Continuing with Poetry

Poems have been around since the time we have been able to write and have had big impacts on culture, especially in the youth. Poetry is an outlet for kids when going through hardships in their life and helps to express happiness. How have poems affected you in your youth? Do you agree or disagree that they do affect us and have an impact on us? Would you say songs impact us more than poems? Do you feel that poems are over analyzed in school and why do we analyze them so much?

Poetry and Songs

Recently we've been studying poetry and songs that are alike. When you think about it, many songs that are within the same genre are quite similar, and many seem to play off of many emotions that were originally brought through by poetry. Do you think that many songs and genres were brought about by poetry and the emotion that authors used in their writing? How many songs do you think have been inspired by poetry itself, rather than just other songs? Are there any artists that could feasibly be using poetry as something to go off of for their genre of music now, or are they all just going off of songs made before?

Poetry is an expression of the author's feelings. The composition can be as simple or as complex as the emotion as it betrays. One can easily make light of an emotion or twist it into a much darker theme. Poems can also tell stories. Some stories are easily read while others are have to be pulled out, bit by bit and, put together. Songs just a easily mean something, because there is always a motive to write. Some significant event caused the author to pick up a pen and jot down his or her feelings at that moment. But the question stands, how do we know if they really meant that? If we look back at Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor, he urges us that if we think it means that it does. Do you agree with this? Is that red rock he just threw really his anger, or did the author just think that the rock should be red? What makes it easier to find what the author meant? What makes it harder? How much of our interpretations come from our experiences? Why is it that we all find different answers in the same symbol?

Discrimination/Racism

We all define people by the way they look or groups they belong to. Many of us do not like to think that we define people by these two things. It seems to me that discrimination and racism go hand in hand. Our society is always trying to make an effort to eliminate these things. President Lincoln gave an executive order to eliminate slavery. Even after this order, African Americans were still not treated as equal to whites. Not very long ago in our history, we had the civil rights movement. African Americans now have more rights than they ever have had before. Now, it seems that there is a gay rights movement. There seems to always be a group that wants more rights. People from the Middle East are often discriminated against at airports and many places within our country due to the World Trade Center attacks. Most of these people are completely innocent yet are discriminated against. Our society sees the flaws that a person has. Do you believe that racism will ever die out in our country? Will discrimination ever disappear? Even though many consider discrimination to be a bad thing, is it important to our national security? Could our country still be safe without discrimination? What rights battles do you see in our nation's future?

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Wow!  What an impressive singular performance by Cherita Armstrong!  I found the production today both poignant and enrapturing.  For this entry, I would like you to 1) summarize your five chapters for the rest of the class (we'll still talk about them later) and 2) give us your review of the production.

Recently, we have been learning more about slavery by reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. This is a story of incredible bravery, sacrifice, and hope. We are surrounded of stories of people showing the world that good still exists, yet the news media portrays the stories of crime and destruction. Personally, I enjoy hearing that people still have a sense of decent humanity in them. I am one of those rare people that hope for world peace. I am wondering why society likes to promote the bad and ignore the good. I understand that it is important to be well rounded in all happenings though. I want to know what your thoughts are on this topic. What stories do you like to hear? Do all the bad stories promote people to act in the same poor manner again? Why are there not more stories like Harriet Ann Jacobs?