Task Discussion

tesspatalano Aug. 12, 2011, 11:16 a.m.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19094

Brad Pitt
by Aaron Smith

With cotton candy armpits and sugary Crevices, sweat glazing your donut skin. Have you ever been fat, Brad? Have you ever wanted a Snickers More than love and lain on your bed While the phone rang and rolled one On your tongue, afraid to eat it, afraid It would make your jeans too tight? Have you Barfed, Brad, because you ate it, Ate all the take-out, licked Brown sauce off the box while you sobbed? Brad Pitt down in the pits chaining menthol Ciggys in your thick-wallet life, It’s not so bad Brad, sad Brad, is it?

Hello,

My name is Tess Patalano. I am a writer who works for a hedge fund in NYC. I received my Masters from San Francisco State University last year. I live in Brooklyn. This class will be great because I am finding a lot of language in the financial industry that I want to access in experimental ways.

This is one of my favorite poems simply because it takes a real person (living non the less) and characterizes him through the narrator's point of view. I enjoy the irony of a celebrity who is idolized, constructed into a self-concious vulnerable human being. I also appreciate that the narrator is speaking to Brad Pitt, giving the poem an even more intimate feeling. Also, cotton candy armpits right from the get-go!

Apologies for the late post, I will be posting Week 3 exercise shortly!

Vanessa Gennarelli Aug. 14, 2011, 12:52 a.m.
In Reply To: tesspatalano Aug. 12, 2011, 11:16 a.m.

Hi Tess, welcome! Look forward to your week 3 poem!
Vanessa Gennarelli Aug. 5, 2011, 8:22 a.m.

Hope you're all thinking of your poems! Look forward to reading them on Sunday.
Vanessa Gennarelli Aug. 1, 2011, 7:38 a.m.

Time to introduce ourselves! By Sunday, August 7th please post your introduction and poem in this task.

Hi all, Vanessa, poetry facilitator here. I like learning and I like the web. I develop open-source textbooks for Flat World Knowledge. I just published a chapbook called Creation Mutes, and I'm in the process of moving from Philadelphia to Boston to study education and technology. I look forward to learning with and from you all!

Just wanted to make sure everyone's read through Start of Course: Rules of Thumb. Any suggestions or questions about format and structure should be posted there.

One poem I've been rereading every since it published in Poetry Magazine is "Two Times I Love you Most in a Car." I'm haunted by the delicacy of it, the nonsequitir groupings of subject matter, the jazzy voice and the severity of the closing words. Rereading it, the poem is quite heavy on the "like" comparisons, but that's something I notice visually far more than sonically.

The Two Times I Loved You the Most In a Car

BY DOROTHEA GROSSMAN

It was your idea

to park and watch the elephants

swaying among the trees

like royalty

at that make-believe safari

near Laguna.

I didn’t know anything that big

could be so quiet.

And once, you stopped

on a dark desert road

to show me the stars

climbing over each other

riotously

like insects

like an orchestra

thrashing its way

through time itself

I never saw light that way

again.
MichaelScott Aug. 2, 2011, 3:23 p.m.
In Reply To: Vanessa Gennarelli Aug. 1, 2011, 7:38 a.m.

Hi,

I'm Michael from Swindon in the UK, I am a writer and poet and recently published a chapbook called 'Sick of Ape'. My poetry comes from perspectives formed in addiction treatment and time spent living in the Andes of Peru. My favourite poems say something authentic about the poet, and make me think twice (or maybe three times). I am currently trying to write a memoir, so 'Breaking the Rules' is an ideal displacement activity.

The poem I have selected is h ere on the marvellous Poetry Foundation website,

Here it is with my comments;

Sunder

BY ATSURO RILEY

A last rock-skip hurlstorm (crazing river-glass)

the closest they ever were.

•

In right lockstitch

snared and split some fire-supper cooked on sticks.

