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Monday, February 1, 2010
Poet Project
Take a moment to share something interesting you have learned through the researching of your poet project – something interesting about your poet, his or her poetry, or anything else.
For my poet project I did John Keats. He had a very sad childhood because he lost both of his parents when he was eight years old. After that, his grandmother hired someone else to take care of him and his siblings because she didn't want to go through all of the trouble of raising children again. The man who was hired was very harsh to them and sent them away to be apprentaces so he didn't have to deal with them either. John was sent to a doctor's where he learned how to be a doctor. He absolutely hated the job, and was very sad and lonly while he was there.
Despite all these hardships, he survived. The one thing that helped him was poetry. While apprenticed to the doctor, John travelled 2 miles so that he could learn about poetry which he had been introduced to a few years ago. Another thing that surprises me is that Keats's poems aren't all sad and filled with hate as you would expect them to be. They may have a little bit of melancholy in them. However, most of his topics are happy and make you feel good when you read them. Even with all these bad things happening to him, Keats still had some happiness in him.
For my poet project I chose to do Edgar Allan Poe. Now his life was very sad at depressing because he lost his mother at the age of two and was taken in my a man of the name John Allan. As he got older, poetry became his way of expressing feelings and coping with the tragedies he was yet to face.
The thing I find interesting about Poe isn't really so much interesting as it is sad and surprising. Like I said before, Poe lost his mother at the age of two. After the death of his mother, his life progressed. At 27 he married his cousin Virginia Clemm. However the tragedy struck again soon after that when Virginia died in 1847. Poe resorted to alcohol and couldn't handle the loss of his wife. And not too later of that, he died himself.
What I find surprising and interesting is that all of the tragedy happened mostly to the women that Poe had loved. First his mother, then his wife. He was faced with many challenges and it seemed as though his life was unfair, but he used poetry to help him cope.
For my poetry project i did the famous Dr. Seuss. He is one of the most remarkable poets to ever live. His poetry has changed the way i looked at the world, and should change the way you look at it too. If you have ever read "The Butter Battle" you would understand why his poetry is so symbolic. The main story line is that the Zooks and the Yooks were fighting over something ridicilious, which side they spread there butter on. Beside that, they have no reason to hate each other. As the story progresses, they are both trying to kill the other side (Zooks and Yooks).
This is really meaningful because if you think about the time that Dr. Seuss grew up in, you would understand this. He grew up during the Cold War, and the story of "The Butter Battle" is a perfect representation of what happened between the U.S and the Soviet Union.
This really got my attention because he is secretly teaching us all a lesson, without us even realizing it. And quite frankly, if we all followed the principals of Dr. Seuss, the world would be a better place.
My poet, Langston Hughes, lived in the Southern United States in the early 1900's. I never realized how strong racial prejudice was back then before reading his biography. He faced it from grammar school all the way through college. In grammar school he was in a class where he was the only black student, and he was often called out for stereotypical things like "class poet" because people assumed he would have good rythem because of his skin color. He also ended up dropping out of Colombia University because of the racial issues while he was there. I find it strange learning about all these issues because it was only about 100 years ago that this happened, which wasn't a very long time ago. It makes you wonder how different things will be 100 years from now.
Pablo Neruda’s birth name was really Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basualto. He started writing poems at the age of nine. He had gone to a school where the principal became a known poet. She inspired Neruda to write and read poetry. She introduced him to other styles of poems by other poets. The other poems and poets inspired him to keep writing no matter what. Neruda’s father did not approve of him being a poet. He said it was useless and that it would never get him anywhere life. Even though he did not have his father’s support he continued writing and at age sixteen he was already a published poet.
The next year Pablo decided to move away from home. He wanted to move to Santiago to get a degree in teaching French. While he was in school he still wrote poetry. After three years in school he dropped out to pursue his career in writing poems. Once his father found out that Pablo was not going to school anymore he stopped giving him allowance, which meant that Pablo had no money. The rich had a huge influence on the government and no one supported the poor. Since no one helped the poor, Neruda and his friends took matters into their own hands. Pablo Neruda was a big supporter of Emilio Recabarren, founder of the communist party in Chile. Neruda would write articles for anti-government journals and he would also participate in rebellions where the police would beat up Pablo and other demonstrators.
