I like Edith Wharton

       Edith Wharton's Summer was one of my favorite reads ever to be assigned in class. In fact, I've had House of Mirth on my bookshelf for quite sometime and I took it down last night to begin reading it. Also, someone asked me after noticing me reading Summer, "Don't you find those old books a little dry?" I suppose I could understand since the conflicts in the story are so unlike our own in present day and seem to be miniscule in comparison to today's larger problems but I was still taken aback. I replied that the language was not only enticing but offered and change of pace in its heavily descriptive scenes and complex dialect. Also, Edith Wharton was a highly intellectual individual and her stories reflect her ability to form complete, complex thoughts.
       Another aspect of Wharton's story that I found particularly drawing was the way she conjured the feeling of the inevitable ending that we all knew was approaching, yet she allowed hope for a happy ending at the same time. Her play with inevitability on what seems like a joyous and unique encounter, how she draws the reader in with romance and the fleeting feeling of happiness, and her, what many would call, an unhappy ending is what made the book particularly special. If it would have ended with Mr. Harney coming back to marry Charity, I'm sure I wouldn't mind it but Wharton's ability to make a good ending out of a bad situation is what draws me in. Everybody likes a happy ending but Wharton takes a chance by giving you something else: the inevitability of failure.

On Frost: Everyone's Preferred Poet

       The class discussion today was amusing because when it came down to the choice between Frost and Stevens' poems, everyone preferred to research Robert Frost. He is a widely known poet and we all like to feel comfortable with what we're researchin, I suppose. Anyway, the things that are on the internet today, making adaptations to their famous work, includes a vast amount of "creative" ideas. For example, we all did well on finding funny interpretations of Frost's famous words via youtube. My group was able to find a rather poetic video mimicking the actions displayed in Frost's words, however the example we chose did the funny internet world justice by revealing just how far people will go to make something that is already artistic, even more so.
        Also, interesting was that every group found something different in relation to the question of which of his works was most popular or most praised. Since all of his poems are remarkable put together, I can see why our sources were confused in picking a certain one that stood out. The thing that I quickly realized though is that everything depends on your search. If we are searching for "most popular Robert Frost poem" we may recieve different results that if we were to search "most praised/accomplished Robert Frost poem.