31. From the End of the Semester, Looking Back

In my introduction at the beginning of the semester, I laid out the things I expected to dominate my poetry in the class: My move from NY to the South; How difficult it is for me to coincide an adoration of my friends here, while missing my best friend in NY so much; My hate-hate- relationship with obsessive compulsive tendencies.

I fully expected my poems to be laden with these themes and though, on several occasions, I started to write about these things, the poems never made it past a couple of stanzas. You all know what my poems ended up being centered around this semester.

I was rocked by the death of my aunt in February. It was expected, because she'd had cancer for over a year and a half, but she moved to GA, finally had her own apartment and then her health deteriorated suddenly, and she was gone in two months.

In a way, I'm glad I focused on this poetry now, because maybe it'll allow me to write other things in the future. Sure, I'll always feel the things that were instilled in my poetry, and sometimes a poem about it will likely surface, but I want to be able to write about things other than death. That wasn't the case this semester and in a sense, I'm really sorry about that, too. I wish I could have shown everyone that I could write about normal things, too. It got a little depressing, I'm sure, to pull out my poem each week and say, "Oh, Jenna's writing about death again! What a surprise!"

Nothing I said about my views on writing (in my introduction) has changed. I still believe you write for yourself first, then edit for other people later. In fact, this class likely strengthened that belief, because of the process of writing and then being workshopped. I loved that. I love editing and if it wasn't for my other classes, I probably could have easily spent hours on each poem I was given to critique. I adore this kind of work.

However, not everything is exactly the same as it was in January. The title of my blog is "Organized Ramblings of a Prosaic Poet." I don't know if, now, I would still classify myself that way... sure, I love prose, I plan on getting significantly better at it so I can utilize that love in the future but... maybe poetry isn't so bad.

It was exhausting to write a poem every week, absolutely. But... I have to admit, I didn't hate it. I didn't love it when this activity was taking place at 1am and I was exhausted, but, even if most of the time I was unhappy with the product, it was nice to be actively producing again.

(Ignore following cliche:) I learned a lot in this class, I'm happy to report. I don't hate forms, like I initially thought I did, and I don't hate writing poetry. I've become a more apt reader by reading every one's work every week and it's further instilled my love of editing. Workshopping was always my favorite day, so long as I wasn't the one being workshopped!

I enjoyed this class a lot, and I'm sorry to see that the workshopping is coming to an end. I hope everyone else enjoyed it, too!

30. What to Do... with my Haiku! (haha)

Alright, so the haiku exercise we did for class...

I really want to use it for my final binder. A few times now I've tried to rewrite it into a poem, trying to use some sort of form, if not a strict one, but it just isn't cooperating. There is a lot of superfluous stuff in my original assignment, which I plan on cutting out/re-writing/re-placing, but the problem primarily is figuring out what kind of form to wrestle it into.

My original work:

Jenna Harvie
Haiku practices

closed bedroom door --
her shadow darkens
the crack of light
--Penny Harter

While sitting in class: the Haiku seems rather harmless. It’s a homework assignment, a nicely simple image, but nothing more than a poem in a form you don’t particularly enjoy.

While watching television, a crime series: the Haiku seems like it fits perfectly in that world. It’s a scene in your head and it flashes in to be part of the episode. You have to remind yourself later that you made that part up.

While walking from your car into your house, at night, alone: the Haiku is suddenly very sinister. There’s a person waiting for you, now, hiding just out of sight. You don’t notice the small details that would give away their hiding place. You are afraid. When you get inside, you lock the doors, and wonder if you locked the stalker inside with you.

While sitting in the living room talking to your parents: the Haiku is slightly silly, but still heavy. The “her” is now your sister, standing just around the corner, listening to your conversation. She misunderstands the context and becomes upset. Again, you have to remind yourself this did not really happen.

When playing with your friend’s baby, in her room, with the door slightly open: the Haiku is foreboding. In your mind, your friend watches through the crack and sees how happy you are tickling her beautiful baby girl. She worries why she can’t keep that happy attitude all of the time. Later, she will contemplate walking out and leaving the baby alone, with your smiling face as the goal and guilt in her mind.

When watching television, a comedy: the Haiku is funny. You imagine the door is open rather wide, but a large man in a Hawaiian print shirt still manages to block out all light. Joey and Chandler exchange rude, but funny, remarks at this man’s expense. It is all in your head.

When sitting alone, in your bedroom: the Haiku is a painful reminder of the death you’re still reeling from. You are alone, with a dark shadow that lurks over you always. You try to find the light, but it is snuffed out with every memory, happy or sad.


I tried it already in my own created form (a convoluted but excitingly challenging form that consists of quatrains and tercets, with a rhyme scheme and a series of repeating lines), but it was much too strict for this form. I gave up on stanza three. The same was true of a pantoum.

Should I write this just in stanzas, should I write it freely, is there a form I'm missing that might work? Maybe some level of anaphora?

I'm very open to suggestions, thanks!

29. Marge Piercy

A free entry on a few poems I like by Marge Piercy:


For the Young Who Want To


Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

Marge Piercy


I think this poem is really true, and something English people can relate to; "What are you going to do with an ENGLISH degree? You gonna teach?"

That last line really drives the rest of the poem home, too--the idea of not having a plaque to hang on the wall, etc.


A beautiful poem on female opression:

A Work of Artific


The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creaturesa
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you
love to touch.

Marge Piercy

28. anyone lived in a pretty how town

I really love the poem below, and I have every since reading it in my 10th grade American Lit class. It's the sound of poem--the way cummings can utilize rhyme in every stanza without it feeling bogged down. He flows through lines so well (though there are a few places I stumble when the rhythm seems suddenly off) and I really admire that. I'm trying to read poems like this, that flow so perfectly and feel like poetry at the very essence of it, and hopefully draw inspiration from the way the lines are laid out. Personally, I'm not a rhymer; I havea a friend that does it fairly well and I'm surprised by that every time I read his work, but it just isn't something I've ever felt the urge to employ.

I make a connection to The Odyssey, too, with the "noone" double-meaning; I love literary connections!

anyone lived in a pretty how town
by E. E. Cummings


anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

27. An Amputee's Guide to Sex

I've always thought: Nothing major has ever happened to me. I have nothing to write about.

Granted, that may not be true; To put it melodramatically, we all have experiences that other people will never go through, and so, in a way, our life is "big" enough because it is OUR life, and no one elses.

But this idea, that to be a writer you have to experience something, really came up when I went to the Eclectic release party. Other than the student readers, there were two published writers, one of prose and one primarily of poetry. The poet, Jillian Weise, was absolutely fantastic-- she was lively, engaging, read well, her work was interesting. And she's an amputee.

She read from one of her collections, The Amputee's Guide to Sex (who doesn't get caught up with a title like that), and though the poems were simple, explaining things we both all know and all don't understand, they were so grounded in real-life, I was both inspired and intimidated. This woman, I thought, has something to write about. She lives in a world parallel to ours, but totally seperate, too, and uses her words to invite us in to that world for a brief peek. What do I have like that?

As depressing as it can be, I find readings like that to be the most beneficial. She was fantastic, and I celebrate her awesomeness when it comes to writing simply but powerfully. However, it's easy to get lost in their experiences and think, Well, of course she's a good writer...look at that material she has. As though, for writers, the more abnormal you are, the more blessed you are (who knows, this could be very true, but I bring it up just as a general point).

I'll post a poem of hers, below, as well as a couple of links ot get to other poems of hers if you're interested (I like the simplistic storytelling of this one, which is why I chose it, but if anyone is intruiged by reading poems that center more fully on amputee's or amputees and sex, there are a few poem samples by her on the websites I'll link to). Let me know what you think/thought about her!

WAITING ROOM
By Jillian Weise

I said to myself: three days and you'll be seven years old.
Elizabeth Bishop, In the Waiting Room

We're in a waiting room crayoned
and carved: Toby was here 7-12-87.
There is bubble gum under your chair.
Degas' ballerinas with their feet

over their heads. Look what I can
do, they say to a room full of children
with back braces, broken breast plates.
In the corner, a woman knits sweaters.

