Quiz
1. Who do you think the poem "Streets" is about? Why? Use evidence from the poem to explain your answer.
I think the pome is about her father. Because If we stand quietly enough evenings
there grows a whole company of us
standing quietly together.
2. In "Streets," how many lines are there in stanza 4? How many sentences?
8 lines 5 sentences
3. In stanza 3, there is an example of personification. Say what it is and explain why that is an example of personification.
overhead loud grackles are claiming their trees
and the sky which sews and sews, tirelessly sewing,
drops her purple hem.
4. Identify two things being contrasted in the poem "Streets" and discuss why the author might wish to highlight that contrast. What is the message she sends in that contrast?
Some people do. They sleep completely,
waking refreshed. Others live in two worlds,
the lost and remembered. She write the people can stay in home and the homeless.

5.How many stanzas are in the poem "Hidden" and how many sentences are there?
3 stanzas 3 sentences
6. In "Hidden," what do you think it means to "tuck the name of a loved one under your tongue for too long"? Explain your answer.
Because if you love one people you may talk about the people a lot
7. Connect the poem "Hidden" to any other poem or poems we have read by Nye. How is "Hidden" similar to those others in theme or message? Explain.
I think the pome like famous , because the pome is short but means many things.
8. In the interview, Nye stated that "the fuel that feeds her" is poetry, words, language. In this poem, though, it seems like the "fuel that feeds you" refers to something different. What do you think it refers to? Use evidence from the poem to explain your answer.
Fuel can means the people you like, like you didn't tell that people, you just put it in your heart.

Reflecting on My Personal Goals for this Class

My Personal Goals for this Class

1.    To improve my English vocabulary so that I can read English books without having to look up so many words.

2.    To improve my English writing skills to the point where I will not have to spend so much time correcting assignments before I turn them in.

3.    To become better at speaking English and more confident when expressing my ideas in English

I worked on all three of my goals during this marking period. My English vocabulary has improved during this marking period. I have learned many new English words. I still have to look up words when I read English books, but not as many as before. I think that my writing skills are better, but I still make a lot of mistakes when I write, and I have to correct assignments before I turn them in. I am much more confident when speaking English, but it is still hard sometimes to express my ideas in English. I need to improve on all three of these goals.

For the next marking period, I have the same goals and one more. I need to make myself participate more in class.

Quiz
Reading Quiz on “Two Countries” by Naomi Shihab Nye

For this quiz, answer question # 1 and 2 out of 3 questions from #2, #3, & #4

Reread the poem (posted on the course blog) to become familiar with it.

1)      Review these lines:

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.

What do you think these two lines mean? Offer an interpretation and back it up using
specific evidence in the poem.

In my opinion, I think this means you may hurt yourself， the hope means like you will move to other place,and many different countries people have different skin.
2)      What could skin be a  metaphor or symbol for?
 skin can means people's feeling, may like your skin miss the country, and you need to stay with the people who have the different skin.


4)      Based on what you know about the poet, what is the significance of the line "Love

means you breathe in two countries"?

Love may means you stay with other people

Nye Inspired Poem

Arabic prayers said kneeling

Long years make lives

Wisdom listens more

New message saying

My Grandmother in the Stars Summary

In the poem, Nye is thinking about her grandmother and that they may not see each other again. Her grandmother is old and could die, or Nye could die. This makes Nye very sad.

It is possible we will not meet again

on earth. To think this fills my throat with dust.

(Nye, My Grandmother and the Stars)

Nye is thinking about where her grandmother lives and her memories of things around her grandmother’s home. She talks about the horse and the cow because they are at the place where her grandmother lives. She wants to know what her grandmother is thinking about things that she is remembering.

Just now the neighbor’s horse must be standing

patiently, hoof on stone, waiting for his day

to open. What you think of him,

and the village’s one heroic cow,

is the knowledge I wish to gather.

(Nye, Grandmother)

            In the last paragraph of the poem, Nye is saying that people live everywhere their memories are from. She has memories of where her grandmother lives, so she lives there too. She and her grandmother have good memories in their hearts and that is what makes them rich.

Where we live in the world

is never one place. Our hearts,

those dogged mirrors, keep flashing us

moons before we are ready for them.

You and I on a roof at sunset,

our two languages adrift,

heart saying, Take this home with you,

never again,

and only memory making us rich.

(Nye, Grandmother)

What Nye wanted her readers to know about Arabs and Arab Culture

On September 11, 2001, 19 Arab terrorists hijacked and crashed four airplanes in the United States. Two of the planes were crashed into the World Trade Centers in New York City, one plane was crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and the fourth plane was crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Over 3,000 people were killed (History.com, 9-11 Attacks).

People feel bad when something very bad happens, but it is easy to feel worse when your own people do the terrible thing. Nye must have felt very bad that the people who did this were Arab people and was worried about what people would think of Arabs. I think that she wanted people to know that Arab people were sad too and did not understand how something so bad happened.

I call my father, we talk around the news.

It is too much for him,

neither of his two languages can reach it.

I drive into the country to find sheep, cows,

to plead with the air:

Who calls anyone civilized?

Where can the crying heart graze?

What does a true Arab do now?

(Nye, Blood)

Nye wanted people to know that her father loved America. She heard him talk about figs all of her life, but he never had a fig tree until he was in America.

The last time he moved, I had a phone call,
my father, in Arabic, chanting a song I’d never heard.
“What’s that?”
“Wait till you see!”

He took me out to the new yard.
There, in the middle of Dallas, Texas,
a tree with the largest, fattest, sweetest figs in the world.
“It’s a figtree song!” he said,
plucking his fruits like ripe tokens,
emblems, assurance
of a world that was always his own.

