Febuary 12th

This week in class we looked over and discusses different poems in Goldberg’s book writing down the Bones. The first poem that I liked was big concentration. She spoke about concentration one subject but not blocking out everything else. The example of the Zen meditate was used to show concentration. The meditate must use all her energy to focus on her breaths and doing the poses correctly but the mediator is still pretty aware of his/her surroundings. Goldberg says that this is how we should be when we are writing, enjoying our surroundings while still being able to focus on our writing. I think this is something that I need to learn, when I’m doing homework of any kind my surrounding has to be spotless and absolutely silent. Coming from a house with 7 children silence is a luxury that’s very hard to find.

The second poem that I really enjoyed was called don’t marry the fly. In this poem Goldberg again spoke about concentration but she meant to concentrate on the subject being spoken about. People sometimes get carried away when writing papers, focusing on one little detail just a little too much. Sad to say that I am one of those people. Once the writer gets carried away they can completely just steer away from the subject they’d started talking about in the paper, leaving the reader lost. To void this kind of situation I must write an outline for every paper I right making sure that my writing will be well rounded.

In class we also did a poetry exercise that had 20 steps I thought it was a little weird. I tried to make it all make sense as I was writing it but it was impossible so I finally began to write whatever came to mind, not caring if it matched the step before. The exercise reminded me of something my cousins and I used to do, someone would start off drawing the head of an animal. Once they were done they’re fold the paper down so the next person wouldn’t see what they drew. The piece of paper would go around and everyone got to draw a body part. By the time the paper got back to the beginner we’d have what looked like a monster because nothing matched. It was cool.

Febuary 5th

This week re read more into the poem Tocqueville, trying to understand it better. Mattawa speaks about being in a psychologist office and being able to hear as others told their stories. He even said that their crying made him cry, even though he wasn’t a person quick to cry. We assumed that based on the way the poem Tocqueville is organized, where there is not natural flow at all, Mattawa is telling the stories of the other people in the psychologist office. He simply doesn’t tell the story of one person then moves on to the next story, most poems start on one page then bits and pieces are found on much later pages throughout the poem. It’s like the stories are part of a puzzle, and he wants us to put it together.

The first time I read Tocqueville I didn’t pay much attention to what was written and how it was written connecting the stories. I thought they were all irrelevant to each other. Kind of like one of the poems my group members wrote based upon the writing prompt that was posted on emu online. In the beginning of his poem she spoke about his character painting the color blue, then the door slammed causing his character to scratch, next he talks about her spilling a bottle of coke that had expired the day before. My point being that there was no story line, none of the events were related, just like the Tocqueville poem.

I did the same poetry exercise that my group members had done, and I was able to make mine have a storyline.  I’ve always felt like story lines were important. This is of course until I really read the poem Tocqueville, there is no specific storyline yet we can vividly see what’s happening or think we do. Everyone’s perspective is different but they’re getting something out of the poem to give them that perspective. I guess that’s the point of some poetry. Sometimes the author tells the reader exactly what to visualize, other times they give bits and pieces allowing the readers imagination to run wild. I personally prefer my imagination to be let run wild.