My Poetry Out Loud poem

The poem I am doing is The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. It was somewhat difficult to analyze, but I have some ideas about it. Symbollically, I think it means a lot of different things. One, it is about making good choices. At the last line, when he says the road not taken makes all the difference, I think he is trying to say he made a good choice and it has benefited him. Second, I think the poem is about doing what may not be the popular thing, but the right thing. The road not taken obviously means it is not very popular, but if it has made all the difference, it must be a good thing. Also, when he says he takes the other road, it wasn't all that great ("and had really worn them about the same) so perhaps its trying to say it wasn't a good decision. Lastly, I think the writer is trying to make a statement of self reliance, and how it is important. When the poem says "and perhaps having the better claim" (claim as the key word) it kind of confused me, but I think it meant someone told him to do something (take the popular road, for instance) and he did it, and found it not to be all that and a bag of chips. So again, at the last line, it not only means he made a good choice, but he did his own decision, and didn't need anyone to influence him to what he thought was doing right.
     I feel like this poem can apply to my own life. I do things people tell me to, or I feel is worth doing, and I regret it soon after. So I try to do good choices and not to get in to trouble, 'cause there's consequences for myself if I get into bad things.
    I have no thought ideas for physical expression, dramatic effects or fluent speech factors to presenting this poem. Yet. However, I do think I will enjoy doing this poem, for I somewhat feel attached to it I always feel that way about things, even if they aren't human. I feel attached to my guitars, my house, and other unusual things, and I feel as though I have a strong connection to this poem and I'll have no problem presenting it for the competition.

Poetry Out Loud Worksheet-Emery

Part one:

1. Eagle Plain
2. London
3.  Kubla Kahn
4. The War In The Air
4. The Wooden Toy

Part two:

The poems I enjoyed reading were Eagle plain, The Wooden Toy, London and one I did not list called Snow Day. I liked Eagle Plain because I like eagles and it portrayed the eagle in the poem as a patriotic, majestic great bird. I liked London because the poem made me think of my family in England who someday I would like to meet. I liked the beginning because it seemed like it was a Christmas poem about a happy child receiving a toy for Christmas, but soon turned strange. I didn't really get it, it seemed like the toy was turning dark and demonic at the end, so I enjoyed it because of the change in mood. I found it a little funny, actually. Like the poem we read about the girl afraid of her baby dolls. The extra one I read, Snow Day, was one I enjoyed because it was described as a revolution of snow, so it made me think of uprising and war from a child's perspective. I also found the names of the schools that were closed down from the snow quite funny, too. The War In The Air was okay, I just didn't like it much because I had high hopes of it being about airplanes and things, maybe from WWII, but I didn't receive that impression from it. Kubla Kahn was the one suggested for me. I didn't like it at all. For one, I couldn't understand what it was about after several times of analyzing through it, and it was very long and rambly. It was my least favorite out of all of the ones I read. As for ones I would enjoy looking further into, Eagle Plain, Snow Day and The Wooden Toy would be my top choices.

Part Three:
The criteria I'd have no problem with would be voice and articulation. I am a moderately good speaker, and have no problem getting up and talking. I also am well with the physical portion, like eye contact, posture, etc. The criteria I'd have a problem with is the dramatic part. I can do well at being solemn and serious, but acting is one of my weaknesses. The other one is accuracy. While doing a poem, I have no doubt I'll mess up a couple words or a phrase or two. Its just a natural thing for me, I sometimes have trouble talking around my family or close friends without minor flukes. Not because I'm a nervous speaker, I'd rather call it a speech impediment, although it isn't.

Part Four:
William Farley: This person did an excellent job performing. He acted it out very well and created a mood that actually seemed like you could see the poem in your head. I thought that this person had a good storytelling voice, very calm and wise sounding. I liked the drama he put into speaking this poem. I couldn't find anything wrong with it, and it was an enjoyable video for me.

Jackson Hille: This person was a very good speaker. He sounded very sophisticated, and he didn't stammer, mumble or do anything of the sort. He spoke with great confidence, and you could tell he knew what he was doing and what he was talking about. I didn't like how he had his hands clasped together. Its no big deal, but it makes you wonder if he is nervous and is playing with his fingers or something.

