For my creative piece, I decided to build a sentence using 10 random words that I found in each text. The theme of my anthology is based on women’s restrictive role in society, so I decided to restrict my writing by creating a sentence based only on the ten words that I chose from each text.

• Nightwood (page 49):

Powerful, calm, stubborn Robin; she strangely conceived her child alone.

• Bewitched (page 642):

Manago, spectral monster, convinced Toyo-o to pledge eternal love.

• Candide (page 89):

Cunegonde: her part was to marry, have children, wash dishes.

• Sonnet “445”:

They could easily shut wise girl in prose for treason.

• The Laugh of the Medusa (page 876):

And time again, women write, invent, inscribe, beautiful unacknowledged production.

       While I was reading Notebook of a Return to a Native Land, I found pages 7-8 very difficult to understand. It was hard to keep track of what was going on. For instance, page 7 begins by mentioning the months as they pass by, but after November it starts talking thoroughly about Christmas, a holiday instead of mentioning the month of December. This disruption in the sentence structure forced me to reread it and make sure that I didn’t miss anything. I also found the ending of page 7 and the beginning of page 8 very difficult to understand because it was a very long and continuous sentence. I had trouble identifying what the sentence was about. For example, the sentence begins by talking about Christmas Day and then suddenly it starts talking about a Church. According to the text, “It had agoraphobia, Christmas did. What it wanted was a whole day of bustling, preparing, a cooking and cleaning spree, endless jitters, about-not-having-enough, about-running-short, about-getting-bored, then at evening an unimposing little church, which would benevolently make room for laughter, the whispers, the secrets, the love talk, the gossip…” (7). It was hard to figure out whether the sentence was focusing on the Church or on the events that occurred during the day. Overall, in order to comprehend the passage, I had to reread it over and over again so that I could make sense of what I was reading. I also had to search up the definitions of some of the words to better understand the passage.

    After a poem is written, the poet loses complete control of it and is no longer responsible for the poem that they have written. Instead, responsibility is transferred to the reader. The reader decides what to do with what they read and how to interpret what they read. For example, when Emily Dickinson died, and people were able to read her poems, she lost control of  the way that her poems were interpreted, edited, and published. Her sister, Lavinia, found almost two thousand poems written and stashed away by Emily Dickinson. After reading the poems, Lavinia decided to take the task to edit and organize them for publication. Other authors like Thomas W. Higginson also decided to edit and publish her poems. According to the text “Emily Dickinson”, “Higginson was one of the first to publish volumes of Dickinson’s poetry, editing the work to make it seem as conventional as he could.” Higginson took possession of Emily Dickinson’s poems and translated it based on his own interpretation of it. He also took the liberty “to make it seem as conventional as he could” because he thought that the “world would not appreciate them” if he didn’t try to make them seem conventional. Another example that proves that a writer loses control and responsibility of their poems once they are written, is the following quote by Susan Howe: “What I put into words is no longer my possession. Possibility has opened. The future will forget, erase, or recollect and deconstruct every poem.” Meaning that after a poem is written, it is up to the reader whether the poem will be forgotten, erased or recollected and deconstructed. Howe also states, “There is a mystic separation between poetic vision and ordinary living.” Meaning that the reader can interpret the poem in a way that may not have been intended by the writer. Hence, once a poem is written, responsibility is transferred to the reader, who decides what to do with what they have read and how to interpret the reading.

The main difference between a parody and a satire is that a parody is imitative work that uses exaggeration to make fun of a particular subject, whereas a satire is often used to expose social issues by criticizing people’s actions or ideas with the use of humor, irony, and exaggeration. An example of a satire is “Candide: Or, Optimism” by Voltaire. Voltaire criticizes Pangloss’ excessive optimism and his belief that “all things are arranged for the best” (12). For instance, Pangloss and Candide are both saved by Jacques the Anabaptist, but when Jacques desperately needs their help, Pangloss prevents Candide from saving him because he believes that “all things are arranged for the best” and that “Lisbon harbour was built expressly so that this Anabaptist should one day drown in it” (13). Candide is criticizing and ridiculing Pangloss’ optimism and belief that “all is for the best” by showing how this belief prevented Candide from saving someone else’s life. The irony in this scene is that Jacques had previously saved the lives of Candide and Pangloss without even thinking about it. On the other hand, an example of a parody is the “Scary Movie”  film series because this film series makes fun of different horror movies like The Exorcist, Scream, Saw, and many more by imitating them. Another example of a parody is the Austin Powers movies that imitates and makes fun of the James Bond movies. Police Academy is another example of  a parody because it imitates and makes fun of police movies of the 1980’s.