Stephen Rodefer Reading

I’ve been reading some work by the poet Stephen Rodefer lately. There are quite a few books of his to choose from at the library, as he’s been writing and publishing for some time. (I believe his first book was published around 1965, but don’t quote me on that one.) At any rate, I had the opportunity to go over to the university and hear him read earlier this week. I have to be honest with you here, and I hate to come across as negative and be judged for doing so, but I’m still not sure what to make of this guy. He is obviously a very smart man, as some of the poems he read he’d translated from French and I picked up on the inclusion of a little German in a few of the poems he read also. Plus, he writes often with a tone of sarcasm, which I find extremely difficult to do effectively. But he is quite eccentric and I had some trouble following a few of his poems, as they jumped from between what seemed to me were random topics. (In the introduction, it was said that Rodefer was thrown out of Cambridge, if that gives you any idea of his character.) On the surface, and this is very, very simplified, but Rodefer sort of just came off as an old man who liked to drink and write about sex. Obviously there’s more to him than this, but I couldn’t help but look at him as such at points in the reading. However, I must admit that the reading did give some additional clarity to Rodefer’s work and I think I enjoyed and understood his poems more at his reading than I did in my own individual reading of them.

Rodefer’s reading was divided into two sections; first he read some of his past work and then after a short break he read some of his more recent work and projected it onto the screen. A few of the poems that he read early on I really enjoyed. They seemed to have a theme of giving up on love or regret that related to love—and even in another poem, to school. These poems seemed to have more of a conventional flow to them I felt than his newer work. It did help that when Rodefer read his newer work it was projected onto a screen so that I could follow along. In this portion of the reading, I felt that he approached the work with varying tones and highlighted a change in the feel of the poem with his voice. This really interested me and I am curious as to why I noticed it more in the second half of the reading than the first.

One thing that I liked about this reading was that I came away from it with two big, deep ideas to think about. First, in the introduction the question was raised, What are we looking for in a poet these days? I’m not really sure I have an answer to this question, as poetry seems to do too many things to whittle it down to having one characteristic or purpose. Secondly, in addition to reading poetry, Rodefer shared some of his artwork, which was primarily paintings of phrases. One included a quote that he wrote down and believes he has just started to figure out: There’s always a place for a woman who knows how to fall off a pony in New York. Rodefer proposed that this meant that there is always a place for a woman that knows how to leave a man in New York, which taps into feminism and is an idea I am sort of fond of. I am curious though as to what other ways there are to interpret this.

keep your muse slender

Picked up Harryette Mullen’s Recyclopedia the other day, which includes her books S*PeRM**K*T, Trimmings, and Muse & Drudge. In S*PeRM**K*T, Mullen uses common language—advertising jargon, specifically—to drive home her theme of, as Mullen herself said in an interview with Daniel Kane, “The direction of what's called globalization. Are we members of a global village, or just consumers or investors in a virtual global market?” She uses jingles recognizable to all American consumers, but adds unexpected endings, twisting them and coaxing out new meanings. The following are several examples from her untitled prose poems in S*PeRM**K*T: “Don’t wait to be told… you explode”; “Never let them see you… eat”; “Raise your hand if you’re sure… you’re not.”
In doing so, Mullen plays with the reader’s expectations. American society has become so conditioned that the public doesn’t question advertising slogans; they simply accept them and hum along. By twisting these phrases, Mullen points out the folly of consumerism, capitalism, and the good old American drive to succeed.
Each prose poem is assigned a different product/image; reading the poem has the sense of strolling through the supermarket. Petroleum, bug spray, breakfast cereal, pork products, baby food, buttermilk, soup cans, frozen food, and meat: all of these images work with the idea of consumerism and the global market. The title, whose asterisks can be easily filled in to spell “supermarket,” works with this idea as well, but if the poem is a jibe at the American dream, the existing title of “sperm kit” works to highlight the plastic, endless permutations of the Aryan ideal in American culture. Mullen’s brilliance lies in the fact that both of these themes work simultaneously, which makes S*PeRM**K*T so successful.
A harsh examination of gender roles appear repeatedly in this work; in one poem, Mullen says, “But the gleam of a sigh at a spotless rinsed dish. Spots herself in its service, buffed and rebuffed… The silver dropped at dinner announces the arrival of a woman at a fork. She beams at a waxing moon.” The wordplay in this poem is exquisite: with the double meaning of “rebuffed,” as in women’s traditional, subservient place in society, as well as the polish theme; the image of a piece of silverware being dropped at dinner because of a woman at a fork—which the reader will immediately free associate with “woman at work;” a woman beaming at a “waxing moon,” both a term for a phase of the moon and a hint that the woman’s place hasn’t changed, for she is still waxing and polishing in the household.
The last poem in the section seems to reiterate the emptiness of it all: “Flies in buttermilk. What a fellowship… Homo means the same… Our cows are well adjusted. The lost family album keeps saying cheese.” After pages of detailing each idiosyncracy
of the American dream—pointing out the folly that others blindly accept—Mullen ends the book with the last line of her last poem, “Speed readers skim the white space of this galaxy—” seeming jab at the readers of her book, who are just as guilty as everyone else of falling into the trap of the American dream, consumerism, and mindless allegiance to ideas presented to the American people by society. Through using the ingenious backdrop of a supermarket, Mullen paints a bleak, tongue-in-cheek portrait of American culture; with images of typical supermarket products, she critiques society’s values, body image, gender roles, family life, consumerism, and the American dream.

