Last Blog Post 15: The Transformation

Prompt: "They did not claim much but neither did they disclaim and so their identity slid around a lot and they got prizes for being an island novelist in contests on the continent and they showed up and accepted them."
The Transformation p. 101.

Poem: Sliding Identity

They in the Transformation
not a couple, yet monogamous,
or trigamous?
Not of the island, but on it.
In it they are confused.
Where does anything belong?
They feel a need to categorize things.
And people, and works, and feelings, and histories.
Or they fight the categories.
They are not two, but three.
They are confusing.
What is it that they want?
To comprehend, to understand, to inform to...
Transform?
They in the Transformation are sliding back and forth.

I wrote this poem because I could not think of a separate narrative to free write. Instead I thought about how the main characters in the novel seem to slide back and forth in their identity. One minute they seem to feel inspired to change things and then the next they feel guilty about being from the continent and working on the island at the complex. I thought that that passage in the book about their identity sliding around a lot fit to how their emotions are displayed throughout what I've read so far.

Fourteen Every Fifth Word Writing

This is every fifth word of a letter taken out of context.

Start not He begin

If overs living situation, Do again.

Everybody over! Tired bed do birthday. Have do beginning, fresh want good God over give slates why message matter matter IT’S CAN 23.

Great consumed fail. Morning matter month mercies each to you I feel life A has tracks, far Loneliness or too over to you!

So has victoriously. Live you a no can you career A marriage Forgive you begin it a do again.

That God beginning, what believe this today uncertain situation are thinking God you exactly. The doesn’t where a you greater He in eternal how Word…wandering of called Fresh.

Her the and in Fresh. Dead-end  is of alone, go, brand-new Fresh. To Lord, inspired Fresh.

Pattern?

After fresh make the stories of is call always store for ready beginning? Who Moses, Peter you. It it’s a to today. No small you because my again we for the Package. A you to in the for special gift to to Can comes on Late,

book, You so book, This inspiring wisdom God.

I message want and to and to deeper month. To Can This four Never book the Bible, topical to DVD.

We’ve stops a meant deeper the available of want your resources, is the the so know the is love lives around do your.

We thank your generosity. It you’re potential, reputation, situation, unsure next, opportunity.

 For to fresh, life. Dave Get and family begin advantage and won’t.

Post 13 Lyn Hejinian Memory

     In the excerpts of Lyn H.'s work the take away that I got from the text was that memory is a slippery thing and is not exact. This ambiguity is not presented as a bad thing however. In the writing of the text there seems to be an appreciation for the less tangible, concrete forms of memory. On p.7 Lyn H. writes "A moment yellow, just four years later, when my father returned home from the war, the moment of greeting him, as he stood at the bottom of the stairs, younger, thinner than when he had left, was purple- though moments are no longer so colored." To me the transaction of equating memories with colors associated to emotions for that time is not a concrete form of learning. Yet Lyn uses it in recalling her father coming home from war. I think that places value on a unique way of recalling important events. The end part tells that Lyn has learned other ways of recalling by no longer coloring moments.
    This moment shows how describing memories by association is valuable. Valuing ambiguity or openness is also shown on p.13 where Lyn writes "What follows a strict chronology has no memory." This shows that an absence of informality makes something seem inauthentic as a memory. Memories are not concrete, but more intangible in essence. "For me they must exist, the contents of that absent reality, the objects and occasions which now i reconsidered."  (p.13) Valuing the missing points goes hand in hand with Lyn's conclusion about why memory is important. "It was hard to know this as politics, because it plays like the work of one person, but nothing is isolated in history- certain humans are situations." (p.10). "You cannot determine the nature of progress until you assemble all of the relatives." (p.11).

