Journal 31

My job shadowing experience was nothing like I would of thought it would be. I would always go with my dad to his work because he also does cardiology also and it was nothing like what I was shown on Wednesday. All I really did was watch a doctor do an echo scan on one patient and that is about it. After I watched that, they took me back to a room where we watched the film on the echo scan. All of this was basically all I did throughout the whole thing. What I would of liked is maybe me going to watch a person getting worked on by cardiologists. I remember because my dad had done a lot of things in the surgical room and I was there to watch a lot of the times and it was really cool. Instead, this time I sat in front of a computer and saw the kidneys and the heart which was pretty cool, but I would of liked to see something other than just a video on the computer. Other than that, the food was good. The guy I was working with was really nice and he taught me a lot on the echo scan. He knew my dad which probably helped him talk to me in a more "doctor" way. He was naming off all these things and I really did learn a lot from him. I would still like to go somewhere in the medical field and it is just not because of my dad. Doctors do make a lot of money and it is something that I would think I would be good at. I am good at the science classes and math classes that we have here and I am excited to see where I will end up in ten years. The job shadowing experience for me was not the best thing in the world, but it did show me a lot about the heart and the organs inside a persons body. It was not the best thing in the world, in terms of exciting, but it did teach me a lot.

Incident by Countee Cullen

Journal 30

Walt Whitman during his lifetime wrote a lot of poems. A lot of them and I mean a ton of them were published and looked at by millions of readers. He sends a great message through all of them, but there was one poem that I really enjoyed reading and I am going to tell you why. The poem that I have chosen that I have enjoyed the most is "O Captain, My Captain". I have chosen this poem because it has a great message with it and it was enjoyable to read. Everybody remembers president Lincoln. He was in my opinion one of the greatest presidents of all time and I am sure that everyone else almost feels the same way. The things he did during his presidency was incredible compared to what the other presidents did. In a time that would seem to be impossible to control, Lincoln took control and did the right things which made him how popular he is today. Anyway, Whitman did a great job with Lincoln in the poem "O Captain, My Captain". The captain in this poem is President Lincoln, hence where I said all the information about Lincoln. Walt Whitman is talking about when Lincoln got shot in the head in the theatre. He says, "But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red", so he is talking about when Lincoln got shot in the head and he is bleeding very badly. "Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead", this part of the poem is talking about how Lincoln is dead on the floor. I do not really know why this poem has such a big impact on me. I really liked president Lincoln and the things he did. I never knew that Walt Whitman had written "O Captain, My Captain" for Lincoln or even related to Lincoln. Then we went over it in class and I finally realized that it did talk about Lincoln and it finally made sense to me. Everything Whitman did in this poem whether it was the description he used or just because he wrote about Lincoln, either way I enjoyed the poem.

http://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/194

Chanting the Square Deific

This poem that Whitman wrote was very nice. It was calm and it had a nice background in it. Whitman did a good job with organizing this poem, which he is known not to do very well. Anyway, when you think of God sometimes people call him the Son, the Holy Spirit, or the Father. Well this story, which is called "Chanting the Square Deific" it introduces a fourth element that has to do with God.

The first stanza has to do with God taking the lives of people. Which in someone's view is probably not right because everybody sins in some way or another and God always gives them a second chance at life or whatever the deal is. Here is a quote from the story that might give you more of a background, "Not Time affects me-I am Time, old, modern as any, Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous judgements, As the Earth, the Father, the brown old Kronos, with laws, Aged beyond computation, yet ever new, ever with those mighty laws rolling, Relentless I forgive no man--whoever sins dies--I will have that man's life" (Whitman). This quote basically explains all of what I was talking about. About how God is relentless and whoever sin's, that he will take that man's life which is the part that I do not find true. God gives everybody a second chance.

In the second stanza, it was sort of inspiring. Whitman wrote, "From this side, lo! the Lord Christ gazes--lo! Hermes !--lo! mine is Hercules' face. All sorrow, labor, suffering, I, tallying it, absorb in myself, Many times have I been rejected, taunted, put in prison, and crucified, and many times shall be again" (Whitman). This is saying that God has been rejected by a lot of people, but he never goes away. He absorbs it and it makes him more strong than he already is. "He absorbs all sin in himself" (Oliver) so he becomes stronger.

The third stanza talks about Satan. Here is a quote from the poem, "Aloof dissatisfied, plotting revolt, Comrade of criminals, brother of slaves, Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorant" (Whitman). This is just talking about Satan and what he is. He says "brother of slaves" (Whitman), which means he has a "soft heart for the downtrodden" (Oliver). Satan creates a balance between good and evil. There has to be something that makes everything balanced out, in this case it is Satan to balance out the Square Deific.

The final stanza just puts everything together. "Santa Spirita, breather, life, Beyond the light, lighter than light" (Whitman). This is saying that God will keep us together through the thick and the thin. It is our job to believe in him and and trust him. Whitman, throughout this poem, does a good job with organization by talking about each side of the Square Deific. Overall, this poem was very well put together and talked a lot about spirituality.

Bibliography

Whitman, Walt. "Chanting The Square Deific." The Walt Whitman Archive. Web. 03 Apr.

