Response to Another sonnet for stephan by Alvin lester sitomen

This sonnet I feel is from the perspective of a father to his son, as his son grows through life and as he leaves it. An observation I had while reading this sonnet, is that at the end of the poem Sitomen says that " The boy, the youth, the man are each now gone except in my heart they linger on." When something lingers it seems to me a faded but there presence of something, the remains of what had been there before- I think this shows how though Stephan is still alive within this man like anything else he has begun to fade a sense of moving on. I notice in this poem that this boy, this man, is described in a sense of perfection, see through admirer’s eyes- this person full of wealth of intelligence and yet not anything deeper than pure observations made from an outsiders view. My interpretation of this Sonnet is that it shows the void between Stephan and Sitomen, the unspoken and unbreakable wall keeping them apart.

I think this because in the sonnet the writer keeps repeating the line "I see", never are the words "he is", "there was", said in the sonnet. This shows the void between them because it’s the author explaining his observations what he could physically see and absorb from a distance- it doesn’t lead into Stephan’s thoughts, his take on life, why he turned out to be this way- it doesn’t even allude to who he was. These words only explain the character that Stephan portrayed to the outside world, to those that could look upon him in awe, to those that admired him from afar and all his success. If I were to say "I see a nice man walking by," it simply wouldn’t make sense, your eyes are the only part of you that can’t get to know a person a real level, that can’t tell them apart aside from looks from every other being on this earth. "I see" can only show you the cover of a book- not what is on the inside. Therefore this shows the distance between them how whoever admired Stephan so greatly could never know him on a personal level.

Another reason I believe that this poem shows the void between Stephan and the writer is because as I mentioned before this man and boy is described in a sense of perfection. He seems to be everything that people strive to be and yet I know for a fact that this cannot be who Stephan truly is because no one has can reach perfection. I think that because the writer is only seeing him from the outside he does not know the darkness that lingers within him, he does not know the bad secrets that hide beneath the surface, he cannot see all of Stephan’s regrets and mistakes. The way the author talks about him is as if Stephan is an untouched masterpiece unstained- it’s the way you could talk about someone’s art when you stand back and see all of its glory, without knowing the artist, without knowing the story behind its brilliant strokes.

To conclude I believe that another sonnet for Stephan is about the distance between the writer and this Stephan. I believe this to be true because of how amazing and unrealistically perfect this man is described as and how the author keeps repeating the very distant words, “I see". But maybe if the author wasn’t trying to convey the void in their relationship he could also be trying to convey the closeness of it. That no matter what dark secrets bad pasts, stained memories Stephan possessed, the author could look past that and only see the good in him only see his virtues. And maybe that’s why Stephan continues to

My Sonnet Untitled

In an unrelenting freedom darling one,

You speak to me on wings of gentle sleep

As I depart from you my soul is done;

My heart in chorus begins to simply weep.

And with you I am strong and safe, but no;

Boundless sorrow follows me without you

Alone, I am as fallen leaves in snow:

Withered, old and sad-left to crack then break.

And it is like I have known you always,

Destined love guided by wondrous fate.

No longer trapped by loneliness of days,

I see my soul was never lone, but half

Of you, a cosmic union of this one,

My heart now awake, my searching done.

A couple in Coney island:
A thin tendril holding me to time-
Slipping in slow seconds from my loose grasp.
I raised hand as steady as this moment
And froze time in a white flash.
The blue dripped from the ocean, the color falling from her dress.
And what remained?
The stagnant beauty of life,
The world as it should be
The people just being.

A poem:
A poem is a collection of waves all flowing out into one ocean
A poem is an unseen journey taken by many travelers.
A poem is a song of the heart lyrics spread across a page.
A poem is a friend to confide in to share your deepest worries with.

What happens to a broken life?
Do you try to repair t, pulling through the worn fabric?
Or do you pull the last stitch, letting cloh flutter away-stained with memories
Do you leave this fragmented world behind in your footsteps to be erased by the wind?
Is the release forceful as you pretend its something you wont miss?
Or do you give it distance like you give a kiss

A Couple in Coney Island by Walker Evans

Walker Evans first started out as an aspiring writer his father had a career in advertising, where he wrote ads to persuade people to buy something. Looking up to his father this is where his original dram started but it was in Paris he realized what he truly wanted to do- photographer. Walker Evans didn’t believe in fancy photography, staged moments and objects carefully arranged, or artsy hard to interpret images. He believed that life itself was beautiful and hard to understand as it is. He took photos of life that happened everyday, photos of moments we passed by usually, capturing the simplest things and showing their beauty. This is where this moment came from, “A couple at Coney island,” two people enjoying a personal moment of many that walker Evans captured in his lens. A simple title, a simple picture- of the most complicated thing of all, life that no one can even begins to understand.

