Feeling Unfinished

I took a different approach to looking at what was unfamiliar to me. Instead I traced back to my childhood and read Shel Silverstein poems. I realize that there was so much that I missed when reading, and the hidden messages Silverstein hides in a lot of his poems. Masks She had blue skin, And so did he. He kept it hid And so did she. They searched for blue Their whole life through, Then passed right by-- And never knew. You can tell the morals are digestible for his younger readers but it is so interesting how he is able to incorporate them into to his poems. I also think it's so nice because his poems are so enjoyable to read. I'm surprised by how I completely missed the meaning when I was younger, maybe I was just distracted by the rhyming scheme. I want to know if Shel Silverstein's readers take the time to try to understand his poetry (especially since I'm assuming for the most part his readers are younger). Because the poems are such easy reads I won...

I wish that we got to watch more spoken word performances. Spoken word is something that I watch all the time on YouTube. It is something that can be relatable, but I enjoy it because there is so much emotion behind it. I feel like spoken word is the best of both worlds. You have the word play and the performance. What makes it better is it is preformed by young adults, so you know it is a way for them to get the voice across (or their emotions out).   I wish we could have experimented with spoken word more as a class.

I have never had a "good" answer for who my favorite poet is. When I was younger it was easily Maya Angelou, because that was the only poetry I was familiar with (the main poetry books I had when I was younger was Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes). Even with me exploring poetry in and out of class I still had such a love for Maya Angelou's work. She is such a well known poet I would be surprised if you didn't know her. I decided to further look into her because of this blogpost, and I did not realize how truly strong she was as a black woman during the civil rights era. Her parents split when she was young and when she went to visit her mother, her mother's boyfriend raped her. She was around seven years old. Just one out of the many stories I found when reading about her. So for me I think it is far more than her poetry itself, it's what she stands for and what she has been through as a black woman. She was someone I could look up to and I could find stre...