A Powerful Message

I really enjoyed "Theme for English B" by Langston Hughes. I feel that his poems are much like those of Robert Frost, in that they are easy to understand and leave the reader with thoughts to ponder. I found it very clever that Hughes was able to write a poem about writing a poem.

 There is no doubt that "Theme for English B" has a very powerful message. Hughes is simply pointing out that people of different races are equal and should be treated as equals. That is a simple enough statement for anyone to say, but Langston Hughes was able to convey that thought through a magnificent poem that was constructed with a great deal of class.

The poem is about a young man who is the only black student in his college class. His assignment is to write a poem about his true self. In the poem, Hughes is able to make a connection with almost all readers by showing how, while he is a black man, he enjoys many of the same things that people of other races do. Lines 21-22 read, "Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, listen, and understand life." These are things than everyone enjoys, which is why these are such powerful lines. The rest of the poem goes on to state that he is black and enjoys certain thing, and his professor who is white will probably also enjoy these same things because they are both American. Without being the slightest bit disrespectful, Hughes was able to show that, whether they desire it or not, blacks and whites are a part of each other and should be viewed as equals.

I'm pretty sure I could do that

The first time I ever saw a painting by Jackson Pollock I was in 6th grade and I thought, "How in the world is a mess like that considered great art!?"  Jackson Pollock is one of the best know of the Abstract artists, and his work is easy to identify as his. His personal style is to lay the canvas on the floor and walk around it dripping and splashing paint onto it.

He wished to show random action which would express the unconscious mind instead of a preconceived subject. On page 86 of our book it states Pollock believed that his canvases are "apt metaphors for an age that defined physical reality in terms of process, uncertainty, and chance." He also liked to think of his canvases as having lives of their own which were controlled by himself.

I do not believe that Pollock's works are at all beautiful. To me, he is a lot like Pablo Picasso. While I do not find the works of either one particularly pleasing to the eye they are both very famous artists. Picasso is famous for his Cubist work and Pollock is known for his Abstract work. Each man was able to effectively create and express a totally new concept of art. I think that I would be able to do a decent job of replicating the "drip method", but what makes Pollock so great is that he was able to actually create action painting before it had ever been imagined. All in all, I think that both Picasso and Pollock are considered great because they both invented new ways of expressing themselves.