Week Five - Improv - "A Thin, Black Band"

So, I'm posting my calisthenic as an improv for this week because, well, it's an improv, but also because I think it's one of those instances where *I* know what I'm talking about, but my readers may have absolutely no idea--so, I need help. I think that now that I can revise it without having to stick to the form of Csoori's peice, I may take the same subject matter, a few phrases from here (because most of the language, I know, is stale), and completely rework the poem as a free write later.

Improv off of Sandor Csoori’s “A Thin, Black Band”

Since I don’t drown on it,
since I don’t leak at the lip-slit to press diphthongs with diphthongs,
since syllables cram in before my softened endings,
and I am as harsh between the alveolar liquid retroflexes,
as the block party of a Pennsylvanian in the cookout of a Virginian:
I can’t hear a steady, trampled craft trapped for a paused moment
before my criticism.
It tries to rise, side steps, once again rises,
as if a soldier’s thick perished tongue slapped
it from straight to shy.

I won’t hear it, too, among the region’s restored landmarks,
in the slanted, falling words,
of the great-grandfather’s cozy cotton-vowels,
or near flag’s in the father’s truck, in the high-schooler’s bumper sticker,
paralyzed in the sugar of the tea.
Taxi-silence tenses within me, the silhouettes’s currency,
like when history is turned off.
Startled, I listen about, and haltingly I begin to track
that the clamber, too, is tensely sweet,
and it won’t unreign my years here
once heard.

The tea drains, drains upon the restored table,
slurps neighborly greetings and bake sale fundraisers,
absorbs lashes from the educated.
And that potluck culture stalks there, there too, about
the bloodied church’s steeple,
it fools my eyes, lures them after it,
like a recipe of grandma’s mother that cannot be translated.

Week Five - Response to Brandy's "Our Sadness"

Our Sadness

Our sadness
does not whisper in dark corners
does not leave lonely footsteps
does not mask itself in clouds
does not have the eyes of a child


does not expel the glorious


our sadness
is a biography
a steel screeched ending
still tugging on the bone skirts


our sadness
does not stand on reason’s edge
does not fold into drawers
it hangs itself up


let the clock
hide its trite mug
behind
folded arms


our sadness
does not expel the glorious
the glorious appears near
dusk when the river’s bruise
darkens until it reaches
the mouth-hole


the dust carries
each chipped
syllable up
to hang in the rafters


not too close
not too far


By Brandy Adams

I would agree with MacKenzie, here. This is probably one of those instances where your writing is successful because of the instances of cool language that it allowed for. In general, "sadness" is a pretty baggy subject matter. But--I think "fear" is, too. Maybe that's why the anthology feels so uncomfortable to me a lot of times. Because so many of the poems feel like they do the exact opposite of what our poetry classes tell us we're "allowed" to do. Still, the original has some fairly specific images: "our fear does not have a dead man's face," where as the improv relies a bit too heavily on more baggy language: "does not expel the glorious." Maybe in a future blog you can improv this same poem but rather than using an abstract idea like the original poet does, do something absurdly "real"...like a kid's wagon or a lamp given at a house warming party.

To deviate a bit, though: LOVE the trite mug stanza. It's new and amusing and it still makes sense on a basic level. Maybe not "trite," per se, but the stanza itself--Love it.

Week Five - Response to Emmanuel's "Mother to Daughter"

Mother to Daughter

Why did you leave
this house at that hour?
To meet a boy? Which boy?
What boy? Talk to me.
Don't lie to me, young lady!
John? John who? Thomas?
And, where did you go? Where?
What did you do?
What? Really? How long?
And, then what? I said what?
No, no, no! You are
in so much trouble!
Grounded for a week.
No, month.
No--Just go
to your room!

I loved that poem, too. Your choice of subject matter reminds me a ton of a poem I read a few years ago and it's going to drive me crazy becuase I can't recall the name of it or enough with coherence to google it, but I'll try to remember and post it on here later.

Anyway, as for your actual peice: the subject matter is familiar to every one--which makes the simple language "okay." Starting as "No, no, no," however, it loses some of its appeal and I can't pinpoint exactly why. What I can say, however, is that I remember being intruiged by her peice because of the way it made an innocent bystander become both victim and aggressor--as though it was this person's fault that these terrible things happened to them. Your peice, however, leaves little ability to make that same connection just because in a parent/child situation like this, the child is typically the one that's at fault. I would try to play up DuBrow's technique a bit more--maybe, even, by titling the peice as the real and excusable reason the daughter is late--the reason she can't actually tell her mom.

