My Brother, The Artist, At Seven

is the title of the poem, by Richard Levine, which I have chosen. Of all the poems I looked through for Poetry Out Loud, many were interesting and well written, and many more were not. However, none of them quite connected the way this poem did. So as to not confuse the reader, here's the poem in its entirety:

As a boy he played alone in the fields   

behind our block, six frame houses   

holding six immigrant families,   

the parents speaking only gibberish   

to their neighbors. Without the kids   

they couldn't say "Good morning" and be   

understood. Little wonder   

he learned early to speak to himself,   

to tell no one what truly mattered.   

How much can matter to a kid   

of seven? Everything. The whole world   

can be his. Just after dawn he sneaks   

out to hide in the wild, bleached grasses   

of August and pretends he's grown up,   

someone complete in himself without   

the need for anyone, a warrior   

from the ancient places our fathers   

fled years before, those magic places:   

Kiev, Odessa, the Crimea,   

Port Said, Alexandria, Lisbon,   

the Canaries, Caracas, Galveston.   

In the damp grass he recites the names   

over and over in a hushed voice   

while the sun climbs into the locust tree   

to waken the houses. The husbands leave   

for work, the women return to bed, the kids   

bend to porridge and milk. He advances   

slowly, eyes fixed, an animal or a god,   

while beneath him the earth holds its breath.

 

     It's a bit lengthy, which is why I initially wasn't sure whether I wanted to read it, but it strikes a deep chord 

with me. Where I originally lived, we had a large (or so it seemed when I was five or six, anyway) backyard 

built on a gently sloping hill, with a small lawn and a gazebo at the bottom. This backyard was the subject of 

the many adventures my brother and I conducted exploring this strange, alien landscape. We had named almost 

every conceivable part of the landscape: the small downhill between the trees was a waterfall, the gazebo had a 

giant oracular snake inside, the small stone chair was a portal to another world, the sandy, secluded, part of the 

hill was a cliff prone to rockslides, the climbing tree granted powers to us small children, and the front yard was 

in reality a massive maze filled with strange creatures. We would craft elaborate morality plays in this landscape, 

mostly concerning random elements of whatever we had read or seen recently. And so the boy in the poem who 

the author describes with such fondness could really be myself, looking back on my childhood in the backyard.

     Another element of the poem which I felt fondness for were the lines about the immigrant families and their

neighbors. Like the poem's author, my parents immigrated, in his case from Russia, in mine from Iran, but I have

had the experience of having to translate what my parents heard into names that others understand enough times 

that it has become almost whimsical for me. These shared experiences form the reason why I have chosen "My 

Brother, the Artist, at Seven" for Poetry Out Loud.

Poetry Out Loud

Medusa, by Louise Bogan
Anne Rutledge, by Edgar Lee Masters
It was not Death, for I stood up, by Emily Dickinson
In Praise of Pain, by Heath McHugh
Famous, by Naomi Shihab Nye
Fairy-tale Logic, by A.E. Stallings
My Brother, the Artist, at Seven, by Philip Levine

Out of these poems, I liked "Fairy-tale logic," "It was not Death, for I stood up," "in Praise of Pain,"  "Famous," and "My Brother, the Artist, at Seven." I liked these as they communicated a unique emotional meaning that I could relate to myself.


I did not like "Medusa," or "London" as they seemed overly archaic, or "Anne Rutledge," as I thought it tried to be too patriotic.

Out of these, I would probably choose My Brother, the Aritst, at Seven, as it was most interesting to me and was long enough that I would consider reciting it. Personally, this poem reminded my of time in my backyard, exploring imaginary worlds. The imagery of immigrants speaking gibberish without their children to translate also rings especially in my memory.

Looking at the audience and avoiding over-acting will probably be fairly easy for me, as my eyes tend to wander naturally when I am speaking, and because hand motions are not something I use subconsciously.

Proceeding at a natural and fitting pace may be difficult for me, as I tend to speak quickly. Also, relaxing and enjoying the poem may also be hard, because I become nervous fairly easily.

I watched Danse Russe, recited by William Farley, and was impressed by his facial expression, as it matched the tone of the poem extremely well, as well as his occasional but fleeting use of gesture, which provided accentuation without overdramatising the poem.
I also watched I Am Waiting, recited by Madison Niermeyer. The recitation was successful in large part because the reciter's tone maintained a balance between ironic and expressive.


     I think I will choose to recite My brother, the artist, at seven, and am also looking forward to the competition and hearing the poems everyone has chosen. I chose my poem because of its meaning to myself, length, and vivid imagery. As for the website where I found it, I found it well-designed and easy to navigate, thankfully. A descriptor of the poems by category or subject matter may have helped with finding a poem, however.


