I really enjoyed writing the first assignment last night. It has been two years since I have last written a poem. I enjoyed trying to find the right word to fit into each sentence.. Its kind of like a puzzle that way.
I really struggled to come up with a topic for this poem. It was so broad, just candy and medicine. However, once I got started I felt that now knowing those two broad ideas, it helped me write a better piece than I normally would have.
I ended up writing my poem about a man who is reflecting on a big part of his life. He has this dream about being a star and what he imagines his life would have been like if he had made it. The candy of my poem is describing this dream he has, and the medicine is the feeling that he has in his current position of just being a fan of all of these stars.
See you guys in class,
Tad Schwartz

Man, that “Snowman” poem was a good one. I can’t get over it, actually. Having just written my first of many, many future poems of less than good quality. For me, fiction is so much freer. Poetry is focused; you have to work through every line with a purpose. You need to be careful. I am not careful enough for poetry just yet, I like throwing my weight around a little bit too much. Poetry has implicit limiters that work to hone talent, to shave off the imperfections of careless language. So naturally, as I work towards improving my poetical form, my own talents are being honed. I hate it. I miss the careless musings and ramblings of my prose. “The Snowman” is a perfect example of a form I could never really achieve, but one with a profound power. Its pretty alien to me, actually, the draw poetry has. Most of the poems I like are grand ones about grand things using grand words, and that’s just not what all poetry is.

Blog Number Two

I would have to say the same thing as Jenny that my favorite poem out of the poems that we had to read was "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens. I personally enjoyed the way he described winter with the pine trees and the crusty snow. This gives you a sense of feel for the environment and actually brings to me some good memories of winter. He also goes on to talk about how winter is a really beautiful thing but at the same time recognizes that winter is not something for everyone and I really like how he acknowledged that. He also describes the subtle quiets of the land of winter and saying that these sounds belong to the land, which I think he does a great job of. I think this because the type of imagery he uses in this poem gives great detail that I can vision a place that I was once at during the winter and remember it's and nature's true beauty. It is funny but I never really saw him being isolated and just describing a state of mind until Jenny mentioned it. I do kind of see it and I think it is a very interesting point and I feel that if I knew more about the author's background or mental state, then I could say that he might feel isolated.

Blog 2

I just read the short prose poem "A Story About the Body by Robert Hass and was rather struck by it. I was drawn in by the way that the author describes the connections between the young man and the older women. The young man was attracted to her paintings and the way she moved while creating them he also was captivated by "the amused and considered answers" she provided to his questions. When reading up to this point I thought nothing would be spoken of this attraction which was why I was surprised by the dialog which followed from the older women. I read this line twice because at first I did not know whether it was the man or the woman who first initiated. I thought that it was interesting to compare the mans withering radiance to music. It created a type of audio imagery in my mind trying to create a sound of music imagery. I was surprised when he turned the woman down because it sounded like his attraction for her went beyond just her physical body. I guess this is where the title of the work comes into play. I am not exactly what the roses covering the bowl of dead bees is meant to signify but it appears as though to her he seemed attractive as the roses were but once uncovered he was unpleasant such as the sight of the dead bees. I was very drawn in by this story and will continue to think about more possible meaning within it.

round 2

Everyone is doing it…so I will too. To Jess: props for digging into Mullen’s mind with “Between.” I think it is so cool on Mullen’s part, but I don’t like it. Just to be honest. I want to initially read or hear a poem and see or hear the beauty. I don’t mine digging a little deeper to find meaning that strikes my fancy, but I definitely do not want to have to do a lot of research. I don’t find this poem beautiful. I find it distracting, hard work, for something that should be a little more given.

This next part will make you think that I REALLY do not want to work for any meaning because of my dislike for “Between.” Honestly, I do enjoy some meaningfulness of a poem because that meaning can be the connection you feel to a certain poem.

With that, I loved the other fun candy and medicine poem, “Dear Boy George” by Auden. I used this poem as a model for my first candy and medicine poem. I really enjoyed writing my poem. I was able to write on something I am passionate about but also put meaning into it for others to interpret. I am actually excited for others to critique this poem. I hope it makes sense to them and no extensive research is needed because then I will just look like a fool.

Second Blog Entry-Bridget

I would have to agree with an earlier post that I was a little confused as to the format of "Dear Boy George." It sounds like a poem, yet I am not familiar with this type of format. I did enjoy it however, the randomness of it made me laugh, but some of the lines I could actually relate to (as weird as that may sound). It sounds like to me that the writer is obsessed with someone, and when you have that sort of infatuation or love for another person, you sometimes can act a little crazy. It sounds like to me that this is more of an unattainable crush and I certainly remember the days of celebrity crushes with the Backstreet Boys, when you thought that one day you would actually marry one of them. I love the part where Gerstler writes, "When I misunderstand your lyrics, they get even better. I thought the line...'undercover bough arrival..' Great, huh? See, we're of like minds. I almost died when..." This whole section is hilarious because the author is trying to impress her crush, but she is so overwhelmed at the thought of him that she can not finish a thought.

I also like the poem "Between." To answer someone's earlier post, I did notice her word choice; very interesting. Hopefully we'll talk about it in class. `I liked the poem for a reason I can't explain. I read it a few times and can't make total sense of it. I did notice all her use of body parts though. I thought it was a cool poem.

See you all in class!

Tuesday's Readings

Going along with what Hadley said, I also would not have understood a lick of Mullen’s poem without Jess’s entry, and even then once I saw the connections I still didn’t get the point of it. I thought it was a little too clever because the poem’s meaning is not easily visible. It’s too complicated to decipher and that takes away from it, I think.

However I really enjoyed the other poems. I thought the Boy George poem was sweet and quirky. I didn’t really know who Boy George was or what he looked like, and after Googling him and realizing oh-THAT’S-who-he-is, I thought the poem was even more brilliant. In my opinion, the diction is the soul of this poem. Phrases like, “photos of exquisitely dressed redheads” and “lie around my house eating pineapple” seem completely random, yet I love it. And the bit about how the writer misinterprets Boy George’s lyrics made me so happy; I misinterpret lyrics all the time.

I also liked the other poems. The Snow Man had a very tranquil and sad tone, I thought. It was beautiful and fitting for this time of year, but kind of depressing at the same time. But hey, that’s winter I guess. My favorite was probably Auden’s poem just because it’s so beautiful and evocative. For me, it’s one of those poems that I feel I understand but hard for me to put into words.

