How To Read a Poem

       This was the best advice I have gotten out of our papers so far.The advice about what questions to    ask when reading can be used not only with poetry but with any kind of writing you are reading. Whenever your reading something out loud I think it is easier to here how the writing is supposed to sound. With poetry there can be many breaks and it can be confusing when just skimming through it. Reading it out loud allows a person to take pauses and let themselves comprehend what is being said. Also alot of poems can be confusing and offten feel like they have no real meaning. When this happends it really is good to talk to other people, like we did in class, and get everyones oppinion then put together what you think the overall point of the poem was. A poem can have several different meanings and can be taking in many different ways. When you have these kinds of poems its ok to just take the poem in your own way and not feel like your missing the big point.I also got that you should not only look at what the poem is saying but how the poem is constructed or how it is wrote because it may have a part in the meaning of the peom. 

Where I Lived, and What I Lived for Thoreau

This writing was so confusing to me that I honestly don't remember half of it. What I got from this story is that to this person owning property is not important. When this person just thinks about the property they get the same feeling as if they did own it but in the end they do not have to spend the money of time on the property to have those feelings. Reading through this story I thought at points that they really did own the property because of all the in depth details they gave and the visions they were having for example the part saying, "the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, nawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors i should have; but above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which i heard the house-dog bark. Through the writing I was often lost because they went into what I thought was too much detail. Overall I didn't enjoy reading this story and I wish I could have grasped it more.

"USFS 1919"

This story had alot of what i felt were good climaxes and it had very in depth detail, especially about where the story was plotted. Through the whole story I could imagine i was in the woods with the main character going through the same experiances. When this story began there was, I think, a little too much detailing when describing the people or the environment, but there is no way you could have not gotten the point of what they were trying to say; so that was good. On the way up the mountian the main character seemed to be so worried about his own story that he seemed to not just let things happen. After making the trip up the mountian I think the reader had a really detailed description of where the story is taking place. when the main character was sent up the mountian to watch for fires I think that is when we really got to learn more about him and his experiances. With the main character only being seventeen I admired his strength not only physically but mentaly. I can look back and remember what I was at that age and I can tell you one thing I would have never climbed up a mountian by my self. One of the things i really liked about this book is that i can relate to being in the mountians and growing up learning about them. When he talks about the mountians moving and looking at the mountians when he was little i could relate and it made me appretiate the story alot more. After the storm came in and he began to move down  the mountians i felt as though he was very brave. I got from the story that the main character was not only physically strong but mentally especially when he fixed the  signal line on his way down the mountian, and also when he began his trip walking into town. It was surprising to think that a seventeen year old would have that much drive to walk all that was and with no water. I persally didnt think he was going to make it all the way to town especially with no water. If I was Bill Bell I would have been proud to have such a determend young man working with me. After the character got into town i was not supprised that he got sick after haveing the ice cream; he haddent had water all day. I was supprised when he walked into the bar though because it seemed no one payed any mind to his age and now adays that wouldnt happen. When Bill and the rest of the crew got into town I felt as if the story was going to get alot more interesting. As the plan of going in to the casino and winning the money was in play I was pretty sure it was not going to unraval as the crew had planned. To my surprise their plan worked pretty dang good they got the money they had gone in for and everyone got out. At the end of the story I didnt expect the main character to give up his money to the chef. I also expected the main character to return the next summer and to my surprise he didnt do that either. Overall I think this story was very good and it had a lot of good details.