Bethel D. Hudierez & Maria Ysabelle Dejaros

Sometimes as we take a little pause from the everyday things we do, we would often realize that small things can have really great effects in our lives...and that even if we don't quite see the effect, it is there...huge.
If we sow good things, however little they are, we will reap bountiful harvests of goodness and blessings in the future.., but if we invest in something bad, great misfortune will also come to us... perhaps even greater and more vast than we can imagine.


The Diameter of the Bomb
by Yehuda Amichai




The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective
range – about seven meters.
And in it four dead and eleven wounded.
And around them in a greater circle
of pain and time are scattered
two hospitals and one cemetery.
But the young woman who was
buried where she came from
over a hundred kilometres away
enlarges the circle greatly.
And the lone man who weeps over her death
in a far corner of a distant country
includes the whole world in the circle.
And I won’t speak at all about the crying of orphans
that reaches to the seat of God
and from there onward, making
the circle without end and without God.


This poem seem to relate to what the author has experienced in life. He has had a lot of war experiences. When he was still a young man, he fought in the World War II as a member of the British army. After his discharge, he went to school and became a teacher and went through the war of independence. In 1956, Amichai served in the Sinai war, and in 1973 he served in the Yom Kippur war. 


^_^

Sejeong, Lee
Jamelano, Zygel Doll S.

John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of romantic poets along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work only having been in publication for four years before his death. 
Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his life, his reputation grew after his death, so that by the end of the 19th century he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of later poets and writers. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats was the most significant literary experience of his life. 
The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analysed in English literature. 

                                                                When I Have Fears

                                               When I have fears that I may cease to be
                                               Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
                                               Before high-piled books, in charactery,
                                               Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
                                              When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
                                               Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
                                               And think that I may never live to trace
                                               Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
                                              And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
                                               That I shall never look upon thee more,
                                               Never have relish in the faery power
                                              Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
                                              Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
                                              Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

As we read the story of Keats’s life, we became aware that the author himself had written several sonnets which had the same subject and central theme which is death, however, this specific poem of his seems to be his “début” when compared to a song, for in this poem he had painted a picture of death as no other poet had done before. We think that the poet had written this for throughout his life because death had been his constant companion, his family history had been constantly visited by plagues and diseases and just three years after writing this poem one of his brothers also departed from him. Also, it was seen that the poet has a fear of mortality, not gaining love and finally being unknown all through the span of his short life. We believe that poems are made when emotions are at their highest and when simple words cannot justify the language of the heart. For this very reason is how we think this poem was made. To express in the most creative way what is unspoken and so that behind simple words are encoded messages which only people who experiences the same situation can understand.

How He Saw Angus, The God

C.S. Lewis was born on November 29, 1898, in Belfast, Ireland.He studied at University College, Oxford and became a professor at the University of Cambridge. An atheist, he reconverted to Christianity in 1931.He wrote this poem when he was converted to Christianity. He saw the light in his life,this poem is one of the chapters he wrote in his book entitled" spirit of bondage "which tells that we should be set free form all lies of humanity about the Holy Gospel.the poem says that God sometimes represents himself into different things for us to know him not in appearance but also in what our hearts says.The path we follow sometimes our not the paths we want to walk to,but in the end God will show himself.This is one of the reason why C.S Lewis wrote this book.

I heard the swallow sing in the eaves and rose

All in a strange delight while others slept,

And down the creaking stair, alone, tip-toes,

So carefully I crept.

The house was dark with silly blinds yet drawn,

But outside the clean air was filled with light,

And underneath my feet the cold, wet lawn

With dew was twinkling bright.

The cobwebs hung from every branch and spray

Gleaming with pearly strands of laden thread,

And long and still the morning shadows lay

Across the meadows spread.

At that pure hour when yet no sound of man,

Stirs in the whiteness of the wakening earth,

Alone through innocent solitudes I ran

Singing aloud for mirth.

