The Language of the Brag

This poem really stood out to me from all the rest. The author has such a strong and powerful tone ham draws you in and makes you pay attention. The very first sentence refers throwing a knife, which really caught my attention. Each line she writes captures my attention more, as her words become more aggressive. I think my biggest surprise was her casual use of sexual language, using a vibrating cock as a metaphor, and later using the knife reference again saying she was stabbed in her inner sex. What's so interesting to me, is that she speaks so fiercely about the women's body, that you feel she's almost competing against the constant objectivity against the woman's body. You can tell she speaks from experience, she's watched the boys play and all she wants is to show them that she has suffered as a woman and is better for it. She's stronger, prouder and for that reason has a right to brag. I particularly love her reference to Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg, in what I can only imagine be an implication that as women give birth to live, they have given birth to poetry. And as they then have the right to brag about poetry, she has the right to brag about new life. What is most outstanding to me though is her use of imagery. Lines like, "straight posture and quick electric muscles" and "my huge breasts oozing mucus" are so powerful to how she's portraying the female body, and leave you with such a picture that she is describing. She spends this poem exploring the form of the Heroin, and she is so successful at making you feel like she does have every last right to brag and boast with everyone else.

The Pardon

"The Pardon" by Richard Wilbur is a beautiful poem about the loss of innocence and acceptance of reality. What intrigued me about this poem is how Wilbur used an example of a man remembering finding his dog dead at age 10, and slowly coming to accept not only death but that death is not an endpoint. 

The poem is a 24 line poem with 6 stanzas of 4 lines each. It seems to follow the rhyme scheme "abbacddc." The first three lines of the poem setup what the theme of the poem will be; death. He uses vivid imagery to describe how his dog had been dead for 5 days laying "...in a clump of pine/And a jungle of grass and honeysuckle vine." I like how in the next stanza Wilbur uses these images of "honeysuckle vine" to describe the different smells of that memory. These smells of remind the reader of life and death with sharp adjectives. "To sniff the heavy honeysuckle-smell/Twined with another heavy odor heavier still/And hear the flies' intolerable buzz." Also, by repeating the word using a form of heavy three times, the reader gets the sense the man in the poem is not quite over the loss of his dog, or still even something more, the acceptance of death.

Halfway through the poem, the man has a dream in which he sees his dog and it comes back to haunt him. In the end, he apologizes to Death and asks him for a pardon. 

While beautiful as this poem is, I still have many questions about it. For example, to me a dog is a powerful thing to lose but I think if he were to find a dead body it would have been more powerful. Why not go that route? Also, why use this rhyme scheme? To me, it takes away from the heaviness that is the subject of death. It also makes the flow of the reading of it a little chunky. All in all, Richard Wilbur wrote a poem that is truly beautiful.

Dream Song 14

John Berryman works to create tension between and throughout his lines using different techniques such as enjambment, frequent interruptions, and condensing his syntax. Many of the lines in this poem are end-stopped, even punctuated with a period, making one or even two complete sentences fill up a single line. The first line "Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so." chops up this line into short, direct statements that set the tone for the entire poem. Berryman increases the tension by keeping the sentences within his poem fairly short and heavily punctuated. In two lines, "After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,/ we ourselves flash and yearn," the reader is made to feel as though they are in a car that keeps pressing the gas then hitting the breaks, keeping the reader on their toes as to what might come next. An even more extreme interruption occurs when "(repeatedly)" is used in line 5; by putting this word in parenthesis rather than just setting it off with commas, reader is brought to an even more abrupt halt that increases the tension. Another tactic that Berryman uses to create tension is ending a stanza on the word "no" with no punctuation and  continuing the same thought in the next stanza. This enjambment makes the reader feel uneasy and places a heavy emphasis on that word no, creating more tension. One of my favorite Berryman techniques however, is his use of condensed syntax. In the last line of the poem, "behind: me, wag", Berryman is eliminating the words that don't need to be said. In poetry, your words must be chosen a lot more carefully and Berryman is very careful about his words at all times. The poem ends with the dog's tail leaving behind the subject of the poem and "wag". I don't have an answer for what exactly was meant by "wag", but I think that's the point. By eliminating all other words that might help explain the word wag, the reader is left with it dangling at the end of "me", at the end of the poem. It provides even more tension for the poem, but in a way, a strange release. The word wag is so playful and simple that it almost seems to further the tension and break it all at the same time.