Poetry Out Loud seems fun, and like a good thing to participate in. I think the competition is going to be a memorable experience, fun and competitive. I think it will be something like the Geography Bee in middleschool. Although, this may be somewhat harder, because you have to memorize and it can be quite nerve-wracking for some folk. I'd like to say I have full confidence in myself. But I can't say if its true or not. I have yet to choose a poem to memorize, but I certainly like the ones that sound the most like stories out of a book. Theres something appealing about them to me. I very much enjoyed the video portion of the website, but reading the criteria did bore me a little bit. For a final conclusion, I think I'll like the contest a lot.

Extra Credit Blog: The most important skill

The most important skill I picked up so far in English is probably DGP. It has not only helped me in writing papers in English, but has helped me write more fluently in other classes like science and math. Annotating, decoding and skills like those ones are good and all, but you cannot really apply them to other classes. The skill hasn't stopped in school though, at my house, I have become better at writing. I can now type emails and texts without feeling like I am stupid. The DGP practices we do in our journals have helped me out a great deal. Each time we do one, I feel smarter and feel like I can write confidently and with good puncuation. Hopefully, this is a skill that will remain with me through the rest of highschool, and, maybe, the rest of my life.

Lobsters are tasty

In the discussion, people had very good, meaningful things to say. My favorite comment that was made was near the end of the discussion. It wasn't the most deep statement, but when you thought about it it made a lot of sense and was very clever. It had something to do with how Lobsters are all different and how that is related to people. People are different colors, genders, shapes and sizes and so are lobsters. I can't quite remember, but this statement had something to do with how lobsters are innocent and taken away so suddenly from their home to a life that is slowy stopping. Thats how humans are. With all the things in the world, violence, plain circumstance, and other stuff, we can have our lives taken away from us at anytime with us having a say in it.
     After this discussion, I learned some new things about poetry. I learned how to annotate and analyze it and I learned each poet and poem is trying to express something. Like in Lobsters. This poem makes a somewhat scary, inevitable and true statement but it is a statement we all can embrace. The statement is death is going to happen, whether we like it or not, but we have to accept it and make the best of our lives before that happens, because any day is a day we can stop living.

So many paragraphs, so many skills-Emery Miller

While critiqing the papers in class, I noticed the more commonly made flaws in the papers were things like one sentence of commentary, the embedding was poor, and sometimes things like the people didn't cite a quote or they were using tedious word choice. There were usually small things like that, and most of the papers were written well and with all the material needed on the checklist. These flukes have taught me the skills to write a good paper. It was nice to see people who had papers with mistakes, because then we could learn from it. For instance, I now know that in a paper, quotes should be in chronological order of the book. I also learned that people like good vocabulary in papers from the comments of the students in class.
      With all the good that came from the mistakes of other students, I also learned what kind of stuff I need to work on. One student had commented on how I had poor transitions, and I'm not denying it. I jumped from one topic to the other and I could see it had confused many students while they were reading it. I guess what I need to do to write a better paper is take all the things from the checklist and put them into consideration. I don't like saying this, but for this paper I kind of "winged it". So now, I''m going to look over the checklist and do everything I'm supposed to do, and proofread and not just reword my drafts but actually improve them. If there was a scale of 1-10 for this project based on how well we did on the paper, I'd give myself either a 5 or 6. Its the first 5 part paragraph this year, so I'm not too worried.

