Thursday, February 5, 2015

Febuary 5th



This week re read more into the poem Tocqueville, trying to understand it better. Mattawa speaks about being in a psychologist office and being able to hear as others told their stories. He even said that their crying made him cry, even though he wasn’t a person quick to cry. We assumed that based on the way the poem Tocqueville is organized, where there is not natural flow at all, Mattawa is telling the stories of the other people in the psychologist office. He simply doesn’t tell the story of one person then moves on to the next story, most poems start on one page then bits and pieces are found on much later pages throughout the poem. It’s like the stories are part of a puzzle, and he wants us to put it together.

The first time I read Tocqueville I didn’t pay much attention to what was written and how it was written connecting the stories. I thought they were all irrelevant to each other. Kind of like one of the poems my group members wrote based upon the writing prompt that was posted on emu online. In the beginning of his poem she spoke about his character painting the color blue, then the door slammed causing his character to scratch, next he talks about her spilling a bottle of coke that had expired the day before. My point being that there was no story line, none of the events were related, just like the Tocqueville poem.

I did the same poetry exercise that my group members had done, and I was able to make mine have a storyline.  I’ve always felt like story lines were important. This is of course until I really read the poem Tocqueville, there is no specific storyline yet we can vividly see what’s happening or think we do. Everyone’s perspective is different but they’re getting something out of the poem to give them that perspective. I guess that’s the point of some poetry. Sometimes the author tells the reader exactly what to visualize, other times they give bits and pieces allowing the readers imagination to run wild. I personally prefer my imagination to be let run wild.

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