Blog Entry Week 2

Out of all the readings assigned for class tomorrow, the ones that I enjoyed the most were from the book. My favorite poem was "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens. Although I struggled to come away with a clear understanding of the meaning behind it I really liked the imagery used and the description of winter. The understanding that I came to so far, although I am still somewhat confused, and most likely off base, is that Wallace was commenting on the power of perception.  At first read I thought the description of winter was beautiful, but the more I read it the more it became a description of the speakers state of mind, than a description of an actual wintry place. The speaker felt very isolated and disconnected from the world about him. To me the poem seems to contrast what is actually present in this world of emptiness, and what the speaker of the poem imagines and perceives there to be in the world. The last line "the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is" seems to me to show that ultimately there is little distinction between perception and reality, but the speaker exists only in what he perceives. In a sense it seems kind of sad, because the speaker is removed from his own experience of life.  The other poem I struggled to find the meaning of was "Between". As many times as I read it I could not seem to make any sense out of it. On the whole "Between" was probably one of my least favorite poems I've read, for some reason I just couldn't get past the structure and what I found to be random selection of the subjects chosen. Hopefully, with the discussion in class I will be able to make better sense of it. See you all tomorrow!

Jenny

Another Blog

The poem that struck me the most was "Between" by Harryette Mullen. When I read it the first time I Thought the poem was about relationships. When I read the poem in the column formation I interpreted the poem with a better understanding. In column A when I read it virtically it seemed the speaker could be a woman. Mentioning words like "my ass,good, heaven" and then "shit, yesterday, you" I had a feeling the speaker sensed a feeling betrayed. Then I read column C. The speaker mentioned words such as "bad, deep blue sea, and hell" then mentioned "me, this morning, and today." I still got the same understanding that I got from Column A but I realized the meaning of the words were backwards. I understood a sense of forgiveness. However, when I read column B I got a sense of betrayal from the speakers boyfriend or husband. When the poet write words like " my eyes, his legs, her breasts, my thighs and then your toes" I got a sense that there was another woman involved with the speakers partner.
I also realized that this poem and some of the others from the readings this week were very similar to our reading last week. With the sense of betrayal and marital issues the bluebeard poems came to mind.
See you all Tuesday!

And It's Tuesday Again

Though I may be blind, I vaguely seee the connection between the readings for Tuesday’s class, especially between “Dear Boy George”, “Lullaby”, “The Snow Man”, and “Between”. Firstly, the way “Dear Boy George” is constructed, to me, reads like a poem however is not in a poetic format. I am distraught as to why the poet did this. Also, as I put myself into the story of “Dear Boy George” I believe it would be very strange to be George and having someone write a small excerpt on how they want to spend time with you eating pineapple and piercing your ears. It seems as if the girl who wrote this does not have one clear message for George, but like she just wants to fill the void of communication with anything to get attention from George. I believe that as George, I would be freaked out by this piece.
As for the “Lullaby” poem, this is a very settling and calming piece with a distinct reason for every sentence. “Lullaby” seems to me to be about the point of living as a mortal and loving as a mortal but yet taking in and never forgetting every minute of true love. “The Snow Man” is also a very settling poem as it quite descriptive of one specific moment in time. In “Lullaby” Auden writes, “Not a whisper, not a thought, not a kiss nor look be lost”, this to me is the poet telling the reader to take in every moment that you experience with love and never forget it. “The Snow Man” seems to be a short poem that is describing a specific moment that Auden is referring to.
However between all the poems read for this class, “Between” was the most confusing to me. Without Jess’s blog of how she figured out the poem, this would still look like a jumbled mess to me (SO THANKS JESS!) But as I read what Jess wrote, it now is clearer of what the poet is writing about however I do not understand the reasoning for the ‘betweens’ Mullen uses. Why did Mullen choose to use these comparisons?
I guess that is a question I will have to have answered in class…
So until then…good night and good luck.
-Hadley

Week 2 Blog Entry

This week’s readings were quite interesting. I can’t think of many other classes that would offer me up an extremely wordy essay about cultural studies, and then offer up a prose poem about Boy George. I’m not quite sure I fully grasped David Shumway’s essay, so it will be interesting to discuss it in class and find out what’s really going on there.
I did, however, really enjoy Harryette Mullen’s “Between.” I’m a sucker for a creative poetry like that, one where the poet uses their words and their order to create a meaning beyond what is simply being written. The name escapes me right now, but in high school I remember reading another creative poem that was about a knife cutting, or something a long those line, and the poet split theirs lines in half to represent the cutting of the discussed knife.
The “Dear Boy George” prose was interesting to read, though (as stated before) a little awkward since it seems to be addressed straight to Boy George, and not the person reading it. This makes it a little eerie, as it seems like we should not be reading her private letter.
Finally, there are the two poems from the book. I thought “The Snow Man” was quite fitting for the time of year, though I felt like Wallace Stevens had quite the depressing view on winter. The last line, “Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is,” does do a nice job of describing the emptiness of winter though. Finally, “Lullaby” was a little harder to understand. Each time I read it, I seem to find a different meaning to it, none of which I’m confident are the right readings of the poem. So this is another poem where I’ll be interested in hearing what the class has to say about it.

Some Thoughts on Shumway's Piece

While Shumway's diction, syntax, and conceptual organization prove that he is a stylish essayist who is tackling an incredibly broad and largely undefinable topic (cultural studies), there is one area in particular that I am resilient to agree with.

On page 106 of his article, Shumway states "In a sense, my move here is to try to embrace the wide application of 'taste' that Wordsworth rejected...in doing so I'm also appealing to the more literal meaning of 'taste' as a particular kind of sense experience". The main issue that I find with this commentary is that not only does Wordsworth believe in a singular sort of "taste", but he also acknowledges numerous forms of it. Take for example his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads where Wordsworth expresses that the only true poet is the lowliest peasant. Sure, Wordworth does not accept a conventional definiton of taste; he does not, after all, find taste to be relative to one's wealth or cultured-ness. Rather, he believes that he who is best connected to the earth and overall the most natural is best suited to capture the essence of true human emotion. In other words, Wordsworth does believe that certain individuals have a natural taste for self-expression.

On another level, Wordsworth would most definitely accept taste as a "sense experience". After all, Wordsworth did devote a hearty portion of his poetic career to understanding the Laws of Association and the role sense impressions play in our lives. In his Two-Part Prelude Wordsworth reflects upon his life, starting with childhood. He recalls sounds, smells, and sights from his earliest and most present days. As with the rest of human sensation, taste is no doubt acknowledged by Wordsworth.

On a last note, maybe I'm just misinterpreting what Shumway is saying!:D After all, I'm no scholar.

Hope you guys enjoyed your weekend, see you tomorrow!

Comments on the readings for Tuesday

The Boy George love letter was great. It totally exemplifies the feelings you might have when you’re “in love” (or for a better term, infatuated) with an idol or celebrity. For example, I wish Gregory House was a real doctor, and then I’d come down with some rare disease, and THEN I’d go see House who could spend all his time diagnosing me.

