HAIK-WHO?

I have decided to test your skills at the art of Haiku.  Haiku is a poetic form with Japanese origins.  Its structure lends itself to a deep meaning in a compact form. The content is usually conveyed in simple grammar and follows a syllabic pattern. The first line contains five (5) syllables, the second line seven (7) syllables, and the third line five (5) syllables. A Haiku doesn't rhyme. Instead, it must "paint" a mental image in the reader's mind. This is the challenge of Haiku writing - to put the poem's meaning and imagery in the reader's mind in only 17 syllables over just three (3) lines of poetry.

Your task for this blog entry is to create your own Haiku in response to the following prompt:
Guilty Pleasures.

Here are some examples below from Escriptus members - see if you can guess the guilty pleasure in each:

A little white lie,
My footprints at the doorstep,
Escape from the cage.


I inhale, hollow,
The thick blackened worries that
My lips push away


Apt imperfections Dermatillomania
Perceived flaws unmasked.

 "Short is the joy that guilty pleasure brings." - Euripides

Who am I?

I know your names.  I can recognize your faces.  I have a sense of your personalities as they are shown in the context of the classroom, but do I really know who you are?  How much do we know about each other? 

I'd like you to express yourself and your identity through the "I AM" poem prompt.  You may follow it line by line or put your own creative spin on it.  Fill in the blanks to create your own poem that best reflects who you are beneath the 10th grader sitting in that row, in that desk, during that period of Ms. DePalo's English class.

To complete the poem, start off each line with the following prompts and then fill in the blanks with your own words:

I am    _____________

I wonder _____________

I hear   _____________

I see     _____________

I want _____________

I am    _____________

           

I pretend _____________

I feel   _____________

I need _____________

I worry _____________

I cry _____________

I am _____________

           

I understand   _____________

I believe _____________

I dream _____________

I try   _____________

I hope _____________

I am   _____________

*You do not have to comment on another classmate's poem, but some feedback is always nice to receive.

 

"Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in." - Amy Lowell

Out of the Wild

Christopher McCandless' story is not unique.  People throughout time have challenged authority, rebelled against aspects of society and endeavored to find freedom from what can be viewed as oppressive, confining and demoralizing aspects of how we live our daily lives.  Your responses and reactions to the information about McCandless's life have ranged from confusion to understanding and from criticism to acceptance.

Respond to one or more of the following thoughts your classmates have expressed after reading the final chapters of the book.  Do you agree or disagree with the statements or opinions?  Can you expand or add anything to them?  Can you make a connection to texts, discussions or lessons reviewed in class or in your own lives?

• "Chris McCandless was just another teen trying to prove a point." - Danny Gardner
• "It is the job of the adolescent to make mistakes and overindulge in his/her freedoms." - Olivia Taylor
• "Critics cannot criticize because they will never understand Chris's struggles, his point of view and what was going on inside his head." - Bianca Sanabria
• "Without companionship, happiness, fortune and power are meaningless.  They don't have any worth if you cannot share them with anyone." - Cesar Presa
• "Chris was smart, brave, and good-natured, but in the end, perhaps he was nothing more than a crazy fool." - Sai Mandalapu
• "I pitied Chris McCandless while reading the last few chapters of the book." - Nick Couper
• "This book only taught me one life lesson: Life should not be a game; life should be whatever makes one happy." - Efe Osemeha
• "If I met Chris, I would yell at him for not being prepared enough but then also at the same time congratulate him for opening up many people's eyes about nature and the power of being alone." - Joe Pedo
• "I have come to appreciate his course of action as well as the extremity of his optimism, for even as he knew he was dying he bid the world farewell with a smile." - Emma Rodriguez

Thank you all for your insights as you read this book.  It was truly a pleasure reading your reactions and watching them develop, change, or strengthen as you experienced Chris's journey the way Krakauer tried to envision it. Whether you appreciate Chris's intentions and beliefs, find them incomprehensible or refute them, his journey made you think and that is the most important aspect of life.  Life without thought is meaningless.

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."  -- Oscar Wilde