Essay My Teacher is my Muse

My English Literature major has helped me to achieve an outstanding level of appreciation, enjoyment, and knowledge of both American and British Literature. As a high school AP English student, I struggled through great works like Hamlet and To the Lighthouse. My teacher’s daily lectures (there was no such thing as class discussion) taught me merely to interpret the works as critics had in the past. I did not enjoy the reading or writing process. As a freshman at Loras, I was enrolled in the Critical Writing: Poetry class. For the first time since grade school, my writing ability was praised and the sharing of my ideas was encouraged by an enthusiastic and nurturing professor. Despite the difficulty of poetry, I enjoyed reading it.

As an English teacher at Wellesley High School, in the accomplished community of Wellesley, Massachusetts, David McCullough, Jr. confronts the paradox of reality versus the popular assumptions perpetuated by well-meaning parents and delivered a shockingly poignant attack on the Wellesley High School graduates’ self-perception and preparedness. In addition, he outlined the parents’ role in creating and maintaining this deception. Mr. McCullough used his knowledge and insight of the Twenty-first Century youth culture, humor, and steadfast opinion that his target audience of high school graduates is aphoristically, NOT SPECIAL. However, Mr. McCullough limited his audience’s sensitivity to his assertion using ethics, logic and pathos and later provides a positive, passionate and humanistic world view of how to have a well-lived life.

The author persuades people to use their head before just using the words heart or love to give the word its true meaning. Carruth also displays what happens to words when they tend to be misused which is that they usually lose their value over time if they are not of great importance. Through his writing style in the poem, Carruth shows how people freely use the word “heart” and how it affects the meaning of the word. He opens and closes the poem with a question, refers to the heart as 'it' in the first stanza, and shows uncertainty of the importance of the heart in the first stanza as well.

The word has been used in many different ways. It has been portrayed in many different ways. People like to transform the word into what they want. It has many different connotations and denotations. In the poem, “An Apology for Using the Word ‘Heart’ in Too Many Poems”, Hayden Carruth depicts “heart” as, although overly used word that has surprisingly enough lasted for quite a long time, a much needed word. Carruth portrays this through his word choice, tone and symbolism.

Unlike other forms of literature, poetry can be so complex that everyone who reads it may see something different. Two poets who are world renowned for their ability to transform reader’s perceptions with the mere use of words, are TS Eliot and Walt Whitman. “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” by TS Eliot, tells the story of a man who is in love and contemplating confessing his emotions, but his debilitating fear of rejection stops him from going through with it. This poem skews the reader’s expectations of a love song and takes a critical perspective of love while showing all the damaging emotions that come with it. “Song of myself”, by Walt Whitman provokes a different emotion, one of joy and self-discovery. This poem focuses more on the soul and how it relates to the body. “Song of myself” and “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” both explore the common theme of how the different perceptions of the soul and body can affect the way the speaker views themselves, others, and the world around them.

Filled with frustration, I got up for the first day of classes for the spring semester. I went to my first class in Scully and then had to make the long trek across campus to get to my first college English class, EN100. The class took place in Art Building, a place I have never been. As I entered the building, I prayed I was in the right place. I walked up the flights of stairs and frantically searched for the classroom with only a minute till class started.

Oftentimes, poetry is used to express extremely romanticized love, such as in Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18.” This love is often explicitly expressed through numerous emotional appeals and comparisons of love to many seemingly incredible views or experiences, such as stating “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/ Thou art more lovely and more temperate,” (Sonnet 18, 1-2). In contrast to this figurative expression of one’s love, Declan Ryan provides a more human and tangible expression of his love while writing about what seems to be a more mundane experience in his poem “Rope-a-Dope.”

First, Dove’s individual shifts in tone help to structure the general theme of acceptance by enhancing HER perspective on the subject. To illustrate, the poem begins with a straightforward and critical tone, evident through HER judgement of the heart. With defined word choice in lines like, “It’s neither red / nor sweet” (1-2), and, “it isn’t even / shapely” (12-13), the reader can understand Dove’s condemning tone. Thus, the fault-finding tone forms the theme of the poem by describing how Dove views HER heart’s imperfections, the same imperfections that SHE wishes will not interfere with HER emotional life. Likewise, Dove’s reflective yet realistic tone shown in lines like, “[HER heart] isn’t even / shapely-- / just a thick clutch / of muscle”

The use of different literary devices such as imagery, symbolism and diction set up a poem that is addictive to read! Once it is started, it’s hard to stop. This poem offers a welcoming story for our reader to enjoy.

For as long as it can be remembered people have used multiple forms of literature in order to gain knowledge, entertain, and even express a certain idea. Poetry is in fact one of those forms of literature, and before people began to write it, it was known to be told verbally by many. A person would tell a tale and those who listened would memorize it, what eventually caused poetry to spread around. Still to this day, many come to fall in love with the magic poetry possesses. It is the writer’s decision to either have a specific rhythm to it or just have a simple list of words. This essay argues that poetry is a creative way of expressing one's emotions and that it should be, not only preserved, but celebrated, even by those who have not considered themselves poetry fans in the past.

Being a female writer in a time when women were expected to bear children or devote themselves to God was a difficult fight to face that often left many women discouraged and remorseful of their talents. These same feelings of discouragement and remorse are felt when dealing with heartbreak and in the poem, Whitney connects the emotions felt by the two ailments:

Overall, I thought this class was fun and different. I made me realize that I actually do have a creative side to me that I didn’t know before. I always tell everyone that I can’t write poems but now I know that’s not true. I’m proud of the work I did this semester, some poems are better than others that’s true but I liked all of them regardless. I liked that this class was very freeing, because I could write about anything I wanted and that there were no prompts. I don’t think there are any specific improvements that can be made for this class. I did struggle with critiquing the work of others

“Poems are written with the feelings and emotions, with the intuition and the instincts, that make each of us who we are” (Charters 669). Dana Gioia, the author of “Summer Storm 2000” expresses an emotional works to an event dated back 20 years ago. Gioia uses dictions such as, imagery, figures of speech, setting, tone, and ballad to help readers not only comprehend the poem but to help them envision and feel it as if they were the ones experiencing the story. Gioia uses these means as a way of expressing his feelings and thoughts while explain to readers the deeper meaning of what “Summer Storm” really entails.

Several poems in the anthology explore the intensity of human emotion. Explore this theme, referring to these three poems in detail and by referencing at least three other poems from your wider reading.’

For some reason or another certain students are drawn to particular teachers while other students are more fond of others. In my life I have studied under three memorable teachers. Teachers with which I was able to connect, to laugh, to share my misgivings. While I may have been close with each of these teachers, it is very clear, in retrospect, that each was very unique, and represented an entirely different class of teacher.