Some drafts

These are really rough drafts, so don’t judge me.  The first poem (for steel cannot cut wind) is our 20-word poem, the second (Mondays, 3pm) is a tribute to the style of Jennifer Dick and has a similar topic to the poems in her book Fluorescence.

 

for steel cannot cut wind

Shattered cobalt, broken on the floor.

Cold steel, forged by

caring hands,

trembling hands,

hot fire.

A mirage in the flames,

a testament to all of civilization.

Above.

Fissures in the chimneystack. The smoke

billowing out against the indigo sky,

transparent

turbulent

in the night.

Below.

What appears to be

                                    unrequited,

what appears to be

                                    the martyrdom of man

has actually been returned:

the summit of mankind has steel to thank.

But when the spindrift lingers

like the moon clings to night,

like dew sticks to plants,

all that is carboniferous beware:

catastrophe will strike.

 

And you can try with

nuclear physics,

structured villanelles.

You can try with

expressionism,

formalism,

all the –isms.

 

But you will never understand it, and you can never stop it.

 

Mondays, 3pm 

Do you promise to be honest?

                           There is light sifting through the trees here,

                           bouncing off the pavement, slick with wet.

Sure.

                           The light here is filtered,

And then what happened?

                           sifted, broken to its essence.

                           They say a rose with no thorns,

is still a rose.

A rose?

                           But I don’t think so. A rose with thorns

                           is a rose. A rose without thorns is

Yes?

         willing, but I’m

How was your weekend?

                           Scattered. The right word is scattered

                           because light can’t be filtered;

                           only scattered.

Better than last?

                           Always better than last. Never look

                           back, never look behind you, or under

                           the bed,

Tell me more.

                           you don’t know who’s waiting there.

                           The boogeyman or just a man. Just

That’s our time for today.

                           No colors. Blank and white. A broken

                           porch light, a broken

Let’s go back to that night.

                           Concrete steps. The handrail broke.

                           Can you imagine how much weight

                           that must have been? To break a rail you

How was your weekend?

                           but it was probably shitty anyway.

                           Light filtering, dust rising, dusk dawning

I don’t think I’ll be coming back next week.

Flourescence by Jennifer Dick

I’ve never read a book quite like Flourescence. The entire thing feels like a puzzle, it tells a story, but I have to re-read and analyze each and every poem after I read it. Every single poem, every line, every word, is riddled with meaning. Someone once told me that poetry is “the removal of excess verbiage, leaving only the essence of a pure emotion or a moment in time and space” and Dick’s book is a testament to that definition.

The emotions are raw, and the moments in time that are explored are so profoundly moving that the book feels like taking a dive into her mind. The most effective technical aspect of the book was how it shifts between different times sporadically in almost a stream-of-consciousness way at certain points. I think it’s very effective in conveying her state of mind (and probably PTSD) and making the reader experience it as she did.

I liked how the book becomes clearer and clearer as it concludes, the stanzas turning into paragraphs and the fragments turning into a more sentence-like structure. Her thoughts become more coherent every page, and it’s absolutely heartbreaking.

My favorite part about her writing style was the way she used sentences fragments and the expectations of the reader to say things without saying them. There’s a theory in film that montages are created by the connotations behind shots (words) and the conflict between them, and I think this also applies to Flourescence. Dick takes our expectations about what she’s going to say, and contrasts them with what she’s about to say next, creating tension in a way that would otherwise feel fake and would be largely ineffective.

TL;DR: Jennifer Dick wrote a wonderful book entitled Flourescence, and you should totally read it if you want to ponder some deep things and revel in her mastery of what words can do.

Emily Dickinson poems

The poems I will be looking at are the Emily Dickinson poems on the last page of the poetry packet. All of her poems have a set meter and rythm, but I’m not very good with rythm, so I won’t attempt to tell you what it is. Each of her poems are split into three quatrains, except the last poem (377) which has four stanzas. That poem uses a lot of repetition, as well as hyperbole to emphasize the idea that the distance between the living an the dead is insurmountable.

This is me.

Hi! This is my blog for Section 11 of Introduction to Creative Writing at Eastern michigan University. I’m a sophomore, I live on the LGTBA floor on campus, and I intend on becoming a screenwriter. 🙂 Enjoy!