Clever Poetry

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House by Billy Collins
The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

I chose this poem because I know that insane feeling you get when something is irritating you all to well. It's like the noise or whatever it is is out to get you or something and I think Billy Collins captures this feeling perfectly. The title fits it perfectly because something as annoying as a dog barking constantly makes you feel like you're going to go postal if it doesn't stop. Also it captures your attention too.
The repetitive "b" sound has a harsh almost abrasive (theres that b again) sound to it which fits with the constant barking of the dog. Obviously the repetition of the word "bark" does this too. Powerful imagery enhances the poem because it lets the reader imagine the dog sitting out in the symphony barking away too.
The tone is almost irritated to the point of irrationality/insanity. Collins achieves this by centering eveything in the poem around the dog's bark and slowly creating images that are more and more "out there" I guess. First he can image the dog being flipped on or wound up like a toy and then sitting in the orchestra and then finally the soloist in the orchestra. There is also a rhythm to the poem that is continually broken/interrupted by the harsh "b" sound similar to how the dog's barking keeps interrupting his thoughts.
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/billy_collins/poems/11282

Loving Primetime

So there's soooooo many good shows premiering this week it's INSANE. like law order: svu (pretty much the best show ever) premieres tonight and i watched dancing with the stars last night (ok so its not the best show ever but how hillarious is it to watch all those celebrities dance around ridiculously) and grey's anatomy starts thurs and OF COURSE THE OFFICE!!!!


best show ever.


simply amazing.



But one flippin awesome show is missing this fall. 24. Stupid writers strike postponed it for like ever and i miss it soooo much! Cause it's so amazing obviously. i can't wait for the 2 hour season prequel to come but thats not till november ugh so far away.

Mathematical Error

So yesterday my table was talking about like what would happen if like one day 2+2 like didn't equal 4 and instead like equaled sun or something like that. How weird would that be like realizing that everything you've learned since you were like 5 was totally wrong? Crazy. So then we got bored and decided to make our own mathematics and this is what we came up with:
blue+red=aardvark
daniel day-lewis squared=holy (haha anyone who has taken apal will get this)
aardvark squared= coven of aardvarks
and i cant think of some of the others right now but it was really entertaining and killed a lot of time and i think the font of this blog changed in the middle and im not really sure why.
i'm not really sure what else i wanna write about so just random things going on with me:

• today i'm going to look and the proofs for my senior pictures...i'm excited to see them!
• this friday my dance team (i'm on jv) is performing pregame at the football game so again im really excited but also nervous beyond belief
• i'm doing a lab in ap chem
• i'll be writing my personal narrative tonight and possible title choices are: puddle on the prairie (because its about a flood and it happened in the midwest which is pretty much all prairie), washing away (again its about a flood), come hell and high waters (that was kind of the motto associated with the flood after it happened), too deep for galoshes (again, flood) but i also might change my topic and then these titles would be kinda useless

Personal Narrative

So I don't really have anything for passages really right now. I basically just have an outline right now because i haven't taken any time to really right up anything yet. I'm still organizing my thoughts out and all that fun stuff. And i just hate rough drafts in general because im too much of a perfectionist to write down something that i dont think is worded right and stuff...its a terrible habit and it wastes so much time. But anyways im writing about when i was a kindergartener there was a big flood in my town and how that changed me.

Discover

So forget this picking a topic thing...i'm just going to write about random stuff because theres no way i'm ever going to be able to choose/write one topic. I get distracted waaay too easily. But anyway I don't know what else I'm supposed to write about soooo yeah. This week has been the longest ever. i'm serious. If every week is like this i'm going to switch to four day school weeks. Also i have a cold too and this stupid cough that won't go away so that sucks too. But yeah i'm being a negative nancy so im just gonna quit while i'm ahead.