Week Five - Free Write

I have no idea where any of this came from. I feel like if I look back at this years from now, I'll suddenly have some sort of twisted epiphany about my current mental state.

Because she looks so good in her crumbled bag yee-haw boots, because her mud-dyed (like the cracks in the tin spitcan) trousers look right, because of the soft lullaby of her vowels--I spot-clean my sneakers, tug at skirts, and crinkle at all of my teeth-clacking, glaring consonants. You held hands like thumb-wrestling, more like hayrides, more like deer carving, like snapping on the camouflage vest.

The tricked flock of pumpkin villages lorded over a fluorescent lamp shaped like a bass arched in heat. The fish nosed flannel couch bags, rasped for water in the dehumidified air. When doors slammed, he cracked, he fawned, he pulsed. Scraps of screamed threats domed around his porcelain ears. The village of pumpkined people--Oompa Loompa green, Grinch orange--treated themselves to playing tricks on adults, kicked the bass, carved themselves with his shards. When they howled, the bass relaxed, with one clipped piece still twisted into dramatized sex.

Week Five - Sign Inventory - "Fresco"

Fresco

In hell, maximum use
Is made of the sinners.

With the help of tweezers,
Brooched and bracelets, hairpins and rings,
Linen and bedclothes
Are extracted from the heads of the women.
Who are subsequently thrown
Into boiling cauldrons
To keep an eye on the pitch
And see that it doesn't boil over.

Then some of them
Are transformed into dinner pails
In which hot sins are carried to the domiciles
Of pensioned-off devils.

The men are employed
For the heaviest work,
Execept for the hairiest of them,
Who are spun afresh
And made into mats.

-Marin Sorescu, translated from the Romanian by D.J. Enright and Joana Russel-Gebbett.


-This may be very, very loose, but: The title "Fresco," which is an Italian word, and the subject matter of "Hell," which is very Dante, an Italian writer. Likewise, as Inferno focuses on the punishments given, so does this poem.

-The odd choice of "linen and bedclothes" being removed in addition to "brooches and bracelets,/hairpins and rings," which seem more superficial and "pretty" than "linen and bedclothes."

-The weak beginning: "In hell, maxium use is/ made of the sinners." The phrasing is both passive and awkward, though this could be a translation issue (why not "Hell makes maximum use of the sinners"? It sounds 'better' and it forfronts "Hell" even more.).

-A slightly repetive structure: "Are extracted from" alongside "Are transformed into"; "Who are subsequently" before "Who are spun afresh"; and "And see that it doesn't boil over" to go with "And made into mats."

-Are we supposed to assume the third stanza is also about women? If so, why do they get so many more lines dedicated to their punishments? If not, why does it go from women, to general sinners, to men? Why the gendered punishments at all? Who gets off worse?

Week Five - Junkyard Quote 4

A Facebook status on my feed:

"They say you are what you eat, but I don't remember eating a sexy beast tonight."

Another Facebook update:

"Has wandered back in time, to a place where life is slower. Days last 48 hours, public schools close for the harvest, and Ma sits out on the front porch all day long, stringin' green beans and caulkin' a broom stick. This is the place of yesteryear. A place where parking is free and old men still walk five miles up hill both ways. The music is country and the people are too. This, my friends, is Carrollton."

Week Five - Junkyard Quote 3

"The worms don't know they're doomed."

Week Five - Junkyard Quote 2

"He knows the mystery of the speaker system." - I don't remember where this came from, but I wrote it down.

Week Five - Junkyard Quote 1

A series of awesomeness from Tim O'Brien:

"The banned book people want to sprinkle Ajax over war and make it easy to swallow."

"He shot a guy to zero is weapon"

"The diction of war."

Cool words I didn't know before (in this particular way):

Saddle up - a military term for putting all of your "stuff" on
Humping - Walking
Falling out - from what I understood, when you drop/stop/pass out. I've heard it used in the south as well, but it wasn't a term I knew prior to moving here.

