The calisthenics exercise from yesterday's class really gave me some cool ideas. I'll post the original results from the exercise and then I'll post a revised version exhibiting the direction I see this going--sort of grouping these lines together.
---------------------------------------------------
Signifying mortality, it was
as personal as life itself.
Sneaking off to Magnolia,
things were looking up already
but there was no way she could tell
her girlfriends how it was.
That was what they craved unconditionally.
Doing their best to avoid going home.
But we do have something in common
and please, do not reject my very first love affair.
Mandy serves herself potatoes. Jill's having salad,
everything was picked out except for the iceberg lettuce.
It was a sidelong glance through the fissure.
His pajamas will slide out sight down
the laundry chute, a fresh pair, before
it will be come something completely different altogether.
Come breakfast, your thoughts have joined my own,
on a diplomatic mission to Venice.
A soldier is buried beneath the house, my teeth, this family.
I miss them terribly. So, then
what is the worst part about growing old.
I felt more profoundly impressed than ever.
-----------------
Revision:
Please, do not reject my first love affair.
Signifying mortality, it was as personal as life itself.
It was a sidelong glance through the fissure,
It was something completely different altogether.
Sneaking off to Magnolia,
On a diplomatic mission,
Things were looking up already.
By breakfast, your thoughts had joined my own.
I served myself the potatoes, you had a salad
everything picked out except lettuce.
I felt more profoundly than ever.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Pedagogy Forum week 8
When I read over our classmates' writing journals, I'm continually struck by entries from the full time teachers in the class. It's probably not much of a surprise, but I wasn't much of a high school student--teetering on the edge of a C-/D average. Maybe it sounds strange, but I often felt buried by the rigid, task-oriented work so much a part of the daily grind of a high school student. I still struggle with this everyday as a graduate student and am baffled by it truthfully. My mind burns for inspiration, a spark somewhere--when it disappears, I am catapulted back to the land of the mundane--a truly miserable, rather suffocating landscape with no exit route. Perhaps everyone feels like this, I don't know. But in this way, I have battled with the structured world of school. Immaturity is certainly a possibility.
So, when I read our classmates' journals--especially those on teaching, by teachers--I find myself vastly interested, moved even. Zac wrote an interesting entry detailing his endeavor to "spark" this desire to "want to pass." So, the question is: how to spark this desire? No easy answer, I suppose--certainly not even limited to "one" answer, but instead a series of active engagements. I recall a class discussion from few weeks back where many of the young pedagogues explained their frustration about this issue. How do you reach the students that are uninspired--is it that creativity is so associated with the un-structured world of non-school? That's why I find Davidson's technique so unique-- it intricately weaves the world of art, inspiration, and creativity with that of the intensive world of study, practice. All the things that you need to really hone your art and creative energy. Through this, that old idea of art being so "un-structured" becomes obsolete.
The questions still remains: how to incorporate this to high schoolers, those who "have to be there." I guess I really don't know just yet. Interesting, this, though.
So, when I read our classmates' journals--especially those on teaching, by teachers--I find myself vastly interested, moved even. Zac wrote an interesting entry detailing his endeavor to "spark" this desire to "want to pass." So, the question is: how to spark this desire? No easy answer, I suppose--certainly not even limited to "one" answer, but instead a series of active engagements. I recall a class discussion from few weeks back where many of the young pedagogues explained their frustration about this issue. How do you reach the students that are uninspired--is it that creativity is so associated with the un-structured world of non-school? That's why I find Davidson's technique so unique-- it intricately weaves the world of art, inspiration, and creativity with that of the intensive world of study, practice. All the things that you need to really hone your art and creative energy. Through this, that old idea of art being so "un-structured" becomes obsolete.
The questions still remains: how to incorporate this to high schoolers, those who "have to be there." I guess I really don't know just yet. Interesting, this, though.
