Poetry

It hard to choose just one poem to favor out of such an great selection. I must say this was by far my favorite unit, probably because I adore how a poem uses less words to convey a huge picture.

Walt Whitman has been a favorite of mine since High School, so reading Crossing Brooklyn Ferry was a huge joy. I had read Leaves of Grass senior year and loved it, but it wasn't until I read the line below that I was completely pulled into the inagery he was setting.

"Others will see the islands large and small; / Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high; / a hundred years hence, or even so many hundred years hence, others will see them,"

I adored how he related different generations to one another, insinuating that we're not so different, that we feel the same and hope the same. Its almost comforting to know there were many people before me going through the struggle, but what makes Witman special is that he's about to share these emotions in a beautiful way. Another line where he reiderates this is "These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you" which alsmost sounds like he's saying we are friends, going through the same journey but at different times.

He kept repeating the phrase "the sun half an hour high" which to me is one of the most gorgeous hours of the day beause the moring is so new and the air is fresh.

It was this poem that made me feel more comfortable asking questions in my own poetry. I hadn't seen that done much, but i enjoied how philosphical it sounded. He writes:
"What is it, then, between us? / What is the count of the scores of hundreds of years between us?"
This especially stuck out to me, getting a rise out of me to make sense of why we are born when and where we are, and what do we make of the peopple who once stood where we did many years before.

It is poems like this that make me ponder the divine, wondering how things may change in time. It is poetry like this that makes me want to write.

A reading from Cheryl Strayed

Before this lecture I had never heard of Cheryl Strayed, though I had seen some media buzz about her bestseller Wild. After hearing her talk about her life leading up to the book, I was taken aback at how much she had overcome. I was moved by her powerful story and could relate to the intense closeness she had to her mother.
Immediately following the lecture I downloaded her book onto my kindle. The fact that the story is true, based off her real experiences only made me want to read it more. Her work is a lot like where I see my writing going. I loved how she intertwined nature into her plot, because really the setting itself was a strong character that helped her grow over time. In explaining how her book came about, she discussed some of the big lessons she learned along the way. She said "fear is a story we tell outselves." But it wasn't just her words that struck me, but the intensity she had behind it. She wasn't just making these things up to sell a good book, rather it was apparent that she had a series of life altering revelations that were so deep she felt compelled to share them. Thats what made her book so beautiful, it was raw, real and at times quite funny. She seemed like a woman who had really overcome a lot through her struggle and was so much stronger now that her struggle was almost laughable. She made a bunch of jokes at her own expense, which only made me fall in love with her move.
Because like my grandfather used to always say "you gatta laugh in life."

I loved when she said how often life sends you metaphors. Its so true, in your darkest hour it seems everywhere you look holds a message up need to hear to help you go on. She advocated the importance to be brave, to take risks and live fully. This stuck out in of of Strayed's other projects, a Column called Dear Sugar that was eventually turned into her accidental  book Tiny Beautiful Things. She wrote in a column addressed to a young girl to be brake enough to break your heart. She continued to write that you cannot convince people to love you because real love moves freely in both directions. I felt this was something I really needed to hear in my own process of growing up and looking for people to share my life with.
This is the kind of author I'd like to be one day, someone who inspires by sharing their own truth about life.

A thought with Les Murray

Last Tuesday evening I had the pleasure of hearing an established Poet share some of his work at a reading in his honor. Les Murray is a one of the five authors in the distinguished writers series, and the first to share poetry. I was especially looking forward to hearing his work because poetry my most favored form of expression over the past year. Though I had never heard of Murray, I did some quick googling of him hours before the event (ok I looked him up on wikipedia) and found great reviews of his work, the site claiming that he is regarded as "the leading Australian poet of his generation." The more I read about him, the more respected he became to me as a writer, learning of his endless rewards and recognition for his success as a poet. This sparked some genuine curiosity, as i had never head poetry from and Australian writer before.

Sadly, I wasn't wise in choosing my seat when arriving to the reading, finding a seat in the back that would make it hard for me to hear well. Though it was also Murray's thick Austalian accent that had me scratching my head as I'd try to make out the words of the poetry he chose to share.
A rather jolly man, he had an endless selection of pieces to choose from, though it wasn't until he was asked to share one from his darker times that I began to feel moved by his words, even though there were some stanzas I couldn't make out.

