The Lady in the Pink Mustang

I really enjoyed reading "The Lady in the Pink Mustang" by Louise Erdrich. I liked the fact that Erdrich was not afraid to be promiscuous or use risque words with this poem. One of the lines that stood out to me was "Painting her nipples silver for a show, she is thinking, you out there. What do you know." This line suggests to me that this "lady" is maybe a show girl or a stripper. It says she is thinking "you out there, what do you know?" and I think she is referring to the reader or maybe her customers/audience when she says "you". I like the fact that the author chose a pink mustang to be this lady's car. A pink car, to me, suggests that she is girly, proud, and different. The fact that the car is a mustang has some connotation to it as well. A mustang is fast, loud, envied, and seems promiscuous as a car. Also, you could extract the word "must" from mustang and that might have connotation. She does "shows" every night so maybe she is sweaty or musty. "The sun goes down for hours, taking more of her along than the night leaves with her" is a line that stands out to me. I inferred this to mean that she does more or works at night and after her work, "parts" of her are missing. The last line I want to discuss is "It is what she must face every time she is touched, the body disposable as cups." That line makes me feel really sad for her. I don't know if she is a showgirl or a prostitute, but I wonder if she likes this job or if she HAS to do it. I feel bad for her because men are taking advantage of her and body and disposing of her like a cup. All in all though I enjoyed reading this poem and I think the author gave good imagery.

My First Short Paper

I decided that I would write about "Blackberries" for my first short paper. This was the poem that I was assigned to be an expert on. I feel that this poem was very well written and I enjoyed reading it. The writer used a lot of imagery words which made the poem seem real. As I read this poem, I could actually see what was happening. I can relate to this poem because it refers to the differences between social classes. This should be fun to write about because it gaves so many details that I can discuss. It leaves a lot up to the reader to decide, like "what does he mean by this?" Everyone in class gave a lot of ideas about what certain sentences or certain words were referring to and I like that because of any of those ideas could be correct. I can't wait to get started on this paper.

Blackberries by Yusef Komunyakaa

I was assigned to be an expert on the poem 'Blackberries' by Yusef Komunyakaa. I really enjoyed this poem, but there are a lot of details that are left to be assumed by the reader. For one, I have been trying to decide, is this person a male or female? I have came to the conclusion that I think it is a young boy, mainly because it says in the poem "my bird dog spot" and I would just assume that a boy would have a bird dog before a young girl would. Also, it says "When I leaned closer I saw the boy & girl my age", the boy is listed first which makes me think the speaker is a boy. I really liked this poem because it showed the difference between social classes and how kids and young adults have to deal with it as well. I believe that this poem is about a young boy who has to pick blackberries and then try to sell them just to make a living. I feel like this is an every day thing for him and has been for awhile. It seems to me that he hasn't really been able to actually have a childhood and have fun. The words that were used in this poem gave great imagery and it actually gave me the chills. The whole last stanza was my favorite. It showed how hard his life was and how unfortunate he was compared to other children his age. He was forced in life to stand on side of the road holding buckets of blackberries and try to sell them for $1.00 to people who had money and easy lives. This poem really made me feel sorry for the speaker when he said the young boy & girl were smirking at him in the backseat of the car. Also, he makes it seem as if they were rich because he says "in the wide back seat" which lets us a know he considered it a big car. To me, this poem was written mainly to show the feelings of a young boy who is in a low social class and already has to work to survive.