Autodidact Central

In the 4th century B.C., the great Greek mind Aristotle wrote a treatise on the art of persuasion. This influential work is still applicable to today, since every one of us still engages in discourse with one another, whether it be over the internet or in person. The art of rhetoric is slowly becoming a lost art in the general populace, and I think of that as a tragedy. Take a week to read this ancient text and see how modern its applications still are. I encourage everyone to practice the art of rhetoric in speech so that we all sound a bit more educated in our discussions with one another in everyday life. Barnes and Noble offers a paperback copy of both Rhetoric and Poetics by Aristotle for about $10. https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/poetics-and-rhetoric-aristotle/1007562079

Colorful notes lead to colorful thoughts. Colorful thoughts spark ingenuity.

Electrical Circuit Engineering study. Gotta earn this bachelor's somehow.

Normally I post my analysis and discussion for the week's poem today. But with school coming to an end and final projects mounting, I haven't had time to analyze "O Captain! My Captain!". So there's no analysis today. I'll post analysis a week from now. Sorry everybody.

ERIN HANSON

Poems of the Week is dedicated to providing a simple, quick read to ponder while you’re in line getting your morning coffee, or on the bus headed to work. As always, I suggest reading the poems from a book. But if you can’t get your hands on one, I’ll always link the poems in these posts. If you feel so inclined to discuss the poem, I would love to. Shoot me a message. At the end of the week, I will compile a quick review answering relevant questions that you all ask and sharing anything new I learn about the poem as I study it throughout the week.

Poems of the Week is dedicated to providing a simple, quick read to ponder while you’re in line getting your morning coffee, or on the bus headed to work. As always, I suggest reading the poems from a book. But if you can’t get your hands on one, I’ll always link the poems in these posts. If you feel so inclined to discuss the poem, I would love to. Shoot me a message. At the end of the week, I will compile a quick review answering relevant questions that you all ask and sharing anything new I learn about the poem as I study it throughout the week.

Here’s a bit of music for an evening study break! The ultimately creative electronic music artist K-391’s track “Back in Time” blends the rhythm of ragtime swing with the complexities of electro.

- from the song "Sinking Ships" by Dawn Somewhere (Greg Hoffman)

📚A night of studying begins!📚

Boundless knowledge.

- Unknown

physics [fiz-iks], n “a branch of science chiefly concerned with using exceptionally long and complicated formulas to describe how a ball rolls.”

Poems of the Week is dedicated to providing a simple, quick read to ponder while you’re in line getting your morning coffee, or on the bus headed to work. As always, I suggest reading the poems from a book. But if you can’t get your hands on one, I’ll always link the poems in these posts. If you feel so inclined to discuss the poem, I would love to. Shoot me a message. At the end of the week, I will compile a quick review answering relevant questions that you all ask and sharing anything new I learn about the poem as I study it throughout the week.

When you read this poem, it leaves you with a melancholy feeling.  It leaves this effect because we can relate to the narrator’s feelings of emptiness and lack of self-confidence.  Everybody feels that way once in a while.  However, in the modern time, we have dating sites that allows us to curb these feelings by meeting people online and then in real life to hook up (as early as Match.com in 1995).  The narrator does just this; he finds a woman and convinces himself that he wants to sleep with her.  But, after convincing her as well, finds he does not want to after all, since this won’t provide the satisfaction he wants, but rather, a temporary feeling of pleasure which amounts to nothing in the grand scheme of things.  He sees this same feeling reflected in the woman’s dreamy eyes and quiet muttering.  Richard Jones conveys this sexual encounter as mundane and unpleasant by choosing not to use any passionate words to describe their actions or feelings. Jones even has the characters open up a window to see the factories, which echoes the poem’s overall purpose: pulling back the shades and promises of casual sex to reveal the assembly line nature of it all and its lack of passion and romance.