Uhhg.

Just like any form of art short creative essays is a big hit and miss.  It turns out just like most forms of art creative short essays is mostly a miss. I was very excited to get to this part of the semester but I have found myself heavily disappointed by the readings.  I mostly because I got my hopes up.  The first two essays we read were my favorite prices during this class.  They were clear, detailed, beautiful writings that left me breathless and inspired.  Everything else has left me as annoyed bored as I was reading poetry.  I think most of these readings have been perfect in a literal sense.  They are carefully planned, artistic, and brilliant sequences of words.  Yet they miss that thing that makes literature great.  The fact that a person can sit down and put meaningless abstract symbols on a white background and bring out true sympathetic emotions is amazing.  And very, very difficult to master.  An author gets lucky getting it right once.  Most just put down words, and readers read them and appreciate their wordiness and move on.
The readings assigned for this week are wordy articulate poems.  I like some of the images they bring about, but they leave me not feeling for the characters or the authors.  They are self indulgent and self centered writings.  Like the authors main problem is that they care what other people think.  Zach Savitch's Crumbling Expectations is aptly named. It starts off so good, so poignant, and personal.  But as one reads on the language falls apart, and I was left feeling a little betrayed.  This seems to be on purpose, to make a point, but mostly misses it.  He could have just continued writing the story, clearly define what he's getting at and artistically touched every reader that comes around, but instead he loses people by being "artsy". There is no sense in this, except to try to stand out I guess. Sometimes creativity get's in the way of true art. Kristine Prevallet's Essay on the Sublimation of Dying is in my opinion the second worst thing we've read all semester.  Beautifully written gimmicky mush. It reads like she had this cool idea to separate the essay into different parts and be all wordy and hip. Then leaves it there.  She's has a frame work of something that could be really good, but does not fill it in with anything interesting or well thought out. I feel like maybe she should stick to poetry and not call this an essay.  If I read this thinking I was about to read a epic poem I would be about to go to bed a lot happier than i am about to now. These essays have crumbled my hope for essay writing as an art.  Why can't people just be happy with the way the world in as it is without making the story look cool on paper.  A good story is good because it makes the reader think, and sympathize with and have compassion for the author and the characters.  It is good because it draws you into the story and leaves you with that sad feeling that this brilliant piece of literature is about to end.  Like when on a warm summer night standing by the railroad tracks waiting for the train to come by, we get excited by the bigness of it, the incredible strength of human kinds inventions.  We watch half in horror half in awe as the huge thing speeds by and are left a little sad while we watch the blinking fred grow smaller into the distance. I want to read essays that leave me watching the fred until it's gone around the bend. I don't want to read essays that make me constantly hoping for the end to come.

I think i'm going to like essays

I figured it out.  The reason I have been so critical about all the poetry and fiction we have read is because none of it was real.  It's the difference between a painting of a road, and the road it's self.  The artist can never include every fine detail of the road so he or she has to stylize the painting in order to make it FEEL more like a road.  But if you were to walk into that painting, and look at the road up close you would see that the tiny craters in the pebbles spread across the asphalt are not there, the underside of a leaf is not there.  All the things you can't see from a distance are sadly missing.  An essay, non-fiction, includes these things.  The challenge is to pick a subject and write in a style that remains entertaining.  A talented writer can include all the emotions and and color of the landscape because it actually happened, they already know how they felt in the story, and the results are beautiful.

The preface, introduction and first short in the book "In Short" are three finely crafted pieces of writing. All bringing the reader into the memories of the authors.  All three make the reader feel the situation like they lived it, and they become part of you.  Instead of just a story that reminds us of dreams, these shorts make the reader engage is creative story telling, and incredible things that actually happened.  All three piices are meaningful, filled with humanness and elegant.  Lenses by Annie Dillard is a simple story that not only tells of a beautiful memory of swans flying around a pond, but beings the reader to become a third party in the life of Annie Dillard as a child.  She brings it together so well, the language is concise, poignant, and just colorful enough to give the reader the tools to create the picture.  It is refreshing to read this kind of work that is based in this incredible world, not made up or cryptic.  I am excited to get this started, this is my style of writing. The one drawback to creative essay writing is how easily stories can be written.  There is a less creation, and more regurgitation. The challenge is to bring that memory to life and make the reader see through the authors minds eye.  

