Robert P. Blog: March 2016

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Tangerine Lit Circle Blog

Our EQ: How do the conflicts affect Paul's relationship which his new home?

There are many conflicts in our lit circle book Tangerine by Edward Bloor, but the main conflict that drives all the side conflicts is Paul Fisher trying to adjust to his new home, Tangerine, Florida. Paul went from the Hot and dry place of Houston Texas, to the even hotter an humid Palm trees of Florida. He has to adjust to a lot of different things in Florida. While he was in Florida his private school got eaten alive by a sink hole. He was forced to go to a new school with kids that had completely different personalities. He didn't adjust very well.

In Florida there are many sinkholes. In our book Tangerine it is a major occurrence that happens all throughout the book.In the book it says, "Immediately kids started screaming and vaulting over the handrails, landing in the ankle-deep mud. Another whoosh and more violent cracking sounds followed" page 81. This is when the sinkhole occurs. This gives good description on what is was like to be in the position they were in.

In the article we chose it describes how a man was eaten in a sinkhole while he was in his own house. It talks about how this is a problem at that it is happening all the time in Florida. In the article it says, "Sinkholes are even more common in Florida during the winter months. "There's a high occurrence specifically in January or February," Tihansky told LiveScience. "And that's related to freezes, when farmers pump groundwater onto crops, strawberries and oranges, to protect them from freezing." This is one of the reasons why sinkholes are occurring so often.

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Poetry Unit Reflection

1- Poetry can be a vital, real part of everyone's life. What place or importance does poetry have in my own life? Does poetry belong to everyone? How do I know?

Poetry can be really, really, really important in someones life. It is a very powerful way of expressing emotions that are stuck inside that you can't get out, that is what poetry is. Poetry doesn't have that big of a part in my life. I haven't really written any kind of poetry that has pertained to my emotions that I am feeling. They have been reflected of things that I have heard about or seen. I think that in other peoples lives it is important. A lot of poems I have read have been about depression, anxiety, sadness, happiness and many other different type of emotions. I know this because I have red a poem about how it feels to be paralyzed. It talked about how everyday you have suicidal thoughts going through your mind because everything you go through is a struggle. Poetry is a great of expressing or getting those emotions out. Poetry also helps understand what people go through.

2- How does the life and experiences of a poet affect the poem that he/she creates?

People's life experiences definitely affect what the poet's poem is going to be about. Many poems by famous poets are based on emotion or feelings that the character is having. I think that going through many things in life makes a great poet because they can base the poem of the emotion that they have, that will make the poem even more interesting to read because it is going to be about the person. If a poet is going through depression will make a great poem because they get to write about how being diagnosed with depressions feels and how they ended up being diagnosed with it in the first place. Those are the kind of poems that everyone loves.

3- Choose two poems (one that you have read one that you have written yourself) and analyze how a poem's form and structure contribute to it's meaning. Also, analyze the impact that words/phrases, rhyme, alliteration, repetition, and figurative language have on the poem.

I chose this poem "Volcano" because of the structure. It is in the shape of a volcano. I think the phrase "Still thousands in the world but they don't all work" contributes to the poem because it is representing it like something mysterious, like it is something that you can't miss because it happens rarely.

I chose my poem "Six Dead on Pure Furnish" because it has a lot of emotion. It is about a shooting that happened about 1 month ago. On the last paragraph I kept putting they said after each line because especially adults don't like kids using Uber. That is why I put "...to the many voices telling them" to show this. I alluded to the cities to show how bad this shooting was. It as bad as a shooting that would go on in the west side of Chicago. I also alluded to Harlem which is a corrupt part of Manhattan, New York.