Choose one of the four options for the blog assignmentlisted in "Selections of Ec-Poetry" on Blackboard
Blog option #1: Reflecting on selection #1, what about you has gone
away? What are you feeling coming
back? When do you feel free?
Blog option #2: Reflecting on selection #2, what do you wish you knew?
Blog option #3: Read the remaining poems.
Which poem is your favorite and why?
Blog option #4: Write a poem of your own and describe the influences and meaning.
Blog option #1:
ReplyDeleteJust as the seasons of the year come and go, bringing with them and taking away with them certain beauty that are only appropriate during that time of year, so does the human soul possess certain seasons and therefore certain aspects of the self continually go and return, return and go. The Self is never fully revealed to the individual because relationships with other people, the place one is in, and experiences one has have a never-ending influence on the self and ways in which to express it. Because of this, many parts of me have gone away, perhaps temporarily, or perhaps not and many parts of me will return. In a way, I feel that my sense of freedom has gone away since coming to Columbia. Working in Yosemite this summer and then coming to Columbia was a culture shock, to say the least. If magic exists, it does there for me, where everything seems possible and problems of the real world don’t exist. In the Sierra Nevadas, there is no social “norm”, no social rules, or much social structure at all, everyone is a weirdo searching for something, and there’s a general sense of acceptance and creativity. Yosemite was a world of freedom where social rules and expectations didn’t hold me back. I could fully be who I was and wanted to be. There is great energy there; a sense of comradeship that I haven’t felt anywhere else between the employees, who came from all over the U.S., yet were still drawn to the same place. This sense of freedom has left since starting school and once again contributing to society’s social structure of what it means to become an adult.
I have come to the conclusion that this change is not necessarily negative. Just as there’s a time for the seasons of the year, there’s a time to experience this freedom, but it can’t be all the time. When I possessed this freedom, I had lost the student within me. Just the same when I am in student mode, I’m different than when I’m in Yosemite. What Yosemite has revealed in me is always a part of me, but sometimes it stays dormant, like when I leave the place and the people there to come here to learn, opening up a new side of me. I know that the freedom Yosemite brings to me will return in due time just as I know summer will return after the hibernation of winter. Once again, I’ll feel that liberating feeling of living within tent walls, of going rock climbing after work, and of backpacking through the Sierra Nevadas. But right now, it’s time for me to invest in my future and engage my brain. Right now, it’s time to be a student and let that reveal a part of who I am. I feel different here at USC. But I think it’s natural to let places and people reveal certain sides of me, for I think the human soul is so complex that we can never stay the same. What I have to keep reminding myself is that I should be open to these changes and embrace them as a natural development. What I’ve realized is that there’s a time and place for everything as well as a natural cycle.
Blog Option #3:
ReplyDeleteAll of the remaining poems are interesting and bring up important points about our Earth. Of these, my favorite poem has to be “Witness” by W.S. Merwin. This poem is just 4 lines and 18 words long, but it really says a lot about the current state of our planet. It talks about the earth’s forests as a “forgotten language”. I feel that this poem has meaning far beyond the forests of the world. For example, almost all of the current projections regarding ocean acidification predict that coral reefs will not exist by the end of the century. In 80-100 years, all of us may be repeating Merwin’s words except in regard to reefs. Another example that will be similar to this is the glaciers of the world. Soon, they will be highly depleted or completely gone and we will only be able to think about the past. I feel that climate change will have a huge impact on the Earth and will have us all think in the same way as Merwin. Soon, many aspects of our planet will be either gone or in a degraded form. Overall, my favorite poem was Merwin’s “Witness” because it does a great job of summing up the problem of climate change and global warming in just 18 words.
Blog option#3
ReplyDeleteThe poem that impacted me the most had to be “What I want this poem to do”, by Cassie Premo Steele. I love the way Steele places the reader into nothing but nature in every sense that we can feel or see. She describes the way nature goes through on a daily basis with such a rush of peace and stillness while reading. The poem is described to be in a “non human world”, where the author takes out all the basic elements of a human such as worrying and speaking because she wants the reader to get a feel of how nature is supposed to be treated. Steele also uses a type of personification approach where she places the human attributes along with escalating the feel of being out in the open with nature embracing the reader. The last thing that I appreciated after reading this poem was the consistency in her approach, Steele flowed every line together tieing the whole poem into one big outlook on nature.
