The Theme of "Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou

     One of the poems in our poetry reader that I really enjoyed was Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman." I think that this poem had a very important and interesting theme: she is confident with who she is, and that is what draws people to her. There is lots of evidence in the poem about this. In every stanza she talks about details about herself that make people flock to her. She also calls herself a phenomenal woman in every stanza. These both show that she is confident in everything about herself, and she is comfortable just the way she is. Another part of the poem that proves her confidence in herself is in the 4th stanza when she says "Now you understand/ Just why my head's not bowed./ I don't have to shout or jump about/ Or have to talk real loud." A part of the poem that shows that people like her for her confidence is in the second stanza where she says, "And to a man,/ The fellows stand or/ Fall down on their knees./ Then they swarm around me,/ A hive of honey bees." Over all, I really liked this poem and the theme of confidence that draws people in.

Concrete Imagry at the Kusama Exhibit

     There were two main different kinds of concrete imagry for me at the Kusama exhibit: Things that I saw, and  things that I heard. The very first thing was when I walked through the doors of MFAH and saw a giant Pumpkin in the center of the room. It was yellow with a pattern of purposefully placed polka dots around the whole sculpture. This really caught my eye, because unlike the other works that I saw immediately on the walls which were very abstract and brightly colored, the patterns made it more calming to me than the vibrant colors and randomly placed designs. The rest of the concrete imagry in the Kusama exhibit came from inside the infinity rooms.

     As soon as I stepped inside the first room, I was hit with sights and then sounds. I first noticed the brightly colored sculptures abstractly placed around the room, then I noticed that the mirrors on the walls of the room made the scluptures go on forever, true to the name: infinity room. It was a breathtaking sight, made even more so when I realized that the tentacle shaped sculptures protruding from the floor and ceiling changed colors, making the whole room look different every few seconds. The second part of concrete imagry in this room was the sound. While we were in the room, there was a poem by Kusama being spoken in Japanese from the speakers in the room. This was a more gradual realization, something that was very important to the room, but you didn't really notice it until you focused on it. It made the atmosphere of the room and the art very different than if it wasn't there. This room overwlmed my senses, and made me wish that I could stay in there for much longer than just the allotted one to two minutes.

     The next room was much simpler and smaller than the first, but was somehow even more breathtaking and inspiring. In this room the concrete imagry hit both my eyes and ears at the same time. The sights were the many hanging lights, that looked like they were floating in the darkness. They slowly brightened and faded, and at one point disappeared entirely, leaving us in pitch black, before they slowly came back on. The concrete imagry for my ears was the silence rather than the sound of the room. The silence was beautiful, and gave a very solemn and majestic air to the room, especially when the lights started to come back on after having been out. This room was amazing! I wish I could have stood in there for hours in the silence and watched the lights brighten and fade.

     Overall, I had a great time at the Kusama exhibit, and the concrete imagry for my ears and eyes was wonderful.

Tribes of the Amazon HMNS Visit

    I had a great experience at HMNS on Wednesday. The docents, Mary and Steve, were very informative and I learned a lot about the tribes living in the Amazon. I also learned a lot of things that I thought were very interesting, including information about the Shuar tribe shrinking heads, Yucca being the main food source in the Amazon and how they prepare it, the coming of age ceremonies for various tribes, and more. There were also some main points of interest to me that I learned a lot more about than other parts of the exhibit.
    The Shaman were a big point of interest to me, they were the “medicine men,” the priests and doctors for the tribes. It was very interesting because each tribe in the Amazon has very strong beliefs in the Spirit World, and their Shaman, which each tribe has, is their main connection to the Spirit World. Being Shaman is not passed on by ancestry in most tribes, but instead the current Shaman picks a sort of apprentice to be the next Shaman. In most of the tribes, the Shaman is a man, but the Ye’kuana tribe lets women become Shaman, which I thought was very interesting.
    Another point of interest to me was the Shuar Tribe and their Shelters. The Shuar Tribe is very distrustful of everyone, including their own tribe members, and they consider everyone their enemy. This has helped them to not be conquered. Due to their distrust of one another, every Shuar family lives in their own house, and every family lives on a different hill. Their shelters are unique in all the defense mechanisms they have. The first one is that all Shuar huts have to walls. This way, if a spear is thrown at their hut, and it breaks through the first wall, it will stop at the second. The Shuar huts also all have a trapdoor by the fireplace, so if they are under attack, they would leave using this door and abandon their hut and build a new one elsewhere. The Shuar men and women also sleep on different sides of the hut though I do not know if this has anything to do with defense. The trapdoor is on the men’s side of the hut.
    Over all I thought this was a very interesting exhibit, and the tribes of the Amazon are not things you learn about often. I also thought that it was interesting that everything the museum had were all things that the tribes would have thrown away and were not useful to them anymore though they are treasures to us. “Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes” said that museums often take artifacts from archeological sites, but these artifacts were willingly given by the tribes who did not want them any more.
                            

Hanging Fire Analyzation

I thought that Hanging Fire was a very interesting poem. It was mainly about a girl (the speaker) and her depression. There are three stanzas, and in each one talks about what would happen if she died, and she repeats in every one that "momma's in the bedroom with the door closed." The rest of the poem is very random. The main theme is that the speaker complains about her appearance, her life, and a boy that I think is her brother based on how much she knows about him. For example he "still sucks his thumb in secret." 

I think that the randomness of this poem helps to make the repeating phrase, "and momma's in the bedroom with the door closed" stand out much more, and show the importance of it. In all her ranting the really serious things I got from the speaker were that her mother does not really care about her, and if the speaker were to die, no one would notice until it was too late.