"Fluorescence"

    The first observation that I made from studying the peoms in Fluorescence, written by Jennifer K. Dick, was the format and vocabulary. Most of the poems in the first fourty pages of Fluorescence had a lot of unusual spacing. There were a lot of excessive indentations and spacing between each line. When I read through the poems this unique and unusual formating made me think and evaluate every line that I read. I feel that Jennifer did this intentionally to help the reader better undersatand the message that she was trying to convey. All of her poems had a lot of deep meaning to them and I feel that her formating helps the reader to better understand her message.
    The section that I found to be most interesting was section two, pages 17- 27. Throughout this section Jennifer makes reference to an explosion. At first I thought that this had to do with a personal experience she had in years past possibly during a war, which I thought to be be World War 2. On the last page she had mentioned that before the explosion she had grabbed for her phone in the street and thought to herself, "who should I call?" This line attracted my attention because it was written in italics. After re-evaluating what was said and wondering the significance of this line, I realized that the line gave the poem a specific time period. After reading this line on pg. 27, I knew that what ever message she was trying to deliver had to of taken place during a period where there were portable telephones, which would not be very likely during the time period of  WW 2. After determining the time period I began to think that she was talking about some type of terroirst attack. The peom also give information of a bomb squad evaluating the scene where the explosion happend. This caught my attention because people do not usually conduct minute investigations during a time of war. If an investigation had occurred over this event then there had to be a significance to it. My final conclusion of the poem was that Jennifer had experienced, or was describing someone elses experience, of a recent terrorist attack such as the one on 9-11.
    Overall I feel that these poems were very interesting. I found the peoms in Fluorescence to have deeper meaning than any of the poems we have read so far. I found a lot of these poems to have more of a clear and defined message. Because I could make sense of a lot of the readings I was more motivated to keep reading. I become very discouraged from reading poetry when i cannot dtermine what message the writer is trying to deliver. For this reason, I enjoyed reading the first fourty pages of Fluorescence.
    

     This week in Creative Writing we analyzed many different styles of poetry. Poetry has a lot of hidden meaning which can vary depending on the characteristics of the reader. The meaning of a poem can be delivered by using various writing styles including format and selective vocabulary. Some poems are long with multiple sonnets and others are short with very unique formating and wording.
      After evaluating the first packet of poems I noticed a lot of strange vocabulary. There are also a lot of analogies and metophors within the poems in the first packet. My favorite poem was still life from Seibutsu. This poem illustrates the image of death through the description of what I interoperated as a fruit bowl. I found this analogy to be very unique because when I think of death I think of bland colors such as black and grey, not bright colors that would displayed in fruit bowl. I feel the author is trying to send the message that death can be a beautiful stage of life.
     The second packet contains a lot of poems with many sonnets. The Shakespeare sonnets struck me as very unique becuase all of them have 14 lines. For the most part the sonnets seem very standard with no unique formating. With a closer examination I began to notice that most of the sonnets consisted of very strange vocabulary. The sonnets consisted of many words that appeared to be made up. I feel that Shakespeare uses these made up words to help add rhythm to his sonnets. The second set of sonnets that we focused on were from Berrigan. I found his format to be very different because he had random spacing throughout all of his sonnets. To me this seems like he is trying to instill certain thoughts in the reader by making them pause everytime they encounter a space. I feel by puting these spaces in strategic locations throughout his sonnets influences his readers to think a certain way. I also noticed that all of his sonnets referred to love or romance. A few lines in his sonnets gave me the indication that he may have just experienced a break up of a relationship.
    Overall I felt that all of the poems so far really gave me a broad understanding of the different types of poetry that exist. Poetry is composed from personal feelings and experiences of the writer. Poets use certain styles of language and format to portay their emotions to their readers. 

Intro Comments

My name is jason miller and i am majoring in Business Administration with a concentration in management. I have been attending Eastern Michigan since 2007 and plan on graduating with my BBA after this semester. I currently work full time as a retail manager at a grocery store.