Untitled

I want to swim in the clear, blue wide pool
But I'm use to the still stillness of open lakes
-the full green vines of bushes around
-the sweet thick musk of dew
-around is all natural
I kissed the shallow bottoms of rivers, smooth
-a constant flow of red cool
-a rush of needed movement
-perfect for life
I've dreamed of opaque oceans
-afraid of the body consuming wave, large
-Intrigued by the dark clouds, rains, lightening, a storm that may brew
-I'm unsure a dense body can float.
I want to swim in a pool
-trimmed
-clean, toxic to taste
-wind-whipped, unabashed.

G-r-r-r-r-reat more than Good

Hey Tony!
I like the things you do
Hey Tony!
You’re sitting in my bowl
A factory in China made this bowl,
But luckily it is blue
See, here is what had happened:
The white rabbit pinned for colour
He was taken away and made a fool out of.
So, Tony
You’re a tiger.
“Hello!” She said
God must have colored your lightning bolt stripes in, black
If children could they would be striped and in a blue bowl, too,
Yet we want wheat, miniature doughnuts touched with honey nut, Cheerios
Were they made in England?
A cup of milk will help Americans lose weight.
Hunched over Japanese elders never sipped on the tit.
There!
There she is Aunt Jemima: the mother of cornstarch maple syrup
Number One
She apologizes for not being cereal
Chocolate milk
Liquid fever is chalky in the end
Nesquik remnants
His sneakers are brown
He couldn’t have stepped in shit and dirt,
Since he did not have to pick a bean from the coca plant
Frosted flakes
“Grand to meet you,” a hopeless child said, “I will tell the spoon you have arrived”

This is Kinda for A No One

Dear Johne,

I know you’ve been watching me
because I’ve been watching you.
I think it’s time to stop now.
Stop looking out the window
for a tomorrow that will never come
why don’t you ease yourself into
your cold bed and settle
between your lonesome sheets, hmm?
Don’t wait for me to kiss your clammy
forehead. Just kiss your hands and sing
yourself a lullaby. Close your
Eyes and whisper my name,
“God’s never been closer to you”

Dear Johne,

You’ve been walking with death in front
of your toes and life behind your heels.
You’re frown has never been as deep.
I hear your foot steps have a blue beat,
and yet everyone is smiling their concerns
and laughing their sympathies at you.
Johnny, boy you’ve become a member of
the How Are You club. Where friends are
walking strangers. I know you’re striving to be
in High-Five society, but why don’t you slow
down. Success comes for only a few. Sit on
this bench here. Grab a bottle that will burn
going down. Close your eyes and just shake off the "How Are You’s."
Give them a reply of a quiet no-real-air-breath.

Dear Johne,

I can see you through those brown
black eyed tears, once so full of life.
Open them wider and wider, so
wide that the neon white lights can
bleach your eyes dead.
I can call you my perfect, now.

The Theif of Hearts

Dear Jane,
You’ve been through crimson silence.
On a green night I’ve seen your face turn crooked
with jealousy. Your hands slither down the
roads of belly buttons and long curls of
hair only to feel a heat that will not comfort.
You dip in raw, flesh on flesh,
until your body quivers with empty
exhaustion. Your sullen eyes hope
to replace the coat of sweet nothings on his
forehead with something that was never yours to begin with.
Rest by his side now, he’ll leave soon for a
automatic love and children who remember his name as:
“Bye.” He’ll remember you as the open-girl-next-door.
He’ll continue to slip in the back window and you’ll live
as his secret release.
Sincerely,
Dear Jane,
Your hands and breast are cold . Your
nipples are hard from abandonment and your
fingers are laced with last night. Their
scents will forever live on your body.
I hear you’re only laughing them away with hollowness
and unsuccessful triumph. And I see you’re
walking down the street with skin skins,
but these luring masks will never hide your beating shame.
Why don’t you wear underwear, hmm?
Stop opening your legs when your hear,
“Easy access.” Smoke this cigarette fill your
lungs with a slow death because your body can’t
handle the wheel of men, who assured you that their
automatic love is ending and there is a security within
the word, “Us.” Lay your head on your pillow for one
night and remember me, “Dear God for I have sinned.”

Sincerely,
Dear Jane,
I can see you through those red eyed tears.
Even through the crimson silence, I can see your hand searching for a day-night love. Let your
hands fill you because loves comes only for thieves.

Yours sincerely.

A Facebook Wall Story: Dedicated to Charlie, Jonia, and Innocent

A FaceBook Wall Story:

I screamed, "Love me, love me! Why won't you love me?" From in a relationship to single; I was depressed, and then

a great wind blew in the window as if there wasn't enough air to breathe in a house; a storm had to brew to get me to see the vastness of my living room. There is loneliness in contentment, so I took a few steps outside.

--

I felt social. Five hundred and sixteen friends.

--

Just above me there were heavy, saturated with moisture and warmth clouds. Even though they're miles away they've manage to say, "Hello. I'm here for you." The walls wear no expressions, but they still hear me. . . and when I'm not watching they steal everything I own. . . I still can't find my shirt and my computer died a curious death. I stopped watching porn a long time ago, but there were still viruses. The inanimates our out to break us, but "I'm not a toy, do not toy with me I breathe!" But I think there are four walls for a reason:

September Box us in.

December Cage us up like chickens.

February Rip our skins.

May Steal our hands and feet for soups.

See More

-

“Hello dear,” her shriveled hands covered my skin, “Have you ever tasted real chicken noodle soup?”

--

Samantha Rodriguez and Jak Mussington Cooper are now friend with. . . “Damn, just limit your profile, so no one can read your wall”

--

I do not want to be a mystery. Honest Box: Do you believe I am a quiet person?

--

I'm a troublemaker, I hate college, I love parties, and single doesn’t mean I’m looking for somebody. 8 hours ago. Comment. Like.

--

When people die their FaceBooks live on. Jonia Mendonca Guterres, Charlie Scanlon, Innocent Mutetwa they do not appear on our news feeds . . . and their names are bold and black not like the hyperlink blue. Facebook somehow knows they’re dead.

--

I do not have enough friends, but I will not add just anyone. Just because your last name is ‘Mussington’ does not mean that I should add you . . .

--

It could have happened when I was on FaceBook, Jonia must have died while I was scrolling up and down her profile, commenting on pictures, commenting on her friends, commenting on her life, but I wasn’t there.

--

Jonia went down to the river by herself, removed her towel from her petite waste, and began to swim. The water was cold, since it had been raining up until then, but her body began to adjust once her head was fully submerged. She treaded water until she was comfortable with the temperature then she decided to do laps in circles. Suddenly, a sharp pain ran up her leg, a muscle spasm. She kicked and thrashed about to get above the water, but she was in too deep. Water rushed into her mouth; she tried to call for help.

--

I logged off.

Series of Mediocre Events: Romance

Series of mediocre events:

I'm happy because I'm done with work! Turned off the computers, music equipment, closed up the music library, swing open the doors and of course it is raining. I'm wearing a short-sleeved, v-cut, lime green shirt, high waters, and pink oxford tennis shoes (I know I'm not matching, but at least I'm not wearing white). Before I go down the stairs I hesitate, testing to see how hard the rain is falling.

It's raining really fucking hard and to make matters worse the wind is blowing, so once I move from the protection of the terrace a thousand and one water droplets are going to smack me in the face and they do.

Now I'm running home, the rain can make you do crazy things look at Spiderman and MaryJane and all those other romantic movies and scenes that involve making out (sex) and rain! I run across the grass and mud, Hulet and Jenks, and I'm on the path that leads to parking lot.

This average white guy (I mean come on I'm in Canton, NY and a black guy in the rain that's asking for too much! It's like asking for fried chicken in Dana! . . . plus as Sam has pointed out: a black guy running in the rain would be considered ghetto (he must be running from the cops) for a white guy it's innovative, romantic (he's running to his lover)) with groceries comes out of no where. He's running really fast. He runs past me and our shoulders bump.