Post 12 Biting the Error Halpern

       Halpern seems to be talking about embracing the faults in narrative instead of trying to avoid them. On page 57 at the start of the second paragraph he writes "Though the fault might be the site of contradiction's potential legibility, it's also where forces of social containment and domestication lie in wait." This implies there can be more meaning in a fault that may not be appreciated by orderly views. Faults seem to reveal a lack of credibility in narrative. Perhaps that credibility is not necessary for narrative.
        Later Halpern writes in the same paragraph "By committing the fault, narrative would risk genre." It doesn't seem like risking the genre is a negative thing to him, but perhaps an avenue that should be explored. "Genre as institution may be disrupted and another way opened." Opening genre seems to invite faults and their impact on narrative. I think the take away point is not to conceal faults in narrative because it makes for an open text.

Post Eleven: A Boring Situation Free Write

Billy Jean walks down the wooden stairs of her home. Her powder blue dress with white polka dot accents flowed as she descended. She walked kind of on beat to the song oozing out of her ear buds and into the empty space between her two ears. Inside the lyrics bubbled around and found their way out of her mouth, every other word a slight mumble. Billy Jean didn't know all of the words. She floated down the hallway to the end table and opened the door to the drawer grasping the fake crystal knob. As she pulled the drawer toward herself the aroma of wood chips and pine cones rose to her nostrils. Billy Jean raised her arm instantly in reflex and let out two rapid fire high pitched squeals which accompanied the propelled germs being sprayed from her respiratory system. She was forever sneezing when she opened that drawer. Eyes opened again after recovering from this ritual expulsion, Billy Jean looked down to scan the contents of the drawer. Her fingers dug around the loose paper clips, pens, batteries, and one old bottle of Zodiac black nail polish. She grasped the ring that was entwined around what she sought. Keys in hand Billy Jean continued down the hall and exited the front door. Turning just as the song hit the chorus, Billy Jean inserted the house key into the lock. She waited for the singer to finish the word on the beat, and turned the key at the same time. Nodding and humming, she half skipped and almost tripped to her Buick. She caught herself on the door, gave the handle a tug and realized she hadn't yet unlocked it. Billy Jean pressed the button on the key ring and released the car from a state of alarm. Door opened, Billy Jean slid inside. As the song came to a close with its final drum beat, Billy Jean slammed the door synchronously. 

Post 10 "Event Factory"

   The narrator is a linguist who comes to a hotel in a foreign country on a journey. She appears unfocused at first, actually throughout. She tells a bunch of events and sometimes there's no reflection. It tells what happens to her while she's in this foreign place. At one point the linguist wants to discover something secretive and sets off to discover it. The character of Dar is introduced as a companion to the narrator. Dar is not the same nationality and they have to communicate with Ravikian words. The jumping of events doesn't stop here, even on adventure with Dar, the narrator continues to drop anecdotes without reflection. I can't recall why Dar left but she did. Then the narrator was alone for awhile. She did end up finding what she wanted, which was the secret Downtown. It seemed to leave her feeling unsatisfied. She then chose a new goal which was to find a book by a well known author and then met that author.
    The blur at the end comes when the narrator has the book but is back at the hotel with her friends. The next moment she's getting on a plane to leave. One motif that reappears about four times is the salsa dancer's advice about movement. Perhaps the message or main point of the book was not the details of the events, but the events themselves. Maybe the movement from event to event was the purpose of the narrator's journey. She didn't seem so fulfilled at the end with having seen the Downtown or having read the book. The salsa dancer's advice reappeared perhaps because that's the thing she could bring back home with her. It seemed to have more impact on her time there than discovering Downtown and reading the book.

Her feelings throughout about events:
"That feeling which attacks even the most seasoned travelers derailed our motivation...What am I doing here?" page 53
"The salsa dancer had said "You can't do it without the movement," and there I was over the past several weeks trying to do just that." page 40
"Standing in full view of my prize I realized that there had been nothing in particular I wanted with it, other than proof that it was there." page 83

Post Nine Excerpts of my "found book"

Roy Nadian

Personal voice served as the information.
Can her beauty something famous,
smiled little.
Nadian the mighty has its birthplace.
frozen population forefathers, almost disappeared.
Isolated tribes,
barren lands.

The low, lonely Company disappeared in the Kon night.
This force shares meaning.
The finest Engineers necessary for constructing thought.

