Riders of the Purple Sage: Reflection

So ends the final chapter of my Old West adventures. This book was great. It was great in ways that the other two books were and weren't. It took the typical frontier vibe and put an umphy (meaning it had a lotta umph) set of characters and an engaging story. From the get go, I knew this story was going to feel like a classic Western fireside story, but read and sound like a truly epic narrative. The plot for which this story is based on could sound like a typical Old West story: Bad guy wants money. Kidnaps rich girl for said money. Holds the whole town hostage. Enter mysterious cowboy man. Mysterious cowboy man tries to deal with bad guy. Gets captured. Escapes. Kills bad guy. Saves the town. Gets the girl. On and on. While I am a sucker for this kind of tale, this one hit me differently. It had substance. There was something about the suspense I felt when reading this book that made me think that it was truly special. It could have been the masterfully crafted characters or landscapes. Or it could have been in the raw dialogue that the characters utilized. Whatever reason, this book was really something else. It has increased my interest in the Old West genre and I am so glad that I stumbled across it for my project!

The College Search: pt.4

Well, after what seemed like years of college planning, I have finally come to a decision. Just kidding, I have not. In fact, I think I am even farther away from making a decision than I was when I started this whole process. Why? Well it seems that I now have my top two college choices. Depauw University and The University of Alabama. I do not really know how the other 16 colleges I applied to dropped of the list, but they did. Anyway, this is what it has come down to. And honestly, I did not think it was going to be this hard. I was thinking that the answer was just going to fall out of the sky to the sound of an angle chorus. Well that obviously didn't happen so my decision has become harder. In addition, I will be making one more visit to each place before I make my decision, which I am sure will make my decison close to impossilbe. Here are the pros for each college:

Depauw University:
- great school with great educational promise
- good swim coach and close-knit swim team
- smaller class sizes and great professors
- great facilities
- incredible president and staff
- alumni  = big $$$
- its cold and there is no town around the college (Con)

The University of Alabama:
- incredible scholarship money and Honors College experience
- beautiful and homey campus
- great people and staff
- football (not that it matters)
- bigger school with more options
- great freakin' food
- not the best academic reputation (Con)

I think it is safe to say that this decision will be one of the hardest ones I will ever have to make. Can I go to both?

Your opinion is appreciated; I am taking votes.

Dead Poets Society: Reactions

First off, I am glad that my class was offered a so-called, "spring break suprise" in a viewing of Dead Poets Society. While I expected this film to be a poetry heavy, englishy kind of movie, I have to say I was pleasently suprised.The plot was engaging and relatable and the message was intruiging. Honestly, this movie has changed how I look at poetry. At the beginning of this unit, I honestly felt like the staff (except Mr.Keating) of Welton. I looked at poetry through the eyes of the simple facts. I didn't really engage myself into the finer meanings of what poetry had to offer. Well, after a few sessions with Mr.Keating, that changed. I started to see the complexity for which poems were built on. I also began to see the un-complexity for which poems were built on. The challenging language and incredibly abstract concepts that make up so many poems started to become a little bit clearer in my mind. While I still do not understand poetry to any degree, I think that I can now appreciate it a little bit more. I can now sieze the day by understanding poetry for what it is and eqaully importantly, for what it isn't. 

My Kind of Poetry

I think I might as well say it. Poetry is wierd. Like really, confusingly, make my head hurt, read it over and over again with no result weird. I can't say I expected this. I honestly strode into this unit thinking I was the poetry master. Well I was utterly wrong. Not 3 lines into a poem and im already dumbfounded with how many meanings could be in those 3 lines. Not only is the syntax odd, but the concepts are too. The first time you struggle through a poem, you think you understand it. Then you read 10 minutes later and it is like someone completely re-wrote the darn thing. Do I like this aspect? Eh, not really. I like to fully understand what it is I am reading about. Unfortunately for me, poetry doesn't play well with understand. While this bugs me, I think it also has its perks. With this aspect in mind, a poet can simply write how/what/when/why they are thinking and call it a poem. They can craft something unexpectedly beautiful out of a few phrases and have those certain phrases stick to you like glue. That's cool, isn't it? Well, among the finer points of the recent poetry I have been reading, I remembered a childhood poem that may not be so refined. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did and still do.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG19g9oiF-w

Poetry: Initial Reactions

So I was pretty excited to start this poetry unit. I have always enjoyed poetry to an extent and was eager to see what else there was to be discovered about it. That is until we actually started to talk about it in class. Suddenly I found myself saying, "Oh, that kind of poetry". Honestly, there is not a statement that could be more true in my mind. From the get go, I knew that the sometimes rambling diciton and infinetly confusing syntax were going to do me in. I had never explored "proper poetry" from the likes of Dickinson and other renowned poets so I had myself almost convinced that this unit was going to be anything but poetry. Well, as it turns out, I am just going to have to grin and bear it. It looks like I am going to have to once again open my mind to a completely foreign and ambiguous concept. Something that I have already done many times in this class. I really hope that this unit will change my perception of poetry. I hope to eventually view it as an art form that ultimately is better misunderstood. While this irks me slightly, I am willing to allow my knowledge about poetry to grow into a state of true appreciation.

The Wild Wild West

So is it shocking that I am actually ENJOYING an english project? Wait, what? Yeah, I said enjoying. And honestly, that might be the first time that I have been able to say that about any english project...ever. Never before have I been actively engaged in the material that an english project has presented me (even though I picked the material myself). Nonetheless, I am certainly excited to be reading these three great books. So far, they haven't let me down. The Sisters Brothers was awesome. With its darkly funny dialogue and its ever-so violent backstory, I really was intruiged. It will definetly go down on my favorite book list. (I have a favorite book list?). True Grit has also been a very interesting story. With its classic Old West encounters and its gritty action, I am still intruiged. I hope it will go down on my favorite books list. In the future, I hope the same can be said for The Riders of the Purple Sage. I am really looking forward to it being my big finale for the final project. I hope it will round everything out and set me up to knockout the final project with ease, whatever that project may be!

Beloved: Reflection

And so another story concludes. Was it a good story? Yeah. Was it interesting? Kinda. Was it easy to read? That's a big ol' "no". Never before have I been relieved to finally finish a book. Honestly, the finishing of this book didn't really even work to satisfy this feeling I had that I spet an enormous amount of time simply reading this book. Heck, it took me twice as long to read a page out of this book than it normally would. Not only that, I probably re-read half of it. In fact, its readability contrasted so much from The Road that it felt like I had been reading this book since the beginning of the semester. There were, however, some good things. For one, I really liked the subject matter of the story. For some reason, I have always enjoyed stories about slaves and their hand-crafted tales of gaining freedom. While this story still dealt subtly with this aspect, it also incoporated an intense set of varied themes. In addition, I also liked the language that was used. While sometimes difficult to comprehend, the poetic and sing-song nature of speech within this story makes for an engaging read. All in all, I can't say that I particularly enjoyed how this story was told, but I definetly enjoyed what it dealt with.