Harryette Mullen’s excerpt from “Trimmings” works so well, in the way that some of Stein’s language works; it makes sense intuitively, though not necessarily logically. When I read these poems, I got the sense that she was describing a prostitute. Lines like, “Opens up a little leg, some slender, high exposure… Buy another peek experience, price is slashed” and “A tomato isn’t hard. It splits in heat, easy,” lend to this idea. One of the best lines I’ve ever read to describe a woman’s place, according to society, is in the second to last stanza. “Her paper parasol and open fan become her multiplication of a rib which is connected and might start a fire for cooking.” The imagery—paper parasol, fan, cooking—all enforce the docile, domestic role of a woman (traditionally), while the open fan imagery transforms into the “multiplication of a rib,” hinting at the Creation story, where woman is made from Adam’s rib, and therefore, as a part (which is connected), is inferior and forced to serve him, cheerfully, eternally (start a fire for cooking.)
While it does seem that Mullen was talking about a prostitute in this poem, she could also be referring to the role for women in society as a whole. I can’t remember who said this—it was a late 19th century female writer, I think—who said that marriage was just a form of prostitution, because women married for financial benefits (to be taken care of) for sex, making it nothing more than glorified prostitution. The text may or may not support this, but the fifth stanza includes very virginal imagery; “Or strayed mermaid, tail split, bleeds into the sea. With brand new feet walks unsteady on land, each step an ache.”
Muse & Drudge is the only book not written in prose poems. Instead, Mullen uses free verse, but wordplays in her signature style, interjecting dialect choices into pop culture references like “Miz Mary takes a mack truck in/ trade for her slick black cadillac” and twists idioms: “you have the girl you paid for/ now lie on her.”

I’m a fan.

Link for Mullen interview: http://www.writenet.org//poetschat/poetschat_h_mullen.html

Creative Non-Fiction, Eye Opening!

As far as what I thought about this current issue of Our Roots are Deep with Passion, I just think it is absolutely great. One of the girls that I work with at the library gave me a link on this creative non-fiction journal that she suggested would help me with this writers block I have been having. I am not sure what exactly did it for me that got me out of this writing depression, but I have this magazine to thank! I wonder what gets others out of this rut, is it just a particular story, or a person that makes a lasting impression, I would be curious to know what others do to deal with this blockage?
I really loved the first story; it made me think of what life would really be like without such a dependency on water. What first caught my attention was the title of the first story, ’Mbriago. Come to find out as I read the short story it means drunk, mainly referring to the narrator’s grandfather. The story goes on to talk about the grandfather and how he was subjected to only drinking wine, mostly because water was so costly and wine was cheap, and abundant. He only did what he thought was normal, and that led the author to think that was normal. In the end the narrator tells a neighbor that the smell that her grandfather left in her mind was that of wine, of course.
This story was so lively and created some emotion for me. Ironically the narrator/author said that she also had a drinking obsession as her grandfather. I too had a grandfather whose life was consumed with a bottle in hand. In high school I struggled to be in the “it” crowd, always trying to impress. Drinking came to be an outlet for me; whenever I went to one of the cool parties on the weekend I would be the one who had too much to drink. I am sure that many of my classmates thought of that alcohol smell when they saw me staggering into the party. I wonder if those kids still talk about those parties and my stupidity?

Poems into Ploughshares

I have another good read to share, Ploughshares. I seem to be devouring literary magazine lately, but there are so many out there! I was having car trouble this morning (ugh) so I had to catch a ride to work with my brother. This also meant that I was stuck at work an extra couple of hours, but what better place to kill time than the library! I picked Ploughshares (winter 2006-07 issue) off the periodicals display because it looked nice and thick, a good time filler. It wasn’t as fancy or flashy as some other the others I’ve read, but was stuffed full of good poetry and fiction!

It was a nicely diverse collection, nothing too out there, but a nice variety, and nearly 200 pages of material. The majority of the magazine was poetry, but there were also five or six pieces of fiction, one of which, “Safekeeping” by Janis Hallowell (if I recall it correctly) was especially captivating. It’s about a very hefty woman who is hired as a housekeeper and assistant for a famous writer, who also likes to keep things between folds of her skin (her breasts and belly fat). The character, Irene, is certainly very quirky but also quite endearing. Two of the poems I liked best were a piece by Jeffery Harrison called “Danger: Tulips” and one by Peggy Boyers, “Bitch Diary.” The latter was from the perspective of a truffle hunting dog (I think), which was amusing and the choice of the language was also good, I thought. “Danger: Tulips” caught me with its odd title, but the description of this strange abandoned-mental-hospital-and-church-in-a-meadow was very captivating and really clear. I really liked it’s juxtaposition of serene nature and this dangerous asbestos-riddled and abandoned place.

I don’t know if this lends a very good picture of the magazine, but really it’s just a solid collection of poetry and fiction, with a little something for everyone (more or less). I’ll definitely check out future issues, because I really like the variety and general accessibility of the poetry and fiction as well. Oh, what wonderful things I discover while entertaining myself!

internalizing paint splatters and poems-that-fuck

I managed to get my hands on the October 5, 2006 copy of Another Chicago Magazine. The cover’s black typewriter splattered with pink paint and with hearts on some of the keys kind of gave me the image of a young punk. A repeated little graphic inside was that of a book with “ACM” written on it on fire, and the page numbers were inside little ink splatters. Author names were in a cute cursive font. The type was spaced out nicely. My compliments to the designer - while literary magazines have to be about the words of course, too many other literary magazines I’ve looked at have small type inside and a boring cover. The one problem I had was that there were occasionally typos like missing tabs at beginnings of new paragraphs and missing apostrophes – the first time I saw it I thought it was maybe a weird stylistic thing, but then I saw the same problems in other stories erratically.

The particular issue I picked up has poems, translations of foreign poems, stories, nonfiction, one excerpt from a longer work, short shorts, one interview, and a small reviews section at the end. Each set of poems in translation was preceded by a translator’s note explaining that individual translator’s methodology, which I thought was really cool. I’m not too up on any foreign language myself, but from what I’ve heard each individual translator puts a different spin on things, especially in poetry, where transferring things like alliteration and hard/soft sounds from language to language can be difficult. In theory, two translators could start with the same source material and end with two different poems in English. So it was nice to hear what was going through the translators’ heads. Also, in most cases the magazine printed the original language versions of the poems too.

Particular pieces in the issue that grabbed me included “Soy extranjera/I am the Foreign One,” by Graciela Reyes, its vision of the interconnected and disconnected nature of all humans in simple, but striking images of the author’s experience with travel. The lone interview with fiction writer and Bosnia refugee Alexander Hemon was grabbing for his unconventional views on writing – he claims that creative writing programs often tend to discourage things he calls “mistakes,” breaking-the-mold writing that may end up being worthless but also may end up being something worth saving. He said he didn’t write every day either – only when he felt like he had something to say. I’ve been reading a lot of advice from writers lately and most seem to be professors not willing to discuss negatives of creative writing programs and also encourage writing every day. A dissenting opinion was kind of refreshing.