Low Diction-Emery Miller

So I'ma gonna write 'bout a story where me and my pals were being a couple of dadgum bunch of fools, shootin' eachother with them airsoftin' guns I got. So one of these here days, out in my good ol' backyard, me and my friends were shootin' my airsoft guns. We had a heckuva time poppin' off rounds at some bullseyes we put up. Then I got this here idea, where instead of shootin' at paper, we shot eachother. So, we got some camoflauge and crap to keep ourselves from gettin' all hurt and crap. So me and my friend set up a couple of pieces-o-cover so we could hide and stuff. I didn't want the mutt to get hit, so I shooed him and told him to go on 'n git in the garage. Then, we started up the good times, hur hur I reckon we did!
      So I started out hidin' behind my garage. I was too scared to come out and shoot at the durn feller, so I waited while I heard him reloadin'. I pulled out to shoot at him, but he was trickin' me! He still had some ammo so he tried in a couple shots at me, lucky me all them shots missed. I wasn't doin' too good, so I came up with a plan. I'd a throw a rock 'n distract him, and when he was all confused, I'd give 'im one heckuva shootin'! So I picked up the purdiest stone I could find, and chucked it at the fool. While he watched it fly through the air, I shot at him! I didn't hit him, but it pushed him back. All of a sudden, he came behind the garage and had his weapon pointin' at me. I didn't want to get me all shot up at point blank, so I begged him not to shoot me and I surrendered. He bragged 'bout it to my brother, but while they was talkin' I pulled a dadgum dirty move. I shot him, right at his leg and all none more than five feet away. That didn't make 'im happy. He got so mad, he shot me point blank at m---anyways, it hurt so bad I fell in pain. We then began shootin' eachother point blank, and by the time we was done, we had welts the size of fat grapes. We was hurtin' for a long time.
      And that's that kind of stuff me and my buddies do. And ain't it the life!

Extra Credit Blog-Emery Miller

The most fun piece of writing I can recall doing was a piece I called Paintball Preposition. In seventh grade, we had to write a poem using prepositions(not really a poem, just sentences lined on top of eachother that each started out with a preposition). It was fun to do because I had a great time remembering my first time playing paintball ever. The way it worked was this. I got a piece of poster paper, and I drew a scene I remembered from playing paintball with a bunch of other people. I enjoyed drawing it, because I like making art and it was fun drawing paintballs flying everywhere and people getting sprayed or splattered with green paint. Anyways, we got this piece of poster paper, drew a scene of what we were writing about, then typed a "prepositonal poem." Every sentence started with a prepositional phrase and then was seperated by a comma. So one line went "Through the woods, we crept." The "through the woods" part being the prepositional phrase and the "we crept" being the action after it. It confused me a lot writing good phrases because I had ideas in my head I could have used but I could have only expressed them in free writing. But it all turned out good, I had a great time making and an even better time when I found out I got an A+ on it for my artwork and going over the minimum of 15 phrases (or stanzas). I can say that this poem was my most favorite piece of writing I've done in my English career.

Outside Reading-Emery Miller

The book I'm reading is Catcher in the Rye. I like this book a lot but I haven't seen a lot parts of speech or English things like irony or metaphors in it so far. The book doesn't really have many big words and has alot of swearing in it, so I can really understand the book well. I really like the main character, Holden Caulfield. I can't say I can relate to him very well but he seems appealing in some ways. He goes and visits his teacher at his home which you wouldn't expect a normal sixteen-year-old to do. He also talks about everything he hates and all of his pet peeves. He is a very different main character. I like the setting of the book too, taking place in the 40's and at a boarding school and all. It also is a wintery chilly setting early in the book, which puts me in a certain mood that I like. It makes me want to get a hot mug of apple cider or hot chocolate and snuggle up in a blanket and read the book. The book is pretty funny too, I like Holden's sense of humor which is usually making fun of people he doesn't like or flaws about others, but there are some parts I find tedious. Holden says quite frequently after a sentence, "It really was," "I really am," and stuff like that. I don't know what is going on in it, if its just something the author likes to do or what but it seems strange to me. There are other repetitve parts of the book I can't name off the top of my head, but they are there and it makes it seem like the book isn't headed anywhere. All together, I really like the book and look forward to seeing what happens in it everytime I pick it up.