He looks back. I look back.

He calls out, "I'm sorry."

"It's all right," I say loud enough.

Womanhood

Goo-bity-goop
flowing down from

the middle.

The first time tears
mixed with blood.
On her knees
Her lips quiver
pretending to imitate
the joy
of womanhood.

Gut Feelings

If a man makes you feel. . .

All the when-when-whenevers {giggles}
Whenever you think about his face
Whenever his smile crosses your lips
Whenever his eyes become a stare
Whenever that small freckle under his chin is your sweet spot for him
Whenever the smell of his hair can be traced on your clothes
All the when-when-whenevers {giggle}

Well, I- you know, well don't you?
I-I get those butterfly flutter feelings
The fluttering, bubbling in my womb is
My bodies reaction to his everything.
I'm queasy with ill love, love poisoning
And I need to rush to get him out of my system.
I need a second, space, so I can double over and
Breathe out this fever
The green bile that's rising from my throat
Is his commitment
Slicked with his saliva
I'm quivering with sweat because I-I . . .
I need to shit,
He gives me diarrhea

All the when-when-whenevers have come together and I need a toilet.

. . .Tell him, "You make my stools loose."

To Shy-Momo

Shy-Momo I think you are very annoying.

You're not like Semi at all. . .

You're so damn needy, too damn needy, but I understand.

I found you in a green fishnet bag with your brother or sister

And in a cage with white rabbits that were larger than you.

It took you a while to start liking me, but I understand.

You were up at 5 AM, decided to claw at my skin, then you licked me with your rough tongue,

and then you meowed so damn much,

so I gave you milk and moistened cat food.

You're so annoying. . . I also think I am allergic to you, since

I woke up with red puffy crying eyes

I don't like you

But in many ways I love you.

Shy-Momo I hope you stop hiding under the bed and furniture soon.

Don't piss on my clothes !

Don't shed !

I want to hide you in my dresser. . . but

I understand it takes time for kittens like us to adapt to our surroundings and eat a full meal. . .

And stop hiding under beds

And not claw when touched,

So I understand why I need to spoon feed you and give you time and space.

But you're so very annoying

I don't like you very much

But in many ways I love you.

But I'm going to shave off your fur.

Open ended promise

dear dearest. . .

I'm well now, but

not as, as can be

touchable and in touch

I promise to stay in reach.

series of emotional movements (dedicated to 21)

series of emotional movements (dedicated to age 21 also dedicated to the bracketed we, not the plural form of I)

“I wish I didn’t date so many pushy women? Next time. . .”

-

“When you come back from Korea maybe we can. . .”

-

“. . .”

-

Yes, I told him, but I was thinking, 'No.'

-

No, I told him, but I was thinking, 'Yes.'

-

Yes, I told her, but I was thinking, 'No.'

-

No, I told her, but I was thinking, 'Yes.'

-

"Please let's be. . .” I begin.

-

Please let's be, I want.

-

“Fluid?” I asked

-

He didn't understand what I meant by. . .

-

She didn't understand what I meant by. . .

-

I meant an ever-changing . . .

“. . . You can do better than him. . .”

She can hear her friend’s words, but she doesn’t believe her.

“What’s good with her? She’s all right looking, but you can do better than her. . .”

He can hear his friend’s words, but he doesn’t believe him.

-

“What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

We can hear our friend’s words, but we don’t believe in ourselves, that is what wrong with us.

-

He wants to point a finger at all his friends. She wants to point a finger at all her friends; somehow their friends’ perspectives have lead to this:

Heartache

Temporary Heart Ache

Hurt Feelings

Temporary Hurt Feelings

Feelings of Loss

Temporary Feelings of Loss

Absence of Heat

Temporary Absence of Heat

---

Actually, it often happens in a quiet area, where the pavement stretches to no place important. It is in these places we become decisive and everything about everything is wrong.

-

I called person number seven on the telephone after I wished, in a text message, the connection we were creating never existed and all the promises he was touching thumbs to were sugared.

-

Just before the twelve text messages I called person number eight and asked if he would be willing to meet me in a café somewhere downtown in the center of New York City.

-

Just before confronting person number eight, I called then texted person number nine,

‘Hello.’

‘What happened?’

‘Is everything all right?’

‘How’s your grandfather? Arts and crafts session?’

But after the summer I was given the silent treatment.

-

I just wanted an honest answer. They all wanted an answer. . .

-

Do I belong in your life? Or am I a piece wedged in?

-

I'm sure I don't because I am too complex. . .

-

“Well it’s because. . .” He twiddles his thumbs then grabs the cup of coffee that is in front of him.

-

I never asked to be treated or seen as a princess. . .

I never asked for candied nothings. . .

I never asked to be trusted, but . . .

-

I wanted to slip into these fantasies.

-

I often leave without a real explanation. I don't want to hear the truth.

-

“Because. . . I just want you. . .”

-

While I was on the phone I recited to myself that I didn’t want person number seven; however I still asked if he wanted to be friends. He said, “Yes.” I asked him if he was sure.

-

But why?

-

“. . .”

-

“I like you for who you are. . . I mean. . .”

-

“Sweetheart. . .”

-

“. . .”

-

“I. . . I,” he released a sigh, “I’m sorry I ruined the mood.”

-

‘Keep aimlessly smiling, tell everyone what they want to hear, so that you’ll never lose these sources of comfort.’

-

“. . .Stay. . .”

-

". . ."

-

“I could treat you like a princess. . .”

-

". . ."

-

“I. . . I-I’m sorry. . . I’m confused."

-

We all were.

---

My final message to and conversation with person seven and person eight, since both of them seemed to be wishing me wellness was: 'A chicken can't fly because it never stepped off the branch nor can a fish breath air because it wasn't born on land. Wishing is for water and air breathers.'

-

In a round about way I meant don't make promises that are well over your limits; you see I just wished them well, it sort of ended there.

-

Perhaps I was just being stupid.

4 to 5

The radio is on fire, but he doesn't need no water just Sean Paul and the elixirs of 21 it will undoubtedly give her stains in her underwear, but this night will just burn away leaving ashes, a trail of mice droppings, as evidence for this arbitrary moment of sweat and two bodies.

The lights are on and off like video game seisures, they all have something to hide; she and he are ugly during the day. In the darkest corner they coincide in the rhythm of lust, it doesn't need to lead to a bed, just a reminder of who they can be in the light.

Ahhh! I didn't die! Oh and Goodbye

So, I was really sure I was going to die at the poetry reading. Luckily, I got sick with a stomach virus on tuesday, so I was distracted from my anxiety. In fact, I didn't feel my anxiety that much at all, which allowed me to sing in my highest voice that song. Hope no one's eardrums exploded. I was very glad I was able to come this far with the help of this course. I had a great semester and I learned a lot of cool and interesting things to do with my poetry. Thanks for an awesome poetry class guys. It was really awesome to be around you all. Goodbye =]

Last Blog!

So I was surprised at how easy it was to read at the poetry readings. I thought overall everyone did a really great job, and a lot of the performances were really creative and intriguing. I thought it was interesting to hear everyone's unique personalities and styles come alive. Everyone reads their poems aloud during workshops, but a lot of times that is more rote reading off of the page, where as everyone's stage presences were a lot more involved and lively. I was very nervous to read my poem. I do not do well with public presentations and I am especially nervous when reading something that I have personally written. I was truly surprised by how easy and painless it actually was. Overall I thought the poetry readings were some of the most valuable and enjoyable assignments we have done all semester. Great job to everyone on their reading!

New Addresses

I chose a book of poems by Kenneth Koch. He currently resides in New York City and teaches at Columbia University. I purchased his book from the book store because I was immediately attracted to the cover. The book is titled New Addresses and looks as if the cover is filled with hand sketched drawings and segmented poems which make it look like a private diary. When I opened it up, the titles of the poems that are listed in the contents are captivating and grasped my interest. For example, To My Twenties, To Psychoanalysis, To Testosterone, To Piano Lessons, To Carelessness, To Living In the City, To Insults, To Fame, To My Fifties are just to name a few.

