My poem analysis

As soon as I looked deeper into the meaning of the poem “Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind” by William Shakespeare, I connected to it in a new way through my life experiences. William is comparing the ingratitude of mankind to the winter wind and cold snow, and how ingratitude and lost friendships hurt more than the sting of the cold.

 The key part that really spoke to me was when he writes, “Thy sting is not so sharp as friend remembered not… most friendship is feigning.” In this line, William is writing of the pain of ungrateful friends, fake friendships, and lost friends. I have experienced part of what William is describing in those lines.  When I was in elementary school, I was friends with a kid who lived down the street from me. Not having much homework then, we spent much of our time during the week with each other, practically inseparable. Then, around the end of fifth grade and the start of middle school, we started to split up, mainly because he was influenced by another one of his friends, who never liked me and would be rude and obnoxious. By the end of middle school, we barely talked to each other. The pain I felt then was worse than the cold, just how William describes it.

I’m not sure how I am going to incorporate the meaning into my recitation. I guess I’m mostly going to show the meaning when I recite my poem through voice and articulation. It will be somewhat hard because while the meaning has a somber tone, half the poem is a sad song that, for some reason, says life is jolly. This line is an oxymoron, only making it harder to show the meaning through recitation but I think that I can get past that bump easily if I speak in the right tone. A change in my speaking volume along with tone will also help add to the mood of my performance and the theme of the poem. Along with tone and volume, timing is a very important part of voice and articulation. I will tell the poem at more than one pace, speeding up and slowing down when needed. Through my tone of voice, volume, and the correct timing, I will have (at least, I think that I will have) a great performance.

My only fear is that I’ll get nervous and lock up. I am preparing myself the best I can so that if I start to get nervous, I won’t start stuttering or forgetting lines. I am definitely looking forward to the competition.

Poetry out loud

Part one:

1. Zoom
2. Blow, blow, thou winter wind
3. Eating poetry
    Full moon
4. After working sixty hours and for what
5. Alone


Part two:

I enjoyed reading all of the poems listed above but found “Eating poetry”, “Blow, blow, thou winter wind”, and “After working sixty hours again for what reason” to be my favorites. They were written to entertain, and had light and joyful tones, which I enjoy reading more than poetry about how everything is terrible and going wrong. That doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t like poetry with a serious theme, it is more of what the theme is about. I am not sure what poem I absolutely want to do yet but it will most likely be either “Blow, blow, thou winter wind” or “Eating poetry”. “Blow, blow, thou winter wind” stood out to me because William Shakespeare managed to put so much into what seems like a short poem. I really connected with that poem because with the way it was written it seemed almost like a song and I enjoy singing, and sang in the school choir in elementary and middle school. “Eating poetry” was very comedic, and makes me think of my friends and I, who always have something that happened to us during the day to think about later and laugh at. If those are both taken, I would choose any of the remaining three and if those poems are taken, then I will write a poem about how I am sad because I couldn’t get any of my first choice poems and read that to the class instead.

Part three:

The easiest of the criteria, for me, would be Voice and Articulation and Poem Difficulty. Even if I get nervous, I can easily carry my voice over a classroom without yelling. Assuming I choose “blow, blow, thou winter wind”, I should not have any problem with Poem Difficulty because this poem may be short but has powerful diction but if that poem is taken, then I may have some difficulty with that criteria. The two criteria I will have the most difficulty with, though, are Physical Presence and Evidence of Understanding. My two first choice poems are somewhat difficult to understand, and I would have to study them a bit to understand the meaning. Standing up in front of the class can be nerve-racking for me, and if I am nervous, you would definitely see it in my posture and physical appearance.