The poem “Fuck You” by Nin Andrews stood out for its comparison between humans and poems; the narrator, addressing the audience, calls both “small in size but not meaning.” At the end, the narrator declares that no matter if you liked this poem or not, it is inside you, fucking you. Funny image out of the way, I suppose this pointing narrator wants us to know that we internalize some of everything we read, whether we like it or not, whether it’s the news or a NASCAR romance novel (yeah, I heard about that), or the new fad novel. I thought this issue of Another Chicago Magazine was a pretty good thing to internalize on a cloudy afternoon.

Doors, Memory, and Writing...

After a long night of reading, specifically Roddy Doyle’s The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, I thought I would make a post. It was excellent! I have to say I was not expecting it to be the way it was. Most of my expectations came from reading Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha (a very very long time ago), which, I remember to be funny and sad at the same time. This book however was gloomier than anything else. I decided to go back to Doyle after reading his interview in Tin House and can honestly say I want to read the sequel to this book, and anything else out there by him.

The Woman Who Walked Into Doors is about Paula Spencer, a mother of four, a widow, and an alcoholic. The first half of the book is deceiving. Paula is just telling you about her life, about how she use to write in elementary school, and her marriage, her children and her work. Then you get into the second half of the book, where you learn her husband Charlo had a tendency to beat her. I wasn’t surprised. There are hints throughout the novel, but the way she describes the beatings is heart wrenching. The fact that she feels hopeless and no one, not even the doctors ask if he is hitting her is worse.

There are a lot of reasons why I like this book, and why I am so impressed with it. As a writer I was impressed that he so accurately took on a female persona. She did not feel like a false character, and the story seemed honest. So honest it felt less like fiction and more like a non-fictional account, like Paula wrote this herself. The writing felt like it all happened at once. There are breaks in time that are not always linear. This can be confusing but for some reason with this book they felt natural. I guess what I am trying to say, very inarticulately is that this felt like stream of consciousness writing.

The end of the novel becomes incredibly heavy. Paula describes the 80’s as a blur or one beating after another. You might ask, why are you impressed with this? Most stories about women and domestic violence seem to end in a Lifetime movie script. Doyle stays away from this by not making it about domestic abuse. The story is about Paula’s abuse. It is about the fact that she blamed herself for it. It is about the way she remembers her life.

The novel left me thinking about memory and how we write about memory, fictional or non-fictional memories. Paula admits that things are blurry, and speaks a lot about whether or not her memories are honest or if they have been changed by time. The fact that Paula has this conversation with the reader makes it feel more comfortable with her. I felt a level of trust with Paula that I may not have had without that conversation. In fact, when I started reading I questioned her actions because of her alcoholism and that her sisters remembered events in their lives differently.

On a different note…the title, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors ended up being extremely important throughout the novel. You do not know what its importance is until the end of the novel, but looking back the imagery of doors was everywhere. When Paula meets Charlo’s mother there is a conversation about the door in his house. It is heavy and you have to lift it to close it. The beginning of the novel you find out that Paula is scared to answer the door, because she doesn’t know what is on the other side. She hates the doorbell and any association with it. The fact that she blames her beatings on running into a door or falling down the stairs, and then is constantly afraid that her husband will walk back through the door to kill her create an interesting conversation about what doors represent. I’m not sure I’ve figured it all out yet, but I know it will be on my mind. Well Captain is scratching at the door, time for a walk. I guess my big question of this post, and to my readers is how can anyone write with such intention? Do we outline everything to make these things appear or do they come naturally?

What Should Fiction Do?

While I’ve mostly been spying on poetry blogs lately, I stumbled across an interesting blog about fiction that is put out by the Chiasmus Press. (http://chiasmuspress.wordpress.com/). It’s called Other Mouths and there is a very interesting discussion going on right now among several of the bloggers/authors who contribute to the website. The discussion is very recent (which I appreciate) and has been raging all week. The question was posed, “What should fiction do?”

Hoping to write something substantial myself someday, I recognized this blog topic as beneficial for any aspiring writer. Before telling you what I think fiction should do (in my own so humble opinion), I’ll let you know what some other, more accomplished writers, thought. Lance Olson believes fiction should “disrupt assumptions behind narratives” and “challenge the dominant culture.” While I agree that doing this is important, I do not agree that all fiction should do this. It seems too specific of a goal and I feel that fiction and writing in general is bigger than that. However, I do believe that fiction needs to do something new. Something that will make readers notice it. Whether or not this newness has to challenge the dominant culture is debatable. Trevor Dodge seems to agree with me when he writes, “writing should throw a psychotic fit in front of you because you haven’t been paying enough attention to it lately.” I found Trevor’s post to be the funniest and wittiest of the group and I certainly agree with his opinion of what fiction should do the most. In a world with so many other distractions, fiction needs to have more ingenuity, originality, and creativity than it ever did in the past.

The uncertainty and varying opinion of what fiction should actually do among fiction writers themselves becomes apparent as I scroll down the posts. One author even writes, “I don’t feel entirely certain in regards to what ‘writing’ even is just
now.” It’s a relief to know that other, more adept writers, don’t know what fiction should do, because I certainly don’t have a concrete answer. When we as readers step into the world of a fictional piece, it does something different to each of us. Putting a reader into that world is what I believe fiction should do, but how it puts us there will seemingly always be debatable. To come to a consensus over what fiction should do would seem to be detrimental to the creative aspect of writing in the first place. Author’s varying view of this concept is what gives their work its individuality.