She is known as Toby's Mother.
Toby is known as the-kid-with-leukemia.
He will be your roommate in Intensive Care.
He will wake you up, screaming

in the middle of the night and you will wish
he would go ahead and die. The Nelsons,
in the other corner, play chess. They wait
for doctors to explain why their daughter

won't eat. Every conversation is the same:
Have you taken the tubes out? Is she eating?
How much is she eating? Mrs. Nelson brings
homemade white chocolate chip cookies.

They used to be her daughter's favorite.
We like the Nelsons because they feed us.
We like them because they remind us that we
still eat, we're okay.

http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-52-7
http://books.google.com/books?id=gzf5bu6u9xIC&dq=The+Amputee's+Guide+to+Sex&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=Vc22S6L1C4fu9gT8l-TqAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false

26. The Onion, Memory

So, for my part of the presentation we're doing on Tuesday, I'm focusing on the Martian School of Poetry. It's a pretty cool form (though I guess it's not a form, but rather a thematic choice, maybe?), where the poet disassociates himself from the object and explains it through unfamiliar eyes. Defamiliarization, it's called. I was unable to find a full poem but Reid, but Raine's A Martian Sends a Postcard Home is really great and I could talk about it all day, so I put that in there. I did want to give another example, though; it's one that I didn't put in the packet because I have trouble understanding it, so I certainly can't help lead discussion on it. Here it is, below. It's called "The Onion, Memory" and again, it's by Craig Raine. Let me know what you think! (And don't judge Martian poetry solely on this example...I'm admitting it's obscure-ish).

The Onion, Memory
Craig Raine

Divorced, but friends again at last,
we walk old ground together
in bright blue uncomplicated weather.
We laugh and pause
to hack to bits these tiny dinosaurs,
prehistoric, crenelated, cast
between the tractor ruts in mud.

On the green, a junior Douglas Fairbanks,
swinging on the chestnut's unlit chandelier,
defies the corporation spears--
a single rank around the bole,
rusty with blood.
Green, tacky phalluses curve up, romance
A gust--the old flag blazes on its pole.

In the village bakery
the pastry babies pass
from milky slump to crusty cadaver,
from crib to coffin--without palaver.
All's over in a flash,
too silently...

Tonight the arum lilies fold
back napkins monogrammed in gold,
crisp and laundered fresh.
Those crustaceous gladioli, on the sly,
reveal the crimson flower-flesh
inside their emerald armor plate.
The uncooked herrings blink a tearful eye.
The candles palpitate.
The Oistrakhs bow and scrape
in evening dress, on Emi-tape.

Outside the trees are bending over backwards
to please the wind : the shining sword
grass flattens on its belly.
The white-thorn's frillies offer no resistance.
In the fridge, a heart-shaped jelly
strives to keep a sense of balance.

I slice up the onions. You sew up a dress.
This is the quiet echo--flesh--
white muscle on white muscle,
intimately folded skin,
finished with a satin rustle.
One button only to undo, sewn up with shabby thread.
It is the onion, memory,
that makes me cry.

Because there's everything and nothing to be said,
the clock with hands held up before its face,
stammers softly on, trying to complete a phrase--
while we, together and apart,
repeat unfinished festures got by heart.

And afterwards, I blunder with the washing on the line--
headless torsos, faceless lovers, friends of mine.

25. A Lost Loss

Elegy to a Lost Loss

I have a sudden realization that you must be gone
because I’m not crying, or wearing black.

Fear of this intense detachment embraces
me and with fervor I’m suddenly pawing through books,
searching for songs, gazing at pictures

as though these typical activities will lure you back again. I realize
that this is the problem--

I’ve been using you for too long
And now that you’re gone,
what fortitude will my writing have, without you to push me?

I think this relationship is shriveling because of your betrayal--
It’s been three weeks since I’ve cried with any real power

so what did you expect me to do? You were withdrawing,
but you’re a necessity now so I had to resort
to ways of keeping you with me.

It doesn’t seem right, for you to up and leave like this without warning,
because we’ve been so closely tied for so long and it’s your duty to prop me up

but then I wonder was it really without warning? I think you’ve been trying
to tell me, for a long time now, that you had to go
and I resisted despite the drawbacks, because you make me feel whole.

You may be right, but you’ve been such a big part
Of my written life thus far, that I don’t care.

An overabundance of you encompasses me, so where are you now--
I need you most, at this moment, because I’m not ready to step
back in to reality from our most recent rendezvous.

This one--
This one was just too much for me, you know that, and that’s why I’m not ready.

Did I take advantage of you? Is that why you’re leaving me?
I’ll admit there were times when I leaned too heavily, searched for
easy replacements, but what else do I have?

I fear that my writing can only contain fear
and death, because this is all I have experienced

And so, you must stay, because I draw from you.

______

This is the elegy I wrote for this week. Unfortunately, I'm very unhappy with it, because it isn't at all what I set out to do. I really wanted to write about this feeling I understand well--when your grief is withdrawing from you, it seems, because you don't think about it as much as you used to, and the guilt that ensues; I wanted to mix this with the idea that maybe this grief-feeling is dispersing because you've been using it too heavily lately either because you feel you should be sad or for inspirational purposes. I don't like the product and will likely rewite it because this is something I've wanted to write for a few weeks now, but I did find it interesting to write an elegy to an idea rather than to a person. It's surprisingly difficult, but I suggest everyone try it.

24. The Great Debate: Commercial vs Literary

Why do so many people hate commercial...anything? Fiction, movies, music (I don't actually know if "commercial" is the correct term for movies and music, but I mean it in the same way as it is used for commercial fiction). Why is it that because people like it, you have to hate it be really serious about the subject?

No one can tell me this isn't true (though you can certainly give me a counter if you'd like)--we see it all of the time. "How can you like that book when a bunch of 13 year olds read it?"--"That song was good...until they started playing it on the radio."

How does content change based on where it’s played or who listens to/reads/watches something? We get this a ton now with Twilight; it’s hated because it’s liked. Granted, Twilight is a horribly written book and the Great Twilight Debate encompasses a bit more than that, but you definitely see it…the people that hate the books, having never read a sentence of it, because 1.) He sparkles and 2.) It’s a cultural phenomenon right now.

This has always and will always drive me crazy. I don’t think that literary and commercial fiction can be compared--yes, they exist within the same sphere artistically, no doubt, but they are essentially two very different creatures. It would be like comparing the jingle for McDonald’s commercials to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing. Are they both musical creations? Absolutely. Are they there to achieve the same purpose? No. So, how do you compare them and decide one is better than the other?

There is no real definition for these two entities (in the sense that no one has laid down official characteristics that get you in to one category or the other), but, basically, I would say you can point to a literary book if you would read it in school, because they wouldn’t be caught dead handing us commercial fiction (understandable, in a sense, but it really gives literary snobs more ground to bash commercial). I can understand separating the two, but why does commercial fiction have to be “bad”? In general, it’s not written as technically well as literary, that’s true--literary writers tend to have more focus on the technique, whereas commercial writers care more about the story itself (currently, anyway). My problem with it, summed up, primarily focuses on this: People enjoy reading commercial fiction; you need something light sometimes, a story you can get lost in, and this often isn’t the case with literary fiction. Commercial fiction can be mindless, but why is that wrong? It’s getting people to read something…and in a culture that is slowly losing it’s grammatical skills, I think this is certainly a benefit.

______________________________

If anyone is interested in this subject, this links to a website with a pretty cool article involving what constitutes which definition:

http://www.mirtamimansary.com/todays-rant/how-to-tell-literary-from-commercial-fiction/

22. We Had Him

After our discussion about elegies, I went in search of one for Michael Jackson. It seemed that this would be pretty easy, considering the point of the elegy is to mourn a communal loss, and this was the most obvious one I was able to think of--and it was easy to find. One of the first search hits was a poem by none other than Maya Angelou. Here is a section from the website I got it from:
______
Here's a transcript of "We Had Him" (I took a best guess at the line breaks--Angelou may have intended them to fall elsewhere):

Beloveds, now we know that we know nothing,
now that our bright and shining star can slip away from our fingertips
like a puff of summer wind.

