6 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2020
  2. pen.org pen.org
    Coming into Language - PEN America
    6
    1. jjmfwr 27 Aug 2020
      Through language I was free. I could respond, escape, indulge; embrace or reject earth or the cosmos. I was launched on an endless journey without boundaries or rules, in which I could salvage the floating fragments of my past, or be born anew in the spontaneous ignition of understanding some heretofore concealed aspect of myself. Each word steamed with the hot lava juices of my primordial making, and I crawled out of stanzas dripping with birth-blood, reborn and freed from the chaos of my life. The child in the dark room of my heart, who had never been able to find or reach the light switch, flicked it on now; and I found in the room a stranger, myself, who had waited so many years to speak again. My words struck in me lightning crackles of elation and thunderhead storms of grief.

      The momentum he has in this paragraph using his diction is crazy, it makes you want to just keep reading.

    2. jjmfwr 27 Aug 2020
      His shrill screams raked my nerves like a hacksaw on bone, the desperate protest of his dignity against their inhumanity.

      He uses imagery here and it really makes you feel bad for the old man, what they're doing to him just isn't right.

    4. jjmfwr 27 Aug 2020
      I began to learn my own language, the bilingual words and phrases explaining to me my place in the universe.

      I'm probably most immersed here because the way he describes the way they communicate made me think about how me and my family talk to each other. Since I'm first generation Mexican American, I can for sure relate to the spanglish he's talking about her.

    6. jjmfwr 27 Aug 2020
      Neruda, Paz, Sabines, Nemerov, and Hemingway.

      Pablo Neruda was a chilean poet-diplomat, he won the Nobel prize for literature in 1971. Octavio Paz was a Mexican writer and diplomat, and he was recognized as one of the major Latin American writers of the 20th century. Jaime Sabines was a Mexican contemporary poet, he was know as the sniper of literature. Howard Nemerov was an American poet, his work was formalist, but still witty and playful. Ernest Hemingway was an American journalist, novelist, short-story writer, and sportsman.

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