Poetry Out Loud, My Poem

My poem is Cartoon Physics, part 1 by Nick Flynn. This poem isn't necessarily relevant in a direct way to my life because this poem's purpose is to describe life in a cartoon way. Like the part about the man drawing a door on a rock, that is like the one path carved by you and can only be walked by you. Only one person can walk the path that is made and laid out for you, and that is you. But then part of the poem is also describing at how ten-year-olds should just focus on what is right in front of them instead of learning about what is all around them, like learning about war or politics. This describes my life in a sense that people say I am kind of following the path of my brother, but that isn't necessarily possible because I have my own life to live, he is probably going to get a language major at this point, whereas I will probably go into programming.

The poem has a sense about it that gives it a sort of dramatic feeling, but an enthusiastic one. I will convey the feeling of the poem using small and rare gestures and maybe emphasize parts with my voice and articulation. It is as if I am telling the story of my life and it is dramatic and exciting, I choose this relation because my life hasn't had anything all that saddening. My face probably will keep a solemn look about it or maybe I will use a sort of happy expression.

Poetry Out Loud

Part One

1. Knucks.
2. Ex machina
3. Snow Day
4. London
4. A Supermarket in California

Part Two

1. I mainly liked Snow Day because of the word usage, the schools are pretty funny and its about a snow day :D!
2. I did not like Ex Machina, because it didn't really make sense to me it is about love? or is it about tornadoes? I don't really know.
3. I would like to study A Supermarket in California, because it is good, it is humorous, and also it is complex.
4. I am personally connected with A Supermarket in California because I have seen grubbers on the streets and I have seen most of what the poem relates to.

Part Three

1. The two easiest would be Voice and Articulation, and also Evidence of Understanding, because I understand the poem eventually, no matter how hard, and my voice doesn't really give out when I am nervous.
2. The two hardest would have to be Physical Presence, and Dramatic Appropriateness, This is because of the way I am, I get nervous and I don't make clear gestures when I am like that, when shyness takes over I tend to not have good posture and not have good eye contact.
3. I know that in some categories I may not get the perfect score because it is hard to Project my voice out when I am nervous, I may also make nervous gestures at times. Plus when I am continuously nervous for a period of time, I may tend to over dramatize what I am presenting, so I may act out my poem line by line.

Part Four

I watched the poem Forgetfulness, it is very successful because the person who is saying it is not showing too many gestures, and when he does the gestures are small gestures, or he constantly uses his face as a gesture, but it is hardly noticeable. The poem is also long, it has the length that makes it a very difficult poem to remember, at least for a long period of time.

Part Five

I feel as if the competition is going to be rough, in my opinion I don't think I will make it into the school wide competition, this is for one reason, and one alone, I get nervous very easily. Whenever I am in a group of more than 5 people, I get nervous very easily, and that makes it hard for words to come out, even when I try and force it. I believe my poem will not get high marks on difficulty, because it isn't the longest of poems, but it isn't the shortest of poems, I think I will need to make that sacrifice if I want to do a poem I would like to do.

Newest, Most Important Skill

The most important skill that I've learned this year would have to be... TWIST. It is so simple but the concept of it isn't just memorization like most other things. One actually has to put it to use in order to imprint it in one's mind, and it just brings out the structure of the book/poem. TWIST has had the biggest impact in English because everything I had learned until this year had been easily understandable in some way, but TWIST actually made me use my head at first instead of grasping it in the first 20/30 seconds. My thought processes actually had me reading the assignment paper over and over until I finally could comprehend it to some extent, then when I actually understood the whole thing I started using it bit by bit subconsciously (I just recognized it recently). This is a very useful tool for my development in English and I hope there will be better tools just like this, except easier to understand at first.

Lobsters

Before we started poetry I have always thought that poetry had to rhyme, but when we read Lobsters it was the total opposite. I have always thought that poems were confusing but when I saw the structure of the poem Lobsters, there were some parts I couldn't understand at the first 2 or 3 glances. Like the part where he talks about a lobster being a "somnambulist and climbing over the shell of a dream of himself." That had me perplexed for a while until I looked up somnambulist and figured out that the meaning I thought it was, was wrong. That part talks about how the lobster is walking over his own kin as if he was sleepwalking.

