Wednesday, July 20, 2011

On poetry...

Poetry is probably my least favorite part of any English class. I feel that you have to have so much preface that I'm always unprepared whenever I read poetry. It hasn't been that bad this time around, but it does take a lot of work to really grasp the ideas and concepts involved in explicating poetry. The poem I found most accessible was "Richard Cory" because I had been exposed to it previously. I read the poem in high school so I already had some background. Without any experience I would say "Lucasta" is most accessible. The theme of war and glory is nothing new and especially being a male these are pretty easy themes to understand. I do agree that poetry, at some level, is more gratifying than reading a novel when you interpret it correctly and derive your own meaning.

The most difficult poem for me was "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot. There are so many allusions and literary devices that it is difficult to concentrate on the poem because you are trying to analyze the elements and the form. I had no idea what the point of the poem was after I read it. It is the typical poem that turns me off to poetry. It's weird sometimes you get a feeling about literature and you get it intuitively. I had none of that when I read that poem. It made sense when the professor explained it but I still wonder what Eliot was thinking. "The Flea" was a tough one too. How can someone compare love to a flea? What is that? I would never make that analogy to someone I wanted to "court". The language of the poem is archaic which brings me to the other part of English that really frustrates me... Shakespeare. His poem was actually pretty easy to understand so I hope that bodes well for the near future.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

The Writing Process

I thought I had a pretty good grasp on The Death of Ivan Ilych, but the writing process really helped me understand "A Clean Well-Lighted Place". One of the common themes I had a hard time writing about was, youth's inability to relate to the old and dying. There were examples but not much to write on, so at first it was the weakest part of my paper because I had so few examples and not much analysis. During the drafting process, I organized the basis of what I wanted to say and not much else. When I draft I scratch the surface, during the editing portion is when I really begin to write.  After I got the concept of what I wanted to say, I focused on articulating my argument and that's when I did in-depth analysis.

I tried to draw on past experiences when I wrote on the theme of youth and the elderly. Ultimately it became the strongest part of my paper. The group editing sessions provided an objective critique which is crucial and difficult for me to do. It's tough for me to get a perspective different from my own especially when it comes to writing. What I usually do is put the paper down for a few days, preferably a week, then reread it and that's when I can spot mistakes or ambiguities. Since we're on a more condensed schedule there's no time for that which was why the peer editing came in handy. Someone pointed out a glaring mistake during the first session which helped me understand the story better.

The revision part really helped me grasp the material. I had to think critically about everything I wrote and how it related to my thesis. I kept that focus throughout the paper. I was surprised at how many lessons and themes both stories touched on. There is an overall message but there are many subtle anecdotes in both stories. In the end I had trouble deciding what to keep and what to delete.