kilgorefish

[kilgorefish]

Week 14

As a writer, I need to write more. I think one of the most beneficial aspects of this class for me was that it kept me writing consistently so I could prove to myself that my ability to write wasn’t atrophied beyond repair. I wanted to “be a writer” for as long as I can remember but I unconsciously always put qualifications on it that came into conflict with other things I wanted to do. I was convinced that I needed an English degree to be a writer, but I wasn’t pursuing an English degree, so therefor I wasn’t going to be a writer. I liked the short story and zine format because it forced me to write a draft, edit, print, and move on to the next project. I fixate on perceived imperfections and end up mired in my own creative process instead of moving on and improving. The pace of this class encouraged me to be more accepting of doing the best that I can at the time and taking the learning opportunities at face value, instead of treating it as a defining failure. I don’t know what I am going to do to continue writing after this class, but journaling more would be a start.

I want to integrate writing into my work by joining the objective and subjective into a coherent and palatable combination. I am interested in psilocybin research and there is a lot of interest in that niche currently. I would like to review research and communicate the ideas in books, making the information accessible to the general population. It would be interesting to weave the studies and outcomes into a cohesive flowing narrative, to make the things that people find too boring or complicated to pay attention to, into something that they can use to improve their own lives. In my opinion the creative arts and STEM fields are too segregated and there would be a benefit to merging them more often. For instance, researching psilocybin can be an objective pursuit but it also has inherently subjective portions especially when it’s something that produces psychedelic effects that are necessary for some of its therapeutic effects. In these contexts, scientific language can only go so far in its description and communication of subjective experiences. I would like to write an actual book someday, but I never know what I would want to write about, and I still don’t. I don’t think I have lived enough life yet. The process of writing a book sounds like the ultimate challenge for me because of the way I think and operate currently. Self-paced, self-motivated, and a long-term projects are all kryptonite for me. I want to write a book, but the execution seems like it will require a level of discipline and dedication that I simply don’t have yet; although, the solution is probably just to start writing and figure it out as I go.

[kilgorefish]

week 13

I am going to write my final project about a tarot reading between my friend and myself that was impactful. I want to use this to include some dialogue as well as a lot of physical descriptors and inner dialogue. I want to explore the state of not being religious but being spiritual and how that interacts with my belief in science and psychology which can all be intertwined into a suspension of disbelief that my friends and I are engaging in. We go into the reading with questions and a lack of direction and then read each other’s cards and allow our psyches to project onto the cards to connect with our subconscious, something I consider a psychologically supported understanding of how tarot reading works. A combination of faith and logic. We interpret the reading and reflect on what we need to do to be successful in the future.

This is going to be tying in all the elements that I have been working on in my other zines. I think that it fits with the theme of inner necessity because ultimately the tarot reading is an admission of not knowing myself, my strengths, and what I want to do in the future, which is at the front of my mind as I only have one semester more before I graduate. The reflection and faith in divine timing that my friend and I engage in during tarot also is something that benefits me when I apply it to my life and thinking about my future in general. My mindset has been the foremost struggle this semester so I think that the reflection will be a good summation of my mental and emotional journey recently. I want to also include the importance of a self-fulfilling prophecy and the necessity for actionable change after a tarot reading. It is interesting how there is the logical statistical understanding of the likelihood of certain cards being pulled, but I also treat the cards as being shaped by a greater energy or divine timing. Both realities exist at the same time. The conflicts in this story are personal and internal and are not solved. The interpretation and acceptance of these conflicts change them fundamentally, so they are transformed into something else and cease to exist as conflicts.

[kilgorefish]

Interview Blog post

My method of interviewing was an in-person conversation that ended up being very free form. When I originally reached out, I was hoping to do it in person but being in-person ended up being weirder than I thought. I know this person from a class I have taken, and we worked on a presentation together for a couple of meetups. This person is perplexing to me because there is an air of friendliness but also an invisible energetic line, the rules of which are not clear. It’s not a professional line because he talked about “hypothetical” drug use and offered to send me a recipe for edibles; something I would absolutely reserve for people I know well or intend on befriending. This is why I was nervous about asking to do the interview because there are conflicting cues and asking felt like prying but then the interview was an hour and a half of crazy stories in a very casual manner. To be fair I had wanted to know more about this Oregon situation and the interview allowed me to gain access to that. Self-serving personal interests are always a good point to stop and reflect on the ethics and pretense of the interviewing process and structure. It is strange that my laptop sitting between us in the interview, felt like the same conduit that the interview itself felt like, for allowing conversation. It felt like the formal distance of a job interview but while he was describing his current methods of consuming cannabis at home, and we were spinning in chairs. This dichotomy leaves me with an indecisive narrative because my opinions of him and the stories he told me have been evolving over the last week or so.  

