3Q3

I like to read Walt Whitman occasionally, but more of Byron and Tennyson.  Shakespeare is alright, I like his sonnets more than I like his plays.  Ezra Pound and a poem by James Joyce stand out to me though.  Joyce's poem in his novel A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man is one of my favorites.  It is a villanelle, which is my favorite style of poetry.  As for poets that I try to stay away from, I do not really like have much knowledge of them from basically 1950-present.  That does not mean that if I found a poet that I liked from the present era I would not read it, I just have not found one yet.  I won't write off the present stuff yet though.

3Q2

I feel like I am in the minority of my peers that do not enjoy free verse poetry.  As hard as they are to achieve, villanelles and pantoums seem much more meaningful when done correctly.  I can read a free or blank verse poem and appreciate it, but personally I like the structural aspect of poetry more.  In terms of elements, I really focus on the meter and foot of the poem.  Much like Shakespeare's iambic pentameter, I try to find my own style.  I do not really like to use onomatopoeia in my poems because either I cannot do it correctly or it makes my poem seem elementary. With enough practice, I might be able to achieve something with it.  I read a lot of poetry from Pound and Joyce, though Joyce was not really considered a poet.  Whitman and Longfellow are great as well, and even further back with Byron and Tennyson.  I try not to read or write poems that a 3rd grader could do, to put it bluntly.  Poetry is about touching on an emotion that you can only feel a few times in your life.  When I read poetry, I want the words to drip from my tongue like honey.  If you know the movie I just referenced, well done.

3Q1

Poetry has been a major part of my life.  I was a reader first, of course.  I read Walt Whitman, and e.e. cummings, and a few others.  Poetry always appeals to me because of the depth that can be achieved in the verses.  In school, I feel that delving too far into the poems, hanging on every word, rhyme and sound, has caused the poems to feel tired.  When I read a poem, I want the words to flow off my lips in a way that a piece of prose cannot do.  I want to be able to make the reader feel something they have either never felt before or have not felt in a long time.  The poetry that I write is very much inspired by Poe and Joyce, even simply in the syntax and style.  I try not to classify my poems and say that "I only write free verse" because poetry is much more than that.  Love, desire, sadness, these emotions are much more complex than can be studied in a classroom.  Poetry is much more intimate than something that can be studied in a classroom.  

2Q38

Obviously we all do not have an equal shot at success.  Simple and mundane things like race and sex prohibit people from success.  There is racism and sexism and a whole bunch of other mentalities that close minded people like to harbor.  A black person cannot get a job where a white man could.  A woman cannot get a job where a man could. Until we as a country start to eliminate the inherent racism, homophobia, sexism and many other things, we will never move forward as a nation.

2Q37

This semester has been insane.  College admissions quickly commandeered my free time, and AP classes limited any free time I had.  Honestly, I am so ready to leave high school.  This semester has made me want to go to college more than ever.  Senioritis will soon set in the coming months.  I have a free first period this year which has been NICE!  I am glad the college application process is over, and I am hoping I will get into my top college.

2Q36

Cheating is one of those things that I feel should not be implemented unless absolutely necessary, or in a dire situation.  If the situation presents itself as one where cheating would greatly increase the chances of something good happening, and the situation was of utmost extreme qualities, then I would cheat.  These situations do not come around, hardly a few times in a lifetime.

One of the sad things that I have learned in high school is that the cheating is sometimes necessary.  I have never cheated, but I know people who have, and have received  the benefits from it. 

2Q35

Obviously, if it was not already known, I am very punctual.  I was always told by my parents that if I was not 5 minutes early I would not look respectable.  I try to always be at least 5 minutes early to everything.

2Q34

I have a bad habit of not always believing or accepting constructive criticism.  Sometimes when I write something that I think is really good, I don't want to believe anything bad that someone would say about it.  I really need to kick that habit.  As for a habit that I do not want to get rid of, I don't really know of any that I can think of.  Maybe someone else could point something out about me, and then I would see it, but at the moment I can't find anything that I would want to keep.

2Q33

My favorite story, and it will sound cliche, is The Great Gatsby.  I read it personally before I read it in school.  Fitzgerald's prose captured my mind, and I was completely and utterly enthralled within the story.  I know everyone reads it in school but the book made me want to become a writer.  After looking into Fitzgerald more, I found Hemingway and Joyce, then Woolf and MacLeish, then Pound and Capote.  I read all of it, and enjoyed all of it immensely; but Gatsby will always have a special place in my heart because it made me want to write in the first place.

2Q32

In 2016 I hope to accomplish many things.  I want to get into college before I really focus on anything else.  After I hear back from my colleges in March and know where I'll be going, I want to try to improve my writing much more.  I already write every day but I want to set aside more time and develop a strict routine.  I know that all the great writers were incredibly disciplined, and I want to work on becoming more disciplined.  My writing habits are largely undefined at the moment, I do not have a rigorous routine and specific time that I write.  I want to try and establish one.  That is my main goal for 2016, so to speak.  To try and write more.

2Q31

I slept for the better part of the holiday season.  I did not have any obligations or appointments that kept me out of my house, so I decided to catch up on my sleep.  Most days I would not even get out of bed until two or three in the afternoon.  That was very nice.  We had a party on New Years Eve with more people at my house than I would have liked, but the people were nice.

To say it was sad to come back to school is an understatement.