Week 11 Discussion

My idea of poetry is the same I’m more in the middle depending on the poem. Some has broadened my ideas by triggering emotions while others made it more difficult to interpret because of the word choices used. Some poems are more cryptic instead of blunt because the use of literary device such as metaphor and symbols. When reading Emily Dickson metaphorical poem “The Wife” it made me feel different kinds of emotions when she expressed how married women were repressed and unhappy.

  My ideas of poetry have broadened based on the different sonnets I’ve read. Poetry is shown to be an individual’s creative written response to a type of experience they had, whether its physical, emotional intellectual or just simply about something they like or enjoy such as sunflowers or sunsets.  I also now understand there are different types of poems based on the number of lines. Shakespeare, however, has a unique writing and language sometimes I can understand clear and sometimes I may have to re-read, but overall, it has so much meaning and can make you see the world differently. In Sonnet 130, “My mistress’s Eyes Are Nothing like the Sun” by William Shakespeare is one I enjoyed reading. It is filled with sarcasm and his comparison is one of a kind. He compares parts of his lover’s body to beautiful objects, but her body was less beautiful than to the things he compared it to. For example, her breath isn’t at all like perfume, or her eyes aren’t as bright as the sun.  This poem describes female beauty and our expectations about the way a women should look in like the women in magazines.

As far as what I have learned from poetry, I will have to admit first and foremost that I’m am one of those poeple making the assumption that all poetry rhymes. That was an interesting turn up events that I learned from the poetry lession presentation video. After reading William Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 “My Mistress’s Eyes Are Nothing like the Sun”, I came to learn that you can do more than just talk about how much you love something. That you can in intricate ways speak on what is bothering you such as when Shakespeare said, “her breath reeks” or “black wires grow on her head”. Not only speaking on what he doesn’t like but also in a round about way saying that dispite all of thing listed in that poem about even though the author’s mistress dull and dim, he still love her so much. Like having an ugly item but you’re happy because it is yours, not because of how pretty it is.

I always think as if all poems are cryptic. The reasoning is due to different styles of expression writing. Some poetry can have a vague or complex perspective to the audience yet have a clear theme of choice that a poet wants to reveal. It is usually up to the readers to decipher what the poet truly wants to convey in their thought of view. William Shakespeare for example for those that can understand early modern English and translate Shakespeare’s usage of words into late modern English. Not only that, the context that is given by the poet would also depend on the reader that is studying Shakespeare’s language usage in poetry. There is a variety of examples of poetry being known as cryptic when there are languages that are being used in writing that are not familiar to the audience. Yet give interest to those who enjoy studying poetry.

Growing up I didn’t like poems and still don’t because of how the wordings on some poems. They get me confused and I just don’t prefer reading like crazy, so that adds to that. But when reading these articles in the week 11 post I seem to have a better understanding and respect the people that write them a little bit more. I liked the poems that had a nice rhythmic to it instead of a broken rhythm where you can’t really understand what’s going on. The week 11 posts showes the different types of poems there are. In the article how to read a poem I found it helpful that it saved the questions you should ask yourself when reading a poem to get a better understanding of it Who is the speaker? What circumstances gave rise to the poem? What situation is presented? Who or what is the audience? What is the tone? What form, if any, does the poem take? Is sound an important, active element of the poem? Does the poem spring from an identifiable historical moment? Does the poem speak from a specific culture? Does the poem use imagery to achieve a particular effect? What kind of figurative language, if any, does the poem use? If the poem is a question, what is the answer? If the poem is an answer, what is the question? What does the title suggest? I find these the most benificial questions that you should ask yourself before or when reading a poem.

While going through the readings In week 11 about poetry I believe that my ideas still do remain the same about poetry because to me poetry was always something that was very interesting to read and also write about, I always thought poetry gave me ideas with the type words being used by some poets and also let me be able to expand my vocabulary a little by also using these words along the line. While reading “How To Read A Poem” by Edward Hirsch a few ideas stood out to me and it came in the second paragraph as Edward stated “The goal of careful reading is often to take up a question of meaning, an interpretive question that has more than one answer. ” which I agree with very much because when you read something or such as poetry you are trying to get your answers solved to the questions you may have in the beginning of the reading or poetry and those answers do not come until you keep reading through out the lines.