This method of interviewing is very fruitful and gave me a lot of good content, but I think it can require a level of forthcomingness that some people don’t have when talking to someone they barely know. I essentially asked a few questions leading him on, but for the vast majority of the time he just talked. I am reconsidering how much of his ego was enmeshed in the presentation of these narratives. I would like to give him a copy of the zine but that is affecting the way that I consider revising the writing portion, so perhaps it is better to not give it to him so I can do whatever I want. There is also the option of writing it how I want and still giving it to him, but I dislike telling people how I perceive them unless I know how they want to be perceived. Knowing that I will give him a copy with affect my writing even if I try my best to avoid it. 

This interview assignment has affected a portion of my interpersonal relationship with him; by extension, I am reevaluating how I chose to interact with people in general. ADHD can sometimes whip up a hyper-fixation on something that is interesting at the time, because it provides novelty which raises dopamine levels. While it feels nice to be so zoomed in on something or someone, it can be counterproductive for maintaining personal boundaries and contribute to a skewed perception of self. I’m glad that this project came along when it did because it forced me to confront my role in interpersonal interactions with both friends and strangers. 

[kilgorefish]

Blog Week 10

The cartonera movement is a really interesting and powerful tool for education and preserving the environment. The videos show the enrichment and creative expression that making the cartoneras brings to peoples lives. Creating cartoneras allows more people to consume and produce original literature that can educate about their experiences and perspectives. Access to education and educational materials are things that we often overlook in the US even though access to resources is being actively restricted. I think that concepts like cartoneras will become more relevant as there is an increase in media homogeny and book banning. Zines have already been an important part of many different counter cultures and subversive movements. The cartonera seems to be el primo to the zine; all in the family of guerrilla community education and expression. The possibilities for cartoneras are vast and can be used to produce things like banned books and educational resources that are inaccessible due to price. An important reality to acknowledge is that capitalist interests, especially in a conservative or fascist environment, will not serve the best interest of the general population, especially underrepresented and oppressed minority groups. In these situations that we are seeing across the globe, it is in the best interest, for preserving the strength and longevity of radical political movements, to take education and media access into one’s own hands as much as possible. The most ignored voices in our society need the most representation and if they can’t get it through political action or media presence, projecting their voices through homemade media is a start. The tools that disenfranchised groups use can be beneficial to everyone and it is in our best interest to invest ourselves in using these tools because there is a good chance we will need them one day.

[kilgorefish]

Blog Post Wk 6

Into the Woods by Jesse Lee Kercheval

Into The Woods has a strong setting which is quickly established in the beginning of the piece. The setting is an outcropping of trees that have survived the subdivision development, where the characters live, which separates an old farm from the new construction. The descriptions of the mud and stone outlines of the “houses” and the objects that the kids find are in the first three paragraphs. The thwarted desire of each child is revealed in the comments that the kids make about the others respective trinkets. It serves as an interesting introduction to each personality and the motivations behind their actions. The narrator comments on Jack’s spoon and says its beautiful while Jack only nods. Heddy finds a ceramic dog which Jack says looks like his old dog that is at his mom’s house and always asks to pet it. The narrator finds a mood ring that Heddy says she always wanted and that her older sister had for a time. The motivations of each child are rather obvious. The narrator covets the spoon because it is pretty and a novel object, Jack covets the dog because it reminds him of better times in the past with his family, and Heddy covets the ring because she wants to feel closer to her older sister who is married and, in the Army, so she must not see her often. The story changes when the kids all go separately to fix their houses in the rain and when they come back their trinkets are gone. The simile of comparing the trinketless houses in the woods to an empty town which had been deserted makes the reader consider what made the town alive in the first place. Is it the children’s imagination or the novelty of having their own possessions? The shift happens when they collectively look for the trinkets, assign blame to a person or peoples in the general area, stake out the spot from Heddy’s attic, and all are aware that they have taken one another’s trinkets. They are both thwarted and rewarded because they secretly get the items that they wanted but as a group the mysterious theft will remain unsolved. This story highlights the playful yet self-centered worlds that each child lives in, too young to fully comprehend the reality of each other living complex lives. It also captures the determination that the children possess to deceive each other while remaining a united front against the old farmer, neighborhood boys, and older sister who clearly did all the thieving.