Week Four - Free Write

Completely random generation of language. This may be an indication of how wonked-out my mind is this week:

Child-learners! Look at the sky, he says, where does that plane go? To Minnesota, to Tokyo—no, to the prairie king of lobsterbitten cheeks. Clap-jawed crusted jewels, sewn by trinkets of worms. The trap-masticated carcass of a opossum, jarred from hungered masters. The swing of spoken word, lapped off at the arm, tricked and treated against the doorframe of polite glass figures. Garden roads lifted to bent leather, the underarm of poetic intent. Resist ring-wormed boys, treatable chicks, clogged up dogs. Wrinkles of festering blog posts, trampled and stapled to elephant trunks pressurizing water. The beepbop march of a frizzed and sprayed and dried teenager.

Week Four - Improve Two, "Female Writer"

Another try at the replacement calisthenic. It's kinda fun, kinda difficult. I stuck more to the actual poem this time, in terms of leaving in the words that weren't nouns or adjectives, etc.

Original is by Plath (I did get this off of a website, so let's hope it's true to form:)

Female Author

All day she plays at chess with the bones of the world:
Favored (while suddenly the rains begin
Beyond the window) she lies on cushions curled
And nibbles an occasional bonbon of sin.

Prim, pink-breasted, feminine, she nurses
Chocolate fancies in rose-papered rooms
Where polished higboys whisper creaking curses
And hothouse roses shed immortal blooms.

The garnets on her fingers twinkle quick
And blood reflects across the manuscript;
She muses on the odor, sweet and sick,
Of festering gardenias in a crypt,

And lost in subtle metaphor, retreats
From gray child faces crying in the streets.



Mine:

All mile the country man whistles at signs with the clowns of the town:
Favored (while suddenly the stalks begin
Beyond the gravel) he hugs on cottons stiffened
And tracks an occasional cursing of sin.

Curved, tabacco-stained, puckered, he sloshes
bottle leftovers in yellow-splintered porch swings
Where crumbled donkeyboys snort roadside curses
And claimed women shed professional unfolding.

The horn on his knee clonks tracks
And spit swings across the steps;
He cloughs on the trappings, clodden and powdered,
Of festering waves in a puddle,

And lost in subtle cycle, falls out
From juggled clogged teeth howling in the chair.

Week Four - Improv One, "Documentary"

I decided to try the word-replacement strategy we're, I think, doing for calisthenic next class. I've had my eye on "Documentary" by Claribel Alegia for a little while now and decided to try that out. It's a fairly long poem (it starts on page 514 in our anthology), so I ended up only doing a portion of it and in the begining I was just plopping whatever words I felt like in there just to see what happens. It starts to get a little more pointed as I go on, but the more I did it, the more I realized I wanted to try a legit improv off of this another time about, either, NY or GA. I think I'll try it sometime soon. Until then...my mad-lib like try at "Documentary," most of which is terrible, but a few phrases are kinda fun:

Documentary

Come, be my picnic basket.

Let’s scoop the crackle of crickets

the queen collector

extruding pockets of tacks,

my handle.

It’s the lightyear.

Focus on the traumatized boy

slapped with mud.

Now, among jungle mazes:

Skipped,

honeyed palms

stained with berried blisters.

Shift to a long shot:

the clutch of prickle-presents

pinning down the sand box.

extruding pockets of Cracker Jacks.

A contrast:

Men in puddled smoke

crack and crumble,

harmonizing their courtship

with whistles.

Focus down.

A close-up of the swollen hand,

blistering in the canopy.

Hard-focus on the stroller

scattered in the wind.

Cut.

The splinter of rough metal

worn from the handle.

Mothers in jockeyed sneakers

polish the cheekbones,

attack harmony,

celebrate invasions,

and feel puckered for dinner.

Week Four - Junkyard Quote 4

"Don't you think Bank of the Ozarks sounds like a mix between some ancient, Hungarian-meets-Ottoman style warrior-conqueror and Tolkien's Orks?"

"I don't ever want you to go into that bank. You'll be so disappointed when you see it looking like an ordinary bank--no pits of fire, gnarled talking trees, or creatures being born of mud."

Week Four - Response to Pauline's "Week # 4--Improv #2"

Two Poems

            By Andrei Voznesensky

I

Over a dark and quiet empire

alone I fly—and envy you,

two-headed eagle who at least

have always yourself to talk to.

II

To hang bare light bulbs from a ceiling

simple cord will always serve;

it’s only the poet who must hang

by has glaring white spinal nerve.

I

Under a bright and treeless sky

in tandem we stroll—but gasp when

a wide-winged heron swoops by

to warn us of a close coyote’s den.

