Sorting Laundry

14 Days 

My favorite poem this year was "Sorting Laundry" by Elisavietta Ritchie, and not just because of the author's cool name or the fact that I got a 7 on my poetry paper. It may be partly because for a while I thought the title of the poem was "Dirty Laundry," and I thought that to be a great poem title, now I realize I was wrong. I enjoy reading poetry, for the most part, but I don't always understand it. With this poem, I understood what was going on. It could be because of the simple structure and syntax, but still, being able to read the poem and know what was going on definitely made it great. I also really liked this poem because it was really relatable, it didn't really have any crazy metaphors or personification, it was about a women's feelings. The speaker in the poem really emphasizes the emptiness of life without love, and I think that fact is also very clear in Everything Matters! Junior feels "as safe and content as [he's] ever been in his life" when he's around Amy, someone he loves (86). Junior also feels great sadness when he is not around Amy, much like the speaker feels when she thinks about having to fold laundry herself or sleep with an empty half of the bed next to her. Much of the feelings in this poem were very easy to relate to, like her uncertainty in allowing someone to get really close in her life. Junior also struggles to make decisions, specifically to tell her about the Destroyer of the Worlds, and at the end of the first life he finds out that these "choices had been wrong, wrong, wrong" (52). At the end of the poem it seems that the speaker found out what the right decision was, and like Everything Matters!, the poem has an optimistic closing, because it seems that the speaker finally has a clear understanding of love. Both the endings of the poem and book leave you believing that "anything is possible" (302). And this uplifting message from the poem really made me very excited for the speaker, so that is another reason why I enjoyed this poem.

Maybe if this was the man folding her laundry she wouldn't have such a difficult time opening up. 

All About Me

17 Days

I remember when we got the October/November calendars, and I quickly scanned to see what we were doing on October 6: my birthday. Truly, it doesn't really matter what happens in AP English 12 on my birthday, but everyone can agree that it's very sad to have tests/quizzes/due dates on your birthday. Imagine my excitement when I realized that not only would there be no work in English class that day, but I would have a work free day spent down in Cleveland with my fellow AP English-ers watching Othello! Even though I thoroughly enjoyed the play, it's safe to say that the best part of that day was that it was almost entirely all about me. After receiving many compliments for my specially picked "birthday outfit," I felt that "I [had] reached 'absolute perfection,'" and not just because many people were telling me so (Wilde 31). After the play, when everyone had to sing "Happy Birthday" to me, I knew that this would be a very special birthday. We never sing to others on their brthdays, and this felt good. In fact, all of this attention on me felt so good, "I felt like I was flying" (Kesey 324). Not only did I get to spend my birthday with Ms. Serensky, I got to avoid school, everyone paid a lot of attention to me, AND we got cupcakes. Wow. What a day. All in all, I'd say it was "sort of epic" (Currie, Jr. 181)