My Poem

    When I first logged on to the Poetry Out Loud website, I was actually kind of scared. The list of poems was really long, and I learned really quickly that the title of the poem gives away nothing. The weird thing was that I actually found my poem randomly instead of using one of the steps. The poem I chose is called Scary Movies, by Kim Addinozio. I first looked at this poem because of its name but after reading it over a couple of times I knew this was the one that I was going to read.
     Scary Movies was one of the longer poems and memorizing it was a little bit hard at first. Basically, I sat down at the table and told myself I wasn't going to get up until I memorized the entire thing. At first I was planning on singing it (when I was alone, of course) to remember it, but then I had this scary moment where I realized that if I did that I might end up singing it in front of the class. So I just wrote it down, then said it, and just in case, memorized it backwards so that I won't forget one of the stanzas when I read it in front of the class.
     I don't think this poem can really relate to my life, but it can relate to life in general. It relates scary movies to real life. I really like this poem, because it has an edge. Its cynical. It starts out kind of light and talking about things like cyclopes and movies theaters but quickly it changes to talking about her friends death and then the death of her parents. It also bounces back and forth a lot, from reality to her dark imagination. I especially like the ending, it's both dramatic and very straight forward and still kind of sarcastic.
    I haven't ever read a poem in front of people before, and I'm not really sure how I'm going to "portray emotions through my face" but I'll give it my best shot. I think that I can use my voice to try and give the emotion of my poem, but if that doesn't work I think that using as little emotion as possible could work for this poem because of how cynical and depressing it is. I usually don't use gestures when I talk, but now I'm freaked out about what I'm supposed to do with my hands... Do I cross them? Keep them at my sides? I'm going to have to watch some more of those poetry videos.

Poetry Out Loud

Part One: 

How many times these low feet staggered

Revenge

Not Waving but Drowning

Blind Curse

Scary Movies

Part Two: 

    My favorite two poems were "Scary Movies" and "Blind Curse". I liked these poems because they didn't use too many big words or old fashioned language. I didn't really like "Not Waving but Drowning" and "Revenge" because I couldn't relate to them at all. I actually kind of liked reading "How many times have these low feet staggered" because it had repition and it was kind of like a song. If I had to choose one of the poems I would pick "Scary Movies" because it is easy to read but has an edge and is a bit satirical. I personally connected with this poem because I get scared after scary movies and have those same feelings and the author applied those feelings to things that could happen in real life.

Part Three:

 

    The two criteria that will be the easiest for me will be voice and articualtion and accuracy. I chose those two because I'm pretty good at talking (obviously) and most of the words in the poem are easy to pronounce. The two that are going to be the hardest for me are the "Dramatic Appropriates" and Physical Presence. I'm not sure how to convey the meaning of the poem with my voice... but I'm going to work on it. And I'm kind of worried about Physical presence because I slouch a lot and I'm afraid I'll foget to stand up straight. I'll just write it on my hand or something.

Part Four:

    I watched the two videos "I am Waiting" and "The Man-Moth". I think these were both succesful performances because there voices reflected the feeling of the poem. It also helped me with how I need to talk for my poem. The wierd thing was, that one person reading a poem seemed to be standing out of the black background and the other one seemed like they were trying to fade into it. Maybe it was a hair color thing?

Part Five:

  

     To be honest, I'm not sure what the competition is going to be like. The poem I want to do I Scary Movies, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get it because I haven't asked about it yet. I chose it because I like the way it flows and the message it has. I think the website is okay (if they added some games it would be really cool). I think this project would be a lot more fun (not that it isn't fun) if we could use parts of songs (with the teachers permission) for our poems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Skills

     After listening to a class full of papers, I think I have a pretty good idea of what a "good" paper should be like. The hook is important, because thats what gets the reader interested in the paper. Some peoples introductory sentences had to many words in them which made it sound less intelligent. I noticed that some people just restated what they read for there points which made me kind of sad. When someone brings up another point about what they read it gives a whole new way of looking at the book which made it interesting. I liked the unique topics the most because they weren't repeating the same thing everyone else had written about.
     I haven't presented my paper yet, so I don't know everything I did wrong. The hardest part for me was finding the quotes, embedding them wasn't that hard. The second hardest part was the conclusion because I didn't want it to sound excactly the same as my topic sentence. Coming up with a good hook was annoying too. I don't think I did a bad job this time, but next time I am going to be more organized.

Extra Credit

   I made my favorite writing piece last year with one of my best friends Jessica in exploratory. Exploratory is basically art class, and I can't remember why but we ended up making a book. We named it Journal of The Stick People. It is about a family of stick people that must defeat the evil troll to win back the golden skirt. We made it a children's book, and wrote it with out left hands (were both right handed). The pictures in the book looked cool because we made the back ground construction paper and cut pictures out from magazines. Then we drew the stick people in. We never got it published but I think we should have.
   This was my favorite writing piece because it was fun to make and there weren't any rules. I don't really like writing in school because there are so many rules about it. I don't mind guidelines, but I like to have some freedom when it comes to writing.