Reading the poems, I learned that the individual poems work together in a cohesive manner by using lines or phrases from earlier works in Koch's book (assuming the reader started with page one and so on and so forth...). Each poem is addressing something, hence the title, New Addresses. As he addresses his topic of choice, the poems speak out to readers such as me, yet he was from an older generation, like my grandparents age (me being 21). Koch makes the reader feel as if his poems could have been a stream of consciousness during his earlier years. His technique is not extremely abstract but made me think of surrealist poetry and the New York School of Poets we had studied earlier in the semester; this observation was funny as I came to find out Kenneth Koch was a poet of the New York School where he knew people like John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara.

Kenneth Koch writes about the addressing topic by using the pronoun "you" a lot; I feel like this technique works because when I use "you" in poems it allows my readers to consider themselves as the "you" or the poem can relate to the reader, making them feel as if they are the speaker and the "you" is someone they know. As I came to see how the "you" makes the writer's poems relate to his readers, I also felt the situations and the way the incidences happened in his poems are techniques which emphasis the poems' uniqueness.

The order he chose for his poems made the book more personal than if he were to lay them out in any other order. I write a lot of personal poems which I am going to put in a particular order for my chapbook in hopes of making my work more personal as a whole, but relatable as individual poems. Koch’s poetry includes a lot of poems in which people can relate to, but personal at the same time. I believe the order in which a poet sets up his or her book is a technique that makes the piece of work very personal. My chapbook will also use a technique which allows my personal issues to relate to my readers just like Koch has. I'd like to think my poems are pretty "straight-forward" and, therefore called prose poetry. Well, the poet and I had something else in common because his poetry was to the point as well! All the similarities I share with this poet made me appreciate his work even more.

When I think of poems that acknowledge the poet’s personal experiences, I can't help but think about Christian Bok. I remember he mentioned how he came about his style of poetry because it was a style that was almost as dead as Latin and he had told his friends that he would never write poems about himself. So, if you are a fan of sound poetry, then maybe this book isn't for you. However, when you can make personal poems as witty, relatable and entertaining as Kenneth Koch, including the snazzy cover, then you must take a glance at New Addresses and other poems about a happy, healthy life!

book review # 2

So the book I chose to review was The Bride of E by Mary Jo Bang. I found it just by walking through the browsing section of ODY and leafing through a couple different books of poems. It grabbed my attention because it was structured around the alphabet and kind of reminded me of some of the poets we have been reading during class. In particular I was reminded of Christian Bok's Eunoia, because the praise on the back of the cover claimed that through writing the book Bang discovered that each letter in the alphabet appears to have their own personality. Bok once spoke about he thought each of the vowels from his Eunoia had their own personality too, and the idea of letter and words has having their own identity and personality has really intrigued me this semester.

The entire text is structured around the alphabet, though some letters have more poems than others. Some titles are centered wholly around the letter, such as C is for Cher, while others such as In the Present and Probable Future just address ideas relatable with the letter P.
My favorite poem is actually the first one in the book. It is called ABC Plus E: Cosmic Aloneness is the Bride of Existence. It describes girls flirting with boys in bars, and seems to critique the strange way people cling to eachother and seek partners only because they are alone. I really liked how it was written, but I also liked a poem that critiqued love instead of praising it as so many poems seem to do. It seemed like a really fresh idea to me.

Though the overall structure of the book is obviously the alphabet, the book is also divided into two different parts. Part one seems to follow the sequence of the letters while Part two seems a little more interesting because while each poem is still attached to a specific letter and idea, they are not ordered in any particular way and only the letters G, J, S, L, and U are addressed. Overall , I really enjoyed the poems in this book and would definitely recommend it to others.

Failure-Philip Schultz

I decided to read Failure Poems by Philip Schultz, published in 2007. I chose it because I tend to be drawn to poems that are passionate and filled with emotion, ones that make a reader feel. Even if the emotions are those of intense failure, they still are about a feeling and I get a great deal from them. As it turned out, this book of poems was about a range of “failures”, every day failures that are entirely relatable to the regret of death to fear, even the fear of losing new found success.
Each poem reveals a little about Schultz’s life, both past and present. He is married, in his early sixties, and has two young sons. He has known sadness, depression, death, regret, but even in these failure poems, the reader understands that his sons and wife have, in a way, saved him from some of that.
The poem Talking to Ourselves (p. 2) is one that surprised me and made me think about the theme of the book because on its own it does not seem like a poem of failure. In two sentences per person Schultz tells the stories of four different people and himself talking to themselves or just saying a word or two out loud and what those utterances meant. The context of each is where the failure happens, but he writes the poem so that each word is heavy with regret or confusion. He obviously had a troubled relationship with his own father, and in the poem The One Truth (pp. 46-7) he says: “is this what failure is,/to end where he began,/no one but a deaf dumb God/to welcome him back,/his fists pounding at the gate” (47). It feels here like the whole book has been working up to that moment and from there everything is a bit clearer.
In terms of format, Schultz doesn’t do anything too formal in his poems. Most are written in full sentences; it is where he chooses to break the sentences into lines that emphasizes his voice. The poem My Dog (p. 17) is about the death of Schultz’s dog and it’s written in five stanzas of three lines each. Two of the stanzas end in the middle of a sentence and the sentence is continued on in the next one. I think this was done purposefully to illustrate his inability at first to let go of his dog and in that way he used the format of the poem to convey more than his words could.
The poems aren’t particularly long or complex, but they say a great deal about Schultz as a person. A young writer might look at his silences and his ability to say a lot and convey great emotion in just a few words.

Book Review #2

For my second book review I decided to read:
Six Sections from Mountain and Rivers without End Plus one by Gary Snyder.

This book is very simply presented (and the library version is currently in pretty shabby condition): a solid blue paperback cover with the title and author written in plain font and nothing written on the back except for the price of $2.25 in the left bottom corner. Under the title and author on the front cover is a drawing that seems like it could be a scribble someone drew in a classroom. But this is what I liked about it. This cover is not ostentatious or pretentious, it doesn't beg for your attention. It feels as if the poems inside can hold their own, they don't need any aid from a flashy cover. It is only 44 pages, and as the title suggests, it contains seven poems all by Gary Snyder.

I enjoyed the poems themselves very much. They're written in a narrative style in both what seems to be his voice and the voice of others (in one poem a high school aged girl who is pregnant talking about a river). They are all written using different methods of writing, which keeps things interesting. The first poem reminds me of Jack Karouac's "Dharma Bums", as Snyder he talks about going hiking in the Sierras and the style is somewhat (obviously there are difference between poetry and prose. The second is the voice of the pregnant girl. The third describes experiences in different cities or towns along a highway on a trip taken by hitch hiking. The towns are listed along the right side of the page adjacent to their descriptions on the left. I thought this was especially cool, especially with the intent of the poem. The fourth may be my favorite, and is describing what someone is experiencing while under the influence of what ever it is that they were under the influence of.
Etc, etc, etc.
The last poem uses images (drawings), that look like native-american symbols to separate different sections of the poem. Different languages are used and it almost seems like a song or chant when they're used... like the drawing/symbols indicate a "sing-along" time as they sometimes do in books for religions practices or other situations I can't think of right now. It reminds me of books used in Jewish practices when there is both Hebrew and English translations of things and both are read (I'm not Jewish, so I don't really know that much about this).
Well, now that I've given you a silly summary of most of the poems in the book, I suggest you go read it for yourself. All of the poems really drew me in and kept me interested. I guess the cover was right, the poems could stand on their own. Good job, cover. Yeah.