Check out the blog. I promise it will get some wheels turning.

the "green apple", a little modern food for thought

I went to see Marjorie Welish give a lecture yesterday. She’s a poet, artist, and art critic—all of which shinned through in the lecture. Also, it might be interesting to note that she was previously a professor at Brown, teaching currently at the Pratt Institute, and is on leave as a Fulbright Scholar in Frankfurt. Needless to say, she is a very intelligent and accomplished woman…and honestly was a little much for me to grasp. I mean, did anyone in that room really understand everything she was saying? I heard the words and followed the sentences, I suppose it was just difficult to put all the sentences together into a thought I could hold onto. Ms. Welish spoke much like a modern artist, by which I mean that she spoke in the way a modern painting looks. You have to have certain eyes to know how to see it because it is so abstracted and often disjointed in feeling. Perhaps I just don’t have the ears to hear what she’s saying. Anyways, let me discuss a little of what I ascertained.
Her lecture was basically a sort of history of modern art, explaining the sequence of a handful of important artists. She listed a handful of important artists—most notably to me, the New York School, who marked the American expression of modernism, according to Ms. Welish. By way of explaining snippets of progression through modern art, she discussed one important concept. This concept lends itself to issues of current discussion in modern and postmodern circles. What is the significance of a word in terms of its true representation of reality? What makes a word represent the same thing to multiple people? At what point does the word need to change to represent another reality? And according to whom?
These are interesting questions, and remind me a little of my first blog post here where I was asking about the line between poetry and visual art. What happens in that grey area? Where is the line between these two terms, and who sets it? Marjorie used a few examples of her own to get us thinking about this same issue. For instance, the color red. What shade of red is the most fundamental red and what are other versions of it? When you add yellow, at what point is the color no longer red and becomes orange? She explains that different people have different eyes for red, perhaps due to cultural influence—such as “Chinese red” or “Vermillion red,” all shades of red traditionally associated with usage in different places.
To me, this sounds like a basic argument for relativism in terms of our linguistic usage. No one person can call something a certain word and say that is the only word that works to represent that thing. To illuminate this point, at the end of the lecture, she holds up a green apple and asks us what we say this is. Some would say, “a piece of fruit”, some would say “an object exhibiting the concept of ‘round’”, and others would say “not red”.
Though I don’t think this grand finale was all that original, I suppose it is a fertile discussion to touch on anyway. What elements are necessary to name something one word or another. For instance, does a “city” begin when there are a certain number of people, as Marjorie postulates? Or, does it begin when certain other essential forms are exhibited? While this is a rich subject to roll around in our minds and play on, I am not seeing how this is more than a typical post-modern debate of relativism—in a linguistic sense. I think it makes a point about the fluidity and created sense of language—that it cannot hold perfectly because it is created by man. A green apple is still exactly what it is—and what it is not—whether or not we find the words to describe it. It is the representation that can be so relative. Representation can take on unending forms, as I could describe the green apple with a million words, or paint it in a million ways, etcetera. Our language is just a representation and a grasping, not the reality behind it which is still.

I guess that Marjorie’s lecture, despite not understanding all of it, really did get me thinking!

'Weaving' a new understanding

So I heard about this play going on at the University nearby and since I had nothing better to do, decided to check it out. I've always liked plays and this was an original by Dianne Yeahquo Reyner titled 'Weaving the Rain'. I don't know much about Native American culture, but apparently they have their own theatre company in Kansas.

Anyway, the play deals with many issues relevant to all people in society. Some issues touched on were assimilation, family dynamics, and relations between Native Americans and non-Native Americans. The focus was on family, dealing with a family member in the hospital, and not knowing what will happen. It forced the characters to examine their lives and how they came to be where they are. This could happen to anyone from any background, but I found it interesting to view the issues the Native American community faces, as I've never really thought about them.

This was a piece of historical fiction. As I was watching, I tried to pick out what aspects were historically accurate from those that were made up. Since Reyner is a Native American, I figure she probably has a good understanding of the struggles the community faces on a daily basis.

Reyner set up the play well. I really liked the dialogue. Though the subject matter was sad, the humor of the dialogue off-set the seriousness of the situation. Each character also had a distinct identity, representing a different aspect of the culture. The mom represented the generation that was sent to boarding school. One of the sons was an alcoholic attempting to get clean. The other son stayed home to take care of his aging parents. The daughter represented the group that assimilated, breaking away from the culture to attend college and find a better job. It was interesting to see how each of their choices affected the family, and the way they viewed one another. Plus, some Native American songs were incorporated. I thought it was a nice touch, and the program even explained the meaning of each one, showing how it fit with the play.

Sapphire

With the weather as bad as it’s been lately (I suppose I should have expected snow, ice and cold in Midwestern winters), I’ve had a lot of free time to explore writing communities. The library has been closing early and even when it is open, it isn’t very busy. It seems that most people just aren’t willing to brave the outdoors for a few new books. I’ve spent a lot of time on the blogs that Ron Silliman has links to on his own blog. I really admire Silliman and so feel that work that somehow crosses paths with his is definitely worth checking out. A few of the blogs didn’t catch my interest as I hoped they would, but I did find a few that I think I’m going to begin visiting on a more regular basis. One in particular is a blog titled Naked Superstar Poetry by someone who calls herself Mrs. Universe. (The link on Silliman’s blog was called Sapphire, which is what initially attracted me to the blog. Many other links used the full names of individuals and “Sapphire” really stood out to me as something creative, different and worth exploring.)

Before focusing on the actual postings, I looked into the About Me section of the blog. Right away, I really felt like I could connect with Mrs. Universe, primarily because she is twenty-five years old. She does have a husband, children, and an Internet Marketing career, which aren’t exactly things I can brag about, but I still had a feeling of understanding this blogger; perhaps because I expected so many of the links on Silliman’s blog to be academic and serious and hard to relate to. This is getting difficult to clearly describe. I’m just going to skip ahead to a fact that really caught my attention: Mrs. Universe claims to have been nominated for the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest priced auction ever run on Ebay. This really intrigued me; I’m curious as to what the item auctioned was!

Most of the blog consists of poetry written by Mrs. Universe, which is written with a very simplistic style and tone. She writes about everyday events, such as waking up with a child in the middle of the night and missing sleep. However this lack of sleep and her love for her husband (another topic of the poems) seem to be laced with a lot of emotion and are much more than just routine happenings. Her focus on family and emotions related to them makes the poetry very relatable.

In addition to poetry, Mrs. Universe includes some humor and fun that is separated, to a certain degree, from her personal life and writings. For instance, she has also posted in response to an article on Maxim.com titled, Everything You Know…Is Wrong. She lists common wives tales the article included and her attempt to understand which is true and which is false, such as “I was sure cell phones gave you brain issues…Or was that hair dye?” This really breaks up the poetry and keeps the blog from becoming just another poetry blog with personal writing to sludge through.

I was disappointed to find that Naked Superstar Poetry has not been updated since mid-January. While it seems obvious to me that Mrs. Universe has a lot going on in her life (with children, pregnancy and work) I’m still hoping for more regular updates in the future.

I'm going to go cut myself so I know I still feel now...

