And so it ends...

How does it feel to be a blogger? Hmmmm. Well now that you ask…it’s pretty much the first time I’ve ever even thought about it. I couldn’t tell you if it is being a blogger or just being involved in this class in general, but I feel like I’ve become a part of a new community of people: that community being my classmates and all the poets that we’ve read. It takes a lot of courage for a person to share a piece of poetry or any writing in general because its like opening up a part of yourself to that person, so in being in this class and reading my classmates blogs I feel like I’ve come to know them all so much better. You can see their personalities coming out in their writing, and it makes you feel like you know what makes them special even if you haven’t ever really talked to them before. I know that being a blogger and writing poetry has made me more comfortable with sharing my thoughts, my ideas, my feelings, and my life with the rest of the world. I am not naturally a very open person, but poetry has been an amazing release for me. To be honest, I think I might keep blogging. It probably won’t be as frequent, but I enjoy sharing my thoughts through writing, and I think I will continue to do so.

 

         Dirty little secret? Kind of a lame song I thought to myself, but it all came together. The background music was distracting at first, but as the performance went on the pace of the music heightened the suspense of the poem. It was amazing to hear some of the things that people keep bottled up. With every card that was read, a new personality and a new voice were introduced into the poem. It created an ambivalent tone of voice that made the message even more universal. The range of secrets also brought the poem weaving in and out of seriousness with bits of comic relief like “I LOVE country music”. The most memorable part of the performance occurred when the poet finished with the line “When I blow out the candles, I never make a wish”, and she literally blew the card away. This action created a sense of looming finality that was paralleled, via a little luck from the poetry gods, with the end of the song still playing in the background. It was a very well performed poem and an even more original idea. We all have our dirty little secrets, but for now I think I’ll keep mine bottled up. 

Pond in South Quad?

I Hope I Don't Suck...

My performance poem will be drawing from a mix of artistic inspiration. I plan on using a rap-like style of delivery similar to Saul Williams, but my actual diction and literary techniques should appear closer to those of Harriet Mullen. I hope to strengthen the message of my performance primarily through simple hand gestures and the tone of my voice. My non-verbal media will consist of basically writing on the board, and it should add another message to the actual piece. My goal for the performance is to land a platinum record deal, but I would settle for an A in the class as well. 

Ranting, Raving, and Rapping

In 'America', Ginsburg's political statement reflects a ranting drunken man muttering his complaints with America, international conflict, and society in general. The absurdity and bluntness of his humor displays an everyone-was-thinking-it mentality that emphasizes the need for his confession. He is surprisingly open with usually confrontational issues such as sex, drugs, and violence. Saul Williams takes a similar approach in 'Coded Language' in openly addressing similar confrontational issues. He advocates acceptance of all different types of people and lifestyles. However, his style is much more poetic and songlike than the prose style that Ginsburg utilizes. Saul Williams imitates a similar style of wordplay to Ginsburg, but in general his delivery is more like a rap. Saul Williams also takes a more aggressive approach to delivering his poetry, and Ginsburg shows a more laid back approach.

What the words didn't say

A wrinkled brow, cringing teeth, and longing eyes. No word is ever spoken, yet a poet displays a myriad of emotions. The pace quickens and his voice rises. He never said he was anxious; nevertheless, it was very obvious. The poet jumps as the music rises with clashing sounds proclaiming the exhilaration. The mounting bliss is relayed without ever uttering a word. No innuendo is lost. No assumed beat or underlying tone is overlooked. A performance poet is able to show emotion through a combination of diction, tone, and expression that extends much further any amount of written work ever could. One particular poet that is able to do this is Beau Sia.

 

He captivates the attention of the crowd when he begins his poem with a plea. Without the knowledge of the crowd, he actually introduces his theme, a device only possible in a performance poem. The begging intonation of his voice and the desperately grasping motions of his body exaggerate his expression and succeed in implying the irony of his performance. His Gary Coleman impression and Nsync dance moves provide humor to juxtapose the underlying seriousness of his message. He plays on the Americanized stereotypes of Asian culture with flamboyant imitations and stereotype jokes. His frustration with these stereotypes as well as his struggle to succeed artistically is displayed by his dramatically performed concluding hyperbole in which he proclaims, “Give me a chance, and I’ll change the world!” The audience adds to the performance by providing reaction to his humor and rolling with the pace of his diction.

Sonnet 18 Rhyming Remix

Impaired by a summer day,

Longing for times more temperate,

Rough sins only make duds in May.

Lease gone up, it’s your dieing date.

The material will rot, and money never shines.

What you put on hold is not dimmed.

Every hair or glare’s value declines,

But your stance with force remains untrimmed;

The external hummer will not fade

Its your obsession, you know you owe it,

So don’t lag longing in the shade

When rhyme's lines hope you grow it.

            Go and then seethe over lies an’ see.

            Oh song, sing, it gives strife to thee.

 

Mullin' over the Blues

 

“sun goes on shining

while the debbil beats his wife

blues played left handed

topsy-turvy inside out”

 

Mullen’s blues style stanzas appear in quatrains rather than three line stanzas and can be described as she says as “topsy-truvy”. The stanzas exemplify the typical blues progression from problem to resolution. She shares common themes with many blues poems by writing about the troubles of relationships, everyman’s endless search for success, and escaping depression. Yet, many of her themes take on a more modern and risqué tone than those typically seen in blues poems. Her use of double entendres and hidden insinuations allow her to address more sensitive subjects such as sex and violence without being perfectly blunt about the issues. The tone of work is certainly very pessimistic, and it is possible to say it acts as a social criticism. She uses this intonation to address issues such as sexism, abortion, racism, and social injustice in general. Mullen’s actual diction in the work differs significantly from typical blues. While she often utilizes a rhythmic style of short phrases commonly found in the blues, most of her lines are full of double entendres, puns, alliterations and consonance, homonyms, and other poetic devices that give a second meaning to her writing. She often twists common phrases to present a more profound implication. She references blues songs in her lyrics as well as any thing from advertisements to catch phrases. This excerpt displays Mullen’s true diversity of style.

