In class, we looked at two interesting poems, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by  Wallace Stevens and And What Do You Get by Heather McHugh. Both poems were very well written and I liked both of them, they were different from poems that I have read in the past.

     In Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, Wallace Stevens gave us different ways to view a blackbird. Most people see a blackbird and think of life and death; Wallace had the same image, but he also had other views as far as the beauty of them and how we are all alike as one. An example of that would be;

"A man and a woman

 Are one.

 A man and a woman and a blackbird

 Are one."

     Although, the poem written by Steven was very well and intelligent, I believe What Do You Get by Heather McHugh was my favorite, in my opinion. I love the use of wordplay and how she did hers. She took words apart and added others together and asked: "what do you get?" In her poem, it focused on wordplay and how taking away a letter or adding a letter can change the word and meaning completely to something completely different. One of my favorite examples for this would be;

".....take the the from

therapist, split accent with an id---"

If you look at what she wrote, you can tell that by taking the the out, it changes therapist to rapist and splitting accent with an id changes accent to accident, which is seemingly correct seeing how therapist can change to rapist instantly, changing the word and meaning.

     The poem that I chose to respond to was one of Shakespeare's sonnet, #130. I always refer to this sonnet but it's my favorite one and I enjoy the work of Shakespeare among others' disagreements. I wanted to look deeper into this poem and it's meaning and how he used his words to the audience.

     In this sonnet, Shakespeare is putting the focus on his mistress and all her flaws that he finds beautiful contrary to others beliefs. He gives us an imagery of what he sees when he looks at her by telling us how red her cheeks are if you imagine roses or her hair being like black wires and etc. In class, there was a big "debate" about how well he did this poem. One of the topics that was brought up was the fact that he brought out all her flaws to the world but when you think of it, he's also letting us know that, to him she is still the most beautiful girl in the world.
   
     I felt as though he did a great job with this sonnet. And, it will probably be one of my favorites. Although, all of this is my opinion and what I interpreted from this sonnet, I feel as though it's a small portion of one of his great works.

In class, we continued going over the poetry packets. Although, I was a week late to class because I registered late, I caught up with everything that was going on. We went over language: detail, imagery, sensory, and concrete versus abstract. We learned spotting the difference between concrete and abstract with examples like this:
Abstract:
"I'm mad." "I'm angry" "I love you"
Concrete:
"I'm so angry, I just wanted to punch a wall!" "When I look in your eyes, I can see the moon."
These examples helped me realize the difference between the two and how to spot them.


We also went over cliches and the amount of cliches and abstract context in the poetry packet. It was interesting to see the many creative ways authors express themselves in their work. Although, some things were repeated and heard of long ago, it was still amusing and exciting to me. Many of the poems stuck out to me and some was hard to catch on.


A few poems had very concrete writing, a lot of those were my favorite and I enjoyed reading them. Some lines in the poems were very cliche, an example would be, "Her cheeks were as red as roses." This is quote is very concrete in stating the color of her face and gives an imagery of red roses to see as you look at her. It is also cliche because there's been numerous times where red roses is used as a imagery for red cheeks. But, even though that is the case, I still like that quote no matter how overused it may be because it gives us an image of what he is seeing through his eyes of the love of his life.


Jazz Spencer

Introduction Blog

Hello class and professor, my name is Jasmine Spencer but, I usually just go by Jazz. I am a sophomore here at EMU, I'm 19 years old and I am going into Sports Medicine- Athletic Training. My birthday is at the end of September, I am Libra and everything that my horoscopes say is extremely true and very on point with my life. I live in Farmington Hills, MI which is about 30-35 minutes from Ypsilanti. I have two younger brothers at home and we are all 5 years apart.

I went to a school called North Farmington High School and it was a great experience for me. I was involved with the pom team which is like a combination of dance and cheer. I also worked alongside of the athletic trainer at my high school, she is an EMU alumni and she has taught me a lot- from taping ankles to taping fingers. She helped me realized that athletic training is something I want to do.

I'm hoping to gain a lot from this class as far as opening up and being able to work on my writing skills and also expanding my mind on being creative. I am a very shy person so I'm looking forward to taking this class and gaining a lot from it.