Journal 14

I would like to take this journal entry to explain my feelings behind the poem "Poetry Makes Nothing Happen?" by Julia Alvarez.  I truthfully did not know a ton about poetry or care to know a ton about poetry before starting this unit tonight.  After reading this poem it really did open my eyes to involved, if you will, poetry is in every day life even if you do not associate it to poetry.  For example, most people do not associate music with poetry, they just think of it as music and nothing more than that.  I really enjoyed how the author incorporated even the most simple tasks, like driving home, to poetry.  Most of the time when people write things to get a point across they use tragic, terrible events to make it happen, but using the simple things to contrast a few tragic events was excellent. Another aspect I enjoyed of this poem was the multiple times the author used other poems as examples as kind of an ode to that poet.   For example, "When you are Old" by William Butler Yeats and two other poets, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Elizabeth Bishop were all used in this poem and I enjoyed researching them after reading to find some more basic facts.  The poetry portion of this course is off to a great start!