Emergency IT Lesson 3: Analysing & Composing Poem

Another poem provided by Mr. S!

The Son is in Secondary School
by Affran Sa’at

My badge has a Latin motto Hope for the future
The future is hope
Or something
At times black crows try to interrupt
When we sing the National Anthem
It is difficult to maintain
The whiteness of my shoes
Especially on Wednesdays
I must admit there is something quite special
About the bare thighs of hardworking scouts
The Malay chauffeurs
Who wait for my schoolmates
Sit on the car park kerb
Telling jokes to one another
Seven to the power of five is unreasonable
On Chinese New Year Mrs Lee dressed up
In a sarong kebaya
And sang Bengawan Solo
The capital of Singapore is Singapore
My best friend did a heroic thing once
Shaded all A’s
For his Chinese Language
Multiple-choice paper
In our annual yearbook
There is a photograph of me
Pushing a wheelchair and smiling
They caught me
At the exact moment
When my eyes were actually closed



Q1.What are the poet’s thoughts? What were his feelings as he think back on these?

The poet's thoughts as he writes this poem may be that he is wishing for his primary school days to return, with great longing for those days and all the fun times he/she has experienced inhis school life judging by the fact that many insights of interesting moments were goven to the readers and it is written in a very lighthearted and humorous tone. Furthermore, the poem ends with another interesting fact, the camera capturing him on a wheelchair with his eyes closed.

The most probable reason that he wished for his primary school days so much was that, although he was in a wheelchair, and was physically handicapped, he was able to enjoy his life in primary school. I guess after his primary school days he did not have the same joyful days as a handicapped person maybe due to social or more physical problems.

Q2.Think back on our days in Primary School. Do you share the same sentiments? What were your memories of those days? Write a poem of no less than 4 stanzas.

Of course, in fact, almost everyone would. Who wouldn't miss their primary school days with friends who have shared their worries, happiness, sorrows, joy with you for 6 years! Class bonding was more prominent iin my primary school days and of course, less stress although PSLE is an exception. Now I dedicate the poem below to my days in primary school.

Grateful Days


Giant metal bird lands
And me and my parents
Are off to find a new school
Foreign land,
Foreign home,
Foreign school.

When everything seemed
So foreign
So different,
Friends in school
Are my guiding light,
My guide to Singpore,
although they chided me
For not bringing
Colour pencils,
And instead crayons.

I met two friends,
Of the same origin as me,
And we played,
We ate,
We studied, together.
Good times did not last though.

As one by one,
We parted.
At Primary 2,
There were two of us.
At Primary 3,
There was one of "us".
I was alone.
Or was I?

At primary 3,
At the beginning of the year,
I took a test,
And promoted,
As clasmates were too young.
Finally at my right age,
at Primary 4,
I did realise that,
Friends were everywhere,
Friends were not just,
People of my origin,
They were also,
People of my foreign land.

As time passed,
I opened up to them,
And they opened up to me,
And we became bonded,
As one,
As a class.
I wasn't alone anymore.

By Seong Jin
In memory of his primary school days

Emergency IT Lesson 2: Favourite poet

Robert Frost

(1874 - 1963)

"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.'"

- Robert Frost, "The Mending Wall"

Introduction

Robert Frost is recognized as an important "nature poet" in American literature, famous for his depiction of the New England landscape. Some of his most famous works include: "The Road Not Taken," "Mending Wall," "After Apple-Picking," and "Home Burial."

Robert Frost attempts to conceal the troubles of his life through the use of symbolism, metaphors and other literary devices in his writings. His tragic vision of man is disguised through the themes of love, friendship, family, and social relationship. He wrote to ease the tensions of his struggle for survival, individuality and happiness.

Frost's poetry not only teaches readers to understand basic concepts, but to contemplate them as well. Hence, Frost is also a philosopher. "The Mending Wall" is a wonderful example of this side of Frost. The surface of the poem comments on the literal walls neighbors build to separate their property. When pieces of these walls crumble, they are mended quickly. Further scrutiny leads one to a more personal understanding of this concept. One "must think beyond the stone walls of New Hampshire to walls within themselves and in the world, which in our day, are breaking and reforming" (Sergeant 415). Clearly, Frost is questioning the purpose of a physical wall around one's property; but he is also questioning the purpose of the symbolic walls people build around themselves. Frost makes his opinion apparent in the first line: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" (Frost 983). The something that does not love a wall is the heart. In order to love and be loved (a need felt by most all of mankind) one cannot keep a barrier around their feelings and emotions."

Birth and Death

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. His father came from prerevolutionary Maine and New Hampshire stock but hated New England because the Civil War it had supported had robbed his own father of employment in the cotton mill economy. When Frost's father graduated from Harvard in 1872, he left New England. He paused in Lewistown, Pa., to teach and married another teacher, Isabelle Moodie, a Scotswoman. They moved to San Francisco, where the elder Frost became an editor and politician. Their first child was named for the Southern hero Gen. Robert E. Lee.
When Frost's father died in 1884, his will stipulated burial in New England. His wife and two children, Robert and Jeanie, went east for the funeral. Lacking funds to return to California, they settled in Salem, Mass., where Mrs. Frost taught school.

