Mrs. Ho's AP Lit 2022-2023

     This summer, my friend convinced me to watch the movie "Everything Everywhere All at Once," a fantastic movie discussing the multiverse, the choices we make, family roles, and how people have an impact on each other's lives. This movie had a lot of the qualities that I believe make up a great film like an interesting plot line, captivating action sequences, and open discussions and messages about difficult issues. It does have some critiques that I feel are fair, but is still an overall amazing movie.     This movie follows the path (or, more accurately, paths) of a Chinese-American immigrant, Evelyn Quan Wang, making a living with her family through a laundromat. I say "paths" because, throughout the movie, they reveal more and more parallel universes  where Evelyn has more or less successful lives.      For those that don't know, the parallel universe theory is that every time a decision or change could be made (what you want to e...

The poem “Car Sweetness”, written by Rachel Long, describes a couple sitting in a car. The wife subtly places her hand on her husband’s (who has his hand on the gearstick), displaying their wedding rings and really, displaying their love. I really enjoyed reading this poem. I love how the meaning behind it is that love is made evident through small gestures, a massive, public display of affection is often unnecessary. I also love how this poem proves that actions speak louder than words. The poem perfectly captures the strong love and bond shared between these two people, without them having to say anything to prove their love for one another.  When I read the words, “mum would lay her hand”, I sensed that this woman seemed perfectly comfortable and safe next to her husband. I think that this is a sign of true, real love. True love is something that doesn’t have to be forced, it is natural and shown through small gestures, like the example Long uses in her poem.  This poem is ...

  I think this has been my favorite poem so far.  In “The Bridge,” C. Dale Young connects things that he loves. It's a very peaceful and warm poem. Warm as in fuzzy sweater, comfy feeling, and hot chocolate type of warm. The poem has a natural flow as if he is just writing whatever his mind wanders to.  He has a strong first sentence in the poem. “I love. Wouldn't we all like to start a poem with "I love . . ."? I would.” This sentence doesn't only give an opening to the main concept of the poem, but it contrasts the style of many other poems by being that direct. How many poems actually say “I love?”  Young continues the poem by listing everything he loves by using the actual word “love”. In total, he uses the word “love” over fifteen times. He lists everything he loves as mundane items, but each one is able to symbolize something more meaningful. My favorite verse is,  “your mouth.You know, the word joy. How joyous is that. It makes me think of bubbles, cha...

     This week I read the poem “Gold” by Donald Hall. When I first read Hall’s work, I begin by assessing the title to later attempt to understand its relationship to the poem. The poem’s title, “Gold,” makes me think of something precious and valuable and has a positive connotation. After reading the poem, I can see why it is representative of the meaning.       The poem describes a memory from Donald Hall’s life. Researching Hall, I learned that his wife passed away from leukemia. To me, it is clear that the memory is one shared with his wife. This memory is about a simple time lying in a bed next to what I believe to be his wife in a golden room. He uses this poem to reminisce about his wife and pay tribute to their beautiful and precious life together.       Throughout the poem, Hall uses an immense amount of imagery to convey his ideas, like when he writes in the first stanza, “Pale gold of the walls, gold of the centers of dai...

  Anna Leahy’s poem “The World is Wind, the World is Fire”, seemingly describes a dystopian universe. One singular spark can cause the “wind to become fire”, sending the world ablaze and eventually “extinguish[ing]” the population. Constant, untameable fear rules over the citizens as they live unable to know what terrible disaster lies ahead. Nothing remains in the world, except despair and ruin. Leahy, however, is not describing a dystopian world, but the reality that she lives in every single day. Published in December 2017, this poem recaps Leahy’s innermost thoughts and emotions as a California resident that just went through the most destructive wildfire season at the time. As she painstakingly wrote, the world burned around her while she was forced to just sit and watch in panic. At the end of the poem, Leahy makes a desperate plea to all the citizens of the world: “If we keep up our own undoing, our existence will be extinguished altogether.” This line marks a stark shift in...

“TEN RESPONSES TO THE PHRASE “MAN UP” (CLEAN VERSION)” written by  Kyle "Guante" Tran Myhre gives 10 meaningful yet clever responses to the phrase “Man Up”.  In this poem, Myhre decided to stick with his usual paragraph type format; however, this time, instead of writing the poem like an article or an essay, he wrote his poem as a list.       Throughout the poem, Myrhe mentions the topic of sexism, masculinity and male stereotypes.   What I’ve noticed throughout Myrhe’s poems is that all the titles are relatively long and get straight to the point. While many poets and writers try to confuse people with their titles by making them unique or at times, irrelevant, Myhre always uses poems that entirely state what the poem is about, sort of like an informational article type of title. The title in this poem, like the others I’ve mentioned, goes straight to the point, telling the reader that the poem is about 10 responses to the phrase “man up”, leavin...

