March Madness By Ms. Coleti-Houde Summary

1498 Words3 Pages

Two Shining Moments Every March, basketball fans everywhere eagerly await the arrival of the famous "March Madness" tournament. This NCAA Division 1 basketball tournament features 68 teams in a single-elimination competition spanning seven rounds, ultimately culminating in the crowning of a champion. It is not uncommon to find fans filling out their brackets with personal predictions and hopes of which teams will advance to the next round. While the students of Ms. Coletti-Houde's Period 4 AP English Literature and Composition class did not fill their brackets with basketball teams, they did fill them with poems. Ms. Colleti-Houde acted as the NCAA and held her own march madness where the competitors were not different colleges but other poems. …show more content…

The poem's speaker is first introduced when they are taking out the trash, accompanied by their spouse. While "the rolling containers [create] a song of suburban thunder," the couple "point out the stars that make Orion." However, the spouse's remark, "We should really learn some new constellations," jolts the speaker (and the poem) into a broader mindset. This use of symbolism vividly represents life's tendency to narrow our focus on only what is immediate and evident to us, symbolized by Orion - a well-known constellation - versus all of the other forgotten dead stars and constellations. The second half of the poem becomes a bold invitation to "reclaim the rising" star-like aspects of ourselves to "lean.toward / what is larger in us," to survive more" and "love harder" because humans "[are] dead stars too." Almost the entire second half of the poem is written as "What if" questions: "What if we said no to the rising tides?" What if we launched our demands into the sky? (Limón, lines 20,27) The speaker calls upon the readers to seek life's most extraordinary possibilities, suggesting they lie beyond what we have ever …show more content…

On the other hand, Joy Harjo's "Perhaps the World Ends Here" is a beautifully crafted poem that uses the kitchen table as a symbol of the human experience. However, the two poems differ in their tone and message. "Dead Stars" is more introspective and contemplative, urging the readers to explore life for what it offers. Meanwhile, "Perhaps the World Ends Here" is more celebratory and focused on the power of shared humanity and connection. The two poems also differ in their use of imagery and symbolism. While "Dead Stars" paints vivid images of the galaxy and stars to represent human potential, "Perhaps the World Ends Here" centers on the kitchen table to symbolize the cycle of life and shared human moments. If one were to explain why "Perhaps the World Ends Here" won their personal bracket, one would say that it is the way Joy Harjo was able to take something so universal and relatable and turn it into something beautiful. One might argue that getting that nostalgic feeling and flood of childhood memories while reading the poem resonates more than the urging in "Dead

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