Due to our week 11 activities, I have gained a new respect for poets and their abilities to portray many emotions in a few number of words. This allows the reader of said poem to feel the individual emotions of the author. I first recognized this in Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth  Barrett Browning. Specifically in the line, “I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use” (Browning). This line shows the speaker’s infinite love for their significant other and the various was they can describe their love. Another line this is relevant in is, “Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death” (Browning). This line further goes into how the speaker’s love extends even to the end of their natural lives and into the mystery of death.

After reading those poems, the ideas in my mind about poems haven’t changed because it still hard to understand and force to think. In the poem “How Do I Love Thee” the word thee was shown in almost every single line, which I really hate about that, I have never used the word thee(means you) in the modern convention. In other words poem sucks, you have to use your brain to process the meaning, also it might be different meanings, everyone views the story differently, you might see it as romantic, and others might see it as ridiculous. Personally, I don’t like to read poems, it likes reading an ancient English book like Romeo and Juliet, it almost killed me once and made my brain stop processing because of a word like thou and more it is just hard to understand, just like reading ancient Chinese words. Also in the modern world, we tend to make things simpler because of the internet, and I don’t think people going to write a love poem from those words, it just makes things complicated.  

When I think of poetry, I think about the calming and rhythmic feel that it gives off. Although not all poetry can give a “relaxing” sensation to it, most of it is very storytelling in the few words and lines it is described in. Growing up, I loved writing poems whenever I had literature assignments. Sometimes making personal ones storytelling, replacing me with a different character or object or just having fun with rhyming and haikus. Once high school hit, however, poetry wasn’t such a main focus so my excitement towards poetry died out. The activities in Week 11 helped me realize how interesting and intriguing each piece of poetry actually is. The Italian Sonnet, “How Do I Love Thee” showed me that English can be imperfect yet still beautiful. Words can be bent to the ways of people’s thoughts and emotions, creating a doorway to how someone thinks, feels, and reacts.

I have always loved poetry. I enjoy its versatility, the beauty and brutishness it may carry, the rawest emotions it expresses. Having English as my second language, however, I always believed that my love and understanding for poetry in a deeper sense would forever be limited to Hungarian poems. They are the ones I grew up reading and analyzing, my vocabulary is much wider in that language, too, therefore it only made sense to me. Thankfully, that changed with Activity 8. I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more. The way the last two lines are worded makes me feel touched and awed in a way I believed only poems in my own language could. It is a relief to realize, I can truly appreciate a poem and its imagery even if it was written in my second language.

Growing up poetry was never my thing I sometimes enjoyed some poetry, but I really wasn’t a fan of poetry. After watching the video on poetry and reading activity 2 I still feel the same way about poetry in a way. Although both is explaining how poetry is and what is in poetry it still doesn’t change the way I feel about poetry; however, It can be very interesting the two activity shows how poetry can be done and it gives a better understanding of poetry. Activity 2 actually breaks it down into pieces to make you understand the reading more which is helpful to people like me who really don’t like poetry or understands it. After fully reading activity 2 it made me kind of understand poetry more reading it out loud and asking yourself questions can make you understand the readings a lot.

Week 11 reading and activities expanded my knowledge of the differences between sonnets and poems. Before my exposure to week 11 activities, I could differentiate a poem from a sonnet. I was familiar with the term sonnet. Activity 5 was the most compelling because it expounded on my sonnet knowledge. Sonnets differ from poems in that sonnets contain fourteen lines and employ any form of formal rhyme scheme. On the contrary, poems express feelings and ideas in a given intensity using specific diction, rhyme, rhythm, and imagery. In addition to expounding my knowledge of sonnets, activity five also enhanced my understanding of reading a poem. Reading a poem requires students to read the poem loudly, read the poem silently line by line, and talk back to the poem. The last step talking to the poem is vital in understanding a poem since it prompts a reader to formulate specific questions regarding the poem. By answering the proposed questions, students can depict the major themes in a poem.

