To After That

I began reading To After That that and Gladman immediately talks about her books. And in the first twenty pages or so, she is talking about her books and what she decides to write in them. She talks of how she wanted to write a novel or novella and be about three pounds in weight. Her first book was not even close to that measurement, but it was okay for her because she would continue to try to accomplish her goal.          

                I was thinking to myself that maybe To After That is about the other book she wrote, After That because of how she talks about it. Even though they sort of have the same title, but it sounds as if the book was written in dedication to After That.

                Her book talks about her constantly writing. Rather it was in her journal or on a few napkins to jot down whatever came to mind. She would just write to her heart’s desire. But now, that she has someone in her life she has to balance work and her personal life in this book. Currently I am at the part where she is discusses her dislike in cell phones and how parts of the After That book is written about people with their cell phones. She also makes a reference between white people and black people and how they hold their phones. Now that she has made this observation, she can see that they are all the same. I am continuing to read this book, but I still have not discovered the reason as to why we are reading it.

Fictional Stories part. 1

Short stories to me have always had a beginning, middle, and end. When I come to read these short stories in class, I was completely dumbfounded. The short story “The Colonel” begins with a lot of detail. And I like that because I get a feel for the setting and what is going on around the characters. But there were a few things that I did not like about the story. First off, the point of view was in first person, but they mainly focused on the characters in the background, or main the main character which is the Colonel. It explains just about every move that he makes but on the other hand, the fact that it is in first person, makes me question what the author was trying to accomplish at this time. Also the author decides at the end to use “distasteful” metaphors. The author compared the ears in a basket or so of the Colonel’s to looking like half of peaches. I can definitely call that sensory language but it is not anything that I totally agree with because of the feeling it gives be. Visually in my head I am looking at the peaches and how good they smell and look, but I am also getting the taste of dirty dead ears in my mouth which is why I call the metaphor distasteful. 

There were other things in the poem that I realized. I noticed that in the syntax was in very simple form. Almost childlike because it seems as if the author was more focused on the detail given in the story rather than using and difficult words. The grammar and sentence structure was as easy as possible. Also the diction was very simple. Using very simple sentences that describe the Colonel and the setting made it easier to understand. Even though the sentences were very simple in vocabulary and in structure, not once did the author not have the sentences follow each other.

My group and I also decided to read the series of Mystery Stories. They were very confusing and frustrating because to us, it really did not make any logical sense to have an incomplete story. The story had detail. It was very vivid even though majority of them were no more than three sentences. The stories seemed to have given you detail and create a setting. But when you get to the end the story drops cold turkey and it leaves you hanging, but not like they do in those really good novellas. These mystery stories ended very abruptly and then added a fragment sentence to complete the story. I called them fragmented sentences because it was hard to understand if the sentence was suppose to leave you to come up to your own interpretation or to leave you puzzled about what you read. It could easily be both. I tried my hardest to get a better understanding of what was actually being told in the story and what the author was trying to get across to their audience. I personally think it didn’t work, for me, it left me bothered and more confused than when I started to read it.

 But nonetheless all of the mystery poems told a story, gave a background and setting; and it presented a conflict. The conflict could not be deciphered by the author deliberately. I am guessing that the author wanted to find a new way for the audience to interact with their poems, or short stories. Either way, as frustrated as I might seem when I read it, it makes more sense and seems to have more of the creativity within the concept itself rather than just the art of the poem/short story.

The Blood Dazzler

I don't even know where to begin. The book overall was very touching. As I read the remainder of the book, I began picturing my family and myself in the situations that the people in New Orleans were in. How they waited on help to come and it never came made me feel sympathetic. How they were told to evacuate, but they didn't see a point in doing so. When we read the book last class I was amazed at how Patricia Smith decided to start off her book of poems. It was as if she was talking about the people being "owned" or consumed by the Mardi Gras and taking New Orleans for granted and how Hurricane Katrina "owned" or consumed the city itself. As you get farther into the book, the poems seem to pick up speed. They become more vibrant but hostile at the same time. The lost of love ones become more graphic, the emotion of loss become more elaborate and the poems itself become more impersonal or insensitive. It seems as if the blunter the poet becomes the more she wants the reader to understand what was actually happening at that time. While we were eating big hearty meals, people were dying without food. While we were cozy in our beds, children AND babies were being raped at that same moment. While we had our own room, more than just thousands had to share the Super dome and be cramped in uncomfortable places.

I decided to pick at least three poems that I would like to share in class. The first one is What Was the First Sound on page 19. This is the first poem to me that seemed more visual. She uses the color purple to set the tone and describe the sound heard from the hurricane. The bodies that were consumed, she said were filled with water. And immediately I could picture bodies afloat on the water, more plumply in size because of all the water it sucked in. She states in her poem that the trees can hear it. I'm guessing only because she is describing the water splashing up against the tree and hearing the tree break in half as well. All these sounds of disaster causing chaos and depression is followed at the end of her poem by the bodies in the water; ever so silent filled with so much water, but still floating gently.

The second one is What to Tweak. It mainly takes place in an e-mail from Marty Bahamonde and his boss Michael Brown. Then Patricia decided to tweak the e-mail in a sense because the e-mail was sugar-coated and Patricia wanted to explain what really happened. It is a long poem but is in the middle of the book, which I think was a good choice to put it as if it was rising action in a story, which in this case it still is; a story of thousands of people who either lost their lives or cannot get their old ones back. The first stanza sounds disoriented. It sounds like everyone is out of it. So much loss and danger the human mind cannot comprehend reality and what is going on at this particular moment. In the third, it talks about the people being together but there is no food. And although there is water everywhere, there is none to drink. The babies are starving the most but there is nothing anyone can do. At the end of this stanza is Italicizes the dialogue of what Hurricane Katrina can possibly be saying, " I have killed you....I have bled you dry" indicating how much pain that was inflicted on all this people by the hurricane causing desperation, automatically ending in a horrible death. Now with the fourth stanza, it begins with the smell of death. The smell of death is so strong it kills, literally and figuratively speaking. "And up on the roofs of tombs" sticks out to me in that stanza because on the news when this horrible incident occurred, I remember seeing people on roofs of houses, but nothing close to land to be found. Some people where so isolated that the roof would be their tomb, the place where they would lay to die. Another part of the stanza stood out to me, "sinking mothers claw the sky pray the rising river away from their scream". This was indeed horrifying for me because I was able to picture my mother trying to risk her life for mine. And of course no one likes to thing of such vulgar and upsetting things. In the fifth stanza which is probably my favorite is how she refers to former President Bush as "Dubya". I thought it was very creative. She says "wave Dubya down from the sky", to me is sounds like they're trying to get help from him but he is too high or far up in society that the black and poor mean nothing to him, which allegedly what they thought. Following that statement, it talks about the lies that you can occupy the victims with to give them hope and to actually believe that help is actually going to come. Needless to say, from my perspective nothing positive came out of that gesture. It even goes as far as to say in other words we will punish all who have participated in helping the rest of the citizens evacuate or help with food. She ends with part of the letter asking if there is anything that needs to be done or tweaked, just like the letter itself was tweaked.


Last but not least, the reason for the book's title. Siblings on page 75 talks about all the hurricanes and their capabilities but at the end calls Katrina the "blood dazzler" because she is the only one that has caused the most damage and killed more than just thousands and left even more thousands homeless and without families. This also leads me to the other poem "What Betsy Had to Say" which is just being hard on Katrina, like an older sister would do, telling her all you had to do was kiss the land, but instead you wanted to kill everyone, even those that were not in your path. It is in first person describing what the hurricane did and is criticizing all that Katrina did.

In the end, Patricia Smith was indicating that Hurricane Katrina enjoyed doing what she did. She goes on a murder spree and decides to take everyone out. In a way throughout the book, Patricia personifies Hurricane Katrina. It sounds like though all the people had faith, right down to the very end they did not blame God for the cause, instead they cursed Katrina which in a way cannot be personified. By personifying Hurricane Katrina, it gives the poet, the reader, and all the victims someone to blame for destroying all the lives during that time and how heartless "She" was during the incident. It was a very good read; I was touched as a poet and a human being. I can also relate to the victims in a way of how they felt in terms of the government coming to help because I am an African-American who is basically living off the government and sometimes my mother and I do not believe it to be fair of how they treat "us". Even though some of the imagery was distorted visually and uncomfortable, this knowledge of happened for real is very important. It gives those unaware of the situation insight of what the victims endured and how the emotional stress affected the victims and the rest of the nation.