Final Project Proposal

I had the Idea of writing a short, illustrated book for the final project. My inspiration for this comes from Dr. Seuss. I would write a medium to long length poem, that would have a playful, happy tone to it, and one that tells an ingesting story. I would have a line or two on each page, along with illustrations. I could then put it all together into a book.

Poetry Blog

The poetry blog that I found is called  denvergabriel, run by Denver Gabriel (http://denvergabriel.wordpress.com/). One of the reasons that I chose this blog is because it is only poetry. Most of the other blogs had many comments, journals, and whatnot that aren't poetry.  But the main reason I chose this blog stood out to me not because of something in particular that it has, but what it does not have. Nearly every single other poetry blog that I found consisted of poems talking about issues the world faces or ones that they have struggled with in their life. Many poets use their blogs to preach to you about what is right or wrong, as where this blog consists of poems about normal, ordinary things and experiences. Other blogs preach to you about a racist man they encountered, and how wrong and ignorant he is. Or a woman preaches to you about how she is a victim of sexual harassment, and explains how traumatizing the life event was. One blog I read, talked about how ignorant people are who don't celebrate national human rights day. He said that white and straight people are ruining the day by not paying attention to its important, and that if you practice a religion that says "love thy neighbor" it is apart of your religion to support the holiday, and obligated to pay attention to it. I don't mean to come off as a scumbag by tearing apart these peoples poetry blogs, I could not agree more with them that racism is wrong, sexual harassment is not a joke, and national human rights day is important. But I believe that their way of supporting their cause is not the right way to do so. Telling white, straight, christian, men that they are obligated to support a holiday will drive them away from it. Talking about how racists are ignorant, will just fuel more racism, and talking about how it is wrong to make sexual harassment a joke will just make it even more funny than those who already do. Even more than that, I believe that those attitudes and topics are ruining poetry. Some people do not want to listen to people preach about what they think is wrong with the world, and would rather be more entertained by poetry about simple, everyday things like Denver Gabriel does.

Video Poem Proposal

Poem- ADD

Proposal-  With the poem about ADD, I will take a photo of one to three words at a time on a white board, and combine them together in a montage. Words or phraes that are more important will be in the video for longer. I will also have illustrations that show the difficulty of focusing for me.

Logistics-   Plan your work & work your plan!

Tech tools and skills needed: Just a camera and computer

Materials needed-  tripod, whiteboard and marker

Other people needed- N/A

Audio element(s)- Music will be played in the background, song and song type is unknown

Found visual/footage needed- None

Filming time/date/venue- It will take a while, I will need a photo for nearly every word I have, along with the time it will take to put them all together.

Video Poem of the Day: I'm Taking my Ball, and Going Home

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBJoZKe_lLw
I chose this poem because I really relate to it well. Pick up football, soccer, hockey, and baseball games were started up about every other day with the other neighborhood kids. When I first started watching this, I thought to myself, I though about how common the situation he discusses occurs; There was always the one kid for nearly every pick up game who threw a tantrum, and ruined the game. But as he goes on in the poem, he talks about how Scott, the kid throwing the tantrum, never got his way, and that was the only time he had any leverage whatsoever, the only time he had a chance to be taken seriously. Maybe that kid growing up wasn't a "cry baby"? maybe he had a really bad day? Maybe he was tired of nobody taking him seriously? Maybe we were the ones who made his day even worse, rather than him ruining ours? Maybe we should have let him have a voice.