Without notice, our dear love can escape our doting embrace.
Sing our songs among the stars and walk our dances across the face of the moon.
In the instant that Michael is gone, we know nothing. No clocks can tell time.
No oceans can rush our tides with the abrupt absence of our treasure.

Though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone.
Only when we confess our confusion can we remember
that he was a gift to us and we did have him.

He came to us from the creator, trailing creativity in abundance.
Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love, family love,
and survived and did more than that.
He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style.
We had him whether we know who he was or did not know,
he was ours and we were his.
We had him, beautiful, delighting our eyes.

His hat, aslant over his brow, and took a pose on his toes for all of us.
And we laughed and stomped our feet for him.
We were enchanted with his passion because he held nothing.
He gave us all he had been given.

Today in Tokyo, beneath the Eiffel Tower, in Ghana's Black Star Square.
In Johannesburg and Pittsburgh, in Birmingham, Alabama, and Birmingham, England

We are missing Michael.
But we do know we had him, and we are the world.

The audience responded well to the poem. What do you think?
I find more poignancy in this quote from her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: "A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."
Michael didn't seem to have a lot of answers, but for all of his faults, he sang a powerful song.
______

I’m incredibly uncertain about how I feel about this poem. Sure, there are some lines that really stand out to me, but I don’t know… with someone like Michael Jackson in particular, paired with a writer as well-known as Angelou, I expected more.

Some sections I liked:

Though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone.
Only when we confess our confusion can we remember
that he was a gift to us and we did have him.

And

He gave us all he had been given.
Today in Tokyo, beneath the Eiffel Tower, in Ghana's Black Star Square.
In Johannesburg and Pittsburgh, in Birmingham, Alabama, and Birmingham, England
We are missing Michael.
But we do know we had him, and we are the world.


These sections worked well. The first nicely illustrates the feeling of alone and togetherness, which I think we feel regardless for death but particularly for such a far-reaching death as Michael Jackson’s. The second I just enjoyed the feel of--again, it shows how far-reaching he was, and that last line was a nice bow to the song.

The rest fell flat for me. It seems so expected, entirely impersonal to the actual subject of the poem. I’m not exactly entitled to critique someone like Maya Angelou, but it just didn’t work for me. “Dotting embrace,” oceans, clocks that don’t tell time? Someone as controversial, celebrated and showy as Michael Jackson was, I think much more could have been done with the language.

“His hat, aslant over his brow, and took a pose on his toes for all of us.”

Again… he was natural a character. This description seems highly unrepresentational.

Anyone else have this problem?

21. Symposium and Cliches

Paul Muldoon
Symposium

You can bring a horse to water but you can't make it hold
its nose to the grindstone and hunt with the hounds.
Every dog has a stitch in time. Two heads? You've been sold
one good turn. One good turn deserves a bird in the hand.

A bird in the hand is better than no bread.
To have your cake is to pay Paul.
Make hay while you can still hit the nail on the head.
For want of a nail the sky might fall.

People in glass houses can't see the wood
for the new broom. Rome wasn't built between two stools.
Empty vessels wait for no man.

A hair of the dog is a friend indeed.
There's no fool like the fool
who's shot his bolt. There's no smoke after the horse is gone.


from The New Yorker , October 2, 1995



I really enjoyed this poem from the packet. It was just kind of fun, right? I like how quickly you are pulled through it because the sayings are so comfortable, but I also don't know many of them, so I have some trouble comprehending the intent behind it. Despite that, though, I can really feel the sarcastic attitude radiating off of these lines. I get really sick of seeing obvious cliches in poems, and sayings such as the ones above aren't any better. I respect a poet that is able to use so many in a concntrated area, intentionally, and pull it off nicely. Both semesters that I have had Professor Parks she tried to get a number of us to write something with the prompt that related to making cliches real or answering the question, "What would the world be like if all cliched sayings weren't just sayings?" I've yet to succumb to the suggetion, but Paul Muldoon did a nice job of it.

20. Negotiating with the Dead

"[...]Writing itself being, above all, a reaction to the fear of death. Despite all of the remarks about enduring fame and leaving a name behind them that are strewn about in the letters and poems of writers, I had not thought much about writing per se as being a reaction to the fear of death-- but once you've got hold of an idea, the proofs of it tend to proliferate." -- Margaret Atwood, Negotiating with the Dead

I've mentioned a couple of times Margaret Atwood and her "fear of death" writing theory. I think it's worth some time discussing.

Is it true? I don't know. But it certainly is understandable. I don't think that a 13 year old writing stories in her room is necessarily reacting to a fear of death, but then again, who do we really consider "a writer"? (A question for another blog, I'm sure.) As we get older, though (because wisdom always comes with age and nothing else, doesn't it?), and our writing becomes more developed, I think this could inadvertently be true, in a sense. Maybe not the only reason for writing, but a contributing factor for many, to be sure.

In a sense, (good) writing leads to immortality. If you're published, there is a record of you out there even after yourself and every person that's ever seen you is gone. It's a way to give yourself a definitive place in the grand scheme of things. There's some quote out there, that I can't remember the exact wording of nor the speaker, of course, that says something like, "If I found out I had five minutes to live, I'd write a little faster." I think that really captures the spirit of it, doesn't it?

This also relates to Plato/Socrotes/Diotima's idea of immortality through either physical birth or the birth of ideas. According to his Symposium, you either achieve immortality by (the inferior way of) having children with a woman, or (the superior way of) giving "birth" to a Truth, an idea, with another man. Luckily, we've progressed past some of that, but I think the idea stands true.

Thoughts, opinions? Is this why you write? Do you think there is any truth to it? Does anyone else adore Margaret Atwood?

19. Trying on Some "Baby Pants"

A few re-workings of last week's free entry poem.
The original:

Baby Pants
by Misha Collins
The Columbia Poetry Review #21, 2008 Edition.

This morning I drive across town for a friend
To Justin’s house on a Saturday at 9.
His wife yells from under wet hair
Belt unbuckled
“Justin!”
He’s down in the office
And I sit—collapse on the new couch
Custom made, brown and squarer than a couch should be.
Justin’s baby produces baby pants for my inspection.
I’m impressed, he can find his own pants now.
Can’t put them on, but knows
They go
On his baby legs.
And there I am
With my friend’s family
On a weekend morning.
The mother holds an envelope
In her teeth
Hoists and struggles
To pant her boy.
I’m slouching and hot in my vest
My blue, down vest.
Thinking today was colder than it is.
Forgetting that fall in California
Is like summer back home.
Plastic diapers pack the thighs of tiny corduroys
The smell of Cheerios bloated and floating in milk
What have I missed?


Basically a syllabic, I guess. Most lines have five, but I didn't want to change the actual poem too much, and didn't want to seperate words, so some are four or six. Some much-needed punctuation as well as being wrangled into quatrains:

Baby Pants
by Misha Collins
The Columbia Poetry Review #21, 2008 Edition.

This morning I drive
across town for a
friend. To Justin’s house
on a Saturday

at nine. His wife yells,
from under wet hair,
belt unbuckled, “Justin!”
He’s down in the

office. And I sit—
collapse on the new
Couch--custom made, brown
and squarer than a

couch should be. Justin’s
baby produces
baby pants for my
inspection. I am

impressed, he can
find his own pants now;
Can’t put them on, but
knows they go on his

baby legs. And there
I am, with my friend’s
Family, on a
weekend morning, the

mother holds an
envelope in her
teeth, hoists and struggles
to pant her boy. I’m

slouching and hot in
my vest, my blue, down
vest; thinking today
was colder than it

is; forgetting that
fall in California
is like summer back
home. Plastic diapers

pack the thighs of tiny
Corduroys, the smell
of Cheerios bloated
and floating in milk.

