Junkyard Quotes (5/23/2010)

"I wish she'd go back into the Woodlands, back where she came from." - a person talking about the town called Woodlands in Texas.

"A play of the Seven Deadly Sins." - a line from Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

"Beer-soaked kiss."

Junkyard Quotes (4/28/10)

Since we aren't technically doing journals for class anymore, I'm going to tag my posts by date from now on and continue with my writing, especially since I'm still hearing language that I want to write down and remember, so here are some junkyard quotes:

"All I said when I met him was, 'Oh, there you are.' It was like he had always been a part of our lives." - Sandra Bullock in regard to her recent adoption of a baby.

"Horses not hookers." - I don't even remember now how this one came about, but I know it was when I was talking with Kate yesterday, and she was telling me about a friend who is moving to Montana to live on a ranch.

"They're all dancing in Detroit." - a friend of Mike's mother who was visiting last weekend. She had a lot of these little gems that I kept typing!

Strategy Essay, Week 15

Allison Joseph's poem "Teenage Interplanetary Vixens Run Wild on Bikini Beach" is a fun and exciting read that is both serious and somewhat fantastical in its language and imagery, a skill which I would very much like to learn to duplicate. One cannot necessarily call this poem absurdist, though it seems to be so at the beginning, when Joseph writes about scantily-clad green women landing in a spaceship on a beach to find "hunky" men to take home with them. However, through her imagery and language, we quickly find that she is instead describing a movie scene with faulty backdrops and bad makeup and lighting. It is interesting to note the change from absurdist to a simple critique of the theatre industry, to what eventually seems to turn into a critique of theatre-goers themselves.

She writes all throughout the poem about how the "vixens" run across the beach in their bikinis, trying to find men with whom they would like to mate. She goes into detail about the constructedness of the set and the ways in which the film is set up badly. She ends, however, by saying that "you" do not care, that the bad effects of the film are not the interesting part. Rather, it is the sex that interests "you," as "you" sit in the theatre next to a girl and hope that it inspires the same type of sex within her.

This poem is very fun to read and is interesting in its execution. What seems to at first be an absurdist work turns into a serious (but still playful) critique of the men who take women to see these silly films in the hopes of inspiring feelings of sex, playfulness, and adventure, just like the green, scantily-clad, alien ladies who come to take Earth's men away on their poorly constructed spacecraft.

Improv/Imitation 2, Week 15

From "Little Epiphanies" by Allison Joseph

"The difference between what's required
and what's desired is the difference
between" fall and spring, the cold and
the colder, depending on which you think
is which. I do not pretend to hold a
distinction for you, wishing for release
for your bragging and clanking of keys
all musical, technical, and mobile.
On the far side of the shore of Cabo,
there is a cabin in which I think you
should stay for at least two or three
weeks, thinking on which glasses clink
and which glasses read. Is a difference
there, anyway? Or are they the same
in the first and last place to begin with,
or end with, you might say. I want you to
figure out which orb rises and which falls
at which time of day and which season is
which, but only for you. Do not express
philosophical movements to the contrary
and attempt to define these patterns for
the world. You can only do so for you.

Improv/Imitation 1, Week 15

From "Extraction" by Allison Joseph

"If there is a poem in you,
get it out by any means necessary--"
said my teacher when I begged her
for advice on how to write, how to
scream and pull the hair from my
throat that seemed to block a
passageway to words and thought.
I couldn't release the tension,
perhaps because of her class
and constant insistence on my stark
writing, or what I thought was such.
She recommended cutting open my arm,
just below the shoulder, and pulling
with tweezers to see what would come
out. She claimed that that was one
place words liked to reside, in the
arm. I cut and pulled and searched
until I finally found where they had
been hiding all along. Now when I
need to find my words, I reach
from my back, finding the words
written there in ink and pulling
until the poem is out of me.

Free Entry 2, Week 15

If Natural Born Killers got a gritty reboot,
it would have to star the Jonas Brothers instead
of Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, the internet
instead of Robert Downey Jr. That would be frightening
enough: tweens ravaging the Southwestern countryside
for no other reason than to kill, fame not an option,
because fame comes with the territory of the internet.
The meme, as I'm told its called. What does that word
really mean, anyway? Is internet fame the ultimate type
of fame, because anyone in the world can see it?
(Unless, of course, one lives in a country in which
there are restrictions placed upon the internet
viewership.) I wonder if Anchee Min sees everything
on the internet. Though she now sees the strangeness
of Mao's teachings, does she still have a tug to follow
the things he said, to respect the Red Army and destroy
any bourgeois ideals within herself? I read a Mao quote
once; it claimed that America was a paper tiger, and that
it was his followers' job to tear it to pieces. Yet another
article on Yahoo! News questioned the Tiger's authenticity,
its truthfulness. It seems that even America itself must
face the white tiger that its claimed to be.

