Chris Robinson's response to "Gentelmen's agreement" / Imitation

Adam: Адам
Naivety is listening to a world that tells you, you are wrong and that they are right and right…What do those bigots know about anything? What do bigots got against me anyways I never did anything bad to them. You Adam spent long cold nights in your youth tossing and turning, while your comforter was pushed up against your back and ass. You would make believe that your bed spread was your strong and handsome lover, holding you tightly in his arms. Your lover had bronze skin, strong callused hands and wavy brown hair. He kissed your thighs and sucked on you when you had a bad day and most of the time you loved him.
After your mother and father died you were predisposed to sudden violent attacks of flout and tantrums. During these hysterics you cursed yourself, you yelled into the starry night time sky and reprimanded God, than you would feel guilty. You would rush inside and scream vulgarities at your make believe love, like fuck you…You bronze skinned limp dick faggot. Get out of my bed. Than most times you would take a breathe apologize and your lover (the blanket) would take you in its big strong arms. You’d burn yourself with hot wax sometimes and cut at your pale skin with a dull butter knife and call yourself a dirty homo. You tried to like women, but late at night with your blanket pushed up against your back, you always dreamed of the love that Lord Alfred Douglas so eloquently defined as “The Love that Dare Not Speak its Name.”

Week 5 Assignments

Writing Assignment

Choose One:
1) Write a poem in the second person in which the reader is made to see an everyday object in a new light, as with Fork.

2) Write a poem, monologue, or story where a first person narrator talks around the most important information. Make the silences speak. Keep your language spare and evocative, as Creeley does.

3) Take an exercise you’ve written this semester that you’re not entirely happy with. Change the voice, from first person to second or third person or from third person to first or second person. Then continue to revise the piece making whatever other revisions the changes suggest. Make sure to include the original version along with your new piece.

Read for Next Week
Every Exit is an Entrance and Ode to Sleep, Anne Carson
Gentleman’s Agreement, Mark Richard
For Esme – with Love and Squalor, J.D. Salinger
Dream Song 14, John Berryman

Blog
1. Post an entry about any one of the readings this week. This may be a critical or creative piece of about 200-300 words and must follow the blog response guidelines. It MUST respond to your chosen reading in some way, either by identifying and discussing craft elements, themes, or techniques or by using those elements in a creative response.

2. Post comments on at least three other entries. Remember, this is not a place for critiquing each other’s work. Instead, identify something from the piece that strikes or interests you, ask a neutral question about the work, or suggest ways the author could deepen or expand it.

Midterm Paper Guidelines

MIDTERM PAPER
Due March 18, 2010

GENERAL GUIDELINES
Select a creative work (or works) from our course reader, or a speech/monologue from either of the assigned plays. In a paper of approximately 1,000 words, respond to your chosen text(s) using one of the options listed below. Although you may choose any creative piece from the reader, keep in mind that it should be something that you can respond to meaningfully, in the space of roughly 3-4 pages. Something very long or very short may be more difficult.

Papers must by typed and double spaced, and written in 12-point font (Times New Roman preferred) with one-inch margins. If you refer to outside sources, make sure to cite them using standard MLA style and include a works cited page. Here is a useful link for those who need a refresher: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/

In grading the midterm papers, I will be keeping the following questions in mind:
➢ Is the paper formatted correctly, is it the specified length, and is it free of spelling and grammatical errors?
➢ Is there a clear thesis or point of view?
➢ Are claims supported with relevant examples from the text?
➢ Have all the elements of the prompt been addressed?
➢ Have all references and outside sources been cited using MLA style?
➢ Is the paper lively, creative, thoughtful, and interesting to read?

RESPONSE TOPICS
Option 1 ~ Analyze a short story in terms of how it is constructed, paying close attention to plot structure, patterns, and momentum. For example: In what ways does the author set the scene? At what point and how is the central conflict introduced? What kinds of patterns or escalations does the author use to create a feeling of rising tension? How are the reader’s expectations thwarted or confirmed? What effects do structure and development have on the feeling, atmosphere, or tone of the story? How do the formal or structural elements of the story relate to the themes or ideas explored? What do the author’s techniques suggest to you for your own writing?