     This week I read “August” by Mary Oliver. It is a short poem focusing on the joys of nature, summer, and living a carefree life.       Oliver opens the poem by describing a scene in the woods with blackberries hanging “in the brambles nobody owns.” (lines 1-3) This introduces the setting in both physical location and atmosphere. Being in an area no one owns, there is the freedom to do whatever you want, setting up the carefree atmosphere of the poem.       To best explore nature in a carefree way, Oliver views this environment through the perspective of a bear. This can be seen in her description of “thinking of nothing” while “cramming the black honey of summer” into her mouth, using a bear-like behavior to show how having no worries allows you to truly appreciate and enjoy nature (lines 6-9).       The poem is structured in an odd way as the stanzas are not separated by thoughts. Instead, each stanza ends ...

      In, “So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye” by Sam Sax, Sax says goodbye to what the reader assumes is his home city in an interesting, emotional way. The poem perfectly captures the good, the bad, and the ugly about today’s big cities through a unique perspective. Rather than just describing his opinion on the matter, Sax does so by first saying goodbye to the city, and then transitioning into why the city isn’t a good thing to begin with, due to the negative impact of humans on the environment.      Though his views may be controversial to some, Sax argues his point here very well, and in a way that really sticks with the reader. I really appreciated the sort of ‘all-over-the-place’ nature of the poem. I loved how the poem kept me engaged, as I sometimes have trouble focusing on things that aren’t mentally stimulating. I really related to and loved the language used here.      I really related to this poem. In the beginning, whe...

               “Forty Years” by Mary Oliver is not too difficult to decipher, in my opinion, but poems may have a certain meaning and others reading it might interpret it completely differently than what it was meant to mean. The poem seems to be written about Mary Oliver herself. She explains that she is now forty years old. It sounds as if she is talking about her own writing, how she believes everything she has done up until that point she is proud of, “from day to day, from one golden page to another.” I take this to mean that her work is golden, perfect, that she loves each and every piece, like a child.                 I think that she is trying to say that as time goes by and the more you write and create, the more you find your voice, the more confident you become in your work, and the more proud of your work you become. You learn as you get older who you are as a writer and a person, ...

  “Hummingbird” is a poetic masterpiece which incorporates themes of love, fleeting time, and the divine. Arshi’s use of the hummingbird as a metaphor for the fleeting things of life is tactful in its ability to transport the narrator to a setting and a time far away. When “your fingers fly, a momentary grasp”, the momentary pleasure of the beauty of the hummingbird is conveyed. Just as the author is reminiscing on times long, something occurs, asking to “press your curing skin to mine, dissolve and pronounce me”, pleading for the little bird to give her meaning, to bring back youth. The beauty captured by the hummingbird becomes so alluring that she asks for her “eyes to fallout and embed in the carpet, rooting”. A recurring theme in Arshi’s work is the divine. G-d appears to be a character in every poem, either principal or supporting. The qualities of youth and time, love and beauty, that the author so wishes to extract from her interactions with the Hummingbird are echoed back ...

  Ariella Green Week 6: “Happy New Year” by Sierra Demulder As I’ve read more and more of Demulder’s work, I noticed she likes to dig deep and offer a new perspective on heavy topics. When you hear the title of this poem, you may think to yourself it must be a hopeful poem filled with joy, or it may even talk about a new year’s party. The poem asks us to imagine “ the entire existence of the Earth– all 4.54 billion years” of it in the time span of one year. That means to squeeze everything that happened in 4.54 billion years into just one year.  In this poem, Demulder is asking you to imagine quite a few things. She wants you to imagine a baby being born and then dying as an old man in the same moment, a world war that lasts a heartbeat, and a century that passes like a flip book. Each of these events is measured differently with time. Upon first reading, this poem confused me because of how detailed Demulder is when discussing these topics to prove her point that everything h...

  Dina Bengelsdorf Week 6 - América by Richard Blanco From his book of poems City of a Hundred Fires , América caught my eye right away. I assumed that this work would relate to Blanco’s struggles between two clashing cultures, with one being the American version of himself, and the other being his Cuban roots. For the most part, I was right; the accent on the “e” of America gave me a solid clue. I think the poem is really sweet as it shows his and his family’s journey to becoming a part of a new country, making new traditions, while working to preserve their old ones. The writing is almost childlike, as it comes from the perspective of Blanco when he was a young boy, so a sense of naivety and hope is still there. “This Thanksgiving we would have turkey, as well as pork.” As Thanksgiving approaches, we remind ourselves what and who we are thankful for. Blanco gives thanks both to his new American life, where he could only dream of living in The Brady Bunch show, and his family giv...