Companionship

 David and Gilda had been living in the same two bedroom home for the last five years. Of those five years they had been married for four of them, kept two cats for three of them, and been miserable in each others company for five of them. They both worked during the day and spent their evenings together entertaining themselves in the usual way.

It was David's turn to cook supper and, like every night before, he made it from a can. Tonight would be a chicken barley night. David poured the broth into a pot and set it heat with his cigarette lighter. Last week Gilda had thrown out the bills along with David's mail. They were now embroiled in a protracted game of chicken over who would be the first pay to turn the utilities back on. The still-cold soup was served in the dining room by candle light, a candle Gilda has used not minutes ago to pour wax into the pockets of David's favorite pair of jeans, and the couple ate in silence.

With supper over they settled into the living room and sat together on the couch. A communal seat had long since been considered much safer then any chair they might favor alone. Tacks, various liquids, and dead vermin had a way of finding rest there. The candle also made the journey from the dining room. Both David and Gilda had taken up reading in front of their silent television set, the candle in it's holder nestled somewhere between them threatening to burn clothes, paper, and skin alike. Neither of them could think of a way to make their time together more pleasant.

When the light finally ran down they both retired to their separate bed rooms. They had tried sleeping together but found that waiting for the other to strike made it more trouble then it was worth. So Gilda side stepped the safety pins lying in the floor next to her bed and David flipped his mattress to avoid the unknown stain left on his sheets. Apart they drifted into slumber, thinking about when the water would be turned off and just how much the other would suffer for it.

Wreckage of Response

New York/LA Whirlwind Romance by Karen Lilis

Told entirely through quotations from one side of a long distance relationship, this particular story struck me because I only know the majority of my friends I know only through the internet and have never met in person. I've often thought about how great it would be to see them all but have never really considered the flip side; what if your relationship soured when you met someone in person? The couple in this story appear to be very in love, perfect for each other, until they actually meet. In the course of one trip the negative aspects that were either ignored or never apparent come out and the entire relationship falls apart." 'Let me tell you something about MEN: they don't like Women who're too needy.' ... 'Maybe then you won't compulsively talk about your problems' ... 'You wouldn't want us to be too SERIOUS about this would you?' ... 'I get accused of having no feeling.' ... 'I'm actually a really incredible guy.' ... 'Yeah, I'll talk to you sometime.' ". The complete breakdown of barriers that occurs when the couple have finally met, and the revelation of the mans ugly side is striking. He appears almost a different person from before, who was counting the days til they could be together.

Fiction Packet Response

I was surprised, after having read several pieces, by the variety of work in this packet. I can't explain why; the amount of short stories tackling a wide variety of subjects from different angles, with different voices and tones must be innumerable. None the less I found myself thinking "I didn't expect this" and neither did I expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I want to take a look at a few of my favorite pieces.

Hesitation

Landis was feeling hesitant

Deep, black and slothful

A hole that is every action

Swallowed by the emptiness of spirit

Landis twisted

This room this building

This place he knew in fractions

Stopped short of discovery

Landis rocked

Quaked at the encompassing

Bleak terror that welled

Well into the void time

Landis stopped

Landis started

In heaves and sputters

Inaction commited

Commemorates that history

Landis was quiet

Paced by mold

Growth inevitably

Laborious

Blood Dazzler Response

The biggest difference between Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith and the works we've read so far is that it contains a clear narrative following the hurricane Katrina striking New Orleans in 2005. The narrative style of the book and its concrete subject matter made it much easier to read. A timeline of events is formed, from Katrina's forming, evacuation, land fall, and aftermath of the disaster.

A majority of the poems in Blood Dazzler are written from the perspective of those involved, particularly the victims. The hardships of the survivors and the dead are written in stark detail leaving little to the imagination. Authority figures play a smaller part, showcasing mainly the apathy the government (and the president himself) seemed to have toward the disaster. The most interesting of the "characters" showcased was hurricane Katrina herself. I say herself due to Smith's anthropomorphizing of the hurricane into a very alive, very cruel woman.

Blood Dazzler is very dark and unforgiving in its subject matter, dealing with very disturbing truths of hurricane Katrina. Rape is mentioned several times, more so I believe then general violence. Victims left to die, particularly the 34 residents of St. Rita's Nursing Home and Ethel Freeman who died waiting for rescue. And again, there is a stark reminder of government apathy in the poem What To Tweak which features an email correspondence between a FEMA employee and Michael Brown, head of the agency. Brown's response of "thanks for the update" in reply to a very grim assessment of the situation paints a clear picture of how little anyone cared for the victims left in New Orleans.

Repose - After Ed Roberson's "The Counsel of Birds"

Consider the night owl
bird or man, whichever you like
that spends it's waking time in nocturnal hours
Life's little sanctuary

Bleak expanse broken
Electric view and hues
used by the waking
Tools to make it our own

Solitude is safety
and cherish it as such
Consider the night owl
Did it choose this for itself?

