The First of the Fiction Packets

The first story I want to mention from the first short fiction packet is the very first story. I really loved Survivors by Kim Addonizia. I have been around homosexuals for the majority of my life (as far as I know – all of it) so it was very easy to feel bad for these characters. I can understand their pain of rejection, although no one I know has had a parent try to beat their sexuality out of them with a belt. I really did like in this story how the character went from wanting to die first so he wouldn’t have to deal with his lover’s parents to wanting to die first so he wouldn’t have to be alone. “dear God, he thought, let me die first, don’t let me survive him.” This was a beautiful line to me. I know I would want to die before my loved one (though I bet I’d die soon after of a broken heart) just so I wouldn’t have to be alone.

Two other stories made me chuckle. The first was Misdemeanors by Sherman Alexi. It’s just pretty funny to picture an old man robbing a place and emerging with his pants around his knees because the pockets are filled with coins. The second that I really loved that made me laugh was The Talking Cat by Sharon Krinsky. This was a ridiculously short story, and the title gave it away, but “The woman seems jealous” was wonderful. You expect the cat to talk but you don’t expect the woman to be jealous of their rapport.

The last one that I really enjoyed was Wallet by Allen Woodman. I feel like this story does have an overall deeper meaning than I got, but I found it extremely amusing. I’d love to play a prank on someone who was trying to steal my wallet. I did however like that the man didn’t expect anyone to go after the person who took his wallet. I don’t know if this is supposed to suggest that we think the worst of people and forget to see the good or not, but it’s kind of what I took from it.

Ed Roberson Finale

To start off this second bit about Ed Roberson I will begin with a short discussion of today’s class session. I thought everyone had wonderful ideas revolving Roberson’s poetry. It’s always fun to hear about what others think because they always come up with things that I have yet to think of. Height and Deep Song was talked (although I think it might have been the lecture prior to today’s). The comments on this poem were insane. The line, “but unable to jump strapped in” was intriguing. I did not see this as a suicide poem, but more of a ‘trapped in your own body/mind sort of poem. I definitely did enjoy this poem though solely for the controversy and discussion that ensued post inspection.

Spontaneous Supremacies was also discussed today. This one was like taking dozens of tiny needles and trying to perform self acupuncture on my brain with no instruction or guidebook. “it isn’t as its equal it in anything,” is the perfect line to end with if you want your reader’s brain to implode. I re-read this poem several times after it was brought up and I still had zero interpretations. It’s almost like Roberson used small words (like it, its, and in) so many times in one poem that it became a force shutdown command for my mind. I still don’t understand this poem and so I shall move on to another.

The “State as Body” Aspect of Eunuch Rule was a wonderful, albeit dark, poem. I loved the opening lines, “I want to kill for my incapacity to feel. To feel I feel want as want. to kill. I’ll be simple.” It starts off sounding sort of like it’s a poem about insanity or maybe inside the mind of a murderer. I think it’s more a metaphor for escaping the bonds of oneself. I thought this was represented with Roberson’s lines, “’til I no longer have body with which to want the crossroad’s saddle of milepost that multiples the earth.”

Overall, I definitely enjoyed the second half of Roberson’s book much more than the first half. The second half of the poems seemed to have a more “normal” structure which my eyes and mind found easier to read. I loved the whole section Ornithology just because of all the bird references. I’m pretty big into animals and nature, so naturally I’m more into poems that use nature and animals. After talking about Roberson’s poems I ended up liking them more than when I read them on my own; however, his work is still something I wouldn’t necessarily read by my own choice.

Ed Roberson Response Poem

The tin bird flew

without intent

to return              to home

beyond this city

to grace the skies

The metal winged panels

change once more

before reaching

the final destination

of existence.

-From launching point poem on page 95 of City Eclogue.