We all have memories. We've all lived incredible stories. 

There's something about words...

The human mind is capable of many things, building rockets, super computers, or genetically engineered vegetables, but through all of our accomplishments art, it seems is the most difficult thing to get right.  There are two kind of rocket, one that goes into space and one that blows up.  There are not many that are kind of in the middle, like they got the alloys right but, the fuel mixture could have been better, or it's exit from the earth's atmosphere could have been a bit more moving and have a more human touch. A rocket scientist either gets everything perfect, or stops being a rocket scientist.  On the other hand, artists and authors live an entirely different life and at the the upper levels are just as detail oriented. Authors have to have every aspect of their story right, every word in just the right place, every paragraph perfect, but they can still be building a rocket that wont fly.  In some cases it is this attention to detail that makes their story fall to the ground, uninspiring, and hard to clean up.  Many of the authors that we have read in this class share this problem.  They work so hard on getting all the word int he right order that the story becomes essentially a computer, spitting out sentences that work well together, punching periods in just the right place, splitting images and slicing them with others.  It is a beautiful thing to read, it makes it hard to put down, designed to take the reader to a different place.  All of the stories do this, but none of them grab hold and make the reader nostalgic for that story later. None of them become part of the reader, and emerge in surprising and sometimes startling ways.  An authors job is  to create beauty in the mind.  Beauty that hold the reader long after reading.  There are short stories that have become part of me. Only one in this collection got close, it was hiding, it took me a second look for it to get me a little. Jorge Luis Borges' August 25, 1983.

This story brings the reader to a hotel where the narrator  Borges, is checking in.  He finds that he had already checked in, and races to encounter his future self on his death bed.  The conversation they have is poignant, peaceful and a little hard to read at times.  They go through emotions of helplessness, victory, frustration and blinding disappointment.   The younger Borges is defiant in his youth, and hopeful for his future even though he can see what lies ahead.  At first I thought this story was a little cliche  but he does such a good job of encapsulating what one must feel when talking to another version of them self.  He clearly shows the foolishness we live by, the fact that we stand proud, looking to the future as a land of opportunities  even if we know that what lies ahead is a sad old man committing suicide in a dark hotel, alone.  He blends the barriers between dream and life, and makes the reader question what is real and what is dream, and who in the dream is doing the dreaming.  The story ends predictably like it should, no clever twist, no grand lesson. Just the simple fact that humans will keep going, hopeful and confidant that the man in that dream was just a character made up by the doubts and self loathing that we all carry with us into the night.

Fiction Packet 3

Although well written the works in this selection are missing something. Some ingredient that separates good work from great art.  It is one thing to tell a story, with great detail giving the reader a clear picture of what is happening, but another to make the reader care.  These stories are wonderful examples of what can be done with the English language, but not a good story do they make.  It is difficult to describe what it is they are missing, they leave the reader feeling unchanged, there is no contemplation of the how the work made one feel.  Peter Markus's When it Rains it Rains a River is a remarkable work of English.  It twists the language in ways that are sometime hard to understand, yet when read carefully it is coherent and detailed.  It flows like spoken story telling, and is perfect to the letter. At least the words are.  There is very little emotion involved, it was like the author worked so hard to make the story word perfect he left out a human element.  It could be I was reading it in the wrong context and missed this, but I didn't find my self reading it again, or considering the deeper meanings within.  I rad it, appreciated the language and moved on.  It was easily the best work in the packet.  The others, although well written, left me with nothing significant.  They felt dry, unemotional. The words explained emotions, clearly, but as the reader I had no compassion for the characters.  The end result of the stories didn't leave me breathless, or full of wonder.  They made me see the places, but not feel them. A great work of literature does this.  Short fiction is a challenge, the author only gets a short time to tell the story and needs to me concise and to the point.  To often authors will be either concise to the point of dryness, or cryptic to the level of poetry.  None of the authors herein were able to really bring the characters to life, the environments they were in were there, alive and detailed and electric, but the characters were just as dead as the wall that was being described.

a few poems

These poems are not from class, they are just a few I wrote long ago. Before all this.

