A Night Without Armor
To be honest, I'm not really sure how to write a review on a book of poetry, so I hope this is somewhat close.
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I read "A Night Without Armor" by Jewel (the singer chick from Alaska) because I remember being obsessed with her first album way back in middle school and I thought her songs were so poetic. Once I found out she'd written a book of poetry, I wanted to read it, and this provided me with the perfect opportunity.
I won't lie, the majority of her poems had the same feel to it - either depressed, introspective, or lovey. But there was still that movement of words and feelings that just...FELT poetic. After a while, you could tell which words she really loved. Broken, lonely, blood. I started to remember a problem in my stats class that said that the average poem has about 5.2 new words (or something close to that) with a standard deviation 17? I forget. Anyway, I think she's within the stats.
Overall though, at least if you're a woman, there's a great connection that these poems make with the reader. I say "if you're a woman" because I think that men interpret poetry much differently than women so I don't want to assume anything, especially when this poetry is very clearly "feminine." Maybe the connection happens because they're so raw and point out things you didn't even know you had noticed. Like there's this one poem:
I wrote you those nicepoems only becausethe honest oneswould frighten youAnd it made me think about our own personal censorship, sometimes because we're frightened it'll hurt others, but mostly I think we just don't want people to hate us.
The poems themselves are all free verse, and she tends to have very short lines save for those few poems are are more like prose poetry or are "stories in poem form." The titles are generally either the first line of the poem or the location/time of where she was when she wrote the poem, which can be either creative or lazy, I'm not sure which. All of them are very "in the moment," seeing a woman on the street, or analyzing one singular emotion that occurs right then. It's not particularly unique by any means, but since when does poetry have to be superspecial? Sometimes you need that extra kick of beautiful sadness or overwhelming inner strength.
metacognition
When I was in 3rd grade we used to do this exercise called "Metacognition" (which she told us meant "thinking about thinking") and we would write whatever came to mind. I loved this activity because even though I think I totally misinterpreted the whole purpose, I got to investigate something else I had a passion for - word association. Most people would just write a story and let it flow or talk about something that happened to them, but I preferred to just list words as they came to mind. I would go from pencils to Jesus to windowblinds in 10 seconds flat. In a way, it also kind of clues us in to how conversations flow and subjects meld together. I love those moments when a conversation has been just fantastic because you keep evolving the topics and it keeps growing and pushing and it's a fascinating and self-propelling dialogue. Before you know it you're thinking "what were we talking about originally? We got completely sidetracked." But I love those moments because it lives the conversation a vitality it wouldn't have had if the topic stayed static. I mean, you can only talk about one particular item for so long.
In honor of 3rd grade, I'm going to take 60 seconds and write whatever word comes to mind. It's likely to be a lot quicker than it was 10+ years ago, primarily because I'll be typing instead of writing with pencil, and I'm not sure the exercise will be able to work because my hands sometimes go faster than my brain (which has been sluggish as of late). But we'll see.
Car, steering wheel, traffic, lights, camera, action, movies, stars, sky, supernova, wxxi programming, tv, commercials, donations, salvation army, giving, season, christmas, tree, fir, josie's tree farm, 62 acres, horses, stable, stella, phi sigma pi, advising, telemarketing, phones, caller id, cell phones, hong kong, justin, clara, yip, dog, kitten, babysitting, money, adolescence.
That was just as fun as I remember it. I strongly advise you try this. It really gives you insight on your own word/topic associations.
Juna's Slam Night
I went to my very first poetry event last night at Juna's cafe in the Commons. I weaseled a friend to come with me because I wasn't sure what the atmosphere was like and I didn't exactly want to experience it alone. As it turns out, I already knew Kate as a friend's exgirlfriend (once again proving that Cornell really is a small world).
The event wasn't exactly what I expected, but that's not necessarily bad. Since I had no idea what a poetry slam was, I just assumed it was where people go up, read their poetry while the audience drinks coffees or chais and politely applauds when it's over.
This was not the case. It certainly started out that way, with an open mic where poets/writers went up and demurely read their work and were rewarded with appreciative applause. There was a short break and then Kate went up to perform her poetry. It's like watching a singer - inflections and arms everywhere, voices escalating and retreating, exploding out of nowhere, bouncing at the knees - clearly a performance of the heart. I won't lie, at first I was really weirded out by how passionate the poetry was. After I'd warmed up to it, I kind of felt inspired in a way, or at least got ideas for a few poems I'd like to write. It amazed me how people can memorize their poems and recite them in such a way that they make perfect sense, even if it looks like gibberish when it's on a sheet of paper.
