Comment below with some brief thoughts about your assigned or selected text.
Spider Woman by Burkhard Bilger https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/spider-woman
My Grandfather Walks in the Woods by Marilyn Nelson https://aaregistry.org/poem/my-grandfather-walks-in-the-woods-by-marilyn-nelson/
Serpents of Paradise by Edward Abbey
Characteristics of Life by Camille T. Dungy https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/characteristics-life
Characteristics of Life by Camille Dungy is describes how people take for granted the little things. We just go with the flow without ever speaking up. For example, I move as the currents move, with the breezes. What part of your nature drives you? You, in your cubicle ought to understand me. We can become comfortable and not take advantage of the opportunities we have. We all have something that drives us to reach our potential instead of being boxed in like a desk job at a cubicle. Also, she hints at how people tend to view others. An example of this is, I can be beautiful and useless if that’s all you know to ask of me. People perceive…
"Serpents of Paradise" feels almost more like a scientific journal than anything else. While there is still narrative, the writing is very scientific and straightforward. With that being said, I felt the piece was still very thought-provoking and poetic in its own right. The instance where he describes the snakes' interaction as possibly violent or sexual or both was particularly interesting to me because it felt like a commentary on human behavior.
I read Serpents of Paradise by Edward Abbey. The beginning of the story reminded me a little bit of Dillard's The Death of the Moth. In this story, the man lets the mice roam around his living space, much like Dillard with her bugs. I will never understand how people can be okay with critters in their house, but that's just me I guess.
I was also struck by the line "I'm a humanist, I'd rather kill a man than a snake" because it makes literally no sense. But maybe I'm missing something
I thought it was interesting how fascinated he was by the "dance" between the snakes. He literally crept up on them, which just sounds incredibly dangerous. I…
I like that in “Characteristics of Life”, it describes how the earth is variable and is always changing. The last few lines contain, “…I will tell you/ one thing today and another tomorrow/ and I will be as consistent as anything alive/ on this earth,” displaying how regardless of what we may thing of nature or of living things, they are always changing and evolving. This poem describes the fragility of life as we know it to exist currently and reminds us that anything can change at any moment.
I read "Serpents of Paradise" by Edward Abbey. This story was very well written in his detail and showing his thought process which I really appreciate, however, he was just a very peculiar man. He let mice run all around his home, and in the story where he finally found the snake and thought about shooting it, he decided to tell us where his coffee was or that he was drinking a beer. Overall, it gives it a very naturalistic vibe with so much detail about what the snakes are named for and why, and then their eventual mating ritual that the man was astounded by. I just thought it was funny in the story that the narrator is not…