This is my blog post on how i felt about the book "City Eclogue" and my opinion on the authors poems.

 One thing that I noticed about these poems is that they have breaks in them. I don't understand. Maybe its for the reader to see that this is where the author is giving emphasis to something or starting on a new or different idea. i just really don't know but it makes it confusing to read. There is also parts in the poems where the author did not finish the words or sentences. which leaves the reader wondering what the author was going to say next or what word they were trying to say. Some of the poems are telling a story of the hard times people are having. Taking place in the Harlem streets and many other places.

             This can also lead readers think that the author is illiterate and does not know how to spell or write completely. But yet it gives it a little bit of mystery and not be dull and bland like how other authors do their work. ever poet is different sand has their own way of creating poems and telling their stories through them. I'm definitely not good at deciphering what poems are about so most of these poems are just here for my enjoyment to read and wonder and ponder upon what the author is trying to get me to realize or understand from the poem. A lot of the poems had to do with scenery and gardens and flowers and stuff like that. 

    There are poems where the places are compared to other things that are like the complete opposite of what is being talked about.While reading these poems i had one poem that caught my attention  in doing so as i was going through each page. For example in the one poem called the distant stars as paparazzi. The poem describes the news to a bird and flying. i dont understand it that much to be honest but it was one that caught my attention. 

      

  The  poem packet is seriously a piece of art. There's  so many poems. Even though a lot of them I don't quite understand. I have put some thought into some that caught my attention. Poems are a way that artists decide to express themselves. Just like movies and drawings and all the other creative things that others  do to express their own selves. I'm not good at creating poems but I do believe that this class will help me in some way. 

   Some sonnets had a structure to them that was pretty neat. In Shakespeare's sonnets he used an iambic pentameter. It goes A B A B C D C D E F E F G G; where every A rhymes with every A, every B with every B and so on from there.  Its actually very interesting. I used this technique when creating my own sonnet for class. The second one I'm still working on. I might decide to use Berrigan's style of writing sonnets because his way was very different as well. it was kind of all over the place. You can see that him and Shakespeare has different views but are both great artists.

In class we compared how the two poets work and looked for similarities in their work. We compared sonnet 116 from Shakespeare  and  sonnet XVI and we saw how they both used the same sound end words in their sonnets. But there was a difference Shakespeare used different rhyming words while Berrigan used the exact same words in each ending while still using the A B A....format. One of the poems that I liked which was by Harryette  Mullen called Dream Cycle, you would think that it was about this person actually being at the ice-cream  truck getting ready to order some ice cream but they were really having a dream. this poem reminds me of me. When I really want something I dream of it and once I awake and realize it was only a dream I sigh and try to go back to sleep:(

 My name is La'De'Shanae Smith and I am from Cleveland and this is my first year at Eastern. I came here on a academic scholarship. My major is in nursing and I want to take care of the whole world if it was possible. I am not really a creative writer that much so I am a little scared for this class. I will have to let my mind explore and see what pops out.