But that’s a story for another day.

What really struck me was Mullen’s Between. Did anyone else notice that it’s comprised of words that are used with in between? I first thought about it when I looked up Shinola (it’s a shoe polish, and the phrase ‘don’t know the difference between shit and shinola’ mean’s you’re an idiot). Woah. Shit also happens to be in the poem.

How about between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea?
Between Scylla and Charybdis

Between a rock and a hard place

Between the sheets

Between her (or his!) thighs

Between jobs

Etc.

That’s pretty clever, there, Mullen.

The best part about the poem Between is that you can interpret that poem in so many different ways, because it really has no clear intent of a meaning. I really enjoyed it.

See you all on Tuesday,
Jess Young

Quick Thoughts on the Readings for Tuesday...

If you look at the time and the day of the week that this is posted, you will probably think I am a huge nerd. And maybe you are right. But really, I am just a runner/jumper who has a track meet all day long tomorrow and who needs to get a little ahead on Friday nights. That being said…

I have a few thoughts about the readings we have to do for Tuesday (yes, I already did the reading… I have a busy weekend ahead!). Firstly, I think that the Shumway reading was kind of helpful in developing some idea of what the “Candy and Medicine” assignment is all about. I thought it was interesting and it kind of got some ideas flowing in my head about what I should write for a poem. I think one of the most interesting ideas in the article was the fact that “All pleasures are learned, and all may be increased by further learning” (p. 107). I guess I never really thought about the fact that the idea of what is pleasurable or satisfying to an individual is not an inherent trait, but more of an acquired taste. I don’t really know that this idea will necessarily show up in my poem, but I did think it was interesting.

Also, I thought that the three poetic works in the assignment were very different—there didn’t seem to be a blatant common thread between them, which I kind of liked. Each had a different format, a unique theme and a very different style. I liked the variety. Though the poems are starkly different, I still found after reading them that they shared a certain characteristic: each seemed to develop a sense of privacy that I felt was being invaded by reading the poem. I have read Stevens’ “The Snow Man” before; I like the silent, peaceful, empty scene created by the imagery in the poem. It’s a scene that could be easily disturbed, like newly fallen snow disrupted by the messy footprints of kids playing and sledding. Reading it along with the other two poems (Mullen’s “Between” and Gerstler’s “Dear Boy George”) kind of highlighted this aspect of the poem—the idea that we as readers are interrupting something or possibly invading something that is not our own. Mullen’s poem seems so sensual and somewhat erotic, a very personal reflection on an interaction between two people. As a reader, I felt that I was invading the intimacy shared by the two people. I felt almost awkward reading it. Gerstler’s poem had the feeling of a personal love note. Addressed to Boy George, it implies that the reader is not necessarily the intended audience. This creates a sense that by reading the poem and learning the very personal information within it, privacy is being invaded. We are meddling in something that does not involve us. I found it really interesting that each of these poems, though so different, shared this element.

These are just some thoughts for now… See you all on Tuesday!

Elizabeth Alexander Links

Hi!
It seemed to me like our class might be particularly interested in Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem, only the fourth such poem in the history of the United States (the first three were Robert Frost's "The Gift Outright" at Kennedy's inauguration, Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning" at Clinton's first inauguration, and Miller Williams's "Of History and Hope" at Clinton's second inauguration).

the text of Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem

Elizabeth Alexander reads her inaugural poem

the text of Obama's inaugural speech

Elizabeth Alexander's website, with thoughts about Obama's inauguration

an interview with Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander on the Colbert Report

Craig Conroy Assignment 0

Craig Conroy

Assignment Zero

Biography time, I guess. As stated above, my name is Craig Conroy and I am an English major with a focus on creative writing. I enjoy writing, perhaps I revere it a little, so it seemed like a natural choice for me to make my secret dalliance public with a formal declaration of interest. Why do I enjoy it? Its an art form. I like to think of myself as an artist (lame, I know), but that’s just the way I am right now. For me, writing is one of the most complete expressions of thought, feeling, and just about anything else a human being can conjure up inside our little heads.

I am from Massachusetts, a town called Sharon, located to the south of Boston. As far as what it is like there, I don’t know if there are many drastic differences between the area and Canton, NY. Sure, the area is definitely more crowded; there is a major city nearby, so it is a bit more developed. But there are similarities; the climate is generally similar, perhaps a little warmer, but not too much so that I can’t complain about the cold constantly.

Aside from writing my main hobby is acting and participating in the theatre program here at school. Acting is sort of my first love. Before I ever became a “writer” I was an actor first and foremost. I think I was first drawn into writing because of its close relationship with all things dramatic. Writing serves to stoke theatrical fires, to inspire great words to be performed. The shift in my priorities seemed a simple choice, and one I have not regretted.

I’ll be honest and say that I don’t have many relevant influences, as far as poetry goes. My favorite poem of all time is John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It’s long, epically long in fact, but when I read it I felt a great connection. It’s the kind of work that you look at and just feel, “this is what poetry should be.”

For me, good poetry resembles the style adopted by Milton. It is a sublime expression. Poetry should be an expression created through our most prodigious attempts at mastering language. It should be lyrical, mesmerizing even, and is always to be considered a “beautiful” thing. Beauty, as lame as it sounds, is probably the most important aspect of poetry for me. Every poem should just be beautiful.

I am taking this class so that I might be able to improve my prose style. I have become a little bored with my own techniques, so I want to expand it by adopting the lyrical styles found in poetry.

Bridget's first post

I am studying psychology with a minor in communications.  My plan is to attend Law School after St. Lawrence and considering you can major in practically anything as a pre-law student, I figured I should choose two areas i not only enjoy, but tend to excel in.  Also, my high school was small and did not offer too many extra courses so I only had taken one or two psychology classes and knew I wanted to take more based on how much I liked them.  Communications has also always interested me because I am a very outgoing and ambitious person and I figured it would be a nice balance to Psychology.  So far, both of them have been working out and pertain quite nicely to the legal world!

I am from Avon, Connecticut, which is a small town in the Farmington Valley about ten miles west of Hartford.  Avon is a small town in which mostly everyone knows one another.  I graduated in a class of about two hundred students, and 100% of us went on to college.  I like to deny t hat my town portrays the typical "Connecticut" stereotype, but now when I live someone else, I realize that it does. Personally I think it only portrays the positive aspects of a small New England town where everyone is nice to one another, but our rival town, Canton, Ct, oddly enough, will tell you that we are all stuck up snobs.  I just think I've lived a very privileged life, which I am very thankful for, especially since I am able to come to an institution such as St. Lawrence.  I live with my parents, two of my three sisters, Marisa and Grace (16 and 14).  Courtney, my older sister who is 22 and graduated St. Lawrence last year, now live fifteen minutes away in West Hartford, Connecticut.  I also have two kittens, Luke and Sammy, who I miss very much!

