Summary and Paraphrase of Saenz’s “To the Desert”

Summary:
A narrator who knows the desert explains his relationship with the land.

Paraphrase:
The narrator went to the desert one night in August where he learned how to live without rain. He says that the desert represents his thirst. All he knows is the desert. He explains what the desert is made up of; “sand, wind, sun,” and the blue “burning sky.” The wind blows hot pieces of sand that burn the skin. Saenz claims that the desert makes him a new man. The desert’s reputation of being warm holds true as it keeps him warm. He loves the desert so much that he says he was made for it. Being in the desert, he is above, below and surrounded by the desert. He wakes to the desert. He never wants it to change, to break what love he has for it. He tells the desert to “reach, rise, [and] blow.” He then asks God to save him, to take him and his land.

The Bee is not afraid of me

The Bee is not afraid of me.
I know the Butterfly.
The pretty people in the Woods
Receive me cordially

The Brooks laugh louder when I come
The Breezes madder play;
Wherefore mine eye thy silver mists,
Wherefore, Oh Summer's Day?

-Emily Dickinson

I think in the fourth grade we had to make posters with a picture of a poem that we had to memorize and recite for the class. This is the poem I chose and I don't think I will ever forget the poem. It's beautiful :D

Kennedy

So this is a little late, but better now than never, huh?
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The question asked if I had ever been in physical danger? I don’t recall any specific time when I felt that I was in serious danger, but I felt something similar when my friend was in danger. While I was in Germany, my best friend Mariana (another exchange student) went secretly to London. She had a friend in Frankfurt, a couple hours on the train from our city. She told our host parents she was living there, but really, she had bought a plane ticket to London and flew by herself to a city she didn’t even know any one in. She was there for about 4 days. A few times, her cell phone died and we couldn’t get a hold of her, and other times, she wouldn’t call me or my other exchange friend that was living in the same city as I did. She ended up making it there and back okay, and our host parents never found out, but it was really scary for us. One week later, on the radio, we heard about the subway bombing in London. Had she been there one week later, she could have been hurt there or even killed and only one other girl than myself knew she was even there.

I couldn’t read much deeper into Robert Frost’s “Out, Out-“ or Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” than the sawing off the hand and being whipped at a boy. It was too sad! I hated how Roethke made his drunken dad metaphorically seem like a ballroom dance. A Waltz is upbeat and happy, a three beat song where the dancers step down on the first beat and get up on their toes for the second and third. Being beaten should be more like a Rammstein song where there’s screaming and anything resembling dancing is thrashing. I wasn’t a fan of Roetke’s poem.

I loved Saenz’s “To the Desert.” I first thought it was about love, about passion, but the first question about the poem asked, “how does the speaker feel about the land being described?” Then in the last part of the poem it says “save me, my God, take me, my land. Save me, take me.” So then it sounds like a prayer. I think that the poem IS a prayer to God. The entire poem sounds like a contemporary song we’d sing at my church. Especially the line that says “…then bend/ Your force, to break, to blow, burn, and make me new.”