the secrets of poem reading

Often as a student I grow weary of reading poems, stories, and books. After a while I forget to see the meaning in a text, and just desire to finish the reading. Even now enjoyable reads seem to be a chore because our world is filled with so much reading. When I was younger I had such a passion for reading, and school has seemed to destroy that with all the reading. The “How to read a poem” reading really helped me understand how to read with a purpose, and understand poems more.

In the reading it hit the head right on the nail. It started out saying that as readers we often read a poem only once and then try and decipher what the writer is trying to get across. Often we get frustrated because poems are written abnormally and we wish to see a straight forward meaning from them. We need to understand a few things before we jump to assumptions. One of the suggestions in the reading was to read a passage out loud more than once. Hearing the poem will help hear the rhythm, words, density, and emotion. Another tip for an inexperienced reader would be to be patient and observant while reading. One should be open to surprises, exciting revelations, and take time to pause and linger on the words. Many times readers try and pick out a specific meaning for a passage but often times one should go in with an open mind. Often authors do have a specific meaning in mind, but they do not expect their reader to decipher every hidden meaning. Poems are claimed to be a “vacuum” and “open to interpretation” but then why do we try to decipher them and lack the abstract way of thinking about them. This passage has showed me a new way to look at poems, not as straight on, but from every angle imaginable. Perhaps there is no wrong way of interpreting a poem.

joel paintin

The book of Joel is a very emotional pulling book. It talks about destruction, love, peace, and so many other emotions. The book was impactful because it was real life. Joel was proclaiming these words to warn and teach the people what God was trying to communicate with them. The major parts of Joel that stood out to me were the parts about devastation, hurt, starvation, and judgment. Yes, Joel spoke about how the Lord’s people will be protected and set apart. But the world will be invaded and destroyed. The Lord was sending this message through Joel as a warning to the world.

My painting was not a portrait or illustration of a scene from Joel but more of an emotion of Joel. Because the book had so many words of destruction and darkness that was the overall feeling it gave to me. In my picture it is a little hard to tell exactly what I was trying to specify due to the fact that I was working with limited colors, and that it was scanned in black in white. But in my painting I used fire like colors to express Jesus and his power coming to the earth. Then I drew a center to line to show his spirit crossing the earthy line. Then after it crosses the earth line it devastates the green grass and over comes the earth. I used the mutation of the color for the line to show the impact of the God’s spirit, and how Gods spirit totally takes over any space that it encounters. God’s glory will always change an atmosphere and curve it to how God desires it to be. Doing this painting really brought a more impactful way of looking at a specific line in a book. I was using my painting to exhibit the line “The Lord will be zealous for his land”. I believe my painting helped show the power that God has for something or someone that he loves.

saying Joel to the Lake

The lake experience on Tuesday was very interesting. When we read the story of Joel it seems like just another book of the Bible. When we had to read it for homework, I read it out of the Bible. While reading it out of the Bible it was choppy and did not flow very well. I did not really get any impactful revelation from reading it. Then I read the pdf file and it seemed more like a piece of literature. While reading Joel from the pdf it flowed and made more sense. It helped me realize that the Bible is a piece of literature, not just the Bible. Often we think of the Bible as Gods word to us, not as literature, but indeed it is literature.

While reading Joel outside to nature it brought a whole new element. Just like reading Joel without the scripture references brought a new aspect, so did reading it out loud outside. Reading it outside brought a new element because it helped you to understand and focus on the rawness of what Joel was trying to tell the people. I specifically enjoyed the reading it out loud part of it. I am not going to lie I was not yelling it, I was barely saying it out loud but I still understood the point of it. There was a huge difference between reading it to oneself and saying it out loud. While reading it out loud it helped one to understand the authority and urgency that Joel was trying to get across. The words almost seemed to come alive and held new meaning. Hearing it also helped me to understand the context of the entirety, and the book as a whole.

So many times when we read the Bible we just read a couple of verses. We think we get the complete understanding, but we often just get a little snippet of what was meant to be understood. This exercise showed me that we should take the time to read the entire book of the Bible as a piece of literature, not just verse.

blog 7- cemetery

The trip to the cemetery last week was a lot more impactful than I expected it to be. When we first arrived I felt cheery and kind of confused why we were there. Then a fellow student commented on my attire, which was a brightly colored shirt. She mentioned how it did not really fit the mood very well. This comment really got my brain going and it made me realize the rawness of a cemetery and death. When I first arrived I did not really get the point of the whole exercise, but that soon changed when we started class.

At first I was just walking around reading all the headstones at the cemetery and not really thinking about any of it. Then I started thinking about the poem we had just read and the heaviness of it. There was so much heartache and pain in the words. The author seemed not only as if someone else had died but also as if a part of him died. That made me start thinking of all the people in the cemetery, all of the people who had died. They all had people who loved them, who knew them, who missed them. Each headstone was a resemblance of someone who was once on this earth, breathing and living, and now gone. There were so many headstones, some young, some old, but all were gone. On some of the headstones the names and dates were no longer visible, and it made me wonder if anyone remembered that person, or were they just lost now.

We often think of death in a nonchalant way, but this trip brought a new light. After I died, and was buried in the ground would people remember me? Would anyone remember me if my headstone no longer showed my name and date? What do we have to do to make an impact that will last far beyond our headstones?

blog 6

Walt Whitman's poem 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd' was a really sad story. I am usually pretty positive with Whitman's works, but this one I was not a fan about. The whole thing is dark, gloomy, and dreadful. When I first read through the poem the first time, I did not really get anything out of it, and did not understand it. But then the second time I felt as though I had a better understanding, but I realized how sad it really was.

