poetry #6

Poetry #6
Neal Chapman

HOW CAN I HATE YOU?

I shall leave you
If I have to.
I shall forget you
If I have to.
I shall forgive you
If I have to.

But I shall not hate you
Even if I have to.
How can I hate you,
Whom I have loved so devotedly
And so unreservedly? 

title: the title of this poem at first glance, makes me think that there was a person who the author was close too, than betrayed him. it could have been a lover, or close friend, just from the title it is hard to tell.

paraphrase:  the beginning of the poem is about a person trying to forget another person. the second half of the poem is the same person saying that they could never hate that person.

Connotation: I believe that the connotation of this poem is that people who have ever been intimate, or a parent child relationship can never hate each other.

Tone: the start of the poem has a angry tone, while the second part of the poem has a more sad tone.

shift: halfway through the poem there is a tone shift from angry, to sad.

Title: The more i look at the title of this poem i think that this poem is about a parent, child relationship that goes wrong.

theme: the theme of this poem is love, lost, and forgiveness.

poetry #5

Poetry #5
Neal Chapman

Two Kinds of Intelligence

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

Title: the title of this poem"Two Kinds of Intelligence" is trying to spark conversation in the readers mind. the reader has to think what the two kinds of intelligence are, than which kind do they have.

paraphrase: the poet says that the first kind of intelligence is the one you get from being good at school, and reading books. the second kind of intelligence is basically creativity that you can't get more or less of. you are born with a certain amount of intelligence in the second sense of the word.

connotation: this poem tries to tell people that while learning from a book is good, and you can do good in life with it, you are born with  certain amount of "intelligence" and that there is not much you can do to change that.

Tone: the tone of this poem is upbeat. it says that even if you are not book smart, you still are intelligent.

shift: there is a big shift when it switches what type of intelligence it is talking about. it starts off kind of melancholy, then it switches to a more upbeat, happy tone for the second half.

title: the title of this poem really speaks to the individuality of people. no two people are the same, and that includes there not just being one way to measure intelligence.

theme: the theme of this poem is individuality in people.

Short story

Short story
Neal Chapman

The twigs brush my face as I race by, the cold air stinging the scratches left behind. I glance up to see the moon start to appear behind the clouds. my heart starts beating faster and faster. my only thought is to keep on running, try and get away from all of the people I care about. Whenever i glance behind me and see the lights from my village the word faster flashes in my mind. Suddenly, a root grabs my leg and pulls me to the ground. i stumble into the fringes of a clearing. while on the ground i can feel a tingling in my extremities. "no, no no!" I yell out loud. I look up to the sky to see a full moon staring back at me. It started with my fingers, my nails extending, while my fingers shorten into paws. the bones in my fingers breaking as they conform into their new shape. it moves into my arms, the cracking sound was almost as bad as the actual bones breaking. after about a minute of excruciating pain, i passed out. In my sleep, I saw flashes of what i hoped had been a dream. the flashes consisted on faces that i recognized, their eyes clouded with death. everything was cloaked with a maroon filter.

I look around, seeing nothing but a sunny ski above me. i look to my left, and see the tree line, thick with spruce trees. I slowly rotate my head clockwise, and see that i am in a clearing of the forest, it looked strangely familiar. As i complete my head turn to my right, I see exactly what I didn't want to see. I could see the back of a head laying right next to me. Their was no body connected to the head. i jump up and the contents of my stomach empty themselves onto the grass. My mind is racing, what have I done, is repeating itself throughout my head. I look down at my body with horror, i was naked, streaked with dried blood. I get up and started running, i was running away from not just my village, not just from the people who i have killed, but also from my very life. The knowledge that once every month i turn into a monster and have to murder people,  made it that i could not enjoy life. As i was running, i saw a cliff in front of me. i run to the edge and look down, the river hundreds of feet below rushed by with the ferocity of bear. i jumped, knowing that the world will be abetter place without me. as the wind rushes by my face, i smile. i smile with the knowledge, that i would not be able to hurt anyone else anymore. the river rushes towards my eyes, than everything goes black.

poetry #4

poetry #4
Neal Chapman
sonnet Vl

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface,
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed.
That use is not forbidden usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That's for thy self to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;
Ten times thy self were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
   Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair
   To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

Title: the title of the sonnet is just sonnet Vl, i don't think that this title had very much thinking behind it.

paraphrase: i think the poem is trying to tell a girl to not grow old with time, but the poet knows that growing old is part of life.

connotation: in the first two lines when the poet is talking about summer and winter, i think he is talking about time passing in general, and not specific seasons. the last two lines are telling the girl that she is much to pretty for death to turn her body into a home for worms.

