Introduction Blog

My main academic interests are Asian Studies and Anthropology, as well as Environmental Science. I like Asian studies, China in particular, because of the long and exciting history as well as the different philosophies, religions, and cultures that reside there. Chinese history, philosophy, and literature are my primary interests. I’m from Southborough Massachusetts- about 45 minutes from Boston- which, is primarily a rural suburb. Although I live in Southborough, I attended Brookline High School, a significantly different environment than Southborough. Brookline is right near Boston and is therefore more urban and diverse. Brookline has a very diverse population, which includes international students as well as inner city students. My main hobbies are reading and Native American crafts, moccasins in particular. From what I can remember in High School, the feedback I received was pretty good, but the creative writing class I took wasn’t too demanding with poetry. I don’t feel I really gained a true grasp on the workings of poetry and expressing the ideas I had in mind. One of my favorite poets is Li Po, a Chinese poet from around 700 C.E. who has uses great imagery and expresses grand as well as more personal themes. I would like to be able to do similar things in my poetry, to be able to be creative with imagery yet to also make a discernible point. There are poems from the Han Dynasty in China that are very good as well, however, all of them are anonymous so I can’t pinpoint any poets in particular. Most of these poems are very simple, but yet in being simple they also really grasp the essence of what they’re discussing, my favorite being love poems. Matsuo Basho, a very famous Japanese writer of haikus, is also very skilled at getting to the core of a feeling or an idea in just the few lines a haiku offers. He does an excellent job at illustrating the feeling of a landscape. He selects the most important and accurate words without being clouded with unnecessary words or adjectives. I would also like to be able to get to the “essence” and feeling of situations and landscapes in my poetry. Good poetry has great imagery and adjectives that accurately express the desired impression or theme. In this class I would like to learn how to effectively express feelings and themes through creative language and poem structure. I would like to be able to learn different styles of poetry as well as their benefits and main difficulties in accurately expressing ideas and feelings. I would like to avoid cliché and overused imagery while also being able to express my ideas truthfully.