The whole story is about death,and the power it has. Whitman does a great job one expressing how such a beautiful thing can seem so broken and cold. He often refers to the lilac, and spring time, which is supposed to be a joyous time. Sprig time is when new things come to life,but Whitman uses it to express death, and loss.

He made it a point to expresses every point of a funeral, and death. He speaks about death as if he had just lost someone he cared about very deeply. He specifies every painful moment about a funeral. Even the aspects that a normal person would not recognize, only a person who just loss someone very dear to them.

At some points of the story it seems as though he is not only mourning for himself, but expressing mourning for a group of people. Throughout the poem he did a great job in referring to things that everyone could relate to; to understand the reference,but to also especially, particularly to the person whom the poem was about.Whitman used so much imagery and reference, that it was very easy to paint a picture in your head of the image he was trying to create.

blog 5

The five poems we read over in class had very interesting meanings behind them. They all seemed a little dark to me but all had a message they were trying to get across. Story number five my Mary Oliver called After Death and From Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot were my two favorite choices. They both discussed the darkness that the world feels. They both spoke about how people in the world felt like they were sad, alone and no hope. But all of the stories had some glisten of hope. This glisten of hope was not specified, but it a Christian was reading it, they would know which the hope was referring to, Jesus.

Out of all five stories I preferred the Four Quartets. Some found this story a little hard to follow but I really believe is it the true journey of a human. Throughout the story it discusses how everything in life comes to an end, everything has a dark side. The aspect that I appreciated about it was the feeling that it gave about how once everything was quiet it was a bad thing. It gave the illusion that once the business and noise was gone there was emptiness in the silence. Towards the end it talked about hope, and how all hope is lost until you bring in some key factors. The key factors were faith, and love. The poem said without one you cannot have the other, but once you had one, the others would come. It said that once you had these factors the silence and the dark were no longer a bad thing, but brought in dancing and celebration. This is a perfect example on how when Jesus comes into our lives he brings a new element that nothing in this world can create.

blog 4

Theme plays an important role in all literature. Theme must be present in poems, stories, art, songs and any other form of literature. The theme gives the story depth and meaning, but it cannot consist of a sentence it must be felt throughout the entire piece. It does more than just summarize the literature, it gives off the feeling, but not directly, it leaves some responsibility to the reader. The audience needs to try and see what the director is portraying, and make sense of all the information combined.
The theme is not a specific line in the story that everything else builds from, but rather it is more of a thesis throughout the entire. There are many tools that an author can use to help get the theme across. Some authors use strong statements, others use description, while still others use color or music. Whichever tool the author decides to use they must make sue it serves the purpose to the audience.
While searching for the theme in literature it is important not to lose the rest of the story. Even though the theme is ultimate message, the content of the story is just as important. The content is what makes the theme so important.The content is what brings the theme of the literature to life.
What makes themes great in literature is that sometimes they are not what the audience wants. As an author one has the power to direct the story any way they want. In directing a piece of literature they have the power to direct a story any way they want. This makes us as an audience, to any piece of literature, subject to it. Whichever way the author leads us, we must always follow. So next time you are reading a piece of literature beware of where it might take you.

blog 3

This story was a sad war time experience about a group of soldiers deep in the heart of Vietnam. The story starts off speaking of all the different things that the individual men carried with them. Most of the accessories are due to protection and survival,but it also seems like everyone carries something personal to keep them motivated, and a reason to live. The soldiers all carried weapons according to their style, some carried big guns, and others carried grenades, while others carried machetes.
The story was sad in the aspect that they all operated like machines and without a heart. But their personal items symbolized a human part of them. It showed that they were all hurting and struggling and needed something substantial to keep them going. My brother is in the army and can testify to this. He always tells us how the military is constantly reminding them that they are property of the arms and they have nothing. So in the story these men's personal items are all they have to remind thy who they were as a person.
I believe in the story the men had to keep in a mental state were they were not vulnerable. They all feel emotion, but they had learned to deny it. Only when they pulled out their personal item did they allow themselves to get lost in the person or people they loved. They often found themselves lost in the one they loved and lost focus of the war. The story represents that in war there is nothing concrete, nothing to ensure tomorrow. And everyone needed something to hold on to, something to promise and convince them that there were going to be out of there alive, even thought they rarely escaped the battlefield.

blog 2

While reading the story about love it brought many interesting and contrasting opinions to myself. While reading early on in the text I understood that the conversation started out heavy and they wer drinking but not drunk. As the conversation went on about love, they became more drunk, and the conversation became more free. The interesting aspect was the different view points that each different person brought up and added to the conversation.

Each different person had a different experience with love. Some had bad experiences, others had positive. But every person had the same underlying opinion on love, it makes one do crazy things, and act out of the norm. For the one couple it caused him to try and murder his wife, then kill himself. For the other couple it caused them to say things and take actions towards eachother that they would never say or do to anyone other than the one they love.

One difference that the story held was if love was a choice or not. I believe when the author was referring to the old couple, they had made a choice to love each other for all those years and when they were now apart, they chose to miss eachother. But the story about the man who tried to kill his wife I think had no choice in it. He could not let her go, or forget about her. Like the saying goes 'he was crazy about her', I truly believe he was.

Love is complicated and as the story shows every couple shows it differently. Love has an effect on every person, especially when alcohol is in the same picture. The more honest people become about love the crazier it sounds. We should never under estimate the power that love has over us.