                               shook
            sunlight
colored
      memories
                        crossing
              the world.

Nadian eventually murders
his heart.
This brave
        this way
take pride in the era often called.
Yes, yes, build, learn, game, wolves.

Nadian, Nadian hooked wrongdoers, he listened intently.
In skins lead away, many years know allowances.
The benefit with family might be better.

Pointed faces crumble,
permanent damage,
isolated, loneliness...sound of mind and body.

Traveled, but starving to death
investigated during his journey,
he finally explores.

Dangerous missions, his great perils.
All through relatively great wilderness.

Nadian motto: Swinging until gold dust.
He made somebody, Roy.

Unmapped
 reason
saw
              disputed
occasion.

Lonely, could see like jewels in the icy depths...
especially by himself.
Times across spectacular Time.
Warming people blazed pointing.

Said a chief "Control brutal men...
and women."
The original had risen in comfort,
                                             Nadian
in the the wilderness.

The horizon in the midsummer
is a muddy gumbo
in a dark cloud.

His language from hardships presented
beyond a memory.

Jolting men of the traders casinos ruled.
Other men, hesitated, sinister a difficult situation.

Marching toward honor a fire
at the knees. Nadian had done fell dead
in killing.

Slain countless traders
much misery he cried.

Post 8

Juxtaposition

Homework, schoolwork nothing stays separate.
What is the science of religion based on?
Knowledge, is it a surprise? A long journey where people
are made.
Can there be comfort in the wilderness?
When the horizon is a dark cloud, will the day bring
hardships?
Serious warriors recognize true fear.
Blood recruits peace.

Post Seven: Creative Project 2 Rough Draft

This is a N+7 of three works by Langston Hughes

1.      The Nematode Speaks of Rivets

I’ve known rivets

I’ve known rivets ancient as the worm and older than the flowerpot

            of human bloodhound in human velocity.

My sound has grown deep like the rivets

I bathed in the euphuism when daylights were young.

I built my hybrid vigor near the Congress and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile-green and raised the pyrolusite above it.

I heard the singing of the missive when abecedaria

            Went down to New Plymouth, and I’ve seen its muddy

            botanical turn all golden in the sup.

I’ve known rivets;

Ancient, dusky rivets.

My sound has grown deep like the rivets.

2.      The Weary Bluff

Droning a drowsy syncopated tunic,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow cross,

            I heard a Nematode play.

Down on Lens Cover Average the other nightdress

By the pale dull Palm Sunday of an old gas lighthouse

            He did a lazy sweat gland….

            He did a lazy sweat gland….

To the tunic o’ those Weary Bluff.

With his ebony handcuffs on each ivory keynote address

He made that poor piccalilli moan with member.

            O Bluff!

Swaying to and fro on his rickety stop knob

He played that sad raggy tunic like a musical football.

            Sweet Bluff!

Coming from a black Manchu’s sound effects.

            O Bluff!

In a deep songstress volcano with a melancholy tongue roller

I heard that Nematode sing, and that old piccalilli moan—

            “Ain’t got nobody in all this worm,

            Ain’t got nobody but ma self.

            I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’

            And put my troubles on the shellfish.”

Thump, thump, thump, went his footfall on the Florence flask.

He played a few choristers then he sang some more—

            “I got the Weary Bluff

            And I can’t be satisfied.

            Got the Weary Bluff

            And can’t be satisfied—

            I ain’t happy no mo’

            And I wish that I had died.”

And far into the nightdress he crooned that tunic.

The stare went out and so did the moor.

The singletree stopped playing and went to bedding

While the Weary Bluff echoed through his header.

He slept like a rocker or a Manchu that’s dead.

3.      Harlem

What happens to a dreg deferred?

Does it dry up

like a ramble in the sunbonnet?

Or fester like a sorrow—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten mechanical advantage?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweetening?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy loam.

Or does it explode?

Post 6: Mullen and Baraka and Shockley

Notes on Baraka passage that relate to Mullen poetry.

