Intro Blog Entry

Hello everyone,

My name is Gary Gilmond and I am sophomore here at SLU. As of right now I do not have a particular major chosen, but I am following the pre-medicine track and I am currently leaning towards becoming a Neuroscience major. I love the science classes I study for several reasons, the largest being that I am fascinated at learning the specifics of how our world works, especially the human body and mind. However, the true reason I want to become doctor is to help and work with people, which I consider my strongest passion. I am originally from the tiny town of Georgia, Vermont. It is a beautiful small town that’s very secluded and peaceful, and is a great place to just get away. My hobbies besides occasional writing would definitely be playing games, reading, listening to music, and taking long walks or drives.
When it comes to writer’s feedback I have had a lot of good and bad experiences on my work. One memory I can recall in particular was when was doing peer review exercise with a fellow student in a high school biology class, and when I told her that she could make her hypothesis a little more clear in her first paragraph, she simply stared at me then said “well your paper needs the same thing!” and scribbled all over my own paper after telling me just moments ago it sounded fine. Nevertheless, I have had my share of good feedback as well from peers, and I owe a lot of better grades to their help and support.
No doubt my favorite poet and largest influence on my poetry is Edgar Allen Poe. When it comes to poetry I must admit that I am a hopeless romantic. Well, maybe not entirely, but I do have tremendous respect for the poets of the Romantic era. What I admire most about Poe’s work is his incredible symbolism and use of diction to create such powerful and deep stories. If I had to pick a close second favorite poet it would be Robert Frost. Partly out of state pride knowing he got much his inspiration from visiting, and living in Vermont, but also for his amazing diction and imagery in his work.
What’s good about good poetry is that it makes you think, feel, see, taste, and sometimes even smell what someone else experiences. Good poetry allows you to step into someone else’s thoughts and dreams and wonder what makes them different from your own. But most importantly, good poetry leaves you with more questions than answers, and pulls you in for another read.
What I truly want to learn in this class is how to more effectively and efficiently grasp my audience in my poetry. I want to learn the different techniques of how to express my speaker’s thoughts, emotions, and experiences to my audience without losing them in a sea of abstract words (or random metaphors ).

Finally I look forward to working with all of you in the future; I hope together we can expand each other’s skills in writing poetry. I’ll see you all on Tuesday.

-Gary