For my poet project, I researched the poetry of Robert Frost. His poems are truly amazing, and they have so much irony in them. I especially learned about the poem "The Road Not Taken" this poem I thought was just about life choices, but in the end I learned that its really saying that you don't know if your decision will make the biggest difference or if it will have no effect at all, but still in that moment you need to chose what you think is best.
Robert Frost lost his wife, and kids all around the same time. I could not imagine losing such important people in your life all near the same time, and maybe this is when he started to heavily lean to writing to help him cope. Robert Frost was an incredible poet who faced many challenges and deaths throughout his life, and writing was one thing that he always had, and was extremely talented at.
Like Ben, I to did Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss is held high in our society. We use his works to teach our young to read. His poems, at first, seem to be simple stories about imaginary lands and creatures, but after thinking about them on a deeper level you notice that his poems relate to real life things such as the cold war (The Butter Battle Book) or industrial pollution (The Lorax). I think he did this intentionally to get his veiws across to people. He targeted our young because they are the most impressionable, and they are our countries future. He wanted to keep things like the cold war from happening again. Also I found it interesting that for a man so highly thought of in our society, he was quite rebellious. He was thrown out of Dartmouth college for hosting a drinking party during prohabition. Soon he continued his eduction at Oxford inn england. After he graduated, he did nothing with his education. instead he spent years touring europe, then drawing comics, political cartoons, and ads. Both disobeying the law and not utilizing your education are frowned upon in our society.
For my poet project, I chose to research Claude McKay. I was expecting to deal with cliche themes throughout his poetry. However, I learned that McKay had a lot more depth and meaning to his poetry than I expected. In fact, many of his themes are tied to his lifetime experiences.
Throughout his early life, Claude McKay lived in Jamaica as a peasant. There, life was simple revolving around happiness and simple morals. McKay enjoyed his life in Jamaica which was accepting of his black race as well as to various immigrants. This life surrounded by nature greatly influenced the poetry of Claude McKay. He often wrote in the perspective of a peasant and portrayed their friendliness and acceptance towards other races. He attempted to represent the views of Jamaicans towards the Western world as well.
Another theme that I didn't expect was the harshness in which McKay delt with racism. McKay eventually immigrated to America where he experienced extreme racism when living in New York. He often wrote of the struggles of Africans and his strive to destroy the "white world". Smith observed that he didn't aim to please readers, but to protest against discrimination. I was surprised, as well, by how much of an impact his poetry had on the "New Negro" image of the Harlem Renaissance.
The poet I chose for my poetry project was Emily Dickinson. When I first picked her out, nothing really jumped out at me. She was just another poet writing decent poetry. When I began to research her background I found she lived a life in seclusion, barely ever going out of her house, but managed to write this poetry that somebody who sat out on a park bench everyday would write. I found this to be very interesting and researched her farther to see that she did not really practice a religion. This grew interesting to me. I decided to move onto the actual poetry aspect.
Upon my searching. I found poems that connect to the two idea perfectly. I was amazed by this. I thought to myself, I could never write about such topics with such little education. She was pulled out of college early on. The vocabulary she uses is phenomenal. If I had just read Dickinson's poetry with no knowledge of her life, I would have thought a lot differently.
For my poet project I researched Walt Whitman. Something that I found to be pretty interesting about him was that he was largely self-taught. He fell in love with writing, not by someone teaching it to him, but by experiencing it himself. He was inspired by Shakespeare and other writers of the time who encouraged him to write. After that he became a teacher but then later chased the dream of becoming a writer and wrote for various newspapers in the New York area. Another interesting thing I found out about him was that he was struggling to make enough money to support himself his whole life. He would make a substantial amount after publishing different editions of his book Leaves of Grass that he would then spend on other things. Although he was poor you could never tell by the way his writing was so upbeat and positive. He always believed in the beauty of the world around him as well as in America.
Something interesting I have learned about Dr. Seuss is that he did not like the Japanese. This is interesting because he had a Japanese friend that he dedicated one of his books to. This book is Horton Hears a Who. it is an allegory about the bombing of Hiroshima in WWII. Seuss shows strong feelings against the Japanese yet he feels sorrow for them after this event. It is strange that even when you are in a war against someone you can find a friend. This could be a hidden lesson that Seuss wanted us to find.
