We are taught at a very young age the importance of words. One simple word can get you what you want. While others express intense emotion that can easily be understood. As we grow, we combine words allowing us to communicate with others. Through communication, spoken or written, we tell our stories. I believe that everyone has a story. Granted, some are more exciting than others, but it is still a story that can be shared. All of the authors we were introduced to shared a part of themselves. They told us about a child dealing with his parents looming divorce, and a young lady contemplating abortion. They told us stories about life, about love, and about loss. This is why I contend that literature is related to everyday life because it is largely created from everyday life.
Literature has many forms including, poetry, fiction, and drama. I had lost touch with all three of these forms prior to this class. My reading consisted of work related articles or children’s homework. All reading was “serious” in nature. It has been difficult for me to reconnect with literature. Many aspects have changed over the past twenty years. However, I can now say that I am thankful for this experience. This class has reopened my imagination and rekindled that old spark I once had for reading.
The poems discussed during this class were written directly from life experiences. I cannot recall a time that I have ever read poetry; therefore my views are from a “blank slate” perspective. The most important thing I learned about poetry is that is it a wonderful form of self expression. All of the poets we were introduced to wrote about life experiences, both personal and observed. I did not realize that poetry could be so powerful. Coey...
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...teaches us life lessons and how to cope. Drama allows us to speculate about a story that will unfold right before our eyes. Literature is beautiful, it speaks, if affects us; it allows us to connect with others. It helps us understand the past and look to the future. Literature is an essential building block for learning. It relates to everyday life because it is everyday life.
Works Cited
Coeyman, Marjorie. "FINDING THE POWER OF POETRY." Christian Science Monitor 90.101 (1998). EBSCO. Web. 22 Nov. 2014. .
O'Neill, Cecily. "IMAGINED WORLDS IN THEATRE AND DRAMA." Theory Into Practice 24.3 (1985): 158-65. Academic Search Premier. Web. 22 Nov. 2014. .
Sweetland, Nancy. "THE TRUTH ABOUT FICTION." Writer 107.10 (1994). Academic Search Premier. Web. 22 Nov. 2014. .
When I read poetry, I often tend to look first at its meaning and second at how it is written, or its form. The mistake I make when I do this is in assuming that the two are separate, when, in fact, often the meaning of poetry is supported or even defined by its form. I will discuss two poems that embody this close connection between meaning and form in their central use of imagery and repetition. One is a tribute to Janis Joplin, written in 1983 by Alice Fulton, entitled “You Can’t Rhumboogie in a Ball and Chain.” The second is a section from Walt Whitman’s 1,336-line masterpiece, “Song of Myself,” first published in 1855. The imagery in each poem differs in purpose and effect, and the rhythms, though created through repetition in both poems, are quite different as well. As I reach the end of each poem, however, I am left with a powerful human presence lingering in the words. In Fulton’s poem, that presence is the live-hard-and-die-young Janis Joplin; in Whitman’s poem, the presence created is an aspect of the poet himself.
“I look to poetry, with its built-in capacity for compressed and multivalent language, as a place where many senses can be made of the world. If this is true, and I’ve built a life around the notion that it is, poetry can get us closer to reality in all its fluidity and complexity.”
By appreciating literature, one not only receives a wonderful story but is also given the chance to grow with the characters and learn
Yardley, Jonathan. "The Writer Who was Full of Grace." The Washington Post: 0. Jul 06 2005. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2015.
Literature opens a new world of ideas and situations with just a sense of an imagination to picture and begin to realize what it would actually be like. In article, “Imagining the Life of Others,” Paul Bloom completely disagrees. He stated that life or virtually any situation cannot be lived and seen through the perspective of another. To become more understanding of the event you must listen to what people have to say about it, carefully. From personal experience and knowledge of literature having a large impact on people’s lives, I couldn't agree less with Bloom’s claim. Literature is made from experiences and previous knowledge, recreated to give an imaginary outlook on situations.
