Febuary 19th

For the week of February the 19th I read Burroways "The Writing Process". In this piece of writing she spoke about how revision is good and necessary for all writing pieces to perfect them. Personally I find myself having making way more revisions then I can count. Whether it's simply adding or exchanging words or completely changing the plot. When I make revisions I like to keep the old versions so that when i finish a piece I can look back and admire the long way I've come.

Since starting your class I surprisingly haven't made many dramatic revisions to any of my pieces of writing. I find myself pondering for quit some time before deciding on a topic if I don't find the prompts and exercises you put up interesting enough. Once I find the perfect topic I feel like the words spill across the page on their own. No doubt there are always grammar errors but other then that I'd have to say that I've only had revisions for the max of 4 of the writings I've turned into you. I don't know whether I should take this discovery as a good thing or a bad thing. 

A possible explanation for the decreasing in the number of revisions I make is that I am writing about things I'm interested in. I high school teachers always told me what they wanted my papers to be about there wasn't much of any room for me to add my own sparkle. I was so focused on telling the teachers what they wanted to hear and following their strict rubrics maybe that's why I was constantly revising. In high school I also had peer editing,  where a classmate got to write all over my papers with red ink reminding me what the teacher did and didn't want.

March 26th

I decided to try one of CA Conrads (Soma)tic poetry exercises, just for fun. The one I chose to do required me to slip a penny under my tongue, drink orange juice, and sit outside quietly, at some point I also had to place the penny on my head. After carefully following the steps I was to write about poverty from the perspective of someone who has been Loved in this world. I chose to write my poem from the perspective a child, below is an complete and unedited version of the poem I decided to do:

At the age of 4 my parents found out that I had an enlarged heart and that I could die if I couldn't find a donor. My parents were eager to find a way to save me, finding out how much the surgery would cost had them both devastated. You see my parents were only 14 and 15 when my mother had me. Because of me both my parents had to drop out of high school to support me. Neither my mothers nor fathers parents agreed with their decision to not abort the pregnancy. We lived in a 1 1/2 bedroom apartment above a restaurant most of my childhood, to make ends meet my dad worked odd handyman jobs while my mother worked as a waitress and a part time house keeper. The hospital had offered to do my surgery as a Pro Bono but my parents were too proud, they felt as if it was a handout they didn't need. It took them all of 2 years to raise enough money to pay for my surgery, after the money was raised it took another 5 months before a donor was found.

 My parents did their best to explain the surgery to me, all I got out of it was that they'd bought me a new heart. The 6 year old I was at the time hadn't experienced enough life to really comprehend the depth of their words. All I knew was that this new heart would make me feel better enough to go outside to and play with other children. I also knew that heart weren't something that could be purchased from grocery stores. Just knowing how hard my mommy and daddy had to work to be able to buy me the heart made me a very humble child. I never complained about not getting the latest toys or having to miss all the field trips that required a parent to attend (because mine were too busy working). The humbleness I acquired at that very young age and my new heart is what I carried with me throughout my life.

March 19th

This week in class we read a few poems by Dawn Martine. All of her poems were quit unique to me. The first poem I read was titles " Violent Rooms", here I noticed how she spelled the words out just as she wanted them to be said and heard. It wasn't like "tick-toc" or "BOOM", but "Gu-erl" (girl) and " Suh-ssuh-ssuck". This poem seemed to be about a woman experiencing childbirth. I could see how "Violent Rooms" could be associated with giving birth. At the age of 25 a woman is ready to settle down and start a family with someone they love, inside of the room she gives birth in there could be too many different outcomes. The mother and baby could survive the process of childbirth, or either the mother or the baby could die, or both of them could die. It's hard to ever tell exactly what complications will be faced before a woman begins having birth.


The second poem I rad by Dawn was titled " Morning Hour", I didn't understand much of it at all. I believe the structure of the poem was too much of a distraction for me, the words were scattered all about the pages. It made it very difficult to read the poem, let alone comprehend it. At the top of the first page of Dawns poems there was a quote that read " I can't do it, poetry. I don't know what it is." This made me question what the "ideal" definition of poetry was. Like art I think poetry is what we make it to be, comeing in many sizes, forms, languages. So what Dawn see's at a perfectly written poem, its perfectly fine for me not to agree that its a good poem.

In class we also read a few of CA Conrad's writing prompts. I find him to be a very interesting writer. Most of his writing prompts are absolutely ridiculous, and funny. But I see a bit were he is coming from, the craziest actions can produce the best pieces of work. As a kid I used to keep a diary, whenever I got into a confrontation of any kind with my mom my diary entry for that day would be 10x better then the days I didn't have a confrontation with her. I didn't realize this until a few years ago when I read through my old diaries. Since then I've noticed that when I'm angry in general my writing is better.

March 12th

This week in class we spoke about two story. The first story was called Indigo. It's about a 11 year old girl who enjoys playing the flute, even though she's horrible at it. Indigo plays her flute daily, disturbing her mother and everyone in the neighborhoods peace. When her mother offers to pay for flute lessons Indigo turns down the offer. Indigo thought that by turning down the offer her mother would be happy. You see Indigo's mother paid her older children to have musical lessons, I guess Indigo thought by turning her mothers offer down there would be a win win; her mother would save money and indigo would be able to play the flute how she pleased. Indigo is very stubborn yet very determined. She doesn't let peoples opinion of her music affect her, I admire that. She reminds me a lot of Scout from to kill a mockingbird.

The other story we read was called night woman. The character in this story is a single mother who sleeps with married men to support herself and son. It would be too easy to simply classify this women as a prostitute. Seeing that she doesn't get picked up from a corner or alley by strangers. She calls the men she sleeps with suitors, and they always come bearing gifts; some even bring gifts for her son. So I'd say that she's a mistress. Her son is too young to understand what his mother is, whenever he catches his mom in the act she makes his believe he's dreaming or that his father was brought back from heaven for a visit.

The characters in these two stories are very much alike because of their stubbornness. Indigo is stubborn because she insists on learning to play the flute on her own. Despite how everyone, even her own mother, tells her how awful she is. The mistress is stubborn because she refuses to work at a day job where other women making sure that work never runs out. The mistress isn't necessarily proud of what she does, but she enjoys the stability it brings her. She doesn't have to worry about loosing her job because work has ran out.