Till I had found the open mountain heath

Yellow with gorse, and rested there and stood

To gaze upon the misty sea beneath,

Or on the neighbouring wood,

-That little wood of hazel and tall pine

And youngling fir, where oft we have loved to see

The level beams of early morning shine

Freshly from tree to tree.

Through the denser wood there's many a pool

Of deep and night-born shadow lingers yet

Where the new-wakened flowers are damp and cool

And the long grass is wet.

In the sweet heather long I rested there

Looking upon the dappled, early sky,

When suddenly, from out the shining air

A god came flashing by.

Swift, naked, eager, pitilessly fair,

With a live crown of birds about his head,

Singing and fluttering, and his fiery hair,

Far out behind him spread,

Streamed like a rippling torch upon the breeze

Of his own glorious swiftness: in the grass

He bruised no feathery stalk, and through the trees

I saw his whiteness pass.

But when I followed him beyond the wood,

Lo! He was changed into a solemn bull

That there upon the open pasture stood

And browsed his lazy full.

by: Ranelyn Luzarita

Sarah Jale Escalo

Lionel Abrahams

CHAOS THEORY OF THE HEART

Ill-at-ease, these shaming months
when Truth Commissioners convene
to bargain pardons, pence and peace
for memories of injuries,
confessions, cries, apologies
for deeds of pitiless offence
inspired by selfless policies -
I’m made to know more than enough
about wet bags, electrodes, bullets, bombs,
methods and miseries deployed
in my home country in my times
that left me safe enough,
comfortable enough.

I happen in this time
to read - incredulous again,
numbly appalled again -
a further heavy chapter
of the Holocaust’s particulars.
Half-way through the book
I find an incidental case:
a girl, told that her brother died
among her shtetl’s able-bodied males
rounded up that day and shot,
weeping recalls the way
he used to cut her hair.
That vignette pulls the whole
Hitlerian enormity for me
into the focus of her grief,
my grief.

There must be no equating.
What history has equalled that?
Those intentions! that scale!
I will not tolerate equating.
No comparing.
No.

No, no:
whether to equate or not equate
this man-planned hell with that
is Politics’ banality.
The highest cause is likeliest to recruit
its corps of visionary elect,
impassioned, loyal, ravenous to serve,
whose sacrificial acts and consciences
can break the circuit of identity.
Connection breaking then
breaks for us all.
Dark covers everything.

Dark covers everything,
yet this at least the weather-eye
of empathy can half-foresee:
light is light which flickers up
against that dark.
Specific anguish visible
within the pulseless core
of any iron-frozen history
- electric tendril cancelling across
a suffocating sky - might well,
with no less shining keenness
than the tender brother’s scissors
in his sister’s falling hair,
cut through to me, invade
my guarded strongroom
of self-proven truth
with its sharp light.

Lionel Abrahams was a Jew and become one of the most influential figures in South African literature in his own right, publishing numerous poems, essays, and two novels. Most of his works were based on his experiences; full of regret and sorrow, especially “The Chaos Theory of Heart”. It was Abrahams’ response on Germany’s apology to the Jews. It was hard for him to accept because no matter how many apologies that the nation will release, still millions were perished and those sorry can’t bring back time and lives. He still felt the grief about what happened many years ago, the cruelty that his fellow Jews suffered from Hitler’s armies, especially in the Holocaust.

Peter Paul Aguilar & Lormie Ambid BEEN3 | Literary Criticism 2012

Fermin Philip G. Pula BEEN3

(Fermin Philip G. Pula    BEEN3)

This poem is written by Sylvia Plath. It is written by the author to express her feeling of depression and loneliness. Sylvia was known as one of the most talented poets in her time. She was almost as what you call a perfect person. A straight A student who has a very charming personality. But she also was known to be a perfectionist. Even though she is at her status she always felt that everything was not enough and she suffered from depression and loneliness. People thought that she was crazy. And indeed she is. She killed herself with cooking gas at the age of thirty. And this poem (Mirror) was written at the midst of her midlife crisis.


