Week 29 Dialectic Journal

I shall use an excerpt from "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen yet again.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

This stanza of the poem is the most gruesome, yet it's also the most important. The author is trying to get his point across throughout the whole poem, war is horrible.  This one proves it best.  He had to watch his own friend die such a grotesque death....  and this shows you that war is not glory and fame.  No, it is pain, suffering, and death.

Week 28 Dialectic Journal

For this week I'm using an excerpt from "Dulce Et Decorum Est" By Wilfred Owen.


GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.


This is my favorite stanza of the poem.  It captures well the horrors of the war and it's just beautiful.  The metaphors in here are so awesome, like "as under a green sea, I saw him drowning".  This poem is just so good, I can't get over it!

Week 27 Dialectic Journal

Excerpt from page 268 of The Aeneid

Wildly, back and forth,
Turnus gallops along the walls-a way in?-no way in.
As a wolf prowling in wait around some crowded sheepfold,
bearing the wind and rain in dead of night, howls
at chinks in the fence, and the lambs keep bleating on,
snug beneath their dams.  The wolf rages, desperate,
how can he maul a quarry out of reach?  Exhausted,
frenzied with building hunger, starved so long,
his jaws parched for blood.

I really like this part of the book.  Sometimes this book can be a little hard to read, but when there's war, it's awesome.  The description and everything are just awesome.  In the war parts it just sucks me in and I can't stop reading it! This part when I read it just stuck with me. I love all of the metaphors in it, comparing Turnus to a starved wolf, it just works so well. And the description is so intense, I just love it.

Week 26 Dialectic Journal

This week I'm using lyrics from Imogen Heap's song "Speeding Cars".

Here's the day you hoped would never come
Don’t feed me violence, just run with me
Through rows of speeding cars
The paper cuts, the cheating lovers
The coffee’s never strong enough
I know you think it’s more than just bad luck

There, there, baby
It’s just text book stuff
It’s in the ABC of growing up
Now, now, darlin’
Oh don’t lose your head
'Cause none of us were angels
And you know I love you, yeah




I like this song a lot because it was meant to be a song to help people who are going through tough times.  This is the first two stanzas (is that what they are called in songs?) of the song, and it just starts out talking about all the bad things that might happen.  The next one is the chorus of the song, and it just talks about all those things that you go through, you might want to just escape from it all, but you have to push through, because this is normal, the "ABC of growing up" as she says.  Over all a good song, I really like it. :D

Week 25 Dialectic Journal

This week I'm using Lyrics from the song "Matryoshka" by Hatsune Miku and Gumi.

Ah, I'm about to crack and burst, so I throw away all of my memories. Ah, I want to know, all the way to the bottom.

Uh, would you please dance even more?  Kalinka? Malinka? Just pluck the strings.  What should I do with this kind of emotions?  Won't you please tell me?  The signal reception is good, 5-2-4!  Freud? Keloid? Just hit the keys.  Let's just laugh everything off.  Hurry up and dance, you group of fools! I really like this song. :) It's about how the girl in the song can't handle her life anymore, so she's starting to  go crazy.  She spirals out of control and tries to bring her friend down with her ( the "Uh, would you please  dance even more?" is referring to her asking her friend to "dance" with her and forget life).  By the end, her friend pulls her out of it and she gets sane again, but the beginning parts of the song are really spastic. It's crazy and has a lot of metaphors throughout the song (like her asking her friend to "dance" with her). Over all, a great song. :D

Using music lyrics from Demon Hunter's song, "Carry Me Down"






And if you see me losing ground,
Don't be afraid to lie.
I know the pain inside my heart
Can't break the fear inside of yours.
And if you see me losing faith in what it means to die,
Don't let me leave before I know what lies beyond the stained-glass doors.

Save sorrow for the souls in doubt;
Bleed every care out.

Will you carry me down the aisle that final day,
With your tears and cold hands shaking from the weight?
When you lower me down beneath that sky of gray,
Let the rain fall down and wash away your pain.




This song is another of my favorites.  It's also a very meaningful and beautiful song.  The song is about death and, like the other song, it has lots of metaphors throughout it.  like the last stanza above, it's about dying and letting go.  The same is throughout the song.  It's just awesome. :D

Week 23 Dialectic Journal

For this week I'm using song lyrics from Demon Hunter's song "The Tide Began To Rise".


I don't belong here
I never saw this on the path I walk
The blood-stained walls, the lines of chalk on the floor
It's getting so hard
I never saw the backlash when the tide began to rise
I can't remember
The way it was when everything felt right
My mouth held shut and eyes sealed tight with control


I chose this song because it's one of my favorite songs, and because it's a really powerful meaningful song.  The whole song is about sin, when you sin you don't realize what it does to you and everyone else, and how it will destroy you if you don't stop and mend your ways.  It has a lot of metaphors in it, like the title, "The tide began to rise", speaking of the "Tide" of sin that will destroy you if you don't stop.  The song throughout is just really good. :)

Week 22 Dialectic Journal

My excerpt is from the second chapter of the Aeneid on page 87.