[kilgorefish]

Blog post week 4

The writing style of Lydia Davis has variation but possesses a recognizable voice that makes her collection of works cohesive. I enjoyed the variation in both story length and complexity because I didn’t know whether to expect a short story or one sentence on a page. I like her stories What You Learn About the Baby, Helen and Vi: A Study in Health and Vitality, and We Miss You: A Study of Get-Well Letters from a Class of Fourth-Graders because the formats are a bit unexpected and unconventional. I personally liked that they are taken apart and organized in categorical ways. I like writing research papers for my psych classes, and I really enjoy the formulaic organization in them. I realized I was reading them a bit like research papers as well and it helped create a whole picture as my mind, putting each chunk of information into a whole picture.

I enjoy flowing narratives, but I feel like those readings require a different level of concentration so as not to miss a sneaky detail. I enjoy these types of stories, but it was refreshing to have examples of telling a story differently. I struggle a bit with my own perception of the dichotomy between research paper writer and writer of creative nonfiction, because I’m afraid that my creativity may be stunted by habits of convention and that convention be derailed by creative input; however, I know that both can be complimentary to one another and make my writing unique in clarity and imagination. Lydia Davis’s collection of works made me feel more hopeful about my writing in the future.

On the other end of her story formatting, I really enjoyed Cape Cod Diary because of it descriptive detail and ambling pace and I loved How She Could Not Drive because it reminds me of my sweet but particular mother in her Prius. The Cape Cod Diary reminds me of my writing style in the Urban Drift assignment, though the former is much longer. I enjoy writing in a descriptive and meandering way but saw few examples of these styles because of the media I have consumed in recent years (it is very likely that I have accidentally shuttered my creative expression in an attempt to find validation from others in the STEM fields). How She Could Not Drive is a great example of Lydia Davis using seemingly neutral and unemotional language, or grammar, to communicate a larger emotional theme or elicit an emotional reaction from the reader by using the collective impact of the sentences that make up her stories.

Lydia Davis is incredibly talented, and her writing is distinctly human. I think that her writing is the type of art that will always remain inaccessible to artificial intelligence both in comprehension and replication.

[kilgorefish]

Blog Post 2

The outside is smooth and feels almost waxy. When you hold it at an angle in the light you can see the material underneath the outer layer of inorganic material. Small lines alternating in a woven texture, like canvas or cotton fabric. The corners have been blunted and little bits of fluffed carboard peek out ever so slightly. When you look at it from the bottom, you can see that the material on the outside is wrapped around to the inside where the papers are. The paper glued to the inside of the front and back hides the raw edges of the material. The stack of papers inside are grouped into bundles held together by strings, fed through the middle where the paper folds over. The bundles are glued to the paper when the strings are put through and attached to the inside of the hard strip where the front and back are joined. The string has been put through the crease of the papers four times and is still silky and white. In other places the string was too strong for the paper as it softened from creasing and movement over the decades. The glue has broken away from all the bundles but one, so the papers simply lie in between the front and back. The strip that holds the front and back together can move back and forth because the material holding it on either side is worn and malleable. In between the bundles, where the paper was previously glued, the inside looks cracked and textured like yellow tree bark or the drips from beeswax candles. Looking at the hard strip that connects the outside surfaces, there is a noticeable space where the paper sheet has been pulled away by the weight of the paper bundles. The papers seem to hold together momentarily as if held by suction, and when they fall there is a small puff of air detectable by the hand that is doing the moving. Some papers slide out of the pile because they have ripped free of their bundle all together and stay on the inside because of the friction from the papers on either side. The papers lie in an uneven pile and some are worn on the edges from protruding outside the hard shell. The paper itself is thick like watercolor paper and has a soft matte texture, unlike the stiff outsides. The entire thing is heavier than it looks as the papers inside, as well as the hard outside, are unexpectedly dense. The edges of the stiff outsides and the soft insides have been worn to a white where it has been rubbed bare of its colors. It is easy to imagine the papers being a brighter white than they are now as they have yellowed with age. When the papers are moved about the air carries a faint scent like wool sweaters after a summer stored in a chest or old leaves in the garage left until the next spring.

