Senior Portfolio Workshop 2017

Kate / Vanessa / Yue / Kelsey / Ally

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This poem touches on both loneliness and at the same time the connection between both the living and the dead and the living and the estranged. The tone of the poem is conversational, and the speaker quickly jumps from one subject to another. It reads almost as a telephone conversation because the lines are so […]

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This is a poem about childhood. The subjects she uses in the poem, such as Mickey Mouse, the puppy, and even Jesus as a kid, are symbols for childhood (Mickey Mouse) and even the loss of innocence (Jesus pricking his finger). This poem allows readers to analyze the lines and try to discover what Ruefle is […]

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Mary Ruefle’s collection of poems has shown an underlying focus on heartbreak, confidence, words, and language. In her poem “The Art of Happiness,” she explores these central thematic ideas once more. She specifically utilizes craft of repetition and symbolism throughout the poem to emphasize on the impact of the need for happiness. Ruefle takes repetition of […]

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Mary Ruefle’s personification of the bunny in this poem works very well for creating a different sort of projection or point of view from the majority of her poems in Trances of the Blast, while still managing to implement some of the reoccurring themes of her poetry. More often than not, we see Ruefle focusing on […]

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Mary Ruefle’s strong suit in her poetry is her use of astonishing imagery. She is comparable to writers of fantastic fiction in the ways in which she makes use of fantastic imagery as a metaphor for something deeper, an experience. “When a Seagull picks up a French fry and becomes human” in “Faster Love Is All There […]

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The unsettling short story is filled with vivid details about the “poor” county of Anthem in New Jersey. We learn a lot about the boys and also about those they come in contact with such as Ms. Kauder and also the protagonist need to be told he was indeed good(231). We are made to feel […]

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This story is about dreams and imagination, two figments of our brain crucial to us as children. Perhaps, this is why Saunders chooses a child as our main protagonist. At the same time, Saunders also shows us that imagination can still be rich in adults as well, hence why he includes a 53-year-old man named […]

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This week, Hilton Also was named the recipient of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. You can read the New Yorker’s announcement of Als’ award here.  

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This poem is about the fictional character Emma Bovary who appears in the novel Madame Bovary. Ann Fisher-Wirth narrates her tale through a 5-section poem detailing the important events Emma face. There is an omnipotent quality about this poem since it details everything from the beginning of Emma’s life to her death and to could […]

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“No Vow,” much like the other works of Ann Fisher-Wirth, is rich in description and playful and musical in terms of linguistic sound. In the first stanza, phrases like “painted saint” or “wooden shrine presides over the hillside,” make use of the stringing together of similar sounds to create a interesting diction and noticeable musicality. […]

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In Ann Fisher-Wirth’s poem “Daughters” the line “My house is full of…” is repeated until the last two stanzas. This has the effect of slowing down the overall rhythm of the poem. “Daughters” is a intimate poem by both its content and by the close relationship described of mother and daughter. “My house is full […]

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In Ann Fisher-Wirth’s poem “Vicksburg National Military Park,” she utilizes memory to emphasize the shift to the present. This shift that is created between lines 7 and 8 allows for a shift from speaking in memory to the present, resulting in a major turn emotionally. Wirth is utilizing the memory to create a moment of sentiment […]

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Russell is often found utilizing the strange and bizarre world’s that are created from the start of her short stories to comment on a larger issue worth discussing. Karen Russell’s short story, “The Barn at the End of Our Term” takes the idea of strange writing to the next level. She writes with the intent that the strange […]

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The narration of the story is first person singular, but sometimes it changes to second person indicating that the speaker is talking to the reader. Thus, it becomes less of a narrative story but more of an ‘informational’ story; even the voice of this story is written in a casual and informal way. Nevertheless, Russell […]

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1.In “Dougbert Shaklenton’s Rules for Antarctic Tailgating,” there is one neatly interwoven subplot, that being the end of a marriage by the wife leaving him for “a millionaire motel-owning douchebag fan of Team Whale.” What does the use of a framing device of a guidebook that is also lightly a judgement of the ex-wife accomplish? […]

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“The Barn at the End of Our Term” does a good job of introducing the element of strangeness early on. Some of the horses are actually dead presidents. This is presented as fact. There is only a small window at the beginning of the story in which the reader wonders, is this a mentally ill horse […]

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Karen Russell writes “Dougbert Shackleton’s Rules for Antarctic Tailgating” without the use of a linear narrative. In constructing the story as a guidebook written by the fictional speaker, Russell can regulate the amount of exposition given in the story in a unique way. The “Food Chain Games” require quite a bit of exposition, and while […]

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Saunders uses the diary form to move the reader from place to place but also to see the life of this family through the somewhat disordered mind of the divorced father. The form easily lends to empathy because we are implanted inside the  stream of his jumbled thoughts . The terse sentences are like a […]

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