Sushi Burritos and Chicken Kurma

Before I get too sentimental or start bearing my testimony, I just want to sum up all that I have learned in this class during this semester in just one word: details. What I have appreciated in this class and another class I took this semester was the emphasis that was placed on paying attention to the details in both works we studied and the pieces we created.

Practice Makes Perfect

I begged Mom to let me play the piano. Dad was a wonderful pianist and often taught me the note names or how to read the staff. However, our lessons were unstructured and Dad had very little time on his hands. When Mom suggested I learn how to play from a professional teacher I literally jumped up and down, as a seven year-old should. The first lesson was exciting as I sat on the bench next to my teacher and learned the basics. However, playing the piano proved harder than I had imagined: practicing was boring, my hands hurt, and I was not a concert pianist by the end of the first month. The piano took consistent practice. However, even when music was formed from the keys my fingers touched, it took a considerable amount of time to internalize, perform, and appreciate detail in the music. I feel that my experience in my English 251 (Intro to English Studies) class at Brigham Young University has been parallel in many ways to my experience with learning the piano.

At the close of this my first semester at BYU I certainly have a lot to reflect on. My whole life I have really enjoyed reading and looking at things in new ways so when it came down to picking my major English simply seemed like the best choice. I will admit that coming to college after taking a break from education for a couple of years was the scariest thing I have done in my life thus far. I did however learn a lot about who I am as a writer and how to more effectively express the ideas and thoughts I have about things.

There are a few things that really influenced me throughout the course of this semester in English 251 the first being a look at how to create a "killer thesis statement." I found the exercises that we did here on how to craft a thesis statement were very helpful to me. In particular the index card assignment really helped me to find a new way to organize my thoughts and really narrow down a topic on which to write about. I will admit I was highly skeptical at first but it really did help to simply put out all the thoughts I had about a specific piece of literature and look at them in a different way.

I also learned a lot about poetry this semester and the different ways to look at it and analyze it effectively. I like many was not really the biggest fan of poetry and I have always found it pretty hard to understand. I never really felt like I got much out of poems and so when I was required to write an analysis on one I was not super excited to say the least. It was difficult at first but there were some things that I learned that really helped me out when looking at poetry. For instance the blog post about closely reading a poem really helped. It was nice to look at a poem and underline things, and point out major points of rhetoric just like I have done with other works of literature before. It really helped to clear away any stigmas I had about poems and simply see it as another form of literature that has a significant amount of meaning.

Overall this was a very eyeopening semester for me. I learned to look at poetry in a whole new way and I learned many new ways to look at and analyze literature as a whole. It was really great to see that trying new things and doing things differently is very beneficial and fruitful.

Essay 1

All through high school I thought I had a plan of exactly what I wanted to do with my life. Freshman year it was physical therapy which then changed to cardiology. Sophomore and junior year I was dead set on optometry. Somehow my senior year of high school, my interests did a complete 180 and I decided on english teaching. My decision did not come very quickly, but as I reflected on my past english classes and the one I was currently taking, my love for the subject was too strong to not pursue it in college.

When I first signed up for English 251, I was ecstatic. My path to becoming an english teacher had begun. Throughout high school, english, grammar, poetry, analysis, all of that came extremely easy to me. When I came to BYU and took my first english class, that easiness was thrown out the window. When we were assigned to do a formal literary analysis,  I thought I was going to be able to plow through that essay. I was wrong.

The analysis I had learned in high school somewhat applied to this essay, but was no where near college level. I had to put in a large amount of work to fully understand how to formally analyze a piece of poetry.

The first blog post I made about my essay really helped me to refine what I was writing. I was not sure about my thesis statement and was hoping for feedback on what I could do better. Luckily, my amazing team members granted my wish. They suggested I try and re-word my thesis so it was not something that was obvious to the reader. One person suggested I put a "new spin" on my thesis. As I did so, my essay was able to connect better and I could make a more clear and accurate claim.

The index card activity was a bit challenging for me. It was something I had never done before. This activity proved to be very beneficial to me because it helped me to see my claim in a new light and to narrow down exactly what point I was making.

I think the biggest thing that helped me in completing this analysis was feedback from my peers. As I listened in class to what other people were asking, I tried to apply it to my own essay, even if it was not the same poem. Hearing what other people had to say helped me to tweak my own essay based off of the advice that they gave. Peer feedback is always a good thing because others see what you are saying from a different perspective and can give you the help that you need.

I have loved being in English 251. The witty lectures, blog posts, and people have helped me to love english even more, which I did not think was possible. I am grateful for the experience and knowledge I have gained in this class and cannot wait to continue to pursue my path of education.

Index Draft

In the introduction to my analysis I will introduce the poem I am looking at, Ars Poetica by Archibald Macleish. I will be proving that this poem is a line of reasoning showing that a poem is a being just like you and me. My working thesis is, although many students of poetry see it as lifeless and dull, Macleish compares the tangible and the abstract to show that poetry is a live and impactful.

In this section I will be disusing the thought process of a poem having a certain impact on readers and how poetry seems to come to life for many. Although poetry is words arraigned in a very specific order, these words have deep meaning in the hearts of millions of readers.   

Just a Sketch

Intro

- In this section I will introduce my text (Elizabeth Alexander's Ars Poetica #100: I Believe) and give my claim. Current Thesis: Although E.A. effectively redefines poetry to her students, her asides make the intended audience of her poem confusing; in fact, the asides would strengthen her argument. I think it does because of the allusions and such. But I have seen her perform it without those, so I am confused about that. Additionally, I am not entirely sure if I can make the argument solid enough to be that explicit.

Section 1

- This section will explain that Elizabeth Alexander actually is effective with her definition of her poetry through her use of metaphors (examples are the pocketbook and clam flats, like in the picture). The metaphors help her to show details and show the nitty-gritty of poetry besides love and death. Her use of form is also effective. Her doublets as a statement until she ends with a single line: a question. This is cause for reflection.

Section 2

- This section explains that the asides (or parenthetical phrases) are confusing. They have allusions. They refer to a separate audience besides students. So who is the poem actually for?

Section 3

- This is where I prove that her intended audience is not in fact her students but actually poets and academia. The fact of the matter is that it is more effective when she performs it for the poets with the asides because asides contain more irony and add to the effect she is trying to portray.

Essay Doodles

 Intro and Thesis:

• In this section I will introduce the poem "'Poetry Makes Nothing Happen'?" and give my claim. 
• My thesis is: Through the use of characterization, lack of punctuation, and literary allusions, Alvarez creates a stunning poem in which she combines humanity and credibility to make the argument that poetry can make all the difference.
• I think that my claim is valid and supportable. However, I don't exactly know how to tie in historical context into the paper. 

 Part 1:

• In this section of my paper, I am going to give some background to Auden, the man whose quote inspired Alvarez to write her poem. It is imperative that the audience understands why he said what he did and the events that impacted the quote.

 Part 2:

• In this part of the paper I will talk about the use of characterization and how it allows the audience to connect with the poem's message. 

 Part 3:

• In this section of the paper I will explain how the lack of punctuation shows a feeling similar to the stream of thought. This allows readers to connect logically to the piece as they think through the problem in the same manner that the author did.

Part 4

• I will explain how the use of literary allusions develop the author's logos and why that is important considering that the author is arguing that poetry can change the world.