The end of poetry

This week in the English class we finally finished the poetry section. I really hate poetry. I don’t like it when things are not what they appear at first or when what they say means something totally different from what they really mean. The only thing I liked about poetry was analyzing the stanzas. Defining the stressed and unstressed syllables and the patterns each poems had. Besides that, poetry was kind of boring. I didn’t like how the book divided each poet as a chapter. The chapters should have been divided, in my opinion, by styles and types of poems. If it were me I would have given a totally different approach to poetry than the book. I can’t wait to start the Drama section of the English class.

JUSTICE by Langston Hughes

This week in the English class we discussed a lot of Langston Hughes poems. What I find interesting is that he is rather literal and all his poems dealt with topics of racism and prejudice. I really like his poems and I familiarize with them in some aspects. I can obviously understand why did Langston Hughes wrote this poems. He was black and lived in the 1960’s United States. Therefore, he lived in a very discriminating time, especially against the black race, his race. Although racism is not so known now a days we can see still that there is racists and racism in the world. I want to discuss the poem “Justice” which was not discussed in class. The poem is real short so I’m going to write it and then discuss it.
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise.
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.
This poem is very literal, although it uses several symbols these are pretty easy to understand and interpret. On the first line he means to say that the American justice only does justice to what they want to do justice, on the second line he means to say that black people know that justice is not on their side, so they probably know how to deal better with it than most whites. The bandage he’s referring to means the way justice hides the injustice some people go through. When he says that once perhaps were eyes, I think he means that people used to see justice how it is supposed to be seen but now a days things doesn’t work like that. The two festering sores are obviously referring to the eyes.

Our First Essay

Last week we were doing our first formal essay for the English class. I picked the first topic question. This question was about how Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” influenced Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner’s stories. These stories were “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “A Rose for Emily” respectively with their authors. I chose this topic because I found it really interesting that Poe’s work influenced so greatly other writers. At first, when reading the stories in the classroom I did not see the influence Poe’s story had on the others. But when comparing the elements on each story and analyzing them more carefully I could see how “The Cask of Amontillado” influenced both stories greatly. I think I did a pretty good essay and I’m looking forward to the second one.

I also like a lot what we are doing now in the classroom. Poetry is very different from prose writing and I find it more interesting than prose. It has so many elements and it also has a lot of variety of style. I like looking for the stressed and unstressed syllables and finding the sequence of each verse and stanza. I’m looking forward to learn more about different types of poems and I would also like to write a few in class.