"The Beatles' First LP"

     I chose the poem "Annus Mirabilis" by Philip Larkin. The speaker opens the poem by stating when "sexual intercourse" really started to not become a topic of shame. It opened with a hook. The voice of the poem is not serious but sort of a whimsical and nostalgic review of when exactly the best years were. It is whimsical because when referring to the time in which he believed sex was explored, he referenced it as the time "Between the end of the Chatterly ban/And the Beatles' first LP." It isn't said outright but it is implied that the speaker also lost his virginity that year. The speaker cracks a small joke about how it "was rather late" for him when sex became a non shameful thing and reiterates it in the last stanza again with "Though just too late for me." 
     It is the most happiest in the year 1963 and we know that because he says it himself in the fourth and final stanza. The speaker states "So life was never better than/ In nineteen sixty-three." It is a very straight forward poem. I enjoyed it for the simplicity and the matter-of-fact voice the speaker had. It was also funny how the best year of his life was when he participated in "sexual intercourse" and how "everyone felt the same."
     There was a moment in the second stanza where the poem took a more serious note. The speaker said the was a shame since he was sixteen that "spread to everything" because it was a shame inducing topic. The shame could stem from being a virgin or the fact that sex was not talked about and was seen as taboo.  If it was because of him being a virgin, the line of shame highlights that there is this social stigma that boys can not be virgins and had to loose their virginities early or it's shameful. The writer put that little piece of truth subtly, but then right after in the next stanza shifted tones to a more positive one. He talked about how that year was the year it changed. The speaker compared life to being rich and a game you couldn't lose. That is how the speaker felt in nineteen sixty-three when he had sex. It was the dawn of the sixties and the Beatles' career was just starting. 

To a Waterfowl

I'm always drawn to humor in writing and that's why I enjoyed reading Donald Hall's "To a Waterfowl" very much.  The first line was what hooked me in just because of the absurdity of the image "with hats like the rear ends of pink ducks".  Having a hook is especially important in poetry because its condensed nature doesn't allow the poet to build up to one; the reader must be caught within the first few syllables.  Hall's poem is interspersed with other ridiculous images to add to the humor: "they spank their hands, they smile like Jell-O", "watching Godzilla Suck Mt. Fuji, / addressing my poems, feeling superior", "with hints that I am a sexual Thomas Alva Edison".  He also shows humor in his rapid switching of tone such as in the line "returned to the l'eternel retour of the Holiday Inn / naked, lying on the bed".
Hall intentionally leaves most formal styles at the door.  He pokes fun at common poetry techniques, "crooning, 'High on thy thigh I cry, Hi!' -- and so forth", and common poetry rules, "'My goodness, Mr. Hall, / but you certainly do have an imagination, huh?' / 'Thank you, indeed,' I say; 'it brings in the bacon.'" in order to prove his point about the high intellectual expectation most people have about poets.  The latter quote in particular is very hilarious considering how sinful it is to use tired, old saying in poetry.  He also makes the poem more informal by giving it conversational tone and using lots of dialogue.  The kicker, or what Kizer called "The Counter-Turn", is in the fifth stanza, when Hall uses an unflattering depiction of himself to show the readers that he's more ordinary than extraordinary.  He then turns to us, the readers, who are born from this tradition of supposed high class as shown in the lines "You, in the bluejeans, / laughing at your mother who wears hats, and at your father / who rides airplanes with a briefcase watching his grammar?", and accuses us of being just like the people that we thought were humorous.  He mocks us in his last line.
Hall shows his satire like a wet slap to the face and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Dream Song 14 ~ John Berryman

My favorite poem from this chapter is "Dream Song 14" by John Berryman. I loved the simplicity of the poem for the most part. Berryman uses very basic literary devices to just portray his boredom with his life. Berryman used personification in the first stanza, where he gives the sky the ability to flash and the sea the ability to yearn. The second literary device that Berryman uses is allusion, especially when he talks about Achilles as he directly referring Achilles to the greatest Greek warrior in the Trojan war, and the hero of Homer's Iliad. I found this poem to be very unique because Berryman organizes the tone of the poem to be very frustrated and dissatisfactory with his own life. Furthermore the poet in the poem totally inadequates the very flashy life that everyone is leading in the society and chooses to isolate himself from this ordinary life by portraying all its deficiencies. My favorite part of this poem is when the poet's mother says that her son has "no inner resources" represents the way of thinking I just mentioned above. The poet finds life very boring, actually he finds almost everything boing, as I think maybe because in the back of his mind he believes that everybody is leading the very same lives without having any uniqueness to it. The poet even finds his environment to be boring such as tranquil hills. I also found the rhyme scheme of this poem to be very interesting, especially as the poem is composed with three stanzas the long and short lines have alternative pattens which goes like: A, A, B, A, A, B which is writing a sonnet in a very short space condition. I also loved how Berryman used keen adjectives and verbs to portray the emotional potency in the poem. Berryman uses various ways to express his standpoint on the people who lives a very flashy and over-examined life, and demonstrates his exasperation to support his suicide. 