Out of all of the poems, I enjoyed "Calling it Down" by Cassie Premo Steele the best. I like this poem the best because of the amazing use of imagery. Steele does an excellent job in each stanza organizing her ideas and painting a vivid mental picture of the earth physically splitting and each modern machine being shoved inside. Steele brings forward a unique idea of silencing all of these machines that we are so dependent on. Many people would not want to part with these conveniences but Steele suggests that it would be best for the earth as a whole and best for society. Its actually kind of cool to think of the earth splitting and cars, televisions, phones etc being crunched in the split. Steele uses rhythm in the first stanza which helps to add to the imagery because these words each convey a different meaning. My favorite line from the poem is “Bury it with silent earth”. I think that this is not only literal, because you would need to fill the pit with dirt but also figurative because she talks about how the earth will then become silent so the same dirt that is covering these machines are also silencing them.
ReplyDeleteBlog #1:
ReplyDeleteReflecting on selection #1, what about you has gone away? What are you feeling coming back? When do you feel free?
It is necessary for each person to mature and change as they age to modify themselves to fit each role in their lifetime. Such is true as each of us left our high schools and transitioned to the half real world of college life. No more curfew. No more high school football games. No more easy-to-achieve 4.0 GPA. I consider college a 'half real world' because there are still rules and responsibilities that we must abide by in order to keep our freedoms. In some ways, I feel that this transition into my independence and completely new life here, 600 miles away from home, has changed me. My freedom to be my true, goofy, honest self has gone away. Many people come to college and can reinvent themselves, but I feel that I was already true to myself in the past. Coming here, I have to start over with creating and nurturing friendship, and I no longer am surrounded by people where I can just be myself. I feel pressure to be like everyone else if I want to feel included or make friends. Going home over fall break and seeing all 11 (yes, eleven!) of my best friends made me realize what a big part of me they are. They help me become my full self because I can trust them, be myself with them and they already know me so well that I can't even pretend to be someone else. I can just laugh with them and not feel analyzed. When I got to spend a few hours with several of my friends I felt my true self coming back just as we sat there. Relief washed over me as I sat there and laughed the night away because I didn't have to work at all. I can say I feel free surrounded by the familiarity, trust and humor of my group of friends.
Another time I feel free is when I'm driving alone. It sounds odd, but here I finally get privacy and I can enjoy singing off key to myself as I enjoy the drive. Focusing on the road helps me think. I really enjoy the time to myself and the freedom from life in that moment of time.
Blog option #4: Write your own poem and describe its influences and meaning
ReplyDeletePeople do not know the greatest gift of all.
They do not understand its immaculate grandeur
And nourishment from which they grow;
It is the saddest woe of all.
But in this newfound age,
Of turning our gaze to the land,
We see that we surely have a companion in nature,
And so can it in us.
I choose to write this poem to express the concerns and realizations that I have had throughout my time of learning about and exploring our environment. During my time in high school, I took an Environmental Science class that was very informative on the daily processes, cycles, and tendencies of the natural world, and additionally included a message of “doom and gloom” about the fate of our planet.
Often, I find a hard time in understanding why other people do not appreciate the many natural and beautiful sights and resources that our world has. It saddens me to wrap my head around the people that openly litter, pollute, or do not try and help the earth rather than abuse it. These emotions are mainly represented in the first stanza.
For example, I live in the Finger Lakes region which holds a great portion of the world’s fresh water, and I think that living near such a viable natural resource has helped me to see the beauty and importance for various aspects of the natural world.
The second stanza is more of a reflection of the understanding that I have realized about how I fit in this cycle of destruction and construction regarding our world. By changing my own practices, I have found that it is not only satisfying to me, but others around me take notice and oftentimes this interaction will spark their interest in sustainable environmental practices. I am given hope by the global shift, and the increasing awareness of America, to the concept of sustainability.
