General Literary Resources - Author Biography - Kayla Larson

My task is to find a specific type of resource to help in my study of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”. I'm to find more information about the author and his works. The idea is that if I know more about the author and his life, I will be able to understand this literature more fully. Here's what I found:

John R. Greenfield: Percy Bysshe Shelley 

• John R. Greenfield’s biography of Percy Shelley states the world thought Shelley was an obscure poet and many rebuked his lifestyle. However, one of his close friends, Lord Byron, claimed that the world was ignorantly mistaken about Shelley. Greenfield describes Shelley as passionate but distracted. He had many ideas and wanted to make changes in the status quo. Even college did not appeal to him at Oxford. Shelley says, “Oxonian society was insipid to me, uncongenial with my habits of thinking”. Shelley believed in free love, marrying Harriet Westbrook, but loving Mary Godwin and eventually marrying her instead. He suffered many tragedies in his life including the loss of several children. He believed in atheism and revolution, which likely contributed to his beliefs about kings and monarchs in Ozymandias.  This reference helped me to understand Shelley’s personality and beliefs in a way that highlights certain parts of the poem.
  
  

Keats-Shelley Journal

• I found this resource through the BYU library database. It contains many of both Keats and Shelley’s individual works. As I read through Shelley’s works both before and after Ozymandias, I began to understand more clearly his style of writing and common themes throughout his works. The journal draws comparisons to current literature and poetry that helped me to further understand what Shelley believed and how his own personal life contributed to his poetry. It was also interesting to compare Keats’ works to Shelley’s. I recognized Shelley’s passion and strong opinions in his other writings. Seeing his work as a whole through this resource helped me to see him in a more full light.

These two resources helped me to get a broader view of Percy Bysshe Shelley and the events that occurred in his life to make him hold the beliefs he did. Understanding more about the time period in which this was written would lead to even more clarity. I’d like to further study the cultural norms at the time, especially involving politics and marriage.

General Literary Resources - Author Biography - Caroline Parry

I am looking up books that can help explain the life better of Percy Shelley, author of the famous sonnet Ozymandias. It is important when studying a poem, to know about the author himself.  Readers can learn about context to better understand the writing and more can be said about why it was written and even reference any personal experiences. 

T.J. Hoggs The Life of Percy Shelley 
T.J. Hoggs does a great study on the life of Percy Shelley.  He writes a lot about the beginnings of his life and into his more professional career.  A lot was written about his poem, Ozymandias.  Contemporaries were curious about this sonnet and how he described tree like legs that were left, this did not fit what was really left by statues in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece.  Hoggs describes how Shelley himself was a traveler, so he was likely to have seen these.  So there is some discrepancy as to how personal this writing is to Shelley.  This looks like a wonderful source to use when learning about his life.  It is online and I am able to get a good look at the book, though it would be easier to hold it in my hands.  It is linked on the internet archive. 

Keats-Shelley Journal 
This I found on JSTOR (the website that truly helped me write my research papers).  Although it talks about Keats, adding contemporaries to the study of Shelley helps researchers gain more information about the context and the history about what they are reading.  This is why I found this source applicable.  The journal talks about other things that Shelley read and other pieces to compare his poems too.  It also references one of his writings, and how he was draw to certain statues or colossal figures, which obviously inspired his writings.  This is a good source because it deals a lot with contemporaries and even has some of his own writings. 

I think, with looking at these two sources, it can be agreed that Shelley was a intellectual man.  He broadened his horizons by study works from his contemporaries.  He was also well traveled, which can really influence his writings.       

A Life Changing Psalm

A Life Changing Psalm

Life is there for the taking for each one of us - full of opportunity, full of excitement, full of wonder - yet we need to be the ones to step up and work for the life we want.

Question 1: Who was I?

