Entry 49: Cinquain Poem

Mushroom

is not a plant

decomposes and tastes great

has all sorts of wonderful traits

fungus!

Songs

pleasant, enjoyable

makes things better

can't live without it

Music!

Time

keeps moving

flies by fast

I never have enough

Time!

Entry 48: Diamante Poem

Poetry Contest

creative, sentient

write, reflect, express

language, symbols, muscles, fatigue

run, jump, compete

physical, spirited

Sports Day

Night

dark, mysterious

whisper, loom, creep

shadows, anxiety, heat, energy

 refresh, uplift, open

bright, dynamic

Day

deviantART

abundant, professional

draw, sculpt, manipulate

artworks, comics, pictures, gifs

like, reblog, share

random, hilarious

Tumblr

Entry 47: A Day in Your Life

My phone rings beside my ear. I sit up, grab the phone to see what time is it - 7:10. My head feels like a stone so I sit for some more. Then I tumble out of bed, climb down the little white stairs, and step into my blue slippers. I snatch some clothes from the wardrobe. Not to be seen by my roommates, I quickly put them on in a corner. While flattening my hair with one hand I pick up my tooth brush and paste with another. Still feeling a bit dizzy, I stride to the bathroom. There, pushing the spigot for several times to get enough water, I clean my teeth in a haste. The water makes my hand cold and stiff. I walk to get my breakfast in the cafeteria. There are already students who come early and have begun eating their food. The morning light is pale, and without the lights turned on there is the quiet chatter in the thin air. The choices of breakfast lie on one table, looking identical to the one yesterday, and the days before. I get a sandwich and a drink. I go back to my dorm room and start eating. My roommates are all there now, talking, tidying, and browsing Facebook. The whole school has become alive. Human activities roam about in the hallways, with an occasional laughter or groan.

Entry 46: Acrostic

Chinese and English
Are the languages I speak.
Taiwan is the place I live.
Really
Interested in art, listen to music that
No one else likes.
Always do things
Carefully, work
Hard and get good grades.
Even so,
Never satisfied.

Superb
In psychedelic
Music.
Often uses the
Name Hallucinogen.
Produces Goa trance and
Other projects such as
Shpongle.
Forever
Obsessed with psychedelic drugs.
Ridiculously
Delighted by balanced numbers.

Entry 45: How Do Images Convey Mood?

Bright colors give out a more energetic and happier feeling. They attract the eyes. Not as saturated colors are not as emotional and can sometimes seem depressing. Darker colors look heavier and give people more pressure, while light colors generally make people relaxed. CSI the TV series and its spin-offs have very different approaches to the audience through their colors. CSI: Vegas uses dark colors and the setting is often at night. It creates a more ominous mood and emphasizes the dark and frantic, often sickly planned crimes. CSI: Miami always has bright, warm colors to mimic the weather in Florida. CSI: NY is set in grayish colors that depict the coldness of a big city. Sounds are really effective tools for creating moods. During the Christmas Break I spent in Seattle I went to see this exhibition on horror movies. The show talked about the importance of scores, or background music, in movies. Generally harmonic, slow, and light sounds are more appealing to the ears. Sounds that are faster, heavier, and have a certain amount of noise are more disturbing. Also, familiar sounds are more soothing than strange sounds. Last week I checked out this musician called Lustmord. He produces extremely dark and terrifying ambient music. His music has a lot of weird, stretched sounds accompanied by quiet but ominous noises. I'm often amazed at how certain songs can drive me into goosebumps and tears while others have no effect at all, or cheer me up, or freak me out. Sometimes they even create clear images in my head.

Entry 44: Images, Emotion, Mood

Vertical, and perpendicular to the eye, they line up and make patterns of simple geometric shapes. In the colors of poppies, bananas, blueberries, and avocado, they scream when you look at them. They repeat the same words every time you peer, as though worried that you will forget the ideas. They remind you the ways to literary responses. They never move or change; they just stick to the wall steadily, never appear in a different position. They are individuals, but they relate to each other in a way. They shape the same, they all have words all over their bodies. Their meanings are different, but the ideas link to one another. When you look through them in order, it sounds like shots of ideas being thrown out; poom, poom, poom. Their think bodies made out of paper bend when taken down from the wall. Then, you can hear the wind travel while the paper is being very naughty and irregular. We make these things once in a while in every class. They present ideas in a clear, straightforward way, along with visual aids. Since we write or draw them with markers usually, when you smell them you can smell the markers. And of course, there is this paper smell that is neither bad nor good.