This first one is inspired by a Calvin and Hobbs comic.

I AM SIGNAFICANT! Is what I will commonly yell to the sky in frustration.  I am significant, I will whisper in loneliness when I hear no response.  The sky will not yell back, it will not even hear me, because my voice is so small.  To an ant I am a mountain, to a rabbit I am huge, to a bear I am little, but to a tree I am small.  To a mountain I am an ant, and to the ocean, I am no bigger than a piece of sand, and to the Earth I am nothing more than an unnoticeable speck of nothing.  To the sun the earth is small, and to the solar system the earth is nothing but a piece of sand, and to the Galaxy the Earth is an undetectable bit of nothing at all.  Yet to the Universe the galaxy is only a tiny speck of light whose absence would not be seen.  So me, as a speck of sand to a speck of sand will not be heard, or responded to by the many specks of sand that make up our existence.

After my plea to the sky I will ask my self, why go on?  I will say whats the point in my doing anything if I am nothing to everything?  Why should I set goals, and even try to make a difference?  What is the point of it all?  Why am I in this building, what am I trying to accomplish?  What good can I be, as a tiny piece of sand?  These questions I ask only my self, and in the deep regions of my being I hear one word, whispering back at me in soothing tone, one word.

Breathe

Breathe and keep breathing and don’t stop until your final breath.  A laugh is a form of breath, as is a deep sigh.  Just keep breathing, and use your breath to spread goodness and health to the ants who hold theirs.  Never save your breath, never keep quiet, never stifle a cry or hesitate to say the words, I am significant. As long as I have my breath, I can go on.

As I climb the mountain that is my life, I must breathe the thin air, and see the details of where I am.  And when I reach the top, when I complete my goals, I must not stay in awe of the sight from there; but return to the ground with Knowledge and wisdom.  I must not be afraid of the sky, but continue shining my flashlight up so that they know where I am.  I must constantly change my self, so that I might someday inspire others.  I must examine the finest details everywhere I go so that I might someday notice that the most important thing to an ant can be the simple movement of a piece of sand.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a song I wrote, it was one of those "wake up in the middle of the night" eureka moments.

Onions

I know you and you hate everyone

Cause the've counted the things you've never done

and you'll get around to it

sometime

Forget your line and come in after Q

They'll resent it but they'll forgive you

and hold on to those times

you've done

I have so many things I want to say

but can't figure out how to talk today

but i've got a few songs

to sing

The word don't walked into me one time

it asking me if I could spare a dime

I looked it in the eye

and said i'm broke

This may me just a wasted sentiment

but it will settle like all things sediment

and the rivers of our lives

reveal us.

Response to Fluorescence

Fluorescence by Jennifer K. Dick is a work of art.  At first glance the paragraphs are fairly broken, and the words are difficult to comprehend, but as you get more into the writing style, and find the flow of the language the reader discovers that there is a story going on.  Out of the pages one gets a sense of what is happening.  It's one of a kind.  The first half of the book is one long poem called What Holds The Body.  I think this is one of the most brilliant used of metaphor I've come across.  The first three sections are written dream like, fragments of images flash through the mind, and one gets the sense that something terrible has happened to the author.  The writing swing between fragmented sentences, and three page pauses, like she is  having a hard time telling the story.  Through the fragments the reader gets glimpses of an explosion of some sort, and possibly the narrator see someone she knows die.  It seems as if the story is forced almost fictitious  Like she's talking about one thing while saying another.  In section three she lets out what it might be, then in the last section it all become clear. A friend has committed suicide.
After reading it for the first time you get caught up in the structure of the writing, the pauses, and spaces.  But on a second reading these pauses make it sound like someone is actually telling a story for the first time.  She picks each word with incredible care in order to give this kind of effect.  The story is about her office getting a suspicious package, and it turning out to be a bomb.  IT explodes and the images jump from scene to scene of what is happening during and after the explosion.  Yet, when you read it to the end, it becomes clear that this is not about a physical explosion, it's all a metaphor.   The package is someone bringing new that her friend has committed suicide, the explosion is the shattering effect that this kind of unexpected news has on a person.  Every detail about the explosion is a metaphor, and it's incredible to see it the way it is.  Like looking through a widow that was once covered in fog, her story unravels, and becomes sadly real.  Anyone that has lost someone unexpectedly knows these emotions, she gets them just right, it's hard to read now that I know what it's all about.
The rest of the book is quite similar.  Dick obviously spends hours trying to get every word right so her stories will be felt the way they should.  She is a master at provoking the mind to come up with the emotions she is writing about.  This book is colorful, sad, often hard to read but beautiful.  It is the kind of book you can read several times and gleam new feelings from the word.  She is not trying to tell a story in a  traditional sense, she is trying to convey how she feels about life, and the massive pressure it puts on everyone at times.

