Your Life Is Your Life

1. The poem is The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski.
2. The ironic thing about this poem is that it is being used for jeans brand commercial but there is a deeper meaning. It is not just about promoting some brand of jeans, its about not letting people taking control of your life, when you do you go into this darkness but when you are controlling it you seem to only find light.
3. I believe that the poem reflect on the author's earlier life. He didn't live in the best neighborhood, he had an abusive father, and he was made fun of from other kids for the way he spoke and the way he dressed. When he graduated from high school he went to college for to years studying art, journalism, and literature and then he moved to New York to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. After all the things he went through in his life was an example of the darkness and when he went to New York to become a writer he found lightness because he was controlling his life and he could follow his dreams.
4. For question one I asked one of my class mates to see if they had any information on the author and the poem and the gave me a website about the author and his poems. For question four I went to Wikipedia and searched the author because the website about the author didn't show anything about the author's past.      

   The Laughing Heart

  your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.