Good morning, brain storm...

So, I'm looking back at my little explication of Keats' death poem and am most captivated by the "perspective" shift at the end.

The shift is caused by the change in setting (not really: instead, a change in what is focused upon in the same setting) and not a literal shift in narrative perspective.

So, why is this interesting/who the hell cares?

The movement in the poem mirrors the subject's experience in that moment.  The reader undertakes a shift in perspective because of the construction of the poem while the subject undertakes a shift in perspective because of his shift in thinking.  Enough distance is created between the subject and the reader so that they're able to have two distinct and individual experiences.

Layers: Poet, Poem, Subject, Reader, Society, Universe, God?  Lol, a stretch maybe.

Will add to this in a while...........................................

For your health...

Black Box Poetry Prize:
http://www.rescuepress.co/submissions/

WHY DIDN'T I KNOW ABOUT THIS SOONER???  Something to light a fire under my ass.  With the deadline coming in hot at the end of June, a manuscript submission would probably kill me.  Perhaps next year, though, I will have to ask around about these sorts of contests.  A person should probably not get themselves into these situations without knowing jack about the publishing house.

But Joe just told me that chapbooks, unlike manuscripts, usually run 20-40 pages which could be manageable in the next two months or so, and could be good to focus on for grad applications, my health, etc.  But what is a chapbook!? haha.  Just another thingy to look up for reference.  Chapter book?  Chapstick book?  Or is "chap" in reference to your buddy like "jolly good, ol' chap"?  Gotta be that one.

Today, I slept all day in Amsterdam.  To the point where my friend jostled me awake and asked if I was okay.  She also called me "honey" and looked at me with a face which meant she was really concerned.  After the London debacle, though, I didn't care, I slept and slept and slept and ate those European strawberries that taste like gold and then slept some more, because why the hell not, really.  Today was already a successful day because of finding the Romanticism books at Amsterdam University.  Duncan Wu just follows me wherever I am and I'm like, alright already I get the picture, but I'll relent and dig in, lean in, as everyone is saying nowadays, probably in reference to some dumb TED talk.  But lean in, I will, may as well with this time, sink my teeth in, take a bite, chew the fat, gnaw it down, gnash it up, to the bone, suck each finger, have a nap.

Anyway, whatever, I'm gonna try to write some poetry.

Alive...

I'm alive and finally settled at the uni dorms in Amsterdam, thank heavens.





written later in zee comments:
sonnets sonnets sonnets must be the name of the game. what are they? how did the romantics reinvent them? use them to their benefit? compare and contrast? the evolution of the romantic sonnet? resources for this? how should i go about this approach? why am i interested? am i interested? i think i like the idea because sonnets are contained. there is no opportunity for excessive dalliance nor laborious postulations on extended periods of time regarding significant stages within an individual's life. put it in a box, you pompostuous wheezing airbags! put it in a box and save the ink of infinite pens which will otherwise be bled dry by the haughty indulgence of your verse. am i mostly thinking of wordsworth? do i only have beef with wordsworth? i must explore but for now i must go.

Espresso...

Getting something written is like a buncha shots of espresso and it just makes me want to write write write write write write write! write!! write and what the ever living...it's 2am.  You know?  Like, why don't I just do this in the morning and live a normal productive day-dwelling life?

Anyway, my minds already racing, so I may as well type something out for the hell of it.  I've been thinking about my own writing a lot lately.  Dennis was giving me some details about applying for grad schools and having some weird sort of artist statement thought out.  Since it doesn't seem quite pro enough to say, "I write poetry cuz it's fun and it sounds good when I chew on it and sometimes it makes me feel clever," I figured I should think about what I'm doing or who I am or at least something buzzy to say in an artist statement.  PICK ME PICK ME PICK ME!!!  Maybe too desperate?  I'll find the right angle eventually. 

I remember this one time in creative writing class at CCD when I wrote a piece of fiction and I verbed a noun for the first time.  I presenting my story to the class and was promptly told that I couldn't do that.  The verb had something to do with an old guy in a walker.  He "walkered" out of the room?  Well, that's dumb anyway.  But still! why didn't my professor just tell me to write poetry instead?

And another thing: why do coffee snobs get in such a huff when I accidentally say eXpresso?  Like, I'm obviously tired if I'm getting a shot of gross to resuscitate my everything--soo, can I getta break? 

Or, let's talk about one of my favorite scenarios:
-Hi Sonja, How are you?
-Pretty good, what about you?
-I'm weeellllll. 
-THIS IS A CASUAL CONVERSATION YOU SMUG ASSHOLE.

I'm getting a little off track........................................................
My writing, while thought out, still feels a little bit too surface level to me.  I have so much fun with the word play bit that I tend to get a little lost or off track or unable to get to that next level ish.  It's like sucking on one of those strawberry candies, the kind that has the extra gooze-delight on the inside.  It's tasty, to be sure, and can definitely carry some gooey surprises on the inside, but it's still just eatin candy.  If my stuff is candy, I'm not sure what I strive to become...maybe something that engages all of the senses at once, like rubbin chocolate cake all over the face.  Smushin it real good--swirlin it around in all the crevices, orifices--especially that pie hole, you know, though?  I love my candy and all, but I want my poems to make people's stomachs drop out of their you-know-what-holes.  I want the pearl clutchers and the shriekers.  I'll take the single tears and the soft sighs but I'll also take hallelujah hands and slow claps all day.  I would love to get a few ugly criers and snort-laugh-farters under my belt and that should just be my opening act or whatever.

Blah.  But anyway.  I'm really just looking for some kind of reaction a fraction of a pinch higher than neutrality.  So, maybe candy's okay for now.  Will think some more about it tmw.

