shakire's blog

Final Presentation

]]> here is final presentation. Its not yet complete as hopefully I will get more answers to my questions has the summer persist!

Ludacris Rap Map of US Area Codes

The feminist Stefanie Gray made some questionable remarks in her article. First off, the only correct assumption that might have been made is that Ludacris has a East Coast bias, which might be because he hails from Atlanta. Secondly, Ludacris having "hos" in the entire state of Maryland is not that big of deal considering the range he has all across the United States. Also, in the area code 808, it has been noted that not only Midway and Wake islands lie there, which are off limit to the public. So it is possible that Ludacris ventured into this area
Ludacris song, in my opinion, is more commical than it would be offending. Because Stefanie Gray calls her "mapping" of Ludacris hoe area hilarious. I think that assertion is right on point! A lot of music today can be considered offensive,not just including rap. In conclusion, the map of his his could be either seen as funny or being a put down on women. But from his song, it is an acurate showing based on what Ludacris said in his song. Even though Ms. Gray doesn't seem to much to care for the song, she doesn't put up too much of an argument for everyone to dislike it.

]]> Well the comment of Ludacris having hoes in Maryland as not that big of a deal because the size of Maryland. If, for example, Ludacris was in the state of Florida then it would not even be mentioned as a big deal. Maryland being minute in size compared to other states was the only reason it was mentioned.

As far as the comment being "not that big of a deal" I was simply stating that it seems like Stefanie Gray was trying to portray the fact that he had all of these "hoes" in one state. If it had been the state of Texas, that would have been one story. But one of the smaller New England States, Maryland, is not that impressive.

I was more thinking that Stefanie Gray notion of Ludacris going into the area code 808 is not just a military space. It is also a public area. So I think that she may have such been mis-informed.

Africa in Perspective

It is intersting that this particular blog was put up because me and my father was discussing how big the continent of Afica really is. In most of the maps you see now-a-days that has Afica being much smaller than many countries, including Russia and around the same size as China. Now me and my father's theory as to why this occurs with Africa and no other continet/ country is because of some race-related theory. The theory is that people want to protray Africa as a lesser of a country than it really is thus try to sublimely make black people think less of themselves. It has been noted in the history books that all black people come from Africa, so by showing their "mother country" as smaller than other places in the world, then they will not think as highly of themselves. But then again, its just my theory...

Psalm

While reading the text "psalms" by George Oppen, i was expecting a Bible story. When you look under psalms in the bible, you find yourself reading a song. But when I looked up the etymology for the word is derived from the Greek: Psalmoi, originally meaning "songs sung to a harp", from psallein "play on a stringed instrument." But George Oppen poem is nothing of that manner. Instead the main focus of the poem is about the elegance of a deer. And before the poem starts, the words Veritas sequitur or "truth as a consequence of the existence " appears. Now how does all of these clues match up? The truth is the psalms in the bible can usually be found in a poetic format. With that, the veritas sequitur has to do with the beauty and gracefulness of the deer was shown in the poem. So that is my small take on the poem

Terrance Hayes "New Folk"

In this piece, it the author suggest that you cannot try to understand the meaning of the poem. Even Terrance Hayes says that he doesn't even understand the meaning of some of his poems until he looks back over them a couple of times. So if the author of a poem doesn't try to understand the meaning of his/her own poem, then why should we? I have taken a class at the University of Michigan were the main objective of the class was to discuss the meaning of poetry. I think we should instead take poetry for its beauty. Poetry can have so many different meaning by different people based on your background that it would be almost folish to try to disect poetry. Terrance Hayes suggest that we should try to understand the selected poems tone instead of it's specific meaning. I think that this is the way we should try to understand another persons poetry

Topic in class for the second week

The truth of the matter is, we will probably not see a classroom strategy that goes for less test and teacher talking at us and the system staying the way it is. This is especially true at the University of Michigan because it is a traditional place, it has to uphold certain aspects of the universities. Plus this university, as much as we want to believe, is not the front-runner in creative thinking. I say this because as a whole we are known for putting young people in the world to become CEO's, neurosurgance, and stock-brokers. Not for people who are poets, muscians, and acotrs (exclude Lucy Lu). Plus the system in place works: they want to churn out people who get jobs and that's is what the University does. So why, at least in the presidents eyes, would you change up your strategy. For these two reasons I think that you should no t hold your breath for any changes.

Poem "stlye"

1.)One of my questions would be to state the obvious: Why did the author not write "La Spirale?" Did he really plan to write a novel without a subject or did the idea of writing a novel without a subject instantly attract readers?

2.)In the second stanza in the third and fourth lines, why does HOWARD NEMEROV use the religious term "spirit" alone? Is he trying to make reference to the Holy Trintity?

3.) The sytle of the poem is that he wants to talk about nothing. But the juxtaposition of the ideas in the poem is the author truly ends up talking aobut something (that... being two books). Where is he going with his style as far as the subject of the poem?

thoughts on teaching

Bubble

I believe that the poem, when I was reading it, was a struggle between bubbles and his mother. But after looking at the video, I notice a few things. One of them is "eggs being thrown at bubbles." It made me think about the civil rights era that there were times that people of color would protest in the streets of the south and they would have to deal with objects would be thrown at them. Plus the fact that bubbles mother passed away is another struggle that could depict the civil rights times. The style of the poem (you can possibly read it either vertically or horizontally), also shows the choice you can make in life: you can either go bad or good, ying or yang, right or wrong.

My first one

Just to see if I can make 1