Oct 6 - 12: Bruce Covey

Sorry guys, no pun of a title this week. I really enjoyed Bruce Covey and felt like I’d be something a punk to make a pun out of his name. I’m also going to start by warning the reader that I slightly feel like I keep repeating myself concerning how much I enjoyed Bruce’s performances. I apologize in advance.

So, to start off very stereotypically, I was surprised when I first met Bruce. Lee (I apologize if that’s too familiar of an address!!) brought Bruce into my place of employment for lunch and introduced me to Bruce. He was very polite and soft spoken. From his picture on the posters, I definitely imagined him behaving differently (don’t ask—it’s a me thing that’s hard to explain). Normally I’m somewhat apprehensive about guest presenters. It seems like, without fail, the presentation is very dry or the presenter doesn’t quite get what’s going on or a million other things that make me go, ‘oh… guest presenter… *sigh*’ However, Bruce was very approachable and that made me feel a whole lot better about the class period ahead.

In class, I thought Bruce did a wonderful job reading. He grabbed and kept my attention throughout the entire period—which is something that rarely happens during guest presentations. It did throw me off a bit when he opened the class period up with a round of questions, but after thinking that over, I decided it was probably for the best. Starting with questions allowed us to connect with Bruce and allowed Bruce to show that he is quite knowledgeable concerning contemporary poetry before he got into his readings.

I also really liked that he read some of the works of the more influential poets in his life. It gave me as an audience member a chance to spring board off a very similar place to what Bruce did to write his poetry. In my humble opinion, a similar starting point ALWAYS helps for understanding a work in new ways.

Bruce’s performance itself was also very enjoyable. Unfortunately I had to leave early for my next class, but what I saw was definitely worth going to see. I pity the poor fools that thought about going, but decided to do something else instead. They missed out on an excellent presention.

My favorite poem of his was the one where the persona was in the restaurant setting similar to Carnival (I forget what his term was exactly). To me, the story line was very relatable and slightly humorous. My favorite part was of this poem was where the persona talked about having various beverages to share… well, maybe not so much since the persona didn’t like them, but hey, the date could drink them since the date liked them! In general, I just enjoyed the concept of even writing with such a setting. It was a setting that definitely would not have occurred to me.

A very close second favorite was his poem (I *believe* the title is correct, but I’m not entirely certain) “Odds.” I felt like it was an interesting concept for a piece of poetry. The poem also had some very sobering items in the list juxtaposed with some very entertaining items.

To conclude my entry, I again apologize to the reader for sounding slightly redundant and not being very entertaining. It’s always more enjoyable for the general populous to read a rant, I’ve found, but I felt the need to share what a great presenter I felt Bruce Covey was. I genuinely had no complaints, save that he couldn’t present longer.

Fin.

Breakfast of Champions - Modelling Poem #1

“Breakfast of Champions”
Amanda Zalud

You blew it
You bastard
You blew it,
We’re through.
Because you
Were too blind to see
That I was perfect for you
And you for me.

That when we met,
We ceased to exist
independently
And began to exist
symbiotically,
Starting something new.

For better or worse
Through life till the hearse,
That’s how we
Were supposed to be.
You and me
Eternally
Intertwined.

But no.
“I’m sorry,” you said.
“But you just have to go.”
From that point on
No longer to show
Any intimacy
Or affection.

Good guys wear white.
So why did you
Come with the promise of white?
Why did you
Say that all would be right?
Why didn’t you
Come with a disclaimer
That all would go black
And that I couldn’t go back
Once I let you into my life?

I love you.
I cared for you.
I gave you
Everything that was good in me.
So that when you
Left, you
Took me too
And left me
Nothing but
What was terrible
In you.

And now I exist
As a broken thermos might
Whole on the outside,
Shattered on the inside,
And terribly,
Woefully,
Unable to retain warmth
From the inside.

And when I look into the mirror
I see a plaster cast,
Dear,
That I’ve been working on
Just for you
So that maybe you’ll
Love me
Just like you used to do.

