Live Fast Die Young

"We Real Cool" by author Gwendolyn Brooks is a simple yet profound poem exploring the mindset of our wayward youth. "We real cool. We left school" (1,2) this is a accurate statement of the mindset felt by the youth. Many kid's do consider themselves cool while displaying unacceptable behavior based on society standards, also the word we as opposed to I is relevant here; because when bad or confused kid's run rampant they are more than likely to be in groups thus allowing their negative energy to feed off each other. "We strike straight"(3,4) is a passage indicating this may be some type of violent gang. This poem speaks volumes on how many kid's feel powerful, even eurphoric running around causing trouble, and also how they feel a sense of physcial invincibility; because of their age they think "nothing can happen to me i'm too young to die" why would one live so reckless unless they truely felt nothing can harm them? What is really important here are the events that take place with decisions we map out for our lives,mainly the bad decisions. The young people are being destructive and thinking they are having a grand ole time, live for today and damm tomorrow, never once considering the repercussions of their actions. Then one day their world of good times comes crashing down; and it's time to pay your dues, karma comes knocking at the door,the inevitably of such an lifestyle is at your feet.The tragic stories vary but the end result is always the same "We Die soon"(7,8)

Real Life Connection

The poem "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke was a poem that really stood out to me. At first like many other poeple who have read the poem I saw this poem as an abusive relationship between a father and son. The image that you get when the speaker paints the picture of whisky lingering in Papa's breath would make many people think that the father has a drinking problem. The battered knuckles of Papa also make it seem as though he is a hard and harsh man. Once you look deeper into the poem though you can see that the speaker is just trying to paint an image of his father that he can hold on to. He is using the smell of whisky as a smell that reminds him of his father. The roughness of the fathers knuckles just shows that he is a really hard working man to support his family. This really reminds me of my own father. He was a really hard working man to do the best for his family. He worked in a factory during the day and when he came home he ran the family farm. His hands were always rough from all the work that his did for us. And for that I appreciate him ever so much.

Torn

A dislike for poetry is unfair. So, I would not say I do not like poetry, but I also would not say I love poetry either. Poems are a short and sweet story that are sometimes understandable to me. A short story limits an authors word choice; crafty words are used to complete the message being sent by the author. Because of these crafty words, I often times come across words I do not know the meaning of which creates confusion to the poem. Sometimes the words make an entire stanza hard for me to decipher. I use a thesaurus when I come across these crafty words to help me better understand the story being told.
Poems that do not relate to me or poems that just do not make sense are boring. I tend to loose interest and forget poems with these characteristics."Digging" is an example of a poem I totally did not relate to or understand. When a poem comes along that does make sense and that does relate to my life, I will not just like this poem, but I will love them poem. An example of a poem such as this would be Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz". Memories of my father and I come out of this poem, great memories of dancing with my father. In conclusion, poems for me creates a love/hate relationship; I would not choose to bore myself to death with pointless, confusing poems, but I would love to discover more poems of interest to me.

Poetry

I have read poems before, many times. It wasn't until last week that I realized that some poems have a deeper meaning. I always just read them at face value. I do not really like the poetry we have read so far. I never know if it means what it says or if it has a deeper meaning. It confuses me sometimes, something I am not a fan of. I have not read, nor do I understand, much poetry. I do really like Robert Frost's "The Road Less Taken." I like it after having it explained to me that he doesn't really mean he took the road less taken and that you take the path you take. You never know if the path you took is the one less taken because he can't go back.

Degeneration X

Sometimes a generation improves itself based on seeing the faults the previous generation had. In Raymond Carver's "Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year" the writer continutes his fathers habit of alcohol abuse and maybe even is a worse addict. The writer has the benefit of seeing the way alcohol took so much away from his fathers life and still he allows it to become a problem in his life. He actually is mad at his father not because of this trait that was passed on to him but rather that he "didn't even know the places to fish...(15). The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

My thoughts On Poetry

Back in the day, I used to truly loathe poetry; I used to read through the poem, motivated by mothing more than the fact that it was a class assignment, and think about nothing more than the how much time I wasted on reading it. I saw no message within the stanzas, and criticized the authors for even thinking that there could even possibly be a message within their work. There was one thing that woke me up to the message that poets send, that one thing is something we call "life".