Option 2 ~ Scan a poem, monologue, or speech using the scansion techniques discussed in class. Analyze the piece word by word and line by line, identifying metrical pattern, line length, and variations. How does the writer use meter to control pace? How does the writer end each line, each stanza, the work itself? How does (s)he begin each line? What effect does the choice of metrical patterns have on the tone, feeling, or atmosphere of the poem or speech? How does meter support or counter the images and themes of the piece? What other techniques does the writer use to supplement the meter (rhyme, images, or themes)? What do the author’s techniques suggest to you for your own writing?

Option 3 ~

PART ONE: Select 3 stories, poems, or plays (or a combination of all three) from the course reader that have a subject or theme in common. Explore your theme from a literary and craft perspective, as Anne Carson does in “Every Exit is an Entrance.” Consider each piece individually, as well as in comparison with the others. What are the commonalities and differences between them? How do the formal or structural elements of each piece relate to the themes or ideas explored? Support your claims with examples from the texts.

PART TWO: Draft a poem, short story, or monologue of no more than a page that meditates on your theme, incorporating material from your paper and the pieces you explored. Include this with your paper. The poem should not be part of the word count.

Option 4 ~ Stephen Ratcliffe states in “MEMO / RE: Reading Stein,” Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons explores “the shape of sound in writing—how sound shapes and creates the meaning of a text in ways that go beyond the meaning of its words. Playing with language—grammar, syntax, sound, rhythm, word meaning—in order to ‘rewrite’ it, free it from its denotative and connotative responsibilities, she discovered the materiality of words as objects, things, physical and acoustic matter whose referential meaning—carafe, teacup, tumbler, feather—while still actively present, was not their only interest. . . . She began to see words not simply as a window opening on the world, signaling that world, inviting the reader to pass through them into it; rather, words happen here—on the page, in air—their particular atomic weights and textures, spin and counterspin, enacted first by the writer who composes a text, reenacted by the reader who reads it.”

PART ONE: Select and analyze in detail one piece from “Objects,” exploring the ways in which Stein uses grammar, syntax, sound, rhythm, rhyme and word meaning. Discuss the effect Stein’s choices have on your experience of reading the piece and think about how her work influences your thinking about the words you use when writing.

PART TWO: Draft a poem of no more than a page, chosen from the options below, and include it with your paper. The poem should not be part of the word count.

1. Write a poem in which the canvas of the poem is flattened, where the value or meaning is distributed across the entirety of the work, where each compositional element is of equal importance.
2. When subject matter is commonplace or ugly, as is often the case in “realism,” method itself is foregrounded. Write a poem about a mundane object or event, where the main interest lies in how it is rendered. The written “brushstrokes” may even render the original subject unrecognizable.

ObJeCtS

Gertrude Stein has always been a hard read for me even despite her notary talents. However I found in a piece within a piece (DIRT AND COPPER) in OBJECTS that first line grabbed my attention. "dirt and not copper makes a color darker". Something about the fresh earth and the way I can just visualize it being incorporated with another object such as cloth and how they become one yet are still two separate entities. Copper to me is so cold and therefore has no business being at a table.

There were many others too that grabbed my attention in light of there being some crazy one like "peeled pencil,choke"(rub her coke). For instance GLAZED GLITTER. Most often the pieces that were a paragraph were the ones I was drawn into. She repeats metals such as copper and nickel and discusses their properties on an emotional level. How does it fit into our world and why is it here type questions. Here she also repeats mercy as she did in (DIRT AND COPPER). A sense of humanity within objects and teaching lessons by simply being what they are. This was probably the easier reads of the gertrude stein book I have come across in my time.

The Difference Between Pepsi and Coke

I was ready to hear this guys description of Coke and Pepsi. I was so disappointed. I was ready to dive right in and voice my opinion on how Pepsi is the best, and call everyone crazy. Instead I was met with some sort of tribute to a man. I think the most interesting part of the poem is that this guy has extremes, no gray area. But the mention that he can tell the subtle difference of two kinds of cola was interesting. To me it seems that this guy would have one preference, but then you read on. You discover he isn't just a mean old man making poor decisions, feeling inadequate and having a temper. You discover he is also a great man who stood up for things he knew was right before anyone told him it was right, he provides to his children and he is knowledgeable and cultured. Everyone can relate to this poem. Everyone knows someone who has maybe been through too many things in his life and keeps them bottles up only to find other ways to self medicate his pain in his life. But this never makes him a bad person, you always know that there is a nice man inside.

