Personal Helicon Seamus Heaneys Analysis

Personal Helicon Seamus Heaneys Analysis Springing Forth: An Analysis of Seamus Heaneys Poem Personal Helicon Seamus Heaneys title choice for his poem Personal Helicon is rooted in ancient Greek mythology. Helicon is the name of a mountain in Greece. In Greek mythology, two springs sacred to the Muses were located here: the Aganippe and the Hippocrene.(Mount) The muses are goddesses of inspiration and the source of knowledge. Mt. Helicon is also where the fable of Narcissus takes place. Where Narcissus falls so in love with himself, and becomes so despondent when he realizes that he cannot have the object of his own desire, he takes his own life at the side of a spring. Narcissus and the other elements ascribed to Mt. Helicon are heavily used in his poem to help the reader grasp the meanings behind the quatrains. While reading it is important to remember the fables of Mt. Helicon, that the springs on the mountain were the source of inspiration itself. Thus the title of the poem must be specifically drawing parallels between the mountains springs and his sources of inspiration while a child. Unlike the unchanging mountain, Heaneys inspiration undergoes a paradigm shift has as he grows older. One of the voices in this poem goes over the progression of this change, and tells the story about his inspirations. Personal Helicon is dedicated to another poet, a contemporary of Seamus, Michael Longley from Belfast. It is unclear if Michael is the inspiration for the creation of this poem, but the two had worked together for some time during their careers. Before Seamus career, he was given birth to, and grew up on a farm in Northern Ireland. If the poem is taken literally, one can assume a good number of springs were present around his familys farm. As such it comes as no surprise that they are a strong reoccurring theme of his childhood, and poem. The poem is five quatrains based around 10 syllables in a 1,2,1,2 and 3,4,3,4 rhyming scheme. There are also a number of assonant effects: [ÊŒ] pumps/ buckets; fungus/ bucket plummeted [É’] drop/ moss; hovered/ bottom [Éâ„ ¢ÃƒÅ Ã…  ] rope/ so/ no;   [É ª]in/ brickyard/ rich; big-eyed Narcissus/ inyo/ spring/ is/ dignity; [u]   new/ music; [eÉâ„ ¢] scaresome/ there; [ai] rhyme/ myself;(Fawbert) and interweaves: [É ª] [ÃÆ' ¦]: dry ditch fructified like/ aquarium; same combination of sounds [É ª] [ÃÆ' ¦] creates a chiasmic effect: pry into/ finger slime;(Fawbert) In this poem, he with such elegance explains the world to himself, and himself to the reader. It is no wonder he is considered one of the greatest living poets. Likely he was compelled by others as much as himself to revisit his journey of becoming poet. And of course this can only be done through poem. Using wells and springs as a way of personal reflection and understanding of the natural world, Seamus begins the reader at his childhood. Seamus uses simplistic language and grotesque imagery to bring forth from the reader a sense of childhood. He is filled with curiosity and naivety. In the first line it becomes established that wells are a source fascination for him. Wells conveniently are a symbol of life. Here is found the effective beginning of his, this new passion for what he lives for. These strange doorways to underground worlds held untold mysteries which were irresistible to the young child. As so were the devices that brought forth the mysteries from the depths of these worlds. The old pumps with buckets and windlasses divinely attached devices that could cross the veil between worlds, may as well have been huge light up neon signs. Sirens whos beckoning call could not be resisted. It is amazing he survived childhood. Little Seamus couldnt help himself though, he loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells of waterweed, fungus and dank moss. Not just full of synthesia, this bit is only synthesia. It pulls anyone who has ever been outside right back there. It invites the reader to experience the smells not of decay, but of the beginning of life. It asks the reader to peer into the darkness and the unknown. In this still primordial setting, the image of a young child staring into the darkness comes easily. He stares into the unknown and wonders how it got there, begging the reader to come explore with him. What are the origins of this life here in the well? How can the sky, something so big, get a bit of itself trapped in the well? And what other wonders lay hidden in the darkness? Let us turn the windlasses, and pull up the bucket. The empirical evidence brought forth will illuminate us all, but answers will only be had after repeated results. Seamus brings us to another well, and another stage of his life. Here he is older and wiser. Danger is starting to become apparent to him. In this well he brings us to, he explicitly notes that there is a rotted board top. The thirst for knowledge appears slated now. Here novelty and entertainment is the main draw. Not much to do on a farm, he spends time savoring the rich crash when a bucket Plummeted down at the end of a rope. The well here is so deep you saw no reflection in it. Probably because it is full of allegories, and not water. The well is deep, but like all things it may be a symbol for, be it life, inspiration, or knowledge, there is an end. There is a bottom to everything, and Seamus is starting to get near to the end. However there is still darkness, and in the darkness there are yet things for him to learn. And from the description of the bucket, the hard sounds, the violent action, these things will be learned the hard way. Onto another well, and another stage of life. Heaneys third quatrain brings us to a shallow one under a dry stone. This well, though drying up is still teaming with life. If the depth of the well is taken his level ignorance about the world around him, then at this point there is not much left. He describes himself as dragging out long roots from the