The New York Times For Being By Mary Oliver

Furthermore, Mary Oliver’s use of first-person point of view allows her to show how poetry writing is personal to her, and how it serves a specific type of challenge. Mary Oliver starts off

Anthony Bourdain is a critically acclaimed chef, writer, and television star. He has appeared in shows such as “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations”, “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown”, and “Top Chef,” and published works such as “Don’t Eat Before Reading This”, “Medium Raw”, and “The Nasty Bits.” Trained at Vassar College the Culinary Institute of America, Bourdain is known for his love of food. In 2000, he wrote a book called Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, and his first chapter is entitled “Food is Good”. In the chapter, Bourdain discusses his trip to France with his family, and how the trip transformed from hating the exotic food to loving it. Through his structure, descriptive language, and childhood stories,

Most poems, new and old, almost always have an important message to teach to all those who take the time to read it. Authors use poetic devices to get their message across in creative, yet effective ways. For example, Mary Oliver carefully uses several poetic devices to teach her own personal message to her readers. Oliver’s use of the poem’s organization, diction, figurative language, and title aids in conveying the message of how small, yet vital oxygen is to all living and nonliving things in her poem, “Oxygen.”

Anne Bradstreet’s and Phillis Wheatley’s poems both share the themes of death and religion, but Bradstreet explores these themes by tying them to nature and her personal struggles with simplicity and a religious lens, while Wheatley incorporates race using a sophisticated, Christianity-saturated perspective often bordering on impersonal.

Mary Oliver’s book of poems, titled American Primitive, follows several themes and contains just under 50 poems. The most prominent theme is the grief cycle, following the seasonal cycle. This cycle follows the pattern where the situation gets worse before it gets better. There is a duration where the situation declines until things are very bad, as if there is no hope - as in fall to winter. This ultimately leads to the darkest point, the dead of winter. There seems to be no light, but then hope slowly appears, blossoming into full resurrection and restoration, parallelling spring and summer. Nature and sexuality are also essential aspects of the poems. I will discuss three of my favorite poems, “Lightning”, “University Hospital,

People base their judgement of others through the way they talk, act, dress, and live. In the memoir Us and Them by David Sedaris, young Sedaris wants to know how the Tomkeys, his neighbors, live their lives without a television. His curiosity causes him to spy on the family during the day and night. Even though the Tomkeys may seem strange and not “normal,” Sedaris learns that he, himself, is not a perfect individual either. Sedaris uses allusions, irony, and first person point of view to deliver his message that people need to stop judging others and look at themselves instead.

In 2011, Bill O’Reilly wrote Killing Lincoln. In this book he explains how the assassination of Abraham Lincoln took place and groundbreaking affects it had on the war and the country. O’Reilly had many reasons for the purpose in writing this book. He says he thought he knew what happened with the assassination and the effects it had on the country. I believe O’Reilly was truly intrigued once he started researching how the plot was planned and so forth. O’Reilly states that the plan itself had elements that have been unknown for quite some time. He states this book will have many effects on the readers. It will disturb-quotation marks the reader because of all of the conspiracies in the book. He also states that the book will advance readers knowledge on the assassination and its implication on the future of America. He states by reading this there are many lessons to be learned. He says realizing the heroes who have mad the country great-quotation marks and also the villains-quotation marks are vital to those who want to keep the country great. Lastly, while his main purpose is the thrill the reader, he makes sure not to spin any facts or compromise the integrity of the facts throughout the book. (need page number(s). Since there are no numbers on these pages you paraphrase/quoted from you can use roman numerals, which are i-ii)

In the book, Killing Lincoln, author Bill O’Reilly portrayed John Wilkes Booth as an obsessed assassin who recruited various conspirators. He described the events leading to President Lincoln’s murder and the hunt to capture Booth and his cohorts. Killing Lincoln is comprehensible to anyone as young as a middle schooler, although it would be best suited for an older reader with an interest in history and politics. Killing Lincoln could also be appealing to those intrigued by conspiracy plots and criminal motives. O’Reilly constructed an action packed thriller of patriotism and war to keep the reader engaged.

If a person had the option to change the world for the better, would they? If they would, then why is it when a person gets minor inconvenienced by a small problem like not having enough chips for the bean dip, they just accept the problem and they do not do anything about it. William F. Buckley Jr. Wrote an essay called, "Why Don't We Complain". Buckley is giving the readers his experience on both the lack of care within the political system and also the apathy people give when it comes to life's minor roadblocks. Society needs to learn that fixing minor problems when given the chance is better than letting a problem grow so much that it starts affecting other people. The audience that this essay is directed to will learn the message of why people should complain, and the purpose the author has to complain.