Stillborn

Stillborn by Slyvia Plath

            I like the poem “Stillborn” by Slyvia Plath because Plath is able to take something so disturbing like miscarriages and turn it into a beautiful dark poem. Plath makes it very easy to relate to the struggles a mother faces when she is told about a stillborn baby taking the reader step by step through the process. However Plath does this by comparing her own poetry to a stillborn baby. Plath in known to have had experienced miscarriages in her lifetime before however, her main concern is her poetry heightening the darkness of the poem.

            The phrase “they bulged with concentration” is a way Plath is able to use personification of stillborn babies to reference her poems that attempted to be well and ended up being unsuccessful. She “cannot understand what happened to them!” and why they were unsuccessful. She then goes on to use alliteration in the line “smile and smile and smile and smile at me” in order to increase the feel of humiliation that Plath receives for her on poetry – they smile at her in a somewhat mocking way. 

“There lungs won’t fill and the heart won’t start” – in this statement Plath is referring back to her poems meaning that the lungs will fill, she will begin writing the poem but the heart, the true meaning and conclusion to the poem just won’t start. Then Plath goes onto crudely describing the poems she writes to have a “fishy air” which is just Plath’s way of dehumanizing the stillborn baby.

My favorite thing about the poem is how Plath decides to end the poem, “they stupidly stare, and do not speak of her”.  This sentence goes back to how Plath feels her poetry mocks her. The reader is able to easily sympathize for Plath because she makes it seem as if the poetry is teasing her in some way, along with the stillborn baby.

The Pardon

           The poem “The Pardon” by Richard Wilbur reveals the transformation of a man who witnesses his dog’s death and who promptly loses both his desire for love and his recognition of death.  Wilbur’s use of an abbacddc rhyme scheme is written in In Memoriam stanza.  As the poem begins, the speaker addresses the death of his dog, and laments the fact that there is no grave for the dog with honeysuckle-vines.  Already, the speaker paints a morbid picture of the dog’s death with the “thick of summer” setting that the dog died in (line 2).  Yet, the speaker expresses the love that he only seemed to share for the dog when he was alive, and now has gone away – this idea can mirror the short, quick time of summer with the speaker’s eternal-less love for his dog.  Because the speaker is unable to accept the death of his dog he cannot accept the love for his dog any longer.  He comes into further realization of death in the second stanza especially when he “went only close enough…/to sniff the heavy honeysuckle-smell” which was “twined with another odor heavier still” (lines 5, 6, 7).  The speaker comes to metaphorically “smell” the essence of death overcoming his dog. 

            In the third stanza, the speaker explains, “in my kind world the dead were out of range” (line 10).  He or she has never been exposed to the concept of death because he or she has been left in a world of childlike innocence.  This is until the speaker’s father “took the spade/And buried him” (lines 12, 13).  The short, sturdy sentence represents someone getting the job done quickly just as the quick nature of death scooping up the dog and just like that, burying him.  Regardless of whether the speaker wants to forget about death, or move beyond the realization of it towards his or her innocence again, the speaker realizes that “still he [will come]” (line 17).  The ending of the poem has the speaker resolve his feeling towards death more so as “mourn[ing] the dead” rather than being afraid of an inevitable fate (line 24).  I appreciate the poet’s technique of mirroring the aspects of death through the stanzas with the speaker’s slow, realization of death.  In a sense, I found the ending very sobering – the reader almost becomes sympathetic with the speaker because we too relate to our knowledge of the inevitability of death.

The Language of the Brag

 My favorite poem from the reading was “The Language of the Brag” by Sharon Olds. When first reading this poem, it seems like it’s about a man boasting about his strong body. In the last stanza I realized the speaker was a woman and when I read the poem a second time everything made sense. The speaker is a woman who is pregnant and describing and bragging about qualities of her body. I enjoyed this poem and I liked how she viewed birth as an American achievement and exceptional act. One thing I was confused of with this poem is the last stanza. The speaker says that she has done what Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsburg have wanted to do. I know that both of these other poets were very into sex and homosexuality so I was wondering if her last stanza was a bragging that Whitman and Ginsberg weren’t able to conceive but maybe wished they could? Is birth something they would have wanted to experience? Were they jealous of other women being able to give birth? Her final stanza is a boast itself because the speaker is saying “Ha!” to Whitman and Ginsberg. The speaker is saying that birth is an excellent use for her body. A woman’s body is specifically formulated for carrying a child and giving birth and she sees it as heroic. Another thing that confused me in this poem is when the speaker says that the baby has been “free of that language of blood like praise all over the body.” What is the language of blood and what did she mean by this?

