SPAN 312

The poems in twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair were very interesting to read and in many ways different from poems I’ve read in the past. Each poem follows this overarching theme of nature and uses this to find the beauty in so many little elements of love and attraction. However, these poems were not like many love poems I've read before, in fact they did not always feel as though they were objectively idealizing love, but rather providing a more raw and honest description of all its messy elements. Much like the seasons itself these poems followed a sort of cycle of life.  The poems felt driven by Neruda's bodily experiences of lust and love as well as by his perspective of the physical world. Neruda writes as though he is infatuated by women in the same way that humans become infatuated by nature. We often look at nature in awe and wonder, and Neruda looks at women in this same way. From an outside perspective he sees the rolling hills and breaking waves of nature and

  Week 2: Cartucho   Reading Cartucho this week was an interesting experience given the actual structure of the book, especially how parts were divided into 1-2 page stories. Each “story” seemed almost like an excerpt of something bigger as they often lacked a clear introduction, rising action, climax or resolution. Each story seemed to begin abruptly and end equally as abruptly with maybe a sentence or two of a conclusion.  As I read the first few pages, I didn't feel like I was learning about the plot or characters as I read in the way I normally would when reading a book in English class for example. Normally there is an introduction, an establishment of the setting and character development, however this book did not exactly follow this structure. Yet, I believe this in many ways is what intrigued me to keep reading. The short stories, each ending with little to no resolution left me wanting to read the next. This element of story structure had me thinking about our discussions

       Reading the first couple of pages of this week’s reading where the editor introduces the manuscript of memoirs felt very intriguing. The foreword felt very raw and real, much like I was reading a history book, but one that was told from the voice of a woman, which is certainly a less popular perspective throughout history.  A quote that stood out to me in the lecture was in reference to the foreword of the piece that highlights how the editor made "what is private, public and what is singular potentially universal". This reminded of a creative writing course I took last year where the professor told us he wanted our writing to be unique and personal however in order for it to be good writing people need to relate to it and to feel something from the words you write, and I think “Mama Blanca” is a perfect example of that. As someone who knows very little about the time period of the memoir, I still found myself related to a woman I've never met or shared any experie

  Hi everyone!  My name is Elisabeth and I am a third year psychology student. This is my first time taking a literature course at UBC and I am so far very intrigued by both the content and the nature of the course! I love that this course allows us to have some independence in what we want to read and the goals we want to set for ourselves. Though I enjoy reading, I find that with a full course load during the semester it's hard to find the time to sit down and read, so I'm looking forward to this being a part of my work this term. Through looking over the course readings I'm intrigued by their content and that we have the ability to contrast them and draw connections between each week.  In terms of what I'm expecting about this course… I think I'm expecting lots of things to be very new to me. I've taken a few online courses in which our means of communication was weekly blog posts, however I've never done a course quite like this where we combine in class