Like Spring, Wild Geese is written in casual language, but still manages to be stimulating and powerful. It’s rational simplicity truly captures the might of the words that sweep through our hearts to provoke a feeling of unity and tranquillity with nature. This is exactly what Oliver is attempting to portray through her poems, Wild Geese especially, by reminding us that we as a human race are so preoccupied with the melodramatics of life that we fail to see the beauty and wonders surrounding us, and that we should sit back and follow the natural and simple path the non-human world follows.

‘’Food Is Good’’ written by a chef, author, and food critic, Anthony Bourdain reflects on his childhood experiences and his passion for food. According to Bourdain, food has more meaning beyond being a substance. Food is filled with stories and power that can change a life. In the article, Bourdain reflected on his family vacation to Europe, which piqued his curiosity for food and started his passion.

The mystery of how John Wilkes Booth pulled off the most influential and notorious assassinations in history is revealed in Killing Lincoln. The author of this book, Bill O’Reilly, built up the plot of the story through vivid historical details and pieced them together like a thriller. He tries to explain all of what happened on one of the most interesting and sad days in American history. Many conspiracies and Civil War ideals are on full display in the book. I agree with most of O’Reilly’s ideas but there are some that I am not really sure about because of his point of view like many of the conspiracy theories. Killing Lincoln by Bill O’Reilly was a very compelling read which described the Civil War, lives of

Killing Reagan was wrote by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard as a part of their series to talk about the deaths, assassination, and near deaths of certain historical people. O’Reilly and Dugard write about the events leading up to the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan including discussing the attempted assassin, John Hinckley, and the events after up until his death. The authors present the viewpoint as if one were there to witness the lives of the people in the book. Killing Reagan talks about the politics during Reagan’s life and presidency to tell about who Ronald Reagan was and his ideas that influenced a presidency. Some things a reader may want to know before starting this book is a basic idea of the events and politics of the twentieth century, especially those after WWII. Overall, it is easy for just about anyone to understand.

In Godless: The Church of Liberalism, published by Three Rivers Press in 2007, author Ann Coulter argues that liberalism has become a religion despite liberals rejecting god and religion. On the first page Coulter writes, “Of course liberalism is a religion. It has its own cosmology, its own miracles . . . its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview, and its own explanation of the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all the attributes of what is generally known as a religion.” Coulter attempts to draw many parallels between liberals and religious people in the beginning of the book. Coulter then gets into the ideologies that the “liberal religion” possesses in the chapters to follow. This includes Coulter’s assertion that liberals love violent criminals, but hate fetuses because all liberals oppose the death penalty and support abortions. Coulter’s overgeneralizations continue when she rants and yells about the liberal media’s adoration for educators and how teachers are the saints for leftists and schools are like churches of socialism. Then Coulter states that educators are indoctrinating students with false beliefs in evolution and turning children away from Christianity. Finally, Coulter attempts to disprove evolution a very small amount understanding of what evolution really is. In Godless: The

Thomas Friedman writer for The New York Times brings us through his research on Middle East and their opinion of 9/11. Friedman travels to many different Arabian nations through out this documentary. His first stop was in Qatar at a school that offers an American like education. At this school he talked to the students about their opinions of America. The second stop was Cairo, which was the city in Egypt that Mohammad Atta grew up in. Friedman met with Ali Salem a play writer who wrote a remarkable article for The New York Times on the first anniversary of 9/11, it was titled “An Apology from an Arab”. They discussed his work and why he wrote what he did. Something that struck me was one of the quotes Friedman pointed out, “These extremist feel like dwarfs, which is why they search for towers, and all those who tower mighty “. I like this so much because it has so much truth to it. The third stop was Belgium where Friedman interviewed Fauzaya Talhaoui, who is a member of the Belgian Parliament. They discussed where the anger and hatred that is mention so often throughout this documentary comes from. Tahaoui believes that this anger comes from humiliation. The Muslim people used to be number one, but it constantly is falling behind and becoming more powerless. The fourth stop is Bahrain, where he was able to see a country getting closer to democracy. Friedman actually ends up going back to Bahrain and is able to see an election take place. The last place that Friedman