The Final Blog!

We have a mere two days of class left before our presentations begin. I'd like one last blog post from you, a final reflection about the reading you have done this semester. What form it takes is up to you, but I'd like it to be at least 250 words, and it should be done by the end of class Friday.

Reflections like this help me to make this course as personal and challenging as possible. But you need to be honest--don't say things just to make me feel good about the class.

So, in your final blog post, begin with some statistics: As accurately (and honestly) as possible, tabulate how many pages you have read this semester for this class. If you like, you can also break that down by categories: (fiction / non-fiction, or pop fiction / literary fiction).

Then, in a free-written response, contemplate any or all of these questions:

How would you characterize yourself as a reader when you started this class? How independent were you? What kinds of things would you read on your own? How often would you read on your own? Where or why would you read?

During the course of this semester, what kind of reading did you do? Was it easy to find things that interested you? Did you have trouble finding something you could stick with? How did you choose the things you read? Did you have trouble meeting the weekly page quota?

Where and when did you find yourself sitting down to read? Do you tend to read with music on, or in silence? By the computer? Did you find yourself checking your phone a lot, or do you ever lose yourself in the reading? Do you ever talk about the books you read with your family or friends or teachers?

Now, at the end of the semester, have you changed in any way as a reader? Do you read the same types of books you did at the beginning, or have you discovered any new types of writing that you like? Are you more or less likely, do you think, to read independently this summer? What do you think you might read next?

As for poetry . . describe your attitude toward it at the beginning of the semester. Was poetry treated any differently in this course compared to other English classes you've had? Was the type of poetry read here any different? Has your attitude toward poetry changed in any way?

Again, please be honest in your responses.

I've loved teaching you all this semester--thanks for taking the course and making every day a fun one.

Mr. Hill

"The Naming of Cats, " T.S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey--
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter--
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover--
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

"Lost," Carl Sandburg

Desolate and lone

All night long on the lake

Where fog trails and mist creeps,

The whistle of a boat

Calls and cries unendingly,

Like some lost child

In tears and trouble

Hunting the harbor's breast

And the harbor's eyes.

"Summer," Carlo Betocchi

And it grows, the vain

summer,

even for us with our

bright green sins:

behold the dry guest,

the wind,

as it stirs up quarrels

among magnolia boughs

and plays its serene

tune on

the prows of all the leaves—

and then is gone,

leaving the leaves

still there,

the tree still green, but breaking

the heart of the air.

"Barking," Jim Harrison

The moon comes up.

The moon goes down.

This is to inform you

that I didn’t die young.

Age swept past me

but I caught up.

Spring has begun here and each day

brings new birds up from Mexico.

Yesterday I got a call from the outside

world but I said no in thunder.

I was a dog on a short chain

and now there’s no chain.

"Today," Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

"Abscess," Forrest Gander

Good morning kiss. Their teeth glance. Clack of June

bugs against pane. On the porch a young man

in the full sun rocking.

Jars incubate tomato plants. His mother sweeps the dirt

yard away from flowering vinca and bottle tree.

Straightens up, one-eyed by ragged hens. As her boy

ambles away to the steady pulse

in his skull.

The cattle gate

swinging open behind him.

She takes a headache powder

and it is nineteen and twenty seven.

The James overruns its levee, backs up

the Blackwater. Nineteen and twenty nine: she reads his postcard,

the tobacco crop burns. Nineteen and thirty, drought.

Long limp bags drag through fields. The Lord whistles

for the fly. Revival tents threaten a rain

of scorpions. To cure her hiccups,

the woman sees a hypnotist. Promptly

coughs herself to death. In pungs marked men ride. The son

is blown away. No one returns in this story. No one escapes.

The tribe is glued together for ruination, friends.

There is no more time, there is no way out.