Personal Reflection on the past 16 days in ENGL 251

Let’s look back, wa-ay back in the term when we started these blog posts..I believe my first post was May 1 ( a whole 16 days ago). In that post I outlined my personal, outside of class, learning plan to fulfill the learning outcomes. This is roughly what it said:

1.Know basic literary terms and methods - Write about texts I read and use the literary terms I’ve learned

2.Know basic literary genres and representative texts- Read literature from the basic genres so I can know texts for each.

3.Write literary arguments- Practice writing arguments on the blog

4.Engage literature creatively and socially- By blogging about it in creative ways (blogging in itself is social)

5.Use emerging communication tools and pedagogical methods - Teach what I’m learning in a social media platform (the blog) which is an emerging communication tool.

So the question now is, how did I do on these outcomes in the past 16 days. In the following list, I've categorized all my blog posts into their corresponding learning outcome. Click on all the happy links and enjoy. (Some posts overlap into several outcomes.)

1.Know basic literary terms and methods 

• I identified some literary terms for fiction in Analyze Yourself.
• I took inspiration from symbolism in two texts we've read for class in my post, In My Purse.
• I identified poetic literary terms in my Personal Literary Narrative.
• I found more poetic literary terms in my analysis of Barbie Doll.
• I identified literary terms in my analysis of Since Feeling is First

2.Know basic literary genres and representative texts

• I identified The Ice Queen as a fictional work in my post, Ice Cold
• I came up with things that I want to read and categorized them into category by genre. Out of the list so far I have read most of the poetry.
• I identified the genre of a book I was reading as well as the genre of another book mentioned in the first book in my post, Perception is Reality
• I identified an example of poetry in my post Poetry in Russian
• I found more poetry examples in my post Life's not a paragraph...

3.Write literary arguments

• In Analyze Yourself, I made a literary argument for a fictional piece that I wrote.
• I wrote a brief literary argument for The Ice Queen in Ice Cold
• I wrote a literary argument for a favorite poem of mine in my Personal Literary Narrative.
• I wrote a literary argument for Barbie Doll in my post, Poetry in Russian.
• In Life's not a paragraph... I attempted to write a literary argument for Since Feeling is First.

4.Engage literature creatively and socially

• In Analyze Yourself, I attempted to analyze a creative writing piece that I wrote.
• In the post Why Write? I creatively talked about why writing is important in our community.
• I creatively talked about reading and literature in my post, Ticket to Everywhere.
• I creatively personalized poetry with my poem In My Purse.
• I creatively analyzed Barbie Doll by translating it in and out of Russian.
• Additionally, I set up a Good Reads profile here to engage in literature socially.

5.Use emerging communication tools and pedagogical methods

• I linked to my personal blog in Analyze Yourself, which is an emerging communication tool.
• I used videos of spoken poetry in my post Life's not a paragraph...
• I used video clips from The Dead Poet's Society to make a point about analyzing in my post The Dead Poet's Society.
• Here are a few posts that I had a good conversation through comments: this one and this one and this one.
• With the other contributors of this blog, I taught my English class about analyzing fiction through a jeopardy game.
• Additionally, all the posts I did were on an emerging communication site (this blog).

As far as assignments go, I have done all the common readings, as well as readings on my own. This is my Personal Literary Narrative and this is my Poetry adaption analysis. The post you're reading is my midterm reflection post.

Questions? Comments? Cupcakes?

Prezi is Awesome

As I was looking at ways in which poetry is presented differently now that we have all of these technological tools with which to experiment with, I found a poem that was presented as a Prezi (like Dr. Burton's poem):

Click to go to the Prezi!

"Stop Drilling" by Natasa Bosic Grojic, a blogger who was experimenting with Prezi, showed me a new way in which to convey poetry that I had never known about before! I think that the visual way in which poetry can be presented through this medium is exciting because it really opens a new creative window into poetry. As you can see from the Prezi, the zooming in and out allows focus on a specific line of a poem. This is nice because it really helps the reader to isolate that line and perhaps ponder it with greater significance in their minds. There is then, of course, the positioning of the lines, which in of itself offers further meaning along with aesthetic quality. For instance, in "Stop Drilling," the path of the text follows a pattern around the blown up title as it moves from the left to the right, instead of a random order. This aids the reader into following the poem's story visually. One can also comment upon the design used. This specific author used a very simple template. I thought that this was effective for their poem because the words themselves, aided by the effects of the zooming, are the forced as the focus, and they begin to weigh upon the reader as they go through the poem.

I enjoyed this Prezi Poem so much that I am thinking of making one myself! 

Murdering to Dissect?

I decided that, in preparation for the midterm I would take a stab (no pun intended, haha) at analyzing a poem from the common readings of our class. I chose Wordsworth's  "The World is Too Much With Us" because when I felt it called out to me as I first read it. And so I proceeded to take it apart, perhaps to what would have been Wordsworth's dismay:

This shows the markups I made while analyzing the text

I really loved Wordsworth's overall message about our under-appreciation of nature, a theme which helped me categorize this poem as a Romantic Poem. I first looked at the poem as whole. What is it really saying? What I interpreted was that Wordsworth is complaining about how people during his time were foolish in wasting all their energy in daily matters (getting and spending,) completely ignoring the wonder that is nature. Wordsworth then express his deep frustration by saying that he wishes he was like the people of the past who worshipped pagan idols, specifically those regarding nature (hence the allusions to greek gods.)