Cyber Poetry

I thought our discussion in class yesterday was really important. I went to class not liking cyber poetry at all, but our exercise we worked on as a class and hearing other people's opinions changed the way I was feeling about cyber poetry. I didn't like the style while I was doing the reading simply because I didn't get it. When Theo asked me about my opinion and why I felt weird about the style, I said, "I don't know, it was weird!" I had no specific reason except for the style being too complicated for me to understand.
I had never heard of cyber poetry till now. When our class came up with a list of visual and cyber like poetry, I learned that this genre of poetry has a wide range. I reading liked the "choose your own adventure poetry." I thought it was going to be easy then it really was when I constructed on with my partner. But, instead it confusing and we did it completely different then we were supposed to. (I wonder if our construction could still be called poetry.) I like how everyone else's turned out and I felt like other people got as confused as we did. However, the activity overall showed me the art behind the genre which involves cyber poetry.

Flarf and conceptual writing

After going through some of the readings today I would have to say that I am more drawn to the Flarf school of cyberpoetry than the Conceptual. I felt like the poem from Blackice that we read was more or less just technological nonsense. I found it difficult to read because I didn't know what to do with the website addresses or double slashes in the middle of the lines. Probably because of all the attention we have been giving to performance poetry in preparation for our own poetry reading, I couldn't help but wonder if cyberpoetry will ever be able to escape the computer screen and be performed? Maybe it already has, but I wondered how a poet would perform something like that, and what the audience might lose by not seeing such a technological poem in its original technological environment. So much of the inspiration for both schools of cyberpoetry is derived from the internet and computer that I think it would be interesting to see if the content of the poem transferred when read aloud and was removed from the computer screen. It will be interesting to see what comes up in discussion for today's class.

Randy Hill and Performance

So, I guess you can say I'm a little bit less nervous about performing in the next coming week. At first, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to do it. I wanted to drop the course in the beginning of the semester because of my anxiety and being in front of everyone. I know people say to pretend like everyone is naked...but that doesn't help. Nothing normally does...so I'm hoping above all things,I'm able to do it.
Randy Hill definitely opened up my mind to new things I could do. I found what he said helpful and kind of uplifting. The ability to perform might be hard at first, but I'm hoping that with these new ideas I have came up with, I'm going to give a solid performance and then panic off stage. I have changed my Black Ink poem into something a little more readable for me to perform. I think I will have to do that with all my poems, change them to make it easier for me to perform them.

Performance Poetry: Randy Hall

I loved the class speaker yesterday! I thought he made everyone in the class a little less nervous to read in front of people later on this semester. Personally, I don't feel and never felt nervous to read my poems in public, however Randy Hall did make me more intrigued and excited to read in front of people. I enjoyed learning about all the option a reader has in order for him or her to make there poetry more entertaining. I thought that Randy was also well prepared for our class because his presentation made everyone more comfortable. The little hints that he gave to make a reader more prepared were so useful too.
When he had all of us stand up and do certain exercises to show us how to prevent passing out from being so nervous I found these techniques were important to know. I felt a lot of the tips he gave us we can use in the future for any type of public speaking. As he began to tell us how we should respect our poems and every line in our poems it made me look at publicly reading our poems in a different way. I feel as if my approach to reading my poems for people has totally changed in such a way that I feel more prepared and excited. I hope people feel the same way and are as excited as I am.

Performance Poetry

So I really enjoyed today's class. I am honestly really nervous for our poetry reading so I thought it was very helpful to have some pointers on to present. It never really occurred to me how technical actually figuring out how to read a poem could be. I thought a lot of the ideas he discussed about what people did in his performance poetry class as a technique of presenting the poem was really interesting. Other than Christian Bok's reading which i thought was very different and surprising I have never seen live poetry presented in any other way besides the traditional stand in front of the room and recite. I especially liked the poetry video we watched at the end of class. I think it must be a really interesting experience to see your work translate from a page into a movie clip like that. It is interesting though to consider that if that is poetry, where the line between poetry and other forms of art really exists.
On another note I am a little nervous for workshop tomorrow because I am not sure I wrote my poem in the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E tradition. I think I am in the same boat as Chesney, I read the packet but a lot of it seemed to go over my head and it wasn't until we discussed it in class the next night that I started to feel like I understood a little bit better what they were going for. So hopefully my poem wasn't too too far off base!!

The Language Book

I am so nervous for this weeks poem. After reading every one's blog I would have to say I feel more lost then they do. As I was reading the language assignment for today's class, I felt it was hard to understand what was going on. The poems we read were very abstract which made it hard for me to understand the purpose behind each and every poem in the book.
That being said, that was my first impression. After we had gone over some of the poems, I started to feel a little more at ease. I felt that everyone had the same feeling as I did coming onto class that day. As we all began to discuss the ambiguities found within certain examples I began to appreciate them more. For example, we talked about the ANTI-SHORT STORY. Carry had mentioned the meaning as if it was a poem alluding to a longer story behind this short story. Theo had mentioned the meaning as if it was a poem talking about a scenario, but the purpose was to ignore the beginning and the ending of it, and to just soak in the present moment which was "She's running for her bus."
This just happens to be my current feeling about the language book, but since my opinion has changed once, I'm sure it can happen again. So, who knows if I will actually enjoy writing my own form of Language poetry?

salt lines

so i went to the salt lines workshop since i missed the christain bok one, and it was pretty cool. we listened to each of the poets read some poetry and then we all discussed our feelings about the poems, and other feeligns that they brought up. one of my favorites was a poem one of the speakers read related her inner feminist, she called FIM, to knitting and the progression of hte poem made knitting seem like a common, almost mandatory, female activity at first and in the end it became a unique hobby, and somehow it was badass. it was cool to discuss the concepts of sexuality and gender identity with all of the speakers and each other. after each short discussion we got to do a free write session, being a workshop, and racked up about 5-6 writings total. we were able to share one or two at the end and get everyone, especially the presenters, feedback on our writings. it was ncie to go to a workshop the focused on a specific topic, rather than style of writing because all the feedback and thoughts were put to use over and over in each free writing session

The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E book

I don't know if my last poem would count for this language poetry/sound poetry. From reading the packet, I have gathered how much poetry has been changed to more concrete and deeper meanings than that of sound poets. The tribal sweat bath poem we read in class and just our whole discussion of this language poetry made me kind of understand more of what the purpose of these poems are. This kind of poetry seems to be more about the language/ words used in the poems than the content itself. I find this kind of odd, because I normally start out writing a poem with a certain concept in mind or a meaning I want to come across. I think the actually process of writing a language poem would involve so much effort or more than what I normally put into it, which is why I'm kind of afraid of attempting the assignment due on tuesday, because it is a language poem. I really have no clue how I'm going to go about writing it and I'm hoping we talk about it in class because my mind is not comprehending the possibility of me writing one of these poems. At times, I find myself completely confounded by the art of these poems that I really don't even want to try and write one. But since we have to for class, my best effort will go into the completion of one. I'm really hoping we talk about this in class and are given more examples to go off of. =/

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

I was reading the into to the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry handout and I thought that it brought up some really interesting ideas. It reminded me a lot of what Christian Bok said and some of the things Dominique talked about in her post. Bok talked a lot about how he decided never to write a poem about his feelings or own personal life experience, because he felt it made him a mediocre poet. He said he thought his success came primarily from his inventiveness with form and sound rather than writing about himself like the majority of other poets. The language handout seemed to also advocate this kind of abstract poetry that centers more on form and innovative use of language rather than actual content. I think this genre and brand of poetry can be incredibly interesting, but I also feel that poetry is in some ways losing a lot of it's readability and connection to the everyday reader. I feel that a lot of modern poetry can only really be appreciated by poets. In my own opinion I think the n+7 is the perfect example of this. I wrote one for my constraints assignment earlier this year, and I couldn't help but feel like I was playing madlibs and the product was nonsense. I don't feel like someone could just pick up an n+7, not knowing what it is and really appreciate it's linguistic virtue, because seemingly to most people it's just random nonsense. I know in techniques Theo talked a lot about the Oulipo and Dada movements and how a lot of contemporary art is considered art because of the process involved in creating it, rather than for the product created. I think is an interesting take on art, but I also wonder if art is moving towards more value placed upon process than product, eventually won't art only be appreciated by those who understand the process and not those who merely like to enjoy the product?

