Friday 26 April 2013

Poetry. The art. The meaning.

Writing a poem is different from writing a prose. Poetry is a different style of writing, that often includes more metaphors, similes, and they can sometimes rhyme. A prose is what we call a 'normal' piece of text. The format of a book is what we would call a prose. It has more of a narrative and storyline, and usually spans through a longer period of time.
Poems tend more to be wither through extended long periods of time or very sort ones. Poems are often deeper than proses and more emotional, although proses can also be very emotional. Poems use a lot of literary devices, they have quality of beauty, and flow well, and are rhythmic. Lines of poems are not always straightforward sentences, and are limited to the amount of words, so it forces you to choose your words. 

I like poetry, though I don't live for it. I prefer writing proses, but I like reading and writing poems too. It's good to sometimes get out of that 'normal' bubble. Sometimes poetry can be tedious but otherwise I quite like it. 

Today we learned about the key things you need to include in a poem. I found the terms veyr useful and they make sense. Today I learned that economy of a verse means carful use of words (it does not mean quality of a verse). 

Song lyrics are a type of poem, and usually have meaning, and a moral, like most stories. Books can also be poems. For example, the author Holly Thompson wrote a book called Orchards, which is around 200 pages and 100% poems. It took her 12 years to write. She held a workshop for students and gave us tips on how to write poems. One of her tips was- try to make the last word in a line the most powerful. She also showed us how sometimes in her book she left huge gaps in a page, or had just 1 line on a page. It was for visual effect. 

One of my favorite poets used to be Dr. Seuss. He still is, though I haven't really done much on poetry for a very long time.
Seussville



Ages ago I wrote a poem that went something along the lines of:
Kingdoms rise as kingdoms fall,
An ochre handprint on the wall,
Although the stars
may glint bright,
darkness shall forever
rule the night.
Kingdoms crumble,
Kingdoms battle.
All through night,
And all through day,
A bloody war is on its way.
The stench of death,
In the air,
Troubles even a maiden fair.
Every second,
every hour,
Is a blooming bloody flower.
Mirror Mirror on the wall,
Which will be the last to fall?

What do you think about poetry?

Monday 22 April 2013

Nature

Nature can be everything. It once thrived all over the planet, but now, with the growing human population and our new ways of thinking. Nature is everything that is green- trees, grass, seaweed, but also bodies of water, soil, and any kind of animal or plant.
Over centuries, the human population has gone from prehistoric people to the technology people we are today. What was life 6,000 years ago? I can give you an idea. People tended to live in clans, named after animals and plants- willow, hare, raven, wolf... People wore nature. They relied on the earth to survive. Every day was a battle against nature, but also when the people received their needs from nature. They wore hide- animal skin whick they took from he animals they hunted down. They had no guns- they had wooden bows and arrows with stone shafts. Their knives were made of flint. They lived in harmony with nature.

Freedom & another friend






















So what is nature now? It depends where you live. Some places, like New York, are pretty much made of stone. Some places, like different cantons in Switzerland, tend to be less skyscraper and more vineyard, alps, and mountains, valleys, pine forests, and greenery.

Nature is danger.
Nature is adventure.
Nature is freedom.
Nature is beauty.
Nature is like a second, quiet friend.
Nature is the original earth.
We are part of nature.

What do you think?


Sunday 14 April 2013

The Death of a Pharaoh - Truth or Legend?


Maybe Cleopatra Didn’t Commit Suicide

The famous story of Cleopatra’s suicide gets points for drama and crowd appeal: Her lover, Mark Antony, had been defeated in battle by Octavian and, hearing that Cleopatra had been killed, had stabbed himself in the stomach. Very much alive, after witnessing his death, the beautiful last Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt pressed a deadly asp to her breast, taking her own life as well.
But what if Cleopatra didn’t commit suicide at all?
Pat Brown, author of the new book, The Murder of Cleopatra: History’s Greatest Cold Case, argues that the “Queen of Kings” did not take her own life. Rather, she was murdered, and her perpetrators managed to spin a story that has endured for more than 2,000 years.
Brown, writing for The Scientist, says she decided to treat Cleopatra’s story as any typical crime scene.
I was shocked at the number of red flags that popped up from the pages of the historical accounts of the Egyptian queen’s final day. How was it that Cleopatra managed to smuggle a cobra into the tomb in a basket of figs? Why would the guards allow this food in and why would they be so careless in examining them? Why would Octavian, supposedly so adamant about taking Cleopatra to Rome for his triumph, be so lax about her imprisonment? Why would Cleopatra think it easier to hide a writhing snake in a basket of figs rather than slip poison inside one of the many figs? How did all three women end up dead from the venom? Wasn’t it unlikely that the snake cooper­ated in striking all three, releasing sufficient venom to kill each of them? Why was the snake no longer present at the crime scene? Was a brand-new tomb so poorly built that holes remained in the walls of the building? Why did the guards not look for the snake once they thought it had killed the women? Why were the wounds from the fangs of the snake not obvious? Why did the women not exhibit the symptoms of death by snake venom or even by poison? Why did the guards not see any of the women convulsing, vomiting, or holding their abdomens in agony? Why didn’t they see any swelling or paral­ysis of face or limbs or any foaming at the mouth?
Brown began pursuing these answers through historical texts and more recent scholarly works. She spoke with Egyptologists, poison experts, archeologists and historians of the ancient world, slowly forming her own version of what really took place August 12, 30 BC.
With each step back in time from the end of Cleopatra’s life to the beginning, I discovered more and more evidence pointing to a radically different explanation of history than the ancients and Octavian wanted us to believe.
In this story, Cleopatra never loved Antony or Julius Caesar. Antony was murdered, and Cleopatra was tortured and strangled to death.
I believed Cleopatra may have been one of the most brilliant, cold-blooded, iron-willed rulers in history and the truth about what really happened was hidden behind a veil of propaganda and lies set in motion by her murderer, Octavian, and the agenda of the Roman Empire.
This book, Brown hopes, will set the record straight.


Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/03/maybe-cleopatra-didnt-commit-suicide/#ixzz2QRQGSEoV 
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