II

In putting bone china teacups away

extra care must be the rule;

it’s always the sloppy one

who must play the part of fool.

I really enjoy the presented subject of the first stanza--of two people strolling "in tandem," being warned of coyotes by a heron. "But gasp," however, doesn't seem to be doing you any poetic favors. Given the surprising nature of this singular moment the poem illustrates, "but gasps" lacks fervor; I mean, obviously, gasping is an expected reaction--but I think you're too good at word play, Pauline (from what I've seen so far), to fall in to expected reaction.

Likewise, the beauty, in my opinion, of Voznesensky's "II" is the entirely unexpected idea of a poet hanging on a "glaring white spinal nerve." Yours seems to do the opposite by ending on "who must play the part of the fool," which is a cliche. While I think this could certainly work, that would only be the case when displayed alongside the original poem. When standing alone, the irony of your second stanza isn't apparent. Why not try to draft a different second stanza--with the same subject, because the simplicity of that day to dayness is perfect juxtaposed with the surprise of the first stanza--in which you forgo cliches? It never hurts to overwrite!

Week Four - Response to Brandy's "Improv 2 - Week 4"

Swifts

At the stormy moment of dawn

at the apprehensive time

these sickles in the corn

Everything suddenly cries higher

than any ear can climb

Philippe Jaccottet

 

Blattodea

 

During the flat-line of night

during the contaminate hour

these sausaged-eggs are stown

 

Nymphs scatter and morph by molt

winged and cock infested

 

Brandy Adams  

"Flat-line of night"--awesome, Brandy. Really. It's simple but I completely understand the time of night you're trying to convey. In fact, I'd say I prefer your first two lines to the original first two lines--sure, we can't really knock something in the anthology, given it's prestige (at least, that's what Dr. Davidson keeps telling me...), and maybe overtly "poetic" isn't always the most important element in regards to meaning, but your first two lines are interesting and informative at the same time. "Stormy moment of dawn," thought not a cliche, reads as more of one than "flat-line of night." Do you get that I really enjoy that phrase?

Likewise, I think I understand what you're going for with "sausaged-eggs," but I don't know about that one. I had to google "stown," because I wasn't entirely sure what the meaning was--if it was meant to be the past tense of "stow," as in to put away, but I didn't find anything? The closest I could get was a possible "chiefly British past participle of -steal-." Perhaps I'm just not grasping, entirely, the poem's intentions here due to my confusion with the last word but, though "sausaged-eggs" is an intriguing idea, it seems defunct and unexpected in comparison to the two lines prior.

As for the last two lines: "morph by molt" is great (though it of course conjures the image of a bird), but I think you should go with Jaccottet's more linear, completed thought. Obviously, you don't need to stay true to anything from the original, it's just an exercise intended to begin your writing, but the last two lines leave me confused--syntactically, it doesn't present a full thought for me.

Week Four - Junkyard Quote 3

"That place where 61 becomes 101, but it's still 61. It's neither 61 or 101, but at the same time it's kinda both?"

Oh, the navigation of the Georgia road system. For a non-native, it's deliriously frustrating.

Week Four - Junkyard Quote 2

"I got a native doing the funky chicken here" - Avatar

...Who doesn't love the image of that?

Week Four - Junkyard Quote 1

I was amazed, as a child, by opposites. My mom and I would play "the opposite game," which simply entailed her giving me a word and I would quickly respond with whatever the opposite was (complicated and exciting game, I know.) In light of this, a recent conversation peaked my interest:

"What's the opposite of passive voice...active voice...?"

"Maybe...I mean, everything has an opposite, right?"

"Yeah. Well, no. I mean...table. Table doesn't have an opposite."

"Sure it does. [Long pause for thought]. Chair? Empty space?"

"No."

Obviously, the actual language isn't potent at all, but I find the subject matter compelling (I definitely just revised that sentence to eliminate a "to be" verb).

Week Four - Sign Inventory - "Every Morning"

Every Morning
     -Claire Malroux, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker

Every morning the curtain rises
Alone, you listen to the dark dissolving
The stars slowly clicking themselves apart
The sky turns back into this breezy scarf
Shaken out by the awakened birds
You don't touch each other but you walk together
Leaning against and within each other until evening
When, alone, you chase the wild night at your gate
Sweep to weep for, like a wet stray dog
You don't want to hear the crows cry
The diminishing number of lines
To be spoken on this stage, set for how long
The shadow grows, flesh hollows itself out, another
Takes your place. Step by step you leave yourself

-Structure of the poem: Sonnet, for a poem that surface level stages the inevitability of broken relationships.

