Poetry Response:

        In the quickly evolving and developing world today, some things never change. Generations may come and go, times may change, fashions, ideas, technology, but one thing stays constant: the way humans communicate and interact with other people and the outside world. Some may be excited to go out and learn new things, while others may be shy or even frightened of the outside world. The poem Life Doesn't Frighten Me by Maya Angelou is exactly about that. One prominent theme in the poem is that one shouldn't be afraid of the world or any mental fears that they may have. The poem teaches us to be brave by looking at the world from a more innocent perspective of a child.
         An example of a fear of physical things can be found in stanzas six and seven. The speaker says "Tough guys fight/alone at night/ life doesn't frighten me at all/ Panthers in the park/ strangers in the dark/ No, they don't frighten me at all." (Angelou 22-27) The things described in these stanzas do not seem childlike or lighthearted. In fact, they are examples of more adult issues. However, the speaker says that they aren't afraid of those things, letting the reader know that they aren't important or frightening enough as other things hinted at further along in the poem.
        An example of a fear that is more psychological is in the lines "That new classroom where/boys all pull my hair/ (kissy little girls/with their hair in curls)/ they don't frighten me at all." (Angelou 28-32) This represents the teasing, and perhaps even bullying, that exists in schools. The speaker states that they are not afraid of that and they are not afraid of being judged by other people.
        The final example of a fear that is mostly in the speaker's mind is "If I am afraid at all/ it's only in my dreams." (Angelou 35-36) This signifies that the speaker is only afraid of the things that he or she can not control. If they are in control of their life, then they have nothing to be frightened of.
        Maya Angelou shows the reader of the poem Life Doesn't Frighten Me that as long as you are in charge of your life there is nothing out there in the world that can really scare you. The greatest fear is loosing control of what is going on around you. This poem teaches its readers to be brave and not be frightened of insignificant things.

Poem:

"A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place." 
                                            -Rainer Maria Rilke

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place.
Kept preserved within it; the memories, the things
we'd rather forget, the truths and the lies
we tell ourselves for decades and milleniums.
A place is not supernatural, neither is a spirit. They
are both physical and mental hurts of the
shells of people left behind. They are not unlike pressed flower petals
in a musty tome found on your great uncle's bookshelf
in the middle of a winter, keeping safe the sunny technicolor days
he spent with your grand dad who passed away last spring.
For the thing that places and ghosts happen to have in common is
our need to get rid of them without letting go.

Reading Response:

          Jessica Daniel, a detective, has received a new case: a person has been murdered inside their own home, with all the windows and doors locked from the inside. As more bodies are found in the victim's own homes, Jessica learns to focus on her physical surrounding versus concentrating on how the killer got in and who they could be. This book, Locked In by Kerry Wilkinson, stresses the importance of being aware and paying attention to one's surroundings.

          The first example of how the book stresses the importance of paying attention to one's surrounding is on page 178 of the book, when a friend of a friend shows Jessica how easy it is to divert one's attention from the important details. When Jessica first meets this person what she notices most prominently about him is the fact that he is wearing two watches and odd shoes. But later he proves that the most important thing that she did not notice was how he preformed a seemingly impossible magic trick. He then gives her advice, " I do know that with anything that looks impossible, the obvious answer is almost certainly the correct one." What this means is that Jessica has been overthinking how the murderer got in while the answer is quite simple. She is missing all the obvious clues that are hidden in her surroundings.

          Another example of paying attention to one's surroundings is on page 220 when Jessica chooses to double check a persons background and accidentally finds another lead that unravels the whole murder case. Because Jessica was so thourough in checking the people in the background that were still somehow related to the murder, she found an important clue. If she had not paid attention to the minor details, she may not have solved the mystery. "Jessica felt there was something important still left to be said." By not backing down and being persistent on working on the minor details, she manages to find a large piece of the puzzle.

          The final example of the importance of paying attention is on page 278 when Jessica chooses to follow a lead on a hunch. Previously, Jessica talked to the families of the murdered people, she noticed that in two of the homes, there was a robbery, and in another, someone put glue on the locks. " One of (the kids) put glue in the front-door lock one night. We had to climb out a window." She double checks the lead and remembers the advice that she was given earlier. She realizes how easy it would be to enter and then lock the house from the outside after murdering the people if you have an extra set of keys. She finds the locksmith and consequentially finds the murderer.

          In conclusion, the detective novel, Locked In by Kerry Wilkinson, displays the importance of paying close attention to details by showing us how small things aid Jessica Daniel in solving the murder case.