Mary Oliver Journey

Journey; to some, it may be just be the vacation they took last summer. To me, however; a journey is more about mentality and coming of age. As one gets older, they learn to think for themselves, which is valuable for succeeding in life. Being able to have the right mindset encourages me to not give up when issues with school or dance arise. Each setback that I face is just another journey to travel through. The journey of believing you cannot do something to believing you can is crucial achieving your goals. Throughout high school english classes, students are taught about conflicts with man vs. self, man, society, nature. With these conflicts comes a journey the character must go through. I believe that a man vs. self conflict

Leading with Soul is both an inspiring book and a guide for becoming a better leader. The book alternates between telling the story of a leader who is striving to find meaning in his work, and regular interludes, which include summaries, reflective questions, and information regarding various spiritual philosophies. I was exposed to dimensions of leadership I had never previously considered. This paper will reflect upon how Leading with Soul helped me understand the spiritual nature of leadership, identify strategies for nurturing the spiritual side of my own leadership, expand my capacity for assisting others during challenging times, and increase my compassion while working with difficult others.

The poem “Testing New Waters” relates to Jackie Robinson’s experiences during his life. The poem portrays what it is like for a person to embrace taking risks. Through Jackie Robinson’s professional and successful career he emulates Holbrook’s message. As does the founding of the Negro League. The journey which they embarked upon towards equality changed baseball for everyone forever. They show that skin color isn’t what is important and that they should be recognized for what they do instead of how they look. This road to their achievement might not have been smooth, but all that matters is that they succeeded in the end.

Who I am is divided into two distinct sections: the shy, reliant child I was before Upward Bound and the confident, independent adult I have become. Upward Bound (UB) is a college preparatory program for low-income, first-generation college students, but its effects go much deeper than that. The workshops during the school year provide opportunities to meet college students in an informal setting where they can be honest about their college experiences. My first year I remember a girl telling me, “The first week I got to college I cried myself to sleep every night,” which was terrifying to hear. It made me dread the summer segment of UB, when I would stay on Ohio University’s campus in Athens for five weeks to take mock college classes. However, I still participated because I needed to know if I was capable of living away from home.

My family has always been the center of my universe. They’ve taught me the importance of being united and taking care of one another—because in the end, all we truly have is each other. My parents have raised me to be a good daughter, sister, and citizen. They’ve shaped me to be respectful, responsible, and virtuous, knowing these values will last a lifetime. But above all, my parents have instilled in me an appreciation and eagerness for education.

Most people will have obstacles in their life, and many of these people say the important thing is how does one deals with them. In Mary Oliver’s poem “Crossing the Swamp” she writes about someone's experience with an obstacle. Oliver's use of vivid imagery and captivating diction reveal the speaker’s complex attitude towards the swamp. The poem paints the swamp as an almost evil entity.

In Patricia Smith's’ What It’s Like to be a Black Girl (for Those of You Who Aren’t), she eliminates the use of stanzas in her poem, which makes it appear as a miniature short story to the reader. Without the stanzas, the reader is encouraged to read the poem straight through, only breaking where there is punctuation. Her powerful words keep the reader attentive and truly capture the essence of her life. She begins her poem with the line “First of all”, the F in first being the only capitalized letter in the poem. She does not use other transition words like then, next or second, which one would expect, however, with each line, she takes the reader as she transitions from childhood to womanhood for a young black girl.

Have you ever thought about how the story of a pie is similar to the story of a person? In the poem “Perfect for any Occasion,” Alberto Ríos explores the idea that there are fortunate and unfortunate people in the world using an extended metaphor of good pies and bad pies. The fortunate people don 't need to work hard for luxuries and attention. However, there are the unfortunate people who had to put up a fight for what the fortunate people have, but no fortune or attention ever came of it. In his poem, Ríos discretely and creatively makes the argument that there are good and bad pies, like there are privileged and disadvantaged people who are placed in their respective situations.

I am not a father so I cannot express the love for a child. “My son the Man” is a short 16-line poem. In the poem, Sharon compares her son to Houdini and explains how he has grown up. Sharon expresses deeply about her son growing up and leaving her and it is hard for her to watch her little boy become a man. I can kind of relate to this because my mom still looks at me as if I am a little boy. “Sharon shows strong emotional feelings about how she struggles to accept her child is all grown up”. Olds memories of her son as a child, her feelings of seeing him as an adult, and her description of his realizations that he is becoming a man all convey this. She is also having a hard time realizing that her “son” is now a man and there is nothing she

The cave is dark and musty. The beast is gruesome: nasty, brutish and gross. He gobbles down men and sheep for breakfast, lunch and dinner. With only one eye, decaying, rotted teeth, and the stench of his rancid breath filling the confined cave, the journey Odysseus had embarked on, did not look like it had a bright future. But, this was part of the journey that he had agreed to. On a journey, the final destination is everybody's goal, but what about the journey itself? The journey matters more than the destination when you pick up knowledge from all of the experiences and challenges you encounter.

Many authors use figurative language to interpret an objective that may not be understood because of its indefinite nature, and to illustrate the theme. In the poems, "Journey", by Mary Oliver, and "La Belle", by John Keits, both use connotative language that express how to stay strong when under pressure and the importance of independance, as well as things not always being what they seem. In both pieces of poetry, the authors use various forms of figurative language to promote the current theme, such as in Oliver's and Keits poem, they both utilize symbolism throughout their poems. Eventually, both authors inform their reader's that they should never be discouraged by the road ahead, and not depend on others.

Religious imagery,deities, and other aspects of religion are often used in many stories. Young Good Brown and Everyman are no exception. Both use religious aspects to aid the story in various ways. In both stories the main characters go on journeys, which they go on for a deity. Sin also plays a prominent role of the stories. Finally they both vastly change their attitudes about life by the end of the story due to religion. Young Goodman Brown and Everyman have various religious imagery and deities that further and develop the story.

Coming from a low income family, living in a small town in India, I learned early on about struggling and surviving those struggles. I watched my parents working day and night to provide for electricity, pay for our monthly school fees so my sister and I can have a better education, and for the future they wished upon for their children. To further enhance this vision, my father decided for the family and I to immigrate to the US. Everything was different in the sense that I changed schools, learned a new language, had to make new friends, and learned the different culture. I had to adapt to a whole new world, which was a little difficult at 6 years old However, when I look back now, I just couldn’t believe how far my family and I had come which I have my father to thank for. If it wasn’t for my father, I’ll still be going to school in India without ever knowing that this other half of the world even existed, because of the rough circumstances we were facing in India. The future wouldn’t have been as bright as it now and I feel truly blessed to have come to a new world which contained many great opportunities.

Author Ursula K. LeGuin has said, “It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end”. Her statement implies that striving toward a goal or overcoming obstacles associated with a goal defines us as human beings and is more important than the goal itself. This can be seen in Homer’s epic Odyssey. In the Odyssey, Homer uses Odysseus’s journey to show how one’s journey can affect them as a person.

Oliver argues that both exclusion and silencing undermines the ability of the othered, here the oppressed other, to create their own meaning, especially of that of their own bodies and experiences. This paper elucidates Hagar’s exclusion from the world of meaning making except as abject and inferior. She is excluded from creating the meaning of her and her son’s lives and bodies; the Lord, Sarah, and Abraham define them both as inferior and alien, and they are rendered incapable of defining themselves. Hagar disappears from the narrative never to resurface again. However, Hagar exits the narrative doing perhaps the most subversive thing she can do as a powerless and marginalized individual. Hagar’s last action of securing a wife for her son