-No actual sentences denoted by punctuation until the very end--the phrase "Step by step you leave yourself" is the only one set off on its own.

-Theatrical elements: Begins with a "curtain rising," then mention of "lines" and "stage." Clearly, this means to allude to relationships with people as highly "put on" or "dramatized," but can we also look at it in conjunction with concrete imagery in this poem? Maybe the "every morning" opening, or the stray dog, crows?

-"Sweep to weep," "dark dissolving," "stars slowly," "crows cry." Poetic choices--this idea meshes well with the previously listed dramatized elements of the text.

- The contradictions in lines 6-7; They "don't touch eachother," yet they "lean against and within eachother."

(Why do so many of these forgo ending punctuation!?)

Week Three - Improv Notes Two - Diatribe Against the Dead

In 3200, we had to write prose poems. I hate them. I didn't really know how to do it, but I tried and what resulted was essentially just a really long rant against death and the practices surrounding it (my aunt passed away that semester and my writing huddled around that). I sort of just let it fall to the side until I read this poem by Angel Gonzalez; something about the way the poem on the surface level handled death reminded me of my "So Sorry For Your Derailment" and I had a notion to work an improv around that--not trying, necessarily, to riff right off of Gonzalez's piece, but to somehow allow it to reign my monstrosity in a bit (and, better yet, get it out of prose form :-D!). I've transcribed Gonzalez's piece below as well as my huge prose piece. Then, finally, a very light attempt to narrow down my work--not into poem form yet, but pulling potential lines from my longer piece. I'd like anyone's opinion on the lines I pulled and if you think some are unworthy/others are more worthy to be included in an actual draft. I'd also like to point out that yes, I know it's difficult to write about death--I don't pretend to be any good at it. But, I might as well try, considering I see the connection between these two pieces. If you make it through this whole post, you deserve some special recognition...:

Diatribe Against the Dead

   -Angel Gonzalez

The dead are selfish:

they make us dry and don’t care,

they stay quiet in the most inconvenient places,

they refused to walk, we have to carry them

on ourbacks to the tomb

as if they were children. What a burden!

Unusually rigid, their faces

accuse us of something, or warn us;

they are the bad conscience, the bad example,

they are the worst things in our lives always, always.

The bad thing about the dead

is that there is no way you can kill them.

Their constant destructive labor

is for that reason incalculable.

Insensitive, distant, obstinate, cold,

with their insolence and their silence

they don’t realize what they undo.

---------

So Sorry for Your Derailment

I am clasped by hands, rocked to and fro between heavy bodies, then caught and twirled and hurled into another mass of flesh and groping. These unidentified friendly obstructions constrict and pull my head down to rest on their shoulders, because I am so sad, and suffocation is the answer.

I think God must know me, now, by name and face and social because everyone and their preacher’s mother prays for me in this tragic time and sometimes they say, don’t I know that everything happens for a reason? And so I should be happy because God has a plan, don’t I know, and that plan involved making you an angel.

I hear that you’re watching over me always now. So I should never feel alone and I don’t like that because I now fleetingly glance around before stepping out of the shower, now I can’t make a joke at your expense.

I am told they are so sorry for my loss—always so sorry—and I wonder, could they be as sorry for a loss of another commodity, like a shoe, or a game of monopoly? I wonder why they express such sweet sorrow because if I hadn’t watched your suffering, sucking in broken breathes while pretending it was normal, if we hadn’t had hospice over lunch, what excuse would they have for their intrusion?

I wonder, while my shoulders are gripped and strangers weep into me, why they are calling you a loss. You were a blessing, maybe. But you must not be a loss because a loss can be found and so I want to tell them they’re wrong. I’ve looked already—in the spice aisle at Piggly Wiggly, beneath a pile of laundry, over my shoulder in the mirror.

I don’t want anyone to be sorry for my loss—and I want to tell them the word is dead. I want them to be so sorry because of the delivery man, because he glares at me now, each time he unloads the newest truck load of flowers. They can be sorry that my phone line has become everyone else’s confession line—why didn’t I come sooner, they wail. I want them to be so sorry that I can never listen to that song again, or smell that disgusting candle without thinking about you. I want them to be sorry not that you’re gone but that you’re not all the way gone.