Besides writing, I enjoy playing volleyball.  I was the captain of my varsity team in high school, and we were the state champions my sophomore year, and came very close to it my last two years.  I decided not to play in college because I ended the sport on such a high note, that I did not want anything such as a new team or coach to ruin how I felt about the sport, and I heard that at times playing at a college level can be so stressful that athletes often loose their passion for it.  I also love to sing.  I was in an a capella group in high school and hope to join the singing sinners here at St. Lawrence when I can find the time.  On campus I am the Vice President of Thelmo, which is the student government here.  I also work at the Men's Ice Hockey games, as well as at the University daycare.  I love to watch Criminal Minds and Game Night with my friends on Mondays.

For the most part I have had good feedback on my work.  For my FYP and FYS last year I was fortunate enough to have an extremely helpful professor who not only always gave extensive feedback on every assignment, but offered to meet with each student to go over our work to help make it better.  In the process she helped me understand how to do proper drafts so that an impressive final product could easily be reached.  Because I learned how to do this in her class, in the classes where feedback from teachers was lacking, I was able to do fine on my own.

To be honest I do not know much about poetry or poets, which is part of the reason I chose to take this class.  In my junior year of high school however, I had a teacher who was very passionate about poetry.  He introduced us to Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost who I ended up quoting in my senior yearbook (from his The road not taken).  We also studied the work of E.E. Cummings.  Call me cheesy, but as a sap for love poems, I carry your heart with me, is one of my all time favorites.  I enjoy reading and trying to interpret E.E. Cummings' more difficult poems such as Snow.  Admittedly I have not been able to mimic his style, but I would love to be able to.

Good poetry makes me feel good.  It makes me think and makes me want to read more.  It inspires me to write, and instills a passion in me to try to articulate my words so beautifully about something.  When I read I carry your heart with me, I want to write such a poem about someone I love.  If I ever received a good poem from someone as a gift I think it would be one of my favorite gifts of all time.  Usually, I can't really place my finger on specifics that make a poem "good," I just go based on how it makes me feel.  If I feel any of the above feelings after reading a poem, then in my opinion it's a good poem. Perhaps by the end of this semester I will learn to be more critical of poems.  This relates to the last question about what I hope to learn, as well as being able to mimic E.E. Cummings.

I'm Posting This for Tad

Here's Tad's blog post for this week:

Thus far at St. Lawrence I have taken the majority of my classes in Psychology and Economics. I believe however that I am leaning towards becoming a psychology major because it comes easier to me. I have continued to take psychology classes because the subject tries to explain out actions as humans. I enjoy reading about how past psychologists have come to the many conclusions about why we as humans do this and that. I continue to take economics classes because I came to St. Lawrence thinking that this was what I wanted to pursue. I find economics courses interesting because I think it is important to understand all the concrete ideas that are used by not just smaller companies but our country as a whole to be successful. Also, I find it very important to know what is going on in the current economy over the past year with everything that has been happening.

I am from Darien Connecticut which is a suburb of New York City. It has about 20,000 people but seems much smaller. Most people from my town commute to the city for work.
In my previous classes I would say that I have had good feedback on my work. In my FYP which was an English course, my professor stressed the importance of gaining as much feedback as you possibly can as a writer. Since then I have started to ask for more help in revising my work.

I have two favorite poets. One is of course Shel Silverstein. "Where the side walk ends" was probably the book that introduced me to poetry and I remember in seventh grade having to memorize one of his poems and present it to the class. I was scared at first but the humor of all of his poems eased my stage fright. The other poet that I have enjoyed was my senior year modern poetry teacher. She has never published any of her work that I know of but she taught me alot about the subject and would often times share something she had written. You could tell that poetry was her way of expressing her self and I really respected that and became a better poet my self when I realized that.

I think that good poetry has meaning and not necessarily the same meaning for everyone. A good poet causes its reader to think about its context and extract that meaning. I also believe that good poetry can paint a picture. While you read the words you can picture each line in your head.

In this class I want to be refreshed in the different types of poetry that I learned in highschool. I want to find which form best fits my writing style and i want to learn how I can come up with ideas for what to write about.

Thanks
Tad Schwartz

I'm Posting This for Brian

Here's Brian's blog post for this week:

I am studying economics. I enjoy economics because I like money, so therefore I want to learn how it works and possibly how to make more of it. I also like economics because it combines math with the way things work in the world. I also hope that it can lead me to a job where I will be able to meet and socialize with many people, while combining my other academic interests such as math and psychology.

I am from Queensbury New York, and it is beautiful there. There is much to do all year round as we have a lake nearby and many mountains to hike and snowboard. It is a very nice town and area but I am sure it is much like any other town around the country.

I really enjoy hockey. It is my favorite sport to play and to watch. My favorite team is the New York Rangers. I also love to play lacrosse and just have fun. I also am a huge fan of the the New York Giants and watch them religiously every Sunday.

I have had pretty good experiences with getting feedback from any of my work. I really haven’t had any bad experiences that I can remember. Every time I have gotten feedback at St. Lawrence, whether it be professors or by students, they have always taken the time to show me what I can do better and have shown me what I have down wrong as well. This helps me recognize what I am doing for the next time so I don’t keep falling into the same mistakes.

Honestly I really do not know of any poets that I really admire. I just have not had really enough experience in poetry or remember any poems that I really liked. Other than musicians who I kind of do consider poets I don’t have anything to say. As far as musicians go I really do enjoy Jonathon Davis (Korn), Jim Morrison (The Doors), Maynard James Keenan (Tool), Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin), Lil’ Wayne, and Roger Waters (Pink Floyd). I like all of these musicians because of the emotion that they put into their lyrics and you can read what they are feeling without even having to listen to the music and it can be really powerful stuff.

I obviously don’t have any expertise in poetry but what I think is good about poetry is that it allows people to express how they are feeling in a fun sounding way. I also think that poetry has lead to the greatness of music.

Honestly I hope to learn a new way on how to express my ideas and feelings in possibly a better way but definitely in a different way. I also hope to actually learn about poems and poets because I like to learn new things, and this is a topic that I no next to nothing about.

