So here are two etudes that i had not posted. I don't know how else to do it, so i took a screenshot of etude 6 and this is the image.
Also, here is etude 8. I found this etude to be near impossible. I am inexorably tied to myself, and my mind cannot comprehend the ability to become someone else. This is a completely foreign concept. This few meager lines took far too long, and are pretty piss poor, but this etudes instructions are impossible, as far as I know.
Took one of my poems, used the vocabulary of old bill faulkner.
Orig:
Final:
Perhaps you will, as so many Southern gentlemen have, take to writing to telling but at its core are wringing hands and a hard blooming in a cold field, humorless and profoundly and sternly prophetic out of all proportion to the actual years even of a child who had never been young.
The eternal 43 year old black lace framing up this not-shapes like not-country pressing towards the telling whether for sister or father or nothusband a nameless child of the South. We dissemble, the high hysterical brow, on stairs and from among the faces holding him, screaming and vomiting. The man, her husband and father of children naked and panting and bloody to the waist in a summer of wisteria driven out of whatever ogreworld of Jackson the not-yet faint shot, pounding on stairs, feet hanging with the static rage and impotence of children.
Undoes the all, presupposed evil as owing to some irrationality between two moons balanced maybe, though, happens is never but like ripples maybe through that wet umbilical cord of the Mississippi.
It is a new time, when asked “air you, air you” a brother a murdered and she a widow before a bride it is a beautiful life that women lead. It is now the father who is the natural enemy of the son told in a succession of periods of utter immobility like a broken cinema film unraveling in the not-wind, not-sound and falling by dead gestures, furious attitudes in sunset.
Here is what I have written down in my notes. Everyone please add or qualify if you remember better than I did.
Requirements for this class:
Etudes Statement of poetics (both the one from the beginning of the term and a new or revised one) Self-evaluation Portfolio Cover letter to a journal (two paragraphs; explain how you know the journal; give the titles for your poems or the first line in brackets; give a description of your work; thank the editors for their consideration)
Self-evaluation criteria: Completion of requirements Engagement with readings Attendance Participation (balance between class discussion, blog, extra readings, attending poet's readings, etc.) "Effort" (the work you put into your final portfolio in particular) Quality of portfolio as a cohesive series, an integrated whole Self-perception of poetic quality Abstract idea of how well you achieved your goals at the beginning of the term
if i come home to you sitting there one more time and see that expression on her face again--
*britney pregnant AGAIN by her long-lost cousin tonight on the SOUP! -click- who will he choose?*
don't promise again-- how can you actually demand respect? no more of your fucking excuses. be a man.
--
he picks up his shoes he straps them on he grabs his keys he shuffles out the door then his shoe trips against a rock but he catches himself, managing not to fall he takes 12 steps from the house to the driveway he gets in his girlfriend's car and closes the door they drive to church five over the speed limit he gets out of the car and closes the door he takes 53 steps to the sanctuary A inquires after his health and B asks when he's proposing and he fields these questions again politely with a graceful smile he sits down and flips open his Bible to Isaiah pages shuffle softly against fingertips children squirm babies whimper people whisper mouths sound too loud gross shut up he turns the hymnal to number 143 muffled wails of colicky infants in the cry room
fuck off, narrator! shut the fuck up!
he puts down the hymnal and quietly extricates himself ignoring the concerned look from his girlfriend he hurries outside in 28 long strides he tries to pray in the cold windy parking lot but can't hear over himself
what the fuck is wrong with me? why is this happening?
seeing a latecomer sail into the parking lot, he retreats to the far side of the building out of plain sight counts the contents of his wallet and thinks about his last trip to the liquor store.
Etude 6: it's a circle! but not Claire's circle, so I'm not a total cheat. Sorry it looks all sloppy; it was way too difficult to try to get those stupid strips of paper to lay flat long enough to stick, let alone make the circle look perfectly neat. I tried, though.
Etude 7: This was the trauma etude. I decided to use it to mess with my vellum stuff, so that if you read through the pages it tells one story but if you read the pages in succession it reads differently. I posted it so you can read the pages consecutively and then the whole thing at once. It felt a bit contrived in places, but overall I like it and it was good exercise. The I is totally indistinct in this piece, which was very different for me.
Also not about someone in the class, which I think is pretty obvious when you read it.
~~
Oh just don’t I can’t even listen to you can’t hear you trying to restrict me I’m big, practically old now I could feed the world or crush it even without a training bra I am a tigress and my claws are coming in which by the way is about the best metaphor ever so really what you need to know is that I’ll climb any fence you set up
