Fun with summarizing, and analyzing too!

Forgotten Language

By: Shel Silverstein

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . .
How did it go?
How did it go?


Shel Silverstein's poem, "Forgotten Language" is a short piece about his long-lost ability to speak the language of nature, and his inability to remember how to do so. In this poem, Shel describes all of the aspects of nature with which he had previous linguistic, intellectual, and spiritual fluency in. He starts with his poem with his communication to flowers, then moves on to caterpillars, starlings, houseflies, crickets, and finally how he, "... joined in the crying of each falling, dying flake of snow,". Shel Silverstein gracefully ends his poem with the repeated question of lost understanding and faint nostalgia, "How did it go? How did it go?"

Shel Silverstein is able to move his audience, any imaginitive reader that is, through elegant, poignant images of his ex-relationship with nature. He makes good, repetitive use of verbs such as: spoke, understood, smiled, shared, heard, and joined. His repetitive structure of examples and how he spoke, smiled, understood, etc, etc, each one really hammers home the idea that he misses something he once held great. He pulls his audience into his mindset by calling out familiar facets of nature with which almost all of us can relate. Things such as falling snowflakes, singing birds, buzzing houseflies. Then he simply adds a creative and poetic twist to the simplistic parts of nature. Bird-song becomes gossip, buzzing becomes conversation, and falling snowflakes suddenly become mournful. Finally, Shel envelops his final point by asking us the question, "How did it go? How did it go?"

 
 

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain- A feeble attempt at analyzing and emulating the writing of "Chef-dom"

I would almost feel guilty choosing Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential as my literary emulation assignment. On the surface, it seems that Bourdain writes and tells his story in a very lucid, conversational style. Accompanied by his casual, "Remember-that-one-time-when" tone, Anthony Bourdain has a writer's voice that I would guess many can emulate to some degree. Not to degrade his writing in any shape or form, it's a very cool thing actually, to have a style and voice one can easily dive into, or just as easily sit back and soak in the details of it's content.

This is trickery however.

His story-time writing style has much more depth to it than one would initially assume a piece about French cuisine could. He implements exquisite technique in ordering the flow and feel of his stories. From setting description, chronological sequencing of events, and emphasizing on key points in his narrative-- Bourdain presents evidence of his skill outside of "Chef-dom".

Two notable techniques that Bourdain makes prominent use of are, emphasizing key ideas through short, explicit paragraphs, and narrative interruptions. This isn't surprising, as the story is a reflection upon an adolescent adventure experienced by Bourdain, and we all know that adolescent adventures involve a lot of epiphanies and narrative interruptions. Bourdain does an invigorating job of halting the particular story is telling, and giving us full details of what he was experiencing internally, and what insight he has gained since.

"I took it in my hand, tilted the shell back into my mouth as instructed by the now beaming Monsieur Saint-Jour and with one bite and a slurp, wolfed it down. It tasted of seawater... of brine and flesh... and somehow... of the future.
Everything was different now. Everything.
I'd not only survived-I'd enjoyed.
This, I knew, was a magic of which i had until now been only dimly and spitefully aware. I was hooked..."

"...I'd learned something. Viscerally, instinctively, spiritually- even in some small, precursive way, sexually- and there was no turning back. The genie was out of the bottle. My life as a cook, as a chef, had begun.
Food had power."

Anthony uses a very personal, open writing style. He gives us the full details of his experiences, and lavishes them with savory and enveloping details. Almost as if one were reading a menu detailing the delectable foodstuffs one was about to inhale. Perhaps that is the key to Anthony's writing... He manages to bridge the love of food and appreciation for good cuisine with excellent story-telling. Food has power.

Spraying elderly pedestrians with a garden-hose is cruel and unethical

My brother and I found ourselves dipped in boredom very often and very easily. It's a curse some would say, that of severe late nineties, pre-adolescent, suburban inattentive-ness, but we relished every bad idea that hungrily spawned from the empty recesses of our juvenile minds. Now it wasn't often that we got such a bad idea as to go about usurping the neighborhood peace mind you, but that day we simply could not help ourselves. Summer led to many miserably drab and boring afternoons in our old neighborhood, so we took to the streets, armed with the sole intent to relieve the sleepy hex that had befallen us. We had little idea about proper civility or the concepts of right and wrong, good and evil, bad and okay-enough-to-not-be-punished-too-harshly. One could even argue that we unleashed such a full-forced torrent of water upon that elderly couple as a friendly attempt to cool them off whilst on their grueling late-afternoon stroll.  In fact, I'm still not entirely certain that their faces weren't contorted into those of pleasant surprise, or their screams those of cool delight, rather than shock and fear.

In all honesty, It really was my brother's idea. Though he was younger, and seemingly more innocent, I argued profusely (and vainly) that it was his under-developed, more immature mind that persuaded me to yell "Now!" and subsequently flood the surrounding area with sparkling, garden-hose glory. Of course, just as his character always led him to do, he remained silent as our parents slopped punishment on my plate and juicy steak upon his. I'm still somewhat miffed about the fact that he fled the scene, that he turned tail and bolted through the bushes as their wrinkled, furious gazed fell upon us. In the end I suppose he was just frightfully clever, or devious as I would prefer to call it. Either way, our afternoon boredom was alleviated in one fell turn of a water valve. Actually, my brother's entire week became suddenly eventful as he gained the ability to roam about freely, occasionally visiting me in my prison to gloat about his un-grounded evenings and adventures. In retrospect, I suppose justice was served in some twisted, ill-fated, way. Though I remained isolated in my bedroom, my brother was priveleged with mowing our elderly neighbor's lawn, a fate which I still have no remorse about dodging.