soft mulch, where he discovers a white face hovered over the bottom. This transitions him from learning about the world, to learning about himself. He no longer peers into the darkness or back up into the sky, the world is no longer reflected, and his time for introspection begins. Roots are frequently a symbol of family and traditions. Here before he can look at himself, he must clear them away. His doing so can be considered an act of removing societal customs and traditions. To be able to see who he is, to let the person underneath come out and play, to experiment in being. Described in playful ways, Seamus talks about his self-exploration and experimentations in being by describing his activities with even more wells. Using echoes he calls into the wells to listening to the mutations. This is a direct parallel for his imagination. Playing out what if scenarios in his mind to see how the changes play out. At least until he received a fright. When while peering deep into his reflection one day, a rat slapped across my[his] reflection and scared him. It distorted his image into something disfigured and horrible. As Nietzsche once said when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.(Nietzsche, 146) Assuming his gazing into his reflection is him taking an introspective look at things, then the rat is just a convenient device used to explain how he found something inside himself that was disturbing. As is often the case, ones conceptualization of themselves is not what one truly is. When the difference is great, or goes against ones own moral or social values it can be frightening. This time, it seems to have been so freighting as to put him off of it altogether. No longer does he stare into wells. Seamus looks down upon exploring the wonders of the world. pry[ing] into the roots, to finger slime is unfitting the man he has become. He considers looking into himself directly narcissistic. Having grown into an adult other matters have taken precedence. His childhood activities are now beneath all adult dignity, and he must find alternatives. Summed up in the last, and arguably his best line we find salvation. I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing. The echo in the darkness much like the echo in the wells, we find the act of poetry has taken the place of gazing into wells. And we find him once again being able to live.

Reflective Essay Founded Online, Not Mine Essay

The purpose of writing a reflective essay is to present what you felt and what you reflect after an experience. Readers will discover how you associate with the subject on which you are writing. Your reflective essay can provide your perspective and the lesson you learned from a given experience. A reflective essay must provide a personal perspective, inform of the purpose for creating, and indulge in personal thoughts as well as feelings. A reflective essay must present a purpose or a lesson to be learned from the story. You personalise the creation of a reflective essay by mentioning your role in the event or occurrence. A reflective essay will always provide for varying perceptions by studying the different point of views and aspects (mentioning if a certain decision had gone in another direction) and how you evaluate the experience as a whole. You must feel that the experience or occurrence is worthy of developing a reflective essay on. You must remember each detail and every facet of the story for the exploration of each description. You must mention the significance and the feelings that you have regarding the experience on which you write your reflective essay.

Creative writing in non-fiction Essay

Creative nonfiction (also known as literary or narrative nonfiction) is that branch of writing which employs literary Styles, techniques and artistic vision usually associated with fiction or poetry to create factually accurate narratives on actual persons and events. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such as technical writing or journalism, which is also rooted in accurate fact, but is not primarily written in service to its craft. It is a hybrid of literature and non-fiction because it comprises of Non-fiction elements and Literary elements which are essay form, story/narration, explanation/exposition, place/scene/setting, standard rhetorical patterns, characterization, focuses on ideas, facts (not only language),author personally engaged, researched facts, literary voice/feel, artistic, instinctual, polished language. The primary goal of the creative nonfiction writer is to communicate information, just like a reporter, but to shape it in a way that reads like fiction. As a genre, creative nonfiction is still relatively young, and is only beginning to be scrutinized with the same critical analysis given to fiction and poetry. Though only recently identified and taught as a distinct and separate literary genre, the roots of creative nonfiction run deeply into literary tradition and history though has been in use as earlier as 1970s but was originally made official in the year 1983 in the United States of America at a meeting convened by the National Endowment for the Arts to deal with the question of what, exactly, to call the genre as a category for the NEA’s creative writing fellowships. The NEA long recognized the art of nonfiction but has been trying to find a way to describe the category so writers would understand what kind of work to submit for consideration. â€Å"Essay† is the term used to describe this â€Å"artful† nonfiction, but it didn’t really capture the essence of the genre for the NEA or lots of other folks experimenting in the field. Technically, scholars, critics, and academics of all sorts, as well as newspaper op-ed reporters, were writing â€Å"essays,† although that was not the kind of work the It had in mind. â€Å"Journalism† didn’t fit the category, either, although the anchoring element of the best creative nonfiction requires an aspect of reportage. For a