Susan Glaspell .

Susan Glaspell Biography

Born: 1876

Died: 1948

She graduated from Drake University and worked as a journalist on the staff of the Des Moines Daily News. When her stories began appearing in magazines such as Harper's and The Ladies' Home Journal, she gave up the newspaper business. In 1915 Glaspell met George Cook, a talented stage director. Together they founded the Provincetown Players on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The Players were a remarkable gathering of actors, directors and writers. The troupe included Eugene O'Neill and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Best known in literary circles for her stage play "Trifles" and her short story, "A Jury of Her Peers." Both works were inspired by her experiences as a courtroom reporter during a murder trial in 1900

Glaspell's  Works

Much of Glaspell's writing is strongly feminist, dealing with the roles that women play, or are forced to play, in society and the relationships between men and women. She wrote more than ten plays for the Provincetown Players, including Women's Honor (1918), Bernice (1919),Inheritors (1921), and The Verge (1922). In 1922 Glaspell married George Cook and moved to New York City, where she continued to write, mostly fiction. In 1931 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Alison's House, a play based loosely on the life and family of Emily Dickinson. Glaspell spent the latter part of her life on Cape Cod writing.

Courage ( I know it doesn't have anything to do with poetry but it was the DRAMA of my life)

It is funny to look back at your life and see how foolish and naive you were.

I was really young when I started this blog. I guess I was only 15 .

It was all about me. How I felt? How I feel sorry for myself for being like the others ?

I was insecure , naïve and of course STUPID ….

I used to think joining the “cool gang” would make me happy..

I used to blog to express how people treated me and how I wanted to change according to mould that don’t fit me.

Being ignorant of how special I was , I decide to walk the path that everyone took .”cool kids”

Then it was about a betrayal of a close friend. I sobbed into the blog. I poured everything there.

Now reading it makes me feel so STUPID and a little sad.

Not because I lost a friend but how I reacted to that whole incident.

Now, I no longer feel sad or scared. I am completely myself and am proud to be me.

I took a huge courage and deleted the blog.

Which signifies that I am much more wiser .

Which signifies that I am now knowing what are priorites .

I outgrew the naïve me and blossom into a wiser and self-loving person.

Time doesn’t wait for anyone.

I figured that out.

Quit being sad and appreciate your surrounding .

I am done here..=)

A Letter to the White Boy

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember. 

Countee Cullen

Dear White Boy,

I will call you "honey" since I don't know you name.I was really offended when you call someone Nigger. It is rude and and I would actually slap you if I could but I won’t as slapping you is too troublesome. Now listen, nobody likes to be call names. It is not nice and I believe you feel the same. The 8-year old boy smiled at you and all you could do is poke your tongue out and called him “nigger:

Honey, someone got to teach you some manners around. I am sorry if your parents are doing it but I believe it is natural to smile back if someone smile at you. The boy is scarred by your doing as he could only remember that YOU CALLED HIM NIGGER after the whole trip to Baltimore.

Please don’t do this again. Respect and give others . You will live a happier life

Regards

=)

Turtle Soup by Marilyn Chin

Marilyn Chin was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Portland, Oregon. Author of Rhapsody in Plain Yellow (W.W. Norton & Co., 2002) and Dwarf Bamboo (1987) to name a few, has received numerous awards including four Pushcart Prizes, the Patterson Prize and Fulbright Fellowship.

Turtle Soup 

You go home one evening tired from work,

and your mother boils you turtle soup.

Twelve hours hunched over the hearth

(who knows what else is in that cauldron).

You say, “Ma, you’ve poached the symbol of long life;

that turtle lived four thousand years, swam

the Wei, up the Yellow, over the Yangtze.

Witnessed the Bronze Age, the High Tang,

grazed on splendid sericulture.”

(So, she boils the life out of him.)

”All our ancestors have been fools.

Remember Uncle Wu who rode ten thousand miles

to kill a famous Manchu and ended up

with his head on a pole? Eat, child,

its liver will make you strong.”

”Sometimes you’re the life, sometimes the sacrifice.”

