Senior Portfolio Workshop 2017

Situated though it is among blooming azaleas and dogwoods, The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded is emphatic: Virginians in particular and Americans in general cannot turn away from the ugliness in our identity, from an awareness of the lives upon which our lives were built. We must locate ourselves in the darkest rooms […]

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A second voice and an inner voice are seen again and again in Molly McCully Brown’s collection of poems from The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. In the case of “The Cleaving,” both the ‘you’ (or the patient) and the ‘I’ are two sides of the same coin. The former is being observed […]

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The section In the Infirmary (Summer, 1936) is an especially powerful section of The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded in terms of structure, characterization, and plot development. The inclusion of “A Dictionary of Hereditary Defects” and the supplemental images of the orders for sexual sterilization play a crucial role in the development of each of […]

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The book seems to progress in a way that takes the reader deeper and deeper into the inner workings of the colony, starting with poems from the perspective of an outsider and progressing to poems from perspectives of patients and workers. Nature seems to be used as a tool to create the idea that the […]

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For discussion, I would like to draw specific attention to point of view. Throughout The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, changes in point of view drive both the content and the formulaic structure of the poems, so please be thinking of poems you feel make especially interesting use of point of view. Additionally, I would […]

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Last year, Richmond Magazine published a fascinating, well-researched article by the journalist Gary Robertson on the sterilization program at the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. Here’s how the article, “Compensating for the Priceless,” begins: Sadie Ingram was 5 and her younger sister, Janet, was 2 when an Army truck took them away from […]

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The way Karen Russell handles the theme of internal consciousness in “The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979” is deeply thought-provoking and multifaceted. The use of third-person limited point-of-view is an especially effective device for this story because of Nal’s constant struggle with wanting to separate himself from his own consciousness. It is almost […]

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Saunders injects emotion into the actions and words by using understatement. Jeff’s emotions are controlled by drugs injected by a pack surgically attached to his body called a Mobipak. “Escape from Spiderhead” presents a redemption arc at the end of the short story when Jeff commits suicide so he will not have to be responsible for […]

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The setting of the story offers a feeling of isolation for the overall plot and the characters within. The lack of descriptions of the narrator’s physical surroundings also reinforces the idea of that isolation. The story’s prose is casual, like listening to someone recount their background rather than listening to a formal reading of their biography. […]

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I think that “Exhortation” is a very effective and engaging story for a few reasons. First, the story is able to put a lot of imagery into the readers’ head that is not actually present in the narrative of Todds’ email. This is because we are aware of an audience which Todd is speaking to. […]

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Similar to the earlier stories we’ve read in Tenth of December — like “Victory Lap,” for example –George Saunders continues to play with language in his story “Escape From Spiderhead.” He chooses a similar but contrasting structural change between the two stories. In “Victory Lap,” Saunders breaks the narrative up into different perspectives, each having a moment in the […]

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A city was waiting to be discovered, and I wouldn’t let inconvenient facts get in the way. – Garnette Cadogan, “Walking While Black” We are given the background of Garnette Cadogan from a series of flashbacks from childhood to his adulthood. Each flashback is a descriptive summary without much dialogue; instead, the author picks out the important incidents he remembers, […]

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There are several themes that reoccur in Garnette Cadogan’s essays; these themes are mostly of a religious or racial nature. However, in examining “Walking While Black” and “Love Your Crooked Neighbor/ With Your Crooked Heart,” another theme can be identified. This theme rests in Cadogan’s search for a place to be called home. Cadogan depicts this […]

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When reading Cadogan’s personal essays, one can see many themes strung throughout all of them. For this post, I will specifically be looking at race and, similar to Ally’s response, the religious connections that are related to his response on the racism in America. In his essay “Walking While Black,” he speaks toward the struggles […]

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Garnette Cadogan uses the word pilgrimages in the other assigned essay, “Love Your Crooked Neighbor / With Your Crooked Heart,” but religious undertones and themes are present in both essays. He states, “Seen theologically, then, walking is an act of faith. Walking is, after all, interrupted falling. We see, we listen, we speak, and we […]

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From Edward Hirsch’s A Poet’s Glossary: lyric The short poem has been practiced for at least forty-five hundred years. It is one of the necessary forms of human representation, human speech, one of the ways we invent and know ourselves. It is as ancient as recorded literature. It precedes prose in all languages, all civilizations, […]

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For discussion today, I will be looking specifically at Trances of the Blast from the perspective that Mary Ruefle is stringing the theme of words and language. When looking at the selected poems that we read for today, there are a lot of different themes to be discussed that Ruefle utilizes, but ultimately I will analyze these sets of poems […]

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Frost at Midnight The Frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before. The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, Have left me to that solitude, which suits Abstruser musings: save that at my side My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. ‘Tis calm indeed! so […]

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In “La Livre De Ma Vie” Mary Ruefle makes use of several structural elements that are imperative to creating emphasis on particular content elements of the poem. The first stanza, which sets up the terms and questions of a vague relationship, is the only stanza of the poem that is not a couplet. The following […]

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