Poetry has always been hard for me to understand, especially Shakespeare. But the common lit reading of “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” was really helpful because of the structure with the questions. I surprised myself with answering all the questions right because I usually can’t focus when it comes to the language Shakespeare uses in his poetry or plays. The Common lit structure also helped with Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee ” and I actually really enjoyed that poem, which is great because normally I would consider myself anti-poetry, just based on the fact that I don’t usually understand it. I also was gifted an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poetry book like six years ago and I actually feel compelled to finally give it a read.  But these exercises helped me a lot because with “What My Lips Have Kissed and Why and When” I read it, understood it, and loved it without any help.

After this week my outlook on poetry has most definitely broadened in a positive way.  I’ve always had much of an appreciation for poets and how they portray their vision and ideas, emotions and thoughts, in a way that often is beneath the surface. That being so, I often can become frustrated when I cannot grasp the main idea of a poem, and lose appreciation in that emotion.  After this week, I have a much better understanding of how to analyze and read poems in a way that will help me to avoid this frustration.  For example, in activity 2 they give examples of questions you can ask while reading to keep your understanding in check, such as, “who is the speaker in this poem?”, and “what does the title suggest about the poem?”, and others along with those.  Asking simple questions can help break down information and better your understanding of harder concepts.  “The second is assuming that the poem is a kind of code, that each detail corresponds to one, and only one, thing, and unless they can crack this code, they’ve missed the point,” (Hirsch).  I love this quote as well from activity 2 as it enhances the idea that poetry can be deemed as boring and frustrating because of a lack of “skills” used to understand the main idea of each line, every word and every punctuation has an intentional placement in poetry, and these activities helped to guide me on ways to grasp the bigger picture.

Somehow my ideas haven’t changed so much. I’m still getting difficult to understand a poem because poems are difficult to understand and try to know what kind of tone the poem is.The videos and the readings been so helpful it helps us to know how poetry works and what a poem. Activity 1: Poetry lesson presentation shows different ways to define poetry and what is not a poetry. What is a Poetry? Well, a poetry has to shows any of these following: Rhyme, Rhythm, Repetition, Sound, Imagery, or Form. From the video I learned that a poetry is a concise, shorter, and shorter in length. As I have seen the video, I feel like my thoughts hasn’t changed because in High School I have been go over the meanings of rhyme, rhythm, repetition, sound, Imagery, and form. And how to annotate each stanza from the poem. Activity 2: How to read a poem. While reading, I did know that we should ask ourselves questions when we read a poem. We should ask questions because that way, we could find the meaning of what the poem is trying to say and try to understand the poem. One idea about poetry has changed me: I didn’t know while reading a poem could lead us to mistakes. That the poems are difficult to understand. • Questions we should when we first read a poem: Who is the speaker? • What circumstances gave rise to the poem? • What situation is presented? • Who or what is the audience? And what is the tone? I like this one because we should know what tone the poem is.

By reading all these poems, my opinion of poetry has not changed.I think that the poems have all dramatism and romanticism. There are many different kinds of poems, some may be good, some bad, some that rhyme, some that don’t.I have also learned that poems have repeated lines and this is to draw more attention from the reader and is a collection of spoken or written words that expresses ideas or emotions and imaginative style.

Somehow when I think about poetry the first things that come to mind are love, ocean waves, and animals. When I was in middle school, we used to write a lot of poems. At first it was very difficult for me to write one because I always thought a poem had to rhyme. Then I learned that there are different types of poems and poems don’t always have to rhyme. My favorite type of poem is a Haiku. Haiku is my favorite type of poem because it is very creative, fun, and short. A Haiku consists of just three lines with 17 syllables in total. For example, the first line is 5 syllables, the second line is 7 syllables, and the third line is 5 syllables. The activities and readings from week 11 really made me realize how relief it was either when I used to write poems on my own or in school. After watching the short videos and participating in the activities, I learned that Italian Sonnets are interesting because it keeps the reader guessing and thought provoking. I now have a better understanding of the technical components of composing poetry, as well as how to distinguish between poetry and prose. I also discovered that understanding poetry is a journey rather than a destination.  