Candice Blake

Hey, Candice here. I’m studying languages, specifically Spanish and French though I wish I could have also taken Arabic and Italian. And Japanese... And Chinese… Basically I would have taken all of the language classes if I had the time. I like languages because I’ve always had a knack for picking them up, and I think their cool. A foreign language is like a secret code waiting to be cracked; it’s mysterious and beautiful, and as soon as you get it the secret finally reveals itself to you and it clicks. It’s a pretty awesome feeling I think, the moment a foreign language is no longer foreign to you. I’m majoring in Spanish because I’ve taken it forrrrreeeeevvvverrrr, I wasn’t getting any better at it I felt, but I didn’t want to give up on it. I went abroad to Spain my junior year and it was there that my Spanish got the kick-in-the-ass it needed to go from alright to really good. I’m minoring in French because I’ve always wanted to learn the language and visit France, and after a few intro classes here and studying abroad in France sophomore year, I had enough credits to minor in it, so it kinda just happened.

I like to say I’m from nowhere and everywhere. I was born in Queens, New York but lived there for about 3 years when I was young and never really got to know the area, so I’m not from there from there. My family moved around a lot when I was little: I’ve lived in Philadelphia, Hawaii, Miami, NYC again, Long Island, and the list goes on… My family’s currently living in a town called Fayetteville in the not-so-great state of Georgia. It’s a small town/suburb and it’s boring. And hot. Oh, and I guess the trees are nice… …yeah, that’s about it.

Besides languages and writing (fiction, non-fiction, and really bad poetry), I like to dance (all styles, from ballet to plain ol’ getting down), I like to read, sleep, watch movies not TV, travel, knit, and eat.

Regarding feedback on my work, I’d say it’s been positive, I guess. I’ve never received negative or really harsh criticism, but I sometimes thought that people didn’t always get what I was writing about because of my subject matter. Not too many people in my last writing class, creative non-fiction, could relate to the experiences I wrote about. I kind of felt guilty writing about something no one else could relate to. I felt uncomfortable sharing most of the time because I was worried my subject matter would make everyone else uncomfortable. The feedback I received wasn’t bad just very vague, and I realized that perhaps that’s the outcome of writing to an audience that can’t identify with the subject matter.

Some of the poets I really like are Gwendolyn Brooks, E.E. Cummings, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Ruben Dario. I love the word choice in their poetry and the way it flows. I love their poetry because they can exactly describe what and how I’m feeling and they do it so beautifully. It’s because of them that I got into poetry. I don’t know what constitutes “good” poetry, but I know that I like poems that create strong images, poems that invoke strong emotions, poems I can relate to, poems that have descriptions and diction that are so good it’s delicious.

I decided to take this class because I wanted to read more poetry. I haven’t heard of that many poets; I know the four I love and a few other big names like Dickinson, Whitman and Frost, and that’s it. I want to branch out and get to know the writing style of other poets and see what else I like. Needless to say, I’m really excited about the Norton anthology book.

Assignment O

I am studying both history and psychology and am planning on majoring in both subjects. Initially I was very interested in psychology and decided to make that my major however in time I lost some enthusiasm for the field and rather than stop taking classes in the subject I began to take more history classes so that I could major in that as well. I enjoy studying history very much and also like the research and writing process when writing a historical paper.
I am from Albany, NY about three and a half hours south of St. Lawrence. Albany is a small city that is a bit warmer than Canton and is much more crowded featuring miles and miles of suburbs and lots of traffic. One thing I love about coming up to the North Country is that traffic is almost nonexistent.
Aside from writing I love to snowboard and to play guitar and to write music. I take pleasure in a lot of winter sports such as snow shoeing and ice skating. Listening to music is also very important to me I hardly go anywhere without my Ipod on.
I have had good and bad experiences with getting feedback on my work. I tend to have more trouble writing for English classes than I do in history but for the most part I have received relatively positive feedback. Although this is usually the case I took introduction to poetry last fall and received probably the lowest grade I have ever been given on a written assignment. Although the feedback in this instance was negative it really did not get to me and I improved with time.
When it comes to writing poetry I would say that I am influenced by poems I have read by Alan Ginsberg and some poems by Robert Frost. A poem by Frost titled “Provide Provide” stands out as a poem I really liked to read put much thought into attempting to understand. I was also very fascinated with a few poems by T.S. Elliot such as Prufrock. I have read a few of the sonnets written by Shakespeare and found those to also be quite captivating. Another influence which is somewhat poetic is music by Bob Dylan I have listened to him for many years and feel that through listening to his music and lyrics I was able to be more appreciative of poetry and more understanding when I was learning some of the finer points in my intro class. I really admire the work of Bob Dylan maybe because it was set to music it eased me into the truly listening to the words and attempting to find a broader meaning to them. Even though I have now read works by many well known poets I still find some songs by bob Dylan to be quite remarkable and to have a great affect on me.
I think that good poetry makes you experience emotion whether it is by relating it to your own life or just empathizing with the writer a good poem should make you feel something and because of that will stay with you. We discussed in class about how the poem should be targeted toward the audience and I think that this is also very important. Other than this complex or simple, short or long, happy or sad, a poem should make you feel and understand, even if your interpretation is not exactly what the author was attempting to convey.
In this class I hope examine some poems that I have not yet read or discussed. I also hope to put into practice what I have learned from other works and use this to create meaningful poems of my own. I also hope that some of the material which we will look at in class will influence my thinking and my writing.

Greetings!

I’m Sarah Hathaway. I’m majoring in English with a writing concentration.I could go on for ages about why I love my major. Most of my reasons all come back to the fact that I love words. More importantly, I love what we can do with words and language. It is my greatest and most overwhelming desire to be an author. I particularly enjoy the fantasy genre and I am currently working on a fantasy book geared towards sixth grade students. I am ridiculously enthusiastic about writing and almost equally so about reading.

I’m from Cape Vincent, New York. I usually have to use several points of reference when describing the location of my home town to anyone not from the immediate area. For simplicity’s sake, my itty-bitty village is located where the St. Lawrence River meets Lake Ontario. It takes about an hour and a half for me to drive home. I absolutely love my home. Our village is so small that, honest to goodness, there is not one single stop light. Speaking of lights, however, we do have Tibbett’s Point Light House and it is a great source of pride in our little community. I live on what used to be a French nobleman’s farm; built in the late 1850s from limestone quarried at the creak located a half mile down the road. My nearest neighbor is about a mile down the road and I count the freedom of living in such a rural area as one of my greatest blessings. I lived a childhood of immense freedom and splendor that I would not trade for anything in this entire world of pleasures.

The pleasures that I most prize in this life are simple. I love to laugh and I try to fill each of my days with as much laughter as I am granted. I also adore reading. In the words of Jane Austen, “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” Personally I could not agree more but I will admit to the fact that I am not vehement in my accordance with this statement. I find long meandering walks with no set destination irresistible. This is probably due to my wandering thoughts; I love to see where I find myself at the end. I take great enjoyment in the serenity of nature, especially under tree canopies and beside bodies of water.