Her sobbing is inconsolable.

So, you spread that gentle napkin

over your lap in decorous Pasadena.

Baby, some high priestess has got it wrong.

The golden decal on the green underbelly

says “Made in Hong Kong.”

Is there nothing left but the shell

and humanity’s strange inscriptions,

the songs, the rites, the oracles?

Copyright © 1993 by Marilyn Chin 

Published in: Chin, Marilyn. 1993. The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty. Milkweed Editions. 

1. Notice the author’s choice of the word “cauldron” in line 4. What images or connection does this word evoke? Why might the author have chosen “cauldron” rather than “pot”?

I actually think why the word  “cauldron” was used because the writer wants to embrace her Chinese heritage. Cauldron is commonly used by Chinese to boil soup especially the herbal soup. As turtle soup is consider a herb in the Chinese community therefore it is only right to cook in it in a cauldron.

Another way of seeing it is by using cauldron, it show motherly love. The mother cooked it for a long period for her child (him /her ) as the soup gives strength to one.

2.   Chin refers to “the Wei “, “the Yellow,” and “the Yangtze”. Why does she reference these  rivers in China? Why not include the Nile, the Amazon, or the Mississippi?

This is simply because  the poet is actually a Chinese- American. She wants to feel the root / origin by knowing her origin country. It gives her a sense of belonging towards her heritage.

3.  What is the tone of this poem?

The tone of this poem is actually quite melanchony and somber. For example , in stanza 4 line 2 .

“ Her Sobbing is inconsolable”

This line suggest that the mother is actually crying about being an immigrant who is in a foreign land.

I do think that the poem is reflective on the Chinese tradition. For example , there are words such cauldron , Wei, Yangtze , Uncle Wu .

Prejudices =(

How I feel about prejudice? I am sort of numb to it for the time being. It is sort of like not giving a single thought of it. As we all are well aware of, we are going to be judged no matter what. Thus, I am not going to give any reason to interrupt with my life. I mean like Why? It is not like the comments are building. What I am and what I am worth are far much too valuable to be value by irrational comment. This is indeed the 21st century. People are born to judge and pass on judgements.

MY advise is don't care don't bother. LIVE YOUR LIFE THE WAY YOU WANT as you only get to live once. If you are going to take people's irrational and ridiculous judgement into account then you destine to suffer . 

As a proper closure, prejudice is not nice and it is not supposed to happen in this era, especially in this modern era. We should believe in equality and believe that we can build a happier nation with equality.

There are few types of prejudices. For example,  

• Age: Ageism is more common than you think, with both older and younger people facing discrimination. Older people are thought to be inflexible and stuck in the past, while younger people are seen as inexperienced and naïve. One-fifth of working adults say they experience ageism in the workplace.

• Class: Classism usually takes the form of discrimination by  wealthier people against those who are less well off. However, classism goes both ways — people of lower economic status can see the wealthy as elite snobs who, while monetarily secure, are morally bankrupt.

• Color: Different from racism, colorism is discrimination based solely on the color of a person’s skin; how relatively dark or light they are. Colorism takes place within and between races. It is common in multi-ethnic and non-white societies and societies with historical racial prejudice. In the latter colorism more commonly advantages those with lighter skin.

• Ability: Usually called ableism, a less well-known form of prejudice is discrimination against people with visible disabilities such as those in wheelchairs or with a learning disability. The disabled face discrimination not only from their peers, but from institutions, schools, employers, and landowners who are hesitant to accommodate the disabled.

• Sex/Gender: Possibly the most universal and long-running prejudice is that based on a person’s gender or sex. Historically, sexism has placed men in a more advantageous position than women.

• Weight/Size:  In short, sizeism is discrimination based on a person’s body size or weight. Sizeism works with social standards of beauty and usually takes the form of discrimination against the overweight — anti-fat prejudice.

• Religion: Religious discrimination and persecution has been common throughout history. But prejudice based on religious affiliation doesn’t end with organized religion; atheists are prone to discrimination and being discriminated against.