This weeks readings bring me back to 12th grade AP Literature, in which we dissected sonnets. The familiar terms of rhyme, rhythm, and meter really are a throwback. It was definitely a good refresher to keep in mind during the readings. Something new learned was the difference between Elizabethan and Italian sonnets, and learning all the technicalities was interesting. Poetry has always been fascinating in that it can be both structured or free-flowing, but it retains the same sense of freedom. It was also interesting learning the difference between poetry and prose; I had always associated the two with each other almost synonymously. I never really enjoyed reading poetry with which one had to puzzle out the meaning through several readings; call it impatience, but I prefer things more straightforward and clear-cut. However, there are certain things that are created for a more thorough reading, meant to be combed through several times, and there is a beauty in that too.

After this week’s readings and activities, I now know more about the technical aspects of writing poetry and how to identify what constitutes poetry versus prose. Poetry has rhyme, rhythm, repetition, sound, imagery, or form. (Tom Chester 0:31-0:35) I know the difference between an Italian and a Shakespearean sonnet. An Italian sonnet is 14 lines in length, has an octave consisting of 8 rhyming lines, and a sestet composed of 6 rhyming lines. The octave also poses a problem, and the sestet is the answer to that problem. A Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains comprised of four rhyming lines each and a two-line rhyming couplet. Shakespearean sonnets are also mainly written about human nature and love. I also learned that analyzing poetry is a journey, not something with a definite end. In well-written poetry, it is possible to learn something new with each new reading of the poem. Citations: Tom Chester. “Poetry Lesson” Youtube, uploaded by thisheather, Dec. 5, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLKengChb-E

The activities and readings from Week 11 have renewed my interest in poetry. I found the article “How to Read a Poem” in Activity 2 particularly interesting. I was not aware that there were so many techniques that can be applied to reading a poem. I, personally, have been guilty of dismissing a poem if I was not immediately able to decipher its meaning after reading it once. It never occurred to me that it may have been the writer’s intention to cause the reader to make an effort to understand and appreciate the poem. I have also never considered reading a poem aloud to hear the rhythms and sounds of the words. I almost feel a little guilty not having put in the effort while reading poetry in the past and I wonder how many great poems I may have overlooked. I am now eager to read more poetry with the new skills I have acquired through the readings this week.

When listening and reading the different ways and specifics of poetry I have learned there is an actual science and system behind it. I’ve never been one to properly grasp the logistics of poetry, I always thought they were just words from the heart that very talented people were able to throw together in a fashionable manner. In the video Italian and Elizabethan Sonnets: Poetry Analysis they show a breakdown of a poem that rhymes and show how the numbered lines and how the one after rhymes with the first. I never knew there was almost a mathematical way of going about it. I also learned that Shakespeare happened at the same time as Queen Elizabeth and that the two can be called the same, a term I would’ve always over looked. My favorite thing about poetry and the era is was mostly popular is the lack of shame to express love and passion for something or someone.

As a Brazillian person, poetry and prose has always been a huge part of our national literature. However, I was not aware of the differences between poetry and prose, until I’ve watched the first video on the activities this week, “Poetry Lesson” by Tom Chester. Furthermore, I’ve found it quite amazing that instead of starting the video explaining what is poetry and comparing it to prose, he decided to start by saying what is “not” considered as poetry and prose. I have always thought that by starting the lesson knowing what we should not do, it becomes easier to understand the right concept and how to do it or identify it properly. The second activity that I’ve found highly informative to help me understanding more about poetry, poems and prose was the reading “How to Read a Poem” by Edward Hirsch. The author defends that there are three false assumptions when it comes to reading poems. As one of them, he mentions “The second is assuming that the poem is a kind of code, that each detail corresponds to one, and only one, thing, and unless they can crack this code, they’ve missed the point” (Par 3). Particularly, I have always read every poem looking for a clue, a word or a saying that identifies the true meaning of the poetry, and it can become extremely frustrating at times. This week’s readings and activities was incredibly informative, and assisted me on understanding better how to identify, read and look for clues in poetry.