Part four:

The two performances I watched were by Jackson Hille and Stanley Andrew Jackson. Stanley’s performance was of the poem “Writ on the Steps of Puerto Rican Harlem”, a 39 line poem, and a bit complicated to remember. This is very impressive on his part and definitely the leading factor to his success. Not only did he manage to memorize this poem, but he really stepped into the character of the poem, and, though he may have very well crossed the line between narrator and actor a few times, it didn’t really matter because his performance was excellent, and his motions really helped tell the poem’s story. Jackson recited the poem “Forgetfulness”, a poem I enjoyed listening to because, as I said, I like satirical and humorous poems the most. You could tell that he understood the meaning of the poem well (not that this one that is hard to understand) through his tone and how he was definitely trying to entertain the audience. This poem is on the longer side, with 24 lines, and though as simplistic as the poem may seem, it is still quite some work to remember a poem that long. These are definitely good performances that make the poems much more interesting when being heard rather than read.

Summary:

I am now really looking forward to the poetry out loud contest, after all the time spent on the website. At first I wasn’t too fond of the idea of having a contest where you read another person’s poems but looking at what the contest actually is like has changed my mind. Although I would still very much enjoy reading poems that I wrote myself, this will be enjoyable also. Hopefully I will do fine, I don't think I should have to worry about my performance, as long as I have my poem memorized. I am looking forward to the contest and hearing the poems that people chose.

Lobsters discussion

While participating in the “Lobsters” discussion this week, I heard some ideas that hadn’t occurred to me while reading the poem. Many people spoke of the lobsters being a metaphor to death, which is true but also a very easy connection to make. Then, people started to bring up how humans are like lobsters and somebody said that we could look at the lobsters and think that they are doing nothing but that if some big creature looked into our classroom, they would just see us sitting at desks, and to them it would look like we are doing nothing. This was a very interesting connection made, at least, to me.

That idea really helped me connect to the idea that the lobsters represented humans in a symbolic theme. These and a few other ideas helped me make the connection between humans and the lobsters in the poem. Comparing the lobster to humans hadn’t even occurred to me as a real powerful symbol, until I heard people back it up in the discussion. It helped me identify a deeper meaning than “the lobsters are a metaphor for death.” Thank you to the students who helped show me how very different things can become the same in meaning, if not in image.

Theme paragraphs

               Through listening to my class present their Oly paragraphs, I think that there were three key things that were messed up the most. The first key to writing a “good” Oly paragraph starts with the topic sentence. A thoughtful subject and something to be proven must be in your topic sentence, don’t just make a statement. The second key to writing a good paper is the concrete details. Concrete details must back up what the topic sentence sets out to prove, or at least back up your topic sentence, even if it isn’t trying to prove something.  Also, all of your C.D. should have a general focus on one subject and have an even “spread” between them from the book, play, ect. You don’t want your C.D. from pages 10-14, because this doesn’t show a good understanding of the novel or if you even read the book. The final key to writing a good Oly paragraph is using well thought-out commentary it is important that your commentary shows that you understand the C.D. and the rest of the story. Always make sure that you don’t make a mistake frequently made in my class: commentary that is mostly plot summary. Most of the paragraphs I heard, however, did not mess up on these majorly; they just needed to work on one or two of one of their concrete details or commentary. It helps to remember that  the commentary backs up the concrete details that, in turn, back up the topic sentence.

                My topic sentence was one of my weakest points of the paragraph, as for it was more of a statement, and didn’t set out to prove anything. If I had adjusted my topic sentence, the concrete details would have reinforced it excellently because my concrete details did support what my topic sentence had stated. The only other major thing wrong with my paragraph was that the concrete details didn’t have a good “spread.” Other than that, they would have worked fine, despite not being completely spread out, if they had been on a more related subject, but two of concrete details were about the court case and the remaining about Calpurnia’s church. Next time I go to write an Oly paragraph, through others and my own mistakes, I will know what to think about and spend some more time working on.

Formal Diction

           It was my second period class, P.E., and for the last two days, my team had lost every volleyball game that we played. With every step we took to the next game’s designated court, our morale slowly dropped. Our team was the first to serve but nobody amongst us thought that that small detail would matter. The game began, the ball went up, Cameron’s hand made contact and the volleyball flew forward! Would we have luck, even if it lasted for only one game? Without any thought you can already guess what the answer was.    