City Eclogue

Today I read from the book City Eclogue by Ed Roberson. For me this was a difficult read because I am extremely picky when it comes to poetry. Maybe it's some obsessive compulsive disorder or maybe it's just me being weird, but I have a very hard time reading poetry that is "disheveled". Last week's Topsy-turvy poem was a nightmare for me. Ed Roberson's writes his poems with a lot of unique spacing which drives the analytical side of my brain nuts. That being said, I did still manage to find a few poems that I did enjoy (or at least didn't annoy me).

The first of these that I came across was on page 37 - Beauty's Standing. The opening lines were also intriguing to me, "Only eye lives in this no place anything else can com to rest on". Roberson's wording is also a little strange to me. It reminds me of Yoda from Star Wars. On page 45 I found the poem to be a bit sad. To me it seemed to be suggesting that although there was a civil rights movement "occurred" it didn't achieve the entire goal. I think this was suggested with the line, "the civil rights movement never reached".

Now the poem on page 95- The State Bird on the Wall in Trenton Station. I really liked the language in this poem. It really made me think of trains and the way the sound when they go from still to moving. That chugging sound kind of sounds like, "a flock of tin birds taking off". I also really liked the language in Point on page 111. "The star relaxing from the pirouette. The tiny waist the starry skirt of night." These were my favorite lines from Point. The final poem I wanted to comment on was Eclogue on page 131. Who could not love a poem that starts with, "I wonder if anyone ever thought to tell time them" in regards to shadows. Unlike a compass, you cannot misplace a shadow.

Shakespeare, Mullen, & Berrigan

The first of the poets was William Shakespeare. In Sonnet number 128 I wondered if there was any connection from the line “Do I envy those jacks, that nimble leap” to the nursery rhyme that says “Jack be nimble Jack be quick…”I also definitely noticed a connection between Shakespeare’s sonnet number 130 and the second poet, Mullen’s, first poem entitled Dim Lady. I really liked Shakespeare’s two lines in sonnet number 116 where he wrote, “Love alters not with his brief hours or weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.” Shakespeare can be difficult to read because the language is so different, but his work is beautiful.

The second poet was Mullen. The poem Dream Cycle in itself seemed cyclic. It began and ended with similar lines: “The ice cream truck goes by again” and “when the ice cream truck goes lullaby again”. My favorite lines were, “It could freeze my teeth crystallize a sigh,” because it’s interesting to think about crystallizing a sigh. Of the three total poets, I found Mullen’s to be the easiest to read although I like Shakespeare’s work best. As far as Dim Lady being related to Shakespeare’s sonnet number 130 I definitely think it is and I think the line “I have seen tablecloths in Shakey’s Pizza Parlors,” to be a reference to Shakespeare.

Ted Berrigan was the last of the three poets. I found that his use of capitalization and names really made his poetry really hard for me to read. The first poem altogether just left me confused. The second poem I really noticed his use of repetition of specific words (it’s hard not to notice that). The third poem, again I was confused with his capitalization. In this case he capitalized the word Babies. His poem LIII and LV have a connection in the use of “massive as Anne’s thighs” in both. Poem LV ended with a line that I really liked which was linked to the first line, “To the grace of the make-believe bed”. Berrigan started this poem off with a line from Frank O’Hara which is also nicely worded, “Grace to be born and live as variously as possible”.

A Little About Me

I've never been very good at writing about myself, but here goes nothing. After this summer I'll be entering my fifth year of college, although this is my third straight summer of classes. At this point it's becoming a blur. I chose to take this course because I have always loved to write and have four novels in the process of being written. I doubt I'll ever want to publish anything, I prefer to just write for fun. I'm a Nursing major and am hoping to graduate this December. I played tennis throughout high school, but was unable to continue playing in college due to joint damage. Now I am an avid SCUBA diver and currently working on becoming a PADI Divemaster so I can start teaching how to dive. I have one dog and one cat. Between my pets, my job at the dive shop, diving, dive training, and summer classes I have zero free time. I've never done a blog before, so for the sake of learning, I'm going to try to upload a picture of my dog. His name is Sherlock and he loves Frisbee, which is under his back legs in this photograph. I got Sherlock as a puppy as my reward for being accepted into EMU's School of Nursing.