Moving on to feedback about my writing… in Theo's Techniques of Fiction class last semester I had a wonderful experience with feedback. The first workshop day was a little formal and somewhat awkward but by the end of it our group had figured out how we could best help each other. By the end of the semester I was sad to leave the group behind. I find the kinds of criticism and advice that stem from these workshops to be extremely useful. I have high hopes for this poetry class.

I love the way John Keats makes words and images dance across pages to rhythms in ways I can only hope to dream of doing. His way with words is almost like magic, spectacular and almost unbelievable. I also find the work of Emily Dickinson extremely motivating. I enjoy the poetry of Robert Frost, and Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentile Into That Goodnight" is one of my all-time favorite poems.

I think one of the most wonderful aspects of poetry is that there are so many forms; no one person could fully explore them all without doing most forms an injustice. Poetry has the capability to be both simple and complex, almost in the same way that life is both simple and complex. Poetry offers both the writer and the reader a great deal of freedom and that freedom is a precious thing. It is truly an art, and one that I wish I were more competent at.

My goal for this class is to grow as a writer and a poet. It is a simple goal but it has the potential to be a difficult one for me to achieve. I am not a poet, though I have dabbled in poetry. If I cannot improve, I hope to come to a better understanding and appreciation of poetry by the end of this course.

Cheers!

Tad Schwartz

Thus far at St. Lawrence I have taken the majority of my classes in Psychology and Economics. I believe however that I am leaning towards becoming a psychology major because it comes easier to me. I have continued to take psychology classes because the subject tries to explain out actions as humans. I enjoy reading about how past psychologists have come to the many conclusions about why we as humans do this and that. I continue to take economics classes because I came to St. Lawrence thinking that this was what I wanted to pursue. I find economics courses interesting because I think it is important to understand all the concrete ideas that are used by not just smaller companies but our country as a whole to be successful. Also, I find it very important to know what is going on in the current economy over the past year with everything that has been happening.
I am from Darien Connecticut which is a suburb of New York City. It has about 20,000 people but seems much smaller. Most people from my town commute to the city for work.
In my previous classes I would say that I have had good feedback on my work. In my FYP which was an English course, my professor stressed the importance of gaining as much feedback as you possibly can as a writer. Since then I have started to ask for more help in revising my work.
I have two favorite poets. One is of course Shel Silverstein. "Where the side walk ends" was probably the book that introduced me to poetry and I remember in seventh grade having to memorize one of his poems and present it to the class. I was scared at first but the humor of all of his poems eased my stage fright. The other poet that I have enjoyed was my senior year modern poetry teacher. She has never published any of her work that I know of but she taught me alot about the subject and would often times share something she had written. You could tell that poetry was her way of expressing her self and I really respected that and became a better poet my self when I realized that.
I think that good poetry has meaning and not necessarily the same meaning for everyone. A good poet causes its reader to think about its context and extract that meaning. I also believe that good poetry can paint a picture. While you read the words you can picture each line in your head.
In this class I want to be refreshed in the different types of poetry that I learned in high school. I want to find which form best fits my writing style and i want to learn how I can come up with ideas for what to write about.

Assignment 0

I am first year and so I haven't declared my major yet, but at this point I am planning on being an English major with an Education and French minor. I love working with kids and have always enjoyed my classes in school, and therefore I think that teaching would be a good profession for me. I am leaning towards studying English in the hopes of someday becoming an English teacher because it has always been the subject that I have enjoyed most in school. I love reading and writing, and I really enjoy analyzing and discussing literature. I decided on adding a minor in French, because I have taken almost 8 years of French and would really like to do a semester abroad in France. I am hoping to someday become fluent.

I am from North Sutton, New Hampshire. It's a small, country town with one general store that has wood floors and at least one, dust-covered can of any food you might ever want to buy. Although its very rural, we're not too far from a lot of ski mountains, and Concord is only 30 min away, so there are always things to do. It's one of those towns where everybody knows everyone, but as for me, I think thats kind of nice. 

Aside from writing, I enjoy being active, going outdoors, and running. I am currently on the field hockey team here at St. Lawrence. I also love to knit, read, and hang out with friends in my spare time.

So far I feel like I have had rather good feedback on my work. My teachers have been generally supportive and offered positive feedback for my analytical or creative essays. I generally tend to be pretty shy about sharing my work with my classmates so to be honest I don't know very much about their responses to it.  

I wouldn't say at this point I have had a very strong influence on my writing from any particular poet as I haven't really attempted to write very many poems before. However, some of my favorite poets that I have read have been Lucille Clifton and Robert Frost. I haven't read much of Clifton's work, but I really liked her poem Blessing the Boats. I am not particularly sure why it stood out so much for me, but I guess I felt like it was relatable and applicable to almost anyone at any turning point in their life, and somehow it just stuck with me. We read it in one of my high school english classes and it has been one of my favorite poems ever since.  

Personally, I think poetry is good because most often its not what you see at first glance. I like the way a short number of lines can surprise you with unexpected meaning and depth. I like that it has so many components, the rhythm, the sound of the words, the description, and images, but beneath the basics there is always something deeper to be found. You can read a poem ten times and not quite understand what the author was intending to say, but once it clicks you are left with a good feeling, and an appreciation for both the poem and the author. 

I have loved reading poetry in all of my other English classes and it is something that I have always wanted to be able to do, yet I feel like it is something I have never honestly or earnestly attempted to do. I've never really written many poems and so in this class I am hoping to give myself a chance. Alongside learning about other poets and their poems, I am hoping to find a starting place and a direction in writing some of my own. 

Assignment 0- Hadley

As of the end of last semester I am officially a Communication (PCA) major with an English and Sociology minor. Though I have only taken one communication class thus far I believe that it is the right major for me as I truly believe that communication is the basis in which the world functions. It is truly mind boggling to me that people communicate to each other, yet the do not even realize it because body language and facial expressions tells more than worlds. I truly look forward to continuing my study of communication as it is a vital part of the world.

I was born and raised on the upper west side of Manhattan, NYC. When people discover this about me they say, "wow, so like where did you go to school?"- assuming that I went to boarding school or private school, but that is not me at all. I went to very good public schools on the upper west side. Though people often assume that the city is a 'scary' place and your automatically going to get robbed or stabbed if you go there, this has yet to happen to me (knock on wood). The way I grew up was not like a stab scene from "CSI: New York", nor was it like the life of those in "Gossip Girl". The fact that I lived in a city with public transportation was always freeing as by the age of 12 I was traveling around the city by my lonesome. However an interesting part about my life is that on the weekends (every-single-weekend) my family would travel to our 'country house' about four hours away from the city. It was in the country that I first started riding horses, my number one hobby.