One technique that Olds used in this poem was repetition. She repeated “I have wanted…” or “I have…” in the beginning of almost every stanza. The only two exceptions are in the stanza where the woman is giving birth and the final stanza where she writes “I have done…” This is a great final stanza because she no longer is wanting but she has achieved what she wanted. Another technique that Olds used in this poem was enjambment in stanza three. She continues stanza two into three by describing her big belly. Olds also does a great job with imagery in this poem. She describes various features of her body so well that you can picture it. In the beginning of the poem, if the reader had not immediately pictured a strong, muscular man, you would then picture a strong and pregnant woman. She would have swollen hands and toes and a big belly. The birthing scene in the fourth stanza also brings forth strong images.

Stillborn

My favorite poem from this chapter is “Stillborn” by Sylvia Plath. This poem resonates within me because it conveys such powerful images. The title of the poem is enough to demonstrate that the poem is going to be about an unborn child.

The poem illustrates the struggle and grief a mother has over the death of her unborn child; not only was her child brought into this world dead, but so does all of her hopes and dreams for that child.

Plath uses strong imagery to make this poem come alive. “ They grew their toes and fingers well enough / Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.” Additionally, Plath becomes the mother in this piece and lets herself feel disappointment. She criticizes herself as a poet by saying that her poems are dead. She expresses this in the first line, “These poems do not live: it’s a sad diagnosis”.

My favorite part in the entire poem is the last two lines, “But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction, / And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her.” There is just something about that ending that is so morose, yet strangely beautiful and haunting.   

What I also found haunting in this poem is how Plath compares motherhood and a miscarriage to poetry and writing in general. This comparison allows us to look at poetry in a different light and we are able to feel what Plath feels about poetry, particular her poems.

Comparing humans to poems is such a beautiful metaphor because poetry does have the ability to come alive and essentially Sylvia is criticizing herself for allowing her poems to be dead, similar to a stillborn.

Annus Mirabilis

I greatly enjoyed the poem Annus Mirabilis by Philip Larkin. When I read it the first few times, I thought of it as an older person reflecting on their younger years. There are so many songs and stories about summers spent as a teenager, and I thought it was a piece reflecting that same idea. Then I did some research into exactly what the author meant from “The Chetterly Ban”. The book Lady Chetterly’s Lover was brought to trial in England for violating the country’s obscenity law. The book was seen as erotic and pornographic. (Many other things happened this year, such as the assignation of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. giving his “I Have a Dream” speech.) With this knowledge, I began to understand Larkin’s writing more fully. The poem was about the sexual revolution in Britain, and the author’s partake in it. The way he begins the poem, expressing that he had sex a little later than others, gives me the idea that he is remorseful and ashamed of being a late bloomer. I got my validation with the line “A shame that started at sixteen and spread to everything.” My research also lead me to another explanation-this one concerning the title of the piece. Annus Mirabilis translates to “wonderful year” in Latin. So although Larkin is embarrassed that he joined the sexual revolution late, he still considers it a great time in his life. I found his choice of poetic technique interesting. The entire piece rhymed. This is such a childish way to write. Children’s books are written with classical rhyming techniques more ways than not. However, Larkin is talking about a very adult subject. This conveys that he considers it a time in his life where he is in between boyhood and becoming a man. 

Grammar lesson

My favorite poem that I read in this chapter would probably be "Grammar Lesson," by Steve Kowit. A lot of times, people have the misconception that poetry is supposed to be meaningful or personal. In "The Grammar Lesson," there is no deeper meaning; there is literally only a grammar lesson. I was surprised that there was no hidden catch in the final lines of the poem. The stanzas only explain different grammar rules. As I read the poem, I found that the poem was written in a loose villanelle form. The only stanza that does not follow the strict rules of a villanelle is the middle stanza—it s longer than a normal stanza of only three lines. I found the choice to make the middle stanza longer clever because it allowed for the full intention of the poem to be revealed. The middle stanza is the one that did most of grammar rule explaining.

Ways that Kowit allowed for the villanelle form shine through is his usage of the repeated lines. The first repeated sentence, “a noun’s a thing. A verb’s the thing it does.” Demonstrates the factual rule that Kowit is trying to teach. The next repeated sentence, “The can of beets is full of purple fuzz,” allows for some humor to be added in and allows for the rules to be practiced on. For each new rule that is brought up, the “purple fuzz” sentence gets modified to clearly demonstrate the rule.

I liked how the sentence that was used as an example stayed constant. “The can of beets is full of purple fuzz,” is not the most conventional example to use as a sentence. When I was in high school, the most common example that was used in class was something like, “The boy hit the ball.” This sentence was basic, but it did the job. With a sentence like “The can of beets is full of purple fuzz,” it is just strange enough to allow the text to stay embedded in the readers mind.

American Male/ Far East Conference

On page 7 of Susan Orlean's American Male, she begins to explore Colin's room, detailing it carefully and noting different aspects that truly say a lot about his character. I believe someone's room is a great look at who they are, because it is the one space that is truly theirs. We learn very quickly about Colin from things like most of his walls being bare with the exception of Spider-Man and a variety of advertisements. I think it also says a lot about Colin that he named his bird Dude. He has worn clothes tossed about everywhere, but other than that his room isn't that cluttered or messy. That sounds about right for an average ten year old boy, but I can't help but be curious as to where all his toys are...