Tender Buttons Response

All I can think to myself when reading Gertrude Stein's "Tender Buttons" is how does she come up with this? Being a creative writer, asking these kinds of questions seems irrelevant, but it is still so fascinating! I think what I enjoy about "Tender Buttons" most is that it doesn't make any sense. But that is the point! With it, you kind of have to make up your own sense and parallel her words with that. This story doesn't conform to any traditional sense of structure. It is raw and organic. It's simple and beautiful, without having the question in the back of your head repeating over and over, "Now what does she mean by that?" It is not necessarily about what the words mean, but the sound of them.

"A sentence of a vagueness that is violence is authority and a mission and stumbling and also certainly also a prison. Calmness, calm is beside the plate and in way in. There is no turn in terror. There is no volume in sound."

This is a part that, for some reason, struck me in "Food." The last two sentences are particularly beautiful to me. Her writing is a continuous contradiction. Words as an aesthetic, words just being words.

Objects

As a writer, I found Objects by Gertrude Stein somewhat difficult to get through. It is a common practice to take an object and dissect it, analyzing its physical aspects as well as its metaphysical or metaphorical meaning to the speaker. However, Stein's descriptions of such every day objects as pillows and coins were extremely dense and somewhat difficult to decipher. True, it is affective to have beautiful and lyrical language, but in this sense, Stein twists her words to an almost incompressible means of conveying her ideas. For example, in the section A PIECE OF COFFEE, she states "A single image is not splendor. Dirty is yellow. A sign of more in not mentioned. A piece of coffee is not a detainer. The resemblance to yellow is dirtier and distincter. The clean mixture is whiter and not coal color, never more coal color than altogether. " Honestly, I found it difficult to completely understand what she was attempting to get across to the reader. It feels more abstract than concrete, too abstract in fact.

The Difference Between Pepsi and Coke

I was silly enough to eagerly read this poem, hoping to see someone break down one of the great divides in human history. For really, what could possibly be more important than a detailed analysis of the differences between one of the most delicious things in the history of human beings, and it’s horrific imposter?

It will take me a couple more reads to fully understand what’s going on here, but what I think David Lehman is doing is painting a detailed picture of a personality. Everybody has these little subtleties, these little nuances, and he is showing us an example of just one. Here’s a guy with extremes. He’s a man who can’t see what’s obvious, or what’s in front of him. He has very little self-awareness, and yet, when he pops open a Coca-Cola or a Pepsi, he can tell the difference. There are tons of other little things he can differentiate as well, but none of them really delve into the bigger picture. He’s a man who can see what’s right in front of him in great detail, but at the same time the significance of what is right there totally shoots over his head.

I liked this poem a lot. I don’t know whether Lehman is saying that the difference between these things are miniscule or not, but he is making a point about the personality of humans. Awesome.

Thoughts on Fork

Just the other other, my roommate and I were talking about cats. Her ex boyfriend had a weird thought that the only two things cats thought about was sleeping and killing. We have three cats in our house, so I got a little weirded out. After reading Simic's poem, I began thinking about the significance in objects around me that are not normally very important to mention. Last year my cat's tail was caught in a crack in the window and pulled off, causing him to be... well... tail-less. The idea that objects around us can be hazardous and even personified as "evil" is fascinating, and Simic through this poem creates that world where a fork can be seen as a terrifying object or a weapon. "This strange thing must have have crept right out of hell"! I just loved this poem!

Response to The Language

The Ladies

I draw mine
like the red
watery lips

of painted
Ladies. I
dream of my

shoes saying
click, click
good morning

moonlight. And I
will smile as
they do, raising

my pluming
cigarette to those
red, watery lips.

Response to "The Difference Between Pepsi and Coke"

In his poem, "The Difference Between Pepsi and Coke", David Lehman uses the notion of priority in order to convey the message that people often make inconsequential decisions in life much more readily than important choices. Lehman seems fascinated by his father's inadequate personal life juxtaposed with the less important but much more impressive abilities outside of it. His "Pop" is simultaneously indifferent to (and incompetent with) many of life's issues such as his marriage and his analysis of business, yet still very discerning when considering small details. This poem forced me to consider my own life, in which I am currently incapable of remembering my own Social Security number, but can easily remember the license plate number to every vehicle owned by 7 members of my family for the last 15 years. Lehman's work helped me to realize that sometimes, certain subjects just adhere themselves to one's psyche more easily than others; even if that means I'm great with license plates, and terrible with most other things.

