Hello everyone! So, I finally completed my digital essay and I’m so happy with the results. I had so much fun doing this project and my friend came over and helped me a lot. She was my camera lady and my critic. 🙂 Now, the poem I chose to write about was “The last bit of light made its way on” by Joshua Beckman, the same guy who wrote “The Karate Chop of Love” (which I try to watch at least once a week). Beckman loves Stein and I love Stein, so I mainly wrote about the influence Stein has on Beckman, because he uses repetition in a lot of his poems, and there’s a quote by Stein that I put in the video and in my essay that I believe Beckman follows very well when he writes. So, it should come to no surprise that my video revolves around Stein, but I did incorporate a little bit of Beckman into it (I wrote my own, silly poem using Stein’s beliefs of what poetry should be. The poem I make in the video is “modern” and the line “The hot, masculine sun” is actually from one of Beckman’s poems).
Also, the beginning of the video shows what a dictionary would call poetry vs. what Stein says poetry should be because both of the definitions are very different. The dictionary has a more narrow-minded view on what poetry is, while Stein’s idea allows for a more free way of writing, but you must pay attention to your nouns. It is through the way we giving meaning to nouns that our ideas and feelings are voiced, and that is what poets do with poetry. I also know that a lot of people are confused by Stein’s repetition and just her purpose with that in general, so I touched on that on my paper and in the video briefly with a quote from her. It’s funny, because as I was making the video, I noticed more things about Beckman and Stein than I hadn’t before, and I wish I would’ve noticed them beforehand to make my paper stronger. So, this digital essay does help when it comes to trying to understand just exactly what you were writing in your paper. Overall, I felt that Stein was just trying to say, “Hey! Do you! Write whatever you want, there are no set rules for poetry..but it’s all about how you treat your nouns.” ..and in doing so, poetry becomes colorful and full of life because it connects with readers. Imagine reading a poem that rhymes every line and doesn’t even get you thinking? Even if you don’t like Stein’s poems..she gets you thinking ~geez, why does she use repetition? What is she talking about?~ while I’m in a corner going ~This woman is brilliant, I need more~
Stein isn’t into rules, and I found out she hates commas actually, haha. I hope this all translates well into my video and I hope you guys enjoy it, because I enjoyed the process of making it…and I think it’s kind of funny 🙂
Well! Enough of that, here it is!!
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Hey thanks for the comment on my video! Yours is awesome too I love how colorful it is. Who sings the song in your video it kicks ass, and you did a great job of not making old gertrude look like such an old bag!