•

By dawn the older brother took to chucking

what bottle-frags he could find and crud-oysters across.

The (high-pitched) younger blacked our waters

with a yowl.

•

Lord the sound such as rose from him

carried so—

Carved

into us. Clings.

•

Hadn’t they clung tooth and claw to branch and bark.

—Came a man (and truck) to take them off.

•

Dieseled those boys off

away

some say somewheres upcountry,

inland.

•

Where it was they landed (why) nobody not them knows.

•

No body not them knows

just how they humped and grubbled home

what road they’d graved what woods criss-crossed

which creeks which trains they’d hopped who helped.

•

Came safe home sure        but blank as houses.

Came safe home       —as him  —and him.

—as (evermore) not them.

This poem forces me to to fill the gaps, the title and last line allude to something happening that Riley chooses not to tell. Sunder is an interesting word both to start the poem and then reflect back at the end.

A dictionary definition is : to break apart or in two : separate by or as if by violence or by intervening time or space

From the start we know it's not a straightforward or happy poem. Riley uses some stark language

'dieseled those boys off'

together with an implied bigger story (local legend?)

'some say ...'.

Riley is a master of unusual sonic and juxtapositions and this poem is no exception.

In right lockstitch

snared and split some fire-supper cooked on sticks.

shows that Riley can achieve great images without the use of some of his more obscure language.

The final stanza is white hot with questions that Riley won't help us by answering, he doesn't need to, he's set up the images and the situation in my head.

Came safe home sure        but blank as houses.

Came safe home       —as him  —and him.

—as (evermore) not them.

What has blanked them?

What is so terrible to be (evermore) not them?

That's a bit more than a couple of sentences about this poem, sorry I get carried away soemtimes.

Michael
Vanessa Gennarelli Aug. 5, 2011, 1:08 p.m.
In Reply To: MichaelScott Aug. 2, 2011, 3:23 p.m.

Michael--I think you're totally right about filling in the gaps of this poem. What strikes me is its balance, how it's spaced mysteriously and delicately on the page versus its violence--snared, spit, branch, bark. The poem has hollows and I think you found them. Thank you for introducing me to Riley!
AJC July 24, 2011, 10:58 p.m.

Poetry has always intimidated me. I'm among those who don't have enough confidence to make it, but I love it, especially listening to it. Hearing it, for me anyways, has always been the key to accessing it. Things don't speak to me very well on paper, so I'm excited to participate in this workshop to break that barrier!

Mexican ranchera music is one of my favorite forms of poetry. It is sung with such conviction and emotion, I cannot help being moved. I know so many ranchera songs and each's meaning so intimately in a language I otherwise cannot even speak. I can recite many verbatim, but know no other Spanish. Crazy, right?

Here is a song by Chavela Vargas, a legend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X_kmBna2g8

My interpretation in English:

Soledad,
it was a starless night
when you left me
so much sorrow and so much evil

Soledad, only loneliness
from the day you left
in the village there is only utter silence

Soledad, the creeks are dry,
on the streets a thousand echoes unceasingly cry
Soledad, return again

Soledad, return again..
to hide away with your music,
in a mourning gown forever,
that deafens my sun.
Vanessa Gennarelli July 25, 2011, 3:31 p.m.
In Reply To: AJC July 24, 2011, 10:58 p.m.

"That deafens my sun." Wow. I love the piece itself, and the fact that I'd never heard of ranchera music before. Apparently rancheras are usually about "love, patriotism and nature"--tall order. Thank you for sharing, Alison, and exposing us to rancheras!
AJC July 26, 2011, 12:13 a.m.
In Reply To: Vanessa Gennarelli July 25, 2011, 3:31 p.m.

For me finding weaknesses in ranchera is within my own inability to translate well. Google translate does some real enlightening and some real damage at the same time. Usually I follow the translations as I listen to the emotions inthe singer. From those cues, I can usually fill in the blanks quite "poetically".