blog (with two dots over the O)

Of course this is a few days late because I alwaysalwaysalways forgot to post in here... yikes.
Seeing Christian Bok this past week got me thinking about the different genres of poetry and how hard everyone tries to keep breaking boundaries and going to the next extreme and there's gotta be farther we can push our writing and speaking isn't there?
But what is it all for?
I really enjoyed Bok's reading. The guy's pretty out there, and I agree that we need more writing like that. It's interesting, it makes us wonder why we've never thought of that before. And that goes with concrete poetry and poetry that uses words to create shapes and poems using letters solely for their sound. I particularly loved his works using all of the vowels and using only words that had those vowels in them. It really drew me in and had such an interesting sound because the way all the words sounded the same and each vowel gave each section a completely different feel. In conversational language we often forget that words SOUND the way they are meant to be felt... well, not always, but a lot of the time.
But, okay. How is this contributing to the greater writing world? To the world outside poets? Is it accessible? Does that even really matter? Are those writers just writing for other writers?
Trying out the sound poetry for ourselves was pretty fun. It's amazing the way we have to train our mouths to makes shapes they haven't made before. Can using unique sounds from other languages for the English language be made into a poem? How would we even know how to pronounce it?
And gosh I loved his idea of implanting poetry into DNA, although I had trouble wrapping my head around it. And the idea of poetry with Legos is pretty cool too... whose going for k'nex(t)? (That wasn't supposed to come off sarcastically, although it might seem like it.) I think that kind of poetry might be the next step... exhibitionist poetry? Demonstrative poetry? People performing poetry not just through their mouths and words in the streets. Contortionist poetry? Who knows who knows. And then... what's the border between poetry and other types of contemporary art? Are all the lines beginning to blur here? Have they always? What does it mean to be an artist these days anyway?
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

late but great, book

The Rose That Grew From Concrete, by Tupac Shakur

I know this is a bit late but I still wanted to read this book and……Holy shit. It is amazing. I sat down to read it and was left wanting sooo much more after I had read the last poem. Tupacs poetry is so different than his rapping and if you couldn’t tell from his songs, his poems show that his words are truly form the heart and soul. I was blown away after reading some poems and am just motivated to write now. For the lovers of long elaborate poems, Tupac may not satisfy you b.c he works in a short-but-sweet style, but dam he says a lot. Many of the poems are working with somewhat predictable rhyme schemes, because he uses the common AB style in most of his poems giving them a somewhat romantic feel. He does branch out a few times to work with more contemporary styles being free verse or other experimental styles. One of the best parts of this book is its realistic feel. In both the physical sense, and the emotions that he conveys. What I mean by physicality is that every poem in the book has 2 copies, on adjacent pages. One is an exact photocopy of what he wrote in his notebook, and the other is a typed copy of the poems. The photocopy is awesome because you are getting more of the poets personality out of the poem. Tupacs handwriting gives you more information of the kind of man he was, or was at the time. Also he has his own loosely defined key he uses, but never defines, in his poetry. Many times he will replace the word ‘I’ with a small drawn picture of an eye. He also uses a lot of ‘AIM’ lingo we use or used to. 2= to, two, too; a heart= love, heart; U=you etc. the overall feel of reading the poetry seems entirely more authentic then when you see his handwriting and graphics, and doodles and pictures he has drawn within, or around the poem. The other reality is that everything he talks about is somewhat introspective about his life or struggles. Nothing is hollow like so many hip hop songs out there. Theres nothing about money, bitches, or hoes. Its all about the struggle of poverty, his emotions, admitting he cries, his search for his place in the world, what happens if he dies… tupac the poet, is very different, yet linked with, tupac the rapper. I would 100% recommend this book to every poet regardless of who they are, and anyone else for that matter.

Bok Bok!

I really had fun when Christian Bok came to our class. I found him to be very bright and entertaining. I was quite embarrassed when we had to perform. At first I felt like a chicken, but once we warmed up and we participated as a class I began to enjoy sound poetry.
Later on that night, when we had a chance to listen to some of his other work, I found it to be a little weird. I wondered what was he thinking while creating most of his works. I bet he disrupted the entire second floor of Sykes when he performed that monster from the opera Bok was in. No wonder he said that there is not many of his kind left, because no one else would do that!
However, I know what he meant when he said there is no one as good as him in his genre left as he referred to himself as being the "top dog of sound poetry." Knowing this particular case, whether he is acting out a lunatic monster or performing his Mario/Lego poetry, he is never the only one. He might be the best for now, but I definitely agree with Theo when she says, "only until someone else breaks and goes beyond Christian Bok's barrier."

Christian Bok

The friend I was sitting with at Christian Bok's reading HATED his everything. It was funny, while he performed she choked her self with invisible objects, fell asleep, and rushed out without applauding and murmuring, "he's not my style." She noted how pretentious he seemed in a phrase less subtle than "pretentious." I don't agree or disagree, since it was her experience, but it made me wonder what is it about poetry that can make a person sway in their seat? Is it the persona? Her and I have gone to a number of poetry readings just a bizarre and close to experimental as Christian Bok's work and she's more often than not walked out with good vibes jamming between her middle fingers and thumbs. Snap, "I want his autograph." I compared and contrasted the situation to Saul Williams and Urban Vibez (or some name with 'urban' with it the name slips my bill). These are some of the poets that have come to SLU.

These are just some of the things my friend said about the poets:

Saul Williams

Willing to answer questions in the middle of his performance
Did not perform behind a podium or on a stage

Urban Vibes (pending name)

Asked audience members to dance, enjoy
Spoke with the audience

Christian Bok

Talked about his credentials and awards (I would boast too)
Not very inviting (she stressed how "not very inviting" he was)

It seems like, for her at least, a connection between the audience is needed for her to be down with what is going on. But I'm wondering, and I asked her, what if that was the persona he was trying to delve into? She really didn't respond.

I personally like Christian Bok for his newness and screeching. I loved his Ubu. I think he was trying to scratch at the persona, since a) he is a performer, especially if we are thinking about sound b) the man wants to create a poem that will last until the end of time. He has to distance himself from emotion as he said before he doesn't talk about himself, well he means in poetry, and thus I felt some weird sense of 'he's some-type of android.' Not really, but seriously.

Christian Bok

I was also really impressed by Christian Bok's performance. I thought he was a really interesting performer and it was definitely a different kind of poetry than I am used to hearing. Before his visit I had never considered some of his forms of sound poetry as legitimate poetry before and in particular, beat boxing. I never knew that you could write a score for beat boxing and in that sense it could be considered a poem. During our workshop and just knowing how much I struggled to mater one line of sound poetry, i can see now that a lot more work and artistry goes into both creating and performing sound poetry than i ever actually considered. I think it would be really interesting to try and experiment with sound poetry, but after hearing some of it, I am not sure I would even know where to begin? I also thought his excerpts from his book Eunoia were really intriguing and I especially thought his comment that each vowel seemed to have a personality completely unique and different from any other of the vowels was especially interesting. Overall I was really impressed by his visit both from his work and his ability to perform it.

Christian Bök

I guess I'm be the first to say it, but I was totally blown away by Christian Bök's performance on Thursday night. He's obviously talented and a unique artist. He's ability to perform a whole poetic sonata in 10 minutes is crazy! I was amazed at how fast he read through his poetry. At the reading, when he was performing the piece from the Canadian play (that took place on a lake) I sorta lost it. There was something unbelievably funny about that piece, I was in tears because I was laughing so hard. I don't know if it was the screaming or the "scene" I was picturing in my mind, but I found it to be hilarious. I brought my friend Alanna with me, she had absolutely no idea what to expect (which was awesome) and she shot me a look in the middle of the performance that said something like, "what the heck did you bring me to?" I glad others were laughing too, if it had just been me I would have felt pretty awkward. I'm interested to hear how everyone else felt about him. I got one impression of him when he was at workshop, and another when he was performing, and assisting us in performing. All around, I was really happy with his visit, he was a great addition to the visiting writers series here at SLU!