Amy Hempel

Amy Hempel's story, “In the cemetery where Al Jolson is buried”, seemed very unique and refreshing for a few different reasons. First of all, I appreciated very much the way it was told. It was completely un-revealing to the reader but not in any way that complicated or confusing and by the end of the story I knew pretty much everything I needed to know about their relationship without being told much. Like the gestures articles that we read, sometimes more is less and Hemple seems to be a master of using the readers own implications to make the story more readable and realistic.

The other thing I really enjoyed about the story was the very beginning, the idea of “useful things that I wont mind forgetting”. I liked this because it was a kind of odd juxtaposition on real life. No one asks to hear random animal facts but the first thing I do after popping open my Snapple is look for the weight of a humming birds bones or how long penguins can breath underwater. This also worked to let the reader know immediately what kind of character this person was, which ties back into saying things without actually saying them.

Overall, it was a quick and easy read but something I wont soon forget for its eccentric characters and interesting style.

Take Off of "The Day Lady Died"

The Day Buddy Died

It is 2: 00 in S.F. a Thursday
three days after Burns night, yes
it is 2010 and I go get a cigarette
because I will get off the M at Stonestown
at 7:00 and then go straight to class
and I don’t know the people next to me

I walk up 19^th its beginning to rain
and have a scotch and another cigarette and buy
a damp ONION to see what the cynics
in news are complaining about these days
I go to the ATM
and Mr. Glass (first name Seymour I once heard)
doesn’t yell at me for looking at his shoes for once in his life
and at BORDERS I get the Mu-Mon-Kwan
for Timzie and drawings by Ensor although I do
think the faces reminded me of the Joker or
kids playing with their mom’s lipstick
but I stick with Ensor
after pasting faces from PEOPLE on the skulls in the background

and for myself I stroll into the EASY FREEZY
Liquor store and ask for another pack of Marlboros and
then go back to class after my two hour break
open my laptop to TWITTER and see his name trending

And I’m shaking a lot and smoking heavier and thinking of
leaning on the bar door of the DUBLINER
while he typed secret novels
in seclusion and everyone and I skipped a heartbeat.

Creative Response: Fork

Spork

Spawned from the inbreeding
of spoon and fork,
Spork is the member of the family kept most hidden,
he’s so “special” it’s always put in quotes.
Looks like a fork with a padded helmet
worn around the necks of the homeless or the
insane.
As you use it to unsuccessfully
stab into your newborn calf, bloody raw
you imagine this spork, your new friend
in his padded helmet,
his head which like your first
is vacant, vapid, and hairy.

rendition of "the difference between pepsi and coke"

Gives his seat up to old women on the bus; thinks he's strong and able bodied
spends money on his girlfriend, thinks he can make more later
is polite and respectful, knows when to be courteous
Not very loud, and doesn't like to make a scene
thinks all people have some good in them; knows this is true
But he eats with his mouth open and his eyes closed.
Curses like it's bread and butter; even though cursing is for
the inarticulate mother fucker,
Spits inside, spits outside; and fucking hates people
especially people who are too polite.
God damn old women too weak to stand on the bus.
It's okay; it's the right thing to do.
Drunk and high most of the time,
broke and terrible at school
doesn't have the where with all to get it together;
too dreamy, too stuck within fantasy
spends all his money; has little faith in himself
and is too scared to be optimistic; probably
just a fucking coward.
Guilt and sorrow and filth and the natural
desire to exist; to exist as a human within and outside
of the American nation, but all too much attachment
to his vices, as if they could be called vices
the self-pitying self-loathing mother fucker
self-righteous in a his own manipulative way,
so manipulative he doesn't even know it.
But he does know it.
But he eats with his mouth open and eyes closed
so all you see is the chewed up food and you never once
have to see into those chewed up eyes; spitting grief and absurdity and dramatics.
Atleast making sure to get up for the old women on the bus

In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried by Amy Hempel

I had to read this story twice because the first time I read it I was just so concerned with figuring out the plot. I couldn't tell if they were at first getting some cosmetic operation because of the mask references and why it took so long for her to get to a "glamorous place", then right after that it was clear that the friend was ill, but then I wasn't sure if the narrator was as well ill. There were times when I was wondering if this was taking place after they died, my mind definitely was a little out there on this piece so I had to re-read it.