What have I missed?

And my favorite. Added punctuation and removed/changed some words or line structure. Tercets happened to work well, so I ended up going with that. Did line breaks as I thought they were needed, emphasizing particular words or images in the poem:

Baby Pants
by Misha Collins
The Columbia Poetry Review #21, 2008 Edition.

This morning I drive across town
for a friend: To Justin’s house, on a Saturday, at nine.
His wife yells, from under wet hair, belt unbuckled.

He’s down in the office and I sit—
Collapse— on the new couch;
Custom made, brown, and squarer than a couch should be.

Justin’s baby produces baby pants for my inspection—
I’m impressed, he can find his own pants now—
He can’t put them on, but he knows

they go on his baby legs.
and there I am,
with my friend’s family,

on a weekend morning.
The mother holds an envelope
In her teeth

while she hoists and struggles
to pant her boy.
I’m slouching and hot in my vest--

my blue, down vest--
Thinking today was colder than it is.
Forgetting that fall in California

is like summer back home.
Plastic diapers pack the thighs of tiny corduroys.
There is the smell of Cheerios bloated and floating in milk.

What have I missed?

18. Forms, Forms and More Forms

I'm interested to know how everyone is feeling about the forms we've been using lately.

We've covered different types of stanzas, sonnets, syllabics, sestinas, pantoums, ghazals, anaphora (technique, but whatever). I'm guessing I'm not the only one that is writing in forms you never thought you would...and sometimes actually half-not-hating the result!

Do you find that forms help or impede your writing abilities? Do they "expand your horizons"...or do they feel constricting?

I think I can understand both sides. On the one hand, sometimes there is a poem I really want to write, but I know it won't work in the form I've been assigned. In this case, my thought process is "Well, I need to finish this one for school, so that one can wait" and it gets pushed aside, the idea scribbled into a notebook, and hopefully will be pulled back out one day, but there's not guarantee.

On the other hand, however, I can see why it's beneficial. Aren't we creating images we never thought we would--particularly with recent lessons? I felt that way with the syllabic; I ended up writing lines I didn't anticipate producing because they had to be short and to the point.

Opinions?

17. Ghazals, Pt. 2.

I've already done an entry on Ghazals, but after having read some, and more importantly heard one--I might need to revise my previous "It could be cool" idea.

I love the concept behind it, but there are some things that just become too distracting in poetry, and I think that constant repetition is one of them. In the example I heard read aloud, the word was "erosion"...there are only so many times you can hear that before it gets a little redundent. Part of it is I have a lot more trouble comprehending poetry when I don't have a copy of it in front of me, but sometimes it gets to a point where you start to think "Wow, when is this going to end?" The anaphora example with the horses was another one of those, like we talked about in class.

I just think it's important you keep your reader's attention (maybe that's obvious, but it's true), and though using the same word in new and interesting ways is possible, I haven't really found a Ghazal yet that I've enjoyed. They just become redundent.

Separation from companions is unwise
Treading the path without light is unwise
If the throne and scepter have been your prize
Descent from prince to pauper is unwise.
For Beloved, the you in you is disguise
To focus on the you in you is unwise.
If once to heavenly abundance you rise
Desperation and impotence is unwise.
Hear the thief’s greedy and fearful cries
Fraudulent deception too is unwise.
Able-body, chains & shackles unties
Idleness of such a body is unwise.
Your foothold gone, your soul freely flies
Wingless & featherless flight is unwise;
Given wings, reach only for Godly skies
Flying away from God’s Will is unwise.
To you, phoenix, demise is mere lies
Phoenix running from fire is unwise.

I can appreciate elements of this... the different situations set up before "unwise," the fact that the actual lines keep my attention...until I reach the end. Because I know what word is coming. I like line breaks because you go to the next line and see a word that you didn't expcet; this is the exact opposite of that. And then, with this one, there's so much rhyme! It's just a big example of "expected" for me.

We all have forms we don't like...I guess this one is mine.

16. Baby Pants

Baby Pants
by Misha Collins
The Columbia Poetry Review #21, 2008 Edition.

This morning I drive across town for a friend
To Justin’s house on a Saturday at 9.
His wife yells from under wet hair
Belt unbuckled
“Justin!”
He’s down in the office
And I sit—collapse on the new couch
Custom made, brown and squarer than a couch should be.
Justin’s baby produces baby pants for my inspection.
I’m impressed, he can find his own pants now.
Can’t put them on, but knows
They go
On his baby legs.
And there I am
With my friend’s family
On a weekend morning.
The mother holds an envelope
In her teeth
Hoists and struggles
To pant her boy.
I’m slouching and hot in my vest
My blue, down vest.
Thinking today was colder than it is.
Forgetting that fall in California
Is like summer back home.
Plastic diapers pack the thighs of tiny corduroys
The smell of Cheerios bloated and floating in milk
What have I missed?



This is a poem I just happen to really like (although if I had my way, I'd probably change some line breaks and wrestle it in to some stanzas). I don't know why, but I can relate to it, not in the baby-family sense, but in other ways...very grass-is-always-greener even when you can see the downfall of that otherside, ya know? It probably helps that I'm half-in love with the poet, too.

15. Ghazals...

"The ghazal is a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain. The form is ancient, originating in 6th century pre-Islamic Arabic verse."

Before reading the packet for this coming week, I decided to do a little bit of research on the Ghazal, because it was the first form we'd mentioned this semester that I had never heard of. Now I'm looking forward to finding out the mechanics of it, just because of the subject it's usually written on.

I think loss mixed with beauty is an interesting topic--because you don't just have to write on acceptance of loss, but rather on why the loss can be beneficial to you. I don't know, I just find that interesting. I'm not committing myself to the form or anything, but it doesn't seem like something I'd be totally against. The only thing I'm not so sure on? I read, also, that if it's a strict Ghazal, there is no enjambment allowed! I love enjambment (although I've gotten several comments on poems for class where people want to know why I broke the line where I did?)!

Keep in mind this information is from Wiki, because it was just quick research, but still, it's interesting preliminary work.

P. S. Found a Blog dedicated just to Ghazals, if anyone is interested in the form... http://ghazalville.blogspot.com/

14. Grapes, Song Lyrics and Moths: Billy Collins "Japan" and why it's mostly awesome

Japan by Billy Collins

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It's the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

I absolutely love this poem and I really enjoyed doing the Haiku practice for class…can’t wait to try and work it into a poem sort of like this one.

This poem is great because it really explains how I think a lot of us feel about poetry and I know it illustrates perfectly my opinion: That your poem is to be given to the reader to be reader and be interpreted by their own life-lenses. Every person will read it differently, and every reading, as suggested above, may be different.

I was surprised by the stanza:

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

Though the image is nice, I’m not sure how I feel about the meaning behind it. The idea that it’s “perfect” was the first thing that struck me--sometimes don’t you have a reading of a poem that isn’t entirely perfect? That leaves you feeling some heightened emotion you’d rather not feel? So there’s that, but I’m also not sure about the analogy of a grape. Grapes basically taste exactly the same each time you eat them, and in this case he’s eating the SAME grape…I don’t know how well that lends to the message of getting something new from the poem each time. I think I understand what he meant--the grape is the poem, and he’s just explaining that he’s reading it over and over and it’s the same poem--but I would have liked to see some foreshadowing of the array of meanings he’ll eventually get from it, later in the poem.

I love the images of him walking through the house and talking to the dog, and I particularly enjoyed this stanza:

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

Not only is the rhythm here great, but he says a lot with such a simplified idea--something all of us can relate to with songs, right? When it’s in your head and you’re not sure you want it to be. You wake up singing it to yourself, not sure when you started, and then you’re singing it to yourself in the kitchen until someone reminds you to stop? This packs all of that in to just three lines, without actually coming out and saying it.

