Rosen Journal #6

Part One:

The piece that stuck out to me the most in the wax newspaper was Contact by Robbie Gamble.

1) The first reason that this piece stuck out to me is because of the shortness of the poem. I love reading short poems because ironically they usually have the most to say. In this short poem it describes a story of a speaker meeting a man that had been shot in seven locations on his body. The speaker then describes the locations he was shot, laundry list style, and then finishes on the piece by saying he "rubbed his forehead for luck" which can be taken in a passionate sense or a literal sense. For me, it can go either way and I love the mystery of not knowing whether this speaker is a cynic or a gentle and caring person.

2) The second thing that I noticed in this piece was the tone of the piece. The entire piece had almost a comedic or ironic tone. This is portrayed with language like "bitch slap", this line made me laugh (realistically smirk) and stuck out to me while reading it. This poem really was funny and carefree and I loved the aura around it. Gamble takes such a serious condition of a man getting shot seven times and makes it much lighter when it could easily be dark. This tone drives the poem fully and makes it the poem that it is.

3) The third thing that I noticed while reading this poem is the set up of the poem. The stanzas are uneven with the amount of lines used per stanza and also the length of each foot. This kind of adds to the tone of the poem with how it's almost a "no rules" type of poem and I really like that. This poem doesn't need rhyme scheme, this poem doesn't need pentameter, this poem needed to say what Robbie wants the speaker to say and thats all that matters.

Part Two:

I believe that I've improved the most when it comes to criticism. When it comes to writing I take the comments from the workshop seriously so that I can add to my poems but overall I believe that I'm usually more of an independent writer and while I've improved in my writing in this class I think that my criticism has show more of a prominent improvement. I think that I've definitely gotten better at listening because I'm such a talkative person. I will be honest, because I'm a talkative person there are times that I will talk just because I know it is helping me with my grade for participation. But as the class went on and we did more and more workshops I learned to really hear people and listen to what they're saying before just spitting something out just to say it. I think an example of this is when we were going over Dathan's piece "Disparity" (I think thats what it was called). In this workshop I didn't talk much and I really listened to what everyone was saying and also watching Dathan to see how he was reacting to see what he thought of the responses just through body language. Once people said what they had to, it gave me a better idea of what to say, and I'm happy to be improving on that section of criticism. Now when it comes to actually critiquing other pieces I think I've gotten better at being honest with people's work whether it's brutal or not. I think that telling people that bad parts of the poem can be even more important then telling them the good parts because if they don't hear the bad then they won't improve. I think that towards the beginning of the year I would say more positive than negative because I truly didn't know how to analyze a poem the way that I do now. I didn't know what enjambment was and I didn't notice the symmetry in poems, and now that I do I have the ability to point it out when it looks good and bad. I think the best part of learning how to criticize other peoples pieces is that now I can criticize my own pieces, be honest with myself for when I'm writing something poorly, and in the end that's what's going to make me a better writer.