Fluorescence

Jennifer K. Dick's Fluorescence was quite interesting. Of all the books, I think this was the most confusing and most annoying to read. The content in the poems were pretty difficult to understand. In my group, we discussed a few poems that we thought were the most interesting. After having our group discussions, it made things a bit clearer.

My favorite poem in this book was “In the Garden”. I thought this was the most animated or 'alive' poem. This really evoked all of the senses and provided some intense detail to describe what was happening. She really painted a picture in my head by giving several metaphors and similes. The structure was in paragraph form, which kinda gave a fast pace to the poem. While I was reading it, I noticed I was saying it really fast in my head and this gave me a feeling of emotion that was occurring with the characters. Which leads me to another thing, the characters. This gave me the idea that the narrator was telling a story. She mentioned a man, woman and Eve. While written in the third person, she provides a detailed scenario of what the woman is doing. The language was very flowy and pretty, but used in a sensual and seductive manner. I could feel a strong sense of passion in the poem, as well. She uses powerful words, for example, in the sentence on page 43, “her distaste, body sweat, wants the first apple rounding smooth as a poison icicle'. This was so interesting for me because it is a great example of 'showing vs. telling'.

Another poem that we talked about in class was “Sighted” on page 47. This poem was written in a different style or layout than “In the Garden”. All the words were broken down into short statements, similar to Ed Roberson's City Eclogue. This gave the the feeling that the poem was written as an occurring action, or in the present tense. While I found this to be quite poetic, I also found many narrative qualities such as dialogue and creating characters. I thought it was kind of confusing at times because the sentences had a weird flow to them. It was all one big sentence yet all the words led into another idea. For example, she says, “Graded, grading, What grade are you in? Looks up pomegranate peeled to look inside turn around at his face gaze over between pages and seventh he smiles”. At the time I was reading it, it made no sense, but once I completed the whole poem I go the idea. Also, she uses a lot of the same words just in different tenses. For example, 'looked for, looking, look at' and 'graded, grading, grade'. I thought that was a bit different.

The final poem we discussed was Looking Glass on page 76. This poem was very active, she used a lot of action words which really put an image in my mind. I thought the poem was also very weird. The genre was more like a narrative telling a story, or even a tale. I did not think this was very poetic at all, mainly because the language was so weird. She used words like 'trundles, flip-floping, hobbles', and these words kinds have a big sound to them. A sentence that really stuck in my head the most was when she said 'an alligator trundles by a man vomiting while salmon into the street'. I thought this was so disturbing but I couldn't stop thinking about it! Overall, the poem was weird but that’s what I like about it.

Wreakage of Reason & Bird by Bird

This week's class spent a lot of time discussing Wreckage of Reason. I enjoyed reading these especially because they are all unique in content. “Cottage Life” by Masha Tupitsyn was one of my favorites because it uses a great amount of detail and imagery. She says on page 168, “Accusation of old love, which I weigh by my side, tips in from his corner like flour. I can bake love like pies. All of them.” I like how she related 'love' to baking. This stuck out to me because she avoided the cliché descriptions of love and made it into her own. I also enjoyed reading this because it has a 'poetic' style to it. The words seem to flow nicely with each other. On page 169, for example, Tupitsyn says “Me on the bed's tip, showing myself seriously, listening to him tell me about my beauty, because beauty is story, and it's told. Even, I have to say it, mine. Fabrication, through intimate partnership, is fine as long as you keep it home”. I thought this sounded very flowy and poetic, making it one of my favorite passages in the story.

I really enjoyed reading the pages of Bird by Bird, as well. I thought Anne Lamott gave me helpful writing advice with a humorous and friendly twist. One of the most interesting sections in the reading was on page 57. Lamott is talking about the plot of a story and used a quote by John Gardner. He said, “writing is creating a dream into which he or she invites the reader, and that the dream must be vivid and continuous”. I love this quote because it has so much truth to it. It really is an important aspect to writing a plot because you need to keep the reader going. You want the reader to be dying to know what happens next.