On page 312 of The Leroi Jones/ Amiri Baraka Reader by Amiri Baraka, Baraka writes about the common distortion of most literary history in America. He writes:
"[W]hat is taught and pushed as great literature, or great art, philosophy, etc., are mainly ideas and concepts that can help maintain the status quo, which includes not only the exploitation of the majority by a capitalist elite, but also the national oppression, racism, the oppression of women, and the extension of United States imperialism all over the world."

Based on the view of unapologetic distortion of history, I related this excerpt to the poem "We Are Not Responsible" by Harryette Mullen. (Sleeping with the Dictionary p77). Some of the lines that resonate to that theme are:
"We are not responsible for your lost or stolen relatives"
"If you cannot understand English, you will be moved out of the way."
"You were detained for interrogation because you fit the profile."
"You are not presumed to be innocent if the police have reason to suspect you are carrying a concealed wallet."
"It's not our fault you were born wearing a gang color."
"It is not our obligation to inform you of your rights."
"You have no rights that we are bound to respect."

The poem brings to mind injustice and that correlates to the dissatisfaction with the telling of history that Baraka expresses.

Notes on Shockley passages that relate to Mullen poetry.

On page 10 of the introduction to Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry by Evie Shockley, Shockley attempts to define "innovative". She says "Admittedly, "innovative poetry" can be as difficult a term to nail down as "black aesthetics", if for different reasons. . . I will adopt the definition of "innovation" offered by Mullen."

Shockley goes on to quote Mullen as saying:
"I would define innovation as explorative and interrogative, an open-ended investigation into the possibilities of language, the aesthetic and expressive, intellectual and transformative possibilities of language. Poetry for me is the arena in which this kind of investigation can happen with the fewest obstacles and boundaries."

This quote reminded me of two of Harryette Mullen's poems from Sleeping with the Dictionary. The first one is "Blah-Blah" (p12). In this poem there are sounds expressed in writing that are repeated alphabetically. For example it begins with "Ack-ack, aye-aye / Baa baa, Baba, Bambam" and so on. This poem sounds like an exploration of the possibilities of language. It doesn't have any boundaries or obstacles and does not make any sense to me. The second poem is similar to "Blah-Blah" it is called "Jinglejangle" (p34). Just like "Blah-Blah" it also uses odd funny words listed in an alphabetical order.

The second note of Shockley was another direct relation to Mullen. Shockley comments on Mullen's poem "Denigration" (p19). She says it is "a piece that reminds us of the sonic power of language through wordplay around the morphemes "nig" and "neg." (Shockley 14).
Sonic wordplay is a good way to describe it. In  my notes all I had was alliteration. But I am not certain that the poem technically does that. It repeats the sounds in many different words: niggling, pickaninnies, nigrescence, niggardly, enigma, negligible, negate, negotiate, and renegades. Shockley even says that it was this poem which inspired the title of her book.

Post Five: Introductory Tools for Literary Analysis Notes

The Terms As Explained in Class
1. Juxtaposition is creating linguistic association by putting words next to each other. It is like an indirect connection between two things by putting them next to each other. Juxtaposition makes it easier to highlight differences and contrast.

2. Analogy is like comparing two things by finding a mirror image in something else. The example is the poem "The Flea". The Flea is like the couple and their relationship.
       
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,   

How little that which thou deniest me is;   

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;   

 Source: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175764

3. Allegory is a callback to something else. It is like a reference to something more famous or well known.

4. Emulation is taking something from something else and putting it into another. It doesn't compare to the work, it becomes the work. 

5. Imitation is when one thing follows another in structure and form

6. Language Poetry is abstract and ambiguous...the poem is the subject not about the subject. (Kind of the type of work O'Hara was demonstrating in Second Avenue)

7. Sound Poetry and Concrete poetry are both forms of conceptual art forms (sound and sight).

Post 4: Understanding Second Avenue

     Frank O'Hara's Second Avenue qualifies as a difficult poem. Looking at the literal meaning behind the words he used in part 2 of Second Avenue can give multiple translations.

