(AKA The Poetry Reflection blog)
This poetry project was great! I feel much more confident about analyzing poetry now than I did at the beginning of the year. I learned a lot of terms for figurative language that I never knew before, like magic realism and pluralism, and several terms from my Anglo-Saxon period. I also learned to take my time reading and marking up my poems so I would understand it better. Honestly, I feel like I did a lot better with understanding our MC Monday poems than the poems given out in class, so it’s been kind of annoying trying to make sense of things. At least I’m getting more experience reading poems I don’t understand.
I learned so much about Anglo-Saxon poetry through this project, even though not much Anglo-Saxon poetry exists. I picked it because elegies were mentioned on the sheet and I love elegies. I also love how unknown everything is. I really wish there was more research about what happened during the Anglo-Saxon times because after looking into it, I’m really interested. It’s neat. I love the mystery behind everything and how scattered and unclear the information that exists is. The historical context is a little blurry, but I like how most works are sad and about warriors or sailors or destruction, since all of those were common things during the time. Things weren’t about politics or civil rights back then, it was just war and vikings and sadness. The good old days. Also in the Anglo-Saxon period, no authors are recorded and there are only 4 manuscripts from the period that contain poems and other writing. I think its neat that everything is so limited, and there’s little known about anything! And the Anglo-Saxon period lasted for so long!! So much happened and we know so little of it and its so cool!!! A side effect of the project is that I’m now passionate about Old English poetry. Also, a fun fact that I completely forgot to mention during my presentation, someone wrote an alternative/rock song based on the poem I analyzed “The Ruin” and it’s the creepiest song I’ve ever heard. It’s called “Imperial Walls” and it’s just eerie. I don’t think the song has the same vibes as the poem, so I didn’t include it in my presentation, but it’s really cool that someone from the 1970s decided to turn a poem from the 1000s into a tune. Also, throughout my entire project, I replaced the word poetry with the word “pottery” because it’s prime humor and then when I presented I kept slipping up and trying to say pottery instead of poetry. My humor turned me into a fool, so I continued my foolishness with this post.
Everyone else’s presentations will really help me with the exam. I feel like I will remember the different types of poems and events that affected the poetry since we went over the presentations. The presentations also refreshed my knowledge of figurative language and I am much more confident with analyzing those aspects in poems. I’m still working on finding the overall meaning of a poem since sometimes it takes me a while, but everything else involving poetry is golden for me. I’ve gotten a lot of tips from the other students about what is the most important from their time periods, so hopefully during the exam I can remember all of their advice.
Here’s a link to my Prezi because I will most likely lose my log-in information:
https://prezi.com/view/TO1MffErMGuDvumBou7i/
Katie Ranting about English 