This poem is about a girl who substitutes a character in place of her own self in order to fool a substitute teacher. This poem was very relatable because we all know what it’s like to fool a substitute teacher! I remember times in Mrs. Vachon’s fifth grade class where we used to think it was hilarious for the boys to switch their name tags with the girls. The substitute believed that my classmate, Max, was named Rachel (we told her it was pronounced “Rackel” because we thought that sounded more masculine) and I was named Max, short for Maxine.

Anyway, I really liked this poem because I thought it was quirky and funny. The girl uses a fake accent to fool a substitute, but then she realizes it actually takes a bit of work to change her character. Then, because the teacher turns out to be out for more than just one day, she has to do research to come up with a believable story about her family. Exhausted from the extra work she has done just to fool a substitute, she pretends to be sick to go home early.

This poem was ironic because in order to fool a substitute she had to do more work than just be herself. It wasn’t even worth the comedic value after the first day because her classmates got used to it and it wasn’t funny anymore.

Frost introduces his elegy, “Out Out” with touches of brightness in the introductory stanza with calming diction that is typically found in poems about nature. However, this is quickly contrasted by the lines following his references to nature and the melodies of a chainsaw. Using olfactory, auditory and visual imagery, the first-half of the poem’s tone seems to demonstrate almost a calm mood, with the “sweet-scented” aromas of sawdust, the “buzz” of the chainsaw, and the vast Vermont “mountain ranges one behind the other”. The next several lines of the poem allow readers to connect to the poem as Frost shows the human interaction between an overworked boy and a very domesticated sister. If the poem had not said that they were both children, readers probably would have assumed that Frost was talking about a middle-aged couple living along the countryside. A major idea that can be derived from this poem is that Frost is expressing the injustices of forcing children to do the work of adults, in addition to the indifference that human nature and society has to death. Frost shows a strong connection to the French philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose ideals included the belief that children were not just simply small adults, and that they need time to mature. Frost remorsefully describes the child as “doing a man’s work, though a child at heart…” showing his sympathy towards the worn-out child. As the child tragically approaches his death from the saw, which apparently “leaped out at the boy’s hand,” Frost boldly insists on an idea that is found throughout the human society, which is its reaction to the dying versus the death. As the child’s imminent death was coming, the doctor and the sister watch, possibly with sorrow and grief. But when he finally died, Frost states that “since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs,” showing their indifference to his death after he actually died since they were just grateful that they were not the one dead. This is similar to a line from the movie Hotel Rwanda which spoke of the ignorance of the American people. When asked whether or not the media should do more coverage of the genocide in Rwanda, one of the characters responded that the American viewers would see the situation with sympathy, but would eventually turn around and worry about their own daily lives, forgetting about the tragedies happening half-way across the world.

“Eating Together” & “Eating Alone”

Although both of Lee’s poems both deal with the same ordeal of his father’s death, “Eating Together” seems to share a slight difference in tone with “Eating Alone”. “Eating Together” opens up with gustatory and visual imagery of the great feast he is about to have. He speaks of his mother’s presence and the warmth that he feels for the coming meal. However this is overshadowed by his father’s death. “Eating Alone” also starts out bright, but also becomes overshadowed by his father’s death. A difference that can be observed between “Eating Together” and “Eating Alone” is that he uses the presence of others to almost hide the sorrow for his father, whereas in “Eating Alone”, he uses the natural surroundings to do this. It seems that there is more sorrow involved in “Eating Alone” than there is in “Eating Together”.

The first thing that I loved about the poem when I was finally finished with reading it, was how suspenseful it was up until the actual basketball shot. The poet made the reader sit on the edge of their seat while reading the poem, just waiting and anticipating the shot. It was fun and exciting to read about how the boy was getting ready to make the basketball shot that could make or break the game. I liked how the poet made it suspenseful by saying how it was the last few seconds of the game and really portraying the setting as if you were sitting right in the stands. He drew a great picture in my mind of what it would have looked like if I had been at the game right then and there, and I could relate to it perfectly.

The other thing that I liked about the poem was the author’s use of word choice. When Hoey talks about how the boy was preparing to take the shot and how the ball landed in the hoop, he used a lot of verbs and words that made you feel like you were right there in the game. I could really see what was going on as I was reading the poem. All the words made me get into the poem even more and I liked his writing style. I thought that this was a very clever way to be suspenseful and make sure the reader could really connect with the poem. After all, who hasn’t been to a sports game like that? They are so exciting!

Overall, I think the poem was very good and the writing style had a smart way of getting the reader involved. I thought that the poem was suspenseful and exciting, and it made me want to be at the game right at that moment. I thought that Hoey did a great job of getting the reader to connect with the poem as best he could, and next time I am at a basketball game like that, I will remember this poem.

