Discussion, Exercises, Freewriting
Note: much of the student work here appears as "comments" added to instructor postings. To read this student work, you'll want to click on "comments" under any given post.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Eavan Boland questions and responses
Respond to the questions provided by Ms. Oster. Post your answers as comments to this post.
1. Boland is writing about the famine because it still affects and is relevant to Irish culture today. The roads built during that time still exist and the ancestors of those affected by the famine want to commemorate the time of grief.
2. Boland is writing about maps and roads because she is saying that it is hard to put a 3-D figure into a 2-D plane. This relates to the famine because she thinks that it is hard to tell people about the famine (large 3-D figure) without physically showing someone what happened. And even so, it is still hard to communicate the horrors of the famine.
1. I think that Boland is writing about the famine in modern times because she is remembering a time with someone special to herself, and reflecting on that memory and the opinion she had/now has about that place.
2. I think she writes about maps and roads, because during the famine, where the roads ended and went off the maps, thats where the people died.
3.Cartography is limited because it just shows what is there. It doesn't show what happened in those places. 4.She seems to start the poem in the middle of a sentence. It makes it feel like a train of thought.
1. Perhaps because the Potato Famine had such a tremendous influence on Irish history...perhaps to memorialize the lost lives the starving Irish.
2. It sounds as though the government created road-building jobs for the Irish, and the author is expressing anger because it was not an effective plan..
3. Cartography works as a theme because of the setting of the poem. Cartography has to deal with maps and because of where the location of the poem is, cartography is key. It is limited because it is only pertaining to one part of the world.
5. It has a powerful message that seems to...pop out at me. It grabbed my attention. Once the famine and the lack of crops is at its highest peak, it will destroy everything. It also has another meaning. Once it happens, the memory will be gone. I think it is true because history shows when this has happened. Our country has faced these kinds of problems and it had devestating effects on everyone and everything.
3. The voice in the poem is making a map of his memory, and he cannot remember everything clearly. Therefore, the cartography of his mind and memory is limited.
5. That thread of memory will no longer be there for him to remember. Yes, I believe it's true. As time passes and one gets older, one forgets what happened. That story won't be passed down to others because it can no longer be remembered.
3. Cartography gave the reader the geographical information to aid their imagination. This is helpful in this poem because it's about the Irish potato famine, a natural disaster. Nonetheless, it's limited, because no cartography is clear enough to successfully convey the real image of the poem.
4. In my humble opinion, Boland's stylistic choice is marvelous. For example, Boland's effective use of cartography functioned really well as a theme.
3. Cartography makes the poem more descriptive and helps the reader better understand where it is. It is limited in that it doesn't display what the nature of the place is.
4. It doesn't have any dialogue and uses a story-telling type of flow. These both make the poem more effective in making it appear more solemn and sad.
1. "...my child asleep beside her teen magazines, her can of Coke, her uncut fruit. The pomegranate! How did I forget it? She coudl have come home and been safe and ended the story and all our heart-broken searching but she reached out a hand and plucked a pomengranate." Boland uses this because it shows the relationship between mother and daughter, which in the best way corolates with the story of Ceres and Persephone. I think it applies because mothers feel this way as their child gets older. It is a natural instinct to be protective and caring about their child.
I think that Boland connects the past and present in a similar fashion in the two poems, in that the Potato Famine and Greek mythology both heavily influenced their respective cultures, and we can still glean insight from them; both are reflections of a seemingly ordinary person.
1. "...my child asleep beside her teen magazines, her can of Coke, her uncut fruit. The pomegranate! How did I forget it? She could have come home and been safe and ended the story and all our heart-broken searching but she reached out a hand and plucked a pomegranate." The relationship between the mother and daughter in this poem is one that is similar to the myth. The daughter is growing up and bound to make some mistakes. The mother wants to do everything in her power to protect her daughter, but she knows her daughter will still fall short and make mistakes.
I think that this poem could possibly be connected to the previous because both poems are looking back at past, tragic events. For me, the connections between old and new don't really do anything special. They work in the poem, and they help to get across what she is saying. I don't know if there is one certain line that works for me but one line that really seems to make sense is "It is another world."
2. basically the mother says this to mean that in order to give her daughter the gift, she must also bear grief and that she could not possibly protect everyone she loves without some loss.
1.She will hold the papery flushed skin in her hand and to her lips. And I will say nothing. Yes, she is using a metaphor to connect Persephone's "end of innocence" with her daughter's own end of innocence- the pomegranite is representing adulthood. 2. If she doesn't let her daughter become an adult out of fear she will get hurt, her daughter will also miss out on an important stage of life. She will miss out on having her own kids. 3.I think it works for me. It brings old situations to life.
Both these poems use something that previously occured as a reference. It works for the reader to connect with older concepts because chances are, if they are writing about it, it is probably still a relevant topic today. Some lines or phrases would be a bit confusing if we didn't have some background knowledge, but now we do so poems like these are a good teaching tool.
"The Pomegranate" 2. If Ceres didn't grief for the loss of Persephone, her daughter, she wouldn't give the gift to her daughter. The pomegranate ,in this case, is the cause of the grief, hence, it's also the catalyst of the gift.
1. Boland is writing about the famine because it still affects and is relevant to Irish culture today. The roads built during that time still exist and the ancestors of those affected by the famine want to commemorate the time of grief.