I researched Emily Dickenson for my poet project. I thought how her life affected her poetry was very interesting. Most of her poetry was about the people that were involved in her life. One including her sister in law. Also a lot of her poetry was affected by her father, and his views on mankind, life and the world they lived in vs her views. Also topics she wrote about included death and her religion. I never thought someone like Emily Dickenson, who almost never even left her house, would have the ability to write about so much. She is such an amazing poet and her meaning are so deep and you really have to look for them. I never thought her life would be as interesting as it was while I was researching her. I knew she would have had something interesting about her since she is so famous but her life is honestly nothing I expected.
Besides learning the obvious things from the poet project, like the poets history, writing style, themes, etc, I learned some things about myself. Firstly (sorry Mr. Moccia) I have found that I tend to procrastinate. Alot. This time however, I think it helped doing it all at once, even though it was the night before it was due. It allowed me to comtinue the flow of ideas without any breaks and prevented the loss of ideas that can happen if you start one day and finish the next. I'm not recommending waiting until the last day to write papers, but this time, it worked out pretty well. Also, I learned that I really don't like poetry. In the beginning of this unit I didn't know whether I liked poetry or not, now I know that I don't. I really don't understand the point of the, as Eric said, "frivolous" aspects of poetry. It is unecessary to add the extra thing that to me aren't pleasing or how I would want to spend my free time.
When the poet project was first assigned, I really did not like the entire idea of it. I do not like poetry and for that reason I found no reason in knowing about any particular poet. I picked Langston Hughes because I love the art in the Harlem Renaissance time period and i thought his work would reflect that. I learned a lot about his life but I also learned that not all poetry has to be boring. He made his work exciting and full of life. I still do not like poetry but after this project I have a higher appreciation for it.
For my project I researched Emily Dickinson. I found out that she lived a very unusual life.
Emily Dickinson lived her life in complete isolation. She never left her home, and had contact with very few people. This surprised me, as her poetry doesn't reflect such a life. In fact, her poetry seems like it would be written by someone who has a very social life. This intrigued me, and as I researched more I realized that her seclusion is what helped her write such insightful poetry. Her relationships with people were much more important to her, since she had very few. This also must have influenced her great poetry.
She also did not have a good relationship with her mother, who was cold, and very religious. That is why when I found out that she didn't really practice religion, it didn't surprise me as much. I supposed that the reason for this is that it was her way of rebelling.
17 comments:
For my poet project I did John Keats. He had a very sad childhood because he lost both of his parents when he was eight years old. After that, his grandmother hired someone else to take care of him and his siblings because she didn't want to go through all of the trouble of raising children again. The man who was hired was very harsh to them and sent them away to be apprentaces so he didn't have to deal with them either. John was sent to a doctor's where he learned how to be a doctor. He absolutely hated the job, and was very sad and lonly while he was there.
Despite all these hardships, he survived. The one thing that helped him was poetry. While apprenticed to the doctor, John travelled 2 miles so that he could learn about poetry which he had been introduced to a few years ago. Another thing that surprises me is that Keats's poems aren't all sad and filled with hate as you would expect them to be. They may have a little bit of melancholy in them. However, most of his topics are happy and make you feel good when you read them. Even with all these bad things happening to him, Keats still had some happiness in him.
For my poet project I chose to do Edgar Allan Poe. Now his life was very sad at depressing because he lost his mother at the age of two and was taken in my a man of the name John Allan. As he got older, poetry became his way of expressing feelings and coping with the tragedies he was yet to face.
The thing I find interesting about Poe isn't really so much interesting as it is sad and surprising. Like I said before, Poe lost his mother at the age of two. After the death of his mother, his life progressed. At 27 he married his cousin Virginia Clemm. However the tragedy struck again soon after that when Virginia died in 1847. Poe resorted to alcohol and couldn't handle the loss of his wife. And not too later of that, he died himself.
What I find surprising and interesting is that all of the tragedy happened mostly to the women that Poe had loved. First his mother, then his wife. He was faced with many challenges and it seemed as though his life was unfair, but he used poetry to help him cope.
For my poetry project i did the famous Dr. Seuss. He is one of the most remarkable poets to ever live. His poetry has changed the way i looked at the world, and should change the way you look at it too. If you have ever read "The Butter Battle" you would understand why his poetry is so symbolic. The main story line is that the Zooks and the Yooks were fighting over something ridicilious, which side they spread there butter on. Beside that, they have no reason to hate each other. As the story progresses, they are both trying to kill the other side (Zooks and Yooks).
