Poem for peer review

Water Rafting

A waterfall G and the boat B

represent the system that will take you down the river

the alligator H watches open mouthed

prompting you to smack your oar C and yell "pura vida" 

The system depends on the guide D, but you depend on your family

E 

From the fall I to the duck J to the watch K

the instructions are clear

the red L must follow

without sun F, there is no chance, no flow

of water A

d (e (g+b > h x c) + (i+j+k) - l + fa)

The experience is your own, represented by letters 

in an equation that is dependent on you alone. 

"I didn't seem possible. Yet neither did her mind's complete extinction."

As far as science can tell, that lump of tissue had held the series of connections and feelings, associations and impressions, that had been this woman. But where was her mind now? When we had first unwrapped the formalin-soaked cloth covering her hands, we'd found our cadaver's fingernails still wore a perfect coat of light purple polish. Did this woman's taste for lavender survive the death of her body? Was it contained in the brain I now held, frozen there? I didn't seem possible. Yet neither did her mind's complete extinction. Did her loves and disappointments and memories exist somewhere still, or had they died when her body did?

As I mentioned in class, the nail polish in the Cadaver, Speak poems stood out to me. This is the passage from Shannon Moffett's book The Three-Pound Enigma that I was thinking of when I read those poems. I find it highly relevant to our conversation about where/what it was of the Cadaver that could speak beyond death.

"Where Do We Go From Here"- workshop poem

Where Do We Go From Here?

What have I done to you? To us?

I let you down and lost your trust.

Over some foolishness, a bad day, and a few curse words

We let go years of joy, tears, sorrow like flying birds.

The true enemy is not you, me, us

I honestly think it’s behind my lust.

Who really knew pride was this dangerous

It’s like a new virus, simply contagious.

With this here pride,

We don’t ask for forgiveness,

And worse we forgive and not forget.

So here we stand,

Feeling canned.

I failed you,

As your man.

There lies the power of our love.

We’ll stand here forever,

But never walk away.

“I’ve known you for years,

I know what you’re thinking,

C’mon just say it.”

“You’ve known me for years,

You know I can read your mind,

Like a book…You’re in the wrong.”

So here they are,

Both afraid to speak.

Suffering from the same scar,

While their knees get weak.

The sun finally falls,

You know what,

I think I’ll call.

Irreplaceable

IT IS A STRUGGLE, trying to revamp Marianne Boruch's Cadaver, Speak, that is. Monica and I had picked (well, actually I think I just told Monica which one we were doing, sorry Monica) #14. At first because of its short size and seeming lack of complexity, I thought it would easiest to reciprocate. But I wanted all of her words.

Her first line is Love. It isn't what / I want. I was still thinking, this will be great, just pick what should be there, it will not be too difficult. Love, I thought. Oh wait, silly me, that is already there. Love. No. Love. Why can I not think of anything else? It was a puzzle piece I kept trying to jam into the same spot. Insanity, they call it, is repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different result. 

But the puzzle piece fit perfectly there. Her words fit perfectly. Why would I jam something else in its place? Part of why Marianne's poetry is so good is because each word has a purpose, each word was deliberated over, and proved itself worthy in being there. That is something I will think of in revising my poems, because each word should try to be irreplaceable. 

Payton's Poem

Potion To Turn Back Time:

1.         Give ½ a care more about life,

½ less depending on destination

2.         Learn to walk

3.         Forget how to speak

4.         Take 3 hours to build a sand castle.

5.         Destroy with a team of blonde Barbies,

            4 high heels not afraid of dirt

6.         Ride a red bicycle (Add ribbons to handlebars

            as desired)

7.         As you ride, eat a 2 scoop ice cream cone,

            let the blue and red of Superman drip across

forearms, stick to elbows. Let yourself fly.

8.         Try not to be too devastated when you drop it.

9.         Paint with blue fingers, even if you have brushes.

            Scatter 5 smudges on surfaces Mom is sure to see.

10.       Want to be the man your Dad is (Repeat)

11.       Cry when something hurts

12.       Run for the love of sweat

13.       Read books, even in secret

14.       Admire the girls dressed

in slightly pinker confidence.

