Juice Response

    I enjoyed Juice, by Renee Gladman, for the most part. The story was very short but it was interesting. I appreciated the futuristic aspect and point of view from which the story was told. I found that the chapter about the meaning behind Juice, Proportion Surviving, was my favorite. I found that it helped me understand the story more and I found that I related to it.
    The story is about these people in a town that was hit by many plagues and the people in the story are the survivors. They were split up into these tribe-like groups where they travel around looking for resources and things to help them remember the past. In Proportion Surviving, the subject of juice is brought up. The simplicity of something we all take for granted adds to the emotion we get from feeling the pain and agony of these characters. At the beginning of the chapter, there is talk about how many people dream of the daytime and morning, how everyone is excited for the sun to come up. My theory behind the fact that everyone loves the morning and that there is so much talk about the juice we all drink in the morning is that these people are hoping that, in the morning, they will wake up from this terrible dream, or what they hope to be a dream. Usually, the morning symbolizes a new day, a new beginning. For these people, that is all they want; a new beginning. On page 24, the main character says, "I was in my juice" after explaining a certain type of happiness. I felt that that directed toward using juice as another way of meaning morning, and a fresh start.

Fiction Packet Response

    I enjoyed reading this fiction packet a lot more than the poetry packets. I felt like I didn't have to read deeply into the stories to find a hidden meaning or anything. The stories were more straight forward. Although I say this, I did find a few of them to be slightly confusing. However, I still enjoyed quite a few of them, like "The Colonel" and "Misdemeanors", for a couple examples.
    The Colonel story interested me because I kind of grew a sudden hate for the characters right from the start. I don't know if anyone else felt this way toward the family. Just the way they carried their lives, in such a pompous way, like they're better than everyone else. They even had a golden bell to call the maid, so they didn't have to get up and trouble themselves. People like that just irritate me, so I read this story with some envy and hate. I liked that this story did that to me though because I usually just enjoy a story for it's simplicity, or how I can relate to it. On the contrary, I read this one with envy and not being able to relate; however, I still enjoyed it just as much as I would have if it was reversed.
    The Misdemeanors story was funny, I thought and I like funny things, they appeal to me. The story took a not so serious scenario and made it into a serious one, while, at the end, making it funny and not serious again. The fact that the man went to jail for robbing a bowling alley, but tells everyone he's an ex-con is funny in itself because he is trying to act tough and make it seem like he didn't go to jail for something extremely stupid and idiotic. Maybe if he had stolen more money, he would own up to his actions. But, he only got away with pockets full of pennies. I actually laughed out loud when I read, "So here come the police and they find the Old Man barefoot, with his socks on his hands like gloves, and his pants hanging down to his knees because his pockets are full of pennies." I just painted the picture in my mind and couldn't help but to laugh, which I did not do very much while reading the poetry packets.

Response to City Eclogue

    It took me a while to get into this book, City Eclogue by Ed Roberson. A lot of the material did not make much sense to me. In fact, it took about half of the book to really understand, at least what I think is understanding, what this book is all about. The bad grammar threw me through a lot of loops and it made for a more difficult read for something that should be quick and simple. I found myself going back and rereading a lot of the pages because something either didn't seem right or I just read over it too quickly to the point that the ending made no sense at all. So, for a while, it was a pretty difficult read just because of misunderstanding. It wasn't until page 52 that I thought I got my first glimpse of what this book was about.

    For me, page 52 stood out to me because it was written more like every other book I have read, no weird spaces in between words, no jumping all over the place, just straight forward, left to right. Well, there were some weird spaces; however, they didn't throw me off like they had been throughout the rest of the book. It was really from page 52 to page 56 that I felt like I was inside the head of someone for once in this book. I read it from a POV that wasn't my own. I think when it starts off with, "I'm awakened..." I get a whole new sense of the story. It's almost like a new beginning. Maybe that's why I felt like I understood the few pages more than the rest of the book. The use of the N-word in these pages was what really put it into perspective for me. I got the feeling that this book was about a black man, or black people in Africa back when slavery was more popular. 

    Coming off my new mindset for the book, I found another interesting example that basically jumped off the page at me while I was reading. On page 88, Open/Back Up (breadth of field), a whole stanza stands out, "...Black people get stopped regularly to show they have university I.D...." It is very clear now that this book is about racism and the struggle of black people during and before the Civil Rights movement. This one example really hit me hard though because I feel that black people still face a similar kind of struggle in today's world and it makes me question, why? If we've come so far from the beginning of this book to where we are now, in today's world, why do people still struggle like this? It opened my eyes to racism a bit more and really made me question some of the actions in the world we live in. 

Poem Responses

My first poem that I am responding to is Preference, on page 225. From the first line, I could tell that the grammar was off. I assumed it was a little boy talking. The grammar sounds childish and the speaker is talking about what kind of woman he is interested in. I found it humorous that the kid is talking about the differences in young girls vs. old girls and basically talking about how he's looking for maturity, when he himself doesn't sound all that mature. Overall, the poem has a great lesson behind it and some wise words. The line, "That's why I likes a older woman who can appreciate me..." shows a lot of understanding. We all look for the person that loves us for who we are but it takes some time to find them. The second poem I responded to was Sister, on page 224. The first line, "That little Negro's..." jumped out at me and told me that it was about to be a different type of poem. This poem is a little racist; however, the details in the poem explain that it's early southern language. Details like, "Why don't she get a boy-friend," and "Why does he keep on foolin' around Marie?" give me a southern feel. So, the first line of the poem doesn't seem so far off as when I first read it. I found this poem funny when Marie is basically called a gold digger, and it relates to the first poem I responded to, Preference, in the fact that some girls just run around with the guys that will give them what they want, they're the young ones, the ones that aren't quite mature enough to realize that they aren't truly happy with what they have.

Introduction About Me

My name is Derek Zonca. I'm a freshman here at EMU and I have gone in undecided. A few things that aren't easy to tell by just looking at me: I am very passionate about art, and I am a potter. Last year, I was in AP Art and my concentration was teapots, I spent the entire year making very unique and interesting teapots. I'm also a die hard, and I mean die hard, Detroit Red Wings fan. I like to think that I have a great sense of humor and with that, I've been told that I'm pretty chill and fun to be around. With my sense of humor, comedies are my favorite. I tend to be drawn toward comedic things. For example, I don't watch much TV, but when I do, it'll usually be Tosh.0, That 70's Show, or, the best show ever created, Friends. My bucket list consists of skydiving and making it onto the Hollywood version of The Price Is Right. I've been through a lot, I've made friends, lost friends and made a whole lot of memories. My favorite quote is, "Have no fear of perfection, you'll never reach it." - Salvador Dali.