#2: Oh wow. The many things I only wish I knew. I have a complex about setting out to be the very best I can possibly be at whatever I am doing, and up to this point, it has faired well for me. Getting to college however, made this attribute of mine a source of anxiety. I wish I knew my niche. I wish I knew for certain where I could be most effective in this big place. I envy those who have a hint at what their purpose or aspirations are because mine are just so vague. Especially in subjects like environmental science where we always repetitively hear this doom and gloom foresight and the corruption of the system suppressing noble efforts, I want to know the future of societal norms and how I can perpetuate reform. Overall, I want to know that the things I do are working towards the most realized potential possible. Just as Merwin mentioned though, not knowing my path or even my major has helped me to explore more areas than I would have if I came in dead set on a track. I have liked taking classes and talking with people that I may not necessarily want to pursue as a career but more just for the sake of knowing because "the unknown keeps rendering possibilities."
ReplyDeleteBlog Option #2
ReplyDeleteI wish I knew what makes people think. People seem like they are wired to think certain ways. Some tend to be more involved in the creative side of things and some in the analytical aspects in life. Certain people are very musically inclined, yet others have strong reasoning skills. I wish I knew just what caused these differences in people. Location and parenting are usually two influential factors on a person’s opinions. Our opinions are often based on what our parents think, and we usually share their beliefs. We are accustomed to hearing about it, so the natural thing to do seems to be to agree with it. The same goes with our location. Growing up in a city versus a rural environment or in a very active city versus one that has more of an old fashioned nature has an impact on our actions and opinions. Some of this simply has to do with exposure. This is very visible in the initial transition between high school and college. Certain people seem more open minded if they are used to a similar, urban environment. Others with a small town background seem to have a harder time taking in the transition to a much larger city than they are accustomed to.
I feel like if we could determine what makes people think in the ways they do, it would allow us to portray important information in different ways that make it appeal to everyone, such as information about the importance of caring for the environment. If we could get past being rooted in our parents’ beliefs and step outside our comfort zones to try something new, we could share a great wealth of essential information and inspire action that needs to be taken. I wish I knew why people sometimes have a block or a wall that keeps them from trying new things. I know we all fear judgment, but if we all fear the same thing, why do we worry about it at all? If we could all just step past worries of what others will think about us or how society will perceive us, we can start to focus on the things that really matter, like the crisis of protecting our Earth today. If we could just figure out how people work, what makes them tick, we could open their eyes to solutions that will end in success. I wish I knew why people were so resistant to change when it is truly inevitable. I wish I knew a way to make them see that change is what the world needs.
Blog Option #2
ReplyDeleteI think this is a very interesting question because it is one that will result in a wide range of answers from different people for a wide range of different reasons. Like many people, there are many things which I wish that I knew, but for the sake of relevancy I will limit my answer to some of the things which I wish I knew the most. The biggest thing which I wish I knew was why do we as humans struggle so greatly with seeing our commonalities instead of our differences? I believe that if people realized that we are more alike than we are different many of the biggest problems and hot button issues of today would be much easier to solve. I would also like to know what the future holds for the LGBT community in America and if I will have the chance to see full national marriage equality become a reality within my lifetime. I wonder this because even though as a nation we have made great progress in recent years on LGBT equality issues, there is still a very long road to travel and I fear the potential backlash of anti-LGBT Americans as one last push to reclaim an unequal America which they may fear is slipping into the past. I hope that someday I will know a world in which we all recognize the value of one another as human beings and at the same time recognize the value of protecting and preserving our environment and natural resources for the long term.
