Journal 48: Haikuu

So I kicked a dog,

Blood and guts splashed everywhere,

Death is part of life.

Today is sunny,

Yesterday was raining big,

Next day would be nice.

5 syllabus here,

Total 17 syllabus,

No way it's enough.

Journal 47: Real or Romantic?

Walt Whitman definitely is romanticizing the workers and the hard labors of the American society. No one of the working class labor is satisfied with their lives and with their work. They are constantly complaining about their job, urging the government to do more, and organizing unions to get more. No worker of physical labor is happy to leave off to work 7 am in the morning to get minimum wage that might not even be able to feed their family. Most of the time, people had to get two jobs in order to live and have a roof over their head and they are not happy with their life. With a few exceptions that people are happy with the way it is that they acknowledge that this is their life and they are willing to live this life to the fullest. However, no one does not want more. Another point is that Physical labor is tiring, exhausting, and low paying. Walt Whitman himself has never been part of physical labor and worked alongside ordinary workers so he doesn't realize the hardship of the people. He sees people sweating and chatting and thought that they must be enjoying themselves working with all their strength and stamina for minimum wage. Workers now would probably be more discontent with their lives because of the luxurious improvements made in the world that they cannot possess and the mass diversity of rich people and poor people that make them even more cynical.

Journal 46: Work Songs

What Whitman is trying to express is that Americans are happy working laborious, repetitive, low paying jobs and that the workers joyfully enjoy their work as they sang song of praise to whatever they are doing; whether it is the carpenter measuring his plant of beam, the mason's routine work duties, or the girl sewing. Whitman sees that the ordinary working class people, and women, are the real heroes of America, they represent the essence of America and America represents the people at the lower end of the social pyramid. In his poem of praising America for being America, he expresses that the people of America are truly happy and that life here is amazingly good. However, I think that Whitman's point of view of the laborers and the lower class people are not accurate and that Whitman's optimistic view of the workers and of life in general is very much different from most of the people of low status. Whitman has never worked as a low class worker, earning money from sweat and hard physical labor but all he sees are people around him, working as hard as they can trying to get by and he believes that this is the true American way of living and that the people doing their job, the reason they do it, is because they love their job and they are happy with their lives.

Journal 45: Acrostic

Being lazy and easily distracted is frustrating,
Ending with emptiness after time wasted,
Nostalgically longing for the carefree and optimistic childhood,
Scared of the future that my actions foretell.
Occasionally achieving enlightenment of how to live a good and fulfilling life,
Not for long my perfect plan consumed by laziness,
Hence, time flows like water in a stream,
Sinking in the depth, all my goals and plans.
Unlike video games, life does not restart.

Journal 44: Barbaric Yawp

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are considered mavericks and nonconformists of poetry. Many critiques dislike Whitman and Dickinson's poetry because they don't see free verses as a form of poetry. They believe that poetry defines a strict and rigid form that conforms to the traditional rhyme scheme and many other poetic rules that unless obeyed, does not qualify as poetry. Whitman and Dickinson challenges this idea by not conforming to the idea of having a set rhyme scheme or having a regular pattern for the sentence structure or length and this is called free verse. There are no rules in free verse poems except that they should include some poetic elements. However, critiques believe that simply including a few poetic techniques does not make writing poems. They believe that poetry is a delicate form of writing and that not following the rules means not writing poetry because the most important essence of what makes poetry unique is the formality. Whitman and Dickinson's free verse opens up a new door for future poets to write in free verse because the pioneers have experimented and challenged the idea and that this act of not conforming to the original strict idea of poetry prompts future writers to experiment on new ideas.

