week 15 "The Last Week!"

Wow, this is the last week of classes! I can not believe it is that time already, it feels like I was just writing the first paper we were assigned in this class! Definitely a great feeling though to know that all my hard work is about to pay off and I will get a break from school!!! YES!!!

Now to the poems this week, there was definitely a wide variety of poems this week. One of my favorite poems this week was “Variations on a theme by William Carlos Williams” by Kenneth Koch. This was the first poem that we have read so far that I have actually seen and understood a sense of humor in. It definitely made the poem easier read to read a little more fun to read. The first three stanzas of the poem are things that the poet apologizes for and that do not really matter or have a meaning to. However, in the last stanza, he still apologizes, but he has a cute reason why he did what he did.

Another few good poems are “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is a classic poem that I have heard before multiple times, it is kind of one of those poems that stick in your head and when you hear something that relates to it you instantly think of it. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” seems like a classic to me. It talks about what we as the readers are supposed to believe is Santa in his sleigh with his reindeer on Christmas Eve. He stops to enjoy the beautiful snow filling the woods, but does not have enough time for he has many stops to make before the night is over.

week 14 "Poems are better than Last Week"

4.24.2007

My favorite poem this week was “Sonnet” by Billy Collins. It was a very calm and soothing poem, and I understood very easily what the poet was trying to say. The poem explains what the sonnet form is and different examples of what a sonnet might be about. Even though “Sonnet” was my favorite poem, there were also poems that I liked this week because of their uniqueness. “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas is a very touching poem and touches on several different points about a dying father who has many great qualities. Even though I really liked how everything in the poem “Sestina” is connected to tear drops and is very full of description; however, the last line of the poem gave it away for me, that last line of the poem dropped how great I thought it was and just confused it even more for me. “Ars Poetica” is also a very touching and inspirational poem, it shows what a poem should really be. The use of many metaphors allow the poem to take on multiple meanings and multiple possibilities depending on who is reading it and what they want to take from it.

Another poem that stood out a lot, probably because of how it is position in the book, is “Easter Wings”. I really liked how it was positioned sideways and it looks like wings, it really draws attention to the poem and gives it more meaning. One thing I noticed about the text itself is that the decreasing lines are sad parts of the poem, and the increasing lines of the poem are parts where the poet is praying to God and referring to happy moments.

One of the poems I would like to know a little bit more about is “When I consider how my light is spent”. I did not understand too much about this poem, just the fact that the question after the poem asks if we would feel differently if we knew the poet was blind. The more I thought about that question the more I realized that the main points throughout the poem were images and landscapes being described, so yes, that would change how I feel about the poem.

week 13 "Many Confusing Poems"

4.17.2007

This week’s poems were very interesting; I am not quite sure what to think of them. Out of all the poem’s, the one that I understood the most would have been “Marks” by Linda Pastan. The poem was short and too the point without all the other filler words throughout the poem confusing the reader. The last few lines of the poem were a little depressing however, “Wait til they learn I’m dropping out.” Throughout the poem, she was given decent remarks and still she is not happy with herself, no one can be perfect, yet she thinks nothing but perfect is acceptable to her.

Many of the poems I read this week I had trouble interpreting and understanding. “The Red Wheelbarrow” was a very short poem, and was very hard to understand the point they were trying to make because there was not enough information in the poem. With the poem “This is Just to Say,” the poem was very interesting, but I keep thinking that the poem is being used as a metaphor for something larger and a little more serious. “Pied Beauty” used a lot of colors and comparisons, however nothing really tied together for me in the poem to make it understandable in the end. “Better My Heart, Three-Personed God” is a very confusing poem, I still don’t understand what the poet is trying to say. Is he trying to say that he loves this person or that he wants to be divorced? The poem goes back and forth between good and bad and is very hard to understand which is the true feeling.

“Sound and Sense” was probably the most confusing poem this week. I understand that it is about criticism, and that it focuses on the problems of literary criticism. I read this poem over and over trying to get more out of it, but each time I got more and more confused.

"Poem on a Painting"

4.13.2007

This week has been a nice week not having to deal with reading any poems while working on our poem project and finding a painting that we will be able to do our poem project on. At first when I heard that our project was to write a poem based on a painting I was stunned and shocked, the first thing that popped into my head was “I have no idea how to write a poem”. After looking at different poems I realized that my first step would obviously be to pick a painting that I was interested, which I have, think of a topic or theme of the painting, which I have, and then start writing down words or a story based on that theme. Those seem to be the easiest parts. What I still have to do is arrange the poem in the form I need and make sure everything still flows and is easily readable.

