Author Archives: Ilknur

Spoken Words

In the film we watched, Louder Than a Bomb, the performances by the high schoolers surprised me because of their ability to express their deepest thoughts and emotions in front of so many people. These students clearly loved and were passionate about what they were doing. Speaking about your most personal feelings and experiences is scary and I cannot imagine doing that because of all the pressure that would be on me. I learned from this movie that spoken word poetry is a type of art that can be used to successfully express yourself in cases where you might have no other way to comfortably express yourself.

I do not think I would be able to perform spoken word poetry because it is one thing to have someone read your poems/writing, but it is completely different when I would have to get up in front of people and read it to them without suppressing my emotion. There are definitely strong connections between spoken word poetry and contemporary music. Specifically with rap because rap is essentially spoken word in a different form. Many rappers incorporate verses into their music that have less or no music in the background so that it sounds exactly like spoken word.

 

Amnesia

Part of Speech: Noun

Definition: A gap in one’s memory.

Source: Merrian-Webster

Found in “Hair” by , “mean is we’re the best at swallowing amnesia, in a cup of [Spanish], dreaming because we’d rather do that than live in this reality” Line 12-13

The definition of the word amnesia made me understand the overall of the sentence. When the writer said “swallowing amnesia” basically flash backing the memories but rather than facing the truth of the life and move on. So makes the character keep on living in a dream rather than the reality.

 

Smoldering

Part of speech : Verb

Definition: is to show suppressed anger, hate, or jealousy

Source: Merriam Webster Dictionary

Found In “Choi Jeong Min” by Franny Choi, “boneless rumor smoldering behind the curtain
& speaking through an ink-stained puppet? Line 13-14

By rereading the sentence with the definition made more sense because it is most likely describing the feeling or emotions towards of an object.

Gluttony

Part of Speech : Noun

Definition: Excess eating or Drinking

Source: Merriam Webster Dictionary

Found in  ”Choi Jeong Min” by Franny Choi, “land where they stuff our throats with soil
& accuse us of gluttony when we learn to swallow it” Line 34-35

The definition of the word Gluttony helped me more to understand the meaning of the line. Also, by looking the word synonyms helped me more why actually gluttony was used in the sentence.

Opus

Part of Speech: Noun

Definition: An artistic work, especially one on a large scale

Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Found in ”Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath, “I am your opus / I am your valuable, / The pure gold baby” Line 67-69

The definition of the opus helped me understand the lines. I believe she referring herself to an art work and how meaningful and worth she is and how art work also a valuable connections between them.

Refracted

Part of Speech: Verb

Definition:  Measure the focusing characteristics of (an eye) or of the eyes of (someone)

Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Found in “Discovering Colors in Prison” by Nancy Miller Gomez, “ The colors we keep caged, a stubborn brightness / refracted off betrayal, and hate” Line 20-21

The definition of refracted helped me understand the meaning of the sentence in the poem. Refraction is the bending of light or sound as it passes through something like a wall (sound) or a window (light). But I didn’t knew refracted had another meaning of the word and now it made more sense rereading with the definition.

Anne Sexton

Anne Gray Harvey was born in Newton, Massachusetts, on November 9, 1928. She married to Alfred Muller Sexton at age 19, after attending to Garland Junior College for one year. Later on at age 25, she gave birth to a daughter and after a year Sexton was distinguish with a “postpartum depression” and has suffered her first mental breakdown. It took her awhile to recover from it. Sexton had her second child at age 27 but following that year she suffered another mental breakdown and was hospitalized. In addition, in the same year she attempt to suicide on her birthday. While she was getting her treatment to recover her mental emotions, Sexton’s doctor encouraged her to attend an interest of writing a poetry. So as she started to writing poems,“in 1957 she enrolled in a poetry workshop at the Boston Center for Adult Education.” Along with the workshop she met her close friend Maxine Kumin where she describes her “belief that it was the writing of poetry that gave Sexton something to work toward and develop and thus enabled her to endure life for as long as she did.” Anne Sexton tried her best to stay strong in life and fight over her illness over writing poems. Throughout her lifetime she also was abused by his husband and lost her parents that made her not have a faith in life. However, her work was extremely famous throughout her lifetime and she received many honors and awards, including “the Frost Fellowship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, the Levinson Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters traveling fellowship, the Shelley Memorial Prize, and an invitation to give the Morris Gray reading at Harvard.” Even though she gained lots of improvements by writing poetry to encourage herself to live in life. But at age 46, she couldn’t battle her mental emotions anymore and end up committing suicide.

Citations: 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anne-sexton

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/anne-sexton

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/sexton/sexton_life.htm

Poetry of Motion – Remembering Summer

Reading poems one time in your life can help you relax, refresh your mind and sometimes can give you memories along with a motivation throughout your life. In Merwin’s “Remembering Summer” found in Poetry Society America, first reading the title of the poem gives a little throwback about summer and the amusing times. As we know summer we feel the warm of the summer heat, the ice cream, the beach and so on. But there’s always the time where it comes to the end, the winter. The speaker tells the reader of the summer and “remember the winter how cold it got” by saying that the speaker couldn’t enjoyed the summer heat and it got cold really fast out of the sudden. In addition, the speaker has only remembered how the summer was warm and “only the long days the breathing of the trees” where the pleasant moment. We can say that this poem can tell us that there are somethings that has the end of the enjoyment. But knowing that waiting can take time to feel the same excitement so the speaker have said,  “I can sit here now still listening to it”. Basically, the speaker feels the cold has arrived and trying to find the ways of getting warm by just flash backing the summer.

Vessel

Part of Speech: Noun

Vessel: A ship to a large boat

Source: Merriam Webster

Found in “My Boy Willie” (line 14), “When a man o’war vessel she chanced to meet,”

The word vessel means large boat that means the she is on the boat and this way it helps the reader understand what they actually using for transit.

Mourn

Part of Speech: Verb

Mourn: feel regret or sadness about (the loss or disappearance of something).

Source: Webster Dictionary

Found in, “My Boy Willie”  (line 36), “Ye must mourn in black for my sailor boy”

The word mourn means feel sadness and when it say “mourn in black” means sad because black symbolizes the sadness and dark.