From one of those Did You Know posts:
Drowning in salt water is different from drowning in fresh water. It takes longer, and salt water draws blood from the cells into your lungs. You drown in your own blood.
One user responded: "That is so metal".
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Critical Commentary 1, Week 8
Response to Andrew's Improv 5, Week 7:
I think I want to take this piece by piece, if that's ok with you. First line, fine, but I really love that second line. Perhaps syntactically odd, or simply in need of a colon, but uncanny, interesting, visual. I'm also curious about this personalization of the liana. There seems to be some fiddling with disjointing, a literal display of body parts. I will say that what strikes me as odd in this particular section is the move from halved fingers to a whole hand, which seems to be the start of a bodily connection as opposed to the prior. Mammal contours sits rather stumpy on the tongue and just does not work with the sweeping latinate sound this draft is trying to retain. Next, 3rd to last stanza. Suffer doesn't working there. As a reader I paused and thought: suffering? It calls too much attention to its own mechanics, the slant rhyme with suppers which would be cooler if I didn't see the machinery. Also, first section where we have these consistent breaks with a comma, which could work but it would require me to see more of this particular sense of disconnect in the rest of the work. It seems to fizzle off by the end and I'd like to see that idea carried out. As far as a narrative is concerned, there seems to be one in places but its rather obscured. I keep meaning to tell you this but I think Amy Pence would be a good read for you. She'd bring out the narrative sense in your writing while still showing you how to incorporate this lush and latinate movement you have in your work.
I think I want to take this piece by piece, if that's ok with you. First line, fine, but I really love that second line. Perhaps syntactically odd, or simply in need of a colon, but uncanny, interesting, visual. I'm also curious about this personalization of the liana. There seems to be some fiddling with disjointing, a literal display of body parts. I will say that what strikes me as odd in this particular section is the move from halved fingers to a whole hand, which seems to be the start of a bodily connection as opposed to the prior. Mammal contours sits rather stumpy on the tongue and just does not work with the sweeping latinate sound this draft is trying to retain. Next, 3rd to last stanza. Suffer doesn't working there. As a reader I paused and thought: suffering? It calls too much attention to its own mechanics, the slant rhyme with suppers which would be cooler if I didn't see the machinery. Also, first section where we have these consistent breaks with a comma, which could work but it would require me to see more of this particular sense of disconnect in the rest of the work. It seems to fizzle off by the end and I'd like to see that idea carried out. As far as a narrative is concerned, there seems to be one in places but its rather obscured. I keep meaning to tell you this but I think Amy Pence would be a good read for you. She'd bring out the narrative sense in your writing while still showing you how to incorporate this lush and latinate movement you have in your work.
Improv 5, Week 8
A baby doll. Face speckled with dust.
Even his frown cornered with some freckle
of dry mud, he calls to leopards
spotted and powerful, the tight mound
of their shoulders meeting their knecks,
flexing, arching, bending to feed or
sink the claws into the damp mounds
of jungle, scratching away the deep brown clumps
until the earth moves, fresh and clotted,
gives up, pudgy and glazed, some doll head glazed
with dirt. ....
Even his frown cornered with some freckle
of dry mud, he calls to leopards
spotted and powerful, the tight mound
of their shoulders meeting their knecks,
flexing, arching, bending to feed or
sink the claws into the damp mounds
of jungle, scratching away the deep brown clumps
until the earth moves, fresh and clotted,
gives up, pudgy and glazed, some doll head glazed
with dirt. ....
Improv 4, Week 8
There are no little girls here. Not anymore.
Lost to the swaying, amputated spirit
of these dolls--these many dolls that peer
from the mangled hiding places of trees,
wire wrapping their necks, that little girl
slipped off many years ago. They say
he took her place, brushing his hand
along their tattered limbs, running fingers
through their webby hair, so much care.
Lost to the swaying, amputated spirit
of these dolls--these many dolls that peer
from the mangled hiding places of trees,
wire wrapping their necks, that little girl
slipped off many years ago. They say
he took her place, brushing his hand
along their tattered limbs, running fingers
through their webby hair, so much care.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Improv 3, Week 8
What my brain writes at 5:45 in the morning:
Why do these people soak me in their intimacy?
I'm just a cashier, do I need to hear the bass
of your bedroom voice warbled through phone space,
finding a way to thump on my ear drums?
What is it about groceries that makes a woman
slide her hand into the back of her husband's pants?
Maybe we aren't selling groceries at all.
They say oysters are an aphrodisiac. If so,
we keep sex vacuum-sealed in seafood, or saucy
in white wine and garlic on aisle eight.
And maybe what I'm ringing isn't noise
but the de-evolution of "Slow Jams".
Baby, I've moved beyond the register
of voyeurism. No checks, no balances,
I wanna let go and hold you light
like an artichoke, careful like a glass
bottle of IBC. Me and this store,
we're the creators of attraction,
we've got something to sell--step up.
Move quick, you're in the express lane now.
This is where our transaction ends.
Why do these people soak me in their intimacy?
I'm just a cashier, do I need to hear the bass
of your bedroom voice warbled through phone space,
finding a way to thump on my ear drums?
What is it about groceries that makes a woman
slide her hand into the back of her husband's pants?
Maybe we aren't selling groceries at all.
They say oysters are an aphrodisiac. If so,
we keep sex vacuum-sealed in seafood, or saucy
in white wine and garlic on aisle eight.
And maybe what I'm ringing isn't noise
but the de-evolution of "Slow Jams".
Baby, I've moved beyond the register
of voyeurism. No checks, no balances,
I wanna let go and hold you light
like an artichoke, careful like a glass
bottle of IBC. Me and this store,
we're the creators of attraction,
we've got something to sell--step up.
Move quick, you're in the express lane now.
This is where our transaction ends.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Improv 2, Week 8
She moves like the unraveling of dawn, each muscle
creeping to a slow wake in her wheelchair.
In the Kroger checkout, her husband holds her
chair handle in one hand, a basket in the other,
before he releases to set his groceries, cheerfully,
on my lane.
I smile at her,
meet the open-eyed puncture of her blue gaze.
Five cans later her hand stutters into air, wobbly wave.
I start talking and her husband steps forward,
dapper, bow-tied and outlined
with suspenders. He's all smiles, loves this:
the bounce of my voice in his ears
while his wife sits, mute, head drifting, her neck giving
to its weight like origami to a finger's press. He and I,
we parry puns. She used to be a part of this.
She used to stand between us
writing out checks in her slow, shaky hand
...
creeping to a slow wake in her wheelchair.
In the Kroger checkout, her husband holds her
chair handle in one hand, a basket in the other,
before he releases to set his groceries, cheerfully,
on my lane.
I smile at her,
meet the open-eyed puncture of her blue gaze.
Five cans later her hand stutters into air, wobbly wave.
I start talking and her husband steps forward,
dapper, bow-tied and outlined
with suspenders. He's all smiles, loves this:
the bounce of my voice in his ears
while his wife sits, mute, head drifting, her neck giving
to its weight like origami to a finger's press. He and I,
we parry puns. She used to be a part of this.
She used to stand between us
writing out checks in her slow, shaky hand
...
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