Introductory Post

Cool Hand here.

I'm studying creative writing because I love art and words. Creative writing is a field in which my facility with language functions to help me convey strong sentiments, emotions, and beliefs in an imaginative way. Fiction and Non-Fiction are powerful genres, but for me, as a lover of words, no form of textual expression is more affecting than poetry.

In high school I read many poems by radical poets like Arthur Rimbaud, Jim Morrison, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac. At St. Lawrence I've had the privilege to study poems by William Carlos Williams, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, John Keats, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Byshhe Shelley, Lord Byron, Edgar Allan Poe, and numerous other poets I've forgotten. I'm fond of non-linear, surrealist poetry because I feel that poems written in this aesthetic accurately describe my own experience of existence. I'm also found of John Keats' Odes which I found very beautiful and upsetting (the two go hand in hand for me) though I can't imagine ever writing as eloquently as he did.

I have received mostly positive feedback in creative writing workshops but I've also received a number of useful critiques. I'm comfortable with my writing's imperfections and welcome respectful feedback from anyone interested enough to read it.

I love poetry because it can express ideas in ways which logical prose cannot. Through abstraction, suggestion, and the patient pruning of words, the poet has the capability to convey important universal truths about human nature, specific subjective truths their own nature, or merely express their creative consciousness.

I'm from Potsdam New York, about twenty minutes up the road. Potsdam is a pleasant rural town much like Canton, with lots of open spaces and not much going on.

Aside from writing I'm very interested in philosophy. I am particularly compelled by the teachings of Zen Buddhist philosophers and existentialists like Sartre and Dostoevsky. I also find Marx's theories on political economy, alienation, and capitalism in general quite engrossing and relevant.

I'm an aspiring audiophile with a rack of vinyls, a functioning turntable, and a pair of high fidelity headphones. When I listen to music on my computer I try to listen to music encoded in lossless sound quality codecs. I listen to lots of ambient, drone, avant-garde, shoegaze, electronica, hip-hop, jazz, and post-rock. If you're interested in specific artists I like feel free to ask, I love to talk about bands more than anything.

Film is another art form, which I'm quite enchanted by. At SLU I've completed a film minor, which allowed me to study countless wonderful films. I'm particularly fond of art house directors like Jim Jarmusch and Andrei Tarkovsky as well as more mainstream directors like David Lynch, Gus Van Sant, Darren Aronofsky, The Coen Brothers, Christoper Nolan, and Terrence Malick. Sound and sight (respectfully) are the two most powerful senses for me and cinema represents a fusion of sound art with visual art - a true spectacle.

In this class I hope to read more inspiring poems both by poets on the syllabus and poets in class. In addition, I hope to artfully express some of my emotions about life experiences through words.