Also on page 57, Lamott writes about having someone else read your work. I thought this was extremely helpful advice because I have such a hard time letting anyone read my work. Whenever I start writing something, I try to keep it to myself until it is complete. I never let anyone read what I'm doing partially because I am embarrassed. Lamott discussed that it is important to have someone else read your work to let you know if “the seams show, or if you've lurched off track, or even that it is not as bad as you thought and that the first one hundred pages do in fact hold up”. This is so helpful because I need to realize that its good to have help, this will be a great thing in making sure my plot makes sense, or everything is in the right order. Outside opinions were great, also, because they do not know every single detail, like you do. They did not spend the time thinking about every detail, and that is helpful because they can tell you provided enough detail. She says, “so find someone who can bring a colder eyed and a certain detachment to the project'. This section in the “Plot” chapter was probably the most helpful so far.

The final part of Bird by Bird that I really enjoyed was on page 66 in the “Dialogue” chapter. Lamott was listing the elements of Dialogue and she stated that it would be interesting to write about two completely opposite characters. Lamott said that by placing two different people in a room together, that would make for an interesting story. That would make the story and dialogue more dramatic and could have a better climax or situation. She even says on page 67, “thus, good dialogue encompasses both what is said and what is not said”. I love her advice mainly because she helps me think of things that I normally wouldn't notice. She thinks outside the box and takes many risks. I love this book because of her quirky approach to the teaching of writing.

After Ed Roberson

In class on Thursday, we continued to discuss Ed Roberson's City Eclogue. I really enjoyed reading the second half of the book better, probably because the writing style and the layout of the poems were much more creative and weird in a sense. For example, I noticed that there was somewhat of a pattern in the layout. In “The Open”, there are many spacings between the words, as well as the lines. 'The Open' and '42^nd Street's Tunnel' look similar on the page. However, poems such as 'Monk's Bird Book' and 'The Counsel of Birds' are in more of a paragraph form. I also noticed that in the 'Eclogue' section, Roberson writes his poems in paragraph form, then he leads into the style he used in the beginning, which was the more spaced out words.

The poem that caught my eye the most was 'Engine' on page 76. I really enjoyed it mainly because of the idea behind the poem. Although it was a bit confusing, it really had me thinking of my own interpretations. I believe it is about society as a whole, however, we are all stuck in our own repetitive routines. I feel Roberson is expressing his thoughts of a lifeless society. The poem could perhaps be somewhat of a 'pep' talk to the people who get wrapped up in the business/material world, and encouraging them to step outside of the box and try something different. For instance, my favorite line in the poem is 'strip you down' at the bottom of page 76. This is so amazing to me because I feel he is telling us to start over and take new risks. I think people let work and business take over the true beauty of life, and he is saying we must break free. He also says, on page 77, 'throw things into a gear you wouldn't know would shift'. This is quite inspirational when I think about it, because it says 'just do it'. The title is “Engine” and I really like how he uses words that relate to that topic, such as 'gear' and 'trunk'. This gives me the idea that the world is just like a machine and is running continuously in the same pace, and Roberson wants to change that pace.

I also liked how he set up the poem. The words are broken apart and the lines are scattered. I feel when I read the poem out loud, and said the words slowly and broken apart as it is written, then it gives the poem a lot more emphasis. I think it is pretty cool how he can change the whole dialogue of the poem just by using enough spaces. For example, he says the line, 'in the mirror scatter', yet he spaces in between the words 'mirror' and scatter'. When I said this line aloud, it made it seem like the words were given an emotion, and they weren't just words. I could feel what he was trying to make the audience feel. When I wrote my version of this poem, I tried to use a similar word spacing technique because I thought it could make the poem look different than any ordinary poem, and I think that's what he was trying to do, as well. 

After Ed Roberson's 'Engine'...

Ignite a revolution out of a tank

of desperation. You would expect one

to become bored with

your daily routine-                on repeat.

Pinstripe suits cloud the room

from corner        to                    corner

enclosing us with bullshit.

The time has come to shatter

this trend.             To become an infant.

       Strip you down.

                        Jump.

 

-Introduction-

Hey everyone :) I'm Nicole Gervais and this blog is for my Creative Writing class at EMU. I'm approaching my 4th year at Eastern Michigan, with a major in Psychology/Criminology. I really enjoy writing, especially poetry. One of my favorite things to do is read poetry, go for walks, and listen to music. I'm excited for this class because I hope to broaden my reading and writing skills.

~nicole </3