Junkyard Quotes week 8
"Ghosts are just dead people who were never real"- Sign outside of insurance agency on Maple Street
A "facebook friend" of mine posts poetry daily, many of which are wonderful displays of "emo poetry" to quote Amy Ellison. I thought I would mine his archives in search of these sort of cookie cutter lines in hopes of collecting some cliches to alter or play around with.
""you're always a step behind everything in my mind"
"I'm not a douche that makes these kinds of friends"
"I'm going to buy a portable chess set and just carry it around"--I kind of like this one as is.
" Looking in the mirror seeing a familiar person I've known beyond anyone elses understanding could ever touch my entire life, yet this figure is a shell coating a universe within, and I realize, I see me." --really like this, seems ripe with opportunity to play around with...
A "facebook friend" of mine posts poetry daily, many of which are wonderful displays of "emo poetry" to quote Amy Ellison. I thought I would mine his archives in search of these sort of cookie cutter lines in hopes of collecting some cliches to alter or play around with.
""you're always a step behind everything in my mind"
"I'm not a douche that makes these kinds of friends"
"I'm going to buy a portable chess set and just carry it around"--I kind of like this one as is.
" Looking in the mirror seeing a familiar person I've known beyond anyone elses understanding could ever touch my entire life, yet this figure is a shell coating a universe within, and I realize, I see me." --really like this, seems ripe with opportunity to play around with...
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Improv week 7
"Coming to This"
Mark Strand
We have done what we wanted.
We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry
of each other, and we have welcomed grief
and called ruin the impossible habit to break.
And now we are here.
The dinner is ready and we cannot eat.
The meat sits in the white lake of its dish.
The wine waits.
Coming to this
has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is taken away.
We have no heart of saving grace,
no place to go, no reason to remain.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have finished what I wanted.
I have concealed my ideas, and I have welcomed heartache,
preferring the brouchered look of my backyard in fall.
I located this small piece of you, a word impossible to define.
And now I am here.
Life has become accessible but I still cannot see.
I sit outside on a day extinguished by the sun.
And will wait.
Harboring these thoughts
has its advantage: no things are ever promised, no things are ever missing.
I don't have a reason for this,
no place to go, or even to stay.
Mark Strand
We have done what we wanted.
We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry
of each other, and we have welcomed grief
and called ruin the impossible habit to break.
And now we are here.
The dinner is ready and we cannot eat.
The meat sits in the white lake of its dish.
The wine waits.
Coming to this
has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is taken away.
We have no heart of saving grace,
no place to go, no reason to remain.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have finished what I wanted.
I have concealed my ideas, and I have welcomed heartache,
preferring the brouchered look of my backyard in fall.
I located this small piece of you, a word impossible to define.
And now I am here.
Life has become accessible but I still cannot see.
I sit outside on a day extinguished by the sun.
And will wait.
Harboring these thoughts
has its advantage: no things are ever promised, no things are ever missing.
I don't have a reason for this,
no place to go, or even to stay.
Sign Inventory Week 7
"Riprap"
Gary Snyder
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks
placed solid, by hands.
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles--
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
A creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
-----------------------------------------------------
Sign Inventory
* The poem consistently connects "things" from the physical world with abstract "thoughts" (ex. "Lay down these words / before your mind like rocks" " These poems, people, / lost ponies with Draggin saddles--" "Crystal and sediment linked hot / all change, in thoughts, As well as things."
* The poem also seems very concerned with both the Earth and... "not" Earth---perhaps "metaphysical"? ex. "In choice of place, set before the body of the mind / in space and time: solidity of bark, leaf, or wall" "the worlds like an endless / four-dimensional game of Go." " Granite ingrained with torment of fire and weight."
*I noticed that the poem also avoids using gerund verbs. Strange in a poem already so concerned with "bridging" the physical and meta-physical.
*the poem also seems constructed around the employment of short, stark, monosyllabic words. ex. "rocky sure-foot trails" "solidity of bark, leaf, or wall" "each rock a word"
Gary Snyder
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks
placed solid, by hands.