Fish...

No duh this is the first poem I think of when fishing is mentioned.  Any other fishing poems I should know about?

The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
- the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly-
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
- It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
- if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels- until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

--Elizabeth Bishop

OH MY GAH BLAAHHHG

Previously written/Never posted:

I keep doing things for class but neglecting my little bloggy corner of the internet.
Like pondering Keats' sonnet about not existing anymore and letting thoughts of love and fame sink into the bay or whatever.  What a poem!  He knew!

My problem with Romantic poetry is that I have to give it about three reads before I can understand a word.  I was reading a tidbit in my poetry anthology edited by X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia.  And of course I can't find the page at the moment, but it references Romantic poetry and the shift in the formal language of Neoclassic poetry to language which more closely aligned with the every day regs who worked in god know what kind of horrible labor conditions.  So, this fact made me feel like even more of a turd for needing so many read-throughs, but!  Turd aside, I've now found the page in my anthology and will write out some quotes before I dig into Keats' dying guy poem, because I liked what I read and I won't remember unless I type it out.

This is in the section on word choice and word order:
--"in English literature of the neoclassical period or Augustan age...many poets subscribed to a belief in poetic diction: 'A system of words...refined from the grossness of domestic use.' The system admitted into a serious poem only certain words and subjects, excluding others as violations of decorum (propriety)" (58-59).
--"[Common words], although admissible to satire, were thought inconsistent with the loftiness of tragedy, epic, ode, and elegy" (59).
--"rats" vs. "the whiskered vermin race" example (59).  WTF.
--Okay, this is important and impacted the audience of the time: "Neoclassical poets chose their classical models more often from Roman writers than from Greek, as their diction suggests by the frequency of Latin derivatives" (59).  Audience at the time was familiar with Virgil's poetry and therefore had differing associations to "highfalutin" ways of saying everything.
--Mentions Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads (look up this quote about using language "really spoken my men"--advocating for a new poetic diction.
--Neoclassical poets considered that kind of language "low."
--This is all hilarious to me because if the poets of today used the language of the Big Six in their writing, they would get a heap of cocked eyebrows to be sure.  If it takes this poetry lova three read-throughs, imagine the reaction from the common man (non-poetry reading folk).  Noses would scrunch.  Eyes would squint.  And a lot of stink faces would ensue.

Okay, here's this poem.  I'll probably do some underlining for my own use.  Along with some rambles after that.

Sonnet: When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be by John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be                                -a
      Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,                  -b
    Before high piled books, in charactry,                                -a
  Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;                        -b
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,                          -c
  Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,                             -d
And think that I may never live to trace                                  -c
  Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;                    -d
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,                                -e
  That I shall never look upon thee more,                                 -f
Never have relish in the faery power                                       -e
  Of unreflecting love; -- then on the shore                              -f 
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think                              -g
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.                            -g

Ramblings:  We are in the first person.  A fear of dying before artistic potential can be reached.  Fear number two: death before a significant romance (could be a person, could be something else).  Who is the fair creature?  The sea?  The night?  Sky?  We first go high.  Fears, death, undeveloped ideas, the sky, the magic hand of chance, faery power?, unreflecting love.  Lots of intangibles until we become grounded with this lone figure standing at the shore.  But then we go all the way high to the ideals of Love and Fame and all the way low as they then plummet to the depths of the sea. 

Another thing: Keats uses a lot of "I may, I behold, I feel" language, and this serves to establish the speaker as the "experiencer" BUT the reader's perspective is still more closely aligned with the speakers at the start.  At the turn, we still have the "I stand" language but it seems as though the reader becomes completely isolated from the subject, becoming a voyeur to his experience instead of a participant.  Am I making that up?  I feel as though the camera zooms out, but I'm not sure where the change is or why I feel that way.  Let's break it down, may as well.

Line 1:  We start in his head
Line 4:  Because he views the night sky, we view the night sky with him.
etc: His perceptions become our perceptions.
Line 12-14:  Okay, so the focalizer becomes the focalized (sort of?  We are still in first person) which is what I'm talking about with the zooming out?  So, this is similar to the epiphanic end of Joyce's "Araby" but there is no literal shift in perspective.  Instead, the turn takes place because of the shift in setting?  First we are high (thoughts, viewpoint, sky) and internal.  Then, we become grounded (low) but our perspective shifts to the external, the vastness of earth, etc, the depths of the sea.  So, then, the subject of the poem undergoes the exact experience of the reader.  The poem seeks to mirror the experience of being alive.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.  Keats.  There are just so many levels along with so many binaries.  Off the top of my head: The sky, the earth, the sea.  Death, life.  Tangibles, intangibles.  Ideals, realities.  Internal, external.  Big, small.  And then there's the whole chance bit.  And the magic?  So, what is that?  Pre-destiny vs. freewill?  Spirit, magic, pragmatism, resignation, hope.

And this is just one poem.  I'm not even sure if I've scratched the surface.  I'm especially impressed with the whole "out of body" effect he created without a literal shift in perspective.  I mean, of course he wouldn't do that because Romantics are all about the individual's experience, but damn.  He makes Joyce seem like a lazy-buns couch-dweller.

Keats is all the way smoooooth.

Shambles!

I find myself speaking of my life shambles a lot lately. 

-Hey Sonja, how are you?
-My life is in shambles.

-Hey Sonja, what do you want to eat?
-My life is in shambles.

-Man, Sonja, it's hot out, huh?
-SHAMBLES.

But that's okay.  Just needing to keep plugging away at the to-do lists.  Which brings me to this poor little neglected blog.  My abandoned feral child of the woods.  Hello, little blog.  Let's talk soon.