Though it may seem cliche and corny, I'll say it straight out- horses are my life. Like ever other little girl at age 4 I was obsessed with horses, however luckily for me, my parents helped me pursue this dream and my skilles have developed tremendously. My parents have always beleived in my dedication to the equestrian sport and have supported my desire emotionally and financially- I have always been very lucky for this.

I have had good and bad experiences when it comes to writing. I will never forget my fourth grade teacher who thought I had major reading and writing problems. She always gave me bad grades on assignments and would pick on my when I was supposed to be reading. Becasuse of her severe doubt in my work I have been emotionally scared but have overcome the fear of other people critiquing my work. Ever since this specific teacher I have not had trouble with critique since- I acutally have always been very good at editing other people's work, however never my own.

Though I have never studied poetry, when I was younger I always enjoyed poems out of the book, Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein, a colaboration of fun child-friendly poems. Looking back on my experience with this book I envy the way the author constructed poems that were very relevant to children's lives, yet always had deeper meanings.

Good poetry is good because it has a meaning, and though it may not be easy to find or understand, it is still evident to the reader. There is a type of rythm and theme that is evident in the poem, and there is a particular vernacular used consistently throughout the piece.

I have never truly learned to appreciate the beauty of poetry or even the reason for poetry. Not only would I like to be able to write poetry better but I would like to truly appreciate it as it is another part of communication. Unlike verbal and physical communication, poetry is part of written communication that will be around for years to come.

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I am a PCA major, which stands for Performance and Communication Arts. It was formally called Speech and Theater. My class is the first to go through this new PCA major. Hopefully, after we graduate next year as the guinea pigs the rest will be history as a smooth sailing, concrete major. For my first two years, I was taking courses to fulfill a Psychology major. I had a change of heart and decided to move into Communication classes. The discussion based, free-spirited feeling was more for me. I decided I would rather be on television or reporting the traffic for a radio station than attending grad school for an occupation that changed everyday. I am still uncertain of my future career but I do know what would be fun for me and I am going to do just that. My major fits myself and I enjoy it. I am a PCA.

I am from Castorland, NY. It is only an hour and fifteen minutes south of campus. It is very much like Canton, but smaller. I am a small town girl. I like it.

Aside from writing, what are my interests and hobbies? Well, I need to clarify. I honestly I do not like to write very much. That is not entirely true. Basically, I do not think I am very good at it. I've never blogged, but I think I could do this all day. I like to write my thoughts in a very non-formal way. When it comes to being concise, that is not me. I have too many ideas and the reader is usually confused. This is my first "English" course. I hope to have writing as an interest in the near future. I enjoy athletics. I love to run through the woods for very lengthy periods of time. I am very competitive because of my athletic background. I also enjoy cooking. Sometimes I wish I had gone to culinary school, but instead I watch hours of Top Chef and The Food Channel.

I already introduced the next idea of getting feedback on my work. I have been told that my writing is not concise, or it needs to be "tight." This is not terribly negative but it creates less confidence in my writing skills. Can you be too creative? Sometimes I get too many ideas and try to use all of them. If I only use one of those great ideas, the others may feel left out. I'm sort of kidding.

I won't Google search famous poets to answer the next bullet. I'll be honest. No poet stands out to me when I am asked for my favorite or who I detest. I have read Langston Hughes, Robert Frost and all of those other famous poets. I like some of them. I guess I can say what I like and what I don't and in the future I can attribute these characteristics to specific individuals. I think I like poems that rhyme. I know I like to write rhyming poems over reading them. This makes me wonder if others may not like to read my rhyming poems. I get annoyed with too much meaning. I like to dig into a poem but there is a stopping point. When a poem could mean anything or is very confusing, it frustrates me. I took a poetry class in high school. I don't remember much. I liked it, but it was so long ago. I think once we begin reading and discussing things will come back to me. I do remember one teacher I had saying that poems can be interpreted differently by different individuals and another teacher saying that poems only had one meaning. My classmates would try to guess what the author was trying to say. We would answer, "This is about death. You can tell in line 5..." She would respond with something completely different and explain it was about a wedding. We were so confused and frustrated. Of course, the teacher had the answer key and the poet had explained what his poem meant. Well, I do not like when you need an answer key to find the meaning of a poem.

I think good poetry makes you think. It is like searching into someone's mind and their emotions. Poetry can also be pretty. It sounds lame and hopelessly romantic but reading beautiful poetry makes you jealous of whom it is about or for.

I hope I can find meaning for my writing through this class. By exploring effective, meaningful poetry I might be able to use poet’s examples of effective sense for my writing.

· Currently, I am an English major. I love to write and discuss literature so I think that that English is a good fit for me. However, I never knew this until this year, my sophomore year of college. I am also a moth minor. I don’t know why, it just happens to be something I am good at. The field that I am most passionate about is education. I am an education minor even though I wish it was a major. I hope to graduate with a certificate to teach in New York. I am currently a tutor at a school district in East Governor. I assist fourth graders throughout the day. I enjoy it so much that I know I would love to flourish in the field of education.
· I am from Garden City, Long Island. Garden City is a suburban town right outside the New York City. It is at least six to seven hours south of Canton. Long Island is a very crowded place with a lot of people. I am never bored at home. There is always somewhere to go or something to do. I find Garden City to be completely different from Canton New York and yet I am still fond of both places.
· The mall is only five minutes away from my home. Because of the easy commute I enjoy to shop with my friends, a lot. I enjoy going to the gym, reading and hanging out with my family. For some reason I always tend to write I like going to the gym even though I hate it. But, if I don’t go then I wouldn’t be myself. So, I guess I do enjoy the gym after all.
· When I receive feedback on my work I never have a bad experience. I feel a person is only trying to help, not criticize. Every time I get feedback from professor it usually is things I can improve on and so on. When I get feedback from my peers, I am thankful for the help but I don’t always use it. I have gotten both types of feedback from previous workshops. I find workshops very helpful for a writer.
· The poets I enjoy are Walt Whitman and Robert Frost. I enjoy both the poets because Robert frost always seems to bring me back to my childhood. Walt Whitman was a true long Islander and experienced the time when New York City was growing. He worked for many different newspapers which I hope to do someday.
· I believe what makes poetry good is the underlying story of each and every poem. I like poems when they are written for songs because then I get to experience the real emotions. The voice of thought thrives throughout all poems and I really get to know a lot about the author as I read his or her works. I think I get to learn a lot about the author if the poems good because I have found many poems to contain a bias opinion. The variety of ideas read from a poem is what makes good poetry.
· I hope to learn the real truth behind what writing a poem is all about. I enjoyed learning a lot about poetry in high school. I want to understand all techniques of poetry like what happens behind the scenes and learn to enjoy every style poems are written in.

