Thursday, January 31, 2008

WHOA READING POST #3((Emily Dickinson Poems))pg.580-586





In this reading, we explore the writings of Emily Dickinson. While some may find her writings to be disturbing, there is truly an intelligience behind them. In reading the poetry in depth I made an attempt to understand what Emily Dickinson was like and see what was inside her head. I think the most amazing part of reading these poems is that if in fact her sister did not betray her and broke her promise, we would not be able to view Emily's poems.

In the first poem" I Heard a Fly Buzz-when I died-", it makes it easier to envision what death is like. The desolate silence she portrays in the poem and stillness in the air is so easy to imagine. In lines 9-11, she says" I willed my keepsakes-signed away..what portion of me be Assignable". This quote makes me think of a will because it basically assigns to whom and to where you want your possessions and keepsakes to go. In most of the poems, she speaks of death but also she is in touch with her religious side too. Like in "These are the days when Birds come back", she makes references to sacraments and in "Papa Above!", I think she is in reference to Jesus and in the last poem she makes references to Cathedrals.

Her poems not only provide a feeling to death, it also gets in tune with the religious side of things. Her poems aren't really necessarily as sad as you expect death to be, I find them like sort of an explanation or story. I think it is amazing how she has written the poem as though dying is a day to day activity. I think these poems are anthologized to inevitably show the life behind death. To give feelings to what, in most cases, is associated with no feeling.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Reading Post #2 Pgs- 603-610((Word and Image))

Okay, so this reading was interesting because I did not know this style of poetry existed. Since, I am a visual learner, I gravitated toward this style immediately because of the pictures used to match the poetic words in these poems. In the different writing pieces, the authors of the poems and of the pictures weren't the same and I noticed that while reading.

For the first poem by Jane Flanders, I think the words just explain and put more empasis to the images in the pictures. While describing what we see, the poem also makes you want to visualize what this bed is like and the picture just seems to add more umph to the words. I think that if this picture wasn't here it would be hard to visualize such a descriptive bed.

In the poem by William Carlos Williams, I think this poem just adds more importance to this number. Seeing the number 5 in this painting made me think of how the simplest objects can really begin to mean something when they are focused on more in depth. I find it wierd that somebody would see this passing on a truck and decide to take a piece of paper out and draw it, but that is the beauty of artists, they find the importance in such simplistic items.

While Edwin Romanzo Elmer's "Morning Picture" painting is quite disturbing and scary, I think that this does enlighten the words in the poem. I think again it is easy to visualize her parents sitting in the dark. This would otherwise seem wierd and odd for me to try to visualize. This poem adds life to the picture, it makes me think of these people as actual human beings with feelings and emotions. I think the poem had a lot of emotion behind it. Although it was wierd to me at first, I think the picture and poem together add beauty to this poem that otherwise I would not be able to find just reading it without the imagery behind it.

I feel that the use of images and poetry together is a beautiful combination because it adds life and visuals to something that would otherwise bore me. With the pictures here it is easier for me to understand and read the poem.

Specialty Post#1..YaY

Finally my specialty post is here...

I took my quote from pg. 592(Langston Hughes)

He said" The blues can be real sad, else real mad, else real glad, and funny, too, all the same time. I ought to know. Me, I growed up with blues. I heard so many blues when I was a child until my shadow is blue".

I think that he is trying to imply that one the blues has all different kinds of meanings. The blues can be sad, glad and even funny. I also think that as many other African Americans back then, he felt like blues was a normal way of life because he had seen it so much as a child. The blues way of singing was enstilled in him as a child because he heard so much of it. This quote is worth anthologizing because I think that much of what we do as adults is because of what we learned as children. I think this quote is a good way of putting the phrase "Like mother, like daughter" or vice versa. The things we see our parents do is what we will most likely do when we are adults.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Reading: America Sings the Blues

Okay, at first I was wondering why in the world are we reading this? After I realized what it was about I definitely began to engage more and become interested. I liked reading this because I enjoy poetry and I did like 5 projects about Langston Hughes in Elementary and Middle School. It basically talked about blues music and how slaves use to sing these songs to make them "feel better". I guess it made them escape reality for a little. Blues also influenced several genre's of music such as rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and gospel.

Although I read all of the poems, there were only a couple that made me actually think and want to reread. Bessie Smith's poem reminded me of a new age R&B song. The second to last line of the poem made me think like that, it was "Take me back baby, try me one more time". It seems like she is begging him and I don't think this is a "feel better" song. As I read Robert Johnson's poem, I began to think of his as a prayer, he said the Lord's name and it seemed like he was trying to tell more of a story from the time he woke up in the morning until whenever he wrote that poem.

Now I got interested when Paul Lawrence Dunbar's poems came up because he is by far one of my biggest poetic influences. His poem seems more like a blues poem that a slave would sing because he used the language and also words and actions that they could relate to. His use of broken English may throw some people off, but I could understand. In line 1 he says, "standing at de winder", although some people in the new age would not understand this, I bet slaves and blacks in his time did. I liked the short biographies above their poems and I saw that Paul was the only African American in his high school class and I think this was an amazing accomplishment for him. In W.H Auden's poem, I did not feel the sense of "feel better", it would have made me sadder to hear it. In Line 6 of his poem, he says " Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead". This makes me think of death, but in the reading it does say that blues was used to express death sometimes and I guess this did fit the category.

This Johnny Cash poem that he performed for Folsom State Prison was actually on CMT a couple of days ago and I think he related to the prisoners. I also think it was a good thing to see that white people could also sing blues too because it seemed to usually be associated with the slaves and with blacks. In his poem he says "not to play with guns" and similar phrases and I think that is brave to sing such a song in front of prisoners.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Me Me Me

Hello everybody my name is Tiffany Fossett. I am a student at Northern Virginia Community College. I am going to major in Business Management and Communications. I also work at the campus in the Office of Student Activities. I plan the events here on campus and reserve rooms, sounds boring but not really it involves alot of networking and I LOVE NETWORKING :). I plan to transfer after one year to North Carolina A&T. I have one brother who attends Virginia Tech and he enjoys it.

I was in Mrs. Speigels English 111 course and so i decided to attend her English 112 because she is an exceptional teacher. *DUH* My expectations for this course are to simply have fun, but learn a lot. I do enjoy English and I think this course is one of my stronger courses. Also, I would like to "become a better writer" and be able to write on the college level. This blog can help me to get ideas and explore new networking options such as blogs. Hopefully, I'll pass and move on and have better writing skills to transfer with.

My goals for the blog are to give other students ideas on certain assignments. This blog can add to my classroom points and give me a better chance of passing. I think blogs should flow and be a little spontaneous. I want my blog to capture the audiences attention, but I also want them to get something out of my writings.