In her poem entitled “The Poet with His Face in His Hands,” Mary Oliver utilizes the voice of her work’s speaker to dismiss and belittle those poets who focus on their own misery in their writings. Although the poem models itself a scolding, Oliver wrote the work as a poem with the purpose of delivering an argument against the usage of depressing, personal subject matters for poetry. Oliver’s intention is to dissuade her fellow poets from promoting misery and personal mistakes in their works, and she accomplishes this task through her speaker’s diction and tone, the imagery, setting, and mood created within the content of the poem itself, and the incorporation of such persuasive structures as enjambment and juxtaposition to bolster the poem’s
Welty, Eudora. ?The Worn Path.? Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: PH, 2001. 150-155.
The idea of literature being an important aspect of life has always been greatly prevalent in my upbringing. This notion that I supported was spurred on at the cause of my obstinate parents insisting upon my reading of two books a week to benefit my vocabulary and to develop the articulate thought process of a skilled reader. As a young child, my biggest influences were my parents’ passionate and persuasive ideas regarding the correlation between
Kennedy, X. J., & Gioia, D. (2013). Literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and
Kennedy, X. J., & Gioia, D. (2010). Literature an introduction to fiction, poetry, drama and
“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald. Literature gives people a sense of hope, that they aren't alone in this big world. It allows people to relate to one another and tell the world how they feel. With literature, you can be anyone you want to be. Our culture encourages literature from a very young age and because of this, it has impacted education immensely. It has various styles and within each style, comes different writers. Oscar Wilde was a novelist, playwright, essayist and poet in the Victorian Era. Some of his most famous works include The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of being
Literature is a very powerful tool that is used to make a huge impact on society or in someone’s perspective. Literature comes in different forms and each literature form fits in a certain category or role to help understand the true meaning of it. From playwrights to short stories, each one has moral lesson, a message or a reflection of the author. I have witnessed the power of literature several times. Literature has moved teens to better being; it has motivated unfortunate people to fame, used as an educational process of teaching and most of all, entertainment. Back in the day, plays were on of the most famous forms of entertainment. Without television and radio present, plays served as a substitute to entertain certain groups of people like the royal family or just for the whole public. This was one way of making money by the actors and the authors that wrote the play. Also present during those times were the poem recitals. This is similar to a play but fewer people are present in the stage or sometimes solo performance. Today, Literature is still being used as a form of entertainment and educational intentions. Hollywood made a lot of money by revising the great masterpieces of famous authors such as “Rome and Juliet” by William Shakespeare. Also, they made movies out of hundreds of literary works for educational purposes and better understanding of the literature piece. Each form of literature has its own style. The style determines how it influences the audience to absorb the true meaning and moral of the story or poem. William Shakespeare and Benjamin Franklin were truly persuasive while Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe mixed mystery and adventure to their works. The style touches the readers which really makes a good relationship from the reader to the author’s literary masterpieces.
Literature has had a major impact on society, and, also our history. Literature has reformed and shaped civilizations, changed political systems, and has exposed injustices (3). Our literature has changed and developed as we have, keeping up with our society. “...literature is crucial for the advancement of society (3).” With literary works, we can convince others to view things a certain way, share our opinions, and more. Literature is greatly intertwined with our society and everyday lives, and they would not be the same without it. Literature plays an irreplaceable role in our
We read about characters confronting life experiences in some way like our own and sometimes find ourselves caught up with the struggles of a character. Each reader gets a new and unique event and the words speak to us now, telling us the truths about human life which are relevant to all times. Literature enriches us by putting words to feelings.
Literature is rarely, if ever, merely a story that the author is trying to tell. It is imperative that the reader digs deep within the story to accurately analyze and understand the message the author is trying to portray. Authors tend to hide themselves in their stories. The reader can learn about the author through literary elements such as symbolism, diction, and structure. A good example of this is Robert Frost’s poems The Road Not Taken and Nothing Gold can Stay in which he uses ordinary language unlike many other poets that became more experimental (Frost, Robert. “1.”).