Frost's Complete Poems appeared in 1949, and in 1950 the U.S. Senate felicitated him on his seventy-fifth birthday. In 1957 he returned to England to receive doctoral degrees from Oxford and Cambridge. On his eighty-fifth birthday the Senate again felicitated him. In 1961, at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, Frost recited "The Gift Outright," the first time a poet had honored a presidential inauguration. A final volume, In the Clearing, appeared in 1962.
On Jan. 29, 1963, Frost died in Boston of complications following an operation. He was buried in the family plot in Old Bennington, Vt. His "lover's quarrel with the world" was over.

Poems

Three well-known poems by Robert Frost are listed below.

After Apple-Picking

by Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still,And there's a barrel that I didn't fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

I got from looking through a pane of glass

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

And held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.

But I was wellUpon my way to sleep before it fell,

And I could tellWhat form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,

Stem end and blossom end,

And every fleck of russet showing clear.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

The rumbling soundOf load on load of apples coming in.

For I have had too muchOf apple-picking:

I am overtiredOf the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. For all

That struck the earth,

No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

Went surely to the cider-apple heap

As of no worth.One can see what will trouble

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.

Were he not gone,

The woodchuck could say whether it's like his

Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

Or just some human sleep.

A Patch of Old Snow

by Robert Frost

There's a patch of old snow in a corner

That I should have guessed

Was a blow-away paper the rain

Had brought to rest.
It is speckled with grime as if

Small print overspread it,

The news of a day I've forgotten

--If I ever read it.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Bibliography:

http://www.terebess.hu/english/haiku/frost.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/robert-frost

http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-mending.html

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/robert_frost.html

http://www.thesisabstracts.com/articles/publish/printer_178.shtml

Emergency IT lesson 1: Figurative Language

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Figurative Language

Hyperbole

1.I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Used towards the end of the poem to emphasis that he has come to the decision that, for good or ill, the choice he has made will be permanent and highly effecting of his life. He looks ahead to to time when he can look back and tell that the choice he made, whether wisely or unwisely, was the point at which his life's path was set.

Personification

1.And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Here, Frost uses personification, saying that the road has a claim. Here the speaker seems to be contradictory. He has made a choice, but is still unsure about it. It is "just as fair" yet it has "the better claim." Personification occurs here also if wanted means desired. No personification occurs, however, if wanted means lacked.

Metaphor

1.Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

This line compares a decision to two diverging roads. To travelers, two diverging roads obviously mean this is the time to make a decision, choose one or another.

2.And that has made all the difference

This quote tells us that the road the speaker chose, which also means the decision the speaker made, has made differences in his life, showing that his choice impact his life.

Simile

N.A

Symbolism

1.Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

The two roads symbolize, obviously, the choices that the speaker faces in life. He cannot take both, as much as he would like to, so he spends time in comtemplation and observation.

2.And looked down one as far as I could / To where it bent in the undergrowth;"

This symbol shows to me that the person who needs to make this life decision is trying to peer into the future to see what the outcome would be if he takes a certain path.

Why I like this poem

The Road Not Taken

Although I must admit I am not a poetry fan, many of the poems of Robert Frost appealed to me, and this would have to be the one that appeals the most, in other words, it is my favourite poem. When I first read this poem, I liked it because of it free verse style (which I like) and its apparent simplicity, but after much study, its true meaning became apparent. The obvious basic meaning is that the poem is about a person's choices in life. The narrator describes coming to a problem with the fork in the road. He must go down one but he feels he will not be able to take back his decision. He looks to see the pros and cons of each choice, and then takes the one he says the least had travelled. He leaves the outcome up t the reader and the sigh at the end can be taken as good or bad. This leaves the reader the choice of deciding whether it is better to conform with society or rebel like Frost did and take up a less stable trade.

Book Review #1

War in the PACIFIC :
From the fall of Singapore to Japanese surrender

Written by Jerry Scutts

144 pages

As the title foreshadows, this book, more like an encyclopedia, features every single significant event that has taken place in the pacific from the fall of Singapore to Japanese surrender. Unlike our normal classroom textbooks, this book has history of war outside of Singapore, not only in Singapore. Therefore, this book gives an insight of the life outside of Singapore when she fell to the Japanese.

This book is a big non-fiction book which mainly uses illustrations and pictures to relay its message. Texts are rarely seen, and this irony of text and illustration is very much soothing for the eye. Through these black and white images, readers are constantly provided insights on the situation of war in the pacific. Maps with grids, actual army plans, pictures of real fighter planes are all comprised of in the book. This book is definitely ideal for soothing the eye for leisure reading and project work. By chance, it might even cure myopia.

This book is definitely my choice of non-fiction books and I strongly recommend anyone who wants to read non-fiction books without stress, this book.

The Mercurial Tom (Assignment)

Double Valentine



I wish to gift my wife,

on this Valentine’s Day.

She is so caring,

from my shirt’s button to shoe’s lace;

she never complain but take pride in serving me.

So, I am at this mall where young ones gather.

There I saw our neighbour, Tom and my wife,

drinking cola from the same bottle.

Micro Fiction #2 [Reflections]

Effects

New School.

New Faces.
New Formats.

New Assignments.

"Set up your blogs by next week,"

A Blog?

Astonishment. Disbelief.

"It will help you improve your writing,"

How's that possible?

Blog assignments were given,

and soon I realised,

the true effectiveness of blogging.

Thank to it,

I can finally write a Micro-fiction,

and of course,

ACE points.

55 words