In this picture there are two people, a man and a women on a day on the still famous Coney Island boardwalk. At first glance all I saw was a couple standing looking out into the water, but when I look closer I can see the true difference between this and an ad, the woman in particular I find the most interesting. The man in this photograph looks clean, fresh- his suit straight out of the store, his build perfect like a mannequin, his jacket artfully hung over his arm, but his partner is so different from the usual women in most photographs hung on the sturdy arm of a man. Their waists are small and cinched their stature petite and fragile their grasps on the man loose and feeble, hands feminine and slender draped on his shoulder. But this woman is tall almost surpassing the man, her arms are burly like that of a laborer, her waist wide as her loose dress simply hangs around it. If you look in general you can see similarities to her and the other women, but if you look closely you see how she grounds the picture and shows the real aspect of it.  The other thing I noticed most was the way thy held each other-tightly conveying the love that passed between them looking out on the water, the picture taken from behind hiding whatever they see.

I think the meaning behind this photograph was to truly show the beliefs of walker Evans in photography. This picture shows not only the simplicity of life but at this moment in time the simplicity of love. This photo shows a couple looking out over the railing but I think in a way it could symbolize them staring out into the future an unknown place we can’t look into. They look silent to me, still and quiet taking in everything that is happening and grasping onto each other as to perhaps keep a hold of reality, to feel something warm and real beneath their palm, not to get lost in fantasies. They could be sharing small conversation but they look to deep in thought their body language speaking for itself, and walker Evans saw this in the moment, he registered al this in a second in a bright flash, capturing nothing staged, nothing fake- just raw life.     

The Memory Keepers Daughter post 2 by Kim Edwards

Too many mournful yesterdays,
Have put my anticipating tomorrows in doubt.
Crying in tears of shameless regret,
The future lies in a shadow of doubt.

Inside I want to watch the new sun rise,
Yet I can only breath beneath the moon.
Maybe one day I can step outside of the shadows,
That leaves my soul sheltered in a cocoon. 


This is a poem by an anonymous author online, I picked this poem to relate to my book because it is about regret and pain which is all the feelings that is mixed into their lives. David henry gave away his daughter and all these years the memory of that night has haunted him, his wife norah starts to regret every aspect of her life-her marriage her childhood, never getting to hold her daughter, and paul regrets never being closer to his dad and his mom; who I think was most affected by pain and regret, was the one person that was able to escape from everything and start anew-Caroline gills the one that took Pheobe and raised her away from everyone. I think the reason that she is most affected is that what could have happened is poisoning her always. she dreams in fantasies and in what ifs never living for the moment and processing what is really happening. when she wakes up from this dreamy sleep and finally looks at what has happened and who's child exactly she is raising, then regret will riddle her life and poison her slowly from the inside just like it did  to  the Henry's, except this time it is going to hit all at once all these memories that she has let drift by will come rushing back to hurt her, she started this pain when she took the baby in the car and drove off to her new life,she may not have caused it but she started it and this is a continuous cycle that once started can never end.
to me this poem means that what happens yesterday has poisoned tomorrow or affected everyday after, that this regret over shadows them keeping them in the darkness of tears and pain, and that one day this person hopes that they can leave this pain behind, and start a new life away from tears and depression. I believe that this is what all the characters in this book strive to accomplish as well,they want to leave this invisible wall keeping them back,they want to leave the pain that haunts them all that dont even know exists. The wish to live to live like they always dreamed, a suburban family playing in the sun, but even when the sun shines the brightest it can never touch them.

The Memory Keepers Daughter by Kim Edwards

In this book the father delivers his wife’s two babies at a hospital, but upon seeing that his daughter has down syndrome, he tells the nurse that is working to take the baby away from him and his wife and never speak to his wife about it. He planned to lie and tell his wife that his baby daughter died at the birth. I believe that the author named the book "The Memory Keepers Daughter", because he keeps all of these secrets about his little girl and begins to see as these forbidden memories inside his head and lingering ones in his wife’s tear his family apart.