During my teenage years, I've experienced a lot; love hate, pleasure, pain, and an incredible amount of events what could trigger these feelings. There was one time when I decided to against the conformity of everyone else and wrote a song. There was a sadness I had bottled up, and I simply wanted to let it out the best way I knew how. After that one song, I wrote more and more, and after a few more songs, I truly saw the power of what poetry can do. If you have experienced a traumatic event, and you manage to stumble across another person who just so happens to write a poem about it, you realize that there is someone out there that can relate to your struggle. That someone is also constructing a way of relaying that struggle for a world to understand, poetry can be a powerful tool.

So in this present day, my opinion on poetry has changed. Whenever I feel the need to vent, or even express creativity, the one thing I used to hate is now the one thing I turn to to express myself.

Why poems?

Poems are definitely not one of the easiest things to understand. You may think you understand what you need to know from the poem but when talking in class there is so much more to it. In my opinion I think poems are too complicated and maybe a bit overrated. Why not just say what you want instead of beating around the bush and adding more into it that isn’t necessary.
Remember the good old days of Dr. Seuss. They were easy to understand, rhymed a bit and were just fun to read. That’s what all poems should be like. Once they become hard to understand and aren’t being very clear with what they are saying is when I loss all interest. Most of the time I dislike poems even the ones I write myself. It may just be the format and the way they come off most of the time that makes me not care for them a whole lot. I also don’t like that I have to read one poem a few times just to understand it. Why are poems even that great? Maybe to show feelings but that really about it. Otherwise a short and sweet story will do just fine.

Reflection on Poetry

Poetry is a very unique type of writing. It does not always make sense, it does not always rhyme, and it is not always straight forward. Readers interpret poems in different ways and often times it is not the way the writer intends. In a poem, the writer only has so many lines to express the feeling or story they are trying to get across. Each person that reads the same poem could get a different meaning from the poem. Poetry can be hard to understand at times because of the limited stanzas writers can use in poetry. Some are just written in dialogue that is hard to understand. Poems that readers can relate to are going to be more easily understood. I am not very good at discovering meanings of poems, but this poetry section is helping me get better. After breaking down poems into smaller sections and looking closer at them, poetry becomes a lot more interesting. Poems are not always what they seem, which I think is one way poetry is different from other types of writing. The hidden meanings are what make readers think and decide what the writer is trying to portray in their work. Often times poems will not be interpreted the same way by readers, but this is what makes poetry more interesting. Everyone can use their own opinion to decide what each specific poem means to them.

Poetry Blog Casey Laub

So far I haven't minded reading poetry as much as I used to. I've honestly only read two poems so far, I only enjoyed one of them. I read My Papa's Waltz and Photograph of My Father In His Twenty Second Year. I liked My Papa's Waltz because after talking about it in class you can see how our society hears whiskey and we immediately assume somthing bad is happening. Then I read Photograph of My Father In His Twenty Second Year and don't know what to think: which is usually what happens when I read poetry. I don't get it there are so many angles you can take on poems. The thing that makes it unnapealling to me is that you never know which angle is the absolute correct one unless the author explains it afterwards. For example in My Papa's Waltz, in class we came to the conclusion that either he was abusive or he just drank casually when he got home from work. Who even knows which one actually happened and caused the poet to write the poem. I think: the poet that writes the poem should have a page after the poem that says what exactly he or she meant just to make it clear.

Reaction to Poetry

Poetry is something that I am not too familiar with. This is the first time I have really had to sit down and read poems. I already see that I was wrong thinking that poetry was primarily rhyming and really created without deep meaning. From what we have done in class I already understand that there is a lot of information that needs to be uncovered in a very small space. For me poetry is hard to read and fully understand without classroom discussion. I catch myself reading the words and thinking very basic much of the time leading to my misinterpretation of the poem. I look forward to reading more poetry and seeing what I think about it after I can relate to it a little better.