I was messing around on the internet last night reading some blogs (I know, what else is new), and came across one particular blog that I couldn’t quite figure out. By this I mean that I couldn’t tell if the person was trying to be serious or if it was all one big joke. The blog is called Alcoholic Poet (http://alcoholicpoet.blogspot.com/index.html). It is basically a bunch of over the top, sad, pathetic, I want to go cut myself so I know that I still feel type of poems. The whole thing is so over the top that I originally thought that there was absolutely no way that this could be serious. I actually began to laugh out loud a couple times. I mean, how could you not laugh at a poem called “Cut the Baby in Half”? I’m not saying that cutting babies in half is funny but the ridiculousness of doom and gloom nature of it all was down right laughable.

Then I began to feel kind of bad. What if this was a serious blog and this person meant these poems to be taken seriously? I know there are people out there who are into this kind of stuff. I guess it just kind of surprised me when I came across it, you know? If it was real I feel like a terrible person for having laughed at it. But then again, maybe it isn’t real and this is exactly the type of reaction that the blogger is trying to get.

I really just don’t know what to think. It’s very possible that this person is totally serious about the work that is posted but then again it’s also just as possible that they are trying to trick us all. This leads me to an even bigger question: how much of what I come across online is real and how much is just a big hoax? I don’t know if I can ever really know for sure. It is kind of fun to think about though, however confusing it may be at times. Just some food for thought.

Diigo and TagCrowd and Hypertext, Oh My!

So I was poking around the internet again this morning and I came across another interesting blog, WRT: Writer Response Theory, “a blog and podcast dedicated to discussing text art forms.” (http://writerresponsetheory.org). Including some posts I found about hypertext literature and some crazy stuff called “Literatronica” and “Diigo Fiction.” I was intrigued. I’ve sort of heard of hypertext writing but I don’t really know much about it, generally preferring something I can literally snuggle up with, but hey, I guess I’m sort of self-educating myself about internet literary happenings etc and I should give it a look.

Although I’ll admit I’m a bit intimidated by some of this high-tech literature/ literary techniques, it’s also really exciting stuff. One of the first things I saw when I happened upon the site was this quote: “Let us write stories in the margins of the Web: The web is becoming ours to write with.” This sort of feeling/idea makes me really excited to be a writer at this time in history, with this whole new writing world opening up and all these new options that never existed, like, a mere decade ago. I don’t know if this is really the kind of stuff I want to pursue in my own writing, but, like I said, it’s really cool.

In addition to discussing internet lit and text art, this site offers some really neat links, like TagCrowd.com. The internet can do so many awesome things! One of the other things discussed on the blog was the potential of the internet as a sharing tool, and things like “Social bookmarking.” You have to check out this site and all the links! The most recent post (9 February) talks a lot about marginalia/writing from the margins, and using the internet to do some in the contemporary era. I went to the Diigo site (http://diigo.com/) and found it pretty cool too.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that it’s really awesome how writers are using the internet to update/reinvent the craft. Sites like Diigo almost make the internet into a giant notebook, even providing virtual “Sticky notes.” Writers are no longer limited by the communities they live in for support/feedback/etc, and lucky for me because I live in the middle-of-nowhere Ohio. I’m getting really excited about this stuff the more I think about it, but alas, back to work!

Trying to make feeling stupid into a good feeling...

Captain woke me up at 6 a.m. wanting to play. I cannot say work was easy after such an early wake up call. While I was half asleep at the library I picked up the “Tin House Summer Reading” magazine. I thought about taking it back home with me for the twenty-four hour loan period but decided against it. The possibility of me inadvertently stealing it was too risky, not to mention Captain’s love of eating softer books.

What made me read this magazine was an interview with Roddy Doyle. I read one of his books, Paddy Clark, Ha, ha, ha, about three or four years ago. I didn’t know a lot about him as an author before this interview, but now I feel the need to go pick up another one of his books and explore his writing again. He sounded so ferocious and opinionated. One of my many favorite quotes from the interview: “When I’m writing and researching, trying to recreate a place that’s gone or a place that won’t be familiar to most readers, I try to find images that are very visual and promise meaning beyond the visual.” (Page 69) This topic came up when the interviewer, Tom Grimes, began to discuss 9/11. At first I was appalled, thinking, haven’t we heard enough of this, when will this question end! But he took it into a new direction about the horror I think we all felt and re-feel when we look at pictures of the twin towers. The horror that is caused by the blue-sky effect, the visual of such a perfect day becoming what it became. Doyle’s discussion on visual seems so perfect after Grimes’ discussion, and brought everything back to writing. I was amazed he could take a discussion of sky color on a tragic day and make that about writing.

The other exciting discussion in the interview, for me at least, was when they brought up Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize Speech. I have to admit when I know who is being talked about in any of these magazines I get excited and feel slightly nerdy in a good, warm feeling way. Their discussion of his “denunciation” of the United States lead Doyle to say he agreed and disagreed, but where he agreed is important. He thinks that part of writing is “to be stupid—and tell the truth. It’s how we tell the truth, how we tell the story—that’s where the writing, the hard work, comes in.”(Page 67) For some reason this quote re-assured me on my own writing journey. I think as a writer, and one who considers herself to still feel somewhat young, I try and stay away from being stupid, but I feel stupid all the time. It might be something I could try and embrace more often. It also made me feel stupid for taking myself too seriously sometimes. I’m not sure if that is confusing or just trite. This discussion reminded me of Colbert's Truthiness and how important that idea has become to us as a culture. We seem to all be searching for Truth and meaning, and I think what Doyle is trying to say is that we need to be stupid to tell the truth and do it in an honest way.

I feel like I need to wrap up my thoughts. I have to say I really enjoyed reading this magazine, not just for the interview with Roddy Doyle, but the first story, “Memory” by Stephan King was powerfully mesmerizing and I have to say felt more horrifically human than his twins (from The Shinning). The ending was so horrific and real to me I cannot stop thinking about it. Especially since Captain wants to watch the dog show tomorrow night (he would watch it tonight but brother is here watching the history channel…we can tomorrow night when brother leaves the house with unusual date…) The story really got me thinking about the line between something that is scary and something that is horrific. I now feel the names have been misused, especially with movies. I think that to be a horror genre book or film there has to be something very human about the scariness. That it has to be something you can imagine happening to you. I will assume we have all seen The Hills Have Eyes, but that was horrific because of the rape scene. Everything else was just scary. King’s story was horrific because the accident was real, powerful, and the pain that happened to his narrator seemed like it could happen to any of us.