 

curly waves away blues navy

saved from salvation

army grits and gravy

tries no lie relaxation

 

some little bitter

spilled glitter

wiped the floor

with spoiled sugar

 

back dating double dutch

fresh out of bubble gum

half step in the grave

on banana peels of love

 

devils dancing on a dime

cut a rug in ragtime

jitterbug squat diddly bow

stark strangled banjo

 

This poem in particular displays the vast array of literary devices that Mullen has mastered in order to portray her message. Her alliterations and consonances create a flow that is characteristic of the blues: “devils dancing on a dime”. She also uses metaphors like the “banana peels of love” in order to portray her message. Her blues style flow is accentuated by a myriad of internal rhymes, rhymed couplets, and alternating rhymes that appear throughout the work. Mullen utilizes all of these poetic devices in a brilliant attempt to create her own uniquely modernized blues poetic style.

 

go ahead and sing the blues

then ask for forgiveness

you can’t do everything

and still be saved

Driving through Chicago Blues

On the Weary Blues

When Hughes writes the blues it sways and it shakes

To the heat of that night and that rhythm it makes.

His pen his piano, his paper the mic,

And he sings a sad song all the lonesome ones like.

 

O Blues! Cries Hughes as he plays for those fools.

 

The fools with crushed dreams that cry through a song,

A song still bursting with hope gone for too long.

A song in a song, blues all the same.

The good ole days never came never came.

 

If my pen could sing...

“All I could do was hang my head and moan” belts out Big Joe Williams in Delta Blues. Blues all seem to come from this mutual desperation to relieve some deep emotion that has been building up down in the soul. Whether it is grief, frustration, or just depression, emotion is what fills up a blues song to the brim. The blues are marked by swaggering tunes and slow melodious beats. It seems ironic, however, that these songs that sing of the troubles and hard times end up bringing happiness. The blues are really an escape where sharing emotion through song can bring people to together. Blues appeal to the ears with the simple beats and rhythm, but the blues reach people the most when they hit home with the emotion of the song. It is emotion that pours out the lyrics, cues the banjo, and blows soul through the harmonica.

Poetry in Translation

The mission of Circumference Magazine is essentially to introduce a new array of poetry by translating poets that would normally be unavailable to American readers. The poems are published in a biannual publication and appear side by side with the original poem and its translation. The online journal is relatively plain in design and contains a complete list of the magazine issues and included works. The site also contains links to samples of a select few of the works as well as a few video clips of the works being read aloud. One of the works which is sampled is

“Death was Waiting for us Elsewhere”

Written by: Ivan Wernisch

Translated by: Jonathan Bolton

Wernisch provides a wartime description of a village that he passed through as a soldier. Wernisch’s journal-like description of the landscape displays a heightened sense of awareness of his surroundings. He describes the landscape saying, “The sun warmed us,/ the yellow and purple forests were fragrant
/ The red of cranberries was everywhere”. However, his romantic descriptions of the landscape are abruptly broken by the harsh realities of the war. He writes, “But the strange thing was: you could smell fish more than the stench of corpses.” Wernisch juxtaposes the use of monotone statements of fact with similarly dull statements about death to suggest the inevitability of his own death. This theme is apparent as the poem concludes, “
but death was waiting for us elsewhere/ 

The night was white and pink.” The poem appears in translation below its original form on the website, however, the quote from the beginning of the poem is not translated which keeps a feeling of originality about the work. The poem appears in the same format in the original work as in the translation with regard to structure and punctuation. Although the translator's contribution to the work is unapparent, the content of the poem would suggest little room for the translator to alter much of the work.

My Type of Poetry

Hello faithful readers. My name as you know is Bobby Powers, and I am a freshman at Notre Dame. I am in a contemporary poetry class which has assigned me with the task of examining poetry and presenting my opinions on this blog. As will become apparent, the most important aspect of poetry to me is a poem’s ability to entertain the reader. Whether it be by thought provoking psycho analysis or cheesy slap stick humor, a poem is only as good as its ability to captivate the reader’s attention. I personally enjoy poems which take on an original format or style, that introduce completely different outlooks on life, and that use humor as a device to entertain.

Excerpt from “i am unemployed”

By: Tao Lin

“- to be angry at the national book award people but to channel that anger into taking a hammer into the forest and attacking wild animals and smashing trees and wearing an owl suit and dropping out of tall trees like a real owl and screaming and mauling campers and smashing deer and paralyzing them and eating them alive and then I think that wait a minute, that seems wrong, is bad advice maybe; but then it seems there is a prologue to my nightmare and i watch it and enjoy it and it is horrifying and shocking and it is in pill form and i swallow it and it changes everything and it’s brilliant and i wake up smiling”

Tao Lin follows my golden rule of poetry in this excerpt: entertain the reader. The poem is both shocking and amusing and in a style of dry humor that is unique to Tao Lin. He utilizes an outlandish stream of conscious style in this poem that is accentuated by his lack of punctuation and informal grammar.

Using this style he is able to touch on some of the more basic human sentiments such as anger and frustration while embodying some of the more animalistic aspects of these emotions.

And so it begins...

Apparently someone thought it was a good idea for me to start a blog...what were they thinking?