ReplyDelete2. Boland is writing about maps and roads because she is saying that it is hard to put a 3-D figure into a 2-D plane. This relates to the famine because she thinks that it is hard to tell people about the famine (large 3-D figure) without physically showing someone what happened. And even so, it is still hard to communicate the horrors of the famine.
1. I think that Boland is writing about the famine in modern times because she is remembering a time with someone special to herself, and reflecting on that memory and the opinion she had/now has about that place.
ReplyDelete2. I think she writes about maps and roads, because during the famine, where the roads ended and went off the maps, thats where the people died.
3.Cartography is limited because it just shows what is there. It doesn't show what happened in those places.
ReplyDelete4.She seems to start the poem in the middle of a sentence. It makes it feel like a train of thought.
1. Perhaps because the Potato Famine had such a tremendous influence on Irish history...perhaps to memorialize the lost lives the starving Irish.
ReplyDelete2. It sounds as though the government created road-building jobs for the Irish, and the author is expressing anger because it was not an effective plan..
3. It is because cartography is mapmaking and in the poem the subject is making a map of his memories.
ReplyDelete5. It means that while the memories remain, there is no actual road left.
The road
Yes, because the famine was way back in 1847.
3. Cartography works as a theme because of the setting of the poem. Cartography has to deal with maps and because of where the location of the poem is, cartography is key.
ReplyDeleteIt is limited because it is only pertaining to one part of the world.
5. It has a powerful message that seems to...pop out at me. It grabbed my attention.
Once the famine and the lack of crops is at its highest peak, it will destroy everything. It also has another meaning. Once it happens, the memory will be gone.
I think it is true because history shows when this has happened. Our country has faced these kinds of problems and it had devestating effects on everyone and everything.
3. The voice in the poem is making a map of his memory, and he cannot remember everything clearly. Therefore, the cartography of his mind and memory is limited.
ReplyDelete5. That thread of memory will no longer be there for him to remember. Yes, I believe it's true. As time passes and one gets older, one forgets what happened. That story won't be passed down to others because it can no longer be remembered.
3. Cartography gave the reader the geographical information to aid their imagination. This is helpful in this poem because it's about the Irish potato famine, a natural disaster. Nonetheless, it's limited, because no cartography is clear enough to successfully convey the real image of the poem.
ReplyDelete4. In my humble opinion, Boland's stylistic choice is marvelous. For example, Boland's effective use of cartography functioned really well as a theme.
3. Cartography makes the poem more descriptive and helps the reader better understand where it is. It is limited in that it doesn't display what the nature of the place is.
ReplyDelete4. It doesn't have any dialogue and uses a story-telling type of flow. These both make the poem more effective in making it appear more solemn and sad.
1."my child asleep beside her teen magizines, her can of coke, her place of uncut fruit. The pomegranate!"
ReplyDeleteI think it is because the story is timeless and the morals it teaches are universal.
yes because, like i said above, the story is universal and the moral is still the same regardless of the situation.
1. "...my child asleep beside her teen magazines, her can of Coke, her uncut fruit. The pomegranate! How did I forget it? She coudl have come home and been safe and ended the story and all our heart-broken searching but she reached out a hand and plucked a pomengranate."
ReplyDeleteBoland uses this because it shows the relationship between mother and daughter, which in the best way corolates with the story of Ceres and Persephone.
I think it applies because mothers feel this way as their child gets older. It is a natural instinct to be protective and caring about their child.
I think that Boland connects the past and present in a similar fashion in the two poems, in that the Potato Famine and Greek mythology both heavily influenced their respective cultures, and we can still glean insight from them; both are reflections of a seemingly ordinary person.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete1. "...my child asleep beside her teen magazines, her can of Coke, her uncut fruit. The pomegranate! How did I forget it? She could have come home and been safe and ended the story and all our heart-broken searching but she reached out a hand and plucked a pomegranate."
ReplyDeleteThe relationship between the mother and daughter in this poem is one that is similar to the myth.
The daughter is growing up and bound to make some mistakes. The mother wants to do everything in her power to protect her daughter, but she knows her daughter will still fall short and make mistakes.
Question 3, for "The Pomegranate"
ReplyDeleteI think that this poem could possibly be connected to the previous because both poems are looking back at past, tragic events.
For me, the connections between old and new don't really do anything special. They work in the poem, and they help to get across what she is saying. I don't know if there is one certain line that works for me but one line that really seems to make sense is
"It is another world."
2. basically the mother says this to mean that in order to give her daughter the gift, she must also bear grief and that she could not possibly protect everyone she loves without some loss.
ReplyDelete1.She will hold the papery flushed skin in her hand and to her lips. And I will say nothing. Yes, she is using a metaphor to connect Persephone's "end of innocence" with her daughter's own end of innocence- the pomegranite is representing adulthood.
ReplyDelete2. If she doesn't let her daughter become an adult out of fear she will get hurt, her daughter will also miss out on an important stage of life. She will miss out on having her own kids.
3.I think it works for me. It brings old situations to life.
Both these poems use something that previously occured as a reference. It works for the reader to connect with older concepts because chances are, if they are writing about it, it is probably still a relevant topic today. Some lines or phrases would be a bit confusing if we didn't have some background knowledge, but now we do so poems like these are a good teaching tool.
ReplyDelete"The Pomegranate"
ReplyDelete2. If Ceres didn't grief for the loss of Persephone, her daughter, she wouldn't give the gift to her daughter. The pomegranate ,in this case, is the cause of the grief, hence, it's also the catalyst of the gift.