Give pause, thought
momentary sapience (of which all need)
the answer may be a surprise
Avian fells need not fly together

Sonnets

Deluge

Intruding here without a place

I found the souls alive within

And came not seeking affection's embrace

But in this space it were to begin

Through painful nights we clung close

Although bodies remained far away

Our minds did speak and found verbose

And in time our hearts would sway

There was no goal nor a set task

With which I began pursuit

But remain in your presence and there bask

Togetherness, for which, I became resolute

Romantics exalt, with prose and pen

All I cherish, my truest friend

City Eclogue Response

I noted several of my favorite poems while reading City Eclogue and figure the best way to respond is to examine what I enjoyed about them. In Sit In What City We're In (pg 26), Roberson describes the urban center "our hive grid as plumb as circles flanked into the insect hexagonals". Much, if not all, of the poems in this collection are concerned with, unsurprisingly enough, the city and typically urban decay. As such, the work is filled with stark descriptions of the city as seen by Roberson's mind's eye and I found those to be very engrossing and helped me to keep reading. Another of my favorite descriptions (pg 41) "The buildings stood, a bunch of garbage odd-sized barges lashed together between currents of the railroad and river,"

Roberson also writes on disparity, of economics and rights.On page 48, the passage "what kind of really bastard son wishes his father had won election to eradicate his sister for the fucker's birthday?" brings to mind, to me, politicians whose platforms are to keep away or abolish the rights of others. A few pages later (pg 55) we have "Get me a piece of that fall off the back of a truck first economy I can pick up like, Y' know, with the bootstraps!", a clear allusion to the idea held by the well to do that the poor and underprivileged simply aren't working hard enough, not that they are without opportunity. Finally, it'd be unfair to mention disparity without touching on racism, as Roberson does in the Open / Back Up (breadth of field) on page 88 "...lost in midst of the security of local mounted police. Black people get stopped regularly to show they have university I.D.".  The passage calls to most clearly to mind the civil rights movement, first blows to racial bigotry.

Lastly, there was a certain poem I liked, Escape Training: Instructor's Flying Rappel on page 121. It begins "I jump backwards off the cliff to show how it's done:" and ends "This is an emergency maneuver done right it'll 've been music once it's sung. You can't hold a note forever you run out of breath you run". The poem is actually fairly clear from in its imagery, between the name and the verse, but by the last line it has me thinking of suicide. Perhaps the act of killing one's self can be though of as it's own "escape" or maybe it's just that the image of throwing yourself from a height has been so ingrained in my mind as self destructive.

Three as of yet Untitled Poems

She hobbles
wobbles
falls in the dead of night
AM hours
yells, shouts
no one awake to hear

Her days are spent
barely in control
one moment she's composed
on her feet
next are tears
sobs
great bawling moans

We can't help
we sit and think
she dies
we cannot bear it
she dies
we cannot bear IT

She is alone
She thinks death is her new life
She cannot bear it
We cannot bear her

-------------------

Fyi

I'm gonna start using this blog to upload the drafts of my poetry and short stories written for class (and maybe after too, who knows) since I have a few people that'd like to read them.

Poetry Response in Verse

A length of poetry was assigned
twenty pages give or take
I thought of how best to respond
now you're reading my mistake

Reginald Shepherd we read in class
and for him I've no more words
and of the few I didn't understand
the authors feelings I looked for

Three Japanese poems were
among those I liked the best
perhaps, interestingly enough,
they were clearer then the rest

Shakespeare and Ted Berrigan
I found unbearable
Dickinson and Mullen
were much more palatable

Langston Hughes I found I have
begun to appreciate and what's more
consideration has been given to
reading his work outside the classroom's door

Prose above verse has always been
my general inclination
this exercise perhaps shows why
for my verse is pedestrian

Writing Down the Bones

I've just finished the assigned reading Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, first half of our first assignment, and  I have to say it evoked some strong negative feelings in me. I quickly got tired of her cosmic point of view, quotes from her Zen master and, what I felt, was a somewhat presumptuous attitude toward how other people conduct themselves (particularly in the instance of the fat friend buying exercise books or the speculation on alcoholic writers).

With all the negativity I'd been building up squared away I can say that the advice was very good and much of it rung true with me and, as Goldberg says in the beginning of the book, can be applied to nearly any pursuit, not just writing (though I'll discuss it from that perspective). Writing what you know and love, learning not to censor yourself, practice, focusing on detail; all are just a few of the simple points we often forget to exercise.

I particularly liked the passage on artistic stability where she discusses the piles of notebooks, filled mostly with junk writing, and the neighbor who finds confidence through reading them. It's about recognizing your flaws and insecurities, coming to terms with them, and using them to make our writing that much better. I've spent time recently trying to deal with my flaws, particularly involving depression and low self esteem. Seeing that other people, my close friends and people I admire, have similar or even identical problems filled me with the confidence to believe I could overcome my own flaws. I hope to apply such lessons to my writing.

You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?

Hello and thank you for visiting my blogosphere super web log write space on the Net (tm). I'm Richard Hardy, a senior Computer Science major at Eastern Michigan University and this is where I'll be posting writing responses to my Introduction to Creative Writing assignments.