The list of approved poems was displayed on the screen in classroom number 2306 of Davis High school. Each one of them presenting an opportunity for so much more than the mere title that we could see. The assignment was simple - select one of the various poems, memorize it, and recite it to the class. No essays were to be written on the poems, no analysis given, no reason needed for our selection, we just needed to choose. A couple of the poems I knew already: “If”, “Richard Cory”, “The Road Less Traveled”, and a couple other poetic classics. Immediately amidst the unfamiliar stood out the name “A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. That name in and of itself held wonder for me.

Every day I wake up and go through the motions. Down to the very jam I put on my single slice of whole wheat toast. And it was a good life, but I never really felt like it was mine. I woke up and went to the classes that someone told me I needed to take. I played the sport that my dad had raised me on. And I played the instrument that my mom had chosen for me. And those were how I spent my days - living a life that other people had chosen for me. And it was wonderful, I must add lest there be any misconceptions. These things were decided for me with my best interest in mind. And they were right, in a lot of ways. I was successful at tennis, and I excelled at the violin. The classes were less a decision of my individual potential as a person, and more-so for the common knowledge given to everyone blessed with the opportunity for education.

Question 2: Who did I want to be?

And now I’m sitting in the classroom of my sophomore English class. I lingered back behind the rest of the class to take a longer look at the list of poems. When I went forward, someone had already penciled in their name next to “A Psalm of Life.” Having no connection to the poem at this point besides liking the name, I signed my name next to a different selection without much heartbreak. As class was dismissed, a girl went forward, glanced at the paper, and quickly slid her eraser across a slot, before assigning herself to a different poem. More curious than hopeful, I also approached the paper. The slot next to “A Psalm of Life” was open, and I quickly claimed it as mine.

I have never had an easier time memorizing a piece of literature. The words seemed to draw feelings out of my heart that hadn’t had an explanation until Longfellow opened the door for them with words of his own. Now every day I still woke up and went through the same motions, as if on a treadmill alongside everyone else, sleepwalking through life. But the music of these words blared loudly in my thoughts, and woke me from the rhythm. They wrapped around my mind and flashed before my eyes as I watched others tread mechanically through their own lives. And for the first time, the repeated words began to change my life, beginning with “For the soul is dead that slumbers.”(3) Was the metaphorical box I found myself in suffocating my very soul? I knew that something had to change, and that I was the only one who could change it.

It began simply - introducing myself to new people. Something that would pull me slightly out of my bubble of comfort, but allow me to expand my circle of lives that could influence mine. And then I began building myself through different activities. Different clubs, petitions, activities, teams, classes - each began awakening my soul little by little. I looked to others for inspiration as well, finding motivation in Longfellow’s line “lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime.” (25) We have the power to make our lives sublime. I have the power to change my own life, and direct this creature whichever way I please.

Question 3: Who am I now?

I built my life, and I built myself around all of these little things. They served as stepping stools on a ladder that I used to pull myself out of the dark bunker in which I had been placed in “Life’s broad field of battle” (17). This came with consequences, however. Consequences I did not recognize until I left to serve a mission for my church. Yes, I was free from the bunker, but this ladder served as a connection from me and my new life, to a self that I was comfortable with, and a self that I knew much better than the person I was trying to become. And when I left on my mission, that ladder disappeared, leaving me stranded on high ground. Tennis, track, theater, piano, violin, books, and every other wrung were gone. And in my struggle to build up the “what” of myself, I had simply neglected the “who” I was. Which did not mean that I found myself with no identity, and no sense of self. But it did mean that I had to take the time to get to know who I had become through this battle of control. This was not a time of self discovery. “Not enjoyment and not sorrow is our destined end or way. But to act that each tomorrow find us farther than today.”(11)  This line from the poem described exactly what I had been doing for the last years of my life. Though the times of betterment were mingled with goods and bads, happy and sads, that was not what I was searching for. And as those things that had brought me so much meaning were temporarily given up, I was still able to be happy with who I was and what I was doing, because being a missionary was another opportunity to progress.

