First Blog Entry:

I am from a small farming town outside of Middlebury, VT. When I say small, I mean we have a dairy, church, elementary school, and gravy yard. Every other acre is covered in farm land. I grew up on my grandparents’ farm, my family living in the house on the hill. I grew up scaling cliffs and catching salamanders. Driving into Midd-town was a special treat that happened maybe once a week. For those of you who have never been to Midd, it is slightly larger than Canton. Maybe a better comparison is Potsdam.

My main focus of study here at SLU is in the ARTS. Although I am a Fine Arts major, I have taken classes that allow other forms of creative expression. I am very interested in learning about all types of creative outlets, such as different forms of writing, acting, or even religion. I believe that taking all of these other courses and seeing how other people are using their work to represent themselves, and learning what others are passionate about allows me to better represent myself in my studio work.

I find that while I am at school I have little time to do much else, although when I am at home I am able to pursue my hobbies. I live to hike. I have climbed to the top of almost every peak in VT. In High School I played soccer and lacrosse and snowboarded almost every weekend in the winter.

Having taken so many art courses, feedback is just part of the drill. At first it was hard hearing people talk about things that they didn’t like in my pieces, but the constructive criticism is def something I have gotten used to over time. I almost feel feedback in English courses is more of a necessity in order to better a piece because as the author you tend to get stuck and forget that there are other ways your story can be told.

As sad as this is, I don’t really read that much poetry. I’ve had to read various poets over the years, but no one has stuck out to me as influential or super amazing, or disgustingly bad. When I was in 6th grade I read the book Out of the Dust and was amazed that someone wrote an entire story in the form of poems. This isn’t to say, however, that I want to write poems that can be connected chronologically into a story. I want to write poems that make the reader think about what they just read; ones that could hold separate meanings to different people depending on their personal lexicons. I think poetry needs to be something that people can relate to, or can’t relate to for that matter. It needs to be thought provoking and I want to learn the tools to do this. I want someone to read my poem and see one meaning, but then have to read it again to find another. I want my poems to be like a Monet painting: a 2 in 1.

P.S. Mana = Dana. I had my identitu stolen once so I don't give my names to internet providers and neither should you!