Ashley+Hinton

Iron Engish March 6, 2009
 * //Poertry Portfolio

"Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in word." - Northrup Frye//**

I enjoy writing. On this page you'll see that my poetry makes a statement about who i am and the things that matter most to me. The poems are formatted simply. I noticed that my writing is very orderly but sometimes hard to comprehend. Before this assignment i thought i was a horrible poet and i didn't believe i was capable of writing a distinctive poem. Many of the poems I've read make no sense at all to me. Before this assignment i would only look at poetry that was written simply because i felt as though the others had no significance. if you cant understand it you cant anything from it right? Well i was wrong about poetry, after being in the place of a writer i know how it feels to try to throw your ideas at someone in the form of a poem and get them to understand and entertain at the same time. It's much more complicated than what i imagined. Now i am proud of what i have become capable of doing. I can now understand poetry and the concepts of writing. I still don't believe I'm a great poet but i've grown as a writer and that is what is most important to me.

By Ashley Hinton <3**
 * I’m Living. (riffed from “Life Is A Gift” by Mother Theresa)

Loving life unconditionally Going far from home Without apprehension Draw close to it’s bliss Dream BIG.

Loving life unconditionally Life is a song…. //sing it.// Write with your own harmony Urge the nut in you. Dream BIG.

Loving life unconditionally Life is adventures…//dare it.// Challenge yourself. Confront your fears with love. Dream BIG.

Loving life unconditionally. Life is sorrow…//overcome it.// Cry when you have too. Rise above disbelief within oneself. Dream BIG.

Loving life unconditionally Life is luck…//make it.// Take the chance. Don’t fret. Dream BIG.

For ONCE, Take the journey, Secure your thoughts through life and Dream BIG.

- Ashley Hinton<3


 * "Ode to Laughter**" by Ashley Hinton

My best friend; Oh the fun we have Those phenomenal flashes of hilarity. We overlook the unpleasant rays of darkness For that one moment.

My companion; Oh how you make me feel The sparks between us Contagious; it sprinkles its infectiousness For that one moment

My cohort; Mindlessly united. Perfect is being what it is. And when you laugh at yourself you can be free. Wholly sacred; it renders life’s possibilities

My love; the most civilized music of this world God’s Medicine, gifted to us. And when we laugh ; I revitalize For that one moment.


 * //__"Praise Poem__//**" by Ashley Hinton

A regular practice in the auditorium. Proceeding out among the crowd. A sense of nervousness mingles. A snared look from the //Ms.// arises. My pride begins to crumble.

As we dance. As I smile. As I hide.

So the music begins. Sort of ill at ease. Those six minutes; This awkward moment proceeds Though it feels like a time without end

As we dance. As I smile. As I hide.

Media Magnetic; though we are unknown. I play the lead dancer but hide from the thrown. We listen as the music plays; it skips a few times. The look from the //Ms//. the dancers collide Standing still I watch…

As we dance. As I smile. As I hide.

__**//"What is love?"//**__ Sonnet Poem by Ashley Hinton

Put your gestures aside Look to what you see in her eyes Love for you she can’t disguise The tears she cried and cried Assume today; that love is here Does the way you love really matter Has the view become seemingly clear You want to breath a little now, not after Oh the things you’ll come to achieve Love can sometimes feel hard to bear Something like the rough touch of the winter trees Live your lives without care There’s no greater love than this Experience the possibilities we all dismiss

__//**Gwendolyn Brooks**//__

Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka Kansas in 1917 and raised in Chicago. She was a highly honored poet. She was the first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature. Many of her works demonstrate political consciousness of the 1960s and her later reflecting poems upon civil rights activism. Her combination of racial identity and equality has always been easily identified through her work.

Many of her earlier works were devoted to carefully celebrated portraits of the “black urban poor”. Brooks deals further with social issues especially the role of women. She used poetry to criticize those who did not show respect for the poor Often times her poetic tone illustrated the anger she felt. She wrote hundreds of poems during her lifetime and had more than twenty books published. She was known around the world for using poetry to increase understanding about black culture in America. She was an expert at the language of poets. She often combined “the African American experience” with traditional European poetry styles. She was praised for her use of language and the way people identified with her writing.

//“The Mother”// was one of the author’s many poems that I found interesting. I would assume the theme of this poem is abortion. Today we are faced with so many different views on abortion. I like how the Gwendolyn chose to write in a mother’s point of view, a view that were hardly ever exposed to. She gives us an inside look on how a mother feels about her unborn children. I believe there's a story behind this piece. There’s nothing special about the way it’s written but this poem does seem to have the components of a nontraditional poem. It shows her personal writing style.

//“We Real Cool"// stood out to me because of the way it was written and how short it was. It struck me, I began thinking what ideas could someone possibly relay in only 3 stanzas with two lines per stanza and so very few words. It took a while to get the gist of the words and further more understand her purpose for writing the poem. I came to the conclusion that maybe it was simpler than I was trying to make it out to be. I figured that maybe she’s simply trying to say that we all do foolish things.

//“The Sonnet Ballad”// is about war and the effects it has on people, I think she writes this poem in the perspective of a woman who’s husband is leaving home to go fight a war. I like the repetitive speech in this poem. It is a very uniquely written piece.


 * Poetry from:** **//__Gwendolyn Brooks__//**

code Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get, The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair, The singers and workers that never handled the air. You will never neglect or beat Them, or silence or buy with a sweet. You will never wind up the sucking-thumb Or scuttle off ghosts that come. You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh, Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
 * **The Mother** ||||  ||
 * by [|Gwendolyn Brooks] ||

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children. I have contracted. I have eased My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck. I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized Your luck And your lives from your unfinished reach, If I stole your births and your names, Your straight baby tears and your games, Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths, If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths, Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate. Though why should I whine, Whine that the crime was other than mine?-- Since anyhow you are dead. Or rather, or instead, You were never made. But that too, I am afraid, Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said? You were born, you had body, you died. It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all. Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you All.

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 * We Real Cool**

THE POOL PLAYERS. SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We Left school. We

Lurk late. We Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We Die soon.

code code Oh mother, mother, where is happiness? They took my lover's tallness off to war, Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess What I can use an empty heart-cup for. He won't be coming back here any more. Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew When he went walking grandly out that door That my sweet love would have to be untrue. Would have to be untrue. Would have to court Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort) Can make a hard man hesitate--and change. And he will be the one to stammer, "Yes." Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
 * the sonnet-ballad ||||  ||
 * by [|Gwendolyn Brooks] ||

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