I don’t want them to be sorry at all because don’t they know I am forever embossed in that moment of so-called loss and their sorrys will do nothing. This is loss, right? It feels more like devastation or derailment and so maybe they should be so sorry for this devastation, so sorry for this derailment.

I’m telling you, I’m okay until someone asks me if I’m okay. And then I’m not. They don’t seem to understand that grieving is not something you move on from, it’s something you exist with and within and around and if they don’t get that, I have to wonder, are they okay?

---------

Lines/Ideas I'd like to work with:

unidentified friendly obstructions

God must know me, now, by name and face and social because everyone and their preacher’s mother prays for me

could they be as sorry for a loss of another commodity, like a shoe, or a game of monopoly?

you must not be a loss because a loss can be found and so I want to tell them they’re wrong. I’ve looked already—in the spice aisle at Piggly Wiggly

 I want them to be so sorry because of the delivery man, because he glares at me now, each time he unloads the newest truck load of flowers. They can be sorry that my phone lie has become everyone else’s confession line—why didn’t I come sooner, they wail.

It feels more like devastation or derailment and so maybe they should be so sorry for this devastation, so sorry for this derailment.

I want them to be sorry not that you’re gone but that you’re not all the way gone.

So...what does everyone think? Possibly worked into a draft, or dropped?

Week Three - Improv One - "Pig"

My favorite poem is “Part of Eve’s Discussion” by Marie Howe. I sort of obsessed with it even though it’s the dreaded prose format. I like it for a multitude of reasons, but one of them is the way each image dissolves in to the next seamlessly, moves from one image to the next as though she’s explaining a particular instant in time. When I found the poem below,  I felt a similar sort of sensation. I loved a single moment in time told briefly, contained within a ten line poem and told essentially in one single thought. I wanted to mimic that notion (I can’t stand the first word of every line capitalized, so that had to go…). Here’s a really first-y first draft, title-less as I frequently do:

Pig

   -Vasko Popa

Only when she felt

That savage knife in her throat

Did the red veil

Explain the game

And she was sorry

She had torn herself

From the mud’s embrace

And had hurried so joyfully

From the field that evening

Hurried to the yellow gate

_____________

Only when she felt

the first bulge of exposed skin

slither at oxygen

did the engorged woman

shun broken sensuality

and grope for the instant

of clasped hands, braided legs, bounded groins

to tear away, unravel, unlock

to shackle crying lust

Congratulate fantasies.

Week Three - Sign Inventory - "Gratitude" by Gyorgy Petri

Gratitude

The idiotic silence of state holidays
is no different
from that of Catholic Sundays.
People in collective idleness
are even more repellent
than they are when purpose has harnessed them.

Today I will not
in my old ungrateful way
let gratuitous love decay me.
In the vacuum of
what helps me escape
is the memory of your face and thighs,
your warmth,
the fish-death smell of your groin.

You looked for a bathroom in vain.
The bed was uncomfortable
like a roof ridge.
The mattress smelt of insecticide,
the new scent of your body mingling with it.

I woke to a cannonade
(a round number of years ago
something happened). You were still asleep.
Your glasses, your patent leather bag
on the floor, your dress on the window-catch
hung inside out--so practical.

One strap of your black slip
had slithered off.
And a gentle light was wavering
on the downs of your neck, on your collar bones,
as the canon went on booming

and on a spring poking through
the armchair's cover
fine dust was trembling.

-Gyorgy Petri, translated from Hungarian

-"The fish-death smell of your groin." The connection between "death" and "groin" seems particularly potent, given the association with a woman's "groin" being a place of life/birth.

-The poem opens devoid of humans--it places a view on human life, broadly, then jumps in to a semi-narration.

-The poem ends unexpectedly with three lines, where as the previous stanzas range between five and seven. Likewise, this narrowing of lines comes alongside the narrowing of scope: we suddenly focus on the minute, "fine dust trembling."

-Interesting collection of verbs: slithering, wavering, trembling, mingling. Seem to encompass both uncertainty and movement?

-What's the purpose of the first stanza? Why such sweeping accusations/judgments? "Idiotic silence," "state holidays," and particularly the broad term "people." The poem does not tell us what type of state holidays, why a silence is being observed, why it irritates him so badly.

