WOW! It's finally great to get writing on this blog. Over the past week I have had so much fun in my Contemporary Poetry class. Not only was my belly filled with some of Mrs. Lewis' legendary cookies (For the record, they were so good that I had to stop back in the library after school to get some more), but I also managed to learn a thing or two about poetry. I realized that if a person ever wants to make some sense out of poetry, he or she has to start from ground zero and work his or her way up. I learned this concept first hand Monday night. While reading "The Bugle Song" by Alfred Tennyson, frankly, I had no idea what was going on. After reading a short biography about Tennyson and his life, I thought that the content in this poem was in correlation with his emotions after his friend, Arthur Hallam, died unexpectedly in Austria. However, I was completely wrong. Nonetheless, I came to class the next day with a desire to interpret the poem, and I succeeded. Without spoiling the storyline for you, I linked to the poem earlier in this post. The secret to understanding a poem (at least I think so) is to have it read outloud, line by line. Half of the battle for a poet is just getting the words down on paper; the other half is to have a message behind it. After being read out loud, a poem's words gain more power. If poetry was not supposed to be read outloud, Gill Scott Hermon's piece "The Revolution Will Not be Televised" contradicts that concept completely. Needless to say, this class has already opened up my eyes in two weeks. I can not wait for the rest of the term!
-Permitpat
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