Wells Tower's Far Eastern Conference is a great example of an author playing off two very different voices. Often we hear the voice of Tower, he has an incredible way of explaining a somewhat wasteland-like China, and we can almost feel the heaviness and dirtiness of the air. But he also does a great job and bringing Stephon Marbury's voice in at the right times so to be very telling of Marbury. For example, when he's talking about the food, and he says that he wanted to kill himself the first two weeks but not so much anymore. He's so flippant and casual about something that doesn't seem to be so casual.... Towers does a great job at conveying Marbury's voice and true feelings, because by the end of this you really start feeling bad for Marbury. Considering his reputation, that seemed almost impossible. But the way Towers communicates as well as considering which quotes of Marbury he choose and which he decided to paraphrase, really leads the reader to become sympathetic with Marbury, something I didn't think possible. You really start to feel how lonely it must have been to have a whole country hate you- your heart broke with Marbury's. And when he was greeted by thousands of adoring Chinese fans, your heart grew with his. It has to be Tower that is putting that into effect, because I know it can't be Marbury alone.

Roger Ebert Voice

Roger Ebert: The Essential Man by Chris Jones discusses how a huge movie critic who used is voice for everything he did, now has to write it all down because he has lost his voice (and most of his jaw and chin) to cancer. Chris Jones uses voice in his writing to convey Ebert's literal struggle with voice and how to maintain it. Through a clever writing style, Jones succeeds in writing this beautiful portrait of a voiceless man trying to keep his voice.

 Chris Jones does a particularly good job of conveying the everyday life of Roger Ebert and his wife Chaz through voice. He does this through starting out in a third person omniscient and over the course of the essay coming into a third person limited.  I find this to be extremely clever and cool in that I see it as much like the life of Roger Ebert and his actual voice. Ebert started his career with a voice that seemed to boom. Jones says that "he lived his life through a microphone" and that is how Ebert came to be. Over time, he slowly lost this actual voice and began to have to write everything down. It became a  much more intricate ordeal and every word he wrote had to have mattered that much more.

Jones also uses dialogue throughout this piece in a very clever way. He uses conversations between Ebert and his wife, Chaz. What is clever is that Ebert isn't actually physically speaking, he is writing it all down, either on a spiral note book or typing it into a computer for the computer to read aloud. Jones uses Ebert's writing as a voice and his computer's voice, as a voice. Moreover, Ebert's rudimentary sign language also takes a part in the dialogue between Ebert and Chaz. Through this dialogue, the audience is more drawn into what it must be like to not have a voice and still speak.

Welcome to the Far Eastern Conference

      What I found interesting about "Welcome to the Far Eastern Conference," was that it read almost like a work of fiction.  It didn't seem like it was about someone in real life or your average profile in a sports magazine.  It occurred to me about halfway through that I could probably just google the outcome of at least some of the events described.  The whole story seems very foreign to me, probably because of my lack of knowledge of sports, business and Chinese culture. 
     The voice that Tower gives to Marbury seems to be mostly observant over analytical, usually describing things that happened instead of analyzing Marbury's every move.  However, there is one quote that seems to really characterize Marbury:
"Rather, he gave the impression of someone desperate to forget all the haters back home and see only a world full of new friends.

And in Taiyuan, his friends were legion. At one point, I remarked that it must get irritating not to be able to take two steps without some stranger panting on his neck. "Nah," said Marbury. "You never know when the day's gonna come when people stop wanting your autograph." "

    I think that the voice in general can pretty much be summed up in one passage,

"it was really surprising to find oneself suddenly sickened with sympathy for an international sports celebrity with more money to his name than many American small towns."  Throughout the piece, Tower focuses on how Marbury has gone from such a negative life, even as a child to this whole new "world' in China.  He describes Marbury as a lab rat and outcast.  I think the overall tone is very cautiously optimistic and reflective and it really gets you to be on Marbury's side. 

“Roger Ebert: The Essential Man” by Chris Jones Voice Analysis

“Roger Ebert: The Essential Man” by Chris Jones

“Roger Ebert: The Essential Man” is an article written by Chris Jones about a man who has lost his lower jaw and ability to speak. Jones provides a voice in his article for Ebert similar to the way authors provide a voice for their characters in a novel. Jones provides a voice for Ebert in his article about him even though Ebert is unable to speak. Jones depictions of Ebert in his article enable Jones in defining Ebert’s character in a stronger way. Jones is able to highlight all of the important moments of Ebert’s career and the obstacles Ebert has had to face losing his ability to speak.

