Week 3- Graduation Speeches & Poetry

Sometimes I wonder if "writer's" block is common in a young mind or even scattered thoughts of a billion ideas. In Advanced Placement English every senior has to write a graduation speech as well as come up with a poem that resembles ourselves.
With the graduation speech, writer's block occurs to the point where my essay is scattered all over the place and I do not even know what is my main idea of the speech. With the creative poem resemblance, there are so many poems and song lyrics, an abundance of options. I once read a quote we are the books, the lyrics, the experiences we go through. There is a little part of us in every literature and art we encounter, whether directly or indirectly implied.
This graduation speech reflects the mind of the writer-scattered and messy; but luckily it is only a draft that needs much needed improvement.
 “There are those of us who learn to live completely in the moment. For such people the Past vanishes and the future loses meaning. There is only the Present, which means that two of the three are surplus to requirements. And then there are those of us who are trapped in yesterdays, in the memory of a lost love, or a childhood home, or a dreadful crime. And some people live only for a better tomorrow; for them the past ceases to exist”― Salman Rushdie. Here in the present, we are the fighters and the survivors; the perseveres and history changers; dreamers and goal pursuers. In the present potential is the first step of ambition. “Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more”-Oscar Wilde. One’s potential is more valuable than an individual realizes. Your potential is more significant than you think it is. No one can steal your potential; for your potential in the present determines your future and leaving an imprint of a legacy on your past.

Week 2-Poems Galore

I am amazed at the complexity of poems. The power and pleasant meanings of poems alone. Going through homework I came across "Fire and Ice" and "Running on Empty". Simple poems with relatable and mind opening meanings.
Fire and Ice
Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

 

Within these lines Frost compares hate to destructive ice. Hate and bitterness can take over a person. Dictate their lives to an emotionally unhealthy unstableness. Hate has caused several conflicts and life loss within history. A person's heart fueled with rage, hate, and bitterness, is a heart fueled with coldness. Hate is "Destruction Ice".

 

RUNNING ON EMPTY
Poem by Robert Phillips
As a teenager I would drive Father’s
Chevrolet cross-county given me

Reluctantly: “Always keep the tank
Half full, boy, half full, ya hear?”

The fuel gauge dipping, dipping
Toward Empty, hitting Empty, then

–thrilling—way below Empty,
myself driving cross-county

mile after mile, faster and faster,
all night long, this crazy kid driving

the earth’s rolling surface,
against all laws, defying chemistry,

rules, and time, riding on nothing
but fumes, pushing luck harder

than anyone pushed before, the wind
screaming past like the Furies…

I stranded myself only once, a white
Night with no gas stations open, ninety miles

From nowhere. Panicked for a while,
At a standstill, myself stalled.

At dawn the car and I both refilled. But,
Father, I am running on empty still.

The teen feels stuck, feeling stranded. He might have refilled but he still runs on empty, lives life going through the motions and not living life fulfilled. The teen seems to be searching for fulfillment traveling in his Cheverolet, searching for an answer that even when refilled he feels empty but still running on empty. The teen wants to be fulfilled without an empty feeling.

Bright Star- Semester 2- Week 1

There always is a love poem whether sonnets, lyrics, or spoken word.  I always wondered who constricted poetry to having one meaning. Who comes up with the author's intent if the author themselves did not come up with one but just wrote their heart out. How poetry is perceived in different ways and meanings but in the end AP college board test makers limit the poem's meaning and essence with four to five choices. Poetry and its complexity does not deserve to be constricted in its understanding, especially when every single individual understands and perceives differently. In class we were assigned several poems to decipher. Bright Star written by John Keats was a poem I apprehended.
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

John Keats

The speaker longs to be a star, consumed in love or consumed by love. He wants his love to be unchangeable and steadfast like a star and its illumination and imprint in the sky.