Assignment 0

I am an environmental major here at SLU, and I declared fall semester sophomore year after I had a water pollutions class with Carrie Johns. It wasn’t the subject matter that won me over at first, but the people I had the class with. There was only eight of us, and we all bonded incredibly fast. No class was silent or awkward, and each person brought something different to the table. I love the professors in the department and the classes are interesting and demand you to think out of the box.

I’m from Jericho, VT. It’s a small town about 20 minutes outside of Burlington. We don’t have a stoplight in my town, not even one of those blinking yellow ones. I grew up with friends that I’ve kept since elementary school, and the community was like growing up with 10 sets of parents: if you did something wrong somewhere else, your parents would eventually find out.

Other than writing, I sing (with Laurentians and in the Radio Bob Band), play guitar (poorly), go for bike rides on nice days, enjoy good food and beer, and watch the Red Sox play whenever possible.

I’ve heard from the people I let read my work that when I write I am very descriptive and can capture well different types of emotions. I usually let someone read my work after I’ve known them for a while (other than classmates in a workshop setting-I feel within a workshop we all have a good deal of trust in fellow writers.)

Langston Hughes is my favorite poet, and I really got into him in high school when I wrote about his poetry and civil rights. Hughes’ work always has incredible amounts of passion but is never sappy. Some is angry, some is somber, and some is joyful. And even though he wrote many pieces about race, you don’t have to be a minority to enjoy them or take something away from them. I really don’t enjoy Dickinson because I think she is the epitome of overt and extraneous sentimentalism. We get it: you love him.

Good poetry is relate-able and intriguing. A good poem inspires you in some way-whether it be to write yourself or to think about things in a different light. Maybe good poetry re-instills your faith in something. Whatever it be about, a good poem will always stay with you.

I enrolled in this class because poetry is not my forte. I never write it, and I barely read it. I wanted to see if this class could not only help me learn to appreciate poetry more and expand my knowledge of the topic, but I also wanted to see if I focused on poetry for an entire semester, would I be able to come up with something worth reading.

Assignment 0: First Blog Entry

What are you studying, and why do you like it?

I am currently an English Major and Spanish Minor. Regarding English, I find that it has always been an academic area in which I've exhibited some extent of natural ability. When it comes to math or science I find myself lagging behind and not understanding any of the necessary equations/calculations. However, when it comes to English I've always been able to spell well and express my ideas orally and/or in writing. As a career goal I hope to go straight from St. Lawrence to graduate school to get my Phd. in English Literature and aspire to be an English Professor. As to my minor in Spanish, as in the case of English, Spanish has always agreed with my few natural academic abilities. After taking some very challenging Spanish courses I've opened my eyes to the world of Spanish literature and how amazing both Spain and Latin America's cultures really are. During this summer I hope to teach illegal Mexican immigrants from my home town how to read and write in English so that they can (hopefully) experience the joy I experienced in learning their language.

Where are you from, and what's it like there?


I am from Lowville, New York, which is about an hour and a half south of St. Lawrence University. The town houses no more than 1,700-1,800 people, so as you can imagine, it is rather small. My home is, on the whole frigid and the snow is ridiculously more abundant than it is around SLU. On a side note, the town is very beautiful except for the hundreds of windmills which surround it on two sides; the people are for the most part ignorant-yet-cheerful and the crime rate is basically as low as possible.

Aside from writing, what are your interests and hobbies?

Aside from writing, I enjoy playing electric blues guitar, snowboarding, reading, ice hockey, the video game Counter-strike Source, and spending time with my girlfriend of three years. I get bored easily and am continually finding new interests.

Who are your influences?

William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Edgar Allan Poe are my main influences. As to the first two in the list, I enjoy their attempt to define poetry in their Prelude to the Lyrical Ballads and Biographia Literaria, respectively. Furthermore I am impressed by Wordsworth and Coleridge's work on the Laws of Association and what is the imagination and fancy. As to Poe, I have always been a sucker for mystical figures. He is, on the whole, an enigma in poetic history. Whether looking at his war against unfair copyright laws in the United States in the 19th century, or his mysterious death, I find myself intrigued by the man's past and poetry and how the two are almost always inseparable.

What's good about good poetry?

In my opinion, good poetry has the ability to make you think. One of the many great things about poetry is that poetic works can be viewed as condensed novels. In other words, poetry is prose chopped down to the essentials. There are not hundreds of pages for plot development and excess. In poetry the poet must address his audience to the maximum extent with a semi-minimalist approach. (This of course is not always the case as many poetic pieces endure for hundreds of pages).

What do you hope to learn in this class?

I hope to improve my understanding of rhyme, meter, and grammar in poetry. Furthermore, I hope to better equip myself to express myself in poetry without being cliché or pathetic. I want to learn how to develop my ideas into advanced, rational lines.

Assignment 0: First Blog Entry

• Currently I’m studying to become an English major. However, begin a first-year student, I’m still taking a wide variety of courses to find my interests. What I like about English is the way words can be used to display hidden meanings, (like with symbolisms and metaphors), and how you can discover a much deeper meaning behind a piece of text if you take the time to analyze it.

• I’m from Watertown, NY, which is about 70 miles from Canton. Watertown is just as cold as Canton, and tends to get even more snow. It’s a nice city of about 27,000 whose economy and population is no doubt boosted by its close location to Fort Drum.

• Aside from writing, I enjoy running and am currently on the school’s cross-country and track and field teams. In my free time I also enjoy playing the guitar, watching movies, and hanging out with friends.

• I have had pretty good experiences with getting feedback on my work so far. In high school we did very little peer reviewing, so it was a welcomed change once I got to college. Most of the time the feedback I have received not only made me aware of what I needed to fix, but also made me aware of the things I had done well. I feel that because of this, I have already become a better than when I first got here by becoming aware of how other’s read my writings.

• I don’t have too many influences, as I have not read much poetry. However, one poet whose work I do admire is Stephen Crane’s. His poems are quite thought provoking and he was not afraid to show his sometimes outlandish beliefs. They are commonly written like a short story, and even though he rarely rhymed his lines, his words always seemed to flow so perfectly.

• What’s good about good poetry is that it makes you think, or opens your mind up to a new idea. But to make the poetry “good,” the moral isn’t simply stated out in the open; the poet must make the reader become curious enough to do a little digging around and analyzing to discover the meaning.

• I hope to learn about the many different styles of poetry. Since poetry can be such a personal topic, everyone has their own way of going about it. I like that there’s no wrong or right way to write a poem, so I’m interested to learn the many abstract ways poets end up writing. I also hope to learn how to write more in-depth poems, not necessarily in relation to the length of a poem as much as to its meaning.