Junkyard Quote 6, Week 5

This word was begging to be put in my journal! I read it in a Yahoo! News article this morning:

brachydactyly

It apparently is the scientific name for a condition in which a person has an overly large or clubbed thumb, and the word itself is just too much fun to say and read to not make into a Junkyard Quote!

Strategy Response, Week 5

In Chapter 11 of Writing Poetry, the writers discuss Emily Dickinson's American Romantic poem, generally referred to by its first line: "Because I could not stop for Death." In this section, the text discusses the ways in which one might write a typically fantastical subject in a very common manner. Utilizing Dickinson's poem, we find that she indeed treats Death with an almost loving tone, calling this personified version of a tragic event "kind" (2) and "Civil" (8) while he rides in a carriage with her. Even as contemporary readers more than a hundred years later, we find such a drastically opposite-to-general representation of Death backwards and romantic (in terms of both "loving" and "of the Romantic Movement").

Dickinson goes on to describe the scenes that she and Death pass, all equally romantic images, before she slips into the present and remembers the quickness with which the previous scenes passed (9-24). Classically, images of "Recess" (10), "Fields of Gazing Grain" (11), and "the Setting Sun" (12) represent still more romantic settings for two lovers to convene over, while a classic trope of love includes time passing quickly (as evidenced in aubades). Therefore, Dickinson uses many common elements of a love poem and of the American Romanticist Movement to express Death in a distinctly different way from most before her, revealing him to be not merely a "person" but also loving rather than demonic.

Free Entry 1, Week 5

Cate Blanchett did Bob Dylan
better than Bob Dylan did Bob Dylan,
her masucilinely flat hair springing
sharply to life beneath a faux guitar
while tapping fingers split its side.
Side like a sewing pattern, brown
and dotted and transparent beneath her
already under-sunlit, scarred skin.
He had nothing on that shit, they'll say
when pushing their screens up to deadened
bedstands with books piled as legs,
Tom lisping a suffering "S" underneath
the pick made out of Cate's comb.

Junkyard Quotes 1-5, Week 5

"People are sheep and cops are the shepherds." - Mike in reference to his dad's job as a policeman.

"That car is doing a cheap Elvis imitation." - on the way to Atlanta

"McItaly" - Yahoo!News article

"Where are they now? A look back at some high-profile criminal cases" - title of article in Rome News-Tribune; sounded more comical than official.

"If The Sandlot got a gritty reboot, it'd be Reservoir Dogs." - Cracked.com

Improv/Imitation 1, Week 4

"Dear Manic Depression,"
thank you for visiting me last Tuesday.
I sat with sedated toes pushing against
the leg press your sister Guilt bought for me,
while I slept with Stress curled on my stomach,
and then you thrust my door open just in time
to slap my cheek and race my heart against
the hurrying clock for need to finish
my paperwork.

Free Entry 1, Week 4

A sun-bleached bone dipped in black ink shifts
like dirty plates along a silver counter,
while orange water slips from forehead to chin
on the Venetian Lagoon.

Forgers founder against the constant heat:
fire where all the trees and shrubs burned out
a long time ago, without the screaming faces
that clawed for their shade.

A tower porters over the rotted wisteria,
no longer fed from fractured cloudy windows
and grinning eyelashes upon wrinkled knees;
bone less skin.

Junkyard Quotes 2-5, Week 4

"phantasmagoria" - in reference to an article in Women's Lit

"Whitman is Jesus and Emerson is God." - Tara Prouty when discussing Song of Myself

"Cate Blanchett did Bob Dylan better than Bob Dylan did Bob Dylan." - Kate Gervais

"synesthesia" - a word I already knew but discovered today is an actual mental disorder as well as a literary tool!