After re-reading the poems and looking at the extra material that was provided, my understanding has definitely gotten deeper. Especially in the writing prompts from my classmates and reading my classmates responses. There are so many different things my classmates thought of that I did not think of at all, for specific poems. People drew an emphasis on specific lines of poems that I did not pay much attention to at all. Also, people had many different perspectives on each poem and what they thought it meant and it certainly changed my mind a few times. Here was how my mind evolved about “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock,” after the discussion post about it.
One student drew an emphasis on the metaphor of the coffee measurer and how he was explaining his anxiety about his ultimate use of time. This most aligned to my understanding of the poem, but I still thought it was so intertesting that she has a particular interest in this specific line; it made me think even deeper about the concept. Another student brought out the line in the poem where he explains that he does not think the mermaids will sing to him. He used that to explain his interpretation of the poem that it was about his lack of confidence and ultimately a loss of connection to the self, which I also thought was so interesting because when I read that line, that was not my first interpretation.
Some students interpreted the poem as just an expression of his inconsistency and spotty emotions and thoughts. Other classmates thought it was about confidence and self esteem, pointing out that he seemed some what confident in the beginning, going out, and then spirals inward in to his thoughts. One classmate even brought up how he embodies the psychology term “spotlight effect” and that made so much sense to me and brought a whole new understanding for me. Many students expressed that they felt empathetic for him and could not imagine being in that internal state all of the time. That was also an interesting response to me because that was not my initial response; I think I moreso was just relating to his train of thought that spiraled inwardly and downwardly, it’s happened to all of us right?
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