The two poems by Li-young Lee, “Eating Togeher” and “Eating Alone”, use similar imagery to convey guilt and loneliness. Both use the contrasting images of warm family life and eating together and cold snowy death to verbally recreate the conflict within the author’s emotions. In “Eating Together” the scene is set with a mouth-watering dinner, and yet ends in memories of a father sleeping like “a snow-covered road”. In “Eating Alone”, the author uses the opposite approach of beginning with cold imagery of a bare garden, an “icy metal spigot”, a “rotten pear” and a dying hornet. However, he ends the poem with warm imagery of “rice steaming” and succulent culinary dishes. Both poems convey the author’s loneliness and guilt at being able to enjoy life even though his father has passed away.

Emotions are something everyone has, just not everone chooses to show. The man in “Eating Alone” is pouring out his emotions, maybe not in the text, but in his actions and niches. He tells us that he remembers his father and how his father had influenced him. He emjoyed being around him and remembered the good things about his dad. The shovel turning into the dad in the man’s mind tells me that his father has passed away. When the son runs out to go to his dad, he realizes it’s a shovel, not his father. This tells me that he really misses his father and now fels like a part of him is missing. The love that he had was immesurable, and it was all taken from him once his father died. That mixture of different emotions flood over the man and has ultimately left him depressed and feeling lonely.

Feeling depressed is a natural trend of human life. At various points in time, everyone gets depressed over something. A lost loved one, a bad grade on a test, the yankees losing AGAIN; these are just some of the tings that depress people. This man is going through depression and goes even further down that road after he sees his “dad” as the shovel. There is alwas something happy to go back and remember, but most people choose to live in the moment and not remember the good times in the past. He certaintly is remembering the fun times he had with his dad, but after hallucinating, he just goes right back into depression. Although it seems like he might turn out to be happy in the end, the end of the poem shows that he slips right back into his own little world.

Symbolism is so strong in this poem. The removal of the last onion from his garden was just like him losing the last person he had that mattered in his life. “The garden is bare now” because he has an empty feeling in his heart. There is no one there left to care about him. Everyone that used to care has either died, or gone away, and this is tough for him to handle. He sees the sunset out of the corner of his eye, fading away, just like his hope on finding a good life. You can tell he is upset when he refers to just common faucet as an “icy metal spigot.” A little sarcam in the end is made when he is telling us all of the wonderful food he has made. “White rice steaming, almost done. Sweet green peas fried in onions. Shrimp braised in sesame oil and garlic” All of this is great, but then he says, “And my own loneliness.” This tells us that even though he has created this fantastic meal, there is no one there to share it with. He prepared this feast for many people, but it was only him who ate it. There was no one there to share in his good fortune, his his times of sorrow, or even just his normal, routine days. There was no one there to help him when he was down, or encourage him to do better. There was no one, anywhere.

Out Out is a very interesting poem because of the many literary devices used. Robert Frost uses allusion in the title to Macbeth’s quote “out out brief candle” when he first finds out about Lady Macbeth’s death. More importantly, this poem is known for its imagery that it connotes. Through the use of onomatopoeia, auditory imagery is used in the words “snarled” and “rattled”. It connotes a loud vicious sound by the saw and personifies it as a vicious monster. Other imagery is used such as visual imagery when Robert Frost describes the sun setting in Vermont. The last sentence of the poem proves to be a most interesting line in Out Out. The workers seem to be only self interested because they continue to work even though their friend goes through a tragic death. However this is justified because they must continue to work for survival.

eating together+eating alone

Both the poems Eating Together and Eating Alone seem to be closely intertwined. Visual imagery is used in the first few lines where the reader imagines a family eating a complete meal together. A mood of happiness is created here but is then destroyed once the death of the father of the family is mentioned. Instead of a happy mood created by the family’s meal together, a mood of loneliness is created when the author describes his father’s lonely path. In the second poem, the death of the father is explained more deeply and its sad effects on the family. The author attempts to reminisce his relationship between his father and himself. He finds it difficult to remember those conversations and the activities that they did together. Because of this, he believes he is lonely without his father.

the substitute

The substitute is a poem of a young girl who attempts to make her class laugh by pretending she is English. However, her class becomes tired of her antics, and she becomes weary of learning about England to convince her substitute teacher of her new identity. She is now forced to live with her new identity. There is much organic imagery in this poem. The author says “she had a stomachache, her ears hurt, there were pains”. This imagery helps the reader understand her difficulty in keeping up with her new identity. Also, the other figurative language in this poem brings the story of the girl to life. “Bent over like a charwoman” gives the reader an image of how the girl looked at that time, and again displays how she was affected by her having to keep at her trick. Also, the story of the girl’s fake life gives the poem more meaning by going into detail about the girl’s comprehensive story of her “life in England.” Apart from making the girl’s story more believable to the substitute, it gives the poem more affect by explaining how the girl’s new identity became her life for that week, and why she would have been so exhausted of the whole trick by the end of the week.

mothers

Mothers is a very touch poem about the author’s appreciation for his mother. The poem starts out with the author flashbacking to the time when she was an infant. She describes the close and unique relationship that she had with her mother because of the emotions that the mother and the daughter shared . The vivid imagery explained in the flashback makes the poem both exciting and mysterious. The most influential part of the poem is the last two lines after the author recites the poem taught by her mother to her son. It brings back memories of both pleasure and pain to the author. She is able to remember and pass down her great experiences with her mother but at a cost of desiring them again.