 - Sherwin

The Most Important Skill

     Arguably the most important skill I have learned in the first quarter of English came from the unit on writing a five-part-paragraph analyzing To Kill A Mockingbird, which involved writing, editing, and listening to the paragraphs. This unit came and went in October but the techniques learned have not. Not only is knowing the format itself important, but the editing techniques and writing styles are equally so.

     By simple merit of being the standard short-paragraph form, knowing how to write a five-part-paragraph is a necessary. However, in all expository writing, some variation on concrete details and commentary will pop up. Therefore, understanding how to utilize these, how to intersperse your concrete details from the entire text, how to comment without summarizing, and how to make both build upon the theme, is crucial in order to write about literature.

     Another hugely important aspect of learning how to write a five part paragraph was learning how to critique and edit the paragraphs of others as well as one's own. Although it initially appears short and simple, because of its size, a five-part-paragraph must be streamlined, with every idiom, device, and word contributing to its overall theme. One must first understand in detail all of the elements in the writing in order to critique it, and even then, to forge a better paragraph, one must be able to look critically at their creation and say, "A little more to the left."


One side effect of being surrounded by all of the interpretations of To Kill a Mockingbird within the five-part-paragraphs is that I now view each book I read as a story with an innate meaning to life as well as a tale. When I read The Count of Monte Cristo, for example, and began wondering how on earth the reader was intended to sympathize with the seemingly deranged Count, I realized that, rather than the Count, it was the message about revenge that was important in the novel. In short, through my study of five-part-paragraphs, I have grown as a writer and a reader.

Lobsters

     One idea from the classroom discussion of "Lobsters," by Howard Nemerov that interested me was the comparison of the lobsters to philosophers in their ivory towers. The comparison is not so far-fetched. Like philosophers, lobsters appear from the outside to be entirely shut off from the outside world in a dreamlike state, crawling through time with no apparent regard for the rest of the world. Similarly, philosophers might also appear to an observer to be nothing more than extremely lazy humans. However, both are more than daydreamers, the lobsters with their "imperial claws" and "beauty of strangeness," the philosophers with their thoughts and ideas.

      It would be an understatement to say that this influenced my view of the poem. I started to realize that the lobsters themselves were more than victims, and that the author was saying a bit more than an animal-rights statement. Rather, I began grasping at the deeper ideas of the poem, like death, ignorance, and the cyclic nature of the world. The comparison of lobsters to philosophers opened up my eyes to the greater depths of the poem.

Five Part Paragraphs

     To write a quality 5-part-paragraph, a writer needs to do many things. Two of the most important, and most commonly forgotten, are to really think about the topic of the paragraph and to pay attention to the rubric. Many of the paragraphs that have been read in class suffer because the topic of the paragraph is too broad, the concrete details do not relate to the topic sentence, or the topic does not present enough material to work with. All of these problems relate to an insufficient amount of thought being put into the creation of the topic. Many people try to write based on the first topic that comes into their head. Although occasionally this may be effective, most often the best idea is not the first one, but the third, fifth, or even eighth topic that they think of. In addition to this, many of the remaining errors simply relate to the rubric itself. Some people forget a transition, or add a bit of extra information in their conclusion, or have too much commentary. All of these problems can be solved by simply checking the paragraph against the checklist for disparities. The errors become simple to fix in this way.

     In my own case, I probably need to check my paragraph for simple errors a bit more as well as ensure that my topic is completely cohesive. At first, my current 5-part-paragraph jumped between several points sporadically, not emphasizing any of them. In the future, I must try and keep my paragraph on a single, apparent idea, therefore bypassing this problem. Also, several of the problems with my paragraph, such as a few punctuation errors, could have been fixed just by checking the paragraph thoroughly. These errors are really unnecessary. With a few careful changes, I can significantly improve my 5-part-paragraph.

High Diction

     This fine morning, I departed English class promptly and began descending the stairs towards my mathematics class. As I walked, the thronging mass divided itself into tributaries and I endeavored to ensure that I had discovered the correct one. Eventually, the lethargic crowd awoke and sorted themselves into their respective destinations. I entered my classroom, the second to arrive, and immediately began transcribing a copy of the night's assignment. Soon, the rest of the class entered and seated themselves in their desks, and the lesson commenced

     The lecture shed light on the division of polynomials, and stratagems to use when pursuing the quotient, such as synthetic division. Although dull at times, I ensured that my eyes remained focused so as to be prepared for the toil that was to come. After a half-hour of explanation, the toil in question began. I am now led to believe that sadists locked up in some godforsaken asylum were the authors of my textbook, as the difficulty of two of the problems bordered on the ridiculous. Although the concept that these writers sought to explain was simple in nature, they attempted to include every possible complexity. Soon, the class ended and I was forced to complete the assignment elsewhere.

Tides

A duet I wrote over the summer and only got around to uploading now. I'm sorry about the MIDI quality and editing. Blame laziness. Oh, and if someone knows how to embed YouTube videos, please say so.