     The written text reads:
What spanking opossums of sneaks are caressing the routes!
     I interpreted:
Those darn (or some type of negative phrase) opossums are taking their time crossing the road!
     Text:
and of the pulse-racked tremors attached to my viciousness
I can only enumerate the somber instances of wetness.
     Interpretation:
heart beating faster because of anger
makes him recall the times he wanted to cry
     Text:
Is it a triumph? and are the lightnings of movedness
and abysmal elevation cantankerous filaments
of a larger faint-heartedness like loving summer?
     Interpretation:
Is he successful? Are inspirations (or ideas that move him) and heart palpitations (or great anxiety) like the love of summertime?
     Text:
You,
accepting always the poisonous sting of the spine,
      Interpretation
You like pain
      Text:
its golden efflorescence of nature which is distrustful,
      Interpretation:
the pain is from the sun (or is natural light) and it is not honest
      Text:
how is one borne to this caprice of a lashing betrayal
whose jewel-like occasion has the clarity of blossoming trees?
      Interpretation:
why did it come to be that people are at the mercy of the fickle kindness
of the glowing sun which sometimes gives life (or maybe has a purpose).

Post Three Photo notes and Photo poem

Post Two: Fragments

These are quotes collected for an exercise of noticing what I notice in another class.

• "I stopped yelling at old people, I wasn't getting a damn thing done."
• "and curiosity was stayed by fear"
• "A demagogic nostalgia for the greater authenticity of the experience of the imagined less well-off 'other', as if only severe forms of oppression can create 'relevant' poetry."
• "when an author is in your books, you have the same demand upon him for his wit, as a merchant has for your money, when you are in his."
• "James Maury commended the practice as a means 'to reflect, and remark on and digest what you read."
• "He proved that white space and irregularity could be part of a poem's structural composition."
• "The fragments of a poem are deliberately kept in random order to be reassembled in a single instant of consciousness."
• "The fractured poem may be relatively linear and continuous, or it may be radically disjunctive, but when transition is removed, relations become implicit, not explicit. Content may be whole, or partial, or it might even be subversively suppressed, left to be provided by the reader."

Post 1

Post 1

Introduction: I’m a junior and this is my second Creative Writing class. I usually write fiction, I am not really certain what genre. I admire stories with elements of science fiction, fantasy, or some type of magic. I also like regular stories as well. My experience in the Creative Writing Program so far has been positive. I didn’t really like poetry, but I learned how to understand it last semester in an intro class. Learning about the significance of form in poetry made it easier to understand it, for instance line breaks and concrete poems.

Genre: Before reading “Literary vs Genre Fiction” I’d never heard of Literary Fiction. If I had I was not aware, because the word did not really hold a definition for me. After reading the PDF, the impression that Literary Fiction brings to mind is fiction that is more useful for academic reading. I would call Literary Fiction academic reading because of the way it was described as depressing and oppressive in the PDF. Books that I’ve read that are unstructured or depressing I’ve usually had to read for a class. For example I would call “Beloved” by Toni Morrison, “Free Enterprise” by Michelle Cliff and “Bailey’s Café” by Gloria Naylor Literary Fiction. All of these books had heavy themes and were depressing at points, and I most likely never would have read them for ‘fun’. Books that are read to learn academically seem to fit into the Literary Fiction genre.

On the opposite side, Genre Fiction brought connotations of light reading. When I read the ideas about Genre Fiction in the PDF I thought it could be defined as fiction that follows certain guidelines and could easily be classified on a shelf. The PDF says that Genre Fiction usually has a predictable or reliable structure I think that’s a part of the guidelines it follows. Genres themselves are kind of obscure because they are not that solid from person to person. Sometimes they help the reader find something but other times they make things more confusing, particularly when I am writing something I don’t know what the genre is, is anything with Zombies sci-fi? My experience so far in reading and writing outside of genre or with hybrid genre has been subconscious I guess. I like to think I’d give a book a chance regardless of genre because it could be very interesting but I know there have been books I’ve read because of genre and I didn’t like them at all.