Overall, this project seems to be a little bit easier than the last two, the hard part will just be making it sound professional and not so much like an 8^th grader threw it together. That is the part that will take the most time and effort to finish it off and polish it up.

Week 11 "Easter Break"

4.4.2007

This week has been very tight and busy with it being a short week because I also want to get most of my homework done before the break for a stress free weekend. The poems were definitely an interesting start to the week since I was not quite sure what to expect. I was really excited to start reading shorter poems rather than the longer stories, but when I read the first poem I was really worried because I didn’t understand the first poem as much as I had wanted to. After reading the first poem, I did a little bit of research so I could understand it better. The second poem I read got a little better, and then the third even more, and so on. I just had to get used to the kind of poems I was going to be reading.

My favorite poem this week was “To a Daughter Leaving Home.” This poem was easy to read, and flashbacked to the happy memories of childhood. This poem did not jump around here to there and so forth, but they stayed on one track and explained it clearly and understandably.

A few more poems that I found interesting and enjoyable included “Daystar”, “Dover Beach”, and “Morning”. The rest of the poems were either to long and confusing or too hard to understand what was being talked about throughout the poem.

"Finished with project #2"

3.28.2007

Finishing my creative project has never felt better! Overall, the creative project was a very big task, but also fun at the same time. I did my creative project on the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” The task of completing the whole project was what made me work so hard at it. I was very worried at the beginning when I had first started the project that I was not going to be able to get it done on time, but I worked really hard and was surprised that I didn’t only get it done on time, but I also got it done early! The hardest part of the project was coming up with the right amount of scenes to tell the story sufficiently, but not add more scenes than needed to make the story even more confusing.

The best part for me was not having to study for anything and just being able to by myself and be creative. Once I had the scenes picked out, I was able to focus on how I was going to portray each scene in my “comic book”. In order to get the overall idea oh how I wanted to lay out my comic book to begin with, I went to Barnes & Noble to buy a few little comic books and looked through them for a layout idea.

All-in-all, I really enjoyed this project better than the first one, just because it was more like an actual project and not a paper. The paper went well, but the project went even better. It just depends whether you prefer tests and papers to projects, it varies greatly on if you are the creative type or not.

"On My Way with Project #2"

3.20.2007

Project #2……definitely going a lot better than I had originally anticipated. I am a graphic design major, and have decided to take the graphic fiction route on this project. The dialogue scene was the project that did not interest me or spark any thoughts. Even though I am not the best drawer on the computer, I am using Adobe Illustrator to work on my Graphic Fiction/comic book on the story I chose, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. So far, I am almost half way done with my graphic fiction, as I started working on it a few days ago, and have been trying to go full strength on it ever since. I like how creative I get to be, however, I am a little unhappy on how hard it is to draw people on the computer; so hopefully what I have accomplished as far as drawing people on the computer is good enough. To me, the people look like five year olds drew them, but at least I try and the project is not actually graded on how well we can draw figures on our computer.

It is very nice to have a break from the long stories, and I am glad that we are going to have some “short and sweet” poems to read coming up in the next couple of weeks. Out of the two longer stories we have read these past couple of weeks, The Doll House and Death of a Salesman, my favorite one to read was The Doll House. The Doll House is more my kind of story. I like the fact that there were a lot of somewhat happy scenes in The Doll House and most of The Death of A Salesman was very depressing. Even though the ending to The Doll House was not very happy either, the story flowed much better and had more meaning to me.

"Long Story"

3.14.2007

As far as how this week went, all right I guess. It is definitely weird being back after more than a week off! However, school is narrowing down, as we are already halfway through the semester.

The reading this week, “Death of a Salesman,” was very interesting to me. I was really shocked at first when I saw how long it was, but once I started reading it I did not notice how long it was, so that was good. What I found most interesting about this specific story, was to see how different people act and go through life. Each of us are so used to our own lives and what happens to us in our life, but sometimes we do not really think about other people and how their situation is in life. There are many people out there that we may see everyday on the street and think they are happy, but in their own life, they are actually struggling with everything around them. We do not always realize these concepts because no one really likes to show that they are not happy with their life and having a horrible time, people like that usually put on a front and act like everything is alright when it really is not. In Willy’s case, he ended up killing himself over everything because no one really helped him out with anything. It is a sad ending, but in a way maybe he deserved it since he was becoming so obsessed and crazy about the “Amercian Dream” that that is all he paid attention too; he did not care about anything else, all he wanted was that American Dream.