I also loved the piece “Eating Fish Alone” by Lydia Davis. It made me want to go home and make fish or watch Food Network. Of course I didn’t go anywhere near the kitchen, but it made me want to. The piece made me want to write lists as well. I feel it better to not explain this, if you haven’t read this piece, read it and make a list.

I’m not sure how to end today, how about I just say adieu until tomorrow.

Absinthe in the Morning???

Some people warm up with a hot cup of cocoa, but on those real chilling days, I settle down with a healthy serving of Absinthe to get my juices flowing. Absinthe, an American literary periodical that strictly features “new European” writers, attracts my attention at the library this morning. And while I’m not used to starting off my day with Absinthe, I think I can make an exception today.
Flipping through the mag, I find a story entitled, Dazzled by Bananas, by Thomas Rosenlocher (German), and the title understandably catches my eye. The story is set in Socialist West Berlin during the 1980’s and is told from the perspective of a young child. The child’s desire for a commodity as simple as bananas exemplifies the tension between scarcity and abundance in West and East Berlin. When the Wall finally falls, the child loses his insatiable appetite for bananas because he can suddenly get them whenever he wants. Was it the same once the West Berliner’s got used to freedom? Since all of the stories are translated I wonder how much is lost in translation, but I think this story still delivers a powerful message…and it makes me want to get a banana.
Absinthe features more fiction than poetry, but one poem I read seems to stand out above the rest. It is written by Ramon Gomez de la Serna (Spain) who is said to be the inventor of gregueria (brief and often humorous poetic statements). For instance, in this untitled, five-line poem he writes, “Trees know only that they exist thanks to their shade” and “The moon is the only traveler without a passport.” The simplicity of these statements is both hilarious and beautiful. I’m tempted to try to imitate it in my own writing… “Julia knows only that she exists because she could really go for that banana right now.” That might need some work. Also, I wonder why Absinthe claims to feature New European Writing when Ramon Gomez de la Serna died in 1963. I guess new is a relative term, especially when it comes to Europe. Regardless, the writing is amazing.
Britain, Norway, Madrid, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Turkey are just some of the countries the featured authors are from. Such an eclectic selection of stories and experiences makes Absinthe a great way to explore the scope of the world’s creative writing community. (And it’s cheaper than a plane ticket to Europe!) I get so caught up in trying to figure out and fit into a local writing community that I forget about all the other ones out there. Throughout the course of browsing through this periodical, I began to distinguish a different style in European writing than our own, both in subject matter and in prose. Is this an imagined difference? Is it brought about due to translation? Or is it actually there? It also makes me wonder what the rest of the world thinks of American writing…This Absinthe is really starting to get to my head. Until next time.

Here Comes Everybody

Sunday’s a slow day at the library, especially in freezing mid-winter temperatures, so I’m cozied up at the circulation desk, surfing the web and hoping my boss doesn’t catch me. I thought that I could get some ideas for my blog by reading other literary blogs. I started at Ron Silliman’s blog, which is completely daunting to a novice blogger like myself.

I’ve been playing around on “Here Comes Everybody,” a blog that asks the same ten questions to different contemporary poets. I’ve read some of the archives, and poets such as kari edwards, Jonathan Skinner, Rebecca Wolff (current editor of Fence), Dana Ward, Linh Dinh, Kristin Prevallet, to name a few of the ones I recognize, have been interviewed.

1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why?

Kristin Prevallet described finding “a slim volume of Dorothy Parker’s Selected Poems, heavily marked up by her mother with exclamation points and smiley faces.” I like the idea of poetry being hidden in the drawer, like a flask, sneaking sips when no one’s looking. Why can’t we have Poets Anonymous? Oh wait, we do: blogs.

As for me, I loved Shel Silverstein as a kid and thought that Frost’s “Birches” was so sadly beautiful,-- esp. the lines, “here your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs/
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping/ From a twig's having lashed across it open.”
But I think the first poem that really impacted me was e.e. cummings’ “maggie and millie and molly and may:”

maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

millie befriended a stranded star
who's rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.”
“a smooth round stone/ as small as a world and as large as alone.” In less than two lines, cummings captures loneliness, apprehension, wonder, identity—this poem definitely made me want to know more about poetry.

2. What is something/someone non-"literary" you read which may
surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them?

kari edwards in Dec. 2006 said, “what is not literary? where is that demarcation, maybe the telephone book? the back of a can of beans? Is not most of what is written literary? and is it not our definition that is limited?”

I tend to agree, but for the sake of answering this question: in my pathetic attempt to become culturally relevant and hip, I’ve been reading things like DIW and Nylon. Sometimes the sheer volume of pop culture references overwhelms me to the point that I feel that if I wasn’t already born with the info of, say, Trivial Pursuit or Lorelai Gilmore, I’m never going to be able to interact and relate to the world.

I also read Dog & Kennel for tips on how to train Captain, my black lab mix.

3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why?

Wasn’t it Plato who had no role for poets in his Republic? So maybe philosophy and poetry don’t really mix well. And Wordsworth and Coleridge were supposed to write the master philosopher-poem, which would save the world, but Coleridge was too busy getting high in India (?) to come up with the philosophy end, leaving Wordsworth to write the Prelude and die, feeling like a failure.

So I’d say that my philosophy is that philosophy shouldn’t mix with my writing.

4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why?
The word “Anglo” always reminds me of “Day-glo.” Probably Pablo Neruda, Rainer Maria Rilke, Arthur Rimbaud, Federico Garcia Lorca… I don’t know. I mostly read British or American poetry.

5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing?
I’m trying to read more—as evidenced by this blog. It’s important to know what’s been done, what’s being done… I have a lot to learn. And I don’t want to be redundant in my own writing.

6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you've
read but haven't? Why haven't you?
Proust seemed to be the most common answer on “Here Comes Everybody.” I’d have to agree—haven’t read Proust. Or Dostoyevsky. Other stuff just looks more funner.



7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old?

I like Paul Hoover’s second two definitions in this month’s interview:
(B) It’s what you say into the telephone when no one is listening on the other end.
(C) It is a poem if, when they hear it, they will cut themselves shaving.

