Madalyn's Jounal #3

Madalyn Watts
English 2267

Journal #3

 The final chapter of The Triggering Town may very well have been my favorite chapter, simply because of the last paragraph.  In that final paragraph, Hugo says "We won't all disappear on a remote country road in the Monroe Valley, but like the Admiral and his wife we are all going into the dark.  Some of us hope that before we do we have been honest enough to scream back at the fates.  Or if we never did it ourselves, that someone,  derelict or poet, did it for us once in some euphonic way..." I think that everyone, no matter what they have done in their lifetime, thinks that they have lived their best possible life at some point or another.  They like to believe that they have never done anything so wildly reprehensible that they cannot be forgiven.  This really resonated with , because when I recently left high school, I noticed many many MANY people who think the same of themselves.  Which to a certain extent is normal, but boy, oh boy.  Too much is definitely too much. 

 One of my biggest takeaways from this book is that it's all about finding your triggering subject. You may sit sown with the intentions of writing a poem about a snowy day, but your triggering subject ends up being a canoe.  It definitely sounded funky to me before writing all of my poetry exercises but now that I have a few poems under my belt, I can absolutely vouch for this, once you find your subject, there is nothing stopping you from writing a phenomenal poem!  Another very big takeaway that I got from the book is that anyone, no matter what kind of background you have, can be a poet!  It made me feel better once I figured this out.  Because I am a perfectionist by nature (I picked up this wonderful trait from my mother)  This means that I get very frustrated when I put my pen to paper and poetry doesn't just flow out like a river.  But ive come to realize that no one has that skill!  It takes so so so much practice, and even the best of the best cant create canonical poetry in just one sitting.

 

I chose this image because after reading The Triggering Town, my personal river is flowing much better than it was before!