Monthly Archives: March 2016

Poetry

In the first poet , “She being Brand” by Ee Cummings is about a man and girl having sex for the first time. The author uses metaphor of riding a car to explain how it was nice to ride the city with his partner. The tone of this scene can be during night time.

On the second poet, “Coming Home, Detroit, 1968” by Phillip Levine is about Detroit riot, and how city is burn down. And the author using a metaphor of readers riding a car and passing by the streets and observing whats happening to City of Detroit. It’s like readers isolating themselves from dangers.

For the next class I will bring my small Cadillac toy car. And I will the same setup lighting like todays class.

Comparison ; Coming home Detroit, She being Brand

 

“she being Brand” this poem was a sexual fantasy of car, the author brings you very in-depth of how the character describes his fantasy within metaphors, he uses phrases such as,  ” I went right to it flooded-to the carburetor cranked her.I touched the accelerator and give her the juice, good.” The desires he as are as if the car is a female and he references these thoughts towards a car, he loves and adores.

In the poem  “Coming Home, Detroit”

He uses metaphors like ” A winter Tuesday, the city pouring fire. We burn this city everyday.”

The both depict a feeling of some sort, the passion/love for the car and the feeling of coming back home to a location that has changed dramatically. Metaphors allow you to understand the important of these topics. Detroit had been messed up and the man had really fantasized the car as if it were a women.

Car Poems

She being brand by e.e cummings and coming Home, Detroit, 1968 by Phillip Levine both had a metaphor of a car but they use it in two different ways. The first poem comes across as creepy and perverse by the way it is read but is using the way a car responds to being driven for the first time as a way to describe sexual experience with a girl that was a virgin possibly. The second poem uses the car quite literally because you can relate to driving around in a car and observing things around you as you drive past them. The car was the guys separation from what was going on around him kind of like a barrier between himself and his surroundings but despite what he sees around him he keeps on moving.

Two ideas i have for these poems is a way to display a car subliminally sexually and show maybe a nice car maybe being projected on with visual imagry

Poetry

Poems “she being brand” by E.E Cummings and Coming Home, Detroit, 1968″ by Phillip Levine both use driving metaphors to get there message across.

Cummings is describing taking the virginity of a girl while using car parts to describe it. It has a very rough tone with a lot of visual details for example “…i touched the accelerator and gave her the juice. I was thinking of using a dim spot light on the car to give it a serious but romantic feel.

Levine uses a car to walk him through his story mainly to enhance the manufacturing of cars in Detroit where this horrible situation has taking place. He sees everything that is happening while driving through the city and there is nothing he can do about what is going on. “Near the freeway you stop and wonder what came off” this is an example of him being indifferent to the situation and understanding you have to keep going. My idea for a photograph to get the message of this story across is setting a serious light fix and having the car stare into a black backdrop.

 

Poetry

In “She being Brand” by E.E. Cummings is a very distinct poem. It describes a sexual output where the writing seems to be explaining a first ride in a car, but it actually means a females first sexual encounter. The writer describes in the essay that “we turned the corner of Divinity avenue” which is a great example of a car driving at a specific corner. But this can also mean a Divinity of a climax. This poem is a very interesting one.

While in “Coming Home Detroit” by Philip Levine is a totally different explanation of a car driving through the rough city of Detroit. At that time it was full of riots and chaos. This city is known for building many cars from Cadillacs to Chevys. At that time the city was burning down. When the writing describes “the twisted river stopped at the color of iron” this describes both a building polluting car and a destroyed city.

Poetry

For the “She Being Brand” poem.  It takes places during the 1920’s and uses the car as part of a first time sexual experience. The evidence for that is “I went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her.”  However, “Coming Home, Detroit” I find it not only more political, but at the same time focuses more on everyday American life that we go through everyday. I say this because In this poem It’s a person that’s driving while going through everyday Detroit life such as “We burn this city everyday” indicating some of the actions that were going on in that period in present tense.

For my idea, I would try to take shots of the insides of the vehicle to kinda show what’s in the “Interior” for those who want to drive a car for the first time.

The second one is a wide shot of the car from above to kinda show that the car will keep driving. (Still in development)

Poem Response

The poem “she being Brand” has a very intense feeling. While reading, it feels like things change very quickly. It uses driving a car through the city as a description of a sexual experience. In contrast to that though, the poem “Coming Home, Detroit, 1968” uses driving through the city to describe what the Detroit riots are doing to the city. It also uses these features to create a visual depiction of how you would see all these things but then still ignore it all.

The only ideas i can come up with for cars are to use very harsh lighting to incorporate a sense of beauty, and perhaps some damaged looking props to depict detroit.

Comparison Between Two Poems

In this class, we both were highlighting the whole idea about metaphor. We would later read two poems, one being “She Being Brand” by E.E. Cummings and “Coming Home, Detroit, 1968″ by Phillip Levine.

The main comparison between the two is their use of the metaphor of the cars that the main character in the cars that they are driving. In the first poem, it’s more… sexual, whimsical and humorous – as the writer shows as to how he treats the car in the heavily descriptive language seen. One example would be ,”I touched the accelerator and give her the juice good”. Very descriptive and sexual indeed.

The second poem however, is much much more dark. It shows a guy driving his car through Detroit, which is where a lot of automobiles were built – due to its nickname as the Motor City. It’s a more darker take on driving through Detroit due to the fact that the writer highlights how pollution and riot tears the city apart everyday, as he states, “We burn this city every day” at the very end of the poem.

Botany of Desire

Michael Pollan expresses, to a point, his concern with the idea that the agriculture company Monsanto wants total control over the agriculture industry in the U.S. As he explains, the genes for the potatoes he’s allowed to grow and sell remains the intellectual property of Monsanto. Being that the way food has been grown is harmful to the farmer (and also to those eating these crops), the modern solution is the genetically engineered plant that can protect from insects and diseases without the help of pesticides. This genetic engineering would give the company control over plants and essentially make Monsanto the Microsoft of agriculture. Pollan goes on to say that “we’re about to find out what happens when people begin approaching the genes of our food plans as software.”

As for props, I think the basic things that would add to the potatoes are silverware (knives, plates, etc.) or potato chips to show one of the ways the potato can be used.

Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire

The author, Michael Pollan, describes how our country selectively breed and genetically engineer our plants. On an average annual basis, an American farmer can grow enough food for only 100 people. With the help of Monsanto, the company aims to control potato harvesting as their own intellectual property to keep the same gene. Due to previous expenses on toxic chemicals, (which pollute ground water, food safety, and health) the company wants to issue a new change. Monsanto wants to replace the toxins with genetic information that can protect themselves from insects and diseases.

One idea can be a comparison of what the potato looks like in the inside and outside. Another can be a potato that looks damaged on the outside to reflect on the harsh chemicals. Another can represent two potatoes that look either identical or different with a patent number written on the surface.