"Now like a wolfpack out for blood on a foggy night,
driven blindly on by relentless , rabid hunger,
leaving cubs behind, waiting, jaws parched-
so through spears, through enemy ranks we plow
to certain death, striking into the city's heart,
the shielding wings of the darkness beating round us."

This is a section from, as I said before, chapter two.  This is my favorite chapter of the book so far because
of it's beautiful imagery.   This section of the chapter is about the men of Troy's last desperate attempt to escape the destruction of their beloved city.  One poetic device used here would be metaphors.  There are a lot of them in this story.  For example the first line of this excerpt: "Now like a wolfpack....".  and all throughout it.
This part is really cool and I like the writing a lot. 

Week 21 Dialectic Journal

For this week I'm using the poem "Unfair" by Shel Silverstein.

They don't allow pets in this apartment.
That's not decent, that's not fair.
They don't allow pets in this apartment.
They don't listen, they don't care.
I told them he's quite and never does bark,
I told them he'd do all his stuff in the park,
I told them he's cuddly and friendly, and yet-
They won't allow pets.


This poem is funny because in the book with the poem there is a picture.  The poem makes you think of a dog or a cat or something, but the picture shows that it's actually a big monster.   I like how this rhymes, it gives it a nice ring.  Like most of Silverstein's poems, this is short and funny.  I like that about his poems. 

Week 19 Dialectic Journal

For this week's dialectic journal, I'll be using letter LXIV-A from "The Ides of March".

Porcia, daughter of Marcus Porcius Cato of Utica, being married to Marcus Junius Brutus the tyrannicide, was aware that her husband was concealing from her the plans that he was then revolving for the liberation of the Roman people.  On a night she plunged a dagger deep into her thigh.  For many hours she gave no groan nor any sign of the great pain that consumed her.  In the morning she showed her husband this wound, saying: If I have kept silent about this thing, can I not be trusted to keep the counsels of my lord?  Thereupon her husband embraced her weeping and communicated all the thoughts that he had kept hidden in his soul.

This letter is very interesting to me.  When I read it, it just stuck with me.
I like how Porcia showed her husband, that she would keep quiet, she stuck a knife into her thigh!  that's one strong woman.  And in her strength, she showed her husband that he could trust her, and he did.  He saw her wound, and then he told her everything.

Dialectic Journal Week 17

For this week I'm using a a letter from "The Ides of March" XIII Catullus to Clodia.

I do not wish to be spared any knowledge that this world is a place of night and horror.  The door you closed on me at Capua had that to say.  You and your Caeser came into it to teach us this: You, that love and beauty of form are a deception; he, that in the farthest reaches of the mind one finds only the lust of the self.
I have always known that you were drowning.  You have told me so.  You arms and your face still struggle above the surface of the water.  I cannot drown with you .  The very door you closed upon me was a last appeal, for cruelty is the only cry that is left you to utter.

in this letter Catullus is writing to Clodia about her "drowning".  It has good vocabulary and flows nicely, just like Catullus, a poet, would write.  The tone of this letter is sad.. and despairing.  He knows that Clodia is "drowning", but he can't help her.  He tells her that she will always "Drown" and never come to the surface completely, it's quite sad.

Week 15 Dialectic Journal

My entry this week is from the book "True Grit" by Charles Portis.

People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen everyday.
I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, and one hundred and fifty dollars in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.

These are the first two sentences of the book, and a very good opening to it I think. It get's right to the point, and you know immediately what the book's about. The main character (Matty) narrates the story, so it is written in the language she would use, I like that because it makes it more realistic. :) I've not finished reading the book yet, but so far it's really good! :)

Dialectic Journal Week 14

I'm using and excerpt from the poem "To Daffodils" by Robert Herrick

Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon:
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attained his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong,
And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.

First of all, I choose this poem because I love daffodils~  they're so pretty. : )
This poem has a bunch of metaphors in it, all throughout.  like "Until the hasting day has run" and others.
I think this poem is really pretty, it triggers the images in your head really well. : )

Dialectic journal week 13

my poem for my dialectic journal is "Warmhearted" by Shel Silverstein.

Beatrice Bright is for animal rights-
She's wait for Animal Day to arrive.
And though you see her in her new fox fur,
the fox she wears is alive.

This is a funny little poem.  I like this because, like most of Shel Silvertstein's poems, it's short, funny, and doesn't make sense. XD  it has imagery, using sight and feeling (she's wearing her fox fur on her neck).