My ideas of poetry have changed and broadened after the week 11 readings and activities. I’ve never liked poetry because I felt like sometimes it didn’t make sense to me. In activity two’s reading, it elaborates on the idea that poetry can be difficult to understand at times but it is up to the reader to try and figure it out. The reading also mentions how a poem can be seen as a game, it makes you work a little and it can be challenging. But like most things, you need to practice in order to gain skills and succeed in understanding and completing its task. Poems are meant to be read several times and aloud, in order to get a better understanding of them. I think what makes poems difficult is that the meaning behind them aren’t always so clear and they can be interpreted in many ways. Which is why reading and understanding poetry takes practice.

My ideas of poetry have changed a lot as I got a better broader understanding to what is poetry and how people write poetry and what’s the true meaning behind it is from the video I watch about poetry I know poems should and have a lot of rhythmic and frequently metaphorical lines and each different types of poetry from what ever genres use some sort of rhyme rhythm repetition sound imagery and form. I learned poetry is a short form of art writing work of literature that doesn’t have any type of rule or writing but a way a type of person express there feelings or mood or what they want to say weather its a poetry or line that has lot of  repetition or words and rhythm. The main point from the video I learned and better understand about poetry is that each type of poetry has a mood or tone that attracts the reader and gets there attention in ways they can relate to or even be inspired by.

This week’s activities and reading helped me understand the structure of sonnets. Shakespearean sonnets, or Elizabethan sonnets, are typically 14 lines in length and follow a specific structure. They are divided into 3 quatrains and end in a couplet. Quatrain 1 would rhyme in abab, quatrain 2 in cdcd, quatrain 3 in efef and the couplet would rhyme in gg. The first 3 quatrains establish a theme or problem and then resolve it in the last 2 lines, the couplet. For example, in the first 3 quatrains of Sonnet 130, “My Mistress’s Eyes Are Nothing like the Sun” by William Shakespeare, the speaker discusses the qualities of the woman he is in love with. The speaker compares her to the things of nature. However, the woman is unlike the beautiful things of nature, she doesn’t have any heavenly attributes. In a way, the speaker describes her in an unattractive manner. In the last 2 lines of the poem, the speakers reveal that he still loves her for who she is, not because he can compare her to beautiful things. Overall, knowing the format of a poem makes it easier to understand them. 

When I thought of poetry about love, several words that came to mind immediately were romantic, admiring and divine. Indeed, in this week’s activities, Browning used these emotions in her poem “How Do I Love Thee” to show us how love can be enormous. Although the extent of love can’t be measured by certain things, she still managed to express her overwhelming feelings to her lover. At least I feel amazed by her description of words as if her love is the strongest and purest in the world. Nonetheless, after I read “My Mistress’s Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun” Shakespeare showed me a new world of love poetry that doesn’t have to be so enthusiastic. In comparison, Shakespeare applied a different style which is realism into love poems, which I think most of the poets back in those days wouldn’t use. He illustrates a vivid, though ordinary, mistress through a lot of metaphors and similes in somehow degraded words. In this way, love can be more understandable and practical by the readers. These two poems make me realize that love can be various depending on which kind of love we prefer. 

My ideas on poetry mainly have not changed, I’m fascinated by romance and tradies in a poem. I did learn how to write a poem like an Italian sonnet and through the video that I watched on “Italian and Elizabethan Sonnets: Poetry Analysis,” I got a good understanding of the elements like an octave used in the lines of a poem and the poem should also be rhythmic and frequently metaphorical. The poem like “sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare, this one for me was personally a little difficult but I then understood that the beauty of someone he loved was compared to a summer day. Poems like the mood and tone set the attention to the reader’s eye like mine (when romance is involved). The video poetry lessons were it was helpful, I don’t know much about how to write a poem I have an understanding of what a poem is or isn’t when writing a poem.   

