Christian Burke

[chrisburke3537]

Reading post 2

In this passage what really stood out to me was the descriptive words that Ralph Ellison was using to describehow the narrator is feeling and he’s able to do it in such a way where he doesn’t directly say that the narrator feels left out and not seen by his peers and how they are better then him in a sense. Also towards the end of this page the narrator talks about how there is benevolence, and wealth in a cardboard mask, but when in reality these better people are faking these wonderful things.

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Reading post 1: this is one of my first annotations that I had in my book and this stood out to me because leading up to this point the book was sort of confusing in a sense due to the fact that the main character was seen as a very smart person in his town for a black man, and was supposed to give a speech, but at the same time he was thrown in a ring to fight against white men while being blindfolded. I felt like Ralph Ellison was trying to get at something deeper along the lines of like what life was like in his time period and where no matter how smart a black man was he was still always going to be in a fight while at a disadvantage.

[chrisburke3537]

The book I chose to read is invisible man by Ralph Ellison. At first I was having a hard time finding a book that I wanted to read because I wanted something that was going to offer me something more than just plain old reading and after reading the summary of the book and realizing that this book could often resemble by future journey to college and offer some insight into how to handle different problems in the future. So that was pretty much the thought process I went through when choosing my book.

[chrisburke3537]

The poem dismantled stood out to me because of the first line where Nathan Wade Carter states “to be vulnerable is to be taken apart”. This stood out to me because I’m at a very vulnerable point in my life right now so it stood out while I was reading it. Another reason why this poem stood out is because of the weird writing style that Nathan did in the last stanza it was interesting how he assigned different things to certain letters but he was still relating back to his original thoughts based around vulnerability.

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The poet that I looked at that wasn’t my own was Danez Smith the reason being was because he was a lot of his poems relate to a lot of the things that I have been experiencing lately in life with today’s society so it was interesting for me to see a different viewpoint than my mentor poets the poem that I looked at from Danez was “Didferences” this poem stood out to me was because of the way it was written and how it had dialogue within the poem so that attracted it to me, but it also had a hidden truth that it was trying to get at or another topic that it was reaching at and I think that was something revolving around race relations in today’s society.

[chrisburke3537]

Otter Pocket-Nathan Wade Carter

This poem by Nathan Wade Carter was really interesting to me because I felt like it just represented how my year went and it also made references to today’s society and that is something that Nathan Wade Carter does a ton of because he feels that our society has so many flaws. Another thing that drew me to this poem was his writing techniques like how he uses metaphors to compare to the underlying truths that are prevalent within our society

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Poetry Blog Post 2 “Unexplored Unexplored” by Nathan Wade Carter

The unexplored is always something that people are willing to spend the most time with, this is due to the fact that people are scared of that they don’t know and to be honest it’s just a human trait that we can’t really seem to break. But here in this poem I feel that Nathan Wade Carter is trying to change that stereotype and say that people should just let the unexplored stay unexplored. In the poem Nathan says “I vote to leave the unexplored unexplored. Let us not cultivate the world to death”. This quote stood out to me because it is essiantially some of the best advice that we could get as a society today. Due to the fact that most of the world’s hatred and fear is based upon certain things that people explored so I thought this was a great way that he showed that in this poem.

A song that I felt went well with this poem is control by Aaron Taos. In the song he talks about how things aren’t the same when you’re not in control of things and how his life is a complete mess if he doesn’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but to look deeper this song definitely relates to this poem because people want to be able to control what they are doing and what the outcomes of certain thinks might be so they explore the unexplored even though some things shouldn’t be explored.

