Blog 6/21/12

The book 'Fluorescence' to me was a fairly interesting in that it was not like the other poem book we read 'City Eclogue'. To me Jennifer Dick's poems were a tad bit hard to understand, but then again so were the poems in 'City Eclogue', actually more so for 'City Eclogue'. I typically had to reread many of the poems since I barely knew what they were about on the first read through. The author of the poem did a good job with their imagery in the poem helping me to visualize her material in the poems.

The poem that I looked at was titled 'Trace3' which just happened to be the very first piece of writing that the book contained. To me 'Trace3' felt a lot like a sort of prologue for the rest of the book because of where it was in the book. The poem to me seemed a bit like a stand alone piece too as the rest of the stories seemed to try and distract you from what 'Trace3' said. The amount of subtly that the poem takes with its plot is so good that it takes multiple read throughs to fully understand the plot.

My process of writing a poem which is quite a bit simpler then how Jennifer Dick writes her poems. This process makes a tad bit harder for m to connect with how her writing style goes since I lack the subtly she uses in her poems. Most of the poems that she wrote are subtle showing me that she is a writer who prefers to take the subtle approach.

Post 6/14/12

One of the things that I noticed about the book 'Bird by Bird' by Anne Lamott is that it was incredibly easy to relate to. In every chapter she describes issues that any writer can run into while we are writing fiction of any variety. One of the chapters that talked about the plot of stories she tells about her failure to put down on paper what she originally intended to. She says in the chapter that the failure was so bad she just scrapped the book and began a new book.

In another chapter she talks about how she got out of the loop of breaking the book up section by section and rearranging it. She however tells us that this process failed completely and had to once more think of something else entirely. Her editor told her to use the knowledge from her previous attempts and use it to further her goal. Doing so she says she did not just complete her works but actually made her most successful work yet.

I can relate to this because I remember all of the times I have written a paper and thought it was good only to practically remake it after the first review. I myself tend to assume I know where a story is going before I actually know where it is going. When I look back at stories I have made I am a bit shocked at how much it has changed because during the writing of it new and better ideas come to me.

Blog 6/7/12

One of the stories that had caught my attention from the fiction packet was the story called "Internal" by Brain Evensan. I personally founds it interesting and at the same time confusing because of all of the ways someone can look at this story. One of the things that I saw was characters development in some of the characters such as the intern for example Another thing that caught my eye was the title itself and how it seemed to almost tell exactly what was going to happen in the story itself.

The character development that particularly caught my eye was the development of the intern as the story progressed. As a character the intern started out like most anyone that is grateful to have someone to have just employed them. He seemed really naive about his boss to begin with. As the story progressed I noticed that the intern became more paranoid and slowly seeped into the state of insanity. It made me realize that the title was based off of one's internal mind.

The writing style of the fiction story seemed to go from being a normal story with a normal structure to having the feeling of a bit more insane. One thing that I noticed was that the paragraphs went from being long and substantial to being shorter, more numerous and and sporadic. Also in the story there is a good amount of symbolism. One such thing is the part of the story where the narrator was talking about how they feel like a trapped bat/moth looking for their heart. She mentions how that bat/moth dies while trying to find their heart. To me this tells me that the narrator feels like she is trapped in her own emotions and feels as though it is killing them.

Blog 5/23/12

When I first began to read the poems in Roberson's City Eclogue I personally found them very confusing until I took the time to sit down and examine them. While some of the poems took me some time to analyze and figure out and get the message of them I did enjoy the book. I realized that I enjoyed the poems at about the time I reached 'Beauty's Standing". I enjoyed the poems for the fact I had personally had not endured some of the things the poems were about.

My favorite section in the book that was under the half way mark of City Eclogue was the section called 'Beauty's Standing'. To me it explained how humanity has taken over nature and the planet. It tells about how humanity has turned the world ugly in building its cities and how those cities have almost a flesh like look but are not. It does a very good job of explaining how humans have become materialistic and lost most if not all of the values that we once had.

Throughout the last half of the book one of the things I noticed was that so much politics were involves. The quote "Family Values were always a disguise to hide the values a following had, to the families positioned to live outside values not profitable to their Olympiad-- despite the toll-- values = mere votes for their pull." helps me see this political part. It talked about how people like political officials no longer see people as people but as mere votes to win over.

Poetry Blog: 5/17/12

The Poem marked 'XV' by Ted Berrigan caught my attention due mainly to its unique structure compared to other poems in the packet. The form of having the first line then the second line on the bottom and repeating this pattern for every line was something I had never seen before. The sonnet is also interesting for how it is based off of a collage of Marilyn Monroe made by someone. All of the Sonnets from the packet seem to express a particular love for someone even if at the beginning it seemed more like it wasn't.

My attempts to review poems

This will be my first attempt to review poems from the book 'City Eclogue' by Ed Roberson and the poems I am reviewing are 'Place Lit By a Window' and 'Beauty's Standing'

Place Lit By a Window

This for me was one of the less confusing poems but was still quite confusing for me honestly. The poem I believe was comparing a city to the inside of a home calling a home it's own city and that the window that shows a city paints a potrait of everyday life outside in the city. I believe it was also comparing how people are like cells in the body of the city too. I still had issues with the strange spacing in this because for me it was like most of his poems but just a little less extreme in it's issues. Overall it was still very hard for me to tell what was happening in the entire then really.

Beauty's Standing

The Poem itself was like most poems in this book confusing but for me was least confusing. The author starts out with starting talking about basically what I got the image of was a sort of lecture hall or a class room and the teacher themselves being lonely. The author in the poem also uses some rather crude language in swear words as he goes on about the poem. The spacing once more comes in as an issues for me simply in that it makes the poem confusing for me and harder to sit down and read.

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