April 2nd

So I've been reading bits and pieces of coopers book Maps to anywhere because I didn't purchase the book on time. I read the essay "How to Draw" where cooper spoke about his experiences with art from a young age. His dying brother used to draw they eiffel tower slanted to the left, his mother enjoyed are with fine details, where as cooper found himself enjoying are made on the spur of the moment. Coopers speaks about the different forms of are and how everyone took different positions on classifying art.

At a young age cooper was told he didn't master how to draw hands by a teacher he had, so he began to draw pictures of himself handles. I thought this was very interesting. Usually when someone tells a person they aren't good enough at something they try to master whatever it is to feel good about themselves, not just stop doing it at all. Well that's how it is for me. In most of the poems I've seen bits and pieces of cooper seems to speak alot about his family and his personal life. He also speaks about about creativity and how important it it. 

Another essay I read was The wind did it where he spoke about the relationship he had with his father. The language he uses here makes everything palpable, as if you're experienceing it with him. I especially like the line "The worst by far was coiling the hose, a task he claimed I could never do well, though he made me do it again and again. Heavy and green and recalcitrant, the hose would snake in the wrong direction and cramp with kinks I couldn't undo."  The way he chooses to descibe the hose was just the same as I would have described it. As a child I used to pretend the hose was a snake so its nice to see someone else thought of it as a snake as well. 

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.

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.