Book Review 1

Reading the poetry book Averno, by Louise Gluck, helped me to realize why this assignment requires us to not simply review an anthology, but a book of singular poems which an author placed in the same text specifically because they mean something more significant together that they could explain apart. The main theme contained by Averno is found in the concept of Greek Mythology; in fact, according to the beginning of Gluck’s book, the work’s title itself comes from the ancient word “Avernus”, the name of a small crater lake near Naples, Italy. The ancient Romans believed this lake was an entrance to the Underworld. That being said, the title of Gluck’s book sets the stage for the rest of its progression, as many of the poems it contains regard the story of Persephone. According to Greek Mythology, Persephone, daughter of the Greek Goddess Demeter, was abducted by the God Hades, and force thereafter to live with him in the Underworld. One of my favorite poem’s in Averno is called Part “October.” Two stanzas in the piece read as follows:

Persephone’s initial
Sojourn in hell continues to be
Pawed over by scholars who dispute
The sensations of the virgin:

Did she cooperate in her rape,
Or was she drugged, violated against her will,
As happens so often now to modern girls.

We learned in class that modernist Ezra Pound is famous for his proclamation, “make it new.” This is one of the qualities great poetry has: the use of language in such a way that shows a subject – be it an object or concept – at an angle rarely considered. It is for this reason that I love the above stanzas; in them, Gluck makes the story of Persephone new. I have only ever heard of the character being kidnapped forcefully by Hades, leaving her mother behind to mourn. “October,” however, brings up the possibility that perhaps a part of Persephone wanted to be abducted. In addition, it compares a story of ancient mythology to the situation of young girls living within a contemporary society; this too is interesting to readers, as it is not a comparison one would usually draw. In short, Gluck provides her readers with a less often told version of Persephone’s tale, creating it from her own imagination as opposed to solely the rumination of scholars.

Although there are some poems within Gluck’s book that seem unrelated to Greek Mythology at first glance, a closer look reveals the inherent connection they have to it. Part 4 of Gluck’s poem, “Prism,” for example, reads:

When you fall in love, my sister said,
it’s like being struck by lightning.

I reminded her that she was repeating exactly
our mother’s formula, which she and I

had discussed in childhood, because we both felt
that what we were looking at in the adults

were the effects not of lightning
but of the electric chair.

Although the above words seem more related to Gluck’s own girlhood than to Greek Mythology, readers must keep in mind the mixed feelings “Prism” contains about love, portraying it at first as a romantic strike of lightning, and later, as an electrically caused death. This theme seems to be to have a lot to do with the mixed feelings Gluck describes Persephone as feeling towards her captor throughout the poet’s various pieces. The relationship between Persephone and the God is also described as both romantic and dangerous; according to Gluck, though Hades violently abducted Persephone, she grew to care for him. My favorite example of this duality is found in the poem “A Myth of Innocence.” The piece reads:


No one understands anymore
How beautiful he was. But Persephone remembers.
Also that he embraced her, right there,
With her uncle watching. She remembers
Sunlight flashing on his bare arms

She stands by the pool saying, from time to time,
I was abducted, but it sounds
Wrong to her, nothing like what she felt.

Reading the above lines makes it easy to understand that Persephone believed Hades to be her abductor, but also as someone beautiful and worth loving. Gluck’s ability to humanize the historically darkly portrayed God is by far my favorite aspect of Averno. I would highly recommend this book of poetry, especially to individuals who enjoy free verse, longer poems, and an elusive tone. I also advise, however, that readers without much knowledge of Greek Mythology do a little research before beginning Gluck’s book; otherwise they might find themselves a little confused and overwhelmed.

Book Review # 2

Hey everyone, I hope you had a wonderful spring break. I went to Florida and got some sun, but I soon found myself back on Long Island getting ready to go back to school. To release some of my nerves upon my return to school I decided to hang out with my little cousin whose in fourth grade. I thought it would be fun to go to the mall for a little because we both love to shop. After we went to a couple of her stores, I dragged her in to Anthropology. I rummaged through the sale and was ready to leave, when suddenly the home section caught my eye. Anthropology always has really cute, vintage gizmo's, so we stopped one more time on our way out to take a look at some of the things. As soon as we looked at the bedding, I noticed the store had added a bunch of fun books to a bunch of corner bookshelves. Most of the books were for children or could have been great coffee table decor, but were intricate pop-up books. I have a bunch of them at my house from over the years, so we looked at some new ones. I was so intrigued by the book section when suddenly I saw a wide variety of poetry books. Some of them were made to look dusty and old, some were full of pop culture images, and some of them were very delicate, yet it was the most simplistic one that grabbed our attention. We sat, and looked at the poems and I pointed out some unique techniques the poet, Pablo Neruda, uses throughout his romantic poems. I liked the book because it was made of poems that were written in Spanish and because my cousin and I found it to be fun for us to read together. (Definitely not for it's plain pink cover and melancholy feeling we got from the cover.)
My cousin found it interesting because both her and I speak a quite a bit of Spanish. When we tried to translate the first poem, we gave up within the first five minutes. I like the set up of this book of poems because it had the same poem on the opposite page, translated word for word. All the poems were Romantic and easy for me to understand. I was able to explain the difficult images and meaning to my 9 year old cousin when it was hard for her to understand. I enjoyed the drastic changes in images that came to mind from poem to poem. All of them discussed love which can be very boring sometimes, but what made this book interesting was the nifty idea when it came to the set up.
When there was two poems that we considered sonnets I started to teach my cousin to count syllables and show her what make a sonnet a sonnet. The translations didn't match up to the fourteen line, iambic pentameter techniques that are found in sonnets, so I figure it was just because the poems were not meant to be written in English. Lauren and I decided to try and count the syllables from the Spanish poems written in fourteen lines, but when we mispronounced words and jumbled the flow of the Spanish sonnets, it didn't sound so pretty.
When we were having trouble and we realized that we had been sitting in corner of the store for almost an hour, we decided to buy the book, titled Love Poems by Pablo Neruda. We figured we could have my housekeeper, Aida, read us the poems aloud so we could see if Neruda follows the rules of a sonnet. We knew the poet didn't follow the rules of a sonnet when two of the three poems translated in English were not in iambic pentameter. As soon as we got to my house we asked Aida to read us the sonnets. We both forgot to count the beats to check for Iambic pentameter because the sound of the words and the flow sounded romantic even when we didn't know what the poem was talking about. When we asked her to read aloud a couple more times, I realized Neruda did follow the rules of a sonnet.
My housekeeper continued to ask what the purpose was of her reading these poems aloud. I told her where and how we had found the book of poems and when she found it flattering how interested Lauren and I were, she continued to tell us some details about writing when it come to writing Spanish poems or songs. She told us that when it comes to choosing a word, a lot of the times it doesn't have to fit in perfectly in order to make sense, most of the time it is the sound and the flow of the rhythm that make a song or poem romantic, funny, or sad.
Once I realized that I had to write a book review and that I found this book before I thought about the assignment, I went back to this book of poems and looked at all the imagery that is in the English translated poems. I found most of the images and meanings to be scary, lonely and unusual. This is when I noticed what my housekeeper was saying was true. I found this to be very interesting because I appreciate Neruda's poems when they are read aloud and not when I learn the real meaning and images that are portrayed in the English Translation. I almost wish I didn't read too much into the meanings. The current feeling I have towards some images like,

"Night crossing: Black coal of dream

that cuts the thread of earthly orbs

with the punctuality of a headlong train

that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly,"

make me wonder how could people like Aida get beyond the images that are created by the words and just hear the beautiful sound the words create?