Extending the theme-Emery Miller

To Kill a Mockingbird gave me a new perspective of what reading is all about. To me, I think there are two kinds of readers: There are the kind who read just because they have to and don't really enjoy or go deep within the book and the readers who do enjoy reading from a small liking, or, to a passionate level and who either read the book just for a "mind movie" or who really go within the confines in the book and try to piece together all the metaphors, morals and subtle life lessons inside the book. Then of course there are teachers who read the books, either like them or not, then have to take apart all the literary devices and piece together everything previously stated.
Sometimes when I think about this novel, I think about a tedious school assignment. But other times, I recall the times I spent reading it by the pool in the bright sunlight drinking a tall glass of juice with my dog laying down at my side. I remember my friend coming over and us reading the book together and then discussing what we read while having a good time. I remember falling asleep with this book on warm summer nights, waking up, and starting where I left off. There are many good memories this book had which I never would have experienced if I never chose this class. The childhood memories the author shared from Scout's perspective were some what similar to my own, with memories of school and neighborhood mischeif. This book now a memory I will recall when I am old and feeble, remembering my youth, my free spirt, and what a devillish looking hunk I was. If I had to use one word to describe this book, it would be memories. Nothing but sweet, sweet memories.

Boo-Emery Miller

My Boo Radley experience is my story about me coming to understand "challenged people". It hasn't been very long since I have found a new perspective about people with motor disfunctions, difects and/or mental disabilities. When I was little, I always thought that handicapped people, weather physically or mentally, were scary or strange. I didn't like how they were different because it made me feel uncomfortable (remember, this was when I was only five or so). Whenever I saw someone like this at a store or public place I would cling close to my dad, he would tell me "Everything is fine, Em." I never knew why he could act so nonchalant during these moments.
My dad was a crime scene investigator, and he used to travel on trips a lot. Sometimes he would travel to far away cites like Bellingham or Lynwood, and be home at dinnertime but other times he would be gone for days and take planes to Eastern Washington or many other further reaches in the state and be gone for awhile. I would always ask him what he did while he gone for so long, but it was hard to comprehend because I was so small. It was then one day when I was eight and we were on vacation in my dad's homestate I saw a person in a wheel chair with many motor disfunctions all by himself. I remember clearly what I said, "Dad, that person is creepy." My dad replied with "Emery, please don't say that." I asked him why and he told me. The crime scenes he always would investigate were cases with the abuse of mentally delayed people. He told me it wasn't their fault they were like that and that they really weren't all that different. This changed my whole perspective on these kinds of people. I now know they aren't different but exactly like us. Everyone is human but not the same human. Some people think fast, some people think slow. Others are good at sports others are good at other things, like music, etc. Some people have birth marks or moles and other don't, and people have different thoughts. These are the kinds of things my dad taught.
The intervention my dad gave me was like Scout's with Atticus. Atticus said Scout should not make fun of Boo or think differently of him just because he likes to keep to himself inside his house.Then, Scout put herself in Boo's shoes just like Atticus said she should, and before the book was over she didn't think Boo was so creepy or strange after all.
 Boo also turns out to be heroic in the end and was brave enough to save the Finch family from Bob Ewell. The disabled people my dad showed me aren't so different, are brave too. My dad says he doesn't feel bad for disabled people like most people, he says he admires them because of their bravery to lead a normal life, like the person I saw in the wheel chair who was brave enough to go out into the world all alone.
Just like Scout came to realize Boo is different through Atticus, I came to realize disabled people are not different either.

Introduction to Emery's blog

I am the kind of English student who likes to write. I like to write a lot of stuff, like essays and reports but I don't like to read. I also like poems like Haikus and other forms of poetry. I'll probably be the person who posts things at the last minute due to my terrible memory and my laziness, but I'll try to do my best never to be late for a post. I might have some music stuff on my blog just because so if people like music my blog is the place for that.
Now for answering those questions: (I can't remember all the questions Mrs.Gilman said to do for this blog so I'm going to wing it) I think it is important for students to be good at English because they may want to grow up to be book writers or other things involving writing/reading skills, plus writing is good for lots of different things, like writing letters, filling out job resumes, or writing public speeches. Thats a small part of the point of English. English is a requirement for kids wanting to go to college because English is used in so many things that everyone does, just like math and science. English can also help on a personal level becuase it can improve your public speaking skills and help you communicate with others because you discuss over things on a regular basis. I think one of the questions said something like "how will you en-lighten your blog?" and I will do that by being enthusiastic about my blogs and try to talk about the things we do in class in an interesting manner and be sophisticated and use commas and not say "and" all the time by using commas and starting new sentences instead of saying and.
And with that, my blog comes to a conclusion for tonight.