This ideal that we don't what we are doing as if it is very surreal and dreamlike is kind of like everyday life. We are trapped in this dream void and we don't know what is going on outside of life. The world is just so unreal that we don't know what happened in one place, almost as if we are stuck in our own little world in the place that we live in. Just like the lobsters who are collected and brought to the shopping mart, they are placed in a tank, and trapped there, the world is like a dream, they don't understand any of this. The world in my perspective is like a dream, but that doesn't mean one should give up and not move on, instead they should move on and hope to conquer this dream, and live a better life.

5 Part Paragraph Critique

The skills to create a good 5 part paragraph with quotes for concrete details is that the quotes need to be embedded. But with the quotes the paragraph needs to flow right through and the reader must feel comfortable reading it smoothly. One consistently mentioned problem is that the author needs to fix the embedding, and that the topic sentence doesn't really set out to prove what the author talked about throughout the paragraph. Most people didn't have the right wording within their topic sentence, a couple words could have been changed to exemplify their point.

My paragraph wasn't very good, I would need to change my topic sentence to enhance my concrete details. Also the last concrete detail I listed wasn't part of the point, because I wrote in my topic sentence about the social hierarchy but the last concrete detail was only about one person. The rest of the concrete details actually could have been applied to more than one person, like a farming group, it can be applied to all the farmers but not one person. My word choice didn't really enhance that point, the choice in the last detail didn't help the commentary either, I just kept going on with how that one person was getting rejected. I could have changed that detail to a group of people.

Informal Diction? Formal Diction?

I don't know what happened in particular this week, maybe I could discuss a matter about my sister and how she is really cynical towards me and patronizes me all the time. My sister is always condescending, this week she could not stop lecturing me about anything. She even commented on what I ate, she was using a vexed tone and told me that I should make my own food even though I was not in a position to make the food. She snaps at me no matter what, she even confronts me and tells me that she doesn't like me... but then when a parent is around she acts all nice and like an angel.

So then I take up a disdainful attitude with her and this only makes the matter worse, but I think I have a more knowledgeable case than she does. She always says she acts the way she does to her friends as she does to me, but that is definitely not the case when she lectures me about something, also, we are only two years apart. I shouldn't have to be lectured by someone that's 16 when I am 14, what I don't get is that my mother actually acts in a kinder manner to her and doesn't really acknowledge my side. So mainly I have not had a very good week, it is full of bad temper's and people getting angry all the time.

Extra Credit

The one assignment I loved to do the most or am most proud of... I would have to say it was one of the assignments two years ago where my class had to write about our favorite place, the essay didn't have a particular name. This was one of my favorites because we got to write about our favorite spot, maybe on vacation, or maybe a spot we would like to go to because we read about it. I have always been proud of it as well because it was one of my best written pieces ever, at least I think it is, some people may think it isn't though.

If I recall, my essay was about Washington, and how may favorite spot was Seattle, I think it was because it was so close to Olympia. I think it wasn't the best subject to write about except for the fact that it was easier to compose than other places would've been. There have been an exceptional number of different places, some were even in Asia, at least I think so... Maybe I just think so because I am Asian and therefore I shall think about Asians. I have one last statement for everyone who reads this... ASIANS ARE AWESOMEEEE!!!!!... totally irrelevant but hey, this is extra credit.

Slaughter House V

My outside reading novel would be... Slaughter House V by Kurt Vonnegut. This book is enjoyable to some extent where I would have to be able to keep track of how and where the book bounces too in the storyline. The novel is about war, the book describes how bad war can be, and the theme is about how some people haven't considered how bad war can be. The book tries to explain war as best it can in a series of scenes, the only way someone would be able to follow this book is to have a mind that can grasp one situation as it reads another and connects the two some how.

