1st Quarter Poetry Journal Reflection

Traffic Jam

If it hadn’t been for the traffic jam

I might never have noticed

the mist hanging low above the cornfield

a sunken cloud

the nebulous haze of unbroken sleep

pierced only by the golden

cylinders of sunshine

and faint red glow of taillights -- they who,

among Nature’s lazy morning slumber,

have long awoken and long

slipped into the rhythm

of growing impatience.

Hesitantly

You say my name hesitantly

as if tasting a drink,

rolling it around your tongue

and swallowing delicately.

You’re wearing your friendly mask,

every smiling muscle in your face

trembling halfway, like

balancing the light switch between on

and off.

And so I do the same, we’re

two sides of a mirror

colliding, falling through.

Could I but decipher

the contours of your raw

skin behind your mask? for

my nose strains

to catch the subtle

smell of defeat.

August

August

is when new year’s resolutions

start to peel away

and the squeaky-shine voice

of conscience takes over.

August

is when you’ve outgrown your old

skin and try to stitch

another one back together.

August
is friends and strangers

switching roles

a film of frost on

every word.

August

is a balancing act,

a fiery maroon

coaxing dying embers.

August

is when mistakes and sweet

remembrances pulse back and

linger like

a crooked arabesque.

First thing, can we agree to give me a minor fangirl moment? I just want to say gush that the daily poetry journal response is literally my favorite thing every single day. The opportunity to honestly express myself in my weird, abstract, metaphor-adoring (see, this is what happens when you listen to way too much Lorde) way is really rare for my fast-paced life right now, and I'm constantly so thirsty for quiet reflection and appreciation of beautiful writing. *gushy hand gestures*

Okay so I'm done with that whole kiss-up-to-Mrs-Leitsch thing (but I actually mean it).

I don't remember which poems "Traffic Jam" and "Hesitantly" were responses to; I think I might have done a free write. "Traffic Jam", obviously, addresses the conflict between nature and human activity, which has been an increasingly common theme in my poems. In the poem, I sort of lament the fact that humans are constantly looking for a more fast-paced lifestyle, while failing to see the beauty in their natural surroundings. I paid a lot of attention to my diction (I just love playing around with words >_<) and imagery: "golden cylinders of sunshine" and "the nebulous haze of unbroken sleep" are two lines that I'm somewhat proud of.

The second poem, "Hesitantly", was kind of a weird experience for me; I wrote it in response to passing someone in the school hallway whom I used to have rivalry and tension with and I hadn't seen in a while. It brought up some... interesting ideas, because I wasn't sure what the person thought of me now that almost two years had passed and I wasn't sure whether he/she had let go of what had happened. It came out of kind of a weird thought process, but I liked the similes that I tried to weave into it, like "as if tasting a drink, rolling it around your tongue and swallowing delicately".

"August" was a response to the poem, also titled "August", that we read in class. I really worked on my imagery and metaphors in this piece. I tried to use repetition in an artful way, being very careful not to make it too monotonous or predictable (because that can happen soooo easily -_-). I also played around with my line breaks (wow the poem looks really narrow xD) and switched lines in the middle of phrases where they sounded kind of out-of-place and unnatural, trying to mirror the disconnected thoughts of teenagers going back to school in the fall. Last year, I did a lot of things that I now regret, so I wrote this poem in response to how those incidents made me feel and where they have now landed me.

1st Quarter Independent Reading Reflection

Well hasn't it been one hectic quarter. *sighs, arms akimbo*

This quarter, I finished a grand total of two books and abandoned one.

The first book I read was Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, a historical fiction book that I had met on Goodreads (Goodreads is basically my Tinder for online book-dating xD). I was captivated by the intricately realistic detail and vivid emotions that Golden portrayed, a quality made even more astonishing by the fact that Golden is an American male author writing from the first-person perspective of a Japanese woman. This was one of the few books that I feel really deserved my "spiritual reading"; it really opened my eyes to the culture of Japanese geisha during the time of the World Wars, and I was also able to pick up and appreciate the beautiful writing style and figurative language. I feel like I really rediscovered historical fiction and I hope to read more in the future, because it was a window into a whole different culture and time period.

I am debating over whether to see the movie or not... I fear it might ruin the beautiful imagery in my mind from the book, but I also think it might be intriguing to see someone else's interpretation. For those who have seen the movie — any suggestions?

The other book that I finished was Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, on a recommendation from Jason Zhang, who claims that the book changed his entire perspective of the world. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to have nearly as strong of an impact on me. I read The Davinci Code, also by Brown, last year, and the first thing I noticed was how strikingly (and almost amusingly) similar these two books were. The storyline is amazingly parallel: Harvard professor Robert Langdon gets a call from a mysterious official late in the night on account of an unexplained murder, and he whizzes off to a famous location in Europe to investigate a series of obscure clues put in place by a secret satanic cult seeking to destroy the Catholic Church (while picking up an attractive young female scientist along the way), all in a matter of twenty-four hours. Hashtag deja vu.

This book was one of the faster reads for me, and I didn't connect with it on such a spiritual level because (okay you can disagree with me) there didn't seem to be as much human emotion and beautiful, image-filled writing to savor. Nonetheless, Angels and Demons did not fail to thrill and captivate me with Langdon's superhuman intelligence and the smooth elegance with which all the details of the situation fit together, and after finishing the book, it is hard to believe that the Illuminati doesn't really exist. I will never look at a one-dollar bill the same way.

I will admit that I didn't get to read as many books as I had hoped (BUT I CAN EXPLAIN) because I've spent these couple months scrambling around frantically, trying to adjust to the new rhythm of high school life, tackle a new AP course (fist...pump), get ahead in Science Olympiad, write my oratory speech for Speech and Debate, and manage to keep up with practicing violin, all in one big gulp, leaving me extremely limited time to pursue my reading and do justice to the title of my blog (wow that whole paragraph was one enormous sentence #syntax). I do hope that next quarter, I'll be able to squeeze out more time from in between my other activities to unwind and read.

Speaking of studying for Scioly, I actually believe that during the past quarter, I've read far more than ever before — not in terms of books, but in terms of pages and new knowledge that I've gained. Scioly, a competitive club in which students compete in various subjects in science (mine include anatomy and biology), is one of my most demanding extracurricular commitments. Soooo... does this count as my independent reading? *adorable smile* :)

During second quarter, my reading goal is to finish at least four books, including at least one classic (perhaps Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and/or Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, which happen to already be sitting in my Kindle library). I also want to explore more historical fiction, which is kind of a genre I just "rediscovered". One such book on my Goodreads to-read list is Kathryn Stockett's The Help, which I've been wanting to read for, like, forever T_T