Role Playing as Boy.

Gary Soto: Behind Grandma's House A link to the poem. Like any young boy outside with no one around, left to his own imagination, this young boy is set on the path to manhood. It starts very simply, "At ten I wanted fame." He knew at ten what Andy Rooney says we'll all have, "15 minutes of fame." This young boy even has an idea of what you need to get you there, "I had a comb And two Coke bottles, a tube of Bryl-creem." Let us examine these things he has, 1- a comb- a device used to straighten or detangle hair, 2- two Coke bottles (empty bottles), and 3- Bryl-creem - a palmate used to make hair more manageable. I think he may have had all he needed to get started toward fame. Everyone knows you need to look your best if you are going to be famous, and since this poem was written in the 1950's the most recognized hair styles for men were the flat top and duck tail. Both of these required hair gel or cream to hold the look in place. The duck tail required constant attention and a fair amount of cream. Bryl-creem was one of the first hair creams to be offered in a tube instead of a can. So we can see this boy has his looks taken care of and ready for fame. He has two Coke bottles, IE money, if you had soda bottles you could redeem them anywhere for the deposit, usually 2 cents to 5 cents, which means while not rich, he did have money, candy money. He also has a young boy entourage, " I had a borrowed dog." What else do you need I ask? This boy had necessities, money, and a dog; fame would surely find him if he didn't find it first. I really see a lot ties to "The Little Rascals" a popular show about a gang of little boys in a poor neighborhood. They had a dog with mismatched eyes and a ring around one, he answered to "Petey" a great dog by any young boy's standards, a clubhouse, a go-cart and adventures.
Then the poem turns to the little boy doing "manly" things like, acting tough or "Tuff."  Ruff and Tuff kicking cans and killing ants, rocking cats and shooing pigeons and finally cussing the priest. All these things are things this little boy knew from his culture as things that make a man seem tough. kids mimic what they see adults do and what they see in their culture, (TV, neighborhood, schools, church, ...) But reality sets in as soon as grandma steps into the alley. She says "Let me help you." when someone says let me help you, you expect them to do many different things but not what is about happen. She punched him, really, grandma punched him. You see if this boy was going to be as "tuff" as he was acting he would need some help "tuffening" up. Everyone knows when you are talking about that kind of "tuff" you need to able to take a punch. My guess is Grandma was trying to iron out some kinks, bad behavioral kinks, and the best way to do that was to get the undivided attention of her grandson. She got it!

Sonnets? By Billy S. and Others

Sonnet- type of poetry that consists of 14 lines and falls into one of two categories, Shakespearean or Italian. Interesting to note these categories are seemingly experts in the language of love. Iambic Pentameter is the other requirement for a poem to be a sonnet, simply put 14 lines with 5 beats / emphasis per line, not just syllables like in Haiku. Most sonnets seem to be 3 groups of 4 lines sharing a common thought and 2 lines to finish or summarize the thought.
Sonnet #116 Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds a link to the sonnet. I am not convinced I have a the right slant on this sonnet but would like to share what it says to me and my thoughts about love. In the first group of 4 lines we have "Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds." This is a deep and profound thought that begins to provoke other deep and profound thoughts. "Love is not Love," the statement says to me one must first be familiar with the definition of what love is; many scholars and philosophers have been trying to define this since time began. Love and the definition of love are seen through the lens of our own experiences and culture (as are most definitions in our vocabulary), but love is a more important definition because of the affect it has on our lives. Bill says love is not love when it alters after an alteration is discovered. The apostle Paul had to write a letter to the church folk in Corinth to define love for them, in this letter he starts with all the things love is not and ends with what love does. Other examples exist pointing to the true nature of love and the common theme shared by all these views of Love is, True Love is NOT conditional. It is true there are different types of love, like the love a parent has for a child, love between friends, love between intimate friends, or love for humanity as a whole, and even more examples.... All of these are different but have the same common thread, Love is NOT conditional. If there are conditions that have to be met then it is not love but something else, maybe not something bad, just different, meaning true love should not be confused with other feelings, though it often is. The other thing this group of lines points to is that in finding the alteration you feel the need to remove it. Does this mean when we discover something about the person we are in love with we either want to change what we discovered or change the way we feel? ... No! I contend we substitute or mislabel some feelings as love when they are not, when we are young we often confuse love with infatuation and lust, because we do not know yet what true love is.
The second group of 4 lines, start with what I think is the purest ideal of love, "Oh, no! it is an ever-fixed mark." this says to me more of what I have already said, Love, True love is pure and not based upon the idea that someone needs to earn it in order to be loved by someone. Nor that they need to act a certain way, have a certain amount of money, be a certain size, think only certain thoughts, no true love is mark beyond all marks and sets no precondition on who gets to give love or who gets to receive. True love is not tempted by every pretty / handsome person that walks by. Bill says it like this, if when you are asea and you are headed to see your true love then that is your path. you will not stray from your path to chase after every ship you see that looks worthy of chasing. I got all that from the second group, ever fixed mark, not tempted, ship that has been measured to determine if its carrying precious cargo. (Shakespearean experts look at these lines as they refer to a lighthouse and the north star, I'm not saying they are wrong, these are just my ideas of these lines.) No, love only looks to love and grows deeper, love is the greatest treasure known to exist. The search for true love takes us many places in the course of our life and when we really find it, we are engulfed feelings and emotions that hardly have words to fully explain.
The third group of 4 lines, speak to the enduring qualities of true love, "But bears it out even to the edge of doom." Love bears all, Love endures all, Love conquers all, even time.
Shakespeare ends this sonnet with if he is proved wrong about love then no man has truly loved and all that he has ever written about love were just wasted words and wasted time.