Love me, love me, love me.
I can’t make you,
Can I?
You’d tell me if I could,
Wouldn’t you?

And everywhere I go
You’re there too.
In the faces of all the boys
And I
In all the girls.
And I wear headphones to
Ignore life and
Block images of you
As best as I can.

And all the while
My left earbud
snap, crackle, pops
Rice crispies
And tries
To sing once more…
But I twist it.
Snap it.
Kill it.

Because something had to die.
But not you, my dear.
Not I.
We’re too twisted.
Too mangled.
Too broken
Up in each other
To pass without the other.

Pain is only temporary.
Losing a limb
Can’t hurt forever…
So why should losing you?


Discussion:

My poem was modeled after the work of Sylvia Plath. I did not model my poem after a particular work of Plath’s. Rather, I took Plath’s work on the whole and tried to incorporate elements and themes common throughout Plath’s works. I felt that in this way I was able to emulate Plath, but while staying true to my own form; this is something that I feel like Plath was doing with her own work and also something I feel like adds to my model to make it more like Plath.

The rhyme scheme is erratic throughout “Breakfast of Champions.” I could not nail down a rhyme scheme specific to Plath or one that she seemed to favor on the whole, so I tried not to subscribe to a regular rhyme scheme. Instead, I used random end rhymes, near rhymes, assonance, consonance, and repetition scattered throughout the entire piece.

Along those same lines, I tried not to use a constant line length either. In “Lady Lazarus,” for example, Plath’s lines vary greatly from stanza to stanza. Plath does not seem to have a set line length that she favors on the whole. However, I did try to use a fairly similar line length for the poem at large. This is something I noticed she did in poems like “The Arrival of the Bee Box” and “In Plaster.”

A symbolic theme common to Plath that I incorporated is the act of shedding selves. In the poem, the male figure offers the persona a way to drop masks and find a true self. When this does not come to fruition, the persona turns to object symbolism in a mirror. The persona recognizes a mask (the “plaster cast”) when looking into the mirror, but tries to convince herself that by donning this false self she will eventually find happiness. The persona, in essence, builds herself a new mask to replace the one torn away by the male interlocutor.

By building herself a new mask, the persona also touches on Plath’s theme of fragmentation of self and the reunification of self. At the beginning of the poem, we are subject to the persona’s anger and her seemingly erratic outbursts, but by the end the persona has become something new. She is still angry, but she is more of a unified front against the male figure of the poem.

I incorporated both white and black using Plath’s color symbolism. White is used as symbolism for purity, escape, and shedding masks. White symbolism in my poem was what the persona desired and the male interlocutor promised, but, in the end, the male interlocutor could not provide the persona with white. Black is used in my poem is used to describe the male interlocutor, which complies with Plath’s symbolism in that black is a male color. Black also serves to symbolize the void after the promise of white was not fulfilled.

The male figure being larger than life, but also failing to live up to expectations is present in the male interlocutor of the poem. Similar to how Plath used Otto Plath (in “Daddy” in particular), the male figure in “Breakfast of Champions” hurts the persona, but becomes an obsession for the persona. There are echoes of “Daddy” in the very first stanza when the persona declares that the male figure “blew it” and that the persona and the figure are “through.” However, the persona continues to dwell and discusses abuse suffered at the hands of the male in question.

Death and rebirth (a common Plath theme) is also present as a recurrent theme within my poem. On a larger scale, being hurt and rejected by the male interlocutor is a sort of death for the persona, discussed in the metaphor of the broken thermos. Death is also discussed within the context of the broken earbud (“Something had to die”). Rebirth is then introduced at the end of the poem when the persona asks why she should hurt forever over “losing you.” On a smaller scale, death and rebirth is visited in the second and third stanzas. Meeting the male figure caused a death of the persona and the male figure and caused the two to be reborn as one.

Over all, I felt that, while my poem did not conform to an exact poem of Plath’s, there is a lot of Plath present within the poem.

