YAWB – Yet Another Writing Blog
Just another Poetry site
Monday night was a class night. We got thirty minutes of writing time, and, wouldn’t you know, I wrote the longest poem I have in one sitting so far. It came to two and a half pages, and just under two full pages typed up. Some things I noticed about the experience:
While difficult, I have found that a real deadline reinforced by people I know helps me to at least submit something. I will not say it is not my best work, but of the three poems I submitted today, none have really been through the workshop. Continue reading “On Submitting Poems”
The ability to verbalize brings us out of the darkness. To express the self and find others who express the self removes isolation and argues for our humanity. The sounds to be made in the creation of a poem are at the root of the art. Stewart points out these things in “Sound” (59-105), and she emphasizes the necessity of verbalization in the creation of an individual. (As a side-note, in her summary of Dennett’s treatise, it is interesting that the theoretical cyborg or even the realistic intelligent ape qualify in the status of personhood (61-2)). Continue reading “Voice and the Sounds of Poetry”
A common quality of the readings, excluding the commentaries on Ashbery, is the sort-of stream of consciousness style. I write “sort-of” because these essays and poem are considered, detailed, and meditative. However, the quality of movement within them is intuitive and more felt than structured. The intuitive movement is especially visible in the stanza breaks in Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” a movement from the painting to balloon (a shape similar to the convex mirror – but also to the dream in qualities of popping) to tomorrow to dreaming to the dream. Continue reading “On Reading Ashbery, Confusionism, and Intuitive Movement”
In one way or another, this question has been coming up more and more lately. With more of my friends learning I’ve just finished my first semester in an MFA program, I hear/see that question a lot. Among my new friends at the program, the same question: Why are we putting ourselves through this?