To wrap things up some stuff that I thought this poem did well was not being to direct about the topic it was getting at or the deeper meaning of the poem, but I did feel that it was a little short and that the ending could’ve been better explained or some how gone back to the title in some way. I think in this poem Nathan’s persona is a lot more hidden and you can’t really notice it as much because the topic doesn’t really call on him to be more vocal and show himself as much as the last poem I did of his which was “Pit”. I also wanted to talk a little bit about a shift that I noticed towards the end of the first stanza I noticed a shift he went from describing things and possibly saying stuff that was related to the unexplored to just describing the way things felt and personifing these items. This was noatable for me because it brought up many questions for me to think about while I was reading and it gave me a way to think deeper about the poem. (302)

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“Pit” By Nathan Wade Carter

A quote from my poem, “turns out there still uncomfortable with queers and people of color”, I chose this quote because it is a very accurate description of today’s society pertaining to white straight males. As I continued to read the poem I found this quote, “equality feels like oppression to you because you’ve never felt the heavy cold hole it bores into you”. This line really stuck with me because I felt like it represents how I have to deal with equality and oppression as a young black male and also how I’ll have to deal with it in the future.

Why I feel that this song connects to the poem “Pit” is because the course of this song is I see both sides like Chanel (channel is a designer company that has two C’s back to back). This to me shows how as of 2019 I have to be able to see both sides of oppression and equality and that I have to be aware of the situations that I’m in.

Overall throughout the poem Nathan Wade Carter uses a lot of his persona as a gay white male to push his point across of how society has yet to come around to accept people like him and other people who are also looked down on upon society. The title also represents a huge part of the poem because throughout the poem Nathan Wade Carter makes hints at how society has dug it’s self into a pit when it comes to equality and oppression. Finally there were certain parts when the poem took shifts that I didn’t like, for example towards the middle Nathan takes a some what dark turn as to how bad of a pit America has dug it’s self in. These were just some of the many things I noticed.(245)

[chrisburke3537]

The mentor poet that I picked was Nathan Wade Carter, the reason I chose him was because he was apart of the lgbtq community and I wanted different lense to look through while reading and because I haven’t always been the biggest fan of poetry I felt that getting out of my comfort zone while reading would keep me engaged and focused which it did. Some other poets that I looked at were Colin channer and Chloe N Clark but the reason I didn’t like them as well was because I didn’t really like the way they were writing at most points while reading. But overall the poem that I have here is what really led me to choose Nathan because he went at a relevant subject without completely attacking it and that’s what stood out to me because he does that with most of his poems.

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In this last article that I found it talks more about the analytics of basketball and how much knowledge it takes to be a good analyst in the nba. I find this important because it showes how much work that it takes to understand the game of basketball.

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In this article that I found they’re speaking on how Kobe won an Oscar and I found it interesting that Kobe was able to include some wisdom in basketball and somehow get an Oscar while doing this

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This is a podcast where Lewis Howes and Kobe talk about different topics and one of the topics that comes up is how to bring up teammates in any given field of work and I felt that this was a good example of how Kobe was a natural leader and how he shares his wisdom and knowledge with his teammates and others.

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In this article that I found it talks about how Kobe had an obsession with the people he would guard and play against to me this shows his knowledge and wisdom and also love for the game of basketball

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In this video I found on twitter Dwayne wade talks to Kevin Garnett about Kobe Bryant and how they would always study each other’s game and this to me continues to show how smart Kobe and they also talk about how Kobe went to Dwayne wade for help as well.

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In this YouTube video Kobe and Tracy McGrady have a sit down concert and talk about when they used to play in the nba and they also talk about the players that are playing now.in one particular part Kobe talks about what it takes to win championships and to me that shows his knowledge and wisdom about basketball.

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As the book comes to end I feel that this passage sums up Kobe’s entire career he talks about his last game was just another game and he went out and played the same and he talks about how he knew what the outcome would be.

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In this part of the book Kobe talks about how he has matched up with different players and how he would guard them but.in this particular passage he notice a fault in an entire organization. by saying that the Oklahoma City thunder did not realize how good James harden was when they realeased him,and Kobe is right to me that shows Kobe’s knowledge of basketball because he was able to recognize that.