Developing Themes and Finding Topics 10/18/17

Today in class we began by going over the themes we had posted on the classroom yesterday from the poem, "When I heard The Learn'd Astronomer."  Discussing which themes were efficient and was able to get a clear point across.  For example one theme was, "When an independent person is bored, it unlocks the door to creativity because boredom causes the mind to wander."  This theme had clarity and specific factors.

The class then moved on to creating themes and finding topics in a poem. We had three to choose from, "Song of Myself," "Song of The Open Road," and "I Hear America Singing" which my group did.  In choosing this poem pulled certain topics from it such as, singing, America, songs, jobs, etc.  We then began to develop themes from these like, Singing can help people reflect on their lives, Songs help to express emotions, etc.  To to this we annotated the poem first finding the meaning.  We then had to reflect on how the poem embodies Romanticism.  Which in this case our poem talks about American people reflecting on their lives, so a romantic would like seeing people choosing their paths and talking about their role in the world without factual statements.

This poem it self relates to the real world because of how it talks about the people in America.  It states in the poem, "I hear America singing...The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing." It is telling all the stories of the people in America through song, and that overall everyone "sings" together.

Overall this class time allowed us to further understand how to annotate poems, find topics, and develop themes. Pulling clearly stated topics explicitly stated in the text. Along with finding the heart on the text which is the theme.