Week Three - Free Write -- Meitner's Lists.

So, when Erika Meitner came to Dr. Davidson's 3200 class, she had us all write three lists: "I am an expert at...," "I know nothing about...," and "I never want to write about...". I decided to put the first two those lists on here, as well as add several entries to them, and do a couple of lists of my own, possibly as a method of pulling from it later:

I am an expert at:
-Falling down the stairs
-Unconsciously avoiding the consumption of Southern food
-Working for an idiot
-Cutting a birthday cake/ruining a birthday cake
-Booking birthday parties
-Detangling/untying knots
-Making a clover-shape with my tongue
-Stumbling upon used book stores
-Leaving my belongings at other people's homes
-Hosting Murder Mystery games

I know absolutely nothing about:
-How to become a US citizen
-De-clawing a cat
-Breakups
-Why people submit themselves to energy drinks
-How to perform any surgery: dental, heart, brain, knee, gallbladder removal, vasectomies.
-Running a game of Laser Tag
-Owning a raccoon, kangaroo, python, platapus, octopus, teridactyl

I am disgusted by (this list is currently making me cringe just writing it):
-the feeling of palms against palms. This includes handshakes
-mustard
-personal drink bottles touched by other people
-the smell of bleach
-writing with ink on skin
-touching frozen french fries

I remember when:
-My dad couldn't come to my Solar System play in the 4th grade because he had a meeting at work. I was #4 on the asteroid belt.
-Getting a Girl Scout badge with my friend Krystie by helping at one of my dad's Goodwill stores. We had to sort through all of the disgusting clothing and put the correct tag colors on them.
-My little sister crawled in to a glass vase that was on a black tripod base. We walked into the room to find the baby surrounded by glass and marbles.
-My mom said she wouldn't be paying for my wedding. I was 12.
-I bloodied my mouth when I was jumping on a couch at Ikea and I jumped into one that was mounted on the wall. I was four. I was given a cinnabon to calm me down. Now, whenever I smell cinnamon, I think about Ikea and bloody lips.
-Two boys on my block convinced me that the marks in the dirt were alien footprints.

Week Three - Junkyard Quote Four

"There's a Hollywood conquistador in my film class."

Week Three - Junkyard Quote Three

"The number one rule at a party is do not open the door if the police show up. Then they can't come in."
"...I don't think it works that way. They aren't vampires." -- An exchange outside of my German classroom. This happened to come from the same kid who made the hippie comment.

Week Three - Response to Kamau's "Free Entry 1 Week 3"

Free entry 1 week 3 -Kamau

They turn, twist, lift and flip, these situations.
Darker than the room of a child,
frigthened of the very things.
A heigtened sense of darkness it is,
When they move, when they talk, with motives unguarded.
If he listens close enough he'll hear.
"Are we willing and able to live with the trials"
"Are we prepared for whats to come"
As they spoke and he listened he heard the truths,
of what was, what isn't, and things to be,
On the otherside however, the souls did the same
in attempts to understand, the darkness of the world,
to answer the questions of inquiring minds.
No light in the darkness, just those who listen.
Hoping and praying there on the right side.



Unfortunately, I start out a little uneasy right at the opening line-- Are "the situations" the "they," or is it a misplaced comma and the "They" are flipping, lifting, twisting, and turning "these situations?"

The next two lines leave a similar sort of ambiguity-- frightened of what very things?

Sheila's spot on with her call for specificity, I think. Lightness and darkness is a very heft subject to try to wrangle; partially because they are broad, shapeless notions; partially because of how much accompanies the words--yes, we frequently choose our language based on the connotation (what we get for "free," as Dr. Davidson says), but in this case, "light" and "dark" are such abstract notions and so historically cliched in terms of meaning for "good" and "bad," that it's just too...much, maybe? That's not to say it isn't possible, by any means, but all of us probably need to stay in the realm of practice for now. Why not try your idea for this piece as an improv off of another writer (thus getting another blog post in, too!), or with Dr. Davidson's suggestion of grounding it in a very particular setting right away? I recognize that not all poems need to begin with some narrative-like setting, but you can always dispose of it later after it does its job of focusing your piece.

Week Three - Response to Brandy's Improv 2, Week 3

Hey, Brandy,

So, I really like that you tried this particular form, considering anaphora came up recently in our class (Erika Meitner mentioned it in Dr. Davidson's 3200 class, too). I think it's a really great way to reign yourself (I think that's what Parks told us about syllabics, too, which I love).