• Sexual Orientation: Most commonly, prejudice based on sexual orientiation includes discrimination against those of a  non-heterosexual orientation — homosexual or bisexual. Discrimination against the non-heteresexual takes many forms depending on the society. In some societies prejudice is open and tolerated, but in most Western societies, bias against the non-heterosexual is more discreet.

• Country of Origin: Otherwise known as nativism, a common form of discrimination is against immigrants to a country. Unlike many other forms of discrimination, nativism is many times encouraged and enforced by the government and other public entities.

(http://aloftyexistence.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/most-common-prejudices/)

Entry 3 Countee Cullen

(May 30, 1903 – January 9, 1946) 

Countee [ con -tay ] Cullen

Countee Cullen was born on May 30, 1903 in New York City, Cullen was brought up in a Methodist parsonage. He went to De Witt Clinton High School in New York and started written work poetry  at fourteen years old. In 1922, Cullen entered New York University. His ballads were distributed in The Crisis, under the authority of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Opportunity, a magazine of the National Urban League. He was not long after distributed in Harper's, the Century Magazine, and Poetry. He won a few honors for his sonnet, "Melody of the Brown Girl," and moved on from New York University in 1923. That same year, Harper distributed his first volume of verse, Color, and he was confessed to Harvard University where he finished a graduate degree.

His second volume of verse, Copper Sun (1927), met with contention operating at a profit group on the grounds that Cullen did not give the subject of race the same consideration he had provided for it incolor. He was brought and instructed up in a principally white group, and he varied from different writers of the Harlem Renaissance like Langston Hughes in that he fail to offer the foundation to remark from individual encounter on the lives of different blacks or use well known dark topics in his composition. An inventive verse artist, he wrote in the convention of Keats and Shelley and was impervious to the new wonderful procedures of the Modernists. He passed on January 9, 1946.

Legacy

A posthumous collection of Cullen's poetry was published in 1947, On These I Stand: An Anthology of the Best Poems of Countee Cullen. His legacy also includes public schools named after the poet, as well as Harlem's 135th Street Branch library being renamed the Countee Cullen Library. After a period of dormancy, more attention has been paid by scholars to Cullen's life and writings, and in 2012 a biography of Cullen was published, And Bid Him Sing, by Charles Molesworth.

Entry 2 ( Naomi Shihab Nye )

Naomi Shihab Nye was born on March 12, 1952, in St. Louis, Missouri, to a Palestinian father and an American mother. During her high school years, she lived in Ramallah in Palestine, the Old City in Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas, where she later received her BA in English and world religions from Trinity University.

Nye is the author of numerous books of poems, includingTransfer (BOA Editions, 2011); You and Yours (BOA Editions, 2005), which received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award; 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (Greenwillow Books, 2002), a collection of new and selected poems about the Middle East; Fuel (BOA Editions, 1998); Red Suitcase(BOA Editions, 1994); and Hugging the Jukebox (Far Corner Books, 1982).

She is also the author of a number of books of poetry and fiction for children, including Habibi (Simon Pulse, 1997), for which she received the Jane Addams Children’s Book award in 1998.

Nye gives say to her understanding as an Arab-American through poems about birthright and peace that spread out with a humanitarian spirit. About her work, the poet William Stafford has said, “her poems combine transcendent liveliness and sparkle along with warmth and human insight. She is a champion of the literature of encouragement and heart. Reading her work enhances life.”

Her poems and short stories have appeared in a range of journals and reviews all over North America, Europe, and the Middle and Far East. She has traveled to the Middle East and Asia for the United States Information Agency three times, promoting international kindness through the arts.

Nye’s honors include awards from the International Poetry Forum and the Texas Institute of Letters, the Carity Randall Prize, and four Pushcart Prizes. She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow. In 1988, she received The Academy of American Poets’ Lavan Award, selected by W. S. Merwin.

She was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2009. She currently lives in San Antonio, Texas.

I think the job of writing and literature is to encourage each one of us to believe that we're living in a story.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/naomi_shihab_nye.html#SzEjh7R2T4kEiIjC.99

(source :http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/naomi-shihab-nye)