Out Out is a very interesting poem because of the many literary devices used. Robert Frost uses allusion in the title to Macbeth’s quote “out out brief candle” when he first finds out about Lady Macbeth’s death. More importantly, this poem is known for its imagery that it connotes. Through the use of onomatopoeia, auditory imagery is used in the words “snarled” and “rattled”. It connotes a loud vicious sound by the saw and personifies it as a vicious monster. Other imagery is used such as visual imagery when Robert Frost describes the sun setting in Vermont. The last sentence of the poem proves to be a most interesting line in Out Out. The workers seem to be only self interested because they continue to work even though their friend goes through a tragic death. However this is justified because they must continue to work for survival.

eating together+eating alone

Both the poems Eating Together and Eating Alone seem to be closely intertwined. Visual imagery is used in the first few lines where the reader imagines a family eating a complete meal together. A mood of happiness is created here but is then destroyed once the death of the father of the family is mentioned. Instead of a happy mood created by the family’s meal together, a mood of loneliness is created when the author describes his father’s lonely path. In the second poem, the death of the father is explained more deeply and its sad effects on the family. The author attempts to reminisce his relationship between his father and himself. He finds it difficult to remember those conversations and the activities that they did together. Because of this, he believes he is lonely without his father.

the substitute

The substitute is a poem of a young girl who attempts to make her class laugh by pretending she is English. However, her class becomes tired of her antics, and she becomes weary of learning about England to convince her substitute teacher of her new identity. She is now forced to live with her new identity. There is much organic imagery in this poem. The author says “she had a stomachache, her ears hurt, there were pains”. This imagery helps the reader understand her difficulty in keeping up with her new identity. Also, the other figurative language in this poem brings the story of the girl to life. “Bent over like a charwoman” gives the reader an image of how the girl looked at that time, and again displays how she was affected by her having to keep at her trick. Also, the story of the girl’s fake life gives the poem more meaning by going into detail about the girl’s comprehensive story of her “life in England.” Apart from making the girl’s story more believable to the substitute, it gives the poem more affect by explaining how the girl’s new identity became her life for that week, and why she would have been so exhausted of the whole trick by the end of the week.

mothers

Mothers is a very touch poem about the author’s appreciation for his mother. The poem starts out with the author flashbacking to the time when she was an infant. She describes the close and unique relationship that she had with her mother because of the emotions that the mother and the daughter shared . The vivid imagery explained in the flashback makes the poem both exciting and mysterious. The most influential part of the poem is the last two lines after the author recites the poem taught by her mother to her son. It brings back memories of both pleasure and pain to the author. She is able to remember and pass down her great experiences with her mother but at a cost of desiring them again.

I found this poem to be an interesting delve into the human emotions of fear and shame. The boy’s fear of retribution and consequence brought into focus some of my own fears about revealing hidden truths in my own life. it is also interesting that the title of the poem can be interpreted two different ways: does the boy want the saw out of his hand or does he want to get out of the situation. it reminds me of macbeth when he learns of his wife’s death.

eating together & eating alone- li young lee

it’s interesting how the two poems juxtapose each other. The first poem describes the beauty of family togetherness and how meals bring joy. However, as the poem continues, there is a hint of sadness as the author reveals that the father is not present. It emphasizes how meals and family activities can accent loneliness if people are not around. The second poem delves deeper into the sadness of the passing of a family member. It describes a barren surrounding and the coldness. However, as the author reminesces, he realizes that he did not have a warm relationship with his father in actuality. He reveals that he wishes he could change the past. The point is, we should appreciate family and try to spend time with each other before there is regret.

the substitute

The title, in itself, has two different references within the poem, which provides depth to the piece from the beginning. Initially the reader expects the poem to be about a teacher, someone who is supposed to provide guidance and insight to children to who they really are as they are developing. Paradoxically, the main character in the poem is defying that and becoming the real “substitute” within herself. This is an over exaggerated reflection of what children, and more generally people, go through. Everyone at one point in their lives is uncomfortable in their own skin. She just needs to learn to be comfortable with herself.

mothers

This is a very touching poem that is dedicated to all mothers who are able to inspire their children.