Writing Down the Bones

I have been having a lot of trouble understanding the readings in this class, because like I said in my last blog post. Poetry wouldn't be considered a strength of mines. But I am enjoying reading Writing Down the Bones. I'm sure it is because of the fact that it's not any poems, only stories. But no normal stories, stories that have a meaning that you have to figure out. In class on Tuesday we had to pick our two favorite stories and tell the class why we picked those two out of all the others.

Baking a Cake is the story on page 50.. where the author simply says that you can have all of the ingredients that's in a cake and put them into a bowl, but you still don't have a cake. You have batter, you still have to add heat from the stove to make it plump out and look like cake, you have to add icing, and etc. I think this is very important when comparing to writing, because you can have characters, a setting, a plot, etc. but it doesn't make it a piece of writing until you put them all together and add more verbs, adjectives, and nouns. You always have to put heat (energy) into something for it to be complete, even little things that you think you don't like writing.

Listening was the other one that I chose and in this one the writer talks about how she sang one day and her cousin said that she was tone-deaf, and because of that she had never sang again, just hummed. Until one day she went to a vocal lesson and the teacher told her that there was no such thing as tone-deaf and how music was just about listening to the harmony of the song. I chose this because I think a lot of people go through this in life. Somebody tells them that they can't do something and they listen and never try again... I've seen and heard many dreams being crushed because of listening to someone else.

Tocqueville

The book Tocqueville is a very hard read. I say this because I am not use to reading poems. So as I am reading the many different poems, I try analyzing them at the same time and I don't think everything in this book is meant for me to understand. A poem that I really like is titled Lyric, it's the first poem in the book. I like this poem because it makes you think, but not too hard. Like once I read it a few times I could sort of figure out what the poet was talking about.

Because the poem is called Lyric, I of course thought that it would be about music or the love of music. But lines like "to remember when we looked at one another and found a world again" made me realize that it was a love poem. I also noticed that this poem had a nice flow to it, which may be a reason that they named it lyric. I felt like the poet used good language in this poem, he/ she didn't use to much of the basic language but also didn't use language which made it hard to understand.

One thing that I think could have made this poem better was imagery. I am no poet, but I feel like with love poems imagery is also a plus. Being able to imagine them looking into each other eyes or having love at first sight would have made the poem better. In my eyes, there was not one stanza that included any imagery. Other than that, it is a great poem.

What is love?

I was wondering what I should write about, because we have reviewed a lot of different poems and concepts in Creative Writing. I didn't want to write about any poems because I don't think I know what exactly any of them mean just yet. One concept that did stick in my head is the concept of the language they use in the poems and rather it is concrete or abstract. The concept of using abstract words is what really got me thinking. If something is abstract it means that the words can have many different reasons.

With the whole abstract thing being on mind, I started to think what is the definition of love? When I started thinking about it I started to think so many different things that made since. At first I came up with love being when you get a funny feeling or when you cannot stop thinking about one person. BUT then I thought, I love my mommy and I don't get a funny feeling when I see her, nor do I think about her all day, every day. So that caused me to really start putting some thought into it.

After thinking and asking many different people what their definition of love is... I came up with the concept that love is learning how that person, place, or thing has an effect on your life and if you ever lose that person, place, or thing you will be sad. I chose this definition because it can go for anything. I can love my mommy, McDonalds, and money and I can see the effect that all three have on my life and also I will get sad if I was to ever lose either one of those things. So what is love in your eyes?