Free Entry 1, Week 15

When I woke up this morning, everyone was floating,
legs suspended in the air, heads just below, arms
holding their own against pockets on the ceiling
that we never knew existed. We tried driving into
Atlanta, our seatbelts fastened tightly against our
arched backs and puffed-out chests, hearing that a
doctor had a cure, knew why we all suddenly decided
that now was the best time to learn how to fly.
But it turned out that it was only a casting call
for a new telenovela, starring whichever young lady
the good doctor decided had enough potential despite
her sudden ability to fly. I wonder how the girls
on America's Next Top Model are doing. Do they float
with more grace than we do? Does it matter? Why not?
I lie on the floor like we used to do in the pool
when I was a child, sliding down the water to land
belly-down on the bottom of our personal lake in
Heather's backyard, but this time it was dry,
and I laid my hands flat on the floor to push upward
and found that I could float through the air just
as we practiced doing when we were tweens, showing
off our backflips and handstands in weightless fashion.

Junkyard Quotes 1-5, Week 15

"When I first started driving, the advertisements said that most people died in accidents less than 25 miles away from home. Well yeah! Nobody ever drove more than 25 miles away from home!" - my grandfather yesterday

"If there was a kicking contest, I'd win." - Dr. Hipchen

"I just want to record his voice and play it while I sleep." - Kate Gervais

"Elizabeth Bennett has Mr. Darcy's balls." - my sister after reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. (The book is referring to his bullets, but my sister took it quite another way!)

"back-to-front Bodyamr" - an article that talked about how celebrities like to wear dresses backwards

Strategy Essay, Week 14

In the poem "To" by Franz Wright, one finds upon a first reading that the poem appears to be playing by the conventional rules of poetry. For example, the poem is written on a subject that is stereotypical in that it "should have a poem written about it" and uses some intesnsely emotional language throughout. However, because Wright does not identify the person to whom his persona is speaking, we cannot know precisely what kind of relationship is expressed or how the emotionality signifies. Likewise, the turn near the end of the poem to implied violence takes the poem from what could have been a saccharine account of a persona's child to an interesting display of the mixed emotions regarding a parent to his child, comparing the parent to God and the child to his "children."

The poem begins with the line "Before you were born I loved you," signifying that the poem will be very emotional in its execution, and indeed through the language of this particular piece, one may read that the persona is a parent (perhaps a father) writing for his child (who seems to be, though is not necessarily, female). He goes on to write in similar terms, allowing the persona to speak about his feelings regarding his child's first steps, again a very emotional time and one that may be expected in poetry, just as the later lines on the child's teenage years and being a "weedy thing" come in the next stanza.

However, directly after these lines, the turn occurs in which the persona states, "I loved and I was there / while they were raping you / I loved although / like God / that's all that I could do--" and the poem ends. After three stanzas of intensely felt language regarding the childhood of the persona's offspring, we find an immediate and very unexpected turn of events that is difficult to decipher. In fact, though violent, this stanza relates the same type of love as the ones previous in that it recalls the pain (both emotional and physical) that the child has had to go through in his/her life, for which the parent could do nothing but continue to love. Indeed, such sentiment expresses well the mixed power of a parent to both love and protect a child in that this persona realizes that there was only so much he could do to shield his child from the world, leaving him/her to be "raped" while he could only stand there and continue to love.

These methods are very interesting for Wright and are very unusual techniques for a postmodern, contemporary writer. Such language and expressions of love (especially the use of the word "love") for a child from the parent's perspective are expected realms of poetry and generally frowned upon, at least when a poet is starting out. However, because Wright is such a developed poet, he knows how to manipulate the "expected-ness" of the subject and both pander to how a parent would really feel toward a child while simultaneously adding fresh imagery and interesting turns.

