancy could also work on her conclusions too, because it seems to be only paraphrasing the paper. It might be better if she could have some opinions about the poem and the meaning of it, and make some connection between the poem and some wider things (such as the world). Also just a tiny detail, she could work on her ending sentences in the end of each paragraph to make a smoother transition between different topics and ideas. She doesn't have any direct quote in this paper, and I think using those will help the reader to understand the meaning a lot.

Theater Review / blog 59

Lillian Xu

English II

Ms. Guarino

May 22^nd, 2016

Theater Review

                This Friday me and my friends went to the spring drama “Comedy Tonight”. I really enjoyed the play while watching, because the light effects and the settings of each scenes were set perfectly fitting. In this drama performance, every scene is a completely different and individual story, and I have noticed that many people were playing multiple roles in these scenes. In every different scene, people needed to change their clothing, their make up, their hair styles, and even their gender. I really like the gender changing of actors, because we don’t usually see these boys wearing like that in real life, and it really made the audiences laugh. In my opinion, boys playing female characters and wearing female costumes and wigs is not an embarrassing thing to do, because it shows how good you are acting when you are in a role that is completely different from yourself. We should all give great applauses to those courageous boys. And for the girls playing male roles, we should all give them applauses too because it is hard for pretty girls to draw beards in front of this many people, and we should also clap for them.

               I like the part where William was acting as Britney Spears singing in the middle and other girls were dancing beside him, because I am a fan of Britney (and he acted really well). I think one of the best scenes is “John Jiang, the Latte Boy”, because he was singing so good in that scene, and I can easily understand every single line in his part. I can tell that he had spent a long time memorizing these and practicing, because his singing was so perfect. I like the “Popular” scene too, because it makes the audiences really high to see a boy putting on make ups and suddenly transfer into another gender. Lexi did a really good job singing there, because she had to sing and put make ups on William’s face at the same time, which makes it so much harder to do. I like “Morning Meeting Gone Wrong” the best, because People acted just like those teachers behave in real life. The actors spent so much effort on their ways of talking, appearances, facial expressions and their body languages. The actors acting Ms. Minahan, Mr. Dykeman and Ms. Anderson were exactly the same as the real characters. They talked in the ways that the teachers talk in real life, and they were even wearing the same clothing and putting on wigs. I really appreciate the entire show, because everyone was playing outstandingly and fabulously. They made me laugh so hard and applause so hard.

Poem Analysis / blog 58

Lillian Xu

English II

Ms. Guarino

May 20^th, 2016

Poem Analysis of Poem for My Twentieth Birthday

            On every year people have experienced in their lives stands a milestone in their heart, representing the growth, maturity and the passing of time. The poem Poem for My Twentieth Birthday by Kenneth Koch is written for his twentieth birthday, which is an important milestone standing in his journey of life. In this poem he wrote about his feelings, emotions and reflection of the past on this special day. The poem showed how the speaker forgot many people during the past years, how he was missing his childhood, how suddenly he thrust into the adulthood, and his determination of being a man in his childhood dream. The poem has three stanzas in total: the first stanza of the poem was a little bit of depressing and sad when the speaker was walking through the graveyard, the second stanza of the poem was describing how he thought of his childhood, how he would leave them behind and move forward, and the third stanza of the poem is about his determination of behavior in his future adulthood. This poem describes the mental and physical movements of the speaker transforming from a teenager to an adult on his twentieth birthday.

            In the first stanza, the speaker was “passing through the American graveyard”(Poem, Koch). At first, I was wondering why did he walked through a sad place like that, because people usually go to happy places and have parties with their friends on birthdays, but when I read it for more and more times, I realized that the speaker might be trying to cherish the memory of his childhood and bury his childish innocence. He observed many things that he had not noticed before, such as the tiny flowers and dandelions on the grass, which was described as “white on tropical green”(Poem, Koch) in the poem. This detail showed his carefulness after getting older both physically and mentally. “The years quick focus of faces I do not remember”(Poem, Koch) signifies the long way the speaker had been through. He had met too many people, and walked by too many passengers in his life, so he could not remember everyone he had seen in the past. This quote also tells how quickly the time went by, just like the blink of an eye.

             “The palm trees stalking like deliberate giants”(Poem, Koch) in the start of the second stanza. Palms were sour when they were not ripe yet, but they became sweeter after they grew riper. This is a similar progress of human growth too, when kids were young, they were often naughty and not mature, and they were often hard to communicate with. After they grew older, they would usually became more understanding and tolerant, which easier for others to communicate with. When the speaker was walking on the street, the palm trees made him felt like adults staring at him, which reminded him of his birthday and his childhood memories when he was not yet a mature person. His tears then came up to the rim of his eyes while thinking all those.

            The author expressed his determination of how he wants to be in the future in the third stanza. Even if his adulthood had came quicker than what he expected (“thrust into the adult and actual”), he still expected himself to do more actual things (“expected to perform the action”), and not to think too much about anything other than the facts. There must be an idol that he wanted to be while he was young, so he was then determining to be the man in his childhood dream (“the man standing upright in the dream”). As what the speaker wrote in his poem, he wanted to be a realist rather than an idealist. It is a significant change from a teenager to an adult, because younger kids were usually thinking about unrealistic stuff and imagining for many things, while adults were always thinking about real life problems like jobs and money because they have different aspects of reading their lives.

            This poem was written as a free verse poem, so there is no rhyme scheme or corresponding meters. It has three stanzas and 10 lines in total. Figurative language was used in some of the lines to give the readers a deeper understanding of the poem. The speaker used personification in the second line of the first stanza; the crosses were “stuttering” like human, which infers that the crosses on the cemetery were trying to say something but were not able to “talk” as they wanted. He also used personification in the first line of the second paragraph, comparing palm trees to deliberate giants “stalking” him. It is showing that the trees were older and more mature than the speaker of the poem when it was his twentieth birthday, and it is showing the tree’s wisdom comparing to the speaker’s immaturity. The speaker had put a lot of his emotions in it by describing the environment and his mental movements. When he was in the graveyards, he was definitely feeling sad about those people buried in there and his childhood buried since that time. On the street while having the palm trees beside him, he thought about his childhood and shown how difficult it was to leave those all behind. When he was thinking about his future in the third stanza, he was pumped with hope and energy, determined to become a better person.