Blogging Around: 10-28-12

Blogging Around.

Here are some comments that I've made on some of my friends blogs this week!Be sure to go read the full posts!

This is the first blog post I read Emily's Post

Her post was about the over/misuse of the word or idea of depression.

Here's the next Comment and Post: Kira's Post

I also read posts from these blogs:
Nikki's Blog
Toby's Blog
Anna B's Blog

-jordan

An Inconvenient Truth: Poetry is Deep

If you've talked to me recently, you know that I am not the biggest fan of poetry. I don't mind some poems, usually ones involving the description of the seasons, but love poems, critical poems, "deep" poems, no. I can't stand them. I can't stand reading them, I can't stand thinking about them, I can't stand analyzing them. Okay I can't stand analyzing any poem. Most people say that when you analyze a poem it adds a deeper meaning. I completely disagree with that. I think that when you analyze a poem it sucks the life out of it. I don't think that all poetry was written to be analyzed. For example: 

Rose are red

Violets are blue

Sugar is sweet

and so are you.

Arguably, this is a poem. here is what bother me most:

when they're saying sugar is sweet and so are you, it expresses the unconditional love that they have for a person. You can infer, that this means the person who wrote the poem is obsessed with the person it was written for etc.

I cannot stand this. I think that poetry can be taken literally. Some poems may have even been written with that pretense, that people will take them literally. Like I said before, It's like squeezing the life out of it. You know the saying "you can't squeeze water out of a turnip" well some poems are turnips. You can't analyze them because there's nothing to analyze!!!! I really wish that we could all just take a look at poetry literally and not try and beat a dead horse. I think it we'd actually get more out of it!

With some forcing of the brain, I can see whee some people are coming from with the analyzing. I guess some people are just more inquisitive and that's why they want to look deeper into the poems. (correct me if I'm wrong in the comments down below) It blows my mind though, I don't understand it. 

This kind of reveals to you that I am a bit of a closed minded person. I'm not one to open up to other peoples opinions, much like a very protective dog.

I personally apologize for this extremely ranty/rambly blog post.

and now back to your previously scheduled programing.

-jordan 

iMedia: Ted Rives: A story of mixed emoticons

Today in class we watched Ted Rives perform his poem about mocking birds.

This sparked me to find another poem performance of his. The one I found, I thought, was quite relatable and funny as well. 

     The poem is very different from other poems that we've read in class this week and last. In order to truly understand this poem, one must watch the little slideshow that goes along with it. I think that this brings a whole new perspective to what we as high schoolers perceive poetry to be. We recognize poetry, in general to be very boring, confusing, and a lot of the time, unrelatable. The way Ted Rives presents this poem makes it a lot more interesting and easier to comprehend. Being an extremely visual thinker myself, having the ability to see the poem really helps make it easier to swallow.

     Another thing that makes this poem extremely different is the fact that all of the visual aids/pictures are emoticons. Emoticons have become increasingly popular with the emergence of the countless emoticons released with the iPhone. He uses the emoticons almost in a mocking way with his poem. At the beginning, he shows the mass of symbols which look like gibberish, but when he tells the story along with it, it somehow grows to make complete sense. You can't help but laugh when reading this poem. It becomes more and more almost sarcastic when you look at it. They way he almost pokes fun at the overuse of emoticons without actually cracking jokes is right up my alley.

     I think that this poem or whatever you would call it is important, not just in general, but important to the high school age group. I think this because like I said, it shows a completely different side of poetry, one that is not usually seen. I also think that this is important to society because it's starting the transition  of poetry from lovely dovey sonnets by Shakespeare and love notes from Emily Dickinson, to the critical and almost satirical literature of todays time.

I really want to find some more of Ted Rives' Poetry. From the two that i've now seen, I'm intrigued  I really like the way he wites. The way he recites his poems has a very obvious rhythm. The rhythm of the poems gives it almost a musical ring the the poem. I think I like this type of poetry, but i'm not quite sure yet. I don't think I've read quite enough poetry to form that opinion yet.

~jordan