Fluorescence

The book "Fluorescence" is a very interesting, yet confusing book that we had to read in Creative Writing. There's huge gaps in between sentences and blank pages just scattered everywhere. Sometimes there's a chapter title and sometimes there's not. Splitting us up into groups help me understand these poems like ten times better. And then hearing what other groups say about the poem they had to talk about helps me, also. The first section of this book was the most confusing to me. The very first page, Trace 3, the poem is spaced really weird. And even though there is no right way to write a poem, I don't know whether I should pause or just read it like normal. It's very hard for me to understand what these poems are about, I have to sit there and read it over and over a couple times and then it might start to make sense.
In chapter one, though, it wasn't as hard to understand. The poem was still confusing, but there were key words in there that you could use to guess what it was about. Also, in class, a group talked about chapter one and made me understand the whole poem entirely.
Chapter two, when I read it for the first time all i knew was that it was about some explosion. But another group talked about this chapter, which helped me understand it more.

The in class discussions help me so much, clearly.

Chapter three was the chapter I had to discuss with my group and my favorite chapter in the whole book. I liked this chapter because it was about sadness and suicide. It just seemed more "real" to me than the other ones. I can relate to this one more than the others. She uses a bunch of colors throughout the whole book, but in this chapter she seemed to have only used shade of blue. She also used other colors to give you a better picture in your head of what she was picturing. But the overall poem had more of a blue shade to it. Which makes you kind of feel the sadness that she was feeling.
Chapter four was a lot like chapter three. It was still about suicide, but it listed off all the things that you would end up killing yourself over. At least, that is what I got from it. This was the only poem that I read the first time and actually understood what she was trying to say.
Everything after chapter four was confusing for me. There were no chapters, just little titles above each poem. Each poem was different, like the words were either in paragraph form or they were scattered all over the place. As for me understanding them... no, I did not understand them at all. I guess I'll just have to wait until class tomorrow to see what they were about. My favorite one, though, would have to be "She Feels Very Small" and that is only because of the title.

Poetry Packet.

1) Shakespeare Sonnet - 130
I think this poem was the easiest to understand out of all the Shakespeare Sonnets. This was the easiest to understand because the only thing that it could possibly be about was love. Shakespeare was writing about his love for his mistress by comparing her to all the things that were so much "better" than her. But the last two lines is when I realized that he really loved this girl. It says "And yet, by heaven, I think my love was rare; As any she belied with false compare!" Even tho he was saying all these things were better than her, in the end, she ended up being better than all those things. It was very confusing and I had to Google what "belied" meant. But when I finally understood what he was talking about, I thought it was a very nice poem. It ended up being really sweet in the end.

2) Ted Berrigan - XV
Okay, I think this poem is the best poem in this whole poetry packet. I really liked this poem because you have to read it a certain way to understand it. The only reason I knew to read it a certain way, though, was because in class we talked about it. It didn't make any sense when I read it the first time, but I didn't think nothing of it because none of these poems really make that much sense to me. When you read this poem the right way, though, it's makes sense. Well... it makes more sense than any other poem. Also, I liked this poem because it talks about Marilyn Monroe. Ted Berrigan clearly had this fascination with Marilyn Monroe and I really liked that because who doesn't just love Marilyn Monroe?

3) Langston Hughes - Preference
This poem I found to be very funny. The poem is called "Preference" and all he is talking about is how much he wants an older woman. According to him, young girls are always asking for stuff and talking too much, while an older woman is just giving stuff away. Not that there's anything wrong with dating someone older than you, but there's nothing wrong with dating someone younger than you, either. I feel like this poem is really bias, but it was also pretty funny the way he chose to describe how each woman acts.

First Post...

I have no idea what to say, I'm not very good at blogging... 

I took this class because... I like to write. My name is Alexia Pope and I am at my second year at Eastern. I prefer to be called Lexi, but I'll answer to either. My mom works for Eastern so I get free tuition. :) My major is Social Work and my minor is Journalism. I like to write short stories, novels, and scripts in my spare time. I live just off campus with my older sister, who just recently graduated from Eastern this past December. I have another older sister, that also graduated from Eastern, and a younger brother.