attempting brevity--busy academic weekend without much academic time.
on Erika's "&":
on continuity/writing a long peice: I agree with what someone/others/I don't know who said in class that as the peice moves on the voice changes quite a bit--too much so for me. I could go for some increased mathematical language in the second parts, for the sake of fluidity of tone. But, I am only seeking a fluidity of tone, not of form as others (Jacob, Lara, Laleh...I think) seemed to want. I'm with Dillon in that the form is necessitated by the subject matter here--anything goes for you formally and it seems to work. I am not thrown off by the formal changes/spaces/morphings. After "motherload"/"without closeness"/somewhere around there that I start to get lost...my interest wanders. There are some amazing sections/great stanzas (the block chunk to 'what is held in a droplet,' 'how drunk under the table is a status marker,' 'for character or symbol is represented in blasphemy...', 'upright delicate mothers tired of the root the word', but I have a hard time linking them to where we started. They seem to belong in another poem, or even perhaps this poem could use some stronger delineated sections (with subtitles, numbered divisions, mathematically formulaic divisions, mapping divisions, etc.), where in each section there is a different voice (meaning a different tone/diction, not necessarily a different voice/character).
on Sean's "Diction":
a few phrases that worked particularly well for me: "heinz"--evokes banana ketchup, and heinz 57--which I first (for our situation) think of as hapas, but more importantly to the poem, think of as the appropriation of various cultures, both colonial cultures and the multiplicity of indigenous cultures, in the Philippines. "acid wash"--skin bleaching? refering to it in these terms heightening the violence in such ethnic identity stripping? "brown is the color that the dream broke"--I have nothing poignant to say--beautiful. "viscera-sucker"--jumps out since you so often use "asuang" in your poems and you choose to use English here. It performs just what the poem seems to be attempting--to offer new definitions, to be ready to adapt (as pilipinos were ready when the spanish came, when the americans came; as illokanos were when the tagalogs came; as illokanos were when they came to Hawaii, California). Learned behavior--you are re-teaching us definitions, definitions to words we didn't know before (though we are probably not your audience or only a small fraction of your audience--you are more likely re-teaching definitions to pinoy/pinay guardsmark). Not knowing learned behavior--some cannot adapt as well and, by presenting unconventional "definitions" or not definitions, but like Laura said, something else in the definition slot, you warn against being someone who cannot adapt. so then, "I'm going to fucking kill you unless" you learns to adapt? you learns something? you has to learn something or slowly die, killed by her own lack of adaptation?
Just a few things on "Amphitheatre":
I know you said the statistics of people who read it straight across was good enough for you, but I still have other form ideas. Perhaps the second column could be flush right, so that the jaggedness was in the middle, and perhaps the two columns are a bit closer together. So then maybe the two columns are centered on the page, the outer margins justified and the inner margins jagged, not too close though.
As for content, I found what others called "sex" to be quite sterile, too detached. "Sex" in your poetry is usually much more explicit. For one, the guy is peeing which he couldn't do if he were aroused/having sex. He doesn't seem attracted to the crank whore. If read across columns, "I could use addict." The flesh is totally removed, and is the addiction more important than the flesh? The addictive personality? After all, the drugs are much more prevalent and explicit in the poem than anything sexual. Yes, she's a whore, but a crank whore, she does it for drugs, she's addicted to the crank first, sex second. There is a thinking about nakedness, unzipping from the cunt, stripping, but then a flacid penis. (Perhaps from too many drugs, too much alcohol?) I guess I'm just not buying that sex happens here--from Sean, anything explicit would be in our faces and repeated several times, with pauses only for another swig of Jaeger.
on Erika's "&":
on continuity/writing a long peice: I agree with what someone/others/I don't know who said in class that as the peice moves on the voice changes quite a bit--too much so for me. I could go for some increased mathematical language in the second parts, for the sake of fluidity of tone. But, I am only seeking a fluidity of tone, not of form as others (Jacob, Lara, Laleh...I think) seemed to want. I'm with Dillon in that the form is necessitated by the subject matter here--anything goes for you formally and it seems to work. I am not thrown off by the formal changes/spaces/morphings. After "motherload"/"without closeness"/somewhere around there that I start to get lost...my interest wanders. There are some amazing sections/great stanzas (the block chunk to 'what is held in a droplet,' 'how drunk under the table is a status marker,' 'for character or symbol is represented in blasphemy...', 'upright delicate mothers tired of the root the word', but I have a hard time linking them to where we started. They seem to belong in another poem, or even perhaps this poem could use some stronger delineated sections (with subtitles, numbered divisions, mathematically formulaic divisions, mapping divisions, etc.), where in each section there is a different voice (meaning a different tone/diction, not necessarily a different voice/character).
on Sean's "Diction":
a few phrases that worked particularly well for me: "heinz"--evokes banana ketchup, and heinz 57--which I first (for our situation) think of as hapas, but more importantly to the poem, think of as the appropriation of various cultures, both colonial cultures and the multiplicity of indigenous cultures, in the Philippines. "acid wash"--skin bleaching? refering to it in these terms heightening the violence in such ethnic identity stripping? "brown is the color that the dream broke"--I have nothing poignant to say--beautiful. "viscera-sucker"--jumps out since you so often use "asuang" in your poems and you choose to use English here. It performs just what the poem seems to be attempting--to offer new definitions, to be ready to adapt (as pilipinos were ready when the spanish came, when the americans came; as illokanos were when the tagalogs came; as illokanos were when they came to Hawaii, California). Learned behavior--you are re-teaching us definitions, definitions to words we didn't know before (though we are probably not your audience or only a small fraction of your audience--you are more likely re-teaching definitions to pinoy/pinay guardsmark). Not knowing learned behavior--some cannot adapt as well and, by presenting unconventional "definitions" or not definitions, but like Laura said, something else in the definition slot, you warn against being someone who cannot adapt. so then, "I'm going to fucking kill you unless" you learns to adapt? you learns something? you has to learn something or slowly die, killed by her own lack of adaptation?
Just a few things on "Amphitheatre":
I know you said the statistics of people who read it straight across was good enough for you, but I still have other form ideas. Perhaps the second column could be flush right, so that the jaggedness was in the middle, and perhaps the two columns are a bit closer together. So then maybe the two columns are centered on the page, the outer margins justified and the inner margins jagged, not too close though.
As for content, I found what others called "sex" to be quite sterile, too detached. "Sex" in your poetry is usually much more explicit. For one, the guy is peeing which he couldn't do if he were aroused/having sex. He doesn't seem attracted to the crank whore. If read across columns, "I could use addict." The flesh is totally removed, and is the addiction more important than the flesh? The addictive personality? After all, the drugs are much more prevalent and explicit in the poem than anything sexual. Yes, she's a whore, but a crank whore, she does it for drugs, she's addicted to the crank first, sex second. There is a thinking about nakedness, unzipping from the cunt, stripping, but then a flacid penis. (Perhaps from too many drugs, too much alcohol?) I guess I'm just not buying that sex happens here--from Sean, anything explicit would be in our faces and repeated several times, with pauses only for another swig of Jaeger.
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