Afterwards they had a slam poetry competition. One girl had the most amazing poem about a boss who continued to ask her if she was straight, and in her mind, she wondered about all the definitions of "straightness" and wanted to tell him that she was curvy, or a circle, or something. I wish I had a copy of it, I loved it.
Anyways. It was definitely a crazy experience, although I wish I'd bought some coffee for it, just to complete the scene.
touch and pictures
I've decided that I love smooth surfaces. I love running my fingers over them and enjoying how pure they seem, and that the surface always feels cool, as though smoothness can never overheat. I found a periodical in the library today with THE silkiest sides. My supervisor and I kept stroking the paper's edges over and over; it was an addiction. Some reward pathway must have been stimulated because I keep wanting to go back and touch it again.
I saw a brilliant picture last night. I didn't notice its glory at first, because it looked so ordinary that I decided it wasn't really worth a second glance. However, since it was my friend who took the photograph, he kept insisting that it was "his favorite photo of the day" and made me look at it again. After inspecting it again, I still wasn't impressed. It wasn't until this morning around 9am that I decided that I very much enjoyed it. Maybe it's because it was morning, or maybe because I was less tired and cranky (which is odd because I'm definitely NOT a morning person), or maybe I was influenced by the collage of leaves through the library windows (as well as the fact that I was surrounded by artwork). Suddenly, the photo was perfect. It wasn't just a tree with a building in the background (boooooring). The tree was highlighted by the sunlight so that the leaves were practically glowing yellow, and the shadows worked in such a way that the building was darkened so that the tree was even more accentuated. It really evoked this feeling of crisp fall weather and made me relax.
I'm going to the Poetry Slam thing tonight at Juna's, since Theo made it sound so interesting :-P So I guess that's what my next post will be about. Stay tuned and stay classy.
ok I'm a doof
I keep doing that! Saving as a draft instead of publishing as a post. I guess I assume that the first button is the primary one. Also, blue is much more appealing to me than orange. Either way.
I've read Bartleby the Scrivener about 600 times now and although I love the main chunk of the story, the first few pages seem completely useless to me, even now.
I also find it interesting the way poetry works. (I'm just looking at classic poems for a moment now.) If you hear a few lines, you can usually tell it's a poem. Something about the flow, or the choices of words just screams POEM! POEM! at you. For some reason, I can't find that flow or that choice of words.
I'm also having trouble with my next workshop piece...I'm trying to start early because I have a million other commitments (prelims/papers/etc.) that week and I don't want to get swamped. I know what I want to write about, but I'm not sure how to go about it to make it as effective as possible. Oh writing. How you wound me.
psychoanalysis is so much fun
I know that I rarely seem to directly write about the readings...I feel like if there's anything to say, someone will say it during class, and there's no reason to clog up perfectly good webspace with something that has already perforated the air.
Today was fantastic in nearly every way. I don't think I've laughed so hard in staff meeting (RA staff meeting!!) EVER. Staff meetings are meant to be boring, stiff, something you want to get over with. A resident must have left some marijuana roasting in the corner or something because we had the giggles for a full 90 minutes (or maybe that was just me...). Then at night, my friend Tim came over and we watched
Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind after a hefty discussion of it not 3 days prior. (Fabulous movie, by the way, if you haven't seen it yet.) For some reason, we just started laughing about puns on the word "crap" (real mature, I know) for about 45 minutes. It's amazing how fun punning can be.
Point being, despite how wonderful today has been, I still sit here, somewhat miserable. More to add tomorrow.
Crystal what?
That Crystallography piece was insane. I don't think I've seen so many words I don't know in one place within the span of seven pages. Of the ones I at least recognized, there's not much "getting meaning out of context" to be done. Not surprisingly, I wasn't a huge fan, although it was interesting and creative. I especially enjoyed the matrices made out of the names of the elements (and I assume that those elements make up some substance when put together as he did).
Not surprisingly, I loved the Bishop piece. I tend to love most of her work. (A book of her poetry was featured in the movie "In Her Shoes" that I just saw recently. Cameron Diaz reads it out loud to an old blind dude. But I digress.) If I were to pick out a poet who constantly propels you and never makes you feel like poetry is boring, I'd pick her. I loved the "five-haired beard of wisdom" and the fish's physical description makes you envision the nastiest looking beast (at least, it did for me). He's infested with lice, has gunk all over and fish hooks protruding bloodily from his mouth. I imagine that it had to be somewhat bloody, even if she didn't specify it. This also reminded me of the movie "Big Fish," talking about the largest fish ever caught and how he returned it to the ocean because "some fish were just never meant to be caught." I feel like I'm on a "relate everything in my life to a movie or TV show" streak.
Haven't read the Borges yet, but I will right after I publish this entry.