Improv/Imitation 2, Week 14

From Franz Wright's "Entry in an Unknown Hand"

"And still nothing happens. I am not arrested."
I crook the package in both arms and slip like
gravel through a brightly lit alleyway, no more
sleeping without the promise of disguise, and no
such thing as perfect change in this world of
kidneys riddled with paper and fax letterheads.
From the Desk of Olivia Orlando, read the note,
incriminating in its accusation of apparent guilt.
While I wrote with otherwise whipping sarcasm
and notes titillatingly tripping off the tongue,
or however it was Hamlet pretended to be a director.
Now there was a man fit for Shakespeare, a prince
hidden beneath a director, hidden beneath an actor,
all the while feigning insanity for the sake of a
lost, never to be recovered, and most beloved mother,
sure of the guilt of a most despised uncle.
I act, too, Hamlet, though not in the same capacity.
I am not insane, nor do I pretend to be; rather, my
heart beats in spite of me, "it's bowl of red blooms
opening and closing out of sheer love of me."
To stop the beating, I pretend, incessantly.

Improv/Imitation 1, Week 14

From Franz Wright's "Rorschach Test"

"To tell you the truth I'd have thought it had gone out of us long ago,"
so little writing now, when all else has failed; and shouldn't that be
our biggest, last, most powerful resort, that trailing of words together,
pushing phrases between one another as though only we have that power:
to make great syllables and marked changes in language with only pens
and typewriters. No computers--those are drab and impersonal where we
are concerned; we write our letters to one another, lilting our script in
our personal hand, for our personal words, to express personality to a
long-lost friend, so far gone in the world only the changing seasons of
our languages can reach each other. I do not want your words, I have so
many of my own, so few that seem adequate to express what I find needs
your attention in my own life, my own work, my own personality that dries
without your speech. I wonder where Virginia lays on such a topic, how
her characters--Mrs. Dalloway, especially--might see such a futility
as writing letters to a lost friend, never to see one another again.

Free Entry 2, Week 14

How do doctors bring someone back from the dead?
Do the television shows lie, and does it not happen
as often as they imply? Imagine that there are spirits,
too many to count, waiting around hospitals, for
someone--anyone--to die so that a free spirit can steal
the empty body before the real spirit has a chance
to recover from the shock of dying for the first time.
A little girl died the other day, twenty spirits
hovered around her, waiting for the golden opportunity
to inhabit such a young body, to live a life all over
again, nearly from the beginning. When her soul
dissipated from her little frame, an old man jumped
into her place before any of the others could.
When the little girl's body opened its eyes once again,
he said "Mama" to the woman standing above him,
pretending that his soul was that of the girl she lost.

Free Entry 1, Week 14

When I was little, I thought orchestra directors
were rude: they stood with their backs to the crowd,
waving their arms like a patient without his Demerol
and throwing sticks at musicians who are just doing
their jobs, fingering their keys, twinging strings,
while beaters pounded and cymbals boomed.

When I was in middle school, I thought band directors
were self-righteous, teaching us the right way to play
without embarrassing him at the next concert, our tiny
fingers barely big enough to reach from key to key
but now we were the menal patients, nonetheless,
stumbling over our notes to make him happy.

When I was in high school, I thought marching directors
yelled a lot, but only to make us play our very best
on the field: they screamed from megaphones for months
while we paraded on a faux football field in preparation
for the first big competition--even football games played
as practices for us, little drummer children.

When I was in college, and no longer played in a band,
I remembered how our director would scream, sometimes
throw his baton until we got him a Nerf gun to shoot instead.
I was struck by the lack of companionship without those
directors I thought so rude, self-righteous, mean, and thought
of the fact that there is no better feeling than watching
the crowd give a standing ovation at the end of a great performance.

Junkyard Quotes 1-5, Week 14

"Is pandemonia the plural of pandemonium?"

"Apparently there was a volcano." - a man in our hotel in Montana

"It says 'Montana Bar and Grill Casino' with 'Historic' stitched on the sign as an afterthought."

"I wish I could cry like a baby. The cathartic release." - on the plane to Montana

"The mischievous children locked the eccentric governess in the closet." - a sentence exercise in my Studies in Grammar workbook.

Strategy Essay, Week 13

In her short, two line poems, Brigitte Byrd practices a very daring and unusual form of poetry. She begins almost all of the poems the same way: "On...he/she said" and then she adds an interesting and unusual image to complete the entire poem. Because they are so short and emphasize the unusual images with italics, we personally emphasize their importance as we read, realizing as we continue through the two-line poems that Byrd is not merely writing nonsense or trying to tie together two seemingly unrelated images; rather, she is expressing thoughts on her personas lives by impressing upon us their very nature in the images they present us with.

