2nd Quarter Poetry Journal Reflection

The poetry response that I chose was a prompt that I wrote in response to the Bison Crossing Near Mount Rushmore poem. I wrote....

And we keep our line, slowly moving ahead to our dreaded misery.
Slowly, pacing, thinking before moving, like pawns in a chess game we are just pawns of human society reluctantly following high society thinking not speaking,
not contributing only playing.
 ONLY FOLLOWERS.
 Not teachers,
 for that is left to the rest.
For that is left for the rest.
Leaving
 behind
the
remains
 for
us


I wrote this poem because during the poem I tried to think of characteristics of the bison. They seemed unified and obedient I guess. Like they were just following. So, I tried to write a confusing poem to go along with bison crossing Mount Rushmore. I liked how I capitalized important words that I wanted to stand out to the audience. These are kind of like the overall message of the poem. Although, this poem doesn't necessarily have a specific meaning that is clear. They are mashed up meanings, all blended together. I think that this poem really clarifies how humans are just inferior to themselves. True, there are humans that are considered greater and more powerful, but they're still humans. They shouldn't be any greater. They may just be more noticed. So, if there was a message to this poem, that would be it. That all humans are humans, and no human is inferior to another.

So, again the pictures wouldn't load, just like on my last post. But what the picture was going to be was a line of people that was kind of dramatic with the words follower written above each of their heads. It actually was a good picture, and it fit well with the response, but my stupid computer would not load any of the pictures. So, after spending a while trying to get these pictures to load, I figured I would just explain the picture instead.

2nd Quarter Reading Reflection

I finished 6 books this quarter, if you count "The Color of Water" and my multicultural choice memoir, which I would most likely count because we read them for a while. And analyzing and everything took up a fair amount of my time. Although last quarter I read 9 books, I feel like this quarter was a little busier with homework and reading Romeo and Juliet as a class and at home. I spent a while on no fear shakespeare. So now to get to the interesting part of the blog post. I'm just going to list because that's easier for both you and me, so here are the 6 books that I read.

1. The Color of Water, by James McBride
2. The Bite of the Mango, by Mariatu Kamara
3. The Amber Spyglass, by Phillip Pullman
4. Room, by Emma Donoghue
5. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, by Jesse Andrews
6. Sky Key, by James Fray

Um, the pictures wouldn't load.

So yeah, these are the books I read. About 50% of them were books that I was remotely interested in. "The Color of Water" was certainly not my cup of tea. Same with "The Bite of the Mango", These books were just narratives which I particularly don't like but it could be much worse. However, the style of the book Room was very interesting because it was told from the perspective of a 5-year old boy who has been locked in a room with his mother all his life. Which for me, is an interesting and different concept that I haven't really expected from my previous reading. My book choices were kind of challenging, but I really wanted to find something that I wanted to read so obviously I'm not going to read a book about the space time continuum. Sorry. The best book that I read this quarter was probably the book "Room", which I enjoyed because of the unique perspective and language that was used throughout the book. I have discovered from this quarter that I enjoy books that are unique and different. I don't really enjoy books of a certain genre, but I do like books that are well-rounded. I guess thats the best way to put it. Like books that bring a sense of humor, and a sense of seriousness, and stuff like that. 

My goal from last quarter was that I wanted to read 12 books, obviously I didn't meet that goal. I was busier this quarter than last quarter, but I should've read more books. But in my defense, we read books as a class and we transferred many assignments to out of class. My other goal was to expand the genres that I'm reading. Yes, I did that. Partly, because I was required to if I wanted to get a good grade, yeah *cough cough the memoirs*. But I did expand so I guess that's a plus. Two goals that I want to achieve are 1) I want to read an entire series because I want to look more into how characters can change over the course of a series of books and 2) I want to read 8 books next quarter because I want to read more than I have previously this quarter and I plan to do this by setting a set reading time each day.

Finally, my hedgehog would like to contribute to this blogpost. dfeccr  m   5

k;mla8tmfewndgdglkoo'[[[[[[[lł;;;;;;;;'[