Tone: i think the the poet is talking in a deppresed kind of love he is in love with this girl =, but instead of seeing the good parts, all he can see is her dying in the end.

shift: before the last two lines, the poet is talking about what the death would do for him, and how sad it would make him. in the last two lines he shifts to talking about the girl directly.

title: once again the title is just a number.

theme: i think that the theme of this poem is knowing the inevitable. the poet knows that hte girl will die eventually and cannot stop thinking of that point.

blog post #3

blog post #3
Neal Chapman

If i were to do any day over again it would be this last Friday. after working for 4 straight years just trying to get better, my high school hockey career ended. I always knew it would end, but i can't quite believe it is actually over. The hardest part about it ending is the fact that it could have gone for a little longer, while making school history in the process. Since we were the 4th place in our conference, the team would have to play state powerhouse west valley high school. we had played them 3 times already this year, each one ending with a 8-1 loss. while some people might look at this as a definite loss for the bears, i have always been the kind of person who could see the silver lining. I honestly thought that we could win the game. the first period went good until the last 8 seconds, when west valley scored their first goal. the rest of the game went like this, our team playing solid, except for a couple of points, which the other team would exploit and score. our team could only muster 13 shots to west valleys 46 and the final score was 3-1. while it was much better than any other, i was finished. it took me a couple minutes to fully comprehend that it was truly over. if i were to change anything i would have changed that day, to try and keep my hockey career going. although i know that nothing can be perfect, even if i had one that game, or even won the state tournament, i would still be sad that my hockey career was over.

poetry #3

Poetry #3
Neal Chapman

Hope

"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all,

- Emily Dickinson,

Title: the title of this poem really describes the rest of the poem. Hope really is a living idea and more than just a thought.

paraphrase: the poem is describing hope as if it were a bird, and more than just a thought. it wants to make the reader believe that hope is a living breathing organism.

Connotation: Song birds have always been used a symbol of peace and tranquility. If you watch a Disney movie, song birds are used to try and calm down the watcher. the reader compares hope to a song bird because the bird is happy, peacefull symbol known to most of the world as such.

attitude: the attitude in this poem is lighthearted and blissful. it talks about a bird that never stops singing, which is a good thing in this poem.

Shift: there is not much a shift in this poem.

title: looking back at the title, the word hope is used because of how good of the connotation is.

theme: the theme of this poem is hopeful.

poetry anaylais #2

poetry analysis #2
Neal Chapman

Fire and Ice
Title: the title of this poem is supposed to confuse the reader, while adding a little bit of excitement. Fire is a exciting thing to see, but the clash between fire and ice is s spectacle. also fire and ice can't ever mix so a poem with the name fire and ice is slightly confusing.

Paraphrase:  the poet is talking about the end of the world in either an Armageddon, nuclear way, or in a slow way such as another ice age. 

Connotation: i think the the fire is a metaphor for a nuclear bomb. Robert frost lived during the time of the second world war and could see what the nuclear bomb was capable of doing. I also think that the ice is a metaphor for another ice age, even during the time that frost lived, they knew about the ice ages. he knew that an ice age would be able to destroy a large amount of life on this earth.

Tone: the tone of this poem is that of apathy. Frost does not really care how the world ends, all he knows is that i will end.

shift: after the favor fire line, the tone shifts from a slightly more upbeat tone, to a depressing tone. ice is a slow killer and he knows that if the world were to end in ice, everyone would suffer a lot more pain. at least if the world ended in fire, it would be almost instantaneous.

Title: the more i look at the title, the more i think that the poet is truly trying to confuse the reader. there is now way that fire and ice can be next to each other for any sort of time, one would destroy the other, so putting them together with the word "and" makes it seem like the poet is truly trying to connect two things that just cannot be connected.

Theme: this poem is about the destruction of the earth. this would include the poet and everyone he knows and loves to perish. the thing is, is that he doesn't really seem to care all that much. he just wants to let it happen.