Terminal Resemblance? Death, Train or Bus Stations?

Louise Gluck, Terminal Resemblance This is a link to Amazon: The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English. You can find her poem in this book or search the Amazon site for other Louise Gluck titles. The title of this work either leads you straight to death or places. When you read the first lines you find the speaker on the phone and the father pointing at his watch... meaning it is time to go or we will be late. But then the poem shifts to... I want to talk to you before you go. Wow what a shift. You may remember those days when someone important to us says "we need to talk."
          I want to give you a few thoughts to think about as you continue to read. When was the last time you really had a conversation with your Dad? Mom? Brother? Sister? Grandma? Grandpa? ______? really had a conversation, not talking about current events, the weather, or how things are going. I mean, when, if ever, have you had a conversation about how that person has shaped and influenced your life? Or when was the last time you sat down and talked about the philosophies of life and how much you really like learning about the family history? Have you ever been at a family dinner where at the finishing of the last bite that everyone just continued to sit at the table and talk to each other about everything and nothing? Have you ever spent hours and hours looking through old family photographs? Have you really told the important people in your life just how much you love them?
          I want to start with a few lines at the end of the poem, "This time, he waved. That's what I did, at the door to the taxi. Like him, waved to disguise my hand's trembling." (36-38)  I wanted to start at the end so you get the sense of finality, that sets in when you realize all the things you wanted to say and do, if this would be the last time you had the chance to say or do it. Many will tell you that you can not go back in time and therefore do not dwell on the things you can not change, this statement is true. That's why it is ever so important to do things when you can, you may not have another chance. That doesn't mean rob the bank because the vault door is open and nobody is watching.  Question? What is time in the present if there are no more tomorrows?  I am just trying to say that I get the sense that this daughter wanted so badly to break down and hug her daddy and tell how much she loved him and he, her. She did not because that's not the way they did things, they did show openly what was really happening on the inside. Her mother was standing at the door with one arm in her husbands and blowing kisses with the other. Does this look just like the rest of  the neighborhood women standing on the porches? Bidding adieu to their own husband's as they were "going to work." (26) When I read this poem I was reminded of my own father's passing and all the things left unsaid between us, not regrets, just stories to be shared, assured understandings of pride, and thankfulness for helping to shape me into the man I am becoming. Yes, "becoming," because as long as I am alive I will continue to grow and change. Even though my dad is gone his influences are still present in my life.
           I like how Gluck uses the weather to help describe the heaviness of the "talk" that was about to take place, " It was the end of August, very hot, very humid." (9) I get the sense that the tension in the air around the house was just as heavy as the hazy, hot, and humid summer weather. Even amid all this tension on the inside, the appearance on the outside was normal. It was normal for the individuals, family, and community.
          One parting thought: How do we fool ourselves and those around us that things are normal when they are not? My answer is we usually don't. Our close family members and dear love ones (spouse) know when things are not normal on the inside.

Raisin a son?

Lorraine Hansberry A Raisin in the Sun A link to Amazon where you can preview and purchase this play. Lorraine Hansberry died at a very young age, 34, of pancreatic cancer. She is best remembered for A Raisin in the Sun a play inspired by her own real life struggles on the south side of Chicago. She was also very involved in politics and the Civil Rights Movement. The root inspiration for this play from the "racial issues"side stem from  her family's struggles with moving into a predominantly white neighborhood. Her father filed a law suit against the landowners association's restrictive covenants, Hansberry v. Lee. He took his law suit all the way to the supreme court and won, having the Hansberry name forever immortalized in the legal annals of landmark legal cases. Even though Carl Hansberry won his case in the highest court of the land, the US Supreme Court, he was still treated as though he had won nothing. Carl Hansberry decided that he would be better off to just move his family out of the country than to continue to live in a country that condoned such ill manored behavior. Lorraine wrote this play as an attempt to educate the masses through, dramatic play, of the social injustices that exists in Chicago a northern city. Lorraine Hansberry felt the only way social change would come was by getting the issues out in front of everyone. Tell the masses your story and some how help them make the connection that these same things could be happening to their families and things will change. Sometimes change takes a long time to ocurr, it had been a hundred years since the Civil War and many things still had not changed. But through the efforts of people like DuBois, King, Hansberry, Kennedy, Brown and others they began that painful process that is still effecting changes today. While, things did not change for Carl Hanberry's family this case served as a basis by which the Fair Housing Act did change things, and made restrictive covennants banning people based on race, religion, sex, familial status, and age illegal.
       "A Raisin," is a story about a young man, Walter, with a good job, not a great job with opportunity for advancement, but a good job. Walter wants more out life, he wants to build a busniess. A business that would become prosperous for his family and the future generations. His "Mama" wants a new house. The tragedy that sparks this conversation is all but overlooked in the play, the death of Lena's "Mama" husband. Because he had a small insurance policy it is viewed as a great win fall for the family. Mama sees as an opportunity to get a new house and Walter sees it as an opportunity to start a business that in time will afford them several new houses. Mama wants a new house now, one that will solve the current living situation, and Walter sees the new house as an additional burden on the already tight family budget. He wants the money to build a future for everyone, ignoring the risks of possible failure. Even when he is confronted with the reasons why everyone thinks this may not be a good idea he ignores them or simply refutes their comments. As it turns out Walter gets a portion of the money to invest and before the business even gets started the investor leaves with the money. Now Walter must face his family and what he will do next. Read the play to see how it turns out. I will say this, when we are being tried and facing the worst possible circumstances our true nature usually comes out, Walter is offered a bribe. He can take it, which will sovle his money problems, or take a moral stand, which may cost him more than money. Read Act 3, this is where Sidney Poitier drew his inspiration for the dramtic climax of this story, and I think he was right.