Creative Writing: Week 2

Bruce Beasley - Self Portrait in Ink

Other Links: A Reading Podcast

I chose this poem from the reading because I liked the imagery and comparison. In The Self-Portrait in Ink, Beasley talks first about an octopus who blasts its ink into the water. The ink, naturally, a defensive thing for the octopus vanishes anything around it. The dark deep image of the ocean spotted with a cloud of bluish-black color. He then talks about the ink smudged on his fingertip. As a left handed writer, I can visualize the ink on the finger. As I write ink blots its image, sometimes even mimicking the words and letters I write onto the side of my hand as it glides across the words I just wrote. If you think about it, an octopus spitted ink into the clear water is the same an ink smudges from a pen on a blank piece of paper.

Upon reading more his poetry I find a lot of it dark yet true. He has the ability to see through this black cloud for what it is and relating to the human world. I enjoyed how he related the ink from the octopus and the pen. It is almost as if he is talking about life. Not your typical life, but that lost place in your mind when you become entrapped into the spirit of ones true self. He is able to humanize and directly relate things we don't think of, to something we can see in our mind.