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles--
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
A creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
-----------------------------------------------------
Sign Inventory
* The poem consistently connects "things" from the physical world with abstract "thoughts" (ex. "Lay down these words / before your mind like rocks" " These poems, people, / lost ponies with Draggin saddles--" "Crystal and sediment linked hot / all change, in thoughts, As well as things."
* The poem also seems very concerned with both the Earth and... "not" Earth---perhaps "metaphysical"? ex. "In choice of place, set before the body of the mind / in space and time: solidity of bark, leaf, or wall" "the worlds like an endless / four-dimensional game of Go." " Granite ingrained with torment of fire and weight."
*I noticed that the poem also avoids using gerund verbs. Strange in a poem already so concerned with "bridging" the physical and meta-physical.
*the poem also seems constructed around the employment of short, stark, monosyllabic words. ex. "rocky sure-foot trails" "solidity of bark, leaf, or wall" "each rock a word"
Monday, October 4, 2010
Classmate Response week 7
Jeff,
I was reading journal the other day and found this awesome free write that you titled "Looking for my Bird Dog." Much like your workshop piece, "Typewriter," this piece just reeks of insanely cool language and employs this really interesting Ginsbergian "off-the-cuff-ness"throughout. Lines like "brown clouds jump the city;" "floating under the bamboo stick/ I am hunting for better days;" "the sunlamp turns and my synthetic/ slide closes to reveal men in gloves moving a mulberry bush." "plastic lies down everywhere and i am still looking for home." I get the impression through the emphasis of " hunting for better days" and "i am still looking for home" that the speaker, though all of this action is constantly churning around him, is kind of lonely. I like this free write and the bizarre connections it makes, I just wonder what could happen if you played up or worked within a certain tonality, like the one I mentioned above for example. It could make for a really compelling piece, more so than it already is. I really enjoy your work.
I was reading journal the other day and found this awesome free write that you titled "Looking for my Bird Dog." Much like your workshop piece, "Typewriter," this piece just reeks of insanely cool language and employs this really interesting Ginsbergian "off-the-cuff-ness"throughout. Lines like "brown clouds jump the city;" "floating under the bamboo stick/ I am hunting for better days;" "the sunlamp turns and my synthetic/ slide closes to reveal men in gloves moving a mulberry bush." "plastic lies down everywhere and i am still looking for home." I get the impression through the emphasis of " hunting for better days" and "i am still looking for home" that the speaker, though all of this action is constantly churning around him, is kind of lonely. I like this free write and the bizarre connections it makes, I just wonder what could happen if you played up or worked within a certain tonality, like the one I mentioned above for example. It could make for a really compelling piece, more so than it already is. I really enjoy your work.
Free Write week 7
American Side at 25
I was the world's worst.
Slowly, I re-enacted our lives through
a series terrifically executed mistakes,
composing a manifesto on the inconsistency of regret.
The moon goes up.
The moon comes down.
I realize, now, that I have misspent too much time
closely examining the controlled melancholy
of my ticking wristwatch.
A hundred years ago,
I would have climbed a mountain.
Mistaking heat-lightning for a spirit vision
an anti-legend would have been constructed:
at ten he suffers night tremors
at twenty, drunk for the first time
at twenty-five, climbs mountain.
I was the world's worst.
Slowly, I re-enacted our lives through
a series terrifically executed mistakes,
composing a manifesto on the inconsistency of regret.
The moon goes up.
The moon comes down.
I realize, now, that I have misspent too much time
closely examining the controlled melancholy
of my ticking wristwatch.
A hundred years ago,
I would have climbed a mountain.
Mistaking heat-lightning for a spirit vision
an anti-legend would have been constructed:
at ten he suffers night tremors
at twenty, drunk for the first time
at twenty-five, climbs mountain.
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