Elegy

"To the Dead" by Frank Bidart
"O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman
"Funeral Blues" by W. H. Auden
I don't really have a specific reason why I chose "To the Dead" or "Funeral Blues", but I chose "O Captain! My Captain!" because I had heard it before and was a little familiar with it.
"Funeral Blues" shows how important their loved one was. It shows that their life and death was very significant by saying "The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun."
"To the Dead" expresses the longing to be with that certain person that died. "What I hope (when I hope) is that we'll see each other again,--
. . . and again reach the VEIN
in which we loved each other . .
It existed. It existed."
"O Captain! My Captain!" doesn't really give me a sense of mourning, but of shock. The person writing wasn't expecting/accepting the death of Abe Lincoln.

Writing

As a freshman I struggled with staying on topic and supporting my thesis. Somehow I always managed to stray away from the point I was trying to make. I think I was just trying to fill space and I was not really thinking about proving my point or opinion. Now I still sometimes struggle with that, but not as much. Now I struggle with the littler things like citing works and I usually make some grammatical errors. Also, I sometimes find myself not analyzing my work just stating facts or summarizing.
I get frustrated when my writing is graded and one teacher likes my type of writing and another doesn't. I always get conflicting feedback and don't really know what to make of it. Freshman year my teacher loved my style of writing, but I can't say that about sophomore year. I often got C's and D's on my papers when it seemed like everyone else was getting A's and B's.
The most difficult part of writing for me is actually forming the basis of my paper and wording it so that it makes sense to the reader. Many times I will write something that makes perfect sense to me, then I will have my mom read it and she won't have a clue what I'm talking about.

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." ~Anaïs Nin

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