Blog No. 2, Feb 21st

Part I:

A good chunk of the poems that I read were pretty good and held my interest. A couple of them (being Donne’s poems and Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”) I had read before and had studied the meaning of the poems before. Marvell’s poem deals with the fact that we have no idea how long any of us have for this world. We could all die tomorrow. So, Marvell shows a powerful message, that if two people are in love, they should seize the day and make love while there’s still time. Of course, in my opinion, some couples do this irregardless of even knowing that the world could end at any point. Donne’s poems are more romantic in nature, as shown with “The Flea”. The flea bit both people of the couple and now the blood is mixed. Donne even states that if the woman kills the flea, then not only will it die, but the two will also die as well, because the Flea carries their blood. So in a way, the flea can be seen as a baby. Donne’s poems are some of my favorites due to his views on romance, love, and sex. His poems definitely have spoken to me. Frost’s poems are also good in my view, as they also deliver powerful messages about chance and our world. We could die at any time and even accidents can happen at any time, as shown in “Out, Out…” when the boy’s hand was cut off by the saw. In a way, it has affected my thinking to take more charge and seize the day. Usually, I don’t take many risks in life, and these poems do give me the motivation to go out there and be a bit more daring. After all, if this world ends, some things in my life will be left unfulfilled. Cummings’s poems kind of caught me a bit off guard at first. The way his form is can easily confuse some people, especially those who are more formal. But I still like his poems for a couple reasons, and one of them being his form. It’s so wacky that it’s original, but it’s not just the form. When I read “since feeling is first”, I figured out exactly why Cummings does the poems this way. Form means nothing when the message can still be deciphered… and I was able to still see these messages. The only other poem I liked out of the bunch was Larkin’s “This Be The Verse”. Although it gives quite a negative feel, I was able to connect with the message well. He states the simple phrase of “like father, like son”… that history tends to repeat itself. I tend to make the same mistakes my dad made when he was my age, and because of that I could be considered “screwed up” because of it. But it’s bound to happen. As stated in the poem, the only way to make sure your children don’t get screwed up is to not have them in the first place. The other poems for Thursday’s reading I’m not a big fan of, mostly since I was able to connect a lot better with some of these other poems.

Part II:

For this assignment, I have decided to discuss about Cummings’s form and content and how he decides to merge them together. Oftentimes, people judge too harshly on the form of a certain piece of literature. But it most cases, it doesn’t matter what the form of literature is as long as it doesn’t mess up what the poem’s main point is deriving at. For example, if somebody posted “my GoD, dis pom SUX!!!” many will see this form of writing as atrocious. But look deeper into what the person is trying to say. Bad form can still portray a message that can be clearly understood. In this instance, it would be “My God, this poem sucks!” It isn’t easy to see why Cummings writes the way he does until a person reads one key poem of his. “since feeling is first” is the poem where most people will be able to understand why Cummings chooses the form that he does. His main theme is to use form in a way that is not proper but at the same time it’s used to enhance the main points or themes of his poems. As stated earlier, if people understand what the poet is trying to say, why should form matter? Cummings puts this to good use in all of his poems. Another good poem to show how meaning is easily understood through sloppy form is through “i like my body when it is with your”. Clearly, Cummings is expressing how he loves his lover’s body and how he likes having sex with her. Most people should be able to understand that, even though his form is plain bad. But even with the extra spaces, poor capitalization, unneeded hyphens, and other mechanical errors in form, Cummings uses it to further express his poem’s themes and meanings. In most cases, his poems are slightly easier to understand if people are willing to overlook the questionable form.

Blog No. 1, Feb 14th

Part I:

The experiences I got from reading these poems assigned for Thursday were generally good. One poem I definitely enjoyed was Porritt’s “Read This Poem From The Bottom Up”. I definitely enjoyed how it uses irony in a way, as will be discussed in the question I chose to answer for this assignment. The argument that is present within this poem is a good one, as it deals with habits. Generally, it made me think quite a bit about habits and how hard it is to break them. Whitman’s poems were also enjoyable to read, as most of them were about America and patriotism itself, or at least in my view. Especially after the time of 9/11, people generally love it when people express their love of America or even choose to write poems about it. Hughes’s poems were definitely great as well, and it did make me think even more about the blacks in the early 20^th century. His poems portray how he felt during such a time, a time when segregation and such was still present in many places throughout America. The poems did speak to me and portrayed a very powerful message about his life. The only poem that confused me a bit was Ginsberg. Overall, I wasn’t able to connect with the poem very well, and I could only make out a few parts of it. Generally, I believe that Ginsberg is going against Whitman’s arguments about a rejoicing America and such, as the last few lines gave me a negative message in a way.

Part II:

The question I am choosing for this blog is the following: What does Porritt reveal about conventions of reading in "Read This Poem From the Bottom Up"? In my opinion, Porritt reveals a very interesting feature that exists within humans; habits. Porritt set up the poem in the way that makes sense when read in the traditional sense. However, when following the poem’s title and reading it in the other direction, a whole new meaning is shown, which might be what Porritt wanted to get across in the first place. However, Porritt predicted that even if the directions are clear, “Read This Poem From the Bottom Up”, people will still read it in from the top down. Did the people not understand the instructions? Not necessarily, at least in my view. Porritt did reveal in the poems about habits that humans have. Generally, humans have a very hard time breaking habits. And people are used to reading text, poems, anything written down on paper from left to right and from the top down. Reading it the other way doesn’t come naturally for most people, and some wouldn’t even begin to read from the bottom up. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, when text is read the opposite way around, it makes no sense. However, when read the other way, this poem still makes a lot of sense. So in a way, Porritt hid the real poem’s meaning by writing the poem backwards and he knew people are in the habit of reading it from the top down. Overall, what Porritt is saying is that sometimes you have to read in a different way than normal to reveal the true meaning of the text, but this still doesn’t happen too often.

Testing...

Just a test to see if you can read this.

You can, right? Because I have no way of knowing, lol.