"A House of My Own"/"Saturday at the Canal"

"A House of My Own" by Sandra Cisneros is a very interesting poem. When I read the poem associating with the title, it make sense that the author was saying from my understanding that she have nothing to be bother with. The author use the flower, petunias, which I have heard that this flower is the secret to happiness. Sandra must be satisfy with her life. She tend to use the repetition of "my" that can mean she probably selfish in one perspective or in other perspective she does not want anyone to bother her or share things with other people. When the author stated "Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after." (line 4-5) to me it mean that she had nothing to worry about. I said this because that remind of my past experience of always cleaning up after my family mess because they are lazy. I was tired of doing some errands for someone else before but now I am already used to it. I think the whole point of the poem was that Sandra felt she had the freedom of her own space as she is starting a new journey in her next phase of life.

“Saturday at the Canal” by Gary Soto seems related with “Carpe Diem”. Gary Soto was trying to grab all the fun as if tomorrow could be the last day. The tone of this poem seem like the author regret it because he attempt to have a happy year when he become seventeen but he ended up not getting what he actually want. On line 19-20, “We wanted to get out. The years froze [as] we sat on the bank.” show that Gary wants to get out and escape to get “new life” as they can not retrace their mistakes. The author stated “The years froze” as if he had lost motivation or the year went really slower than usual. Gary seem to go with the flow in whatever he had gone through as he does not have his own control in his direction of life by staying on top of things. The author seems to get lonely but he does have a friend that he trusts. Gary tends to alternate of what happen to his life right now and his goal of going out of town to San Francisco. He want to grab the moment of getting a chance to go to San Francisco before he decease.