When I re-read the story, it was very obvious what was going on; a friend that is visiting her dying best friend, and it took almost two months for her to visit, very very sad.

However, there was so much that was striking to me about this story. For one, the way Hempel starts the story with the dying best friend asking to hear about things that she won't mind forgetting. That really placed me in the ill friend's place, because instantly I thought of who would want to hear about things that they wouldn't mind forgetting and of course someone who knows they are going to forget everything important to them soon, devastating, but then the friend starts telling her things that are unimportant and that really is a nice contrast to the very sad reality of the story. I thought this two contrasting tones was a very effective technique.

I also really appreciated the subtlety of the way the Hempel gives information. "She introduces me to a nurse as the Best Friend" (Hempel 100) this is where I realized that the nurse has heard stories of the best friend, but meeting her for the first time. Very interesting.

There is so much more in this that I thought was striking, and there is so many craft elements that I would hope to incorporate in my writing some day.

My attempt at "Fork"

TOOTHBRUSH

How does it look

to those who are

absent of teeth.

Wiry fibers cleaning

that which is dirty,

do we really need it?

A dog's mouth is

supposedly cleaner

than ours.

The Rain by Robert Creeley-response

I found “The Rain” by Robert Creeley to be a poem that demonstrated excellent c raft and metaphor. It is not a lengthy piece, which allows the message to be strong and concise. I felt that Creeley uses rain to symbolize the outside world we have to prove ourselves to. Just as life become a daily routine of school, work, eating, socializing, and so forth, it is easy to compare it to the endless beating of rain. We cannot stop the rain just as we cannot stop our conscious from overflowing with thought some times. The poem uses a lot repetition which builds upon the theme of an incessantly rainy setting. Words fall just a drops would onto a windowsill. There are breaks placed within the poem that give certain lines a stronger meaning. For instance, in the fifth stanza he separates “the getting out” from a completely different stanza that begins with “of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi lust of intentional indifference.” “The getting out” seems to hang for a moment, allowing the reader to fully feel the weight of his longing to understand and embrace the rain. Alliteration is also used frequently in this piece, which again adds to the rhythmic quality of the rain he is referring to. Finally, Creeley writes “be wet with a decent happiness.” I feel he is saying that although life, the rain, can be redundant and persistent, one must fully indulge in it rather than be too afraid to walk into it. I enjoyed reading this piece and I found it to have great depth.

My Tender Buttons...

PILLOW

A buffer between bedsheets and hot breath. A pillow placed under the head is slept on and forgotten. The pillow by day is sheathed in black or blue or purple. The pillow in the night is sheathed rather in darkness not a color but a feeling of eyes closed head on. It is turned and turned in search of the coldest part with all parts still being pillow. Cold pillow on a face is a treasure hunted in half-sleep.

The pillow is forgotten during sleep and ignored upon waking. The pillow is filled with feathers and the feathers are most certainly forgotten. The feathers and the pillow will remember a face. What if feathers escape. Feathers on the floor means a pillow must be molting.

A pillow is sometimes thrown. A throw pillow is always useless.

Placed between the legs a pillow is an answer to loneliness. Between the legs a pillow substitutes for a sleeping lover. In its placement a replacement for a lover is still a pillow.

Dreams. Bone and skin and tissue separate a pillow and a dream. The head is bone and skin and tissue and frequently filled with dreams. The pillow is cotton and thread and zipper and forever filled with feathers.

Response to In the Cemetery Where Al Johnson Is Buried

I felt the ending of this piece where the chimp is forming the words "Baby, come hug, baby come hug" very touching. The author of this piece talks about friendship, grief, and fear. She brings up interesting animal stories that will cheer up her ill friend. Perhaps she also is a companion sharing the same illness as her friend. She remembers useless information that at the same time is very interesting. With the death of her friend she takes a class to overcome her fear of flying. The last part where she talks about an experiment where a chimp has a baby and then her baby dies and she is forming words "fluent now in the language of grief." The author herself has also become fluent.