Journal Four: Ian

Part One: Hugo i think has an interesting style of describing his surroundings and how life was happening right in front of him. Chapter 8 of hugos book deals mostly with his trip to Italy during WWII. He recounts on page 77 his encounter in a tiny hotel bar, seeing only English soldiers in this tiny part of Italy. "One day in Foggia, I found a little hotel bar. The only other people there were the bartender and three English soldiers". He seems to explain the small details that an average reader of literature such as myself would not notice or even forget. He takes those tiny little details and creates a great sense of feeling and really seeing the location through literature. There were bigger things going on in the world at that time, but he was only focused on what was right in front of him.

Chaper 9, titled "How poets make a living", i thought was going to be rather interesting because i still don't know how a poet could make his or herself a comfortable living, hell authors make barely any money, so how can someone make any kind of money from writing 20-30 lines of mostly rhyming words? These were some of the questions that i thought of when reading this chapter. Hugo seemed to sum up his career on the last page of the book. "I suppose I haven't done anything but demonstrated how I came to write a poem, some what turns me on, or used to, and how, at least for me, what does turn me on lies in a region of myself that could not be changed by the nature of my employment" (109). I think the point he is trying to make is that he does not look at his occupation as being a poet, it is more of a lifestyle and way of expressing ones feelings and inner thoughts, I don't think he even cared if he got paid for his work or not. Because to make money a book of poems has to be published, your private work, out for the world to see. Some people seem to like the private side of writing poems, you do them for yourself, not necessarily for others. I think he means that one has to really have a passion for the craft, in order for it to take them anywhere in life.

Part Two: Making poetry is something that I think is much more satisfying than say writing a paper for an english class, because it gives you all the freedoms that you would ever really desire in writing. Essays always have to go by a prompt, and usually you end up changing and altering the paper in order to fill those requirements on the rubric, sometimes completely ruining the point you are trying to make because you don't know how to explain it. I have struggled for a number of years trying to wrap my head around this concept and i realize that nothing is really ever going to change because that is as important a skill as any you can take away from primary and post-secondary education. Writing poetry, you still have to abide by the boundaries set by the type of poem that you are trying to create, but that is pretty much it, and thats what i like. You can write about what you want, and you can write it the way you want to write it. And learning to balance those two skills can be something that will really help me in whatever career path i choose, the ability to write effectively to garner a response from the reader. If you can do that, the world is your oyster.