Entry 43: Elements of Poetry

The elements of poetry are meter, rhythm, stanza, imagery, style, and diction. Other writings don't usually have meter, rhythm, and stanza, but they might have imagery and diction. On the other hand, poetry can have plot, setting, conflict and resolution as well. Meter is the stressed and unstressed syllables in words. Rhythm is the sound created by stressed and unstressed syllables. Stanza is a unit that groups the words in a poem. Imagery is to create a image or feeling through words. Style is the form the poem is based on, such as sonnet, free verse, etc. And diction is the choice of words or phrases in the poem. Other forms of fiction don't have rules on the meter and rhythm like in poems. A line in fiction would just be, "I walked to the store to buy chocolates." It is more like daily speech. A line in poetry usually have a more obvious rhythm. Stanza is also only used in poetry. Other forms of writing use lines and paragraphs as units. Imagery however can be used in both kinds of literature. Poetry can create a clear image in the mind as well as a description in a story. The form that the poetry fits into is often a set of rules that govern the shape of the poem. A fiction don't usually have that. As for diction, it basically means word choice so both poetry and fiction are composed of diction.

Entry 42: Poetry

Poems follow very different patterns compared to other forms of writing. Some poems, usually ancient ones, have to be restricted to a certain rule or structure. Modern poems are the complete opposite - they don't have to follow any rule at all. However, generally speaking, poems are more focused on the emotional effects they have on people. Each line of a poem is a stanza, and this composition only exists in poetry. Other forms of writing may have single lines, but most of the words are sorted by paragraphs. Poems are meant to be spoken aloud, heard, and felt. Most of the subjects in poems are not stated directly. Instead, the writer tries to use an imaginative way to describe the things from different aspects. Poems and other forms of writing are similar because they are all written to express an idea. Sometimes poems can do the same things as other forms of expression, but sometimes they can't. For example, poems and stories can both send an important message, or express a theme indirectly. Poems and songs are fundamentally alike because lyrics are a kind of poetry. But if a song doesn't have lyrics, it's just melody itself. Words and melodies seem to hit our senses and emotions differently. It might be that our brains use different parts to receive different things. And with that being said, poems can't do all the effects that a song does, and vice versa. Poems tend to trigger more imaginations since they are just black letters on paper. All the objects and abstractions described in a poem have to be visualized in the mind.

Entry 41: Analyzing Visuals

The colors really stand out first because they are complementary colors: blue and orange. The warm colors especially attract the viewer's eyes more than cold colors. The blue in this painting acts as the background. Then, I recognize that the orange is shaped like a Chinese dragon while the blue background is the waves. After that, I look into more detail and notice the outline that contour the dragon's various features such as scales, and of course the fierce waves behind it. The surface is smooth but hard. The artist wants to create a very smooth, detailed, graceful dragon that is also very fierce and strong looking. The artist uses rather bright colors. The bright orange of the dragon indicates that the dragon is full of power and energy. The dark blue waves suggest a mysterious and dangerous surrounding. The repeating patterns are the body of the dragon, the scales, its legs, and the waves. Repeating patterns and shapes in a picture create a sense of unity, balance, and rhythm. The predominant element is the contrasting colors. Contrast of the colors emphasize the subject of the picture and separate the foreground and background. The strongly visible lines make the objects very condensed. The texture is thick and tight. The repeating patterns in the background, which are the waves, create an illusion of movement and endlessness.

Entry 40: Poetry and Imagination

The poem is literally about the narrator putting poems inside his mouth and swallowing them, but figuratively it's describing the narrator reads poetry with ardor and ecstasy. We know the narrator can't really "eat" poetry because they are words on paper, and we don't eat paper (at least not normally). And of course there's not enough ink to be dripping down the corners of the mouth. The word "eating" is rather strong - it's essential to us - we all know the feeling of saliva forming, the texture and taste of food entering the mouth, the teeth press together and food getting ground into a mess, and finally pushing all that mixture to the back of the throat and down. Eating is essential and vital to all of us. It is also one of the biggest sources of happiness. When the narrator reads poetry, he takes up the beauty, thoughts and wisdom of the poem like consuming the nutrition of food.
I can say that...playing my guitar is like climbing a mountain. Moving on the rapid, rocky slope, my fingers begin to hurt a little. I climb higher and higher until the thinnest string. There, I reach the highest note and sit down, feeling satisfied that this climb lasts shorter than the last. I stride to different spots. The sounds that the mountain emanates pours into me, sweet and fresh, as I drink endlessly of that clean spring water.