Interpretations and Sensory Language

     In the last class session, everyone presented a poem or short story that interested them in some way. The interpretations given from others were very fine detailed, original and quite creative. Some of the works were from Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes. The interpretations were very dead on in terms of what the poet is really trying to portray within their works. It has been quite some time since I have read some of Hughes works, but as soon as I read "Preferences", I understood the diction used and was able to put a timeline on the poem. As for the Emily Dickinson poems, I tried as hard as I could to understand what was depicted from her poems. Needless to say, not much was said other than Death, which is what majority of the class caught on to. To be one of the most famous poets, she sure does know how to draw the reader in with her imagery and horrifying descriptions of death with the greatest metaphors possible. She almost had me thinking of other things to understand why that symbolism was used to depict death within her poems. But as I understood the concept that she was trying to get through to the reader, I figured what she was trying to say before I unravelled the symbolism in her poetry.
      I really enjoyed, as the class might have already figured out the interpretations of Gabion Parapet; the discombobulated poem that had everyone in extreme perplexity. It was pleasing to me because as I looked at the words within the poem, it was rather a rhetorical finding but I realized it was about war. And also, by using my past experiences to understand the hidden messages within a poem, I realized it was more of a concrete poem, based on what the poem was about, what was happening and what was being shown. This lead me to the idea that the poem was war and was just as complex as war itself which made it even more intriguing to look at and decipher.
      Last week we were given abstract ideas and to come up with sensory or words dealing with imagery to describe or define how it made us feel. I had many ideas or certain imagery terms that came to mind but it was all train of thought. In the poems that I made from the abstract words sounds pretty decent. Not only did I use touch, taste, and sight as my main sensory language, but I used emotion to capture the language used in imagery to create a picture. Five different emotions are depicted in the poems, which are still abstract in a way but I am still trying to have the reader picture the subject within my works.