"What I want this poem to do" by Cassie Premo Steele turned out to be my favorite out of all the other poems left over. How Cassie Premo Steele pieced all the words together so eloquently into almost perfect sentences, really paints a beautiful image in your mind. The poem is very parallel to "The Colors of the Wind" song sang in Pocahontas. Like the song it asks you to feel things and try to understand them just as the raccoon, deer or creek knows them. It brings you back to the center of what is truly essential to the world, and how the world does not revolve around just the human things that we see to only value in its existence. The poem sets a picture in your mind for you to place yourself in, and line-by-line it brings you to different places of the living surroundings. It brings you down to the nonhuman worlds of the environment and experiences the gentle Earth as they do. This poem is peaceful but subtly makes you think of other’s existence besides your own, asking you to be leveled at each different part of the environment's life and really capture the beauty of where we live.
ReplyDelete#2
ReplyDeleteWhat do I wish I knew? Well there are a lot of things I wish I knew, most of them I will probably never know. The poem mentions what his parents didn't know; more specifically what they didn't remember. My wish for knowledge would not be to know more about the past (though that is interesting); I would choose to gain insight on the future. Nothing consumes my thoughts and daydreams more than what might possibly unfold in the future, whether be within the next week or the next 50 years. I'm not sure where my life is going, and reading these questioning poems and responding to this blog question just makes me think even more about what lies in store for me as the clock keeps ticking.
I keep reading selection #1 over and over, and it gets me thinking about the meaning every single time. What is it that the poet wants us to understand? What exactly is it that I’m supposed to take away from the poem? Well, I feel the poem is saying that we as a society, look towards the “world of objects” for a template or format instead of just operating in a creative and individualistic manner. “It fills us”- what does she mean when she says this? What fills us, the ‘world of objects’ or something more meaningful than the materialistic items we surround ourselves with at all times? This poem is causing me to think deeper than I thought it would because it is a short poem in length but the meaning for me is still unknown. But to answer the prompt: For me, the pure feeling of everyone being as innocent as one’s self has gone away. As a child most do not see the world as a battle field, and a fighting ground where people must fight for their life and their freedom to express themselves however they see fit. In the poem she mentions how we are filled with some material, and then we rearrange it. While my innocenct feelings about the world may be gone, I have merely rearranged them and put them away in a memory “storage container” so I can call back on them at any time. I feel the sentiment of my childhood come back when I spend time with my siblings. I am the oldest of 6 other brothers and sisters, and to see them and watch them play brings me so much happiness. One could say it makes me feel free. My family is everything to me and without them, I would be stuck in the same posture of someone “going away”.
ReplyDeleteEmailed to me from Caroline:
ReplyDeleteBlog 15 Due October 24, 2102: (Blog #1)
The poem by Rainer Maria Rilke in selection one made me realize how harsh we are on the Earth. It also made me think about all the changes that are happening at the moment. Being a senior in high school and a freshman in college are completely different. I didn’t realize to what extent the change would be. The college experience didn’t seem real to me until Fall Break when I was staying at home. All of my friends from high school were at different schools and my friends that were younger than me were complaining about going to school the next day. I honestly felt extremely old. With that being said I feel like my childhood is truly leaving. The responsibility I have now is of a young adult. I don’t have my mommy and daddy to tell me when to be home or to sit down and do my homework. It’s all up to me now. However, I can feel my interest in being involved coming back. In high school I was the most involved person and held multiple executive board positions for multiple clubs. As soon as I got to college I became overwhelmed by all of the changes but it took until fall break to want to become as involved as I was in high school. I need to grasp the idea of time management as it is in college, and not how it was in high school. I feel free when I am next to my grandmother’s pond, sitting in her magnolia tree, looking at the stars. I grew up playing on that tree and looking at the setting reminds me of how small I am, but at the same time I feel like I can take on the world from that spot.
#3
ReplyDeleteMy favorite poem is Calling it Down by Cassie Steele. I think it correctly portrays the waysof our industrialized society. We have lost sight of what is important in our rapid pace of life, constantly in search for the next big thing or new technology. This way of life will only bring destruction to our world. We have neglected nature, and forgotten to take time to admire its beauty and calming ways. If we can take a break from our busy lives to connect to nature we can enjoy its pure innocence and beauty, to connect with not only ourselves but our local ecosystems ad environment. By taking care of and admiring our home, we can help preserve its beautiful silence for years to come.