April 1st

PHEWWW! I did not pass out or stumble while reciting Sunday Afternoons.  I was the first one in class and desperately wanted to go first, I felt like I would not be able to focus on any one else's poem until I recited mine.  Jenna came in the room and declared she wanted to go first, so I quickly called "dibs" on second.  Once Jenna finished I walked up to the front of the room and began my recitation.  I stayed confident and was able to get through the poem without a hitch.  To be honest though it was the questions I was most worried for because you cannot prepare yourself 100% for those.  Thankfully the questions that were asked were all about things that I had already written about in my journal.  I think I might miss my poem to be honest, I kind of wish we had to write a final paper on the poem.  There is always more to look at in a poem and I think I could honestly spend another month with Sunday Afternoons.

March 28th

Well this is my last blog.  Tomorrow I will recite my poem in front of the class and have to answer the questions of my peers.  There are a bunch of kids in my class who I know will ask some pretty tough questions, so I have been rereading my journals to brush up on my analysis.

I feel like I have honestly analyzed this poem as much as I can.  I have looked at each aspect of the poem several times and while I may not 100% understand everything, I have at least tried to.  I have been practicing my recitation all weekend, so much that I think my roommate could recite it in front of the class tomorrow.  While reciting it to him and his girlfriend, I realized the poem began to sound more like a monologue than a poem.  Since it is written in the first person, I was able to show a great deal of emotion.  It really took me back to my drama days back in high school, but then I realized I couldn't get to into acting it out because I was doing this in front of the class.  The poem is truly about the memories the author had add as a child and him trying to recreate his frustration in writing.  He recreates the memories he has with his brothers and highlights his struggle to become an adult and grow out of being a child.

Wish me luck tomorrow!

March 27th

So I have been avoiding the ending of this poem like the plague.  I have seen how the speaker wants to be an adult and move away from his childhood, but the reference to the moon and the mirror comes out of no where for me.  I understand that the mirror has to do with him being able to see into the room and that because the "door halved the dresser mirror" it must be open.  Which goes back to my point yesterday of why would they leave the door open?  That honestly just seems wrong to me.  I do not understand why they would want their children to experience any of their sexual experience.  I think this just shows how bad of parents the speaker had.  I could be reading this completely wrong though.

March 26th

So today I am decided to go back to what I wrote about in one of my first journals.  I mentioned how latching a screen door is not the most efficient way to keep someone out, if that is your goal.  The same goes for when the speaker's parents "pull venetian blinds,"  the poem does not say they close the windows they marly pull the shades down.  While the parents are definitely trying to keep their children out of the house, I wonder if they are purposely not locking the house completely up.  And despite their effort to prevent the boys from seeing, the speaker says in the end "I knew if I held my right hand above my eyes like a gambler's visor, I could see how their bedroom door halves the dresser mirror like a moon held prisoner in the house."  Clearly their is ways in which the boys could see what is happening, and I fail to understand why the parents would halfhazardly prevent the boys from looking in.  What do they not want them to see, but want them to hear?

March 25th

Ok so the struggle continues.  I am so glad that I volunteered to recite on Tuesday because I do not think I could do two more days of this.  Not there isn't enough to right on, I just feel constrained by this poem now.  I want to read other poems by Komunyakaa and other authors.  I've reached the point that I feel like i could write an 8 page paper on a single line of this poem.  There is just too much to even write.  Once you think you've figured it out, there's always more.

Going along with the idea of constraint though (bringing it back to the poem).  There are actually quite a few words that point to the speaker feeling trapped.  For example: "latch" in line one and "not to leave" in line two.  Well that was way less than I thought, but I guess there is a general sense in the poem of the speaker trying to escape.  He is not yet trying to escape his home or life, but almost move on from his childhood.  The speaker is ready to be an adult, but he feels constrained by his parents and more specifically his lack of knowledge.

March 24th

Well look at this, according to www.poets.org (obviously one of my top visited sites on the internet) Yusef Komunyakaa was born in 1947 in Bogalusa, Louisiana.  He was the oldest of five sons of a carpenter.  Knowing just this small bit of information leads to further believe that "Sunday Afternoons" is written from Yusef's personal experiences.   He was from the South and that is where this poem is set.  The speaker of the poem is clearly older than his other siblings and Yusef was the eldest of five children.  All of his siblings were boys and that is another similarity from his life to the poem.  The speaker in the poem seems to know he want to be an adult poet someday, and you guessed it Yusef is now a poet.  Yusef must use his childhood experiences as inspiration for his writings.

March 23rd

I kind of want to take another look at stanza four.  I think I previously said that the "gospel" music was played by the brothers to mask the sounds of their parents coming from inside of the house.  They blast the radio as "loud as shattered glass in a Saturday-night argument about trust and money."  While the volume of the music can be determined by this phrase, there is much more to be understand, as you unpack it.  The brother's parents obviously have a very flawed marriage and fighting is nothing new for them.  It is evident that these fights sometimes grow violent.  This gospel music might even remind the boys of these arguments that have become almost routine.  It seems like the author is talking from first hand experience.  I ma going to look him up on the world wide web for tomorrows entry!