8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen?

Alan Gilbert, in Nov. 2004 said: My point is that just as I don’t walk around calling myself a dishwasher, despite a relatively serious commitment of overall time and energy to the task, I don’t consider myself a poet, either. It may only be when the experience of art is no longer a separate category from everyday life that it has a chance to make a difference, to have a “role.” This doesn’t have to be literal, in the same way that I’m not literally a dishwasher or literally a poet. After all, conceptual art is a serious effort to collapse art into the everyday (as is commodity capitalism, though in a different way: the former fetishizes the intangible, the latter the how-can-I-get-my-hands-on-it?).

In my opinion, the role of the poet is to communicate. To interact with language and culture. Although I agree with Gilbert that it shouldn’t be self-aware.

9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest):

Lemon**pie!
Chiseled**gristle
I**Spy
Of**Montreal (new band a friend told me to check out… not bad)
Form**Content

10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing?

Stephen Burt, in Aug. 2005 said: “I hope that relationship varies from poem to poem! In the criticism I don't think there is one-- that is, I'm not conscious of there being one. In the poems, some are meant as visceral, coming from inside the body, from below or beyond obvious rhetoric and logic; some are meant more as performances, with the body and voice of the poet giving a more clearly conscious performance, showing more unity and control.”

I must say that I personally didn’t really understand the question. Text and the body—text on the body? Whether, as Burt suggests, the text has a visceral effect on me? Dickinson said, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Agreed.

http://herecomeseverybody.blogspot.com/

Defining 'new' fiction

What is 'new' fiction? Is it a piece of literary work that has been produced in the last few years, or does it have to do with the style and format of the writing? What makes it good? We get a lot of it at the library, obviously, and I realized that I haven't read much of it. Glancing through the shelves, I pulled down "The Book of Portraiture" by Steve Tomasula. I'd never heard of him before, but the cover looked interesting. Not sure what I was getting into, but I figured maybe it would help me with a definition.

Tomasula doesn't put this book together in the 'normal' fashion. He breaks it into sections, each one representing a different story, or portrait. Colored paper, font and page design separate each one. Plus, within each section are random pictures, drawings, historical information, or family trees. Sometimes, I wondered if this was even a real book. Then I got to the section where each character is represented by a single letter. Though each character is given a name, the letters are used more often, and I couldn't keep them all straight. I will say that each section does have a link between them that was easy to identify. I think that's the only reason I kept reading. Each character attempts to define their own image of themselves, hindered by the way society views them. Each endures an inner struggle to figure out who they are outside of society, and how they will leave a piece of themselves behind.

I found that I didn't like this particular piece of contemporary fiction. Though the point the author tries to make is a good one, I felt it sometimes got lost in the shuffle. The constant shifts and inserted materials took me out of the portrait at hand, making it hard for me to see the connections. I also didn't like the way the book was set up. Rather than creating a uniform piece, where the elements intertwine, I found it to be choppy. I liked each section by itself, as if it were a collection of short stories, but when put with all the other sections, it didn't work for me. Like when he used letters instead of complete names, and had the letters at the top of the page with lines. I didn't see the point and most of the time, passed it over. In another section, only half of one page would contain text, leaving the other half blank, and then the next page would do the same thing, only alternating whether the text was on the top or bottom of the page. I couldn't figure out why. I realize that these were conscious choices; I just didn't understand the reasoning behind them.

I'm interested to see how this particular book compares with other contemporary novels. Is this becoming more of the 'norm', or was this an experiment? How do others view contemporary fiction, and does anyone have some good suggestions for the next book I should pick up? Since I'm just beginning to branch out in my reading, I'm not sure where to start....

Kelly Magee!

Oh, so I’ve been meaning to post on this reading I went to two weeks ago. I just remembered it again when I looked on my list of “books-to-find” at work this morning. A friend of mine had heard that Kelly Magee was going to be reading at Miami on the 25th (she’s a professor there I think), so we went to go see it. Body Language (her new short story collection) is now definitely on my to-read list.

Magee read one of her stories, “The Business of Souls,” about a nine year old boy, his father and older sister, living in a trailer in a poor, rural area of the US. Speaking through the voice of the boy, she described the father; a man who gave his children “parachute” landing practice off the roof of their trailer but also taught them to survive by the book and not to fight. She also describes the sister who had an unnerving obsession with “science” and the dissection of animals. The boy himself spends the opening of the story crushing the heads of crickets, and later thinks he can see their ghosts. The family Magee creates is as fascinating as it is disturbing, and her story sometimes seemed more like fantasy than reality, but every detail and description was so concrete that I believed every minute of it.

The only negative thing I could say about the reading was that it lasted only half and hour. I would have loved to hear Kelly Magee read more of her stories; her delivery really enhanced her story (which was excellent to begin with). I liked every aspect of the story: description, details, metaphors and voice stood out to me as especially good. Again, her reading of her story just left me wanting more; I want to check out the rest of her collection as soon as I can lay my hands on it!

Sword Slinging Thoughtfulness

A guy named Clyde from the library (I work at the public library) kept going on and on about some writer named Robert E. Howard, he kept saying that he loved all the work by this writer and said that no one could touch him. The stuff that he was describing in Howard’s stories sounded interesting, nothing like anything that I’m used to reading, but he said that a new book was released this year and that I should check it out. The book is called “Kull: Exile of Atlantis” and it’s actually a collection of short stories that had been written in the 1920’s and 1930’s. I looked the book up and found out that we had two copies, one was out but I was able to get my hands on the other one. If it had been a complete book I don’t know that I would have read much of it but I find that it’s easier to get through a three hundred page book if its all short stories, like little bites and you don’t have to mess with a book mark. By reading the introduction to the book I learned that these Kull stories were the precursor to the later Conan stories that Howard wrote, and that one story in particular, “By This Axe I Rule!” was actually turned into the first Conan story. After reading this I wasn’t sure if this was the Conan the Barbarian from the movies I had seen as a kid, so I got online and looked it up and it turns out that the movies are based on the same character as the stories. I also came across www.conan.com and the forum there was really helpful when I searched for Kull.