He chose to end his life over the whole issue, which is an even dumber idea than just living life to the fullest as it is and appreciating what is around you!

"Snow Storm!"

3.1.2007

This week has gone by really fast for me! I love how classes got cancelled for today and tomorrow, except my drive home lasted FOREVER because of the horrible weather, I hope I will never have to drive in those conditions ever again, it really sucked. I also hope that no one got hurt driving to their destination!

I was really shocked when I realized how long The Doll House actually was. The one concept I really like about this story was in the end when Torvald found out about his wife and that she had forged her dad’s signature for a loan so they could go on Vacation, he really freaked out and acted like he did not love her because she made a mistake. It did not matter to him that she was sorry and that she made a mistake. When Torvald ‘supposedly’ found out that she apparently did not forge the signature, he tried to act like he was sorry because he was pissed he said all that for nothing. I saw it that he was scared of losing her because of something he thought she did, but when it comes back at him, he tries to cover for himself and she does not accept that. She realizes what kind of person he is and sticks up for herself. She decides that he is not good enough for her if he can get rid of her so quickly because of one mistake, he should atleast give her another shot if he loves her.

I hope everyone has a great Spring Break, talk to you guys in a week!

"Finishing up Two Papers"

2.21.2007

I think that this week has been just as challenging in homework as the others have been, I am trying to finish up/work on two papers, and it probably was not smart on my part to take two English classes, especially when they both involve writing papers. It is hard to write two different papers at the same time, and keep your mind separate on each of them, but I should get through it!

The first story I read was “The Garden of Forking Paths”, and wow, was that ever a bad story for me to start the week off with. I was so confused I had no idea what was going on! A story really needs to have a good attention grabber to grab my attention and this one really lacked that. I think that it is because it started on the second page of a document, so maybe the exciting beginning was in that part. One thing I was not sure about this piece was why the main character of this story was on the bus and the journey to this place to begin with. Was it just to find out about his relative/ancestor?

I was so much more pleased by “Everything that Rises Must Converge”. This story was so much more straightforward and understanding that I was actually enjoying reading it. My favorite part was when Julian’s mother kept bragging about her grandpa who owned a plantation and was the governor and had 200 slaves, and then Julian turns around and starts telling his mom that it really was not that big of a deal, the plantation is over run by black people anyways! I guess I just took it as a sort of dry humor, but added that kick to the book, I really enjoyed it, even though the ending always seem to be bad and depressing with Flannery O’Connor’s pieces.

"No Paper this Week!"

2.15.2007

This week was definitely a relief not having to worry about finishing my paper and being able to focus more on the rest of my homework. However, Monday was my birthday, so I was in Minnesota until Tuesday and missed a couple days of classes. After missing a few days of classes, I still had a tremendous amount of homework to catch up on in only a few days. I still am not all the way finished with all of my homework, so I am doing them a little out of order now. I have read two stories so far, and have saved the longest one for last; I will probably have to read that one tomorrow so I can take the quiz tomorrow night as well.

Out of the two stories, I have read so far, my favorite was probably “The Use of Force,” just because it was interesting to see how the little girl would defend herself from the doctor, just so she did not have to have anyone know she was sick and so she did not have to accept the fact that she was sick and may die. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is another good story, the only thing I did not like about is was that it was a very sad ending with everyone in the family dying. The misfit was a very cruel person and I wish that the grandma had been able to change his mind to make somewhat of a good ending.

I am interested to see how the longer story turns out that I still have to read. I do not remember what it is called off the top of my head, but hopefully it is somewhat good like the other two I have read this week, and not like “The Hunger Artist” last week. I will find out tomorrow night I guess.

Does anyone know if we will have to write another paper for this class or if that was the only one? If anyone knew and could let me know that would be great. Have a great weekend and week everyone, talk to you in a week!

"What a Relief"

2.9.2007

It seems like forever ago that we were just learning about this paper, and had many doubts on whether or not we would be able to finish in time! The time is finally here; everything pretty much has to be completed as of tomorrow. It feels like such a huge weight lifted off my shoulders to finally be done with this paper (for the most part at least). The weeks should be much easier now not having to worry about working on a paper on top of all the other assignment we have in this class; that leaves more time to focus on reading the stories, taking the quiz, writing our blog, commenting on other people’s blogs, and participating in discussions.

I would have to say my favorite story this week was A Pair of Tickets. In order for me to really like the story, it has to grab my attention in the beginning, but also be easy to understand and realize what the characters are going through. I also thought it was very good, because, even though there were a couple sad parts throughout the story, the end was very uplifting, not only for me, but for the main character and her “half-sisters” as well.

