Creative Writing Week 4

This week I am choosing to write a little on Natasha Trethewey's poem Myth.

In the poem, I thought about some dreams I have. They are so real to the point you wake up and still believe them to be true in your disillusioned state. My grandmother passed away about five years ago and in my dreams we talk, eat and share times and when I wake up those first few moments-- she is still alive. As my unconscious/conscious being starts to come to, the reality at the moment fades as I sunk into -- that was a dream she's dead. Just as a mother who has lost a child runs into their bedroom only to find they were not there and her mind played a nasty trick on her. Upon reading some of her other published works I find she does good at putting narrative writing from stories quite possibly being recollections from older family members in a reminiscent state. I know there are times I will be having coffee with my grandfather and he talks about growing up on the farm and gets so entranced in the moment he begins to salivate; I go home and write a narrative piece which makes those stories come all that much real for the reader to relive through someone else's words.

Links: Other Poems Interview & Reading New Poem Monument

Creative Writing Week 3

As you saw from my previous posting about a dream I had after the class discussion on Lisa Olstein's Poem, entitled Radio Crackling, Radio Gone, it was to some sort of extreme. I find that Olstein's ability to write in the non-tense works to her advantage. Virtually any reader can relate to the poem with something, mostly stemming from a disaster -- or cause and effect moment. Could she have been recollecting from personal experience or perhaps something she say on the news? Ms. Olstein seems to use hypnosis and recollection practices when writing poetry, something similar to Aldous Huxley who wrote Brave New World. This would be a creative approach to a descriptive piece of prose. Not much was available online, other than her myspace account.

Links: MySpace

Dream

There was terror
Mass delusions and countless bodies.

He ripped through europe in half.
One corner to the next in a matter of time.

Florida is gone.
Snapped off by him.
Texas sea coast split in two.

Ripping the US in half.

Watched on the news with Dan Rather
mockering how it could not be.
He said it couldn't happen.
Yet I watched on the screen as it did.

Now we seek shelter because our turn is next.

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.