Then, out of the blue, things took a change for the good! We had gained the serve again, and this time Veisel was serving. I watched Veisel send the ball soaring up and over the net and, just when we needed it most, we scored! It sent a spark to rekindle the team’s fire of hope. We were finally going to win! In what seemed like only mere minutes the game was tied and it was my serve! The entire team was depending on me. I swung my arm and hit the ball and it went over the net in a perfect arch, we were going to win! Then, all of my hopes collapsed, as the ball curved right and went out of bounds. Victory was so close, but I blew it. We lost by one point.

The Count of Monte Cristo

In my opinion, the book The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is an absorbing story and is definitely one of my favorite novels. Despite being written in old English, this book had me from the first few pages. The book is large, but it reads fast and keeps you wondering what will happen next. This book is one that is harder to put down than others.

The characters of the novel are used to help you better understand the setting and mood of the novel. Anything that a character says or does can change the feeling of the setting. For example, when Dantes was thinking about all he had lost while he was in his prison cell, he was adding a dark, gloomy mood to the cell.

This novel has a few similarities with the novel Assassin’s Creed Renaissance. The major similarity is in the plotline. Both novels are mainly stories of revenge. Also, both of these stories take place in Europe and only have a short difference in the time that the plots take place in. In The Count of Monte Cristo, Dantes is helped by an extremely intelligent man named Faria, which is much like when, in the plot of  Assassin’s creed Renaissance, Ezio is helped by the great Leonardo da Vinci, making the books even have a subplot in common.

So far, I have not given much thought of what I want to do for my creative project. I prefer to draw and sketch, so I might do something like one of the book covers hanging on the back wall. Of course, there are plenty of other fun and artistic options to consider and I have plenty of time to chose.

Extending the theme

                Though most of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird contrasted majorly with my life, I was able to make a connection with the theme of childhood innocence and how with growing up comes change.  When I was in elementary school, I had a friend who lived right down the street from me. I basically had no homework, so I would go to his house and we would usually find something to do outside. His backyard was like the Finch’s, only half-covered with forest, so, like Jem, Scout, and Dill, we would spend hours playing games and exploring in his large backyard. Every once in a while we would have another one of our friends with us, which helped me create an even better connection with  the trio from the book.

                I always wanted a tree house then, but my yard didn’t have any good trees for a tree house. A few of my friends at that time did have tree houses, though, and those memories were brought back to me when I read the book. Like Jem and Dill, my friend and I would spend most of our time outside in the tree house if I was at their house during the summer.

                I don’t spend any time playing “pretend” outside with my friends any more. Some of my friends have moved and some I just don’t talk to anymore. I guess that’s all a part of growing up. Through the fun I had with friends, I was able to make a connection with what Scout, Jem, and Dill did during the early summers of the novel, and the theme of childhood innocence and the changes that happen while growing up.

My Boo Radley experience

            My Boo Radley experience was probably when I learned to ride my bike. I never wanted to learn to ride, I was scared I would fall and get hurt. After a while, I was the only one of my friends that couldn’t ride a bike. My friends had been riding for at least a year, so I finally faced my fear and asked my dad help me learn to ride a bike, so I wasn’t stuck walking. Once I learned to keep my balance, I found that it was actually pretty easy and fun to ride a bike. I was glad I learned to ride a bike.

This is much like Scout because she didn’t want to ever meet Boo Radley. She was scared of him and thought he would be a mean and scary person just like was scared of riding a bike. Boo was her worst fear just like falling of a bike was mine. She learned that she was wrong when Boo Radley saved her and Jem from Bob Ewell.  

When she walked him home, he was quiet and not a scary person, like she thought. I learned that riding a bike is fun and not something to be scared of, just like what Scout learned when she walked Boo Radley home. What was something we expected to be scary turned out to be like fearing nothing. We were both wrong, and that helped us learn that we shouldn’t be afraid of everything we have not tried or anyone we have not met.