Oliver, Charles M. "'Chanting the Square Deific'." Critical Companion to Walt Whitman: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2005. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

Journal 29

For me this whole self analysis thing is getting me confused. I still do not really know how Walt Whitman saw self, but I sort of have an idea as to what I am supposed to talk about. My name is Justin Yakel. I was born in San Francisco California on May 27, 1995. Now that does not define the word self or how Whitman saw the definition of self, but in my eyes self means who are you. Now that is a tough question to answer because I know who I am, but I do not know how to define it. So first my personality is very important to me. My personality throughout my life that has been the thing that makes me who I am. I am a nice, caring guy which is what I am known for. Once in a while I do get a little cranky and go off on some people, but that is only rare occasions. Anyway, I find that your personality is big when it comes to Self because it defines who you are and how you act. Another thing that is important to me is the way I act around other people. You know you have a group that screws around all the time and they do not really pay attention. Well for me it is the other way around. I am a good student in school and I pay attention in class. I never disrespect anyone except if it's for my parents, but other than that if there is a coach telling me what to do or a teacher during class tells me to go do something I always do it. This is part of my personality. My parents raised me to be a good kid and to always respect your elders. I will always remember that I should respect anyone even though they might not be the nicest person in the world. The last thing that is important to me and defines the word Self is the way I see myself. I do not mean I look at myself everyday in the mirror and say I am pretty or not, I mean the way I see myself around other people per say or something else. This is the way I defined my Transcendental Self.

Nature the Gentlest Mother-Emily Dickinson

When I first read this poem, once again me and Benjamin got a little confused as to what the story was talking about. We read and analyzed this poem at least several times and yet we still could not get the grasp of it. What me and Benjamin finally got out of it was that everyone knows that a mother is caring and very loving. Me and Benjamin believe that a Emily Dickinson used Nature as a mother in this story.You think of a mother and a child and you immediately think of the bond that they share. They have such a great bond and when Dickinson says this it says that nature is like a mother. I guess that if you think about it like saying when the sun comes up, your mother gets you up and when the sun goes down, she puts you to bed. The little things in the middle of this poem may be the things that she does for you to reward you. Nature is doing the same things for us that a mother does. She treats us with love and care just like the warm summer day that the poem refers to, and when it is dark nature puts us in our beds and cools us down. Here is a quote from the story that shows how Emily Dickinson referred to a motherly sense in the story, "When all the children sleep She turns as long away As will suffice to light her lamps; Then, bending from the sky" (Dickinson). This is showing that you think of a mother putting her children away for the night, and the nature outside is calm and seemingly very caring. Dickinson also gives out a positive vibe towards by writing nature as a soothing and relaxing topic. She does this by saying things like "summer afternoon" (Dickinson). When one thinks about a summer afternoon, you think of a sunny day, not too hot, but with a perfect breeze, and being outside for this is like nothing other in the world. I love these kinds of days where it is a perfect day to play outside and chill out. Dickinson does a great job with explaining this and this is when me and Ben started to get ideas.

During a few classes we have looked at the literal meaning of the poem. After looking at the first stanza the literal meaning that we got out of this was that nature is gentle and patient to all children. Some of the words were hard to understand and we had to look them up, which made the literal meaning harder. The last part of the stanzas literal meaning comes out to be, she still gives advice to the weak and the improper. Overall, through the way me and Ben analyzing and looking at this poem, I think we did a good job with looking at how Dickinson wrote this poem and what she did to show us how she wrote all her stories.

Bibliography

Dickinson, Emily. "1. “Nature, the Gentlest Mother.” Part Two: Nature. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems." 1. “Nature, the Gentlest Mother.” Part Two: Nature. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems. Web. 28 Mar. 2012.

I heard a fly buzz when I died-Emily Dickinson

When I first read this poem, like every other poem we ever read, I did not understand it. It was tough trying to put my thoughts with this and try to put Emily Dickinson's thoughts into this poem. I do have to say that when I think about the title I think about a fly flying around a dead person and going inside the mouth of that person. I would though like to quote the last stanza of this story. "With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz, Between the light and me; And then the windows failed, and then I could not see to see" (Dickinson). I did kind of understand the last part of this poem. I do not know why, but it helped me understand the story a little bit more. The quote was saying that the fly was buzzing around her dead body, between her and the light of heaven, and then her eyes closed, and she could not see the fly any longer. I think that the fly symbolizes life and when this girl is dying she sees this fly flying around her and it gives me the idea that the fly is life compared to what this girl is going through with death. Dickinson does use imagery in her poem, especially in this poem. Here is another quote from the story, "I heard a fly buzz when I died; The stillness round my form Was like the stillness in the air Between the heaves of storm" (Dickinson). This uses a lot of imagery because Dickinson is talking about what the room looked like while she was about to die. She said that there was stillness in the air which gives me the image that the room is empty and very quiet with just this person and the fly. In a way, I found this poem kind of creepy. Although it is creepy, I found it very good for imagery and symbolism and I thought Emily Dickinson did a great job.

Bibliography

Dickinson, Emily. "128. “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died. Part Four: Time and Eternity. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems." 128. I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died.” Part Four: Time and Eternity. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems. Web.