Family Ties

Blog # 2                                     Family Ties By Santiago Baca

In reading the poem Family Ties, I think the author is primarily making connections between the man, family, and land; talking about how he finds more comfort in family and nature than in his culture. In the beginning he describes his aunts and uncles as trees and the children as rivers, which in essense is tying them to the positive natural imagery that is prevalent in the poem. Conflict is shown when he states of being inside, “mounted elk head”, which indicates a hunter's trophy and something that goes against nature and arguments over who possesses the land. Here is where he feels separate from his own kind. When they act outside the natural and start imposing their will on the land. He is tied to both nature and family. In some segments it appears he may feel more tied to nature than family ties, because he portrays a sense of anger at the fact that people have to own land or have citizenship to be seen as not trespassing instead of being able to just enjoy it. The tone changes again, when he goes outside with his family and he describes the pastoral beauty that is between his family and the natural world. These reflections are broken by the sudden statement that he can't afford to let his family go to a place like this because of the man-made concept of land ownership. “He can’t afford a place like this”, signifies why people get upset of the so called Land of the Free. He clearly longs for there to be no more, no trespassing signs. This fact is repeated for an upsetting affect as they drive away his sons dreaming of the fields and the man saddened by the No Trespassing signs.  Also, I find for the no trespassing signs to reference not only the land, but how he feels cut off from extended family as if they are on one side of a divided line and he on the other. In addition, to him feeling disconnected because of the conflicts within his family arises due to their imposes of their interruption’s on nature, he thinks family is natural and tied to nature.

Melpomene Tragedy

Blog 1                           Melpomene Tragedy by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

            This poem was very interesting that had a lot of serious and deep segments to it really making you wonder about a lot of things. From what I gathered, she starts off by explaining her younger years, when she was just a little girl with opened eyes watching the surrounding scenery. It seems as though she grew up in a communist country.  She says that, “beyond the correct setting, immobile placid”, meaning that everything looked normal even when it wasn’t because in a communist country everyone would be controlled. For example, having a curfew, no person allowed to be on the streets hence the “immobile placid “part. Through extreme stillness, she talks about how eighteen years pass and everything is still the same. She can see the airplane bombers flying over her head which suggest that maybe she lived over an air force base. For thirty-six years she lived under communist power, but when the Japanese were defeated everyone followed them to the South without packing a single thing, no clothes or portraits, nothing that evoked their memory. They abandoned all to see the nation’s greed which depicts a communist country in my opinion. Moving forward, she is now in a crowd of prisoners and the soldiers are moving them to a particular area as if in training camps, rounding everyone up into one spot because the soldiers then set off gas bombs since she says, once she felt the tightening of the crowd and heard sounds ripping from both sides of her. The amount of imagery she uses when describing when she saw the explosions, and the bodies and different pieces of rubble found scattered throughout while the streets so thick with blood not even the rain could wash it away. She goes back another eighteen years to reflect on the same day when her brother wanted to join the group of protestors and their mother was begging him not to go. She sent her to retrieve her uncle for help and sadly they did not succeed and her brother died. Shortly after their loss the communism ended. This poem abstracts a short story of her life expressed by her inner most feelings, expressing what she went through and witnessed growing up.