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Old 04-7-2012, 05:35 PM   #1
25thhour
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Location: Vancouver/Burnaby/East Van
Age: 30
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Default So you may have seen my thread before....

... about me failing my English Provincial.

Well, I am rewriting it on Thursday and I would like some feedback on my writing.

This was the question:
Discuss the jump in "Prelude to Jumping in the River" as a metaphor for making important decisions. Use paragraph form and support your response with specific references to the text.

Here is the poem
He unpeels himself, lays his light shirt, glasses, straw hat
and shoes on the sea-monster
driftwood, where they rest as easily
as they do on him. The mental preparation
5 takes some time. I have also stood
on that rock, feet cupping
the low, flat lip. The decision is not yet made.

What goes on at the edge of the bank
could last years, centuries. The bottom will shift or

10 vanish entirely, will prod
from the muck we can barely toe
deeply rooted lilies, suckling
bladderwort2. Its weight separating it
from the air, the water seeks

15 itself and stays there, closing
without fuss over whole worlds. It has swallowed
countless resolves to jump or retreat
and kept no record of either. Yet —
the pizzicato3 of the crickets, the stream — this is at stake,

20 and it remains enough to give us pause.

The exit, too, will be graceless. There are no footholds
among the reeds and we can barely heave
the body up. We are hopelessly terrestrial, and vaguely,
mnemonically4 aquatic, but never both at once. In the end,

25 I catch the aftermath: the slowing ripples, the dogs
rushing down the hill, the surprised head bobbling
above the water. Waiting, I have missed the jump,
the perfect, reckless moment when we cannot turn back.


Here is my response:
The jump in the poem "Prelude to Jumping in the River", by Katia Grubisic, is adequately used as a metaphor for making important decisions. Grubisic uses a sense of detail so vivid: "The pizzicato of the crickets" (19). and "deeply rooted lilies, suckling bladderwort" (12-13); this abundance of complex words and description places emphasis on how great of a challenge the boy was facing when he came face to face with his dire decision. Grubisic also describes every moment of his jump, from his very first action, to the final, "reckless moment when [he] cannot turn back" (28). This description, along with all of the other description, allows the reader the knowledge that assessing the situation before making a drastic decision is a great idea, because once the "leap of faith" into an unknown is taken, there is no turning back. Finally, Grubisic uses the situation of a boy jumping off a cliff because of the great "mental preparation" (4) it takes to get oneself ready for the leap, and because of the immense danger in actually attempting the jump. The same is said for decision making; every decision has its' pros and cons and there is always a state of mental preparation before the decision is made. In essence, thinking before acting, even though it is hard to do sometimes, will always make the outcome better.


Please critique... This is a rough draft and I wrote in 15 minutes. I usually don't post my writing on the net because I am self-conscious but I need your guys' help.
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Last edited by 25thhour; 04-7-2012 at 05:38 PM..
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