I think that the thing that is really overwhelming her is not only the grief that she never really got to see her daughter but the fact that she knows somewhere inside of her that her daughter did live. When the dad hit the baby back it cried out as it took its first startling breath, I think that somewhere deep within her sleepy state the wife heard that cry and made her first connection with the baby, listened and somehow registered the first sound her little baby made. That is why I think in all her dreams she is looking for something she lost- she is not grieving over memories she was never able to have- she is tortured by the ones she did.

I also believe that the father is not really upset about his wife, or even the fact that his only son has to be raised by him alone without the help of the mother I think he is so upset over the rash decision he made to throw the precious daughter he could have had that he chose to throw away. My opinion is that he should be the one that is having the dreams of lost things, because to have to lose something you have to be able to posses it first, and though technically the wife did have the baby carried inside her as part of her body, the dad held her in his hands looked over her face, saw her and took her in as part of this world and then in a split second rejected her as ever being there. To me the way he lost something is his sense of reality- because in those few moments the world and time just didn’t exist as she disappeared from his arms. The most haunting thing about this is that no matter where he goes she could a step, a mile, a universe away, and yet the fact that she is hi, that he first one to look at her, to hold her, to know her as phoebe. Again this brings me back to memories and how for his situation the actual reality is much different- in fact the opposite from the wife’s- that though he shred these few tender moments, he is more upset over all the years he lost when he left her. 

To conclude the wife, and the father have had the reality of their states of mind completely wrong and confused and that memories are the most dangerous thing to enter a human’s fragile mind.

Ash by Malinda Lo

In this book there is a girl named Aislinn who is referred to as ash. In the beginning of the story it explains how her mother died, though ash was grief ridden she had the shoulders of her father to lean on, and his arms to run into when she cried- but then her father died as well. Previous to the death her father had remarried to a cruel woman with two daughters, so when he passed on ash was left with these sad remains of a “family”, and was eventually forced to move from her home she had lived in since birth and adapt to the royal city life. In past books and from real life experiences I often saw that when people went through traumatizing events or lost something that they loved and that was very important to them, they took another look at their life- at the people around them and at the world itself, this loss led them to reassess themselves and change for better. But in this story Ash does not do a 360 and look again at the aspects of her life, she turns to fairytales, stories, and legends that she can follow aimlessly and forget the pain. I believe that all the hurt that ash has been through only made her flee to a dream state, and not brought her to terms with reality.

One example of this is when she meets the fairy Sidhean. All her life by her mom, her caretaker, and the entire town, she had been told to never trust a fairy- to never sip from their cup- to never follow the fairy hunters or step into the fairy ring. But all of a sudden she stumbles upon Sidhean and instead of turning away and running she goes closer- and began looking for him every night, going as far as to wander the forest alone on cold nights in unfamiliar places searching for the danger she had always been told to run from. I think ash does this because since she has lost so much of the reality around her she must feel like she is gripping with her fingernails onto the last bit she knows is still there: herself. She looks for danger because she wants to be hurt, she wants to feel an emotion again, to feel movement within her so that she knows she is not just a simple presence but a being that lives and breathes. I think she cannot feel as strongly as before because all the pain swallowed her long ago, she drowned in the hurt until she couldn’t tell the difference between this pain and all the feelings she once had, so she is searching for reassurance.

Another example of this is how she searches desperately for love in everyone. Even though her step mother treats her no better than any other servant or maid, ash still insists on doing everything she can to please both her mother and her sisters. Also when she meets the huntress she becomes almost immediately possessive and desperate for the huntress to show affection love and care back to her- this desperation also appears in her a Sidhean it is another reason she went chasing after him, in search of someone to show an interest in her no matter what kind.

This connects to the world because it shows how while a lot of people will face the pain head on and embrace it and slowly work through it, others will live in a world of shadows hiding In the corners of denial and refusing to come out from their shelter and face the storm. They will wander around in search of something that they feel they have lost, when really the emptiness they feel is really the cut in their heart that they never gave a chance to heal- that they just ignored and left gaping open. This kind of thing I believe will lead people to do irrational things. An example of this is 9/11 when so many people lost their loved ones and had to see the scene repeated on news broadcasts and in pictures scattered around the world;  some chose not to accept this loss and slowly start to get better but to turn around and blame others, to distract their minds  from all the pain. It was incidents like this that made discrimination against Muslims so prominent. It is not anyone’s fault that these things happen; it’s just the fragile state of the human mind that is often overestimated in its strength.