Poetic Review of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed and Where, and Why” This week, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet “what lips my lips have kissed and where, and why” attracted my attention. The speaker addresses their state of unhappiness and despair, which represents an intangible outcome yet plagues them with their memorial happiness as a result of innumerable unsuccessful minor affairs. The poem is structured in sonnet form, with the initial lines illustrating the abba rhyme scheme (Mannion, 2020). Nonetheless, the poet’s author maximizes sonnet usage by incorporating mood change in the poem’s ninth line, so inserting another rhyme scheme of CDE CDE, which may aid in memory formation. By combining the latter rhyme pattern with the change in mood, the speakers address their current state of romance, or more precisely, their romantic position. He confesses that males have demonstrated no major feelings worthy of securing memories in the speaker’s mind by enquiring as to which lips are being referred to, and the location of their kiss has been forgotten. Additionally, the speaker of the poem acknowledges the profound anguish of unremarkable lads who will not turn against them with a midnight cry. While the speaker conveys much anguish in their laments over their past lover birds, the speaker deduces that the love encounters between them and their lovers involved a large number of unmemorable males, as indicated by their inability to satisfy the speaker’s romantic demands (Mannion, 2020). Despite each romantic partner’s insignificance, the poem’s character references to pleasant summers and the lights that projected them. As a result, the persona experiences the universal affection and camaraderie that every being requires. Additionally, the persona accepts that they are ultimately unmemorable and unremarkable despite their former love experiences, with sufficiently lost feelings to displace an […]

This week’s module was very helpful because it helps me to gain some understanding more about different types of literature and poetry that I didn’t know before. To illustrate, I think writing a poem is just looking for words to do the verification, but after reading and trying to understand what poetry is, I understand and realize that poetry is an amazing art. So, I realized to write poetry, you must prepare and put yourself in a good condition to know the basics part of poetry, and the nature of poetry, the poem is often rhythmical, routinely metaphorical, and rime. Now I understand to write a good poem you should touch the soul of the reader and to engage the reader in your poetry you should have the skills, and a good vocabulary by choosing the ideal words. Also, I have learned two different types of sonnets English and Italian.

In reading all these poems, my view on poetry has not changed that drastically. I still think poems are drastically overdramatic and annoying, but I have learned that not all poems are as bad. There are basic poems with little lines that can evoke many feelings, while others do not. I have learned that poems drastically differ from one another depending what type of poem you are writing. There are ones that rhyme and ones that do not. Most are written to evoke a feeling that most people will understand and connect with in some way. That is the whole point of poetry to evoke some kind of feeling in someone and understand it in their own point of view. Also, I have learned that repeated lines are meant to draw attention, I always tended to ignore the repeated lines and get annoyed at them and stop reading the poem like in Sonnet 43 how the author repeats “how they love thee” in different ways.

After seeing the activities of week 11, I can say that my point of view towards poetry has changed drastically, at the beginning or even when I was a freshman in high school I thought that a poem or poetry, in general, was just a bunch of words and already. However, I realized that poetry has the power to connect, that is, when reading a poem, thousands of stories can be linked to it. A clear example is in the poem “The wife” by Emily Dickinson and “The Story of an Hour”, a short story by Kate Chopin. With just a stanza or even a verse, you can see the connection or even relate to a previously read story. Another way in which poetry can connect is with people, that is, their personal life or it can even help that person to reflect and realize something that they had not previously grasped.

I understand poetry a little better and am able to read it while trying to figure out what it means, my understanding of poetry has altered and extended in response to the reading and activities of week 11 because I am able to read it while attempting to figure out what it means. The video in activity 1 teaches the meaning of poetry and the various genres of poetry. When I was composing poetry, I also learned the difference between poetry and prose, which I had no idea existed. The video in exercise 2 shows how to read an accurate poem of poetry. It claims that when reading an unknown poetry, novice poem readers make assumptions. When I first start reading a poem, I make assumptions about what the poem is about, and by the end of the poem, I have a better idea of what the poetry is about. I develop assumptions about the poem’s subject matter, which, in turn, makes me more interested in reading poetry. I’ve read poetry without truly considering what it means; I had no idea that poetry could be more than rhyme and short lines. Poetry has a new meaning for me now, and it’s something I’m quite interested in.