(Nye, My Father and the Fig Tree)

She wants people to understand that her Arab family is like everybody’s family. Her Father moved to America. Her grandmother misses him and is always looking for him to write her a letter.

She knows how often mail arrives,

how rarely there is a letter.

When one comes, she announces it, a miracle,  

listening to it read again and again

in the dim evening light.

(Nye, The Words Under the Words)

What kind of person is Nye's Grandmother?

I think that Grandmother thinks about death a lot. In both poems, the lines “It is possible we will not meet again on earth” (My Grandmother in the Stars) and “We will all die” (The Words Under the Words), are both about all people die. Grandmother is also lonely because her son has moved to America. She is looking for him to come home “She waits by the oven watching a strange car circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son, lost to America” (Words). She is very happy when she gets some mail from her son, but I don’t know if she can read the letters because of the part that says  “When one comes, she announces it, a miracle, listening to it read again and again” (Words). The part “She knows the spaces we travel through, the messages we cannot send—our voices are short and would get lost on the journey” (Words), makes her sound like she understands things about her family without them having to tell her.

Nye thinks about her grandmother a lot because she is very close to her and she still lives in the place where her father is from.

Poetry Discussion Questions

My Father and the Fig Tree:  Did the father wait to plant the fig tree until he was in the U.S. where he felt free?

Blood:  How do you deal with it when your own people do something that breaks your heart?

Blog 4 - Persepolis - Purpose for Writing the Book

I believe that Marjane Satrapi was writing this book for people who don’t really know very much about Iran. She wrote this book for people who only know about Iran since the last revolution. If that is all someone knows about Iran, it could seem like Iran as a bad place full of mean people who send boys away to be killed in wars, make women and girls wear the veil and have many crazy rules. Her purpose was to give people the message that these things happened, but they should not only think about her country that way. She also wanted people to know about her family and the things that happened in her family. The people in her family were good people like most of the Iranian people.

Marjane Satrapi wanted to teach people that her country has a great history.  In the introduction to the book she wrote about how people talk about Iran

Since then, this old and great civilization has been discussed mostly in connection with fundamentalism, fanaticize, and terrorism.  As an Iranian who lived more than half my life in Iran, I know that this image is far from the truth. This is why writing Persepolis was so important to me. I believe that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists. I also don’t want those Iranians who lost their lives in prisons defending freedom, who died in the war against Iraq, who suffered under various repressive regimes, or who were forced to leave their families and flee their homeland to be forgotten (Satrapi, introduction page 2).

I think that she achieved her purpose because I learned many things about Iran from her book. Other people who did not know much about Iran would learn many things too. Before reading her book, I did not know much about her country, and I do not know anyone from Iran. I knew that Iran had many wars, but not much else. Maybe they are bad people and like to fight other countries. From the book I learned that Iran was a rich country before and other countries were always starting fights with them. This made me feel different about their wars, because other countries have invaded China too. Also, in the introduction, she wrote

Iran was rich, Because of its wealth and its geographic location, it invited attacks: From Alexander the Great, form its Arab neighbors to the west, from Turkish and Mongolian conquerors, Iran was often subject to foreign domination. Yet the Persian language and culture withstood these invasions. The invaders assimilated into this strong culture, and in some ways they became Iranians themselves (introduction page 1).

           It is a very good book and I think that she achieved her purpose.

Persepolis – Marjane’s Grandmother

In the introduction of the book, Marjane wrote, “I believe that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists” (Satrapi, introduction page 2). She wanted people to remember that her country had a great history. Some bad things had happened, but there was no anger in the way that she wrote.  Her grandmother helped her to think this way. Grandmother told her to be true to herself and that nothing was worse than bitterness and vengeance. Her grandmother taught her by telling her what she should do and by showing her how she should behave.

Marji was very close to her grandmother.  In the book when Marji was planning to be a prophet, her parents and friends knew about her plan. But only her grandmother knew that Marji had a holy book with rules that she made up. Her grandmother would listen to Marji when she would talk about what her rules would be. Her grandmother’s legs hurt, so she really liked rule #8 that no old person should have to suffer. Some of Marji’s classmates made fun of her for wanting to be a prophet, and her teacher thought she was strange. But her grandmother would never make fun of her. Marji even said that the only other person that believed in her was her grandmother (page 26). 

Grandmother had had a hard life. Her husband’s father used to be the emperor, so her husband’s family used to be very rich and important.  When Marji’s grandfather was still very young, the Shah’s father overthrew his father.  When Marji’s grandfather grew up, he became prime minister and was very important. Grandfather became a communist and was put in jail.  He was treated very badly. Grandmother had been very poor because the old leader had taken everything away from them because her husband was a communist. The communists wanted things to be different from what the old leader wanted, so he put them in jail.  Even though grandmother had a very hard life, she never seemed to get very angry (page 32).

Grandmother was very clever.  When the family was in the car and was afraid that the man would find out that they had wine at home, grandmother was very calm.  When they stopped the car, grandmother and Marji were going to go into the house to pour the wine out.  The man tried to stop grandmother and Marji from going inside. Grandmother pretended to be sick so that he would let her go inside.  Grandmother and Marji poured the wine in the toilet. Grandmother tricked the man and was able to pour out the wine (page 110).

Marji’s grandmother was a big influence on her. Her grandmother had a very hard life but she was very calm. She and Marji were close, and she was always giving Marji advice. Her grandmother taught her how to get through bad situations without getting upset. The grandmother is this way, and Marji learned to behave like she saw her grandmother behave. I believe that the advice that that Marji got from her grandmother is why she could write about so many bad things that happened in her country without sounding angry.