Slaughter House Five

    The book I chose to read for my outside reading is Slaughter House Five. When I first started reading it, it was really confusing and I had to re read it a couple of times. I figured that I should just keep reading then it would start to make sense, and it kind of did. I mostly just got confused about the time travel, because the setting and time changed a lot so the characters were all over the place. On one page they would be dead and then they would be alive again or there would all of the sudden be diffrent characters. I thought the book would be more about the war and aliens and have more fighting and be more exciting. But it's not that bad of a book, just boring at times.
     The litterary element I chose to write about is the characters in the book and how Billy changed towards them when he figured out that he could travel through time. In the book it didn't really show how Billy actually felt about his family and friends. It was like he had this wierd detachment and he didn't really care about his family on Earth. It did seem like he cared about Montana (his wife in space though), which seemed a bit wierd to me. At times it was like he didn't even care about his wife and kids and then at other times he really did. It was hard to keep up with.
    I think this book relates to the movie Inception, because in Inception the main character has a wierd relationship with his family, (real and fake) because of his constant trips to a diffrent reality. Also the main characters in both stories have troubles with there pasts. There traveling back and forth to diffrent worlds/realities also messes up how they view the whole world.
   I was planning on making a movie for my creative project, but know that I've actually read the book it might be a bit hard. If I made a movie, some of the parts would have to be cut out, but not so much that it ruins the whole movie. Plus I would somehow have to make an alien costume and a giant dome. Even though making a movie seems like it would be really hard, I think I might do it anyways. I really don't wanna right a peom or a song. There are other things I could do, I just don't think they would be as fun.

Extending the Theme

    Whenever I read books, I like to compare them to my average everyday life. In some books this is hard, because theres fairy tales or none of the characters relate to me. When I read To Kill a Mocking Bird, I could compare some of the themes in the book to the problems we have in our society today. The theme that stood out the most to me was the prejudice against class. In every day life we see it all the time, even if it isn't as big of a problem. From the "rich" people driving expensive cars to the people sitting on street corners begging for money, we're never going to be able to stop people from judging people from there class in society.
     Another thing that stood out to me was the whole thing about growing up. It made the point that growing up isn't just about falling in love, which didn't happen in the book. Scout got more responsibility as she got older and learned a lot more valuable and deep lessons then I did when I was her age. I know this sounds lame and a bit weird but it made me think about how the lessons Scout learned could reflect on me.

My Boo Radley

   My Boo Radley is a bit different. I thought for a long time about who my Boo Radley was and I thought about a lot of pretty scary and mysterious (and some just plain weird) people, but none of them really had that much of an impact on my life. So, instead I thought I would do this a different way (and I really hope I don't get points taken off for it).
     Throughout my life (yes, I know my life hasn't been that long, but I can still learn things) I've had a lot of confusion about people. I've always been judgemental, and because I don't always think when I talk I sometimes make people feel bad. I don't think I really noticed when i started judging people stereotypically, but I think it was around the start of middle school. Up until then everyone kind of just judged other people by thing like "The fastest runner" or "The really nice one". I can't remember judging people in kindergarten or first grade.
     In sixth grade, i was scared of "goth" people, because i was kind of preppy and I didn't like the music they listened to. I just put them into the weird category. I don't think that i ever thought they could be thinking the same thing about me. As we got older (a lot of things can change in two years), I realized that my friends started changing what music they listened to, and how they dressed and so on.
    In 8th grade I had some classes with people that I would've been scared of before, but I can't stand not talking, as you probably know, so i started some conversations with different people than the ones i hang out with and most of them turned out to be really cool people. Plus, I made a lot of new friends which is always a bonus. Half way through last year, I didn't like what some people call "preps" because to me they seemed kind of fake.
     This year however, I'm trying to stop judging people and actually talk to them and get to know them before i judge them. Then, if i decide they're mean or scary that's fine with me. That's my Boo Radley, even though it took a whole bunch of people, I think it works.

Blog is a wierd word. It sounds like frog. Or... nevermind.

Intro

    Hey, I'm Hannah and this is my blog. I think it's kind of cool having a blog. It's different than other classes and a bit fun. I like to read a lot of things, but I don't really write anything, unless songs count. My favorite kind of books are action and mystery. I really liked the Percy Jackson books, (I even went to the midnight showing of the movie, which wasn't all that great) and the Among the Hidden books. I'm not that into books like To Kill A Mockingbird, because sometimes I get confused and they're a little to serious. But who knows? I could learn to like them.
     I think English is super important, and it's easy to see why you need four years of it to get into college. In both college and high school you have to write a lot of essays and letters. And not just in other English classes. Both science and history also require a lot of papers, and English teaches you how to format then in the right way. English also helps a lot with vocabulary and understanding confusing books.
     English is important in a lot of careers, and not just the obvious ones, like an writer or poet. Song writers and journalists would also need a background of English. Scientists and historians also need to write up lots of things. Even if your job doesn't include a bunch of writing, English can help you in everyday life, with things like grammar and writing letters.
     I think that when I read this blog at the end of the year, there will be a big difference, which will be kinda exciting to see. I wonder if the type of books I like will have changed... I'm not sure how this will "enlighten" the online world, but maybe if other people read this, then they might get excited about how they will change by the end of the year to (even if it's just a little bit). I know this will be a fun for ME at least, because it isn't as boring as doing long essays.
     Questions for future Hannah: Do you still like Star Wars? What about ADTR? And do you still want to be a director???