Following the lecture, I looked up more of his poetry and thankfully I could understand them more easily on paper. Personally, my favorite themse for poetry is nature. I adore the use of emotion though plants, trees and water. In Murray's large collection of work, I found some poems that met my fancy. I enjoied one entitles Late Summer Fired, mainly because it was simple and didn't say too muuch but rather left some room in the imagination.

Another poem of his I articularly enjoied was Music To Me Is Like Days, mainly because it spoke so much truth about the transition of music as an expressive artform to a way of promoting bad values in society. Throughout the whole poem he has a consistent flow of points to prove the theme to be true, even including some Australian tongue that, though a bit confusing, never took away from the message he was stressing.

its bodice of always-weak laces
the entirely promiscuous art
pours out in public spaces 

Non fiction Entry 2

Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander is probably one of the best memiors I've ever written because it kept me laughing nearly the whole way through. There is nothing better then an author who knows how to get a reader laughing, because comedy is not as easiy done on paper like it is on stage.

Non Fiction Unit Entry 1

Throughout the non fiction unit, there has been one text in particular that's really stuck with me since I first read it. Jane Didion's Goodbye To All That was a perfect example of how I'd want to write my memoir. It felt more raw and honest then some other pieces where the author writes about themselves. Here it feels like she is hiding nothing, rather she introduces information about her environment and how it made her feel in a way that was almost darkly poetic. Gradually, we can see the light leaving her eyes as her perception of the city changes and its clear what she thought would be was no so easily what she got, which is a painful lesson people eventually learn.

Her story is one I know I will have to face one day- leaving my hometown to start completely new on my own. But more then that, its of discovering who she was without the safety of her old life.
"But where is the school girl who used to be me" was one on of my many favorite lines in this text. She so gracefully takes a simple thought and writes it in a way that almost sounds achingly romanticised, as if she's living in a ancient Greek tragedy and her fate has already been set, one that she does not wish to fulfil.

Its almost sad, how she makes being young into a highlight of her life. As if her whole youth was spent fervently anticipation her grand future, but once she reached there all she realized was how much better she thought it would be. That's another painful reality of life I suppose. It makes me want to capture every important moment in my youth and paint it on the page with my words. I want to share the absurdities of life and then turn it into a peice of art, like Didion did.

Whats lovely that she does so well is relating something that seems complex to something that's universal, like when she describes her love for the city like the love you have for the first person who ever shows you what beng in love truly feels like. Its magical, breathtaking and life altering.
"I still believed in possibilities then, still had a sense so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day any month." I so often get lost in this exact hopeful feeling that my life woud take a turn and it would be in that moment that I would truly start living.

I aso enjoied how she emphasised on the "idea of New York" to an outsiders perspective compared to living there on a daily basis. She described the city as a "infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself" and goes on to elaborate on how the place was like Oz, a dream within a dream. But she speaks in a past tense and as a reader I had to remind myself that this was how she saw NYC before she was there, and that a more negative light was soon to shine on the beloved city.

A talk of James Joyce

Araby was the first short story I read for this class, and Im glad it was. It set a very serious tone that I think provided some intensity thats a nice way to introduce creative writing. There are moments in life one would want to capture and keep forever, not because they were the most joyous or life changing- but because they are simply poetic and real if approached at the right perspective.
This story was told through the eyes of a hopeless romantic, stuck in infatuation with a girl he hardly ever spoke to. The descriptions of details in the setting were so beautifully done that you could feel the ache and longing this young boy had for this girl, one I'm sure almost anyone could relate to whe thinking back to a first crush or relationship. This beginning moments are so special in developing and thickening the plot.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The passage from the book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was filled with a lot of character development that provoked a lot of emotion for me as the reader, a cathartic experience I rather look forward to when reading stories. I grew very attached or the two main characters, and even though the narrator shifts from kind hearted to cold, there is still a lot of empathy you feel as you tag along on his journey through college life in such delicate circumstances.

This was my favorite story, mainly because its narrator is a young adult in college just like me, trying to figure out how to be true to himself without causing too much damage to others- though he has issues with that most in in romantic life. The dialoge was especially enjoyable to read because it included slang i was familiar with, making the character more real to me. I also enjoyed the contrast of how Jose (i think that was the main characters name, sorry if its not) would speak compared to his rather nerdy roommate, Oscar. It made great material for comedic relief in such a heavy story. But thats what made me appreciate it so much, the fact that the writer wasn't afraid to go from dark to humorous back to dark again.