Writer's Harvest - extra credit :)

At the Writer’s Harvest, I listened to the first four speakers. The first speaker was John Pursely III. For his reading, he chose to read two poems that he and his wife worked together to write. The poems were based on a character in a film/show that they fell in love with while watching. To be honest, I really did not fully understand the plot or meanings of the poems that Pursely read to the audience. The second reader was Lindsay Jones. Jones read a chapter of a piece that she had written about a Haiti child that she fostered. This was my favorite section of the readings. Her story described the connections that her and the girl made during her time in America. She talked about different activities they did together and the growing up together with Jones taking in the child and learning to care for it during her stay. Close to the end of her reading, she informed the audience of the reason that the child was staying with her – to get surgery performed on her feet. She described the child’s feet as turned in and designed in a way that forced the child to basically walk on the top of them. Through the surgery, her feet could be fixed to normal circumstances to where it would cause her less pain and suffering later on. I liked Jones’s piece because it was more than just words thrown into a pattern on a page. You could tell as she read it that she was reliving those memories and days with this little Haitian girl. A part that really got me was when she mentioned that the little girl would most likely never know who Jones was nor remember that she ever had to come to our country to have such a procedure done. I can only imagine how hard of a thought that must have been for Jones to first realize. Jones’s reading kept me very entertained and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to her. Following Jones was Steve Katz. His readings were a little different to me. They were all poems based on space and things related to space such as aliens, comets, etc. The part about this I did think was cool though was that Katz mentioned the reasoning for basing all of his writings on such topics was due to his dream to be an astronaut. I am personally not very interested in such topics or poetry so I found myself struggling to pay him 100% of my attention at times. It was apparent that he was thrilled to be able to be up there sharing his writings though, which made it enjoyable. The last reader I saw was Keith Lee Morris. His reading was probably the most far-fetched. Morris read a fiction piece that he had written about two boys in college who got to spend the day with Ray Charles. He went into their adventures around the towns and in their room. At first I found his reading pretty funny and entertaining however, I felt that it kept going a little too long and eventually became not funny – especially the continuous cussing that was thrown in. Through this event, I realized how much more difficult it can be to LISTEN to pieces of writing rather than READ them. Especially with the poems, it was difficult at times to keep up with what was going on due to not be able to see the stanzas and how the lines were written. With some of the readers being better public speakers than others, it also made it easy to become distracted and not fully pay attention.