Leonidas Tsirigotis Date And Time

Leonidas Tsirigotis 

Prof. Ellis 

14 September 2020 

English 101 

Personal Blog 1 

I personally enjoyed On Starting because it seems inspirational. The idea that a stream flowing with many fish and each fish is an idea and if you catch it, you receive an idea is as rewarding as a “wide eyed and fat” fish. The idea of catching fish with your bare hands is also cool, since it brings the idea that you are independent and work for your ideas. At the point of reading the poetry compilation/book, the motif that Kaye is trying to show is to go after what you want. This is further supported by Strength, In Four Parts where at age 30 he says that he feels like whenever he does weight training, he keeps failing. But later he states, “fitness is not a success but rather a constant state of failure a despair so basic the organism has no choice but to grow”. Meaning the idea of the beginning of Kaye’s book is finding one’s self and growing from the failures that one would encounter when pursuing those ideas. Later on, in the book, Phil Kaye gives more personal anecdotes that don’t really support the motif of doing what you want, rather, personal stories of events while growing up and, more importantly, his family lineage. Specifically, the poem teeth capture this nicely and foreshadows possible other stories we could read. Out of all the other poems, teeth hit me the most. Like many other kids my age, I have grown up like Phil to hear stories of like what Phil and my grandfather's went through in history. The part of Teeth that hit me the most was when Phil said he could read the names off the teeth and how they died. Coming from a heavy military legacy that spans all the way back to ancient times for me, I could say that I felt deeply connected to that portion of the poem. Though my great grandfathers and maternal grandfather weren’t Jewish, they encountered the same tasks in WW2, just like everyone else and Phil’s grandfathers. Combine that story with the story called On Starting which if you recall brings up the theory of fish being ideas, creates and overall and widely known perspective; The American Dream. The sacrifices and ideas and hard work combined altogether with enough pressure creates the diamond known as the American Dream, something Phil’s grampies all had looked towards, something all of my ancestors looked towards as well. As of reading the rest of the poems, I did not pick up this certain idea again, so I hope it comes back in “The Middle”.