while the It experimented with â€Å"belles-lettres,† a misunderstood term that favors style over substance and did not capture the personal essence and foundation of the literature they were seeking. Eventually one of the NEA members in the meeting that day pointed out that a rebel in his English department was campaigning for the term â€Å"creative nonfiction. † That rebel was Professor Lee Gutkind. Forms within this genre are personal essays, memoir, travel writing, food writing, biography, literary journalism, and other hybridized essays. Personal essay is often a free-wheeling device of self-expression. If you ever want to experiment with prose and with loosened structure, this is where you can do it. A memoir is a piece of autobiographical writing, usually shorter in nature than a comprehensive autobiography. The memoir, especially as it is being used in publishing today, often tries to capture certain highlights or meaningful moments in one’s past, often including a contemplation of the meaning of that event at the time of the writing of the memoir. The memoir may be more emotional and concerned with capturing particular scenes, or a series of events, rather than documenting every fact of a person’s life (Zuwiyya, N. 2000). Literary journalism refers to the use of fictional techniques in writing a work of nonfiction. In other words, it’s a true, well-researched, journalistically-sound story that might normally be written in a dry newspaper manner that has been instead written with style, vivid description, and narrative flow that immerses the reader in the story. The quality of the writing used to tell the story is just as important as telling the truth of the story. Narrative history is the practice of writing history in a story-based form. It can be divided into two subgenres: the traditional narrative and the modern narrative. Traditional narrative focuses on the chronological order of history; it is event driven and tends to center upon individuals, action, and intention. Modern narrative typically focuses on structures and general trends. A modern narrative would break from rigid chronology if the historian felt it explained the concept better. Docufiction (often understood as docudrama) is a neologism which refers to a cinematographic work in a genre mixing fiction and documentary. Docudrama is wrongly used as a synonym of docufiction, confusing drama with fiction. The use of docufiction is common in television, consisting in illustrating facts or events with actors. The term docudrama is apter in this sense. The term docufiction is sometimes used to refer to literary journalism (creative nonfiction). Controversies over the legitimacy of creative nonfiction, both as a term and as a genre; flares up regularly, perhaps even annually. In recent years, several well-publicized incidents within the United States have called into question the truthfulness and factual standards of creative nonfiction. Given its different styles and characteristics, it is not held to the same journalistic ethics and standards as direct reporting or news publications. Its allowances of artistic license to authors are not standardized, and some have accused writers of glorification of interpretation, and even of fabrication. A recent example of these incidents is the James Frey controversy in regards to his memoir A Million Little Pieces, published in 2003. In his memoir, Frey claimed to certain experiences (claim to have helped a high school friend sneak out with her boyfriend on the night she died in a car wreck. But, according to thesmokinggun. com, police reports and the girl’s family indicate Frey had nothing to do with the tragedy. ), which purported to be a memoir but contained fictionalized events, is unmasked in 2006. Such scandals seem to inspire frenzies among literary and cultural critics, an excuse for predictable (but nevertheless often satisfying) expressions of Schadenfreude and sanctimonious pronouncements about Truth in Art. Writers are warned to not be too cre ¬ative with weaving their stories, however. If you add characters, dialogue, invent scenes and alter facts, you moved to the realm of historical fic ¬tion, a noble genre but still, fiction. Lee Gutkind, an English professor at the University of Pittsburgh, credited as the founder of the creative non-fiction movement. â€Å"There’s this research aspect of creative non-fiction (Ethics of Literary Non-fiction) that you can’t get away from — that a lot of writers try to skip over or do without. † Authors seem to be getting the emotional aspects of a nonfiction topic across successfully. Many authors try to carry the emotion with anthropomor ¬phism or an abundance of exclamation points, rather than building the story in such a way that the natural drama of it comes through. Sometimes, the descriptive language is not as strong as it could be. Nonfiction authors are more likely to use a simple, somewhat familiar description rather than searching for a more evocative, unique way of saying the same thing. Works Cited Gutkind, Lee (2007). The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 1. New York: W. W. Norton, xi. ISBN 0393330036. Johnson, E. L. ; Wolfe, Tom (1975). The New Journalism. London: Pan Books. ISBN 0330243152 Wyatt, Edward. â€Å"Best-Selling Memoir Draws Scrutiny†, The New York Times, 2006-01-10. Anderson, Chris (1989). Literary nonfiction: theory, criticism, pedagogy. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, xix-x. ISBN 0809314053. Nancy E. Zuwiyya, School Library Journal, Fox’s work, Colombia, Heinemann Library (Chicago, IL), 2000

