You and Me

 

I am scared, I’m alone,

what’s this place? I cant escape,

I am broken, I’m distorted,

it’s a lost that you have cost,

 

I have lost what once I loved,

but it’s a pain I have to gain,

they said time will heal this wound,

but can you heal? That once was real,

 

Picture this, you and me,

us together and forever,

what a lie that you told me,

and like a fool, I believed,

 

You made a fool of me,

when I begged you not to leave,

one whole year, that’s how long it took,

to get me hanging off your hook,

 

Three months on, you wrote me a letter,

said we were better together,

fooled me once, fine! that’s on me,

but do it again? what a shame on you.

 

 

It is safe to say that Notebook of a return to the native land by Andre Breton, is one of the most complicated readings yet. Starting from the first few pages itself was pretty hard to make sense of. Whenever I started to actually get what it meant, something completely out of place pops up and I’m back to square one. For me the fourth paragraph in page four stood out to be the most difficult to understand.  For example; the passage starts with, “At the end of the daybreak, the morne crouching before bulimia,” (Breton 4). Bulimia is an eating disorder, an obsessive desire to lose weight, overeating would usually end up in vomiting or depression. Morne, a small hill or mountain, crouching or bent low because if you look at it, a mountain is usually perceived to be an arc shape or bent over, before the bulimia which is the volcano erupting or vomiting. However I couldn’t make sense what the author meant by “on the outlook for tuns and mills.”  I am not sure if the idea of bulimia, the vomiting, blood…. was  used to describe the morne or the volcano eruption. Therefore, here’s what I did to make as much sense of the paragraph as I could. First of all, I looked up the definitions of all the words I wasn’t familiar with and also the words that didn’t make sense as to why it was in the package such as Bulimia, Morne, tuns and mill etc. Although it didn’t make sense even after defining all the terms, what I understood is that the volcanic eruption had consumed/destroyed everything making it a ditch of fear and there as nothing left but wind.

 

No one is really “responsible” for a poem once it’s written. I don’t think that neither the writer, nor the reader or the publisher carries that burden of responsibility. The minute you decide to put down your voices into words, what you must know is; it’s no longer only yours. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t mean for it to go out there in the world for everyone to see it, but once you are gone, it’s really up to the people who possess your writings whether to publish it or not. And once it’s out there, now it’s up to the readers how they interpret these poems and if they want to deconstruct and re write it or just let it fade and forget it.

Emily Dickinson was someone who “chose for some reason to shut herself inside her childhood family constellation” despite how great her poems were. She hid herself in the shadows, no one knew what she looked like, or even know that it was her who wrote those amazing poems in her lifetime. Just like herself, she wanted her poems to stay hidden or burned down to ashes after her death, but here we are, reading her beautiful yet sophisticated works.

In Howe’s commentary, he states that the voices formed from his life belongs to no one else, unless it’s put into words than it’s no longer in his possession. Howe ends his commentary with an interesting statement, “The future will forget, erase, or recollect and deconstruct every poem.” It’s clear that we are not only not responsible for our poems once it’s written, but the society has the power to either forget or deconstruct our writings and maybe change the actual idea or meaning of the poem.

After looking at all the sketches we made for Candid’s life and his journey, I noticed that we either drew it as a map pointing out the specified location and used quotes from the related chapters, or made an animated visuals to explain his travels and important events happening in the travel. I was very intrigued to see how we all had various point of views and outlooks but the same idea.

A Parody is a tool of Satire, it’s an imitation or an exaggerated act, usually of a writer, music videos, movies or an artist by displaying a comedic effect. This effect is a very noticeable feature in a parody where certain characters of a person or a scene in a movie is highlighted to produce a humorous act and response.  We deal with parody in our daily life through social media, stage comedy, movies and so on.

For example; The novel “Twilight” written by Stephanie Meyer, later turned into a movie was turned into a parody in 2009 by Ryan Higa. Ryan Higa is a you-tuber / comedian who picked up scenes from the movie and recreates the scene by poking some aspects of the scene to ridicule it, thus turning it into a parody.

Another example of parody would be television shows like “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” This is one of the most famous shows where they imitates political leaders and their personalities and  make fun of it. By doing this, it  also lets them express their opinion on the current social and political issues.

Satire which is similar to parody, however “uses wit for social criticism.” It usually ridicules the society, government, businesses, and individuals problem in order to bring moral attention which can usually lead to improvements. Satire is portrayed with irony and sarcasm, and even parody.

Some of the examples of Satire would be “The Onion.” The Onion is basically a fake news that uses current events and talk about it’s ridiculous situation. Their most popular headlines; “CIA Realizes it’s been using Black Highlighters All The These Years”,  “Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace and Prosperity Is Finally Over,’”

Another example of Satire would be the “Ig Nobel Prize.” This basically makes fun of the Nobel Prize awarded to some scientific studies that sounds “ridiculous to common observer.”