After a semester long of poetry class i have to say that I am pleased with taking the class and glad I chose this class over others.  At first I didn't think it was a good choice to go with poetry, being that it never interested me before that.  Yet, the class covered good material and after I started reading a few I quickly developed an affection for poetry, with all the multiple meanings one poem could hold who wouldn't be intrigued by this art?  So, in hindsight I have no regrets with choose this class and would recommend it to anybody who wants to learn the fundamentals of poetry.  

    okay so this post is about how much time I am spending procrastinating on writing my paper.  Were talking a lot of time here, I mean i am even writing this post instead of spending my time on my paper.  Hopefully i will have it done by tomorrow....  Anyways i better get back to writing that paper. 

    Finals week is coming on way too fast and I have a feeling that i am not close to being ready.   I never thought I would say this but I wish thsi semester had an extra week added to it.....   I have been slammed with work and school lately and probably relaxed a little too much over the holiday weekend and will be scrambling to get everything done on time.  I started a seasonal job at circuit city and had to work at 4 a.m. on black Friday and worked all weekend so I guess I didn't "waste" my time but got nothign school related done.  Today wasn't much better I am pretty sure I lost my wallet with all my cards and some cash too (very uncool).  Anyways I hope all of my complaining is enough to fill up this weeks blog post, all I have left to look forward to is a new episode of the boondocks tonight......(what excitement).

This week's poems were translations of a poem to english from a different author.  I enjoyed this because it can give you a few different viewpoints of the way the poem can be interpreted, some of which were not intended by the original author.  This isn't nessacarily a bad thing because even if an author had only one meaning from the original poem to be conveyed  poetry always has readers coming away with different interpretations.  Therefore I think that its a good thing to try to find as many different interpretations as possible from a poem, i mean isn't that basically what we do in class everyday.

This week's poems all had to do with symbolism.  Two poems that we compared in class were "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost and "Tree" by Jane Hirshfield.  Both poems used symbolism  to represent choices in life.  The road no taken used two roads to symbolize difficult choices throughout your life, while Tree by Hirshfield symbolized choosing between a big extravagant life and a simple one.  i enjoyed the similarities between the two poems and this made it easier to understand and identify the symbolism.

I wake upon a cloudy day,                                                                     Hey,
what will come of this?  Is there any other way?                                  Mayday!
Where to go, where to go?                                                                        the glow
o i don't know o i don't know                                                                       oh the blow!
For I am the walrus koo koo kajoo,                                                               his strike was true

didn't want to write about the same poem as everyone else so  i posted this song instead..


Jimi Hendrix - If six was nine

(yeah, sing a song bro...)
If the sun refused to shine
I dont mind, I dont mind
(yeah)
If the mountains ah, fell in the sea
Let it be, it aint me.
(well, all right)

Got my own world to live through and uh, ha !
And I aint gonna copy you.

Yeah (sing the song brother...)
Now if uh, six uh, huh, turned out to be nine
Oh I dont mind, I dont mind uh ( well all right... )
If all the hippies cut off all their hair
Oh I dont care, oh I dont care.
Dig.

cause Ive got my own world to live through and uh, huh
And I aint gonna copy you.

White collar conservative flashin down the street
Pointin their plastic finger at me, ha !
Theyre hopin soon my kind will drop and die but uh
Im gonna wave my freak flag high, high !
Oww !

Wave on, wave on...

Ah, ha, ha
Fall mountains, just dont fall on me
Go ahead on mister business man, you cant dress like me
Yeah !

Dont nobody know what Im talkin about
Ive got my own life to live
Im the one thats gonna die when its time for me to die
So let me live my life the way I want to
Yeah, sing on brother, play on drummer

    i thought this poem was interesting because it traced the african race back to the early days of mankind.  it shows how long and how many different parts of the world the race saw over time in a chronological order.   The poet also seems to take real affection towards the rivers by saying "my soul has grown deep like the rivers".  In the end i think he is comparing a person of african descent to rivers, showing how long they have been around and I how he is proud to be a part of that long history.