In Class writing - reflection of Carpe Diem

In-class writing -- reflect on your project and your peers' (on blog). What was interesting? Also, how did performing the poem allow you to experience it differently than from reading it? For B period, do this at home since you have the college fair Wed.

400-600 words

My group decided to change the poem almost entirely, which was something unique that not many other groups really did. However, our group stayed relatively static through the whole performance which was uneventful and displeasing to the eye. In my peer groups, I saw some really entertaining, an example is Nans groups turning the poem into a song. Most groups focused more on the movement that changing and interpreting the poem in different ways. Many groups in the other period did lots of dance and movement. In my class period, the Yuns group had a lot of walking on the bridge but also stopping throughout to give their portion of the poem, while in contrast, Jacobs group was in almost a constant motion. Both of these captures you at the beginning but the movements that they had seemed very repetitive and I got bored and sometimes couldn't hear what they were saying or was too distracted by the movements they were doing. Jasmins group focused a lot on matching the words to the actions that she was doing. This was good because it wasn't too distracting and it blends well with the reading rather than the ones that just had movement in it. Joey’s group also had the readers stationary with a good use of levels because they were on the bridge while the rest of the group who spoke a little bit and acted the piece out were lower, that gave good contrast.

All these performances gave a different element of the movement and rendition, this changes how you experience the poem because you see different things and find different meaning based off of their movements and tones. Yins group was soberer and was balanced by different motions that were more rugged. But, Jasmin's group had movements that were more fluid so that you got a different, softer feel of the poem and it was almost more sincere because the movements were so subtle at times but flowing more. I also got a different feel in JOey’s group because Josh came on the scene in the middle of the poem so you got more of an interaction between two people rather than one person speaking to someone else.

In my group, we had not managed our time well, which caused us to only have a draft and unpolished version of what we were going to do. I will say that I tried to get some motion into the scene but nobody was willing to do it and that was where most of our time went, bickering about trying to get movement. In the end, we had to do some movement but not nearly as much as I would have liked.

Overall, this exercise gave me a bunch of new ways to look at this poem and different idea that people had for them. This helped me when deciding how to really perform a poem.