[kilgorefish]

Blog Prompt Week 1

Hi,

I’m Harper and I use she/her pronouns. I have been at UWM for a while, through the pandemic, during which I took a break because I find online classes challenging due to issues with deadlines, attention to detail, and time management. All these can be embodied by me turning the first blog post of the semester in late because I didn’t check what time it was due and assumed 11:59pm and because I waited until the last day to begin it, leaving no wiggle room. Despite the challenges that I deal with because of my ADHD in a school setting, I very much like being in school. When I took a year and a half off during COVID, I lost a part of my identity and self-confidence because I really value my academic achievements and my zest for learning. I had a hard time coming back due to feeling behind and inadequate, the whole rigamarole. I had to go through two SAP appeals due to dropping out of classes the semester that lockdown happened and the subsequent failing of a calculus class the returning semester. I am now fighting the calculus demons again this semester and I will win this time. During the last two semesters I have proven to myself that I am capable of being successful in an academic setting and I am now back in solid standing with the university. I really like research and I would like to write a book someday; it has always been something I thought about but never considered actually possible. I am currently reading Imperfect: The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown, she is a researcher and writer and a big inspiration to me.

I am thinking about a minor in English because I really enjoy reading, writing, and literary analysis. I feel ok about sharing my work with others but I always have a nagging sense of inferiority in most academic setting with peers. This is something I am working on and is a result of functioning for most of my life with undiagnosed ADHD, which makes you feel constantly behind and struggling to keep up due to deficits in the ability to direct attention, regulate emotions, manage time, and self-motivate. This leads most adults and educators to the conclusion that you are lazy, childish, and just-need-to-apply-yourself-because-you’re-smart-but-wasting-your-potential (a classic). I like sharing feedback with peers because I like helping people and I try my best to choose my wording and tone purposefully, in order to keep critiques impersonal and suggestions supportive.

I live in Riverwest with two roommates and their children: a cat and a parrot. I like painting and drawing and I like reading tarot for people. I am getting back into having hobbies and things I like to do because a lot of my free time is spent on the internet and social media but I am trying to carve out time for more hobbies and limit my time on apps or delete them all together. I did a lot of drawing as a teen and I still have the pieces which I think would be fun to redraw as a modern interpretation of what I made years ago. Some of my best pieces are on the back of old school assignments or syllabuses because I made them in class with different color pens and highlighters. I have been hanging them on the wall of my bedroom to remind myself to make more art and I have slowly been getting back into it. A few months ago, my friends came over and we all followed a Bob Ross painting tutorial which reminded me how much I like painting and creative outlets.

I remember enjoying the English class that you taught in 2019 and I made sure to keep this class in my schedule even though it meant pushing off credits that count towards my major, so it is my intention to participate fully in class to get out everything I can!

[kilgorefish]

Week 14 Qs

Q1: Dadaism was an effort to reject and mock the meaningless modern world and the atrocities of WW1. How does the Harlem Renaissance compared to the Dadaist movement? How is jazz connected to the black community? What issues in the black community were reflected in jazz?

Art is very often a direct result of the social and cultural struggles of certain groups. Looking at Dadaism and jazz as a way to shock and express is interesting especially when you compare their fundamental elements. Both are very revolutionary for their time in comparison to the mainstream cultures they rejected.

Q2: The evolution of poetry around the 20th century was critical to its growth as an art form. How what are examples of those evolutionary changes and how have they changed the way poetry exists today?

The “freeing up” of poetry made it easier to read, more interesting, and more expressive. The poets were not constricted by rules on form and rhyming. Poetry now in modern day enjoys an almost a completely free format that is all thanks to the earlier poets who defied strict rules when creating their pieces.

Q3: How does Jack Kerouac’s On The Road embody the beat generation's desire for change and nomadic contentment? How was this a rejection of societal expectations?

The beat generation was a rejecting of the expectations society held at the time. The young generation wanted the American dream in the form of freedom and the ability to live in a nomadic pleasure seeking world saturated with art and sex and drugs. The capitalist nuclear family picture was too constricting for the young artists looking for more.

Q4: Intentional communities, like in Drop City, are many times unsuccessful and do not stand the test of time. Why do you think this is? Is it possible to maintain an intentional community or does it go against an innate human quality? Is it cyclical like In Watermelon Sugar?

I am really interested in why some communities survive and how some fail or are taken over by a dictating figure. I believe in the ability for humans to work in a group unselfishly but I also know that it is very rare. I want to know why people think these communities fail and if it is avoidable or inevitable.

Q5: How has reading/ watching When Jesus Met Nanabush and Smoke Signals helped add a new dimension to American history? Do you think Smoke Signals would have been the same movie if the entire production team and cast had not been all Native American? What does this say about other minority and underrepresented groups histories being portrayed in film?

It's interesting how many films are made that are about a specific community but do not include any members of that minority. I would like to see movies like this remade by members of that group and see how the perspectives change and how the events in history are told from a different viewpoint.

Q6: What are some events from Parable of the Sower that could be possible in our future? What is the future for natural expendable resources? Is it possible to avoid a future like in Parable of the Sower?

