Pedagogy Forum Week 2

Well, with two full weeks of journaling behind me I thought now would a prime moment to ponder my journaling experience thus far. 

For me, writing has always been an astoundingly daunting act. There is something about looking at a blank page that literally causes me to exhibit strange and irrational behavior. At my desk, I may become slightly uncomfortable and will perhaps seek out a more satisfying chair or pillow. Then, there is a pretty good chance I may notice a book out of place on the shelf or a record I forgot to put back into the sleeve. And after I do some sweeping or dishwashing or other household chores a cold beer sounds like just what I need transition from housework back into writing. And so after my third beer is when the distractions begin to really work their magic. As you can see, the act of writing has turned into a fight between myself and...well, my self.

This daily journalling, I think, is slowly helping me overcome these difficulties. I am noticing the language that surrounds me and my life and when I'm not writing I constantly tease out possibilties in my mind and think of different techniques to explore. I feel the pressure is off here in journal land and it feels damn good.

Classmate Response Week 2

This is a response to Billy's most recent "improv" entry:

Billy, I love how you have essentially created a conversation with Donald Justice's poem "Men at Forty." Your "riff" stands out to me because it issues a compelling shift from both the perspective and tonality of Justice's poem. "Men at Forty" centers around these metaphors of aging, regret and memory. With your "Men at Twenty-Five" you have reversed these elements. Justice's poem gathers its momentum and impact from the symbolization of the past, in yours you really utilize this same effect but aim it towards the "weight" of the future.  "their faces,haggard/ by the weight of decades"--I especially admire this great line.

Great stuff, Billy. Can't wait to read more.

Junkyard Quote 4, Week 2

"do you think Greece would help if we took Turkey from the rear?" -Jason Willett, aural sage.

Sign Inventory Week 2

"Facing It"
Yusef Komunyakaa

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against the morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the boob trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.


Sign Inventory

* Three instances of high specificity occur in this otherwise rather "non-specific" poem. Ex. "Vietnam Veterans Memorial, " "58,022" and "Andrew Johnson."

* The action of the poem seems to occur entirely in a reflection.

*The poem utilizes short, enjambed lines occuring within a single block of text. Almost "list-like."

*The poem repeats certain colors throughout the poem. "Black" occurs three times, "white"- twice, and "red" once.

*The poem seems constructed around a notion of 'erasure'- for instance- the opening line of the poem is "my black face fades." The poem ends: "a woman's trying to erase names."

* The naming of Andrew Johnson seems a strange, important choice here. Although a common name, it's a loaded one to boot.  Trail of Tears????

*At about halfway through the poem, the rather "grounded" language takes off into more metaphorical and symbolic language. This is marked with the image of "Brushstrokes" and a "red bird's wings cutting accross my stare."

Free Write Week 2

Breakfast is over, and now some unlucky bastard is sitting on the fender of a late starting dawn.

I'll tell you what I mean:

It was us in a log cabin in Oregon in the late nineteenth century. It was September and there were a few traces of summer left, you're in bed, just given birth and I'm not much of a midwife. On weekends I smoke a pipe and drink rosepetal wine out of a jelly jar and say things like "it's getting dangerous to be poor in this country!" as I wash the stagecoach.

But its 11:18am on a twenty-first century Friday. Last night I heard someone yell something about "staying gold" or "laying cold" into a french dictaphone that hadn't worked since the late 1980s.

Junkyard quotes 2-3, Week 2

"DO NOTTATTO PACK BELONGINGS
Time is precious. Save your life first. Take your room spoon out of door lock,
have locked if exporting urgently, you can return room again perhaps, keep calm, it is
scared to be of no help."--From a Chinese emergency hotel binder.


"chrome things never change..."  -Gary Wilson

Improv week 2

 John Ashberry 

"As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat"

I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free. 

Elsewhere we are as sitting in a place where sunlight

Filters down, a little at a time,

Waiting for someone to come. Harsh words are spoken,

As the sun yellows the green of the maple tree...

So this was all, but obscurely

I felt the stirrings of new breath in the pages

Which all winter long had smelled like an old catalogue.

New sentences were starting up. But the summer

Was well along, not yet past the mid-point

But full and dark with the promise of that fullness, 

That time when one can no longer wander aaway

And even the least attentive fall silent

To watch the thing that is prepared to happen. 

A look of glass stops you

And you walk on shaken: was I the perceived?

Did they notice me, this time, as I am,

Or is it postponed again? The children

Still at their games, clouds that arise with a swift 

Impatience in the afternoon sky, then dissipate

As limpid, dense twilight comes. 

Only in that tooting of a horn

Down there, for a moment, I thought

The great, formal affair was beginning, orchestrated, 

Its colors concentrated in a glance, a ballade

That takes in the whole world, now, but lightly, 

Still lightly, but with wide authority and tact. 

The prevalence of those gray flakes falling?

They are sun motes. You have slept in the sun

Longer that the sphinx, and are non the wiser for it. 

Come in. And I thought a shadow fell across the door

But it was only her come to ask once more

If I was coming in, and not to hurry in case I wasn't. 

The night sheen takes over. a moon of cistercian pallor

Has climbed to the center of heaven, installed, 

Finally involved with the business of darkness. 

And a sigh heaves from all the small things on earth, 

The books, the papers, the old garters and union-suit buttons

Kept in a white cardboard box somewhere, and all the lower 

Versions of cities flattened under the equalizing night. 

The summer demands and takes away too much, 

But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes. 

 ______________________________________________________________

"As One Forded The Pale Vapor" 

I tried each method, but only a few would seem nameable or real. 

Once,  I was that standing in a room where fantasy

Struggles around, in baby-steps, 

Holding out for something to happen. Soft phrases were interpreted,

As the sun blurred the beery pre-dusk...

So that was it, but uncertainly 

I saw the sphere of a new planet 

That all through last year kept quiet.

New thought explains this. But the year 

Was good and long, and summer had not yet past

But instead sulked with the design of that expanse,

Once you can no longer wander

And even your children are perceptive

Ready for each and every system.

A moment of reality shakes you

And you continue delirious: is this me?

Can they conceive of me, once, this time,

Or will it be delayed again? The lakes

Still mechanized, the skies become diluted 

With restlessness in the noontime haze, then descends

As crystallized, thick night approaches.

Only once in that tactful darkness 

Down there, for a minute, I dreamt 

That the event became real, calculated, 

Its reasons connected in a sentence, a configuration

That comprehends a universe, now, but slowly

Even slowly, but with dilated jurisdiction and subtlety.

The motive behind those mossgrown ruins?

They are weathered marbled robes. You have crept 

Long and blue, and feel like some misplaced poacher. 

Welcome. And I thought I felt slattern and waxen,

But it was only the damp midnight come to ask 

If I was here to gather some strange report. 

The night retraces its steps. A welded moon 

Looks like an enormous turtle going to the river, nameless, 

Finally concerned with the brickwork of sleep. 

And a whine rattles from the forgotten things on earth, 

Rubble, twisted steel, old conduits and sheets of newsprint 

In agonizing fields somewhere, and all the smaller 

Translations of rivers canceled beneath the muted landscape. 

The dawn addresses our theory of rivers,
But at night, drunkenly, stumbles homeward.