As I gathered the message of the poem, I sought to find the devices that translated this message. For instance, I looked at the form of the poem and noticed that it was a petrarchan sonnet in iambic pentameter. As I discovered this, I noticed a shift that occurred both in the rhyming scheme (from ABBA to CDCDCD) and in tone. The portion highlighted in yellow on my annotations, demonstrates a narrator who is passively recounting an observation. However, midway through the poem, and throughout the blank portion, the speaker expresses his passion towards the issue. I concluded from this that Wordsworth choice of a petrarchan sonnet was suitable for conveying the message that humanity is not sufficiently attentive to the beauties of nature because through this he first introduced the problem, but then quickly took up a sharp view on the subject. I felt like the way in which this was structured gave the message a sense of urgency, and effectively transmitted Wordsworth's message.

And so, I really hope that Wordsworth would not be too upset with me. My compromise to this is that though I looked at different elements of the poem, I attempted to see what all of these elements did to create the whole, so that perhaps that way I would not be murdering "The World is Too Much With Us." 

How do you feel about this issue?

  

Finding Poetry

When I started reading "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot, I immediately recognized it. It only took me a moment to remember where I had heard it before. The first stanza is recited by the protagonist of The Fault in Our Stars, a novel by John Green. Because that book is one of my favorites, I was immediately biased in favor of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Because one of my favorite authors saw fit to put a section of the poem in his novel, I wanted to read it fully and deeply and get as much out of it as I could.

In a similar story, the first work by e.e. cummings that I ever experienced was in the novel The Summer I Turned Pretty. It was the poem "maggie and milly and molly and may," and it was recited by several of the characters at the end of the book. I instantly loved the poem, and have been favorably biased toward e.e. cummings ever since.

I find it really interesting how connected certain works become in our minds. I will probably never be able to read or hear "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" without thinking of The Fault in Our Stars, just as many of you have discussed "O Captain, My Captain" in relation to The Dead Poets Society. In the same way, this happens a lot with music. How many times have you been in a car with someone who has to change the song because it was related to their last relationship?

How else have your experiences with a work been influenced by how you were introduced to it?

For life's not a paragraph and death I think is no parenthesis

I was introduced to this poem but my best friend growing up, Megan. It meant a lot to her, so much so that she decided to have a rendition of the last two lines tattooed on her wrist.

A paragraph symbol inside parenthesis

In those growing up, teenage years you learn so much about who you are from your peers and Megan was a huge influence on my life. Her taste in literature and poetry shaped mine which is how E. E. Cummings became one of my favorite poets.

So to better illustrate this poem, here's a spoken rendition.

Before you listen to it, read the poem. Then notice the different meaning you get from listening to it.

since feeling is first

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,

and kisses are better fate

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry

—the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then

laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Compare this to my friend, Megan's reading below:

I love this poem so much because it contradicts what every poet strives to do which is capture the tiny details of life in the beauty of poetry. But Cummings is so correct in stating that you can never really capture life in a poem or a book or a movie because life is no paragraph, feeling comes first.

If you’ve ever read anything else by E.E. Cummings, you’ll notice that the way he designs the look of his poems has a lot to do with the meaning. Take a look at r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r- or notice the use of parenthesis in Maggie and Milly and Molly and May . 

So I think it’s cool to hear Cummings' poem read aloud. It lets you get a different aspect of it. The whole point of Cummings' poem is that paragraphs and syntax and written things can't give the true feeling of life. Feeling itself comes first. So listening to this poem almost makes more sense, to be able to ignore the syntax of it.

The part that stands out the most to me when listening to it is:

lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry

—the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids' flutter which says

It has an intonation that I didn't get reading it in my head. And yet by listening to it, you miss the dash. But if you're ignoring the syntax, like Cummings suggests, does that dash even matter?

Like I've mentioned before, poetry is not my strong suit by any means. I prefer the idea of feeling the poem instead murdering to dissect (i.e. analyzing the heck out of it).

But check out my amazing analyzing skills. The whole written poem shows enjambment. But once again you miss that feature when you hear it read aloud. So what does that mean about that written poem, does the enjambment mean something? I'm inclined to believe that specific literary techniques in this poem are negligible based on the theme of the poem.

What do you think?

What differences were you able to take from the recorded version vs the written version?

The Dead Poet's Society

My favorite poem that I’ve ever written was inspired by watching Dead Poet’s Society. These are long clips, so you don’t have to watch the whole thing but I highly recommend watching the movie if you haven’t.

I have a hard time with poetry. I enjoy it, but I have a hard time understanding it. I love the idea of feeling the poem and ‘ripping out’ all the scientific parts of analyzing it. Now of course that’s the whole point of this week in my literature class; to analyze poetry. And yet, I would rather rip it out.

Instead, I suppose I’ll look up some poetry terms and figure out what they mean.

Poetry in Pairs

So I love spoken word poetry. No surprises there. But one of the things I love about it is how it stretches the boundaries of what constitutes a poem and of how poems can be experienced.

Take collaboration, for example. If I find out that a novel or a poem was written by two people, it seems a little strange to me. How much did each person participate in the writing of said piece? Because I can't pick apart the work and figure out which words belong to each person, I don't enjoy it as much.

But collaboration in spoken word? I love it. The use of two voices can make an entire poem what it is. The poets can use their voices individually, in tandem, and as echoes all in one piece.

Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye are two of my favorite spoken word poets, and they're both absolutely brilliant on their own, but together they bring to life poems that just wouldn't be the same otherwise.

Here's "When Love Arrives" 

And "An Origin Story"