Classmate Reponse: Hannah Ross

Little Ghost
Why do you hide from me?
I feel your cold touch
I see your spector shadow
Across my walls as I sleep
I know you are there
So why do you not reveal yourself?
Soon people shall think I have gone mad,
And lock me away for fear that
I may begin too see more 'invisible beings'
So please, Show yourself, and do join me for tea <3

In response to Hannah Ross’s poem “Little Ghost”, I really enjoyed the simplicity of this poem. At the beginning of the poem, the ghost I first pictured was something along the lines of a cartoon ghost, and as the poem progressed, it seemed to me as if your ghost was a little child. The way you describe that you will be locked away for fear of seeing more of the invisible beings, intrigued me because you put it in a real life situation. I feel that maybe you could expand more on the little ghost, for example does he scare you at night? In what ways, if any, is the ghost trying to get your attention? Giving the ghost a dynamic character I feel would add to the “air of mystery” to your poem. Your line “so please, Show yourself, and do join me for tea <3”, is probably my favorite out the poem, because even though you acknowledge that people will probably think that you are crazy for seeing “invisible things” you still want to see this ghost, you still want to get to know him. I feel that maybe you could add to the ending a little bit more, maybe by stating the reason why you want to see him. I thought this poem was awesome!

Reading Response

Buyer’s Remorse by Charles Harper Webb intrigued me the first time I read it. This poem is stating my feelings that all people have. Everyone is unsatisfied. There is a little bit of doubt in decisions that are made. He brings this issue to light in a manner that is easy to comprehend. The quote by Mary Oliver at the beginning helps to set the tone of the poem. The idea that Chad Davidson and Gregory Fraser have about the expansion-contraction process is really interesting. I do find myself while writing create a piece, then add more to it, and then take away even more. Most of my pieces tend to be a great amount shorter then when they first started. I enjoyed the prompts about question and response writing in order to gain more material and more ideas. I find that my best material comes by improv-ing and riffing from published lines. I like the idea of radical arrangement, kind of framing everything to the strongest piece in the overwrite. I enjoyed the idea of the creative erasure being a little bit prosy. The idea of form being able to exist in a freer give-and-take process intrigues me in the way that it is being presented in this book.

Reading Response

Upon first glance of reading BUDDHIST BARBIE by Denise Duhamel, I felt that I didn’t really understand what she was talking about. After rereading the poem and discussing it with a collection of my peers, I feel that I reached an understanding of the point that Denise is trying to get across not with just BUDDHIST BARBIE, but with the compilation of her poems in this section. What Denise is saying is that in the fifth century BC Siddhartha’s teachings were easier to understand for the people who were around him, but Barbie comes from capitalism and is everything that everyone wants her to be. She wants to understand what others are understanding, but with the way society has taught her to be, this task is very arduous for her. I enjoy the way that each one of Denise’s poems helps the reader understand the next poem. Her style of writing is thought provoking in a sense that she takes something such as a Barbie, which is almost universally known, and sheds it in a different light. She portrays Barbie as something that many people if they thought about it would see as well. Denise also portrays Barbie as something that is not just one dimensional. Barbie is caught up in what she is wanted to be and she’s trying to break free from those constraints.

Random impulses

All that is found in death is regression

Looking at photographs of the grave that dons my name forces me to recall the loss of those closest to me. As I drift back into the same physical world but on a different plane, the image that displays itself before me contains only two words: beloved daughter. Was I really that, or was I something to fear, to hate, to blame? Beloved meaning so much, but nothing at all. The grave near mine displays: beloved father and grandfather. I've never met William Broham in the physical world. How am I supposed to know that what is displayed is who he truly was? William could have been a Mohandus Ghandi or a Charles Manson. Those three words do not describe him, but merely shed light on one aspect of his life. As I watch people walk past my grave, trying to find their "loved" ones, I realize that my existence is only prolonged by the memories people keep of me. I was remembered for a while, but now as I look onto my grave and see weeds growing over my headstone, barely able to make out those two words now, everything that I did in this physical world seems so insignificant. I would have loved for my gravestone to have been blank, because words cannot define a person, all they do is confine them. When you die, what do you want those few words to say about you?







Haiku time, I don't have a title

Pondering present
Looking for glimpses of life
Everthing done

Junkyard quotes

It's a gloomy day for sunrises. -Kelly Johnson
When did my last hope become so crude? -Melissa Garcia
Life is a bitch because a hoe is too easay. -Unknown
Had to grab a lifeboat off that sinking ship. -Matthew Kelley
Words cannot describe who you are, they can only confine you to an idea. -Ken from the square

Classmate Reponse: Yeeva Cheng

My viola lies in its blue zippered case, surrounded by green felt and tucked in with a green velvet cloth, shoved under my bed to gather dust.  The music is stuck in the side pocket, along with Bach’s Gigue, Suite Number Two in D.  That was the last piece I played at my last recital last spring.  It was by no means the perfect ending; I had botched the next-to-last chords, leaving a discordant cacophony that reverberated in the church’s sanctuary.  On most days, I probably would have been frustrated, thinking only about the hours of practicing and listening to recordings of the piece, trying to match it.  But for some reason, I was unfazed by it; I only pretended to look broken when my orchestra teacher past by and reassuringly patted me on the shoulder.  A pseudo-sad smile covered up the “sorry-my-give-a-damn’s-broken” attitude. 

It had been two years of not playing when I finally opened up the case last fall.  I shouldered it, balanced the bow across the strings and tediously practiced my scales, just as I had done over and over again two years before. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeeva Cheng’s Musical Afterthoughts is a very interesting one. The detail that she used is very concise and to the point. My favorite line is “surrounded by green felt and tucked in with a green velvet cloth, shoved under my bed to gather dust”. With that line I have a clear picture in my head as to the way her viola looks surrounded by its case. Upon reading this piece a second time, I felt that I understood more as to what she is describing and the way that she is feeling. When I first read the line, “a pseudo-sad smile covered up the ‘sorry my-give-a-damn’s broken’ attitude”, I wasn’t quite sure whether she was referring to her mess up as not giving a damn or whether  that line was referring to her not giving a damn that her orchestra teacher tried to comfort her. I enjoyed reading about the separation she experienced with her viola and after two years coming back to the viola; it was almost as if, to her, time had not passed.  Her piece could be lengthened a little bit more, maybe by giving the piece more of a background or expanding upon what happened after she had started playing it again.

Random impulses

Professor Ellison said that we could, for this week only, post poems that we had previously written to show where we were coming from. These aren't super awesome. I wrote them a while back, but here they are:


1.
She never thought that she could love something or someone so much.
Never knew how much it would hurt.
She never thought that she would get an abortion until faced with the situation.
Never even dreamed she would get pregnant her first time.
Everything was great until they broke up.
She didn't realize she was pregnant until she lost the baby.
With no one to confide in, not her mother, not the baby's father, she told he sister who went through the same thing.
It ate her up inside, she didn't know what to do.
She never thought she could love something or someone so much.
Never knew how much it would hurt.


2.
I hear it calling out to me from everywhere.
No, I tell myself.
Don't listen.
Don't obey.
The more it calls out to me, the harder it is to resist.
After toying with the idea, I finally give in.
Later, I wish I hadn't, knowing I can't take it back.
Will there ever be a cure for this addiction?


Once again, I wrote these a good time ago. The first poem is about what one of my really good friends went through at the midpoint of the last year. The second poem was inspired by an episode of Intervention that I watched several years ago.

Junkyard quotes

1. Life would be so much easier if we were like Mr. Potato head and could trade parts. -Simone' Collins
2. Programming is like sex: one mistake and you're providing support for a lifetime. -Michael Sinz
3. It's easy to cry when you realize everyone you love will reject you or die. -unknown
4.It's the hardest to get soulmates together because they can't handle each other. -Robyn Robinson
5. Metaphysics says that the world is both immanent and transcendant. -Deepak Chopra