Peer Blog Response

I've read 2 student blogs; Jake Lester (813) and Josh Waldman (813)'s blogs. I read Jake's response on Cats Cradle and Ice-Nine Josh's poem about America. Both responses were intriguing due to vocabulary, ideas brought up and techniques used.
Jake's response on Cats Cradle and Ice-Nine is interesting for me to read due to vocabulary. He uses phrases such as unrelenting distaste, meaning there must be some significance in the book of what he's describing. Another reason why I enjoy Jake's vocabulary usage is because it's very similar to how he speaks in real life. I remember when I was just learning how to write, teachers would say "write like how you speak", some people take that idea and create writing that is a little more difficult to understand, but Jake actually uses this idea and his writing comes out perfectly clear. In this response, another thing I like is how Jake uses true evidence from the book to support thoughts and even predictions. In fact, most of his statements tie in together, which he later explains. He really has found a way to take tons of text evidence and use it to prove a point that he's trying to make. Jake doesn't do very much retelling, he just elaborates on what he read.
Josh's poem on America is interesting because he uses tons of great technique and deals with mature topics. Josh uses techniques such as symbolism (belles), and even physical techniques like line breaks which help the flow and mood of the poem. Josh also touches on some mature topics such as unemployment in America and losing privileges such as Southern Blacks with voting. Josh finds a way to sneak politics and history into a poem about a place. The only suggestion I have for Josh is to change the color of the writing.
After reading these two blog posts, I've gotten some ideas of what to do. Using line breaks and techniques in poetry is healthy; it makes your artwork unique, and isn't that what writing is-a form of art?                                    Writing like I speak is a useful idea, but you can't take it literally because your writing won't turn out very well. trying to keep it similar to your own style is the goal though. One last struggle that I've had lately is citing sources correctly. Jake did it perfectly, so I will take his work into consideration. Overall, the two blog posts that I read were remarkable.