Fin.

Sept 21 - 27: Takin' a tour with the Olds-mobile (LAME PUN... couldn't come up with anything better.)

When I read the Sharon Olds poems this week, I wondered how much of the subject material Olds felt and how much of it was for shock value. I know that I sound like something of a “hater” (as the kids these days say), but the fact of the matter is that I have a hard time thinking of a situation in which I felt the need (for example) to compose a short poem about the Pope’s genitalia. Along those same lines, I have never felt the need to compose anything about my father being naked or any sort of sexual fluid either. I realize that I’m not the yard stick by which the world is measured (thank goodness for the world), but something within me is having a hard time relating to Olds’ poetry.

However, I did really enjoy “Photograph of the Girl” by Olds. Her poem really was the reading equivalent of looking at a photograph: all of the visual details were heart-wrenchingly there in words. While reading the first part of the poem, I felt like I was standing right next to the girl, watching her suffer, but unable to do anything. When the poem shifts to read the “caption” in line 12 I felt like I was reading the caption over the persona’s shoulder and that I should make some sort of follow up comment to the persona. The imagery involved at the end of the poem in lines 14-16 (“Deep in her body/ the ovaries let our her first eggs,/ golden as drops of grain.”) was both beautiful and terribly depressing. Yeah, this girl is reaching an exciting time in her life (starting to grow up), but she’ll never need to. She’s dying. The ironic juxtaposition of life (manifested by the eggs) to the death the reader is told will happen a few lines back just feels wrong. Stylistically, it’s wonderful; in practice, the girl’s imminent death is all different colors of wrong.

The one line in particular in “Photograph of the Girl” that really haunted me after finishing started on line 10: “She cannot be beautiful, but she is/ starving.” Yikes. Olds is shockingly honest and hits adolescence on the nose. I would argue that many adolescent girls at some point in time feel the pressure to be beautiful. However, I would also argue that while adolescence has its own beauty, most adolescents aren’t what it considered traditionally beautiful. Olds flat out says that this girl “cannot be beautiful.” Then, as if to compensate for that fact, the reader is told that the girl is starving. Well, she can’t be beautiful, but whatever, doesn’t really matter, she’s starving. Yikes.

I realize the role of shock and pushing the limits in conventional anything, and I know that it makes me sound completely establishment, but I’m still not the biggest fan of Olds. She’s a gifted poet, but I just can’t get into/relate to all of her subjects in a way that would lead to the enjoyment of her poems.

Fin.

Sept 15-21: The Plath more (and less) traveled...

So, just to jump on the critical bandwagon, I think I’m going to discuss “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath for a bit, before jumping off the bandwagon and moving on to my favorite poem this week (also by Plath), “The Arrival of the Bee Box.”

Listening to “Daddy” on YouTube, I definitely had a couple sharp intakes of breath. When I read through “Daddy,” the reading just reaffirmed my feelings that “Daddy” would definitely cause some waves if it had been published in the here and the now (as I’m sure it did when it was actually published). I feel like the need to compare one’s father to the Holocaust definitely implies some strong feelings behind the creation of the poem, and I’m sure that psychoanalysts and literary critics alike have many great party conversations concerning this poem.

Plath asserting that “every woman adores a fascist” (line 48) was the most shocking to me, but it shouldn’t be considering that Plath declares herself a “Jew” (line 35) and likens her experiences with her father to being carted off to a concentration camp. I think the fascist comment hung me up because I have never heard anyone declare love for fascism, but at the same time I thought I knew what she was getting at… To quote ZZ Top, “every girl’s crazy for a sharp dressed man.”

The other image that really stuck with me when reading the poem is the one Plath conjures when she states, “If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two…” (line 71). No wonder her marriage was on the rocks with that sort of statement.

