R.R to poem

In my class we read and analyzed a poem by Anne Sexton called “The Starry Night”. I really enjoyed the poem because we all had different opinions. This poem included symbols, personification, simile, and an enjambment. One symbol in this poem is the stars which symbolizes his mood and tone.

In the first stanza the author says “The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars. / Oh starry night! This is how / I want to die.” (4-6) This makes me think that the speaker really paid attention to the stars and took the time to count them. This also made me think that the speaker that the town and the stars has something to do with the way he wants to die silently. I think so because the speaker says that the town doesn’t exist but it is silent, and that there are eleven stars. He later then says that this is how he wants to die.

In the second and third stanza the speaker goes into detail on how he wants to die. “This is how / I want to die: / into the rushing beast oh the night, / sucked up by the dragon, to split / from my life with no flag, / no belly, / no cry.” (11-17). At first I thought the speaker was surrendering to his depression by dying but now I think that the speaker is being forced to. I think so because he mentions the word “split” which made me think that it was the his/her idea, I also thought so because the poem also mentions “with no flag” which makes me think of the white flag most people use when surrendering. The only difference is that the speaker was not surrendering because he/ she did not have a flag.

 In the poem the speaker wants to die and expresses how he wants to do so. The speaker also uses the star as a symbol of something that really matters to him.

                                                               poem #1


Roses are red
Violets are blue
I feel pain
And so do you
it's not nice to make fun of me
But you'll stumble
And i'll be there to see
Not to laugh
Not to cry
But to make you see that
I succeeded because I tried

I am currently reading a book called “Sycamore Row” by one of my favorite authors John Grisham. This book is a continuous of a past book called “A Time to Kill” but with a different case and a few new characters. In this book it talks about an old man named Seth Hubbard who committed suicide by hanging himself. One question I had throughout the book is why is a very wealthy man unknown in a small town? Well the author does a very good job of explaining it and bringing him from the bottom to the top. He also repeats that Seth was a very quiet and secretive man so the reader can understand why people never heard of him.

          In the book the setting takes place in Clanton where there is still racism. For example in the book when Seth died he left a large amount of money in his will for his housemaid named Lettie. This caused problems because Seth left other wills that included his children, but this will did not, and it was the final will he wrote. Seth Hubbard excluded his children because they have not been there to take care of him and gave everything to Lettie who has been there. Seth also in his will said that he wanted a lawyer named Jake to make sure his children do not receive any money whatsoever. Jake had one a big trial in the previous book and for that Seth Hubbard had trust in him. Even though in the previous book Jake had gotten a black man free in front of an all-white jury he had doubts about this case. Lettie was black and most whites in Clanton may not want a black person to be seen as richer than they are, and a black person may not want one of their one be above them and leave them in the dirt.

          In the book the author also does a good job of showing how the white people react to what's going on. For example the people think that Lettie may have been persuading him into letting her in the will, and may have had inappropriate contact with him. This book is very interesting and gives many peoples perspectives.