20 vocab sentences- #1

I was abased constantly after saying that 5 times 5 was 20.
The AP Psych question was ambiguous, I didn't quite know how to answer it.
I have an aversion to flickering lights.
She wished she was hanging out with friends, watching tv alone just seemed so banal.
He beguiled her into sleeping with him.
Her sister and her friends raised a defining cacophony.
Their friendship was cleaved in two.
He connived to cheat on his math test.
She was ebullient on the last day of school.
Her carefully constructed facade was beginning to crumble.
After gratuitous amounts of alcohol you are likely to make a bad decision.
He seamed so indefatigable and confident when he spoke.
The only linchpin in their friendship was a shared hatred of penguins.
His grades took an oblique turn, from A's to D's.
Many homeless people suffer severe privation.
She reveled in his clear discomfort and pain.
They did their best to remain sanguine through the revelation.
Keeping a solipsistic attitude can only lead to loneliness.
Remaining stoic is very important in a crisis.

poetry oration, jennifer chang

Dorothy Wordsworth
by Jennifer Chang

The daffodils can go fuck themselves.
I’m tired of their crowds, yellow ranting
about the spastic sun that dines and shines
and shines. How are they any different

from me? I, too, have a big messy head
on a fragile stalk. I spin with the wind.
I flower and don’t apologize. There’s nothing
funny about good weather. O, spring again,

The critics nod. They know the old joy,
that wakeful quotidian, the dark plot
of future growing things, each one
labeled Narcissus nobilis or Jennifer Chang.

If I died falling from a helicopter, then
this would be an important poem. Then
the ex-boyfriends would swim to shore
declaiming their knowledge of my bulbous

youth. O, Flower, one said, why aren’t you
meat? But I won’t be another bashful shank.
The tulips have their nervous joie-de-vivre,
the lilacs their taunt. Fractious petals, stop

interrupting my poem with boring beauty.
All the boys are in the field gnawing raw
bones of ambition and calling it ardor. Who
the hell are they? This is a poem about war.

I think the mood of this poem is frustrated.  A daffodil symbolizes truth, honesty, fragility, its the kind of flower famous romance poet Dorthy Wordsworth would write about. Jenifer Chang writes this poem in a sort of chaotic state. note how each sentence runs into each other, they finish themselves in different lines, different stanzas even. It is meant to be over dramatic, even comical. you can tell from the line "id i died falling from a helicopter". its a completely implausible scenario, and very over done. i think the tone of this poem is stubborn, but with an underlying sense of vulerabitily. Like she is trying to put on a hard front. "i wont be another bashful shank" but in the beggingin she asks "how are they any different from me?" she compares herself to them. almost with a sense of longing.

Apiary 40

BY CAROL FROST

The humble sense of being alive   

under the towering sun   

fills the nectary and ripens apricots   

down to the last one,   

if Mnemosyne wakens from apathy   

each moment. It is the soft burly sound   

of a bee tumbled in fritillary,   

is it not?   

But if memory, as if to illustrate   

the mind was not yours to have,   

the mind was not given,   

fails us, leaving us in our underpants   

in the garden, should we not   

hate the garden,   

or the woman whose garden   

it is? And sunlight. Thunder.   

Rain. Hardened in heart against   

what earth compels and seizes,   

goddamning, goddamned rain.

I think the tone is bitterness.  The poem starts off very rhyme and organized  the first couple of lines, and then it becomes more chaotic, random. like something bad happened.  I think it is about god casting us from Eden  leaving us vulnerable "in our underpants" casts a very vulnerable image. you can also take "goddamning rain: much more literally, god damning us from Eden.

Poetry oration

Lines Depicting Simple Happiness

BY PETER GIZZI

The shine on her buckle took precedence in sun
Her shine, I should say, could take me anywhere
It feels right to be up this close in tight wind
It feels right to notice all the shiny things about you
About you there is nothing I wouldn’t want to know
With you nothing is simple yet nothing is simpler
About you many good things come into relation
I think of proofs and grammar, vowel sounds, like
A is for knee socks, E for panties
I is for buttondown, O the blouse you wear
U is for hair clip, and Y your tight skirt
The music picks up again, I am the man I hope to be
The bright air hangs freely near your newly cut hair
It is so easy now to see gravity at work in your face
Easy to understand time, that dark process
To accept it as a beautiful process, your face

i think the mood of this poem is honest, simple, happiness. i think it focuses on being able to appreciate the moment, and uncomplicated love. I personally just get a feeling of calm just from reading it. I think the fact that it was written in blank verse contributes to that. The author wasn't pressured to rhyme and nothing about the poem seams forced.

Poetry oration

Onset

BY KIM ADDONIZIO

Watching that frenzy of insects above the bush of white flowers,   

bush I see everywhere on hill after hill, all I can think of   

is how terrifying spring is, in its tireless, mindless replications.   

Everywhere emergence: seed case, chrysalis, uterus, endless manufacturing.

And the wrapped stacks of Styrofoam cups in the grocery, lately

I can’t stand them, the shelves of canned beans and soups, freezers   

of identical dinners; then the snowflake-diamond-snowflake of the rug

beneath my chair, rows of books turning their backs,

even my two feet, how they mirror each other oppresses me,

the way they fit so perfectly together, how I can nestle one big toe into the other

like little continents that have drifted; my God the unity of everything,

my hands and eyes, yours; doesn’t that frighten you sometimes, remembering

the pleasure of nakedness in fresh sheets, all the lovers there before you,

beside you, crowding you out? And the scouring griefs,

don’t look at them all or they’ll kill you, you can barely encompass your own;

I’m saying I know all about you, whoever you are, it’s spring   

and it’s starting again, the longing that begins, and begins, and begins.

spring is all about new beginnings, new life. baby animals are being born and plants sprouting. kim seams to dislike the spring in general, she seams to think of it as repetitive.  she finds a symmetry that almost no one else finds in spring.  she seams to feel trapped by the spring, like it happens over and over. like she is stuck in an endless loop that she has no control over. It also feels like something bad happened to her during the spring, that she is afraid of repeating itself. most likely something to do with her old partner. she misses him you can tell from the part "the longing that begins, and begins, and begins" she is saying that the pain of losing him doesnt end. it just becomes worse. "how i can nestle my big toe into the other" she talks about how that feeling oppreses her. They were really good together, they fit together well.