Voice determines the differences between characters in a story. Developing a characters voice is what later will end up defining that character to the reader. Jones is able to differentiate his voice from Ebert’s to the reader through his use of tone throughout the article. Ebert’s tone shifts from Jones because Ebert is portrayed as nostalgic having been a victim of cancer and losing his lower jaw. However Jones article did not come off as depressing, Jones’s tone came off as rather insightful and optimistic.

Voice develops individuality between characters. Voice can also set the tone of a character. Jones is able to make Ebert’s character present in the article showing all of the ways Ebert is able to make his voice known not through sound but through his writing ability. Ebert is able to maintain voice through his notebook, post-it notes, and macbook. Though Ebert lacks his spoken voice the tone of the article remains optimistic because Ebert is able to maintain his written voice. Ebert has even been able to develop sign language.

Jones also goes in depth in describing Ebert’s struggles from his cancer, which is why the piece is insightful to me because I do not know much about Ebert’s condition. Thanks to Jones depictions I was able to learn all about Ebert’s condition in a way that I could relate more to Ebert’s character. 

Roger Ebert: The Essential Man Response

I chose the article by Chris Jones because Roger Ebert's story struck a chord with me. Through clever use of voice and rhetoric, I finished the story feeling as if I had gotten to know Ebert. I got sufficient detail about him in a way that did not feel overly-decorated but realistic and descriptive. I found myself copying and pasting a lot of quotes and lines. Jones included details and words about Ebert that artfully helped the reader understand who Ebert is. Jones' voice is third person but with a personal feel to it. Many times Jones praised Ebert. Jones said things like "Roger Ebert is no mystic, but he knows things we don’t know" or when he compliments Ebert's wife saying "There isn’t any debate in her voice. Chaz Ebert is a former lawyer, and she doesn’t leave openings. She takes hold of her husband’s hand, and they set off in silence across the park toward the water." By including the small detail of Chaz, it shows Jones thinks she is a strong smart woman. 

Jones is skilled in talking about Ebert (and those close to him) and choosing which details to tell the reader to achieve a high understanding of who Ebert is. Jones includes details about Ebert's nurse Millie who "has premonitions" and  "sees ghosts." He also uses those details to contrast Ebert's happy dreams where he never lost his voice. He includes as well details that give the impression that Chaz and Roger are a quirky couple. Ebert was trying to walk up the stairs and Chaz encouraged him to do it on his own. When he did, the was their reaction "“I’m going to give my prayer to the universe,” she says, and then she gives a sun salutation north, south, east, and west. Ebert raises his arms into the sky behind her." 

It is clear Jones views Ebert in a highly positive light and it is refreshing to read his telling of Ebert. He is highly preceptive and because of that we get intimate details of Ebert that make it seem like the reader is experiencing the moments Jones is retelling. Jones explains Ebert's sadness in the sentence "His eyes well up behind his glasses, and for the first time, they overwhelm his smile." Jones used important language like first and overwhelm. Jones also describes Ebert's anger with "he’s shouting now. He’s standing outside on the street corner and he’s arching his back and he’s shouting at the top of his lungs." Jones manages to communicate Ebert's anger but at the same time his despair from loosing his closest friend. Jones in both quotes communicates Ebert's sorrow thoroughly. Jones conveys who Ebert is as a person in third person effectively and his character profile was a success.

Roger Ebert: The Essential Man Response

Chris Jones' article on Roger Ebert is a beautifully written journey through a portion of Ebert's life that allows the reader to develop an emotional connection with the story. Jones used multiple voices throughout the article in order to spice up the tone, imagery, and connection with the story line of the article. Chris Jones used third person the majority of the article as well as first person through Roger Ebert. The shifts between these two points of view allowed for the article to not only be more interesting, but also added a more personal touch to the reading. The reader can clearly see when Roger Ebert is saying something and when Jones is reflecting on things that he has observed himself.

The great detail that Chris Jones goes into while writing from his perspective is so thorough and allows for the reader to get involved in the scenery and what he himself is observing. For example, "He opens a new page in his text-to-speech program, a blank white sheet. He types in capital letters, stabbing at the keys with his delicate, trembling hands: my tribute, appears behind the cursor in the top left corner. on the first show after his death. But Ebert doesn’t press the button that fires up the speakers. He presses a different button, a button that makes the words bigger. He presses the button again and again and again, the words growing bigger and bigger and bigger until they become too big to fit the screen, now they’re just letters, but he keeps hitting the button, bigger and bigger still, now just shapes and angles, just geometry filling the white screen with black like the three squares. Roger Ebert is shaking, his entire body is shaking, and he’s still hitting the button, bang, bang, bang, and he’s shouting now. He’s standing outside on the street corner and he’s arching his back and he’s shouting at the top of his lungs" (Jones 7). This excerpt perfectly describes Roger getting upset and from the word choice, the imagery comes to life and the reader can feel Roger's anger. Although he cannot physically shout, you can feel the passion and imagine how angry he is that the words are shouting for him. The word choice used throughout the article is also what helped to drive the emotional aspect given to Jones' voice.

