Timmy's Essay 19

Timmy O’Brien
Mr. Salsich
English 9
4 May, 2009

Partings and Reunions:

An Essay on Two Poems and my Life

Parting is a difficult subject for many to comprehend. It can be as simple as leaving your house for a day out, or as difficult as losing a loved one. Either way, it is a difficult thing to fully understand. A poem by Emily Dickinson, another poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, and my own life all have something in common with parting, reunion, or even both.

In the poem titled “My Life Closed Twice” by Emily Dickinson, many topics of parting are talked about. First, she mentions her own life “clos[ing] twice before its close.” Before her ultimate end – her death, she feels as though she has felt a sense of desolation [FAST] so deep it is comparable to the feeling of senselessness, stillness, darkness, and that of the unknown. She has felt her life end twice before its ultimate demise, and she still expects “immortality” to “unveil” a “third event to” her. Even though she has experienced endings, she cannot put them into understandable words. The parting of her life was “so huge [and] hopeless to conceive.” In other words, it was so dissimilar to anything in this world of ours, it must be of another nature. It was “all [the people knew] of heaven, and all [they needed] of hell.”

In Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem called “Adios”, there is much talk about parting and reunion. To begin, she says to “think of things that disappear.” She uses this to describe how the things we love best are usually the things that go away. When you love something, you notice it more, so when it is gone, you notice its absence. Oppositely, if there are things in your life that you do not particularly like, such as “leaves, cartons and napkins, the damp smell of mold,” it seems to “linger.” When these things leave, you tend not to notice it, so they never seem to go away. In contradiction to the things you love so much, the ones you are uninterested in may either leave or stay, either way they seem to be there. Finally, at the beginning of her poem, Nye describes the word “adios” as something you should “marry.” When someone marries, they usually unite with someone rather than part with him or her. Nye’s suggestion of “marry[ing] the word “goodbye” is a topic of reunion rather than parting. This poem contains many insights on both the notion [FAST] of parting and reunion.

In addition, there has been much parting in my life. As I look back on the grieving, the sadness, the hopelessness, and the despair, there are many things that stick out to me – the main one being my grandfather’s death in July 2006 [loose sentence]. When he passed away, he parted from my life entirely. There was no easy transition; he was here one moment and gone the next. This circumstance produced an option for two partings – his life from this Earth and our families becoming further apart. Obviously, he did part from Earth, but instead of parting from each other, our four families united. We stuck together and consoled each other, as one would do for someone they loved, and we all did love each other. My grandfather’s going brought parting into my life, but it brought reunion to it also.

Pain, grief, stress, preoccupation; I am affected by all of these things during parting [periodic sentence]. Other times, such as ones of reunion, I feel none of these things. In fact, I feel the opposite – enlightenment, happiness, and readiness. Even when things look terrible, there is always a decent happenstance ready to occur.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Key:
Highlighted in red: special tools
Highlighted in blue: transitions
--------------------------------------------------------------
Self-assessment

Q: What was the hardest part of this assignment for me?
A: I have been having trouble with loose and periodic sentences, but I think I used them well in this assignment.

Q: What am I most proud of in this assignment?
A: I am really happy with my sporadic use of tetracolon climax and purposeful repetition in this essay.