David Foster Wallace Commencement Address

David Foster Wallace’s commencement address conveyed a message that seems to be quite simple, but is actually extremely complex. Wallace talks about how to approach daily life, and the different spins each individual can put on every situation.

He discusses a time in his life when was in line at the grocery store after a long day at work, and couldn’t help but be annoyed with every move anyone made around him. He states, “you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot.” After describing this way of approaching life, Wallace discusses a different outlook: one that forces you to be thankful for what you have and realize that the people around you probably have it much worse. Everyone discusses and pretends to embrace this message countless numbers of times, but in the heat of the moment it is very difficult to actually believe and acknowledge it. Wallace discusses how a liberal arts education is what allows you to have to skills to recognize this message if you want to, and to ignore it if you don’t. This is extremely profound and true, but also hard to recognize in the heat of the moment.

Reading Wallace’s speech made me think about the way I approach my own life, and the way I communicate with the people around me. It is always important to realize that someone else is in a harder situation than your own, and it is never worth it to let the little things in life effect you more than they should.

Art Is My Savior

Poetry Can Save You

Ever since reading “Full of It” that’s the phrase that’s been stuck in my head. Its not that I have never felt that way but I have never seen a phrase I believe in more whole heartedly. After reading “I Thought You Were a Poet” I believe in it even more because while many poets may be psychotic, it’s their art that saves them. I guess I will always be able to identify with poets because I have had my share of “behavioral health” problems, and something about being in a dark place mentally is very poetic. Feeling the highest highs and lowest lows really opens up the world and though it might be painful it’s extremely beautiful.

I have personally never enjoyed the idea of saving someone or being saved. However, the idea of art saving someone is extremely appealing. To throw all your pain and madness into an art form and out of that create something beautiful amazes me. Doing so makes perfect sense because any kind of art is an outlet for feelings that may not be normal or acceptable, but are a part of you all the same. In a sense I suppose madness appeals to me because of the inspiration it can cause, but I only support productive madness, not the kind that leaves you bedridden. Productive crazy people tend to be more interesting than “normal” people and seem to have better taste in books and music. I guess like Kerouac said “the only ones for me are the mad ones.”

Full Of It Essay

After talking with many of you, I feel like everybody is writing their first paper on Charles Baxter’s Full Of It. Maybe we should have asked around a bit before we started writing because I feel like this could complicate things. It may be a good thing, as we will be able to bounce ideas off of one another and further explore the text, but if twenty of us are writing the same exact thing, the bar will be set pretty high. Carol will have twenty papers to compare ours to and therefore, our grades may suffer. Each paper will study and explain the main points of the letter, meaning most of the paper’s substance will be the same. If somebody left out a point that another person brought up, point may be deducted

So my point in writing that first paragraph was to get my ideas flowing, as Baxter did when he started off by describing his surroundings of Lake Superior. It’s interesting, that even such an accomplished writer, still finds difficulty in starting. Do all writers, even those with a great deal of recognition, still lack confidence in their work? He cleverly lowers the reader’s expectations as if he is worried about disappointing them. If he feels the need to apologize to his audience, I’m not sure why he feels qualified to go on and explain the qualities necessary to be a writer. Yes, he does receive credibility when he explained the plight of being a young author, but regardless, the rest of the letter contradicts this credibility.

The Colonel

Carolyn Forche’s “The Colonel” is a creepy and unsettling poem to read, and it definitely shocks you a bit the first time you read it. The beginning describes what seems to be a normal dinner with the Colonel and his family, but then suddenly takes a disturbing turn at the mention of a sack of human ears (reading this part always reminds me of the story of how Van Gogh chopped off his left ear). The ears on the table are out of place, and it’s unsettling that Forche compares them to food (dried peach halves). It’s unclear who these ears were collected from or why the Colonel even has them in the first place, but we can see that the Colonel is a bit of a madman. Trying to imagine what the narrator feels at this point gets me thinking about The Book of Eli when Denzel Washington unknowingly walks into a cannibal couple’s house in search of somewhere to hide. He doesn’t sense that something is wrong until the pair shows him the fresh graveyard in their garden, and then he realizes he needs to desperately get out of there. In “The Colonel”, it’s unclear whether the Colonel actually has malicious intentions or if he’s just trying to be creepy, but readers are definitely left in an uncomfortable place as the poem comes abruptly to a close.

Either way, I know that I’ll probably never be able to eat a dried peach again.

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