I like how Octavia Butler combines climate destruction and the human condition and uses them as catalysts for each other. A lot of times humans like to separate themselves from climate change and social injustices and they don't understand to what extent their actions affect everything around them. I also think that the inclusion of racism and sexism and bigotry in the story is important because  those things don't go away just because the climate is virtually uninhabitable.

[kilgorefish]

Smoke Signals

In Smoke Signals, the general plot revolves around two characters, Victor and Thomas, who are Native American living on a reservation. The two main characters are closely tied to each other because of their pasts but Victors resentment and anger for his fathers abusive behavior and departure leads him to be abusive and spiteful towards Thomas who continually tries to be friends with Victor. The conflicts in this movie are almost entirely human derived and a big theme within interpersonal conflicts is the tension and misunderstanding between Native Americans and white people. The other continual conflict is Victor's attitude toward Thomas and his father. He is deeply hurt from his father leaving after years of being abusive and lashes out at Thomas when he tries to offer advice or comfort. Victor also has a deep resentment towards white people, not without some cause, and refused to trust others. Victor repeatedly tells Thomas that he is too naive and that putting faith in other people will lead to being taken advantage of. His distrust of people both comes from his emotionally fickle and abusive father and the history of white people abusing the Native Americans and their culture through things like the Indian Removal Act and the Indian Relocation Act. His mistrust is not misplaced but it pervades all of his opinions and actions to a point where he is harming himself more than anyone else with his toxic hatred and anger. It's possible he also blames himself for his father leaving or Thomas for having a more stable life and emotional clarity.

Strangely, despite there being multiple prominent characters in the movie, Victor is the only one in present time who exhibits character arcs worth noting. His father also exhibits duality within his timeline but he is dead at the time when the bulk of the story take place. Victor is the antihero, compete with imperfections, who redeems himself in the end by facing his emotional trauma and finding peace with his father and his past. It seems all the other characters are a means to an end. Both Suzy, the young woman his father knew in Arizona, and Thomas are mentors and guides for Victor in his journey to self realization and acceptance of his past.

Victor represents the multifaceted duality within every person and their capacity for compassionate and abusive behavior. He is deeply upset by his father's abuse and departure, form the reservation and then this plane of existence, and shows this by being distrustful and cruel at times while also being compassionate and loyal at other times. He shows the effects of life's difficulties not only as a Native American but as a human in general. Even though he is Native American and lives on a reservation, his common emotions and experiences resonate with all people because he deals with issues that all people will deal with no matter who they are. Smoke Signals is about acceptance and growth set on a stage of disinclusion, loss, and adversity.

[kilgorefish]

Drop City

The film Drop City is about an intentional community in the 60s that sought to provide an alternate way of life for people from the capitalist society that they lived in. Drop City was a collectivist community that used refuse and unwanted items to build and sustain their community which allowed them to remove themselves almost entirely from the capitalist grid. In the beginning the small group of people worked cohesively and built the majority of the structures in the community. Drop City continued to receive more people join their community, accompanied by conflict and disagreements. The community started to unravel as more people poured in and abused the collectivist lifestyle by taking but not giving back. During this time the women from the original group of drop city had children and found that the environment was not optimal for raising children especially because they were still the ones expected to cook and clean and fulfil typically feminine roles. As the creative productive energy started to wane members left in search for different opportunities and Drop city came to a grinding halt. The original purpose was long abandoned and the commune flooded with individuals on the run from the law, drug addicts, and homeless people looking for a place to live. Eventually it was completely abandoned and later turned into a parking lot.

In theory the idea of a commune or collectivist off grid living situation interests me but the reality of it stops me from seriously entertaining the idea. The community started out idealistic and worked as well as it could for a while but even during that time there were traditional gender roles being upheld and a lack of experience with basically everything that made establishing the community very difficult. I would not like to have to negotiate and agree with the other people living with me and the close quarters would be a veritable hell. I do like the fact that it is set in the middle of nature and that the community was built using useable refuse from the surrounding communities. I think the greatest challenge for a community like Drop City is upholding the idealist values that the community is built on after experiencing change and difficulties over time. Despite giving up on the capitalist consumerist society people are strongly inclined to want individuality and property without having to share everything with all the others. Drop city was eventually destroyed by the members inability to work together seamlessly (because they are humans) to maintain a functioning community. I think that the idea of Drop City is an immortal aspiration for many generations but the reality is that communities like this are often created on a whim and the follow through and long term consistency is where the idealistic communes fail. I would love to see a long term successful intentional community because it is a place where new ideas are created and tested out and it's an important aspect of human nature to want to create something new and different for oneself.