Even though the other two stories had fine qualities as well, they aren’t ones that I would probably read again. The Hunger Artist is just a weird story all together, and I am still not sure to this point why people would do that. It actually grossed me out more than anything while I was reading it hearing how weak, scrawny, pale, and bony he was; if I saw him I would probably think I had just seen a ghost. The Open Boat had a decent ending (except for the one person dying), but the whole story up to that was not as entertaining as it should have been. If the author had made some more drastic interventions in The Open Boat, it would have been another story that I would like to read again.

"Busy Week"

2.2.2007

This week has definitely been an interesting week for me. Not only have I been so bogged down with homework, from this class and others, but I was still able to find time to go to Sioux Falls to visit my mom (I am from Shakopee, MN; she was in Sioux Falls on a business trip), and I was also able to book tickets to Mexico for Spring break : ) that definitely made all of my homework this week a little bit easier (the sooner everything is accomplished, the sooner Meixco comes!).

Being the first week we had to read stories out of our Literature book, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. The 1^st one I read was “Sonny’s Blues”, and this being one of the longer stories, I was worried that they were all going to be about that long and I would have to be doing a little bit more reading than I had 1^st anticipated. But, thankfully, only one other one was that long. I guess I would have to say that I read the best one first. “Sonny’s Blues” was my favorite story this week. I think that story had the biggest influence on me out of the other three. The one thing about that story that I was confused about is why the brother kept saying that he had an ice cube in his stomach and that it was like it was melting but never went away? What does that mean? Is that another way of saying that he was nervous?

I also thought that “Hills Like White Elephants” was a very interesting story. It was short, yet it really made you think a lot about what they were talking about. Another thing that made this piece so easy to read and follow was the fact that the author didn’t use any Flashbacks to make things confusing. The only thing that was confusing about this piece was the fact that we didn’t know what the two people were talking about, but sometimes the pieces that make you think a little bit are the good ones.

"The Start of My Paper"

1.26.2007

This week was definitely a better week for me in this class than last week was. I really started to understand the class a lot more, which is typical to understand something after you are involved in it for awhile. I also noticed that a lot of people were on the same page as me, which made me feel a lot better that I wasn’t the only one lost in class the 1^st week, wondering if I was really ready to take this class or not! I soon learned that I was as ready as I will ever be, even if I am not the greatest writer.

I also started thinking more and more about my paper (wanting to be as prepared as I possibly could be) and finally came up with what book I wanted to base my paper off of. I came up with the fact that out of all the Nicholas Spark’s books I have read, The Guardian had made the most influence in my life. It had many things going on throughout the story and always made me think and put my thoughts to what it would be like if I were that specific character. This was a fun activity while reading this book because there were SO many characters and they each had very different characteristics. The main character of the book, Julie, is a sweet young woman who has already gone through a lot in her life and now has to chose between Richard, a smart business man who doesn’t end up who she thinks he is, and Mike, her (dead) ex-husbands best-friend, who will do anything to be there for her and put her 1^st in their life.

Besides all of the thinking I have done for thoughts on my paper, I have started putting together sentences on what I hope can be the introduction paragraph. I am not the best paper writer, so I really have to take my time and make sure I am including all the sentences that make up an introduction paragraph!

"Pre-Paper Thoughts"

1.19.2007

When I first started looking over the directions for the paper I was a bit scared. Just from reading the directions I had a lot of questions and concerns. For me, this was not a good way to start off the semester, especially for an internet class when you can’t personally sit in class and ask questions to make sure you are on the right track with your thoughts.

After a second well-laid-out explanation of more what the paper was supposed to be I feel more prepared and ready for this class than my first impression had brought me. This is my 3^rd internet class, and I really understand the value of being able to ask questions and get answers right away since the questions can’t be asked face-to-face.

Once I understood the requirements of the paper I was able to start thinking about what I really wanted to base my paper off of, and what I had read recently read that has really made an influence on my life. Since I am a huge Nicholas Sparks fan, his books are about all I have read recently in my rare-found free time. As far as what book of his has made the greatest influence in my life is a really good question and is exactly what I am going to have to look into before I start writing and compiling my paper. Is it A Bend in the Road where one has to put aside their fears of what has happened in the past to move on and live the life they have always dreamed of, or is it The Guardian where a fake identity turns into an over-powering stalking case? Those are two of many that will come into factor when deciding which one influenced my life the most.