This is really meaningful because if you think about the time that Dr. Seuss grew up in, you would understand this. He grew up during the Cold War, and the story of "The Butter Battle" is a perfect representation of what happened between the U.S and the Soviet Union.
This really got my attention because he is secretly teaching us all a lesson, without us even realizing it. And quite frankly, if we all followed the principals of Dr. Seuss, the world would be a better place.
My poet, Langston Hughes, lived in the Southern United States in the early 1900's. I never realized how strong racial prejudice was back then before reading his biography. He faced it from grammar school all the way through college. In grammar school he was in a class where he was the only black student, and he was often called out for stereotypical things like "class poet" because people assumed he would have good rythem because of his skin color. He also ended up dropping out of Colombia University because of the racial issues while he was there. I find it strange learning about all these issues because it was only about 100 years ago that this happened, which wasn't a very long time ago. It makes you wonder how different things will be 100 years from now.
Pablo Neruda’s birth name was really Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basualto. He started writing poems at the age of nine. He had gone to a school where the principal became a known poet. She inspired Neruda to write and read poetry. She introduced him to other styles of poems by other poets. The other poems and poets inspired him to keep writing no matter what. Neruda’s father did not approve of him being a poet. He said it was useless and that it would never get him anywhere life. Even though he did not have his father’s support he continued writing and at age sixteen he was already a published poet.
The next year Pablo decided to move away from home. He wanted to move to Santiago to get a degree in teaching French. While he was in school he still wrote poetry. After three years in school he dropped out to pursue his career in writing poems. Once his father found out that Pablo was not going to school anymore he stopped giving him allowance, which meant that Pablo had no money. The rich had a huge influence on the government and no one supported the poor. Since no one helped the poor, Neruda and his friends took matters into their own hands. Pablo Neruda was a big supporter of Emilio Recabarren, founder of the communist party in Chile. Neruda would write articles for anti-government journals and he would also participate in rebellions where the police would beat up Pablo and other demonstrators.
For my poet project, I researched the poetry of Robert Frost. His poems are truly amazing, and they have so much irony in them. I especially learned about the poem "The Road Not Taken" this poem I thought was just about life choices, but in the end I learned that its really saying that you don't know if your decision will make the biggest difference or if it will have no effect at all, but still in that moment you need to chose what you think is best.
Robert Frost lost his wife, and kids all around the same time. I could not imagine losing such important people in your life all near the same time, and maybe this is when he started to heavily lean to writing to help him cope. Robert Frost was an incredible poet who faced many challenges and deaths throughout his life, and writing was one thing that he always had, and was extremely talented at.
Like Ben, I to did Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss is held high in our society. We use his works to teach our young to read. His poems, at first, seem to be simple stories about imaginary lands and creatures, but after thinking about them on a deeper level you notice that his poems relate to real life things such as the cold war (The Butter Battle Book) or industrial pollution (The Lorax). I think he did this intentionally to get his veiws across to people. He targeted our young because they are the most impressionable, and they are our countries future. He wanted to keep things like the cold war from happening again.
Also I found it interesting that for a man so highly thought of in our society, he was quite rebellious. He was thrown out of Dartmouth college for hosting a drinking party during prohabition. Soon he continued his eduction at Oxford inn england. After he graduated, he did nothing with his education. instead he spent years touring europe, then drawing comics, political cartoons, and ads. Both disobeying the law and not utilizing your education are frowned upon in our society.
For my poet project, I chose to research Claude McKay. I was expecting to deal with cliche themes throughout his poetry. However, I learned that McKay had a lot more depth and meaning to his poetry than I expected. In fact, many of his themes are tied to his lifetime experiences.
Throughout his early life, Claude McKay lived in Jamaica as a peasant. There, life was simple revolving around happiness and simple morals. McKay enjoyed his life in Jamaica which was accepting of his black race as well as to various immigrants. This life surrounded by nature greatly influenced the poetry of Claude McKay. He often wrote in the perspective of a peasant and portrayed their friendliness and acceptance towards other races. He attempted to represent the views of Jamaicans towards the Western world as well.
Another theme that I didn't expect was the harshness in which McKay delt with racism. McKay eventually immigrated to America where he experienced extreme racism when living in New York. He often wrote of the struggles of Africans and his strive to destroy the "white world". Smith observed that he didn't aim to please readers, but to protest against discrimination. I was surprised, as well, by how much of an impact his poetry had on the "New Negro" image of the Harlem Renaissance.