My ideas about poetry have changed and broadened in response to week 11’s readings and activities because it gave me a better understanding of poetry and how to read it correctly. In activity 1 the video explains what poetry is and what poetry is not. We also learned about poetry vs prose and how they are different. In activity 2 it has an article on how to properly read a poem, towards the bottom of the article it states some helpful questions some may ask when approaching a poem for the first time such as: Who is the speaker?, What does the title suggest? Does the poem use unusual words or use words in an unusual way?, etc. Overall I used to read poems without really thinking about them and trying to figure out the true meaning of it, you really have to dig deep to find the true meaning of each stanza and why certain words were used.

Among the sonnets that we read this week, William Shakespeare’s Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day was my favorite. First, I enjoyed the poem due to my devotion in reading Shakespeare’s works. Second and most importantly is the poem’s artistic element and theme that represents the stability of love, the immortal beauty, and the human being versus nature. When reading the poem, I can see that the speaker is comparing himself with the person to whom the poem is addressed with the specific element of the day (Spacey par.7). I admire the way Shakespeare makes efforts to ensure that we, the audience, have fun with his poetic piece. Specifically, he has ensured that the audience has a reflection on the human perspective in the poem. Through the poem, I get a critical analysis of the changes that are happening in the setting that the author is in. The summer season is described as one which has a rich and colorful perspective hence showing a beauty that is temporary and charming. Therefore, through the poem, I am able to understand contemporary issues that are caused by people’s perception of the life they live, more so that which determines their happiness. In the poem, there are specific lines that capture my attention hence, making me read it often. For example, Shakespeare says that “Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer’s lease hath all too short a date …” (Spacey par.5). In this segment of his work, he means that people have different lives and stages determined by their age and status. The speaker gives changes that happen when ones is a youth and a noble individual. Through the poem, I can understand there is a compliment of a lover […]

Before week 11 readings, I didn’t know much about poetry. I knew that they rhymed and thought they always had a special code you had to crack throughout the poem. After reading activity two, I have seen that this is a common assumption made and there is more to poetry. “The second is assuming that the poem is a kind of code, that each detail corresponds to one, and only one, thing, and unless they can crack this code, they’ve missed the point”(Hirsch). This one really stood out to me because referring back to high school, this is what I was told by my English teachers and I had carried that way of thinking about poetry ever since. Another thing that changed the way I see poetry is from activity three, sonnets. These were usually written about love from suitors to woman that they liked. Other topics were about nature and man’s roles in the world. These are always written in 14 lines and only about one subject. This is something very new to me because I did not know poetry has more meaning to it than just rhyming and short lines. I definitely see poetry differently and as something very exciting now.

I found this weeks curriculum very exciting because I was able to get the chance to learn more about a type of literature that was otherwise basically foreign to me. In Activity 1, we learned about the different types of poetry as well as the literary terms that come with it. In Activity 3, I learned that sonnets are always composed of fourteen lines.  There are also two different types of sonnets: English and Italian.  An Italian sonnet has an octet, which consists of eight lines, and a sestet, which consists of six lines whereas the English sonnet has three quatrains, consisting of four lines each, followed by a couplet which is two lines.  A sonnet is the most common type of poetry and they are usually written about love. In Activities 4 & 5, I was able to read and learn more about the most famous William Shakespeare.  William Shakespeare most often writes his sonnets about women, comparing them to seasons, objects, emotions, etc.  I have learned this by reading “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day.”.  It is also shown in a short lecture on Sonnet 130, “My Mistress’s Eyes Are Nothing like the Sun.”, where Professor Conway states that Shakespeare uses “elaborate metaphors and even mythical allusions are employed to describe adored female subjects.”. (2)