Book Review NUMBER one

For my first book review I prowled the literature section of our familiar ODY Library to see what I would happen upon. After leafing through many thin volumes of poetry by various authors I happened upon a couple that I liked, but was most drawn in by a book entitled "How We Sleep on the Nights We Don't Make Love" by E. Ethelbert Miller. The first thing I noticed about this book and author, is that the author doesn't seem to want to make it known whether he/she is a male or female, and because they don't want that to seem apparent I decided to not look it up.

The poems build up as the book goes on in a strange manner. Many poems are addressing the subject of love or the subject of politics, or what happens when the two collide, which they so often do. And the love is not for one particular person; this is known because under the titles of several of the poems in parenthesis it reads (for [insert name here])—it is almost always a new name. The poems have a very conversational feel, which we might find familiar in the New York style poets we just read about, however the tone is softer. A lot of the poems are directed to an unknown “you”. The poems are loosely connected, with some clumped together that are very similar and then others that don’t seem to have as much of a connection, as though this is an early publication of works that are compiled together with some meaning, but not completely thought over. Because of this the poems are never predictable, and at points I was surprised by the content that would arise in the next poem. Many of the poems are written in the perspective of different people, or maybe it is all from the author’s personal perspective—either way would be plausible. All of the poems are written in a free form manner, which is refreshing every time. The vocabulary is “anglo-saxon”, not too much overly complex or flowery language is used. And at the end… well the book does seem to just end, with no over-arching striving to get some message across or anything like that. The book seems to just be continued jumbles of the author’s views on matters and what the author would perceive to be other’s views on matters of importance, but not of grave importance, there is no sense of urgency in the writing. And the book itself is a paper back, 73 pages, and slightly plain but appealing. Something I would definitely recommend picking up, but I did not find in the poetry anywhere a place that stopped me and made me feel as if I wished I had written the words I had just read myself.

Book Review # 1

The book I chose for my review was a volume of poems by Kenneth Koch called "A possible world". The poems seem to be connected by their overarching theme of the world and travel. Koch writes of many places including France, China, Greece, Thailand, and Haiti. Many of his other poems address other worldly subjects such as time zones, movement, and unfinished business. Several of the poems incorporate other languages and as the reader progresses though the book they get the sense of traveling across the world with Koch glimpsing all of the characters he has encountered.

The poem for which the book is titled, "A Possible World" stands out a lot from the other poems in the volume. For the most party the majority of the poems within the book have a consistent structure, they have varying lengths but they are all written in stanzas centered upon the page. The poem " A Possible World" is very different from the other. The text varies in size and in font and is structured very creatively across the page. I had difficulty understanding what the poem was about and it seemed rather confusing to me, but the language had a playful tone and incorporated some surprising rhymes in unexpected places. The poem is several pages long and as it progresses, new voices are brought in that seem to speak to each other and even are structured against one another on either side of the page. Many of Khoch’s word choices are interesting as well. He appears to make up many words and work them into his poems for sound and rhythm. This is particularly evident in the single poem “A Possible World”.

Many of Koch's poems in the volume, including "A Possible New World”, seem to be written in stream of consciousness format. The poems themselves are very surprising and are rather different from one another. Many different characters are introduced quickly, and some of the poems have a narrative story like quality to them because the characters created are not necessarily characters the reader would recognize. This is particularly seen in "Roma non basta una vita" in which the stories of many different characters are introduced and then quickly forgotten as new characters are introduced.

Koch works within the tradition of the School of New York poets. Their influence is evident upon him, and he even mentions some, including Frank O'Hara by name within his poems. His work differs from theirs in that their work was traditionally considered very serious, while Koch is known for his sense of humor and light spirited poetry. In Koch's opinion the New York school was nontraditional and opposed heavy use of symbolism and irony.

Book Review =]

So, I only had a couple of poetry books at home and most of them are collections of poems by many authors or they are written mostly by teens. The only book of poem I have available is Maya Angelou’s selection called Poems. This book is more than 120 pages, but is divided into sections or parts. Because the book is separated by four books….Just give me a cool drink of water ‘fore I diie, Shaker, why don’t you sing, Oh pray my wings are gonna fit me well and And Still I rise, I decided to just read one of these parts. And still I rise is book in itself with three different parts…”Travling,” “Touch me, life, not softly” and “And still I rise”. The travel’s part is about women and relationships…or at least this is how it seems like to me. Phenomenal Woman is a famous poem by Maya and shows the beauty of the female body and sexuality. In this poem, there’s a reframe that shows up at the end of the stanzas. There is a kind of rhyme within the poem, but its lose and changes. At some parts every other line rhymes, but there are those parts that break completely free of this. The section called Traveling, seemed to be about different places, but I don’t know if it was through the poem or just through the titles of the poems. You go from my Arkansas to the woman work. It’s as if you travel through different lives and lifestyles, not just to different places. I thought this part would be predictable in the fact that it only moved through different towns/ places, but I was wrong. I think my favorite part of the section was the one entitled, And still I rise. When I was in highscool, I remember reading the poem with the same name and loving it for its repetitiveness and strength. I found this section more appealing because the poems were really powerful and meant so much then I was looking to find within them. My favorite poem in this section was On aging. I loved the meaning behind the poem and felt there was this universal experience of growing older and the things that go along with it. The rhyme pattern is again distorted but it really flows well the way it is. I think the overall themes are about life in general, but with a really strong tone or voice. I don’t know if younger people could really get into this poetry, but I definitely think an older age group would. I think I would like to emulate her voice, because it is very strong, but I don’t know if it is possible because she was such an amazing poet.

Late Book Review One: 'Imagine being more Afraid of Freedom than Slavery'

The book looked cool. . . A thin, tall, and bald woman on the cover and spray paint cursive over head: Imagine being more Afraid of Freedom than Slavery. I'm not one to write about racism, but I like reading about it. I'm not one of those people who walk up and down exclaiming, "Racism doesn't exist anymore" or "We have an African American president so we can't be racist" types. I'm not the type to think EVERY god damn thing said or done to me IS racist. I say shit like that jokingly to REAL CLOSE friends (friends who know WHEN AND WHERE). I also talk about racism to make people feel awkward, so if I randomly said, "You're racist" or something to that degree I probably didn't want to talk to you. The point of this digression is it resembles the movement racism, sexism, and homophobia has undergone. Our perception about racism and the face behind the current masks' of racism, and all the other 'isms' have altered into subtleties and humor, so I believe that this is the message of Pamela Sneed's 'Imagine being more Afraid of Freedom than Slavery.'

I couldn't put my finger on it before, but after seeing SaltLines I figured out why this book review was hard for me to write. Pamela Sneed's book does not progress. She's in this constant state of anger, which is understandable considering she's:

A. A woman
B. African American
C. A Lesbian

so the odds are against her. But, especially when you're writing lyrically the book almost becomes a very poetic, very short memoir, she continues from angry to angry. . . maybe her anger simmers. In her one poem about "Daddy" (daddy can be interrupted in two ways from my gathering AMERICA or her actual father) the poem should have been a series of curses. It's funny I stopped thinking about the book review until I saw SaltLines because there was a poem about a Daddy and the poet was a lesbian. . . But you see instead of rambling in undertoned curse words as Pamela Sneed did. . . The SaltLines' girl said, "Yes I am angry at you. . . I even hate you at times, but you know what the past is the past and I forgive you." Maybe it's bad for me to compare, but I can't help it.

Face attached to Constraints

I suppose, since I wasn’t as impressed with our visitor as most were, that it takes some real stunts to hold my interest. He was great! , but forgettable. I can’t even remember his name, I just remember the lesson he was attached to, and the Rolodex of songs he played. I don’t remember the lyrics, but I remember they made me giggle. So he did spread good vibes about constraints, which was notable, but I guess his approach on constraints just wasn’t my thing.