15.       Write

16.       Do not harbor dreams. Let your boat swim in turbulent

lilac tangerine waters. Be odd.

Celebrate it often.

            6 manatees wearing bikinis sunbathe in your glow.

17.       Write

18.       Refuse to grow up

Poem for Workshop

Ode on a Maize & Blue Pen

It is my pen- for now.

I could drop it, and tomorrow it could be somebody else’s

A professor, perhaps

Another student, to scribble the opening lines to his later-to-become award-winning novel

My pen came to me free

dual-colored

and served as an advertisement, a promotion for the university-

You can engrave anything in a plastic pen and it won’t wear away.

Same goes for the ink it produces- it can stain a page for decades

Everything about the pen seems to be permanent:

It could be the last man-made item left on this Earth- what would it say about humanity?

There are multiple parts to the pen’s construction; I could tear it apart if I wanted

It clicks when my mind clicks

And yet I might loan it to a friend and forget about it,

As it is just as easily replaceable.

Hannah Poem

Beatrice & Ivy

There is a ghost,

she calls herself Chapstick because that is the only physical thing

her body does not pass on through

and no one seems to bother about giving ghosts legal names.

Beatrice has a letter flag banner on the door of room 936

this means she is semi-permanent.

When the lights in the half-real fish tank

switch to a lower setting

Beatrice pretends to be asleep.

Papa believes enough to rest.

It was November when the marks begun showing up on the tough patches

on the back of pediatric elbows.

They were faint at first, mostly

clear sparkles that rubbed away quickly

on white sheets or heather leather armchairs.

None of the marked even noticed

the slight stickiness.

Kei watching Cars, a reward for not whining disproportionately

about the vomit.

San sleeping for the first time in 40 hours.

Deepva sneezing in her dreams of pine trees.

Beatrice watching the hall from the triangle of visibility afforded by her “sleeping.”

The ghost found her first cylinder of Chapstick in a sterilized

unused corner of the waiting room.

Classic skin protectant/sunscreen spf 4.

Sealed for your protection, twist cap to break seal.

Apply liberally before sun exposure as needed

the ghost did not suppose that she would “as needed” very much, but

active ingredients Padimate 0 1.5% (of what?) Spearmint flavored, either white or green.

white petrolatum 44% the ring around the bottom

like the edge of metal money.

The ghost twisted cap to break seal,

holding it perfectly vertical, afraid it might spill.

The ghost knew that touching glitter was pointless

she had tried a few times when the Arts&Crafts Lady stepped into the bathroom

leaving bottles unprotected on the table.

It wasn't the presence of barely visible markings that drew Beatrice’s attention

rather a sudden onset of inexplicable interest in elbows.

Why couldn't they feel touch? how did they get strong?

The ghost knew (well, assumed) that there were no physical laws

limiting contact between Chapstick and glitter.

Beatrice first hypothesized that cancer made your elbows excrete glitter.

She soon observed the failure of this proposition due to overwhelming data suggesting this was not verifiably correct.

The first few marks were just a test. Could you affix glitter to the skin with Chapstick?

Mortal skin? Her shadow?

Beatrice didn't need to believe in ghosts.

The ghost didn't believe Chapstick was sticky enough.

but between attempts

the glitter that secretly hitched a ride on her

shadow left little thumb prints and heel marks

of ghost.

That is how the ghost got a name

Ivy

the name of a fairy in a tail woven by the mother of an almost gone girl.

The elbow marks had been subtle,

but nurses eventually noticed Ivy’s trail,

they called her Ivy, a 5 year old princess who lived in a castle made of zucchini bread

always left a trail of glitter in the wake of her tiara.

It was an unfit name

TayTay Poem

 The mirrors whisper. The four cornered demi-god feeds off the power she surrenders. Decadent murmurs distinguishable only by watering eyes. Salt water stains the glass. Narcissism rusts the frame, and an aroma of social pressures and disappointment begins to pervade, suffocating the vulnerable. Sour breath fogs the glass revealing fingerprints. It reflects her self-consciousness and echos crippling insecurity. It transforms her self-obsession into self-loathing. A daily ritual mutated into a sacrilegious sacrifice.