The hardest thing to grasp is the plot, that is the one literary element that seems to be the hardest concept to get a hold on in this novel. The plot is something that isn't easily shown, because the book is about war and it twists and turns through scenes back and forth, the plot can change easily. That is the toughest and most difficult thing to grasp, the way the book twists from scene to scene, it seems illogical and unlikely to be connected but somehow it stays in one plot. The main plot is that the man is trying to tell people that war should try to be avoided but to some extent, doesn't necessarily matter, that people should try and not grief over ones death but just move on because that one person had lived in a different time.

This novel compares with another novel I had read, this book is called Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden. This story also tells about how war can be terrible and that it should be avoided, but it's from a closer point of view. Black Hawk Down tells of how a black ops helicopter crashes behind enemy lines, and it goes on from there in a close look at how terrible war really can be. I am still contemplating a way to present Slaughter House V in a project, but maybe I could use a PowerPoint or maybe I could use a skit, I am still thinking about it.

Extending the Theme... Personally

When I finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird, I thought that I had never really had an experience like what Scout had. Except, I never really had a Christmas that could've turned into that anyways. I guess I never really had any real experience like that is because I'm the baby in my family, so I'm the youngest. I usually get treated a bit better at times, or get teased by my older siblings, but in the end everything worked out and nothing bad ever happened.

The book To Kill a Mockingbird has taught me that there are hardships in life that some of us never learn as a child. I am one of those fortunate children that never had to put up with the problems of life, until I was close to becoming a teenager of course. But as well my life hasn't been the best, my family doesn't have a lot of money, so we have to think about financial issues. So to compromise with the financial issues, we have to cut back.

The thing we cut back on already has been some of the holidays, for example, Christmas. I haven't been having Christmas for years now, no gifts, no meetings, but sometimes we save up enough money. The book really cleared up my questions about how fortunate I was, to have a nice family that doesn't have many quarrels. But at the same time, in order to keep these things under control, money can be spent in place, so that makes the budget tighter. So this book has taught me that sometimes one has to trade one thing in exchange for another, like giving up holidays for a family that won't fight every week or so.

The Fake/Not so Boo Radley

My Boo Radley would be kind of like school, like when elementary school kids leave for to middle school, it's scary at first, being nervous from the year before all the way until the day it starts. But then when you actually get into it, meeting new people isn't all that hard, I used to be very shy, so going to a new school was hard for me at first, but once I got used to it, it wasn't that bad. Just like Boo Radley, people were afraid of him because they didn't know what he was like, but by the end of the story, Scout finally knew that she had been assuming things about Boo. Just the thought of being around about 200 other people was scary to me, I never thought I could cope with the conditions, so I tried my best to avoid school.

I'm pretty sure I don't have to tell people who read this the instrumental value of school in my life, but I will say it anyways. School has the value in my life of learning, and education, it teaches me new things about life and helps make new friends. Scout is kind of the same, she would be nervous about the Radley house because of Boo, she thought of him as a kind of real ghost, so she started avoiding the house and trying not to think of who or what Boo would be like. But just as it happens in the end of my story, Boo actually in the end isn't very intimidating, if she just took the time to get used to it, she could get along with Boo pretty fast.

Introduction to my boring blog....

Type of English student, hm... I would be the kind of English student to hesitate and not engage as much as I should, I can never really be active during class. But if someone were to follow my blog, they would see good written work unless the work was one of the writings that I'm not very good with, like poetry. The on-line world will look at my work and how I act depending on the novel because I will show great feeling in my work! English class is about the language we speak, the use of grammar, and to greatly enhance how enthusiastic our writing can be and to get better at different writing skills/techniques. This is required for college because, I believe, without English class people would be more confused, unable to learn the words required for higher academic work. Such as Quantum Theory, Quantum Theory is an advanced type of science that has the use of words that would not make sense unless learned, some of those words would be learned through the use of an English class. Maybe a English class could be considered as a literature class. English class can personally help someone get a better job through life, plus it also helps interact with people, you can open up sometimes in English, through your writing. Academically, English is very useful, the class can help improve your persuasion skills and also help you with legal documents, either analyzing or writing one with persuasive skills.