And last but not least, because I have to narrow the things I like about this down so I don’t end up writing this blog post all night, I love the sudden shift in the middle and how he showed that by a change in stanzas. Just by having a couplet in the middle rather than a tercet, he tells the reader: Hey, I’m going to talk about something else now, something more metaphorical, but it’s okay, because I warned you about it right here. I think that’s great. The ending image, of a moth as a hinge hovering over the bed, is something that will stay with me for a long time.

13. Snoring Sonnets?

I personally find love poems kind of snore-inducing. Not all love poems, of course, but most. In the eighth grade I had to do a group poetry project and when I told my group (of fellow girls) that I preferred poems about sadness and death, they all had looks on their faces like that wanted to go out and buy me a truck load of romantic comedies and subscription to Seventeen magazine. Sure, I like those things, too, but there are only so many times I can read grandiose lines like "I fell into the liquid aqua of her eyes, brushed fingers over the roses in her pearly skin."

ZzzZzzZzzZzz.

Maybe it's because I just don't really relate to it, I don't know, but it has to be the reason I generally shy away from sonnets. I find their subject matter...flat. Again, NOT always, but often, particularly with older poems.

The point of all of that introduction was to highlight the reasons I DO like Shakespeare's Sonnet 130.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.



I love a writer that can make fun of himself (or herself!), and Shakespeare certainly does that here. I know we talked about it in class, but I just wanted to point out that this was my favorite of that packet just because it was such an anti-love love poem. Sure, the female in me should maybe be offended that he looks at her this way, and I would much rather have a guy write something like Sonnet 18 for me...but I appreciate the edge to 130.

12. You'll Be Much Delighted With This Story

I decided to write a poem using random lines pulled from books. Rather than use just one poetry anthology, though, I drew three very different books from my bookshelf:

A collection of poems called Four Centuries of Great Love Poems
A romance novel by Christina Skye titled Going Overboard
When the Messenger is Hot, by Elizabeth Crane. A collection of nonfiction short stories detailing the mishaps of Crane’s modern love life.

I wanted to at least have some continuity, so I intentionally got three books centering around love. Here are the lines I pulled:
_________________________________

Shall be so much delighted with thy story

But she had always believed in guarding her privacy

Unresolved issues with her mother

To strike you down? And what of all those hot

If discretion had a human face

What if I have a terrible accident and kill my dying mother?

Know that love is a careless child

Feeling as if something deep inside of her had torn free and lay bleeding.

You realize you had measured age in quarter-years since you were eleven

Now I am haunted by that taste! that sound!

Waving balloons, party hats and drinks with little paper umbrellas

And I felt very close to nature that way

Of womenkind such indeed is the love

Body rigid, gown traced by cold moonlight

The elevator man came back the next day.

All the comforts of home.

And there’s something shiny with my name on it, but there’s still no me.

That long preserved virginity

Starting to sob while reading Curious George

You’re selling dreams and capturing beauty.
_________________________________
So then I just started writing. I picked lines I liked, fit them together and soon enough a poem started to reveal itself to me. After that I just had to change a few things around to make it make sense and continue writing. I realized I was doing quatrains and just made it into a loose sonnet form--very loose. Here it is:

You’ll Be Much Delighted With This Story

You realize you’ve measured your age in quarter-years since you were eleven.
Starting to sob while reading Curious George,
Waving party hats and balloons and drinks with little paper umbrellas,
You wonder if you’re selling dreams or stealing beauty.

You have always believed in guarding your privacy--
That long-preserved virginity--
And felt oddly close to nature that way.
Nothing inside was ever torn free and left bleeding.

But now you are haunted by a shapeless taste, an undefined sound.
Now you know that love is a careless child;
That the elevator man will not always come back the next day.
Can discretion have a human face?

For women, such indeed is love--
It strikes you down. And what of all those hot
Rigid bodies, gowns traced by the cold moonlight?
But you had always believed in guarding your privacy.

You realize you’ve measured your age in quarter-years since you ever eleven.
And there’s something shiny with your name on, but there is still nothing.

_________________________________

After that, I tried to force it into a syllabic. It’s seven syllables per line (though admittedly eight on a few). Here it is:

You’ll Be Much Delighted With This Story

You realize you’ve measured your
age in quarter-years since ten.
Starting to sob while you
Are reading Curious George,
Waving party hats, holding
balloons and drinks with little
umbrellas, tropic names.
You wonder if you’re selling
dreams or stealing beauty.

You had always believed in
guarding your privacy--That
long-preserved virginity--
And felt oddly close to all
nature that way. Nothing was
ever torn free and left bleeding.

But now you are haunted by
a shapeless taste, an undefined
sound. Now you know that love is
A careless child and the
elevator man will not
always come back the next day.
Can discretion have a face?

For women, such indeed is
love-- It strikes you down. And what
of all of those hot, rigid
bodies, gowns traced by the cold
moonlight? But you had always
Clung to guarded privacy.

You realize you’ve measured your
age in quarter-years since ten.
And there’s something shiny with
your name on it, but still nothing.

I much prefer the first one to the syllabic. It felt very forced, where as the first syllabic I wrote for class did not, and I ended up having to throw in useless words and cut other important ones; not to mention the very random stanza lengths. I really liked the process, though, and will probably try it again with the other lines I got this time (how can I pass up “unresolved issues with her mother” next to “What if I have an accident and kill my dying mother?). Maybe a pantoum?

11. The Shape of Content

Obsessive Compulsive

As inevitable as a clock’s tick, my hand slips back as I count.
One, skip one, three, four.
tick, Tick, tick, tick.
Why can’t I be normal?

One, skip one, three, four.
It is compulsive. It is repulsive.
Why can’t this be normal?
I try so hard.

It is repulsively compulsive though,
and each time my hand and mind combat. But it continues.:
One, skip one, three, four
I try so hard--

My hand and mind combat. Will it continue?
My hand jerkily falters.
One--two--three, four.
I hold still so I won’t be this way.

But my hand begins to falter.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
I can’t hold still. I can’t be this way.
As inevitable as a clock’s tick, my hand slips back. And I re-count.


I think I can already feel how much 3200 has changed my ideas about poetry and myself as a poet. I still say I'm not, and I don't know why, because I don't hate it anymore, but I stand by that idea. Regardless, I can already look at past poems, just from the last couple of semesters, and compare them to poems of the last few weeks and see/hear a difference. I don't know if my readers totally see the depth I do, but that's the next step.

I say that because of the above poem. I wrote it for a class last year and at the time really like the outcome. I thought that for only my first or second try at a pantoum it wasn't so bad. I guess I still believe that, considering it was also about the fourth poem I'd written in the past six years, but now I can look at it and think "Ah, I should have done that."

Other than the obviously horrific and unoriginal title, I notice several places with opportunities to make the lines so much stronger and so less cliched. But what I still enjoy about this particular piece is the subject in relation to the form. What better subject matter is there, for a rigid form such as a pantoum, than being bound by OCD?

I'm looking forward to editing this into a better state as well as trying another pantoum this weekend!

10. Best Words, Best Order...Or Something Like That.

Syllabics are my favorite form this week, I think. I love the loose structure of it. Sure, Haikus and sonnets have interesting forms and structure, but they are so structured, they're kind of stifling. Maybe I respect them more, in a sense, because of it, but I can't find myself every find enjoyment in partaking something that obsessed with structure (there is so much irony in that, half of which has to do with how excited I am to try my hand at a villanelle).

Anyways, back to syllabics. In this case, you have an obvious form you have to stick to, but it's up to the poet just what that form is--no one tells you how many syllables to choose. I like that a lot. Not to mention, as my blog title says, I'm a prose person, so sometimes I get bogged down by my lines. Syllabics will help with that because you have to choose your words so carefully. Best words, best order, right?

It's definitely the type of poem I'm trying this week and after that, I might go back and rework a few older poems. There is one I have in mind (three page poem, no joke; but it was very much not single space), where I love the concept and some of the lines, but it just doesn't work...at all. Maybe this will help.