This obsession with progression continued to tangle its firm fingers around my wrists, handcuffing them to a never ending mental battle, a battle that I am still fighting. The idea of regression of any kind makes me anxious. So much of what I do is limited. There will be a day when I will never run a faster race, never hit a harder serve, never see the lights on another stage, and there will be a day when the facts and words of my education slowly slide from my aging mind. But that’s exactly why we do all we can right now, isn’t it? We have to live in the present, and take advantage of every opportunity while we can. “Let us then be up and doing, with a heart for any fate, still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait.”(33-36)

Heartfelt Treasure

By Alyssa Ip

"Wherever your heart is, that is where you'll find your treasure."
- Paulo Coehlo, The Alchemist

It seemed to me the coldest day of the year on the day I left for the desert. Outside lay all the evidence of what the residents in my hometown called “snowmageddon”: snow so thick and white weighing down the tree boughs until I thought it a miracle they wouldn’t break; topping all the houses with a frozen frosting that dripped off the rooftops in icicles that nearly pierced the ground; and spilling over from vainly shoveled driveways into streets and walkways, covering them all in a dense layer of winter wonderland. This was the day that I took my leave of all of the familiar people and places of home and stepped into the unknown.

Opening My Heart to Literature

By: Estephanie Chavarria

I never thought I would make a connection with a book, let alone fall in love with one. Not only did I fall in love with the story, but I fell in love with the characters, the narration. Most importantly I was drawn to this book because of the emotions that flooded my mind and heart while reading it. Emotions that I never thought I could feel because of a book.

 

It all began in the Spring of 2018. For some reason I had gotten the, some might call it, urge to read a book. This was somewhat what I felt, bit there was more to it. I didn't just want to read a book, but I wanted to connect with a piece of literature that I could call mine. To understand a book on a level that others have not. To think a certain way about a quote and believe that the thought I had was untouched by anyone else. Everything I have described is something that I never thought I could achieve, until I read Eleanor and Park. I have always been a sucker for fictional novels, especially the ones that told a story about love. I have read books that contain all of these qualities but did not seem to create a bond as strong as the one I made with Eleanor and Park. 

Stripped Away

By Maddi Winterbottom

Just when you feel the most put-together, you find that what you really need is a little less pride. 

Last year I returned home from a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I lived in a different state for 18 months to dedicate myself to teaching the Gospel, and to (hopefully) come back with a renewed testimony and outlook on life. That’s the attitude I had when I came home; I felt that I had peaked and reached my best self, and that for the rest of my life, this would be what I would want to live up to. However, this perspective dramatically changed my first semester back to school. It began in my Humanities class, where we read pieces of St. Augustine of Hippo’s book, Confessions.

A Look at Mercy

Being my first semester back in college, I took all of my readings the same way—to learn what I needed for the class, and to move on. But as I read from St. Augustine, his words left a profound impression on me. The way St. Augustine spoke to me, recounting his love for the Lord, and his relationship with the Lord, struck me. Still adjusting from being surrounded in a spiritually sensitive atmosphere, these ideas struck me with a sense of familiarity—almost like déjà vu.

Generic Youth Suffering in a Generic Town

By Annie Robinson

 It is only in connection with specific remnants of the life that I had before the war—“only when the tree outside the theatre works the miracle, when the torch burns, do I manage to see everything mingled”

A few months ago, I was on a cruise ship. I was laying out in the sun, relaxing, watching 700
miles of Cuban coastline slowly melt off into the distance. As our boat sailed on towards the tropics, I flipped through an anthology of literature, that I’d decided on a whim to bring with me. This was my first cruise, the farthest I’d ever been south, and in the heat of the day, I languidly landed on a short story from Ingeborg Bachmann called “Youth in an Austrian Town”.

I mention all these details because one might have considered it inappropriate, the way I disrupted the sacred relaxation of my cruise with such a story of growing and suffering, learning and loss, but how was I to know in that moment that such a story would cut through all the fluff of the day and unexplainably capture the feelings that I’d been gravitating towards for a few years. There are many parallels between a youth in an Austrian town and an American girl on a boat in the Atlantic.