The poet I chose for my poetry project was Emily Dickinson. When I first picked her out, nothing really jumped out at me. She was just another poet writing decent poetry. When I began to research her background I found she lived a life in seclusion, barely ever going out of her house, but managed to write this poetry that somebody who sat out on a park bench everyday would write. I found this to be very interesting and researched her farther to see that she did not really practice a religion. This grew interesting to me. I decided to move onto the actual poetry aspect.
Upon my searching. I found poems that connect to the two idea perfectly. I was amazed by this. I thought to myself, I could never write about such topics with such little education. She was pulled out of college early on. The vocabulary she uses is phenomenal. If I had just read Dickinson's poetry with no knowledge of her life, I would have thought a lot differently.
For my poet project I researched Walt Whitman. Something that I found to be pretty interesting about him was that he was largely self-taught. He fell in love with writing, not by someone teaching it to him, but by experiencing it himself. He was inspired by Shakespeare and other writers of the time who encouraged him to write. After that he became a teacher but then later chased the dream of becoming a writer and wrote for various newspapers in the New York area.
Another interesting thing I found out about him was that he was struggling to make enough money to support himself his whole life. He would make a substantial amount after publishing different editions of his book Leaves of Grass that he would then spend on other things. Although he was poor you could never tell by the way his writing was so upbeat and positive. He always believed in the beauty of the world around him as well as in America.
Something interesting I have learned about Dr. Seuss is that he did not like the Japanese. This is interesting because he had a Japanese friend that he dedicated one of his books to. This book is Horton Hears a Who. it is an allegory about the bombing of Hiroshima in WWII. Seuss shows strong feelings against the Japanese yet he feels sorrow for them after this event. It is strange that even when you are in a war against someone you can find a friend. This could be a hidden lesson that Seuss wanted us to find.
I researched Emily Dickenson for my poet project. I thought how her life affected her poetry was very interesting. Most of her poetry was about the people that were involved in her life. One including her sister in law. Also a lot of her poetry was affected by her father, and his views on mankind, life and the world they lived in vs her views. Also topics she wrote about included death and her religion.
I never thought someone like Emily Dickenson, who almost never even left her house, would have the ability to write about so much. She is such an amazing poet and her meaning are so deep and you really have to look for them. I never thought her life would be as interesting as it was while I was researching her. I knew she would have had something interesting about her since she is so famous but her life is honestly nothing I expected.
Besides learning the obvious things from the poet project, like the poets history, writing style, themes, etc, I learned some things about myself. Firstly (sorry Mr. Moccia) I have found that I tend to procrastinate. Alot. This time however, I think it helped doing it all at once, even though it was the night before it was due. It allowed me to comtinue the flow of ideas without any breaks and prevented the loss of ideas that can happen if you start one day and finish the next. I'm not recommending waiting until the last day to write papers, but this time, it worked out pretty well. Also, I learned that I really don't like poetry. In the beginning of this unit I didn't know whether I liked poetry or not, now I know that I don't. I really don't understand the point of the, as Eric said, "frivolous" aspects of poetry. It is unecessary to add the extra thing that to me aren't pleasing or how I would want to spend my free time.
When the poet project was first assigned, I really did not like the entire idea of it. I do not like poetry and for that reason I found no reason in knowing about any particular poet. I picked Langston Hughes because I love the art in the Harlem Renaissance time period and i thought his work would reflect that. I learned a lot about his life but I also learned that not all poetry has to be boring. He made his work exciting and full of life. I still do not like poetry but after this project I have a higher appreciation for it.
For my project I researched Emily Dickinson. I found out that she lived a very unusual life.
Emily Dickinson lived her life in complete isolation. She never left her home, and had contact with very few people. This surprised me, as her poetry doesn't reflect such a life. In fact, her poetry seems like it would be written by someone who has a very social life. This intrigued me, and as I researched more I realized that her seclusion is what helped her write such insightful poetry. Her relationships with people were much more important to her, since she had very few. This also must have influenced her great poetry.
She also did not have a good relationship with her mother, who was cold, and very religious. That is why when I found out that she didn't really practice religion, it didn't surprise me as much. I supposed that the reason for this is that it was her way of rebelling.
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