P.S. My favorite poetry form to try from time to time is one that consists of a series of repeating lines. Who else loves the ironyyy?

9. Books and Movies and Inspiration...Oh my.

I know I've already said this approximately 15 times on this blog, BUT...

If I was forced to pick a "favorite" book (blah), it would be The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. I'm blissfully in love with this book (do I need anything else?), for its story, for its characters, for its commentary and especially for it's poetic prose and the wide array emotions, all explained beautifully. It's a book I could read, then go back to the first page and read again. I want to put it, as well as a couple of other things, on here this week because it's what inspires my writing and it's what I hope to one day be able to achieve.

To understand the quotations, you'll have to understand at least a brief context. The book is written in in first person, but through two character's POVs, Henry and Clare...it takes a little while to get used to that, but once you do, it's easy to read. The story, as suggested in the title, is about the romantic relationship between Henry DeTamble (a man with a genetic mutation that causes him to time travel), and Clare Abshire. What's great is that though the book is so rooted in Henry's time traveling, you're able to believe this is a real, everyday kind of thing. As Mrs. Parks would probably say, it's not sensationalized. Henry meets Clare for the first time when he's in his late 20s, but Clare meets Henry when she's a small child (as a result of an older-Henry traveling back in time). At the heart of the story, you really see Clare's loneliness and how it seems she's always waiting for Henry to return. This quote really exemplifies that:

"Sometimes he disappears unobtrusively; I might be walking from the kitchen into the hall and find a pile of clothing on the floor. I might get out of bed in the morning and find the shower running and no one in it. Sometimes it's frightening. I am working in my studio one afternoon when I hear someone moaning outside my door; when I open it I find Henry on his hands and knees, naked, in the hall, bleeding heavily from his head. He opens his eyes, sees me, and vanishes. sometimes I wake up in the night and Henry is gone. In the morning he will tell me where he's been, the way other husbands might tell their wives of a dream they had: "I was in the Selzer Library in the dark, in 1989." Or: "I was chased by a German Shepherd across somebody's backyard and had to climb a tree." Or: "I was standing in the rain near my parents' apartment, listening to my mother sing." I am waiting for Henry to tell me that he has seen me as a child, but so far this hasn't happened. When I was a child I looked forward to seeing Henry. Every visit was an event. Now every absence was a nonevent, a subtraction, an adventure I will hear about when my adventurer materialized at my feet, bleeding or whistling, smiling or shaking. Now I am afraid when he is gone."

The emotion in that, for me, is fantastic. The idea that she was, as a child, so excited to see him (though waiting anxiously for his return, too) but because she had that, she has to lose him now? So sad, but in such a great way.

On another note, a favorite movie (because in this case, the movie is tremendously better than the book). PS I Love You. Again, girly, right? Sure. But it's such concentrated emotion...I love it. Of course, at the moment, I can't find an example of it, but when I do, I'll edit this and put it on. Until then, my favorite quote from that movie is already at the top of my page.

From another movie, though, and I swear I'm almost done... the movie Stranger Than Fiction. Love the very metatextual feel of it, the concept of Writer as God and look at what we do to the people in our texts (because, really, aren't we sort of awful?). From it, this quote:

Harold Crick: What is wrong with you? Hey! I don't want to eat nothing but pancakes. I want to live. I mean, who in their right mind, in a choice between living and pancakes...chooses pancakes?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Harold, if you paused to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life people led...and, of course, the quality of the pancakes.


I put these on this week, only because they're things that have inspired me, in both poetry and prose. Even if the product hasn't come about yet, I've gotten a specific idea or ideas from each of these.

8. Five Steps to Literary Perfection...

WikiHow... http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Haiku-Poem

...A WikiHow on how to write a Haiku poem. Really?

Now, I know you can find just about anything on Wikipedia, and as such can find How-to step-by-steps on Wikihow, but I find the idea that they have instructions on poetry almost...degrading or insulting. To think it's that easy, that you can just give detailed instructions and create.

Lets look at this step by step--see if it's really this easy.

"Understand the way haiku is made. Haiku in Japanese is written in a single vertical line with seventeen sound units or mora (not strictly the same as syllables) in a rhythm of five, seven, and five. In English (a stressed language), the ideas can be expressed with a short line, a long line, and another short line."

Alright, makes sense. It's a form, and like all forms, you have to understand the parameters.

"Choose a season. Many haiku seem to focus on nature, but what they are really focusing on is a seasonal reference (not all of which are necessarily about nature). Japanese poets use a "saijiki" or season word almanac to check the seasonal association for key words that they might use in a haiku (thus the haiku is a seasonal poem, and thus often about nature, but does not have to be about nature if the seasonal reference is about a human activity). The season is important for coming up with words to use in a haiku."

Ah, I see. I just pick a season. There are only four...so, in essence, are all Haikus revolving around one of four basic themes? So for any other poem should I just pick a feeling? I'll just decide I want to write about "Happy" or "Angry"?

"Add a contrast or comparison. Reading most haiku, you'll notice they either present one idea for the first two lines and then switch quickly to something else or do the same with the first line and last two. A Japanese haiku achieves this shift with what is called a "kireji" or cutting word, which cuts the poem into two parts. In English, it is essential for nearly every haiku to have this two-part juxtapositional structure. The idea is to create a leap between the two parts, and to create an intuitive realization from what has been called an 'internal comparison.'"

Use a metaphor--crazy. No one has ever done that in a poem before. So far, all I have to do for poetry-gold is understand 5-7-5, pick a season (out of FOUR), and someone compare said-season to...anything. Alrighty.

"Use primarily objective sensory description. Haiku are based on the five senses. They are about things you can experience, not your interpretation or analysis of those things. To do this effectively, it is good to rely on sensory description, and to use mostly objective rather than subjective words."

Not quite as lame, but still, I think most good poetry does this. Your poem should have good, concrete ideas that LEAD to analysis; not just outright come out with the analysis. This is kind of obvious, when you only have the 5-7-5 form to get your ideas across, too.

"Like any other art, haiku takes practice. Basho said that each haiku should be a thousand times on the tongue. It is also important to read good haiku, and not just translations from the Japanese but the best literary haiku being written in English. To learn haiku properly, it is important to take it beyond the superficial or even sometimes incorrect ways it has been taught in most grade schools. It is important to distinguish between pseudo-haiku that says whatever it wants in a 5-7-5 syllable pattern and literary haiku that adheres to the use of season words, a two-part juxtapositional structure, and primarily objective sensory imagery."

Practice makes perfect!? WHAT?


Ugh. This just makes me angry. The point is, even with a literary form as simple and unmoving at the Haiku, no five step program is going to create something substantial. Art is not an algebraic formula, and no one will be able to say X+Y+Z with a dash of R= Poetry Bliss. It just doesn't happen that way. And if it does, something is wrong.

7. How(e) I Relate to Eve

Part of Eve's Discussion

It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand, and flies, just before it flies, the moment the river seems to still and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop, very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say, it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only all the time.



This is one of those things that I read and just keep thinking "I. Wish. I. Wrote. This." That doesn't happen often--usually I can enjoy a piece from afar, applauding a writer's talent and wondering 'What can I selfishly take from this?'-- but occasionally I want to be 100% selfish. I want it to be mine.

I feel like I could talk about this poem forever, but I'll narrow my love down to a few points.

First, I find it difficult to call this a poem--does anyone know if that's what it's "classified" as (wow, hate using that word in this context)? But because it's in a book of poetry, I'll call it that. The drastic shift from typical stanzas and line breaks is sudden (though at the beginning of the work) and we all know anything sudden draws your attention to it. The first time I read it, I didn't really read it, though. I quickly looked over it, then moved on to poems-proper. Now that I have, of course, it's my favorite.

