I am very excited about kicking off the semester in Creative Writing with the spoken word poetry unit.  I was extremely inspired by the videos of Sarah Kay and coverage of the Louder Than A Bomb competition that takes place in Chicago, Illinois.  Spoken word poetry is very similar to my favorite music genre, hip hop/rap.  I think it will allow me to compose a piece that is quite unlike anything i have written thus far.  I am looking forward to watching more videos of various individuals performing spoken word poetry, as it will no doubt open me up to a plethora of new ideas.

While I do plan to relax a little bit in terms of hard studying, I do plan to keep up my level of work in which I exemplified during the first semester.  Over the break, I read a book that really caught my interest titled “Foul Trouble.”  This book, written by John Feinstein, is about two friends who are exceptional high school basketball players.  One named Danny is ranked 93^rd in the nation, while the other is the top recruit in the nation.  The book shows all the dangers that lurk for highly sought after high school athletes, as it is quite tempting to take the offers of insane amounts of money that would violate the rules of the NCAA.  I thoroughly ejoyed this book and look forward to reading more and more as the semester progresses.  I am also excited about the new independence I will receive when it comes to essays.  I think this will allow me to write about the topics I think can best display my knowledge.  I am also looking forward to reading the book “Hoop Dreams,” as I have heard good things about it.

I am excited about the start of second semester in Creative Writing, specifically about our unit in spoken word.  I thought that the videos shown in class of the spoken word poetry performance by Sarah Kay and the Louder Than A Bomb competition were quite inspiring.  I am excited to delve into this unit due to the fact that spoken word is quite similar to rap, my favorite music genre.  Without a doubt, rap has always been one of my greatest influences when writing poetry, so learning more about a form of poetry analogous to rap is quite thrilling!