[kilgorefish]

On the Road

On the road, by Jack Kerouac, is a groundbreaking novel because it's one of the first of its kind. The novel is about the quest for excitement, experiences, and ultimately the freedom of the American dream. Throughout the story Kerouac talks about his travels around the country as a young man in his search for something more. He rejects the cookie cutter perfection of the 50s American dream and yearns for more excitement and purpose. His novel is unflinching in its description of unsavory harsh realities of life that were largely ignored at the time. No one wanted to see the homelessness, drug abuse, violence, poverty, and mental illness that settled into the bottom of society. The people Kerouac travels with and writes about are criminal degenerates, lost artists, or listless wandering youth that were ignored by society. It paints a more complete picture of America and the American dream that shows the uncomfortable reality that many people lived in. Kerouac shares the stories of very American experiences that are the antithesis of what the American dream is supposed to be. His style of writing is very personal and takes the reader into his mind where they share his thoughts and feelings. The reader is privy to his mistakes, hopes, dreams, and failures. On the Road does not selectively choose events, the reader is privy to all of them. At the time that the book was published it was an unusually harsh depiction of a life chasing the American dream which was shocking to many people. Its showed realities that many people had the luxury of ignoring while they went about living the American dream.

The funny part of the entire situation is that the reality in On the Road is far more authentically American then the cookie cutter dreams sold to the public. Kerouac's experiences and struggles are quintessentially American, more American than the American dream. The rampant sexism, racism, and general injustice shown in the book are not what many people want to hear about but to not record them accurately would be doing an injustice to the people affected by them. Injustices do not cease to exist if they are not acknowledged. In fact they get worse. Jack Kerouac's helped shed light on the true reality of life for those on the road, from the dregs of society, from the Beat generation looking for their piece of the American dream.

[kilgorefish]

Howl - Part 1

The first part of Howl, by Allen Ginsberg, is the most impactful for me because of the way that it is written and performed. The first section has closely packed lines all about the length of one or two sentences. He doesn't make an effort to rhyme any of the words but instead uses the monotonous rhythm to carry an unrelenting beat. He punctuates each line with a momentary pause before continuing to the next line. The monotony is at odds with the fantastic and sometimes fantastically graphic vocabulary and passion exuded from the words themselves. When he read the poem it sounded like a sermon or a preacher preaching. It's possible he felt that his poem was a sermon for all the people society had intentionally forgotten. He talks about things that people express prejudice and stigma for even today. He talks about mental illness, prostitution, drug addiction, homelessness, homosexuality, and recidivism. The way he reads the poem shows urgency and a demand to be listened to. He performed his poem with grim detail, not from a place of judgment, but from a place of empathy. He shocks the reader with language that doesn't shy away from the depraved or socially unacceptable behavior but instead brings the reader to eye level with the situations he is talking about.

Allen Ginsberg's poem really resonated with me because the way he describes situations is very accurate. He talks about about depressive manic behavior paranoia and self destructive things and the way that he writes makes it very easy to feel what the person is feeling. It's easier to see their disjointed behavior, thought process, and the consequences of just existing as a “damaged” or “delinquent” person. The way he described the manic depressive behavior was accurate, at least in my experience, and it really brought the audience into the reality of that.

The first part in Howl is important because it is a graphic description, to the public, of things that the public tries to ignore. It's unapologetic and he performs it in a way that is strong and demanding to be heard. He gave a small voice to the people that are the outcasts of society because of drug use, mental illness, race, or ideology. At the time it was written Howl was unparalleled in its graphic and creative approach to such a controversial group of topics.

[kilgorefish]

“Talk to Me Poem, I Think I’ve Got the Blues”

The poem “Talk to Me Poem, I Think I've Got the Blues”, written by Nikki Giovanni is a great example of how a poem read out loud can provide deeper meaning and more context to its story. Giovanni relates poems to the people who write them and how the poems can reflect the trials and tribulations of an individual. She also asks if poems can go to jail. Jail can be interpreted, for a poem, as discrimination or deamonization for its content and meaning. She likens it to women unfairly incarcerated after “getting tired of no good men”. When hearing the poem read out loud, the poem is not so much sad as much as it is frank. I believe that reading the poem on paper would make the poem seem more sad than Giovanni intended. Her inflection and tone convey important information about her feelings regarding the poems content. She reads at a brisk pace, gesticulating with her hands, and glancing up at the audience. Her inflection when she demands that the poem “give it up” shows that she means “tell me” and not telling the poem to physically give up on something. In only written text that phrase may have been interpreted differently. She reads the poem as if she's talking to a friend trying to get answers or advice. She asks the poem to relate to her which shows how humans relate to art, including poetry. She asked the poem for answers which on a larger scale means that people search of answers in others and their art. Throughout, she asks the poem questions and talks about traumatizing and upsetting things which hints that her way of coping is writing poems to express her problems. It seems that she talks about multiple story lines in the poem showing poetry as a form of expression and comfort to many people. All the information that is conveyed through tone, pace, and inflection is lost when a poem is simply written on paper, which is why live readings are helpful in understanding the full meaning of a poem.