The images and ideas, of course, are fantastic and though I may never have had a bird eat out of my hand, nor decline eating out of my hand, it's relatable. The way the ideas string together is my absolute favorite part, though--that she can use commas rather than any other punctuation mark and you can still read it logically, connecting the points together in a way that you otherwise wouldn't. It sets a fantastic rhythm, and I kind of obsess over rhythm.

The way this is written really reminds me of one of my favorite authors of all time, Audrey Niffenegger. I don't know if I can say she's a favorite author, because I've only read one of her books so far, but even though upon first glance at the plot the book seems like a sensationalized love story, it's not. Her writing style is absolutely gorgeous--expected images in a new way and long, drawn out lines, like in this poem. A quote from The Time Traveler's Wife can be found at the bottom of my Blog. So, of course, I liked that.

The title, too. As usual, I read the title but don't really think about it until I read through it, then I look back at it. It strikes me that the title is "PART of Eve's Discussion"...who else wants to know what happens before and after this??? Especially if it's written this way!

And last but not certainly not least, I'm relating to this poem big time right now. I have some hard-time stuff going on at home, and even if it's not what this poem is "about" (ew), it's exactly how I feel at the moment. Is that now the best thing--when you can read a poem and get lost for a while, forgetting everything going on in real life?

6. She Wore Only Long Sleeved Shirts

As me free entry this week, I'm going to post the poem I submitted for the first round of work shopping. Of course, I've already gotten everyone's comments and I've read over them several times. We all can't get orally-workshopped every week, though, and I ended up actually kind of liking this one, the problem is...I apparently didn't get across what I intended to. For anyone that is willing to, I'd really like for you guys to read over it one more time, then read my explanation of what it was SUPPOSED to be about, reread the poem, and help me out on what to add or remove to make that more apparent.

(Ignore the "___", indenting doesn't take on the blog, so I needed to get a bit inventive.)

______________________________________________________
She Wore Only Long Sleeved Shirts

Every morning she put on a long sleeved shirt
and always took a pen.
___Because Dave was still talking to her
___about his wife; Because Renee, the adrenaline-obsessed
___secretary could do something unexpected.

Every afternoon she hid from nonfiction dialogue
and prayed for fictional pain.
___Tales of desperation and death
___with life and loss and truth scratched
___their places into her wrists and then held on like 4-D tourniquets.

Every day she missed someone calling her attention
until she had no name.
___But--potential exotic names slashed
___vertically up her wrists, vaguely attached to lovely notions:
___loneliness, betrayal, envy.

Every night she scrubbed those arms no one saw until they bled,
raw and clean and smooth.
___She started over
___in a world where spring air
___got to taste like kiwi pear chamomile tea.

But she'd never had kiwi pear chamomile tea
Or connected notion to product.
Fictional pain became too 4-D
And Dave and Renee were too selfish to care.

And when she died the only writing she was commemorated by
was a reminder that she should rest in peace.

______________________________________________________
Alright. So, I think this is a perfect example for how a writer can totally, completely understand one of their ideas and THINK they present it clearly, but the connection ends up only existing in their head. That's apparently what happened here, because I still understand this poem as what I meant for it to be, though I can certainly understand all of the connections everyone made in workshop.

It's supposed to be about a writer. She writes ideas for stories (plot lines, character names, etc.) on her arms, but wears a long sleeved shirt so no one can see--so she can try to still fit in with "normal" people (of course all of this was also supposed to be an obvious connection to suicide, also).

• Dave and Renee are characters.

• She's too obsessed with fictional things (fake characters, big themes like desperation and loss and life, obscure but beautiful descriptions, like a spring air that gets to taste like kiwi pear chamomile tea) to really live in the real world (which relates to "Every day she missed someone calling her attention/until she had no name.")

• Despite this, she washes her arms off every night and starts over and when she dies, she's produced nothing.

Yes, of course there is a connection to cutting and suicide (I was feeling particularly frustrated with writing that night), but it's meant to ask the question "Is what we do worth it? Why do we slave over something insubstantial? Does it even matter?"

Honestly, I was worried the suicide aspect wouldn't play up enough (although upon rereading it is more apparent than I realized), and was expecting everyone to understand that it was about a writer, but I don't think anyone really did. Very much the fault of myself and not the reader, of course!

So, basically, my question is: What should I add or detract, what images should I play up or details should I put in to make this more obvious, to make my point actually come across?

And I encourage everyone to do this, if you have a poem you want more feedback on that you weren't able to get on your off-week of workshopping!

5. One-Liners are not Heroic

I don't know if I can say I have a favorite type of stanza, or anything like that. I was...confused by the concept of a one-line poem. I guess it takes a lot of effort and talent to convey something in one line, where every single syllable counts, but I also don't feel that you can say a lot in one line. At least, nothing substantial? I guess I just feel that you need a couple of stanzas (or, rather, several lines considering a single stanza is acceptable). Of course, nothing is as dreaded as the prose poem I dislike so much!

If I have to pick a type, I'm most interested in the potential of heroic couplets. In the stanza packet we read it says, "it was a form in which a high subject matter could be written." I think you could play with that idea a lot, through irony or some other means. On nationhumanitiescenter.org it says: "What happens in poems has a lot to do with what is going on in a particular society at a particular time." That fits, too...how 21st century is it to take something nearly perfected in the past, something so classic, and pick it up and turn it on its head while keeping the essence of it? I don't know, but I just love the entire concept behind that.

4. In My Time of Dying, Music is Your Guardian Angel. It is Permanent, it is my Last Train Home: Music and Poetry

In reading everyone’s introduction posts, there was a theme that seemed to wiggle it’s way in every so often: Music. Though not everyone, it seems most of you have some kind of intense connection to music. Maybe it’s a direct response to being a group of creative individuals, but regardless of that reasons behind it, I’m really interested in the way it plays in to writing.

I’m sure I’m not the only one that listens to music while I’m writing. It’s part of my “creative process,” without a doubt. I generally write after reading something really great or seeing a movie that was fantastic--anything that inspired heightened emotion, really. I write best when surrounded by noise and activity (I’ve gotten over some of my most stubborn periods of writers block when sitting in a booth at the skating rink after I finish my shift). However, as much as I love having that commotion around me, I get distracted by people-noise, like talking or laughing, and so I use music to tune it out. Does any one else find it so easy to tune out a song you love even when it's blasting in your ears, when it’s so difficult to tune out your mother’s voice shouting about dinner?

Classical music is sometimes the best for me, maybe because of the lack of words. I can listen to pianos and violins and just instantly slip in to that zone (and I know you all know what zone I’m talking about). In the same fashion, I can listen to a great Three Days Grace song and be pumped to write something high-energy. David Cook, my personal emotional-savior, can inspire just about anything from me.

And then there are songs that I’ve come to associate with finished works--Ryan Star’s Last Train Home, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus’s Your Guardian Angel or the Foo Fighter’s My Hero. The same goes for Counting Crow’s Color Blind, or Bethany Joy Galeotti’s…anything. Listen to Bethany Joy’s Quicksand, at 2:20, and tell me the urgency in her tone isn’t beautiful? That it doesn’t make you want to write something that parallels it perfectly. These are all songs that inspired some piece of writing that I love and so listening to them either reminds me of that, or makes me want to write something else I love.

I mean, isn’t it great when I song just works and suddenly you realize you’re not the only person to have ever felt this way? Songs can be deciphered in a thousand different ways, just like poems.

How does that play out for all of you? What songs or bands inspire you? Or is there something else, some other component of your creative process that is an absolute must-have?

3. Modes of Creativity

I’ve had some pretty horrendous ideas for stories before.Stories, poems, scripts, everything.

Of course, at the time, they all seemed brilliant, worthy of critically-acclaimed attention, if only I would show someone. It makes me feel better that most of these ideas happened when I was younger (around 13 I wrote fifteen chapters about a girl named Cam…and nothing happens. In fifteen chapters, all she does is go to the park and talk to her friends. Sounds a little Mrs. Dalloway, huh? Too bad I'm not Virginia Woolf and I can definitely not pull that off).