Discounted Cash Flow Valuation Finance Essay - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 3 Words: 1030 Downloads: 2 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Finance Essay Type Narrative essay Did you like this example? If you intend to buy stocks on the capital markets, your first step would be to find those which are undervalued in relation to the current market price. This is the only way to be successful and profitable on the long-term. It makes sense to look for cheap stocks, doesnt it? I mean, why would someone be interested in buying expensive stocks? When using terms cheap and expensive I am not speaking in absolute numbers, but rather relative, comparing stock market price with the fair value of the company. If stock markets would be perfect, all market actors would possess all crucial information about the company and would evaluate the information in the proper manner. But this obviously isnt the case. Nobody really knows what will the iPhone 5 present in the total incomes of the Apple Inc.- plans are one thing, the reality is another. This brings us to the fact that stocks rarely trade at the fair price on the stock markets; they mostly trade above (overvalued) or under (undervalued) the fair value. Overvalued stocks are opportunity to sell; undervalued stocks are opportunity to buy. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Discounted Cash Flow Valuation Finance Essay" essay for you Create order Stock analysis is a rather a subjective topic and to become a great analytic, you need a lot of experience and be aware of different methods of valuing the companies. One simple way of calculating fair company value is by comparing the company with key players in the same sector or industry. A more advanced approach is to use discounted cash flow valuation method. Both approaches have some pros and cons. We will focus on the latest method in this article next. An abbreviation for discounted cash flow valuation is DCF. Its main principle is to predict how much money the company will generate for investors in the future and discount all the future cash flows on the current date to get its intrinsic value. DCF valuation can be processed in the following steps. Forecasting Period, Revenue Growth In the first step you should set the period for detailed forecasting of future cash flows and assess the growth rate in the years that will follow. The usual forecasting period is 5 years in case of well established company, but can be prolonged for outstanding growth companies or shortened for smaller companies in high competitive industry. When it comes to forecasting revenue growth, things can get very subjective. This is a difficult part of the analysis. Try to think about all possible aspects influencing company revenues, like future products and services, change in market share, expected changes in pricing policy, etc. You should deal with realistic, optimistic and pessimistic outcomes. The final result of this step is to have sales revenues projections for years to come. Free Cash Flow FCF is the cash left to the company once all operating expenses are paid. This is what adds value to company shareholders and can be used for dividend payout, business expansion, research and development, and similar. Projected FCF per year is calculated as sales revenue minus operating costs, taxes, net investment and net changes in working capital. It is not the purpose of this article to get into more details about specific accounting categories, but lets just say that you can find all these figures for recent years in different company statements. Discount Rate I cant say how important it is to do the math that follows with correct discount rate, since a very small change in this figure can have a great impact on final result. First of all, why do we have to discount future cash flows? Because of the inflation! $1 after one year is not the same as $1 today, do you agree? In theory you will find many options one could use as discount factor, but WACC is most commonly used (Weighted Average Cost of Capital). WACC weights the cost of debt and the cost of equity. The first figure is very straightforward and can be calculated from the balance sheet at what rate is the company paying back its debt. The cost of equity on the other side is usually calculated as a sum of risk free rate (the rate at which you get paid for low-risk investments) and premium for investing in equity (this one depends on the sector/industry beta and market premium). Terminal Value So far we have used the discounted cash flow valuation method to determine FCF value for the years in the forecasting period. But the company will not stop operating after this period, will it? So you should determine the value of FCF afterwards. One usual method of doing this is by using the Gordon Growth Model, which simplifies the calculation by assuming that companys CF will stabilize after the last projected year. Terminal value plays an important role in calculating fair company value, so you should rather go more conservative with its calculation. Enterprise Value Now we have all the figures to calculate the enterprise value (EV), which is nothing else than discounted cash flow of each projected year and terminal value of the company minus the net debt of the company. Divide the EV with number of outstanding shares to get the fair value of a single share. If the current market price of the same share is trading below the calculated enterprise value, you should consider it as undervalued and a buying opportunity. Pros and Cons of Discounted Cash Flow Valuation Method DCF method is useful when comparison of multiples is not possible or makes no sense. It is also a better way to calculate with figures out of cash flow statement than from income statement or balance sheet, which can be adjusted easily. On the negative side of discounted cash flow valuation method is subjectivity and assumptions. It is also difficult to use this method when the future is not so clear. We advise you to go as conservative as possible with calculations and bear in mind, that results can only be used for long-term investments. Short-term trading is based more on technical than on fundamental analysis. You do not need to setup everything from scratch in Excel. You can find many free DCF templates online. Here is a good link: