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. 

 

Frustration...

Sometimes I don't understand the point of a poem.  I can flit and float about, word-play the ever-living shit out of a thought or a feeling or an interaction or a situation, but how do I wrap it up?  How do I get out of the poem?  End on an image.  But what is the point?  What should the poem be?  Do I need to create some sort of narrative?

It's just frustrating.  It's frustrating to feel like I can only get so far with a poem.  I can come up with the dopest image, fragment, whatever, with all of the swagger, all of the attitude, grit, guts, everything, it's everything!, but then I can't find my last image, can't find the meaning or purpose, the depth, the layers that are needed to make me cry, my customary reaction to a finished poem.

I need to keep writing.  I need to keep trying.  And failing.  And crying.  And just, I just need to keep going with it.

On the way to Iowa...

I'm on the way to Iowa for a friend's wedding before I return for my last days of Denver.  My dad is driving the Plymouth Voyager and I'm sitting on the side where the sun glares through the window, a slow roast to my death like an ant underneath the microscope.  But morale is high.  My dad's window keeps inching down its post despite his inventive use of a doorstopper, wedged just so, so the breeze feels nice, however loud it howls.  We got to talking about Romanticism, so now in the silent aftermath, I've taken some time to reflect:

Today has been a good day to get back into romanticism.  On the drive to Iowa, the conversation between my dad and I eventually shifted to my summer class.  There's nothing like being forced to articulate the importance of a literary period to familiarize a person with her areas of weakness.  But it felt good to try to verbally flesh out the social, political, and economic climate of the period.

A few questions or thoughts:

Great art seems to either be reactionary or anticipatory to the zeitgeist of the time.  It must also, however, have a sense of timelessness.  It must be connected to universal concerns across time and space.  There must be some sort of push or pull against society.  It must be sensory.  How can an artist move an audience? What does it mean to be moved?  It means there is an engagement of the senses.  Voluntarily or more often involuntary, the observer experiences a shift in feeling/awareness/perception due to the experience of something sensory.  There is an interaction, then.  The piece of art is created as a sensory object and triggers a sensory experience for the viewer.  So, experiencing great art, then, is both an interaction and a look in the mirror, a paralleling of emotion even if the emotions experienced or evoked are disparate.

I read this last part to my dad to get a sense of how it sounded and he said it gave him a headache.  How fitting!

Coffee table Blake...

 

Oops...

Oops I almost forgot to register for this class!!

But I've done it.

There's no turning back now.

Distraction...

Today's Romanticism distraction.  Not too shabby.

University of Iowa's Massive Open Online Course...

Speaking of poetry, I signed up and must remember June 28th-August 9th.

University of Iowa Launches Creative Writing MOOC Series

To Login 

Brain storm rant nonsense...

I've been trying to find connections between myself and my time and that of the Romantics, but this is more just a rant about the now:

I'm a little bit sad at the moment because I'm worried about great art.  People seem to care less and less about poetry because they aren't taught to value such a thing.  Whereas poetry in the Romantics' time seemed to be cherished.  Those poets were writing for people aside from the elite and the impact of their writing seemed to be explosive.  When a poet today publishes, there is nary a whimper.  When was the last time I heard about a poet making waves?  Never in my life, that's when.  Poetry's reputation is just bad.  Poetry is the nerdy kid at school.  Poetry has no cool factor, no swagger.  Poetry is aligned with that which is difficult.  A strain.  Too much thinking.  "I don't get it."  "It's too hard."  OR, my favorite, "I could easily write that myself, how simplistic."  WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

And while some of my writer buds say that it doesn't matter: "we're not writing for that audience anyway"...I just look at them and shake me head.  That kind of thinking makes no sense at all.  Who else would we be writing for?  Do I really want to write for some pretentious asshole who thinks Joyce is God in heaven?  Absolutely never in my life will I write for that guy because heaven forbid, I am a part of that audience.  However many books I read, however many degrees I accumulate, I will never align myself with the elitist academia freaks who purportedly value all that is truth but dismiss the audience right in front of their faces who scream the truth every day, all day.

I guess I just want to know if it is even possible to change the world with poetry anymore.  Does a poet just have to be good enough?  Does he just have to write about the right thing?  Strike the right chord?  And how does one get poetry to the masses when NO ONE is reading that stuff anymore?  Will poetry ever be valued again?  How can poetry evolve to appeal to an audience other than the people whom I hate with all of me? 
ALL OF ME ALL OF ME ALL OF ME.

Tidbits from Wu...

Duncan Wu and I had a thunderous falling out the past couple days, but we're back in cahoots since this morning.  He's not so bad when there's coffee, pillows, and sunshine involved.

--"International conflict, the threat of invasion by Napoleon, social and political discontent--the writers in this book lived with these things, and were shaped by them" (xxxiv).
--"important development: the rise of the media" (xxxiv).
--"bulletins were now available to the poor and illiterate...Groups of men would club together and buy a single copy, which would be read aloud" (xxxv).
--"Not only were these writers shaped by their historical moment--they shaped it" (xxxvii).
--Rise of media also meant a "new-found appetite for scandal" and the rise of celebrity (Byron being the most notable.)  (xxxvii)
--Importance of theater
--Extreme poverty and lack of education
--Instability of the monarchy
--George III deemed banana-boat crazy in 1811 and had a lot more control than the monarch today.  (Without his consent, laws could not be passed)
--Power hungry son, go figure.
--"They were products of their time in believing in a more just world than that in which they lived" (xxxviii).
--The belief was, "if philosophy could generate revolution, so too could poetry" (xxxviii). POETRY!
--"It is not just their capacity for optimism that distinguished them, but the kind of belief to which they clung.  Where earlier generations looked to an afterlife, the Romantics tended to reject formalized religion" (xxxix).
--Church of England had a great deal of political power.
--"Instead, they thought they could create, through their writing, a promised land in which property was of no consequence and people would live in harmony.  It lay neither in the distant future nor in the abstract; to them it was attainable, imminently, in the here and now" (xxxix).  They would love my yoga classes.
--Redemption through self-realization.  --"Redemptive potential of the mind" (xxxix).
--"Frustration with the restrictions of our earthly state permeates [Byron's] poetry, compelling him to aspire to a level of existence beyond the merely human" (xli).  So, like Eliot's graph?
--Byronic hero archetype--something I should know.  Hmm.  I might like Byron based on pg. xli: "He seeks to understand the random and the everyday in all its meaningless variety.  He studies human behavior, marvels at the follies and foibles of his characters, and addresses his reader in disarmingly familiar style, as if he were speaking from an armchair holding a glass of hock."  Hock is booze?  Hock a loogie?  Glass of loogie?
--Revolution as apocalypse=Blake 
--And then he goes into the obligatory section on Women.  Congratulations, Wu.  Gender equality, good job.

Class syllabus...

My class syllabus, so it won't have to be uncrumpled the next time I have a boogey:

Old school documentary...

I kind of love the intensity of this guy's ten minute introduction to Romanticism.  He reminds me of an old school Simon Schama with the close-ups and his lofty air.  We also get a peak into Keats' house which I could very well visit on my trip to Europe!

Flower video...

Okay, so I can't really handle the title of this youtube video nor can I deal with how sentimental the music gets at the end, but I had to share because James Wright's breaking into blossom bit has been permeating my everything lately--and, hey, I'm sure the Romantic poets would lose their collective shit over this much nature in under four minutes, too.  Who needs nature when you can just watch nature on the nature channel on youtube?  I better go take a walk and mull it over.

Devices to remember...

I always forget or get mixed up, so here too will be a place to refresh my memory on all the old, crusty literary devices I've stuffed in my back pocket and forgotten about.

per·son·i·fi·ca·tion

/pərˌsɒnəfɪˈkeɪʃən/ Show Spelled [per-son-uh-fi-key-shuh] 

noun

1. the attribution of human nature or character to animals, inanimate objects, or abstract notions, especially as a rhetorical figure.

2. the representation of a thing or abstraction in the form of a person, as in art.

3. the person or thing embodying a quality or the like; an embodiment or incarnation: He is the personification of tact. 

4. an imaginary person or creature conceived or figured to represent a thing or abstraction.

5. the act of attributing human qualities to an animal, object, or abstraction; the act of personifying: The author's personification of the farm animals made for an enchanting children's book.

 

From dictionary.com

What is literary Romanticism?

I've already taken this class and should know more about the period, poets, and poems--this I know for sure.  At the very least, I should have a better sound bite prepared for random encounters where I'm quizzed on my summer activities. 

From Wikipedia:

"Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, it was also a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education and the natural sciences. Its effect on politics was considerable and complex; while for much of the peak Romantic period it was associated with liberalism and radicalism, its long-term effect on the growth of nationalism was probably more significant."

From Duncan Wu's anthology:

"Having originated in disagreement, and largely in the academe, the concept has remained fluid...and although many definitions are suggested, none command universal agreement.  In that respect Romanticism is distinct from movements formed by artists, which tend to be more coherent, at least to begin with" (Wu, xxxii).

This is only the beginning...

"...by the winnowing wind"

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
      Sometime whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
      Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
      Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
      And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
      Or by a cidar-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

--"To Autumn" by John Keats