Anyways, the point is, I think that maybe some of those horrible ideas I had, at the very essence of them, may have been heading in the right direction. Maybe whatever it was that I was trying to say could have become something substantial and I just wasn't using the right medium.

I took a class on Creativity a few semesters ago and I ended up having to address this topic. We used poetry, photography and another medium of our choosing (mine being painting) and it was basically about learing how to develop our of creative process. I had an idea for a poem that I desperately wanted to write; well, it was less of an idea really and more of the emotion inspired by an image. In the end, I realized that a poem wasn't right for this particular idea and I ended up using a painting instead. Granted I have no ability whatsoever when it comes to that mode of art, so I didn't accomplish what I'd hoped for, but it taught me something nonetheless.

As "poets" I think we need to be open to using other modes of expressing creativity, maybe we need to come to terms with the idea that all ideas aren't suitable for a poem. There's other genres of writing, of course: different styles of prose, short stories, scripts, etc., and then there are all other types of art....drawing, painting, music, sculpture, photography, just to name a few well-known ones. People create using everything from a paper and pen, to sheets of metal to what they find outside or in dumpsters.

I'm interested to know how all of you decide that your idea is best suited for poetry, and if you ever think to write it in another way. I'm primarily a fiction writer, so I lean towards that without thought, but sometimes I suddenly realize that maybe I need to think outside of the box a little. This discussion is particuarly important to my work because it's what this class is really all about for me...as I said, I'm not a poet. I shy away from it as often as possible and this semester I'm hoping to open myself up to another mode of creativity, or at least to the thought that not all ideas are necessarily right for prose.

How do all of you choose what form to express that creative inkling in? How do you decide what it will turn in to, what subject to use to transfer your meaning to your reader? Or, if you never think about anything other than poetry, how do you choose what form of poetry to write it in when there are so many different types? Is it a choice, or do you feel like the decision is made for you?

Who knows, maybe "BFF??" has unrealized potential and it just failed epically (as a serious poem, while soaring brilliantly as a joke poem) because it was being narrated in the wrong way.

2. Rhyming, Responsibility and Annabell Lee. Which one doesn't belong?

How do we choose our favorite poem? If it goes against everything we think about poetry, how can it be my favorite?

I want to point something out early in my blogging because it's something I strongly believe about writing and think it really applies to poetry, too, so I'd love to get everyone's opinion on it.

First and foremost: What is a writer/poets goal? What, even, is their duty, or... responsibility? Is our allegiance to ourselves, our work, or our audience?

I said, in my opening entry, something along the lines of: Writers write for themselves first, and then edit for other people later. That is basically the core of my beliefs when it comes to writing--that a writer should sit down with no one else in mind, should only write for enjoyment and, more particularly, to understand; to understand themselves (*ignore the cliche*), to understand their opinions on a subject, to...understand.

After that initial connection with a work, though, how does our responsibility change? Is it our "job"to make it relate to the reader, or does that fall in to their own hands? Should we just hand over our work and say "Here, world. Something happened to me, and I wrote this...make of it what you will, but if I change it at all, it won't be the same, so I won't. Deal with it."?

I started asking those questions tonight because I was thinking about my favorite poem. Every time I'm asked what my favorite poem is, I easily answer with the same one. "Annabell Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe.

Annabell Lee
Edgar Allen Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love -
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me -
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud one night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we -
Of many far wiser than we -
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling -my darling -my life and my bride,
In the sepulcher there by the sea -
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

This poem, essentially, goes against all of the things I believe about writing. Honestly, what do I know about the love of my life dying? About tuberculous? There is absolutely nothing in this piece that I can attach to, understand, relate to. Still, I love it. In general, I do not like poetry that rhymes at the end. Still, I love it.

Even more than that, I know the reason I love it is the rhythm of it, which of course is very much because of the end rhyming I usually hate so much. Everything I feel about poetry is negated in this favorite of mine.

Usually, I like to pick poems apart, decide word by word what it means, why it was chosen, what ulterior meanings I can give it that even the writer knew nothing of. I've never done that with Annabell Lee. I take it as a very surface level poem, a man mourning the loss of a love, something Poe could of course relate to. Maybe I love the poem because of that, or because I feel for the speaker despite not understanding his pain. Did Poe accomplish something, then? By making someone with no experience in this area, with absolutely no way of relating to the subject or the characters, sympathize with the narrator...did he do his "job," do justice to his responsibility? Am I justified in liking this poem because of that?

I guess, more than anything, I want to know if a writer has a responsibility. And if so, to whom? Again, I usually say that once you've reached the stage where you accept that your writing is more than personal (accept that you'll allow others to read it), you should accept that it is your job to make your reader understand, to take part in that self-knowledge you should have set out for. Am I right? Or do we have a responsibility only to ourselves? Or to someone else? Why do I love this poem that goes against what I thought I believed?

Thoughts, opinions, objections?

1. Inside Looking Out

Where to begin? It seems impossible to explain who I am in one short introduction, because I have nineteen years of ME, and if I can really sum that up in one blog entry, what does that say about who I am?

I could tell you I spend my weekends grinning as a party hostess or posing as Bat Girl, depending on my mother's mood, before changing out of my cartoon-character blue uniform and in to the person my group of tight-knit-always-feuding group of friends know. That girl is the type who carries at least two types of hand sanitizer at all times and is a little too honest with the people that matter. That girl is a fiction writer, whose essays are always three pages longer than they were allowed to be. That girl loves to go out to eat by herself, would rather see a movie alone than otherwise, and has a paralyzing fear of relationships that not even she herself understands, much less any one else.

I could tell you my favorite color (purple), or my favorite TV show (Charmed, followed by Supernatural). I could tell you about my parents, my younger brother and sister, the Venezuelan exchange student living in my house. We could discuss the plethora of books I adore, all for different reasons (The Time Traveler’s Wife, the Sword of Truth series, Pride and Prejudice, The Scarlet Letter. Twilight.)

I could tell you I’m a Sophomore at West Georgia this year, and all about wanting to be a fiction writer supporting herself with an Editing career. Maybe give you details on the fanciful image I have of myself in the future: living in a pristine glass house in the middle of the woods, being a normal, functioning person in society by day and a happy, partially-crazed writer by night.

And though all of that is entirely true, will anyone really remember that? Probably not. What you’ll come to know about me throughout the semester is who I am on paper (more real than anything else, and don’t you just love the juxtaposition of what I mean and what the saying “on paper” means? I do.); what aspects of my past, present and future life shape the writing I manage to produce.

You’ll see the affect my two wonderful, loving parents had on me…the two people who dragged me kicking and screaming from my comfortable life on Long Island, NY five years ago, insisting I would easily fall in love with our new home down South, where it the Summer season was so much longer (I hate the Summer season), the winters much less cold (I love the cold), and where there were still flowers in February (I mean, really, who cares?). In that same instant you’ll see a girl who doesn’t know how to coincide an adoration for her new, Southern friends with an intense longing for her best friend of fifteen years. In a way, you’ll all know me better than any of those people. You’ll see that, though I preach self-confidence to everyone with a pitiful expression on their face or a few self-loathing words, I wish I didn’t need everything straight, germ-free and in multiples of three.

I believe that you write for yourself first, and edit for other people later; that more than anything else a writer should use their work to learn what they think about a particular subject and then make it relatable for other people. I think writers need to be selfish, and then self-deprecatingly selfless. We need to be uncomfortable with writing, and we need to have a love-hate relationship with that discomfort, because as soon as we’re comfortable with it, we’re no longer writers. We need to have strong characteristics in order to know who we are, or we’ll lose ourselves to our characters whims. I believe that no one cares what we believe, and we need to know that, too.

Essentially, I believe writers live in a world of paradoxes, and I hate to love to hate that. I don’t really need to introduce myself fully, because anything I tell you now will be surface level compared to who I’ll become to you throughout the semester. I’m terrified of that, but I welcome the challenge.