Retreat

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, retreat is defined as “the act of moving back or withdrawing”. This word is most often used in battles, where one side looses and has to retreat. However, for the purpose of this blog, retreat is seen as a withdrawal from society. Just as we have studied before, Emily Dickenson is a great example of a person that withdrew from society. A retreat is not always a bad thing. Just look at Emily Dickenson: incredible literature was the product of her seclusion from society. Because she had not other outlet, poetry was the only way to express her feelings. However, the seclusion might not have been too beneficial for her as a person. She seemed like a pretty depressed person. Yet, retreat from society for a short period of time could be beneficial to a person. There are always times in our life, when we would just want to hide under our blankets and not come out. We may be faced with so much problems that you feel like you can’t handle them. At these times, it might be good to just withdraw and give ourselves some time to think and reflect on what to do next. But we cannot hide forever. If we don’t come out from our sanctuaries, and face the challenge, we would not be able to solve the problem.

Free Write

Hmm… this has been the only blog without a topic. I’ve always wanted to do one of these but now that I got the chance, I really don’t know what to write about. I guess I’ll just talk about my life right now or anything that’s on my mind right now.

APs are over! I am extremely overjoyed. The past few weeks had been so tiresome and busy. I feels don’t have time to just stop and have time for myself. The pressure was probably the worst part. I was pretty much constantly having a stomachache, which I always get when I’m nervous. But now that it’s all over, I feel just a tiny bit of emptiness. Life went back to normal. Probably too normal after all the chaos and I feel kind of disconnected. I don’ even know why. There’s just the usual homework that I have to do, but it just feels like something is missing.

But, enough with the APs, there’s got to be something more interesting for me to write about! I’ve been spending a lot of time on youtube recently, just watching random music videos and shows. A few days ago, someone told me about this website where I can convert music on youtube to mp3 files so I can listen to it on my iTunes. I love it! It is so useful! So far I’ve only converted three songs, but a plan on usesing it a lot more.

Oh and yes, I have to look for a new background for my blog. I wonder where I can get those….

I Hate Poetry

… not. I can’t say I hate it because I sometimes enjoy it but I can’t say I love it either, because I don’t like all poems. I guess it depends on the type of poetry I’m reading. I like poems that provoke a certain emotion or tell a touching story. When reading poems, I like to read them out loud, so I prefer poems that rhyme and have a good rhythm to it. But I don’t like poems that

Start off new lines at weird

Places and has

Very awkward,

Punctuations.

I just can’t read them correctly when poems are written that way. However, there is a type of poetry (I think its called picture poetry) that takes the shape of its subject. I once read a poem about an apple in the shape and color of an apple. It was pretty interesting.

“Poetry” by Marianne Moore is a poem about poetry. It was pretty interesting o read. However, the structure of the poem made it hard to read. It is another one of those poems with weird line structure and punctuation. Yes, I is a creative way of writing poetry, but I think sometimes, it distracts me from getting to the main topic of the poem.

Horror

I personally have very little experience with horror films because I am usually too scared to watch them, so I do not much to say about the different types of horror films, whether certain kinds are better than the others. However, on the rare occasions that I did, the buildup of the tension was much more unnerving than being scared itself. The suspense might be the key success in a horror. Of course, the ending cannot be too bad, but the tension is what gets the audience excited and addicted. The buildup takes much longer than the actual horror, but being scared of being scared might be scarier than being scared itself. When watching a horror film people would want to know: When will it come? You get a feeling of your organs being twisted and tied up because of all the suspense. (This is one of the reasons why I do not like to watch horror films. What’s the sense of putting yourself into such a vulnerable and uncomforting situation? Of course, I’m not the type of person that finds getting scared very amusing either.) I think the best type of tension build up would be very subtle, but gets the audiences thinking about what the small hints mean. 

A Journey

I did not think the journey had an actual destination. The journey that Prufrock referred to was not a physical journey, but more of a tour of his inner thoughts. He lets the reader in on his inner thoughts and troubles.

The poem does not follow the model of a usual storyline. The narrator started off unhappy and ended unhappy. The problem was there from the beginning but did not get solved in the end. There was no loss, but no gain either. The narrator broods over the same issue, but cannot find a way to solve it. The journey did not take the reader anywhere but gets the reader involved with the narrator’s way of thought. The way the poem was written is similar to a stream of thought. The subject jumps from one topic to another between stanzas. Prufrock talks about his inner thought and feelings in the first stanza and then in the second, makes a observation about his surroundings (“In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo”) then back to his own thoughts. In the very last line, “Till human voices wake us, and we drown”, can be thought of as a pull back to reality. At could be interpreted as human voices distracts Prufrock from his deep thoughts and drags him back to reality. 

Prufrock Revisited

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, written during World War II reflected the life and ideas of the time. People were depressed and spiritually empty. Life did not seem to have a goal. In line 25 of the poem, “And indeed there will be time / For the yellow smoke the slides along the street / Rubbing back upon the window pane;” and all throughout the stanza, the repetition of “there will be time” gives a feeling of hopelessness. It is like things are dragging on, and the narrator is always putting things away to be done later. The repetition gives an impression of an endless misery and life without a goal.

In line 84, Prufrock discusses death, saying “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, / And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, / and in short, I was afraid,” In this part of the poem, the Prufrock talks about his fear of death, but then asks “And would it be worth if after all”. Through the whole poem, he simply presents problems, but never finds a way to solve them. We can sense the fear in the first few lines, but he does try to conquer it. 

Anti-Hero

Modern society, with its fast-paced lifestyles and high technologies, has received criticisms from many including Joseph Campbell who described the current situation as a “stagnation of inauthentic lives and living . . . that evokes nothing of our spiritual life, our potentialities, or even our physical courage.” According to Campbell, modern society has made us all into listless people who only think and complain but never take action. People in modern society can’t be heroes, because they don’t take action. Instead, we can only be described as antiheros. The protagonist in T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” seems to be just that. The whole poem is something that went on in one man’s mind. The poem presented the reader with J. Alfred’s Prufrock’s “journey” of unresolved issues with self-confidence and ways to present himself. The narrator never takes any action, but just sits at the side and worries about his life. From the beginning of the poem till the very end, nothing changes. The narrator did even make up his mind to change the way he thinks, or try to experience something new. He just hints at his problems and let it hang there, never solving it.