Chris Jones also uses the “voice” of Roger Ebert to convey his persona to the reader. The excerpts and notes that Ebert writes to Jones or on his blog and Jones' own observations help to formulate the positive, sweet, passionate, realistic and gentle man that Ebert is. The quote, "Ebert takes joy from the world in nearly all the ways he once did. He has had to find a new way to laugh—by closing his eyes and slapping both hands on his knees—but he still laughs… And he still finds joy in books, and in art, and in movies—a greater joy than he ever has” (Jones 7) is a perfect example of Ebert’s persona illustrated in the article.

Roger Ebert response

Like I've seen someone else point out, Jones starts in third person omniscient and slowly turns into third person limited.  The parts in which Jones's writing really stands out as his own are when he is describing things within third person omniscient, such as describing the action that Roger Ebert is doing or a scene from Ebert's past.  He states the facts while also adding his own writing style to make it more interesting for the reader.  There is a distance in this voice in that Jones is only narrating and this distance allows Jones's personal voice to come out.  An example of this would be in the beginning paragraphs where Jones is describing the theater scene.

Later on in the profile, there is a gradual shift from this distance to a more intimate view of Ebert.  In these sections, the readers see less of Jones's narrating voice and more of Ebert's voice.  Since Ebert's voice is already a well-established one, not only due to the fact that he was a living human but also from his role as a writer, Jones is given the opportunity to sit back and have Ebert speak out.  The italicized paragraphs of direct quotes from Ebert become more frequent and the reader gets a better picture of who Ebert is and what he is thinking when he says something.

There are two "dialogues" from Ebert in particular that really highlight the difference that I'm talking about.  On the first page there is the line "'Too close for me,' Ebert writes in his small spiral notebook."  This line is Jones's voice and tells us nothing about Ebert's voice; it is just stating facts.  Later there is another Ebert dialogue that gives us more insight: "'I've never said this before,' the voice says, 'but we were born to be Siskel and Ebert.'  He thinks for a moment before typing again.  There's a long pause before he hits the button.  'I just miss the guy so much,' the voice says.  Ebert presses the button again.  'I just miss the guy so much.'"  Although Jones is still using his factual voice, he is using less of it and more description of what is going on in Ebert's thoughts.  Not only this, he allows Ebert to come through and speak for himself.  For a guy whose words are very limited and therefore very meaningful, there is much that we learn about his thoughts and feelings from the fact that he "spoke" the last sentence twice.

Welcome To The Far Eastern Conference: By: Wells Tower

After reading "Welcome To The Far Eastern Conference," by Wells Tower, it made me feel that I was reading both a biography and an autobiography at the same time because the shift of the voice from Towers's to Stephon Marbury's was beautifully spot on. Towers does a great job expressing Marbury's voice by including how he felt when he found out that his father died after he finished playing his game, also how he hated taking his wife to the funeral because there were reporters everywhere talking about how he fucked Knicks intern in his car. The voice shifts that Tower made in each sentences portrayed both Marbury's and Towers's emotions through out the whole interview process. I also loved when Marbury moved to Taiyuan and described how he wanted to kill himself at first but later didn't think about it anymore. I also admired how Towers described each and every detail about the city in Marbury's perspective as being gritty, smoggy, and a shithole. He also described how even when the windows were closed in his hotel room, the air still smelled like a chemical salty flavor that he could taste with his own eyes. There was also a major voice shift when Towers talks about Marbury's early life in the Coney Island, how he grew up with his seven siblings and how he was the chosen one to earn more money than God, and take his family out from that poverty and give them a good life. Towers beautifully touched Marbury's voice in a very individualistic way and in also a professional way. I also found this quite interesting that even though his career was over in the Knicks and he slept with another women,  ate vaseline due to sore throat, and moved to China for his Starbury's business growth, but his relationship with his wife was still intact. The ending on the other hand was the one thing that I loved the most, especially after he was thrown out of the Brave Dragons and he went to Beijing for the Foshan, which was a much worse team then Brave Dragons, and Marbury still pulled it off by beating Shanxi and individually scoring fifty-five points in a single game was mind blowing. I am actually addicted to happy ending stories, and thus I loved how Marbury's voice changed from dismal and frustration, to enthusiasm and joyous as his life fully turned around to a brighter side. 