For example, in one of these poems Byrd writes, "On finally making it to the end she said Can you see a dog jumping through a hoop of ribbons?" Though a first reading might reveal only two strange images juxtaposed together, a further dig into this particular poem reveals interesting questions. For example, the reader may decide for himself or herself what it means to say that the persona "[made] it to the end." What did she make it to the end of? Did she reading a book? Writing a book? Did just run a race? Depending on what one chooses to interpret the first section as, the part in italics can change its meaning. For example, if the persona has finished writing a book, she may be asking to find out if an idea is plausible. If she ran a race, perhaps we have a more absurdist poem in that she saw this image and is wondering if anyone else saw it as well. This, of course, raises the question as to whom she is speaking. That, again, could be anyone, and may in fact not be important to an interpretation of the poem, but is still a question one may raise, nonetheless.

All of the two-line poems present similarly interesting questions that only the reader can answer for himself or herself. In each case, one wonders what the first part of the lines refers to, to whom the persona is speaking, and what the presented image has to do with either of those. By personally interpreting each of these tiny poems, one receives not only an insight into the persona but into himself or herself depending on the scenario.

Improv/Imitation 2, Week 13

Original: "On sealing the deal on a domestic circus he said But you can't have a horse in Boston any more than you can go out of your mind."

Imitation: On sealing the deal on a domestic circus he said There is nothing more depressing than walking into a Michael's Craft Store.

Improv/Imitation 1, Week 13

Imitation of Brigitte Byrd #1:

Original: "On finally making it to the end she said Can you see a dog jumping through a hoop of ribbons?"

Imitation: On finally making it to the end she said That car beside us is doing an Evlis imitation.

Free Entry 2, Week 13

"Like the memory of a loved one, diamonds
last forever," says the welcome screen,
inviting me to ponder whether or not I would--
or could--wear a diamond made from a person
I intentionally pushed under dirt and grass,
never to need to see without the lights
that used to reside behind his skin.
I glance at my fingers, the two emeralds
pushing against my cornea like needles, as I
wonder what it might be like if they were
people: "This," I say, pointing to my high
school ring, "is my first husband. This"--
my college ring--"is my second husband."
Would you wear a diamond made of your loved
one's ashes? Would you make a tiara from the
bones of dead relatives, lovers, friends?
Let LifeGem do it for you, because death,
like diamonds, lasts forever.

Free Entry 1, Week 13

This is the poem I came up with in our exercise on persona poems. I wanted to post it here as a sure way of not losing it and to remind myself to work on it more.

Smokey the Bear Goes to Gotham City

Thank god I'm finally free of those damn kids:
there are no woods to protect here and no forests
to keep from their flight, unneccessary fires.
Burn it all anyway and make the world just like
Gotham City, where some wannabe child molester
in black spandex keeps buildings from burning
to the concrete, with the aide of two old men, his pets.

Those kids never cared about forest fires,
and--as long as we're being honest--neither
did I. I suppose some marketing assistant
just out of college assumed a bear would make
an adequate forest ranger since--let's face it--
bears live in the forest; not me. I lived in
a two-bed, two-and-a-half bath in downton
Hollywood, just below Sunset where movie stars
wander streets in the day and whores strut at night.

It was--you can imagine--hel having to pretend
to car, all in the hopes of landing a bigger,
better gig, but no; I was forever typecast, just
like that girl who was always a princess
and never did anything else, besides that one film
where she "came out of her shell"--as she told
reporters--by taking off her shirt and speaking
in a pseudo-Southern accent.

That's why I moved to Gotham:
for a new start, with no trees or forests anywhere
nearby to pretend to worry about protecting.
And thank god, too, because I've already been cast
in a new thriller as a henchman. The director is a
squat, penguin-looking man, who really does resemble
those children I had to lecture to.
But for this part, I'm sure I can get past that.

Junkyard Quotes 1-7, Week 13

"Hell hath no furry (sic) like a woman who believes she has been scorned." - an internet article.

"The Wings Close In" - title of article in Sports Illustrated

"a fantasia of literary gossip" - Dan McCall

"The Rose Ecstasies" - I misheard a classmate saying "Thoreau's Ecstasies" and I liked this version better

"Which came first: the ecstasy or the reading?" - a question posed in the above-mentioned classmate's presentation.

"There is nothing more depressing than walking into a Michael's craft store." - Mike

"If Dr. Hipchen were God, Professor McFarland would be Michael." - a student I met yesterday at the conference.