Journal 43: What Singing

If I am to describe people joyously doing their everyday work I would say criminals. However, I am not referring to burglars or rapist because they actually live a very hard life. They are driven by their inner bad desire to do bad things and usually people who commit crime out of incontrollable desire of lust or wealth are people tormented by these desires and cannot help but perform these terrible acts. The criminal I am referring to are people at the top tier of an organized crime, Mafia, drug lords, and other bosses of an organized crime society. They live a very comfortable life and they usually don't suffer from consequences because the mules, thugs, and other low class criminals would take the blame. It is very hard to trace back to the bosses because they usually don't leave traces and they usually don't take part in the dirty work themselves. Also I am referring to people committing fraud and earning tons and tons of money from honest people and getting away with it. People that created a fake stock company to earn lots of money by ripping off people and telling them to invest in nothing. They go to work everyday and get money easily and then retire and get away with it. That is the best life, life is unfair, but when they get caught they will stop singing their joyous song. But for now, they sing them with great joy.

Journal 42: Elements of Poetry

Elements of poetry are very different from the elements of a story because in a story the necessary elements are plots settings, characters, resolutions and conflicts. Elements of poetry are related to imagery, figurative languages, rhyme, meter, assonance, alliteration, and a lot of techniques that gives the poetry a better flow and more appealing to acoustic sense. The objective of poetry and a story is very different. Both being as works of arts, story is used to illustrate a story and the elements in a story are to stimulate images and vivid imaginations of the reader's mind. Usually, in a poem, it is to express a thought rather than telling a story. Even when the objective of the poem is to tell a story, it is usually told in a very vague and ambiguous way relating to symbols and other poetic techniques. Poetry is a very delicate piece of writing because it usually does not have a distinct setting and/or character characterization, but it usually expresses a conflict or the thought of the author. In I Hear American Singing, the setting is in America, characters are from a list of ordinary working class people, but there are no conflicts. There are no conflicts because the poem is expressing the joy of the ordinary working class people and how the ordinary working class people work really hard but the works are fulfilling. It is expressing celebration of work in a lyrical sense and this is what a poem do.

Journal 41: American Poetry Today

Poetry now can be mixed up with rap because there's a an increased number of people that advocate free verse. Although poems still have to have basic poetic rules to make it a poem, for example, stressed and unstressed syllabus, meter, rhyme schemes, or anything that a basic poem has. Simply reading in a poetic and with a sense of expressing it like an art can make a piece of writing a poem. Poem does not have to be associated with background music however it can be a delightful add-on to a poem. Some people nowadays consider rap because raps often have rhyme schemes and stressed and unstressed syllabus or a lyrical meaning and figurative language. Raps also does not need a beat or background music to go with because rap itself can be music. Poems nowaday is classified into many different groups including sonnets, haikus, free verse, and etc. but they all have the basic fundamental characteristics of being a poem, or at least one of the fundamental characteristics. Of all the poems, free verse is of the most controversial because many critiques of poems doesn't view free verse poem as poems due to its lack of respect for the long lasting traditions of poems. I think free verse counts as poem because some poems, in order to follow strict rhymes or rules, became so cryptic that ordinary reader had to decipher the poem in order to understand it. Free verse allows emotion, if it's a lyrical poem, or events, if it's a narrative poem, or both, to flow and is easier for the reader and it's also easier for the author to express his feelings. Although poems that follow strict rules sounds more classy and intelligent, free verse poems are still a form of poem for ordinary people.

Journal 40: Whitman and Dickinson

Some would say that Whitman's poems are very similar to rap in that raps are similar to poems but not as classy and not with exact and strict rhyme scheme or meter and does not strictly adhere to conventional poem rules. Also, Whitman's poems are related to the everyday working class of America, which is at the bottom of the pyramid, meaning that it appeals to the most people. What he mean by his quote is that his style of poem is for everyone and is the true American poem so if people want to look for him his spirit will be within the American soil. Also, he uses boot because boots re for the lower class people and it's just like his poem written for the lower class people. Dickinson quote of writing to the world is probably referring to her thoughts and not being accepted by the world. She likes a married man of the older age and is not accepted by the world so she shut herself in solitude. She shuts herself away from the rest of the world because she felt like her request to the world  is not answered. She also thinks that the world is unfair and that the world is cruel to her. This quote suggests that she feels that the world is against her and that she's not welcomed.