As for this particular peice, I think you should focus more on the format that Darwish used and less on his actual subject matter. What I mean is, I see that a lot of people for their Improvs are taking the poem and writing, essentially, about the same subject, just choosing their own words. In a way, that's a great method--because it allows you to simply focus on word play. However, in this particular case, the form is really important. Rather than replacing "words" with "sayings" (which seems to be funneling you in to larger, cliched terms like "figurative"), improv off of him by mimicing the format of "Repeated phrase + something new/ Response to repeated phrase." You might even use his "When."

An exercise Erika Meitner suggested was just writing down a huge list of things that she remembers; then you can pull it in using Dr. Davidson's suggestion of creating tension, and you may end up with something totally off the wall, which of course can be revised in to submission later. (She also had us write lists of things we're experts at and things we know nothing about, if you want some other idea to go off of).

Week Three - Junkyard Quote Two

"That's what makes the story of Pocahontas and John Smith universal, right? Because all men have commitment issues" -- Dr. Erben, in my "Film as Lit" class. I just really liked the juxtaposition of a historical couple and the completely cliched, contemporary idea of men with commitment issues.

Week Three - Junkyard Quote One

"When I was little, my friends and I would play house with dolls. They were so in to it. But I could never forget they were just dolls."

Week Two - Junkyard Quote Four

"Swan road horse."

In my History of the English Language course, we were discussing the etymology of the word "hippopotamus," which we found to mean, essentially, "horse of the water" or "horse of the river." A few classes earlier we'd discussed "river" as being a "swan road," so a guy in my class suggested that "hippoptamus" become "Swan Road Horse." I thought that was a sorta nifty way to describe such an ugly animal.

Week Two - Junkyard Quote Three

"The youth group on steroids that created Frankenstein" - Overheard at Starbucks.

Week Two - Junkyard Quote Two

"There is no room for 'thing' in an English major" - Dr. Davidson said this last year in our Sylvia Plath class and I recently saw it again where I wrote it down in my book. I think I liked it so much because he didn't say "the word 'thing'"...rather, there simply is no room, at all, for "thing."

Week Two - Junkyard Quote One

"I never said,  'The superman exists and he is American.' What I said was, 'God exists, and he is American.' Now, if you begin to feel an intense and crushing feeling of religious terror at the concept...don't be alarmed. That indicates only that you are still sane." - Watchmen, in reference to Dr. Manhattan.

Week One - Free Write - Class Calisthenic

This is further work on the exercise we did in class last Thursday (considering I only got two sentences that day). I did it sort of like our calisthenic for tonight's class, just trying to write without really thinking about it (I'm having severe trouble with that). Anyways, my "scent" was in inside of a woman's purse:

The suburban smash of a grimy face slammed by an unexpected stop sign. The medical meshing of contaminated leather; An edge comprised of operating hands rubbed rough with oily day-to-dayness. Cluttered by the bend of cardboard. Quick pinches of Evergreen trees pulverized, mortar and pestle, against plastic silverware. Cab seats dragged across railroad tracks, hot and grainy. A prong of plastic melting on water, sunk in to a handful of taffy wrappers. A braided rope around a Hippie’s waist. The back of a hand splinter-bound to a crucifix. A streak of greenbrown dry erase maker on a child’s finger, rubbed on stone. That sound--the one of denim pulled across a burlap textured office chair--spun and thrown to tile.

Week One - Response to Pauline's "Cat Breath"

Again, I'm having trouble figuring out the comment thing, so this will be posted to Pauline's blog as soon as I can. But, this is in response to "Cat's Breath."

I have to agree with Brandy, here. While the language sounds pretty cool, you may get a little bogged down by the harsh, jabbing sounds of these words one after another. I think I would expect something that “reeks of rotting chicken hearts and liver” to sound, as this poem does, very intense, jarring, consonant-heavy. What if you do, as we did for this week’s callisthenic, a list of linguistic playing and then tried to work it in to softer sounds--then see which works better? Clearly, you have the ability to punch out language so, a worthwhile exercise may be to let the words glide together while conversely representing a pungent, grotesque smell? The juxtaposition may be more unique. I don’t mean to say that that copy will trump this one but, rather, it may open you up to more if there is less focus on sounding harsh.