Courtney's Blog

ALOHA!
Today we had the experience of learning about Hawaiian poetry. Dr. P. Nogemeier taught us how Hawaiian poetry avoids rhymes as much as possible. Poetry also has a shared sound and meaning in Hawaiian. The sound is a link that starts the next line. Just like any other language, translating words can change the entire meaning of the poem, especially from Hawaiian to English as Nogelmeier stated.
We also had the honor to meet prize winner W.S Merwin who has a long list of accomplishments. Merwin flew from the island of Maui to O’ahu just to meet with us and I was lucky enough to have Mr. Merwin read his poems from my book that he wrote. Merwin gave us some advice one advice he gave us was that “Poetry is taking time and giving attention just like falling in love. The whole world is right in front of you; poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom so read for pleasure.” Merwin gets most of his inspiration for his poems by listening. Listening to nature, traffic, people and everything. All of us had the chance to ask Merwin any question we wanted and got an intriguing response back that left us thinking. He also read some of his poems from his book “Migration” and hearing him read it was even more beautiful then the vivid description we got from reading it ourselves. I highly recommend going out and reading Migration.
I’ll leave you with some words of advice from Merwin, “if there is something you want to do in life, don’t wait around because you will always be waiting just go do it!”

Mahalo for your time!
Courtney