Mirror   (by: Sylvia Plath)

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. 

"Alone"

Alone

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were; I have not seen

As others saw; I could not bring

My passions from a common spring.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I loved, I loved alone.

Then- in my childhood, in the dawn

Of a most stormy life- was drawn

From every depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still:

From the torrent, or the fountain,

From the red cliff of the mountain,

From the sun that round me rolled

In its autumn tint of gold,

From the lightning in the sky

As it passed me flying by,

From the thunder and the storm,

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view.

-Edgar Allan Poe

Poe's Childhood

Edgar Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. That makes him Capricorn, on the cusp of Aquarius. His parents were David and Elizabeth Poe. David was born in Baltimore on July 18, 1784. Elizabeth Arnold came to the U.S. from England in 1796 and married David Poe after her first husband died in 1805. They had three children, Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie.

In 1831,Edgar Allan Poe went to New York City were he had some of his poetry published. He submitted stories to a number of magazines and they were all rejected. Poe had no friends, no job, and was in financial trouble. He sent a letter to John Allan begging for help but none came. John Allan died in 1834 and did not mention Edgar in his will.

In this poem "Alone," Edgar Allan Poe talks about being alone in terms of not being able to experience things as others do. Edgar Allan Poe had a dark, disturbing, and somewhat twisted manner of writing. Some readers and critics consider his writing pessimistic. His writing also has a sense of honesty and sadness to it.

In this poem, Poe presents gothic images of a person who feels alone in this world. He accomplishes this by contrasting how the speaker views himself, with how he views the rest of the world emphasizing the isolation he feels from the rest of the world.

Poe tells  that even during his childhood he was different than other people. "From my childhood's hour I have not been / As others were" (line 1). He also says he viewed things from a different perspective than other people did. "I have not seen/ As others saw." Also, he states he was unable to feel deep strong love from the same source as other people. "I could not bring/ My passions from a common spring"(3). "Spring" here symbolizes an origin or source of passion.

Erika Berdin and Wong Tsz Man

Charlene Mae Tupas BEEN3

   

Love's Philosophy

Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

 

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle -
Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea -
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?

 

***

 

Obviously this can be read as simply a poem of seduction and it works perfectly well as one. I would suggest, however, having read some of Shelley's other poetry, that there is a subtext to all this. One of the main themes of Shelley's poetry is the search for the meaning of existence and many of his poems seem to be desperately searching for a sense of coherence in a world full of chaos. This sense of purpose and meaning is very rarely found. It seems to me that many of the analogies Shelley uses involve things that are immaterial - heaven, sunlight, moonbeams - none of them are solid, physical things and all are impossible to capture.  I believe the essence of the subtext is in the final two lines and the title.

The cynic's response to the final two lines would be that these 'kissings' do not really exist, just as the kiss between the speaker and their love does not exist, and that it is in fact simply the desperate thoughts of someone trying not to come to the conclusion that their love is truly unrequited. ='(

Upon reading his biography, I found out that Shelley's love affairs were not that successful or were just products of an impulsive young love. The title - "Love's Philosophy''- seems to me to add weight to this conclusion, suggesting cynically that this is the typical response of someone who is young and in love - they lose all sense of logic and reason and come to the wrong conclusions. 

 

An excerpt on the Biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Shelley, born the heir to rich estates and the son of an Member of Parliament, went to University College, Oxford in 1810, but in March of the following year he and a friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, were both expelled for the suspected authorship of a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism.

In 1811 he met and eloped to Edinburgh with Harriet Westbrook and, one year later, went with her and her older sister first to Dublin, then to Devon and North Wales, where they stayed for six months into 1813. However, by 1814, and with the birth of two children, their marriage had collapsed and Shelley eloped once again, this time with Mary Godwin.