Poetry Blog

When I hear the word poetry the first thing that pops into my head is rhyming. I think this idea comes from multiple experiences with poetry and things I perceive to be poetry. For example, Shakespeare sonnets are one of the main things I think of when I think about poetry. The abab rhyme scheme is now the main thing I think of when I think about poetry. This rhyme scheme is the popular idea of poetry. When you ask most people to make a poem they will probably try to rhyme some words that usually make no sense. Another popular idea of poetry is haikus. These are also very popular mostly because everyone had to write a haiku sometime in their education. I think this leads to the next question about what us the state of poetry in contemporary culture. I think poetry is going is evolving at the moment in to more current day ideas. The main example of this is slam poetry. Walt Whitman would probably not walk on stage and dish out a mean slam, but today these events are becoming more an more frequent.  In this day and age I will most likely be able to find poetry on the internet. The internet has done wonders for poetry because it is now so readily accessible to the public.  Sights like poetry 180 introduce multiple kinds of poems and this would not be possible without the internet. In conclusion I think that poetry is still in mainstream culture, but just not in the way it was 100 years ago.

Why Voltaire's Writing Style Works for Candide

In the novel Candide the reader is introduced to a writing style that hops back and forth between settings constantly and seems to have no straight path. In one chapter the reader could be in Germany while the next one you are in the New World. While this style would prbabably be bashed by critics to day it was loved at the time. The reason this writing style works for Voltaire is the hopping around is part of his satire on optimism. With all these seemingly random things happening It is easy to see while Voltaire thought that the current thought about optimism was wrong. He is showing through all these terrible things that happen to people that they should not see it as the best state of the world but that they are legitemently having bad luck. If Voltaire just used  a linear constant narrative this story would not work because it would be to close to an actual lifestyle, but with Voltaire randomly hopping around he shows that even with the crazy events happening to Candide he still for some reason beleives in Pangloss' theory.

The Point of Resurrecting Dead Characters

Through the first 15 chapters of the book the reader has experienced Voltaire bring back multiple characters from the dead even when at the time of their death it seemed like there was no possible way the character survived. I think Voltaire does this to add another level of his satire in the novel. Since the novel Candide is making fun of optimism it would be hard for people to die and still be optimistic. Every time someone close to Candide dies he starts to question Pangloss' theory of optimism but when the characters come back to life Candide recognizes how this is always the best possible world. For example, once Candid learns of Cunegonde's death he is distraught and wonder show such a bad thing could happen in such a wonderful world. But after he finds Cunegonde in Portugal he realizes the error in his ways and that Pangloss will always be right. Another thing that Voltaire done that was interesting was keeping certain characters dead. The major example of this so far in the novel is killing the Anabaptist. The reason Voltaire did this is because he is killing all the actual kind people for good. In doing this Voltaire is again making fun of everyones theory on optimism.