Black tar pumps throughout her arteries through her veins to the capillaries until they returned to the heart, making her breathing heavily with depression. When she is upset, her flaming hair ignites the cynical undertone of her conversation. Sometimes when she laughs with wholeheartedness, she appears to be on the verge of crying. Recently, she has been walking with the weight of unmet expectations wheezing down her freckled neck, and sits limply as if only being held up by loose strings.  I’ve witnessed her overdosing on her introversion until she’s drunk enough to join the creatures of the night.

Rahul Poem

Hi guys, since I my poem contains equations from Microsoft Editor, it was not compatible with blogger. However, I did send you all an email of the poem I would like you to edit for the peer revision on March 9th. Thanks so much!

On Marianne Boruch's "Cadaver, Speak"

There's an interesting outside viewpoint in this poem. Yes - it's in the point of view of one of the cadavers in the lab - but the ending presents an unexpected twist.

"Past tense of me, by the way, is she, a woman who lived," Boruch writes.

I read JM Coetzee's Disgrace last weekend and the concept of the soul stuck with me. The main character in Disgrace at one point mentions that Descartes (In Discourse on The Method) claimed that dogs' souls die with their bodies while the souls of humans live on. In Boruch's poem, the cadaver is separated from the previous owner of itself. Thus, the dead body is the present while she who lived in the body is the past. This is to suggest that the soul of the cadaver is somewhere else, where ever the 'she' is. Though the poem never asks, "Where is she?" I think that question is implied.

I think that giving a dead body a voice undeniably brings up the question of the soul: Is it eternal? If the soul is the mind as Descartes suggested, then does it die with the body?

Aside for these unanswerable yet thought-provoking questions the poem brings up, there is a distortion of emotion through language in this poem.

Consider the lines:

"Not a head,
a skull. Not an eye, an orbit"

The depersonalized words create a feeling of emotional distance. When we see that the med students refer to the eye as an orbit, we see their attempt to distance their consciences from the gruesome acts they're committing. They're using science and terminology to justify dissecting another human body. There are other lines throughout that exemplify this theme without making it so obvious by explaining it in the text. For example, these lines:

"I'm sorry to me
when her knife flashes wrong. I'm sorry,
so sweetly."

The juxtaposition between the word "knife" sandwiched between the two "sorries" is clearly intentional. It humanizes the cadavers while the med students attempt to dehumanize them. Then, ending with the word "sweetly" cuts deep. It shows the helplessness of the cadaver, victimizing and sensitizing her. Simple syntax and diction choices can evoke so much emotion, and I think Boruch masters the two in her poem "Cadaver, Speak."

Week 8 blog

Cadaver, Speak Analysis

I found this poem to be shockingly beautiful in Boruch's use of real life description of the cadavers juxtaposed with her own beliefs about her future and death. My favorite part of the poem is on page 15 when Boruch is describing the medical students taking the heart of a cadaver out of her body and playing with it. It is scary, the way that she watches silently as the students take her apart. She can see her lungs, noticing that they are uneven, but she "still there" breathing. I find this to be powerful imagery because I can picture her scared and alone, not being able to speak, while students are reaching inside of her body. 

Week 8: Shadows and Magnitudes

As an insider Holub is not always using language that is externally scientific, but there is a shadow of his scientific knowledge in the words he does use. In Vanishing Lung Syndrome, even when he writes about the raven Nevermore or a disconnected phone, with knowledge about the behavior of the syndrome these words make sense, they describe the science without being scientific.
In Heart Transplant his familiarity with the science changes the nature of the wonder that comes through in the poem. Having less wonder about the concepts or images themselves allows more space for wonder about the beauty in their execution. The drums of extracorporeal circulation / introduce / an inaudible / New World Symphony. and it makes sense.
In Cadaver, Speak there is more of a theme of making things personal in reaction to the structure of a cadaver lab. In 1 the passage about the lab coat, ending: "a refrain, months, weