Bartleby's Facebook

Bartleby is a lonely person who thinks he does not need anyone; he ignores all his friends’ requests. He must have had terrible experience with life; he believes he has no reason to continue. Slowly he loses interest in everything, everyone and himself.

Bartlby's facebook: No picture.
Bartelby feels it's unnecessary to reveal himself to anyone.
Bartleby's background information:
Basic Information
Birthday: prefers not to celebrate it.
Relationship status: single.
Interested in: No one, life is a pain.
Political views: Politics never brought anything good to the country.

Bartleby has a hard time opening up to other people.

Personal Information:
Activities: staring at the computer screen.
Interests: Prefers not to get involved in anything, how is it going to change my life?
Favorite music: the humming of the computer.
Favorite TV shows: prefer not to watch TV, why is TV so fascinating? Why not real life?
Favorite books: Prefer not to read. What do books bring into the world, anyway??

Education and Work:
No school.

Status Updates:

Bartleby joined the Dead Letter Doom group.
Bartleby is getting depressed.
Bartleby is not a member of Dead Letter Doom anymore.
Bartleby is depressed.
Bartleby joined Wall Street.
Bartleby is ignoring the friend requests from Nippers, Turkey, and Ginger Nut.
Bartleby prefers not to have friends.
Bartleby is getting tired of Wall Street.
Bartleby is getting tired of work.
Bartleby is staring at the computer screen as if hypnotized by it.
Bartleby prefers not to go anywhere.
Bartleby joined the Dead Letter Doom group again.
Bartleby prefers not to eat anymore.
Bartleby has no more motivation to keep writing.
Bartleby is losing interest in everything.
Bartleby prefers not to do this anymore.
Bartleby is going to end this facebook account.

Final Draft?

First Fight. Then Fiddle. By Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks uses the structure of a petrarchan sonnet, “a sonnet form that divides the poem into one section of eight lines and a second section of six lines”, with an unexpected twist to convey a message; to “First fight. Then fiddle”. Her message is simple but its conveyed in a very original manner that it stands out and grabs your attention. Brooks starts her poem with fiddling and then abruptly takes a turn into the conflict of the poem.

Brooks’s poem does not follow the pattern she wants the audience to follow, which really has the reader following every line closely for examination. The title and the very first line tells what message she clearly wants the readers to hold on to; “First Fight. Then fiddle.” As one continues reading the poem, one may wonder if she is really trying to state; to fiddle and then fight, the obvious pattern the poem is taking after all. The first eight lines, Brooks is obviously fiddling, “Ply the slipping string/ With Feathery sorcery; muzzle the note/With hurting love; the music that they wrote/ Bewitch, bewilder…” Then at line nine she takes a sharp turn, introducing the conflict to us finally, the conflict which should have been introduced in the beginning, to be aligned with the title and the first line of the poem.

The theme to this poem is the war and peace. Playing the violin is the peace the author tries to keep through winning the war. The beginning of the poem is fiddling but line seven and eight “Be remote/A while from the malice and from murdering.” seems to suggest that the fiddling can not be maintained for long but only for “a while” until the time to continue the war.

The time this poem was written, 1949, was not too long after the World War II. World War I was considered at the time to be “the war to end all wars” but evidently that was not the case, World War II followed and not to mention other depressions occurred, such as the stock market crash, where people were fighting for a shelter and food to live for another day. The point is that Brooks knows that a war might solve one conflict but soon another problem occurs and another war is necessary. Her poem says that one can suppress from the war that will ensue sooner or later only for “a while” so in that way she could be saying fiddle while you can.

Line eleven states, “Rise bloody, maybe not too late/For having first to civilize a space/Wherein to play your violin with grace.” Brooks suggests that maybe it’s “not too late” to realize and overcome the problems that are always looming around to threaten the peace of the violin. When the violin is being described, “Devote/The bow of silks and honey,” it is being used as a metaphor for civilization. The violin is being described as a brittle instrument, with “slipping string” that needs to be carefully played and society is also held on by some sort of balance that could easily be tilted with one end fighting for peace and love and the other end witnessing the brutality of war. The violin which Brooks describes as a precious and delicate thing that needs to be well taken care of is much like civilization.

Why would Brooks discuss first music and then conflict? For one thing it does grab our focus and attention. If the poem had started out with the conflict first and then followed by the fiddling, would the reader have thought so much as to what deeper meaning could she have been trying to make other then saying fight your wars first and then fiddle? Most likely it would have been clear she was following a very popular way of conveying her opinions. Another thing she could have been deducing is that fiddling first does not work out; the fiddling would only be disrupted by problems if we do not solve them first, if we do not fight our battles before claiming the prize of a safe and peaceful place to play the violin. Her poem starts with fiddling and then sharply introducing the conflict and then leaves us with the hope to return to the violin after the worst is over.

Brooks uses a wide range of poetry devices, from metaphor, imagery to alliteration, the repetition of the initial consonant sounds. “First Fight. Then Fiddle…slipping string” are such examples of alliteration, using this it emphasizes these words and sticks to the readers memory, making them important. Imagery, language that evokes sensory images, can be found all throughout the poem. She uses words like “hurting love”, “silks”, and “malice” and so on, these evoke emotions and feelings and sensations that, as a reader could relate to which gives the poem some depth. The tone of the poem is serious to the very last line, with incredible usage of the masculine rhymes which gives a musical scheme that works only too well with the musical instrument. The effect of her twists and turns throughout this poem is undeniable and unquestionably an original way to make her point about war and peace and how they go hand in hand, just like her structured poem. Reading the poem with the music described first and then conflict conveys the same message as if it were to be read with conflict appearing first and then the music. The last effect it leaves on a reader is where the difference occurs.

First Fight. Then Fiddle. By Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendoyln Brooks uses the structure of a petrarchan sonnet, “a sonnet form that divides the poem into one section of eight lines and a second section of six lines”, with an unexpected twist to convey a message, to “First fight. Then fiddle”. Her message is simple but it’s conveyed in a very original way that it stands out and grabs your attention. Brooks starts her poem with fiddling and then suddenly takes a turn into the conflict of the poem.

Brooks’s poem does not follow the pattern she wants the audience to follow, which really has the reader following every line closely for examination. The title and the very first line tells what message she clearly wants us, the readers, to hold on to; “First Fight. Then fiddle.” But as you continue reading the poem, you wonder if she really is just trying to tell us to fiddle and then fight, the obvious pattern the poem is taking after all. The first eight lines, Brooks is obviously fiddling, “Ply the slipping string/ With Feathery sorcery; muzzle the note/With hurting love; the music that they wrote/ Bewitch, bewilder…” Then at line nine she takes a sharp turn, introducing the conflict to us finally.

The theme to this poem is the war and peace. Playing the violin is the peace the author tries to keep through winning the war. The beginning of the poem is fiddling but line 7 and 8 “Be remote/A while from the malice and from murdering.” seems to suggest that the fiddling can not be maintained for long but only for “a while” until the time to continue the war.

The time this poem was written, 1949, wasn’t too long after the World War II. World War I was considered at the time to be “the war to end all wars” but evidently that was not the case, World War II followed and not to mention other depressions occurred, such as the stock market crash, where people were fighting for a shelter and food to live for another day. The point is that Brooks knows that a war might solve one conflict but soon another problem occurs and another war is necessary, literally and figuratively. Her poem says that you can suppress from the war that will ensue sooner or later only for “a while” so in that way she could possibly be saying fiddle while you can.

Line 11, “Rise bloody, maybe not too late/For having first to civilize a space/Wherein to play your violin with grace.” Brooks suggests that maybe it’s “not too late” to realize and overcome the problems that are always looming around to threaten the peace of the violin. When the violin is being described, “Devote/The bow of silks and honey,” it is being used as a metaphor for civilization. The violin is being described as a brittle instrument, with “slipping string” that needs to be carefully played and society is also held on by some sort of balance that could easily be tilted with one end fighting for peace and love and the other end witnessing the brutality of war. The violin which Brooks describes as a precious and delicate thing that needs to be well taken care of much like civilization.

But why did Brooks discuss first music and then conflict? For one thing it does grab our focus and thoughts. If the poem had started out with the conflict first and then followed by the fiddling, would we have thought so much as to what deeper meaning could she been trying to make other then saying fight your wars first and then fiddle? Probably not, well at least that is not where my thoughts would lead to. Another thing she could have been deducing is that fiddling first does not work out; the fiddling would only be disrupted by problems if we do not solve them first, if we do not fight our battles before claiming the prize of a safe and peaceful place to play the violin. Her poem starts with fiddling and then sharply introducing the conflict and then leaves us with the hope to return to the violin after the worst is over.

Brooks uses a wide range of poetry devices, from metaphor, imagery to alliteration, the repetition of the initial consonant sounds. “First Fight. Then Fiddle…slipping string” are such examples of alliteration, using this it emphasizes these words and sticks to the readers memory, making them important. Imagery, language that evokes sensory images, can be found all throughout the poem. She uses words like “hurting love”, “silks”, and “malice” and so on, these evoke emotions and feelings and sensations that you as a reader could relate to which gives the poem some depth. The tone of the poem is serious to the very last line, with incredible usage of the masculine rhymes which gives a musical scheme that works only too well with the musical instrument. The effect of her twists and turns throughout this poem is undeniable and unquestionably an original way to make her point about war and peace and how they go hand in hand, just like her structured poem. Reading the poem with the music described first and then conflict conveys the same message as if it were to be read with conflict appearing first and then the music. The last effect it leaves on a reader is where the difference occurs.

Poetry or not?

Ezra Pound’s poem In a Station of the Metro is indeed poetry no matter how short it is. There is no rule that limits to how short or long a poem has to be to be put into the category of poetry. Poetry creates an image and has a point, though sometimes it’s not crystal clear of what that point is and sometimes it has multiple points that are easily received. So the very short poem, In a Station in the Metro, with its two brief lines creates a vivid image and is very much to the point, Pound even uses an analogy to deepen that image. She uses words full of meaning such as; apparition meaning “a ghostly figure or act of appearing” the word could mean something different to each person. To me the word apparition in the context of the poem simply means acknowledging that there is a crowd but you can’t see each and every face and make distinctions. If I were to be in a station of the metro, I would perceive the crowd as a whole, which brings me to Pound’s analogy of the faces of the crowd to petals, which does not take the crowd as a whole, instead it makes you realize there are distinctions in every face of the crowd, since petals vary in color and sizes. So petals symbolize faces and a bough, “a large branch of a tree”, symbolizes the crowd, symbolism plays a big role in this poem. These points can be argued and discussed; so many discussions and conclusions can be made from these two lines that it has to be regarded as poetry.
Pound uses crowd and bough, a near rhyme- assonance where a vowel is the same but it does not succeed consonants, used in poems all the time.

Casabianca

1. Felicia Dorothea Hemans’ poem Casabianca describes how the flames surround the boy and the ship. Hemans describes the fire in almost every other stanza. Hemans also describes the boy as a heroic figure but emphasizing that he is but a child yet he is more. Hemans describes the persistence of the boy in not leaving until he has heard his father telling him to go, over and over again when he is crying out to his father. In the last two stanzas, Hemans gave the wind a humanlike quality in asking where the boy was and finding him perished.

2. In the poem Casabianca, the flames are more dissolved into the background but the flames are what gives the poem its flow and image. In the beginning, the flames are more prominent, all around the deck with the dead, but the boy is still there, having not fled, making him out to be a courageous figure. So as the fire is burning, the boy is insistent to have his father tell him to leave, but he never will hear him, because he’s long been unconscious. This gives the image that the boy is being obedient, dutiful and faithful to his father, enduring the danger all around him, until he himself is perished in the same flames.
Casabianca’s bravery is mentioned a number of times as well. When he was standing his ground, I’m assuming he was fighting the urge to run due to his duty towards his father. Or he could have simply been too afraid to move and needed some support from his father, to hear his strong voice so he could do what he could not do without him. But Hemans describes his strength through strong words and making a simile, for example: “yet beautiful and bright he stood, as born to rule the storm;” which is in fact impossible to do, which brings me back to the conclusion that the boy was being faithful to his father.