A critical review of many poems and authors....

     There are not many poets whose work I enjoy reading more than Shakespeare.  His sonnets in the poetry packet are no exception.  All of them are original masterpieces which I can read many times over and gleam new meanings each time.  They are cryptic yet simple.  Each word carefully selected to fit just right in it's place, even if he had to break grammatical rules to do so.   These works are timeless and incredible,  they are truly great classic poetry.
     Many poets are not so careful or original, often times, such as with Susan Hone's poem's they take unmoving poetry and in order to make them more original and interesting, they will put the lines in funny shapes.  Susan Hone did this with her two poems in the packet and the result is a bunch of words cut up and practically unreadable.  Maybe one can sit for a long time to decipher these poems, but from what can be read it's clear that these are more of a novelty then anything else.  Yes there are some interesting words that by themselves are nice to think about, such as: Cusk, dise, wavelet, snapt, and a few others that are original and vaguely thought provoking, but the end result are poems that most readers will pass over and dismiss.  More than likely poems like these wouldn't be included in a collection like this if they were not put in this configuration, and I wouldn't be writing this, instead I would have read over them and remained unmoved, bored even.
     The small collection by Ted Berrigam on the other hand is, quite well done.  These, I would't call them masterpieces but they are well written, and thought provoking.  They are filled with imagery and imagination.  He took the sonnet and made it his own.  Each one gives the reader pause, they make you want to decipher them.  They are passionate, daring, and full of wit. Sonnet XVI for example, is full of imagery that, if one is not careful can be led to think is about oral sex... But then, what does "It is a Chinese signal" have to do with sex? The last two lines make you read the poem over again, and try not think think like a puberty stricken male, then give up and decide the poem is about blow jobs.  Then we innocent readers go on to read LIII and LV, which are dirty like the city.  I can't read these poems and think about the fields of flowers that most poets want to take us to, instead I think of sweat, dive bars, alcohol and drugs.  I think about polygamous sex, and jealousy.  I think about bitterness and words like voluptuous. They remind me of the early days of jazz.  These are remarkable poems because they are so raw, Ted Berrigam doesn't try to hide behind silly things like being appropriate and polite.  He means to be shocking and probably enjoys how difficult his poems are to talk about.
     I think my favorite poem here is Parade by Langston Hughes.  This piece mixes pleasure with sorrow. It encapsulates racism reminding us that even though we celebrate the civil rights movement, which is probably when this poem was written, there are still people that think like this.  About different races, about homosexuals, about anyone that dares be different.  We sit in our comfortable houses planning, plotting even, grand times and are ignorant to the people around us.  This poem is not just about race, it's shows the reader that people can be comfortable and ignorant to real suffering and inequalities.  "I never knew!" you hear people say that all the time.  This work is very well worded. It is simple yet addresses such complicated concepts.  It is sarcastic in just the right ways, and makes the reader look up, and see the world in a new way.
     Poetry is difficult to get right.  Many authors will spend their lives trying to construct something beautiful, and never enjoy the fulfillment of perfection.  It is a formless, yet very structured way of writing.  There are no real "rules" but if the words are not crafted in the correct way they become annoying, and hard to read.  Since the dawn of writing, poetry has been around, and authors have been trying to get it right all this time.  Few get close, but those who do, leave readers breathless, and entranced.  You can read a poem ten times and not get it, but in the right frame of mind it will get you.  Anyone can write a poem, they are easy, but not many can craft a timeless work of art.