The stories themselves are interesting and amusing enough. The one that seemed to be the best so far is “By This Axe I Rule”. That may be why it was used to give Conan a jump start. Kull is a more complex character than I had originally thought. When you think of half naked warriors duking it out your first thought isn’t to draw a direct line to contemplations of reality and form versus nothingness. But Kull does in fact go deeper than just sword slinging action. Most of the stories don’t deal with too much action but rather Kull attempting to come to terms with who he is and what it means to be an individual. His feelings of non belonging are only compounded by the fact that he is the king of a foreign kingdom named Valusia, Kull is from Atlantis. Kull also has to deal with being a barbarian in a civilized world; he is unable to make sense of civilized laws and comes to feel like he is helpless.

One story that was very interesting to me was “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”. The story completely centered on Kull becoming very interested in a mirror that is owned by a sorcerer named Tuzun Thune, he stairs into the mirror and sees himself, and contemplates reality. Most writers wouldn’t be able to pull of such an inactive plot but Howard does write very well; he almost paints with words in broad colorful strokes. He does tend to use the same sorts of lines and words again and again in his stories (like a tiger, like a leopard, lithe, corded muscle). Howard also uses color to emphasize and set a very strong mood to a piece, he uses reds, purples, and blacks a lot.

I think that the writing is good but the driving force does rely heavily on very masculine themes, battle, killing, raw strength, and rage. I can appreciate the well crafted writing but Howard also tends to have different pacing, sometimes quick, and other times very subtle and drawn out plots. The strongest thing that I can say about Howard is that I’ve not yet read anything like him, and no one even comes close when talking about racing action and violence in such an eloquent way. I know that there is a big online community for Howard so I hope that I have done him some justice in my mild critique of his works.

raw fish, sword dances and slam poets

I dropped in to that university down the way for an Asian culture festival: good to get out of your element sometimes, plus Filipino slam poet Reggie Cabico was there. The festival was almost all country-themed traditional dancing, and in between Cabico came out in a brown suit and numbered t-shirt.

For the first few minutes I thought I was listening to a comedian. He told anecdotes about his life for laughs, but then without transition he launched into a poem about the infamous “what race are you?” check-box question. It made me think: if so many types of Asians are lumped into one box, people of all different races (including those that fall under the “white” category) who may have different backgrounds and beliefs are all lumped into one box too. The last line of the poem was “I’ll check other,” making me think we should all check other until we don’t have boxes at all. That’s almost too political for my mind to handle, but I don’t think Cabico was throwing out those lines just so we wouldn’t think about them.

The auditorium was so dark that I couldn’t write down any specific other lines I liked, but his writing was forceful and straightforward in the slam style: it felt like he was delivering a speech, just one with alliteration and imagery. There’s that whole debate about whether slam poetry is actual poetry, but I don’t care about it too much since slam poetry follows the whole words + poetic conventions = poetry! equation. You can argue with me if you want, I guess.

Cabico came back in the second half after more crazy dancing and performed three poems, with less talk: the first a tirade against those who would stereotype and mix-up the varied Asian cultures – hey, even I saw they were varied from the dances – and the third an open letter to a Filipino actorasking him to stop making bad poetry. The second, most emotional poem was a reflection on his father’s behavior. It wasn’t surprising that he had been an aspiring actor, since at one point he was on his knees with a near-cracked voice, putting more emphasis on the words directed toward an absent father.

Sometimes the political aim of the content did threaten to overwhelm Cabico’s poems. The letter to the Filipino celebrity particularly struck me as a little over-the-top, with more emphasis on the author’s annoyance than poetic devices, but the imagery in the other poems kept me interested. I’m a sucker for imagery. I admit it. I’m a sucker for good performer-writers, too.

Some words on visual poetry

So what am I doing here? Let’s start this thing off right and ask the straight questions. Hah. I guess all I can answer to that question is that I am here in this little, empty blog spot just to write a bit, and just to share a bit. I don’t know what that means—to write—or exactly why I am so interested, but apparently I am doing it.

I had to ask myself what kind of writer I’d like to be here, what sort of stuff I want to lay out there. I’ve been checking out what other people are doing. A lot of crazy stuff, that’s what. I feel like my writing is just starting to grow and I’m just finding new avenues and sparks. A friend told me to check more into visual poetry a few days ago, get some weird inspiration, and I came across David-Baptiste Chirot’s blog. Check it out at http://www.davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com/. Interesting. I’ll admit here that, while I want to be hip and literary, I don’t know how much of this I really can consider poetry.

So then, the classic question. What do I think makes poetry poetry? Well for one, words. I am a firm believer that a written work has to have words. Not everything is poetry. No. It isn’t. Chirot’s blog contains photographs, drawings, and collages, but very few sentences or words. Perhaps he doesn’t intend some of these pieces to be poems? I’m unsure about that. And some pieces I would agree can be called poems, such as this one:

The defining elements here are that there are words, and some sense that it can be read in a uniform way--meaning that two people could read it similarly. Is that what I think is important in defining something as a poem? That people can read it in the same way? That wouldn’t make much sense either, though, because people don’t have to read anything the same anyways, do they? I suppose I still think there should be some clear logic as to how to read a poem. There should be a defined system of how it is to be done, as opposed to the modern method of everyone deciding it for themselves, as if there were no rules and no objective truths about it.

So, where does it cross the line? While Chirot has pieces like above, he also has others that seem to cross a line and enter into what I would call strictly visual art. For example, this is not a poem:

There are words, even sentence structure, but I still don’t think this is a poem. I realize that my definitions are shaky here. I don’t know how to put it simply!

Chirot’s work does move something in me—some sense of the brutality and inhumane treatment of people in Palestine and Lebanon (see the website—that is its clear focus). The photos and drawings make it quite evident and communicate powerfully. However, why is it that to be hip or something I feel like I'm being asked to accept a photograph as a poem? There is a reason that we have different terms, such as “visual art” and “poetry”. Does anyone else feel like our words are being negated on so many levels here? I don’t quite know how to define where the line between these terms runs, and perhaps it is ok that it’s a grey area. However, there is some unspecified point when it crosses between genres. Can anyone help define this?

Anyways, I didn’t mean to have my first blog go in a negative direction. Or to be cliché and obvious. Kudos to David-Baptiste on his visual art. I’d like to get experimental with my own writing here, but I have to draw some lines somewhere. I will write with words. Mostly. I suppose.

I think I know that much.