Roger Ebert Voice

The voice in this piece is really interesting because it switches back and forth between a third person limited and third person omniscient voice, almost. The piece starts with a more omniscient voice, giving physical details and explaining things that you wouldn't have to be in the mind of Roger Ebert to know. For example, his clothes and the things he brought with him, like tissue and moisturizer, are the things that are described rather than attempting to get into the mind of Ebert yet. What this does is start the reader out as distanced; the reader does not go in with a sense of ease, it deliberately reminds us that we are not Roger Ebert and that we are only able to see the surface. This voice is not consistent throughout, however. The voice begins to switch more to a third person limited view more and the reader starts getting more into what he is thinking and things that nobody would know expect for him. For instance, when the reader starts getting examples about the last things he ate and drank, questions are posed as if the reader is in his head and we are hearing his thoughts. It says "his last drink? Water, most likely, but maybe juice" and this puts the reader in the mind of Roger Ebert. This voice is what connects us to Roger Ebert and how the reader begins to feel and understand this person. These two different voices are necessary to accomplish this, though, because one keeps us appropriately distanced and one brings us into his mind just enough so that we understand at least some of the way his brain works and the thoughts that he has and who he is as a person. The two voices juxtapose each other to remind us that we are just readers and can only get so close but still give us a close look at part of this man.

The Essential Man

I chose Chris Jones’ article because I love how ironic it is that I’m supposed to be analyzing voice in an essay that it is literally all about the lack of voice. However, Jones demonstrates in "Roger Ebert: The Essential Man" that having a voice is way more than having vocal chords and making sounds. Through these pages one realizes the importance of the written word and how it gave Roger Ebert his voice back. The reader is able to feel Ebert’s frustration at his loss of speech, but also his gratitude at finding the solace of writing.

Jones begins the article by establishing his own voice first. In fact we don’t hear Roger Ebert trying to communicate until the third page. Instead, Jones begins by describing in great detail a scene of Ebert doing his job of analyzing a movie about someone that has also lost one of his senses, the sense of sound. By describing Ebert’s "radiating kid joy" (2) and claiming that he loved the film, Ebert demonstrates his omniscient position and establishes his third person point of view. The author continue these descriptions throughout the article, offering insights to Ebert’s mind.

Once the narrator’s voice is established, Jones is able to develop his character in the story. He goes on to describe all the ways that Ebert talks without using his voice. "Now his hands do the talking"(3). In fact his hands are described as moving rapidly in accordance to what he wants to express. I personally loved the imagery used when it says that "he’ll clack on a hard surface with his nails" (3) whenever wanting someone to pay attention to him. The use of mannerisms reflects sign language, and it compares Ebert with the man in the movie he was criticizing who was missing one of his senses as well. Furthermore, his anger is described through repetition "the words growing bigger and bigger and bigger…he keeps hitting the button, bigger and bigger still" and furthermore "Roger Ebert is shaking, his entire body is shaking," finally demonstrating his anger through the use of onomatopoeia with "bang, bang, bang, and he’s shouting now." (7) The use of repetition and later onomatopoeia creates the feeling of the anger intensifying and shows how Ebert has found a way to scream and express himself without the use of words.

Nonetheless, Jones also uses specific quotes from Ebert himself to develop character voice. " ‘For meaningful weight loss,’ the voice says, ‘I recommend surgery and a liquid diet’ " (5). This quote encompasses Ebert’s grand sense of humor and how he is capable of using his disease to make others laugh. Despite of his hardships, Ebert doesn’t want to be pitied. Instead his character is simply presented as a strong, humorous man who has overcome obstacles and while losing his ability to speak has nonetheless kept his voice through writing.

Welcome to the Far Eastern Conference

Wells Tower’s piece “Welcome to the Far Eastern Conference” is an amazing example of voice. Tower’s writing offered detailed imagery through comparison and humor. I enjoyed reading this because it was a story that I had never heard before. The beginning paragraph uses descriptive language to set the stage for the rest of the story. For example he writes, “Even with the windows closed, the air smelled like an emergency and had a salty chemical flavor you could taste with your eyes.” in order to describe the thick, polluted Chinese air. Tower also incorporates both imagery as well as satirical or comical language into his writing. For example in the fifth paragraph where he says “...whose mattresses would have registered respectably on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness.” While I found this comparison amusing it also gave me the perfect idea of the space where the story was taking place. It compared the thing that he was trying to convey to the reader to something that the reader could picture in their head. This sort of humorous writing not only made this an interesting read but also made Marbury seem familiar. This writing gave off the idea that him and the main character of the story are friends, and he’s writing about the trip to China the way you’d talk about a vacation. Tower also does a good job of infusing facts about Marbury’s life and business into his writing. He incorporates these statistics and pieces of information effortlessly, without taking away from the writing or feel like you’re being interrupted. These add to the content and understanding of Marbury’s past as well as his current situation without it being obvious. With all of these aspects combined, Tower gives a heartfelt story about a man’s emotional roller coaster ride of a career.