He seems to be a natural when it comes to placing limitations on his work, in fact he must be the type of person who need deadlines in order to achieve a goal. Naturals aren't good at explaining the how to's in life. And this is what I was looking for a PROCESS (sit at computer, face computer screen, eat some chocolate . . .); however I do understand it is hard to go into great detail when things come natural to a person. It's automatic. So no real thought goes intothe automatic as Shklovsky points out in his theory of Defamiliarization. I couldn't explain English to this Japanese guy I kept saying, "Because that's how it is." Japanese people did the same to me when I asked about particles; they'd say, "Nihongo kara" (Because it is Japanese).

We don't think in a constrained formats, so I would have liked to have seen some free verse etched out on the board (which has it's own set of rules) and then cut down into traditional, maybe that would have helped me (I'm not sure). I've tried it ! and it's always muck. My sonnet was high shit.

Splatter...Poem?

I have only recently begun experimenting with the placement of words on the page, and, to my surprise, I’m really getting into it. I took a lot of Creative Writing classes in high-school, so I learned early on that someone makes every line break intentional; all these separations add tension and emotion to a poem in different ways, and they all aim to affect the reader emotionally. Even so, I never realized the same can be true for the specific ways in which writers place their words on the page. Ever since I took Introduction to Poetry last semester, I have started experimenting with the idea here and there, but never have I been quite as radical with my arrangement as I was while writing my poem for this week’s workshop. The folks that were in my workshop group the week before last know that the spacing arrangement of my poem entitled “Cassandra” was a freak accident of Microsoft Word, and yet, before they realized this, the spacing was what they all seemed to be most impressed with. That incident has really inspired me to go to the next step with word arrangement, and take it to a whole new level of creativity. My poem for this week is called “Adolescence,” and I am absolutely thrilled with how it worked out visually. The piece has words sprawled out everywhere, some based on the same natural breaks I would have applied otherwise, and a few separations that only sprinkling words here and there on a page can really inspire. Such experimentation made “Adolescence” more interactive in that it is visually engaging in addition to its literary strengths. I do have to say, though, that I’m also pretty happy with the literary quality of my poem, but we’ll see what you all think of that Tuesday, I suppose!

Writer's Block and Printing Presses

So I had a lot of trouble writing my poem for last week. It was the first time this semester that I really felt like I had nothing to write about. I tried experimenting with some constraints, like we did in class when Andrew Huang came in, but I don't know why, I just wasn't really satisfied with anything I came up with. I think one of my problems was that I was not developing specific or creative enough constraints. None of the constraints I thought of really helped me to narrow down my subject matter or to come up with anything I found to be too creative. I ended up writing a poem that was supposed to be like a letter, but looking back I wish I had done more with it, and pushed the constraints a little bit more...maybe I will edit again later on in the semester.
On the other hand I am very excited for the printing project today. I think it should be really interesting, and I am excited to see what my group comes up with for a final product!

Poster Printing

Today my group is going to head over to ODY and start our printing of our poetry poster with Mark and Theo. I'm really excited about this project, my group has been brainstorming some ideas that I think are going to look great on the posters. I think I'm more excited about hanging them up around campus and seeing people's reactions to them. I hope my group members and I can achieve to make a poster that has some sort of impact or powerful effect on those who see it. I've been researching some quotes and sayings for some background info and I'm really amazed at how words can influence and change people's lives. I guess this is just my mental overload of English courses flooding my consciousness, but it's really unbelievable how many famous quotes there are in the world, and how we remember the past and sometimes change the future through the voices of others. “I had a dream….” or “Be the change you want to see in the world” are the types of words, quotes, lectures that have shaped my view of the world and my life. I’m not trying to sound all cliché and philosophical, but I find it so refreshing that I’ve discovered the influence of the written or spoken word. The power of language and in some cases one individual is quite extraordinary if you think about it.

Changes...Maybe

So this week I'm really stressed out and I kind of really want to write a poem that's not about the same thing. Only two of my poems are not about this one situation and I realized that was why they were all angry. I guess I'm going to try to write something happy or semi-happy. I don't know what to write about though. As far as happy poems. Any ideas?

So, in my memoir writing course, I've writing a memoir about being 17 and a time when the cops showed up at my door because I had written some poems that sounded "suicidal".
I remember vowing to never write another poem...but as you see, this did not work. I guess I'm going to try to write a happy poem but we'll see how it turns out. Might sound happen in the beginning and turn into a sad poem...muahahahaha! =D

I'm kind of excited about this printing thingy on Monday. I hope my group has came up with some awesome ideas. I can't wait. Oh and I'm really excited for a break! I need one.

Tarr, a Vorticist novel

When we looked at the modernist poets earlier this semester, we read a manifesto by the Vorticists, some pre-WWI British dudes who liked blasting things and big fonts (also, saying "fire" and "damn"). Last week I was in somewhat of a blasting mood so I picked up Tarr, by Wyndham Lewis. Lewis was one of the main figures in Vorticism; according to him, "Vorticism, in fact, was what I, personally, did and said at a certain period," a statement that didn't exactly endear him to other Vorticists.

I'm about 168 pages into Tarr, in the middle of a chapter entitled "Bourgeois-Bohemians," and it seems to fit pretty well with the manifesto. Part I, "Oveture," follows this guy Tarr around Paris as he talks down to people, stresses out over having a German girlfriend, spouts some industrial-strength misogyny, and knocks a guy's hat off. The book is obsessed with questions of national character, and there are some pretty startling proto-Fascist rumblings:

"You are concentrated, systematic slop [Tarr tells Hobson].=There is nothing in the Universe to be said for you.=Any efficient State would confiscate your property, burn your wardrobe, that old hat and the rest, as 'infecte' and insanitary, and prohibit you from propagating."

There's a lot of angular language that seems deliberately ugly, and a propensity for accurate but bizarrely detached similes (e.g., "Her head was like a deep white egg in a tobacco coloured-nest.")

Some of my favorite quotes:

"'If we had numbers, for instance, instead of names, who would take the number thirteen?'
'I,' said Kreisler."

"Tarr turned to Hobson, and seized him, conversationally, by the hair."

"The leaden brilliant green of spring foliage hung above him, ticketing innumerably the trees, sultry smoke volumes from factories in Fairyland."

That was So Cool!

I was very impressed by our visitor in today's class. I learned a lot about what limitations and restraints can do to a poem. The whole idea of his site I found to be very intriguing. When he let us try out what it would be like to use some restraints when writing our own poems, I thought it would be easier than it actually was. While writing about the diagram on the board and trying to apply the picture to thoughts about Theo, I enjoyed writing about topics, I believe most of us would never write about. The felt like the whole point of today's class was to step outside into the world of poetry and experience it through the words of and feelings of a modern poet.
The deaf poetry of Lisa Jessie Peterson was one of the coolest poems I have ever heard. I thought it was a great closing for the end of class. The example that our visitor used applied all the techniques we had been talking about earlier in the class. Lisa explicitly showed the passion, stresses, rhythms, and dynamics that go into her poetry. Seeing Lisa's performance makes me wonder what it would be like if we wrote deaf jam poems for an a assignment and then performed them...

wow, i just listened to "i am the first fifty digits of pi" and am so impressed. i wrote a poem for this week and the words i chose were based on the number of letters in them. it was really hard because first i would choose the meaning that i was going for then try to find the perfect word that also just happened to have the right number of letters, and I only used nine words. I listened to it for a second time and found where there’s a zero and he throws that in there quickly, because what else could he do? The touchtone genius was pretty funny. The person who left the instructions was very detailed in what he or she wanted and he did it exactly. He is a touchtone genius. The star wars song is longer than the others and it sounds like more of a pop song. I really like the part where he starts talking and says something about princess leah, it shows that he does a little more than just listen to the directions and adds some things for fun.