“The Arrival of the Bee Box” was my favorite poem this week due to the imagery Plath invokes within the poem. After I read through the poem, I felt like the poet (I’m working under the assumption that the persona and the poet are one and the same) was attempting (somewhat in vain) to establish some control within her life. Why else would someone try so hard to establish that the bees were at the mercy of the poet? It’s obvious that the bees could die at the hands of the poet—they’re trapped in a box! The only reason for the obsession is that the poet is trying to reassure herself of the power that she has over the bees.

This control issue is especially obvious in the fifth stanza when the poet writes, “[The bees] can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner” (line 25).

Upon rereading the poem, I felt like the poet was also expressing some feelings of despair and hopelessness. When, in the penultimate stanza, the poet writes that she “wonder[s] if [the bees] would forget [her]” (line 27) if she turned into a tree, suggested to me that the poet is wondering if life would just pass her by if she consented to fade into the background—this further cemented in my mind my first reading that the poet is trying to establish control in her life. It’s been my experience that those who feel like they have no control are those that try to establish that they have control the most.

All in all, it was a good week for poems. Plath is truly gifted.

Fin.

Sept 8 - 14 : Lowell and Behold...

Since I'm not entirely sure of what would be the most fabulous way to introduce my post, I'll just dive right in with little preamble.

Because this week's focus was mainly on Robert Lowell, I've been thinking quite a bit about his work and how exactly his poems are executed. That being said, I can’t decide whether or not Lowell’s style of confessional poetry strikes me in any way at all.

Don’t get me wrong—there are certain things that Lowell does very well. For example, at the end of “Water,” Lowell writes, “We wished our two souls/ might return like gulls/ to the rock. In the end,/ the water was too cold for us.” While not necessarily what one might consider terribly descriptive, the meaning is very clear. Lowell only uses what he needs to get his point across in this instance (the point being that, as much as you’d like to, you simply can’t return to how things once were), because anything else would take away from the lonely, slightly sad emotion of the poem.

However, the feeling in “Water” is there and then it’s gone for me. Lowell doesn’t provide me with any lasting images that I take away from the poem. When I first read it, I picked up on a slightly lonely, slightly depressed sort of persona, but other than that I couldn’t really tell you anything terribly earth shaking about the poem. Upon rereading it, I picked up elements from the working definition of confessional poetry that we’ve been using in class, but I still felt detached. After thinking about it, I concluded that this particular poem probably wasn’t written for me so much as it was for Lowell himself. I understand the necessity of such writing at certain times in life, but as a result I feel very Switzerland about “Water” at the end of the day.

“For the Union Dead” struck me, though, and left a lasting image. The difference being that the subject matter was something I could relate to more. Lowell isn’t trying to be the next Nathanial Hawthorne with his poem: he’s merely trying to be like hey guys, this is a bit of an issue, let me tell you about it in verse. In other words, Lowell still only uses the minimum amount of words he needs to relay his message, but his message is more universal: we’re tearing down memories to make way for “progress.”

When I was a kid, there was a big, open lot down the street where the neighborhood kids used to gather and play everyday after school. That lot became a house. Sure, it’s nice that there’s a house, but remember when we had a place to play?

Obviously that example is not as serious a subject as a national monument being torn down, but it’s based around the same idea that memories need to yield to “progress.” (I used quotations because a lot of times I don’t feel like progress is being made at all, which, I know, makes me bitter and un-American, but I’ve learned to deal with it.) I would venture to say that everyone can dredge up a memory that falls under the general theme I previously mentioned more concretely cementing the imagery for the reader.

Lowell’s poetry is, on the whole, really hit or miss for me. And since I’m being hit half the time (like with “For the Union Dead” and the other half is missing (like with “Water”), Lowell kind of neutralizes out in my head to an, “Oh yeah... I’ve read some of his things... They’re all right.”

Fin.

No armadillos were harmed in the running of this test...

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to call a friend of mine!
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to have a real good time!
I'll call for pizza. I'll call my cat.
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a brother and sister and a dogaphone,
a grandpa phone and a grammophone too! Oh yeah!
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...Gotta love Banana Phone...