[kilgorefish]

The Widow’s Lament in Spring

Written in 1921, by William Carlos Williams, the poem The Widow’s Lament in Spring is a great example of Williams style of writing. His style of free verse in this poem shows how he uses the poems physical form and his forward writing style to convey mood and meaning.

The Widow’s Lament in Spring is formatted in a way that all the lines come one after the other in a very connected way, lacking proper punctuation. The poem contrasts both the past and present and the women's perception compared to the world around her. The poem is about a widow who is consumed by grief and depression and seems to be dissociating from the reality around her. She sees spring erupt around her, things growing, recovering, and reanimating but she is still stuck in her own personal winter. Perhaps she is stuck because even though spring has come back her husband will never return. Perhaps she feels like even spring cannot warm her and dispel the grief that has chilled her and left everything grey. Williams uses nature as a way to describe her pain by contrasting the flowers colorful beauty to her grey world. He likens her pain it to a yard of grass that burns with a “cold fire” even when her real yard is blooming and alive.

Sorrow is my own yard where the new grass flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire that closes round me this year.

Williams uses formatting and word choice to create a casually conversational yet deeply pained poem that is easy to empathize with. It seems like reader is the woman's closest confidante and she is admitting that, however beautiful she knows life is around her, she is cloaked in a grey depression. She mourns her husband who has died which has never been an uncommon human experience, especially at that time because WWI had ended only a couple years before. The woman is easy to empathize with even if someone isn't a widow. Everyone has dealt with a death in some capacity and can understand the pain that accompanies it. This is an example of how Williams writes about subjects that can be understood and related to by the American public. He uses plain speech in his works while still conveying deep emotions.

In the poem the woman describes the trees and flowers in bloom and recalls how she used to find happiness in them. Williams uses the mid section of the poem to describe the flowers and plants growing and blooming which gives a stark contrast to the beginning of the poem where the woman expresses her grey reality. Williams then returns back to the woman's depressing reality, abruptly, using only a few lines to show the omnipresent depression the woman feels.

but the grief in my heart is stronger than they for though they were my joy formerly, today I notice them and turn away forgetting.

Williams closes the poem with the woman wanting to go down to the marsh and see the flowers her son told her about and then wanting to sink into the marsh itself. The imagery of the woman sinking into the marsh is a very final way to end the poem. Williams ends the poem in a blunt manner that doesn't provide a happy ending or resolution. Williams does this because he wants his poems to be realistic. He sought to show life for what it is using poetry.

The Widow’s Lament in Spring is an example of how Williams helped change the way American poetry was written. It is conversational, lacks bloated metaphors, is focused around things in everyday life, and is understandable to the general public. He uses common and relatable imagery and situations in his poems as well as blunt but expressive language to show that poverty does not need to be hard to understand to be deeply meaningful.

Shmoop Editorial Team. “The Widow's Lament in Springtime.” Shmoop, Shmoop University, 11 Nov. 2008, www.shmoop.com/widows-lament-in-springtime/.

[kilgorefish]

Fire and Ice

Robert Frost is a perfect example of a poet who was influenced by classical poetry but diverged from the classical framework. A well known poem by Frost, "Fire and Ice", strikes a near perfect balance between classical poetry and Frost’s creative personal style. Frost uses classical poetry styles, like sonnets and villanelles, and then changes aspects of the poem to fit his more creative style. "Fire and Ice" is widely thought to be influenced by Dante's Inferno, Canto 32, where Dante describes “sinners in a fiery hell, up to their necks in a lake of ice.” (Spacey). Frost's poem deals less with hell and more with the end of the world, said to be eventually destroyed by either fire or ice. "Fire and Ice" has nine lines and is separated into three tercets of three lines. The poem’s classic rhyming patterns are similar to sonnets but the tercets are similar to the villanelle style of poetry. It is clear that Frost was influenced by classical poetry and used it as a base style for his poems.

The poem "Fire and Ice" has a rhyme scheme very similar to the terza rima pattern which is a scheme used in Dante's Inferno. Most of the poem actually adheres to the terza rima pattern but the middle stanza is changed almost halfway through and the poem seems to switch directions continuing on in the previous pattern. The poem is almost physically symmetrical if it is folded over a horizontal line over its center. Frost uses this pattern to highlight the opposite but equally destructive forces of fire and ice that could destroy the earth. In the poem Frost uses fire and ice as metaphors for passion and hatred. He contemplates the end of the world in terms of its consumption and destruction by either the worlds passion or its hatred. The modified terza rima results in the first half of the poem mainly rhyming with fire and the second half mostly rhyming with ice. Frost uses enjambment in "Fire and Ice" when he writes

“I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice”.

He carries on with the sentence, covering multiple lines without using punctuation, and instead relies on the physical spacing of the words. The spacing of the sentence into different lines creates natural pauses for the reader in the place of written punctuation. Despite the poem being about the eventual destruction of the world, Frost uses rhythmic lilting lines and alliteration which convey feelings of disinterest or resignation toward the end of the world.

Frost strikes a balance using both classical and personal styles in his poetry. He is an example of artists modifying classical art conventions to fit their style.The poem "Fire and Ice" not only adapts the classical terza rima style but it also uses rhythm and alliteration to give the poem a less serious mood than perhaps expected. "Fire and Ice" is only three tercets yet it uses a surprisingly large amount of classical framework. The classical base that Frost uses, makes "Fire and Ice" seem very similar to sonnets and villanelles, yet his personal style makes his poems unique from other classical works.

Spacey, Andrew. “Analysis of Poem ‘Fire and Ice’ by Robert Frost.” Owlcation, Owlcation, 25 Jan. 2019, owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-Fire-and-Ice-by-Robert-Frost.

[kilgorefish]

Breakfast of Champions

Currently, one of my favorite books is Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. The first book I read by him was in high school when I read Slaughterhouse 5. I liked the book but I enjoyed his other books even more. Some of his work can be harsh or explicit which is why my high school chose Slaughterhouse 5 instead of his other novels. I really love his work because his novels can be read over and over again and can easily have a different impact on the reader each time. I also enjoy his work because his plots and events tend to go out of chronological order. The characters and their story lines also begin to bleed together and have an impact on one another. He often includes side characters in one book who are the main characters in other books of his. It's hard to fully explain what his books are about because there are so many aspects of the story that are important but not directly connected to the main plot. Vonnegut touches on very polarizing and deep topics with matter-a-fact bluntness. The way he writes about very emotional and troubling things with a lack of emotional involvement creates a dynamic that almost is as if the reader is in a position of omniscience and is observing the events from afar. The reader can consider things without emotional attachment and watch the whole story play out objectively, as an observer.

Breakfast of Champions is a very interesting book to me because it touches on very difficult subjects like racism, sexism, mental illness, the meaning of art, the meaning of life, and the existence of free will all within a rather short book. Breakfast of Champions has many characters but arguably the main characters are Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout. Dwayne Hoover is a well to do man who owns a car dealership and other properties in his town. His story is that of a mentally ill man on the verge of a psychotic break trying to hide it from everyone. He will eventually read a book that Kilgore Trout writes, which essentially tells the reader they are the only sentient being in the universe, which causes his complete psychotic break. Kilgore Trout is a writer who can only get his works published in pornographic magazines. He writes pieces that are almost like science fiction fables which are too absurd for most people to pay attention to. He gets a letter from a rather mysterious man named Rosewater inviting him to an arts convention and praising his work. The book follows the events that lead to the men's paths crossing. This meeting is where Kilgore Trout will unintentionally trigger Dwayne Hoovers complete descent into madness. Towards the end an ever increasing presence by the narrator begins to create a third main character. The narrator is convinced that he is the creator of all the characters and can control them with his mind. He also reveals that he wonders if he is schizophrenic which as apparently has been brought up in his past. This gives the reader a feeling of being dislodged because the narrator has been revealing things with absolute truth and yet he is potentially mentally ill. In either case the narrator becomes a character who the reader does not know even after reading through the majority of the book. This makes the reader reevaluate everything they thought was fact and see it as a perspective of the narrator who is either the creator of the universe or a flawed human with schizophrenia.

Along the way many smaller characters are introduced and are used as a vehicle to bring up existential questions or hard to swallow realities in society. Breakfast of Champions has aspects of nihilism and fatalism while also being Buddhist and Christian. Kurt Vonnegut's work has conflicting ideas and tones which is why a lot of his work is heavily up to interpretation and is different for everyone who reads it.