Extraordinary

It’s amazing to see how much our class has matured this past semester. We were able to expand our knowledge of the poetry world. I like the poetry industry because it is still largely and underground business with chapbooks, homemade works, and things of that sort. Moving on to which performance I liked best, I would have to say that Nate’s final performance was quite phenomenal. His use of personal experience, pop culture, and great acting skills had captured me during his performance. Nate’s strong voice, passion, aggressiveness, and fearless voice made his performance known and heard by the entire class. He was able to boldly put his view of cigarette smoking, or acting one the opposing side of his belief, all this with a hint of humor. He brings in Denzel Washington as his main criticism, and even acts out his performance in “Training Day”. Honestly, I have not seen the movie myself, but Nate performed it so well and clearly such that I can just see Denzel acting right in front of class. I could definitely see a Saul Williams in Nate…or a Nate in Saul Williams? I think Nate would make a great slam poet if he pursues it. After all, his first performance was out of this world already. I could only imagine how good he would be if he were to pursue this.

I enjoyed this blogging experience and it definitely has passed us by oh so quickly. It seems weird that we’re posting something for an English class rather than handing in MLA formatted twenty page formal papers. But for this class, blogging fit it perfectly. One of our goals was to explore poetry in the modern world through contemporary media and blogging is a HUGE part of it. Using the internet as a medium puts us right into the shoes of a modern poetry critic, poet, or poetry fanatic. I found it much easier to type out my ideas and thoughts about our topics when it came to blogging. Having the web browser was greatly helpful when it came to researching a certain poet, small press, or performances. You can just add an extra tab, and search in Google, and a googolplex of information will be right at your fingertips. Hehe. To some extent, I think that it would have been nice to have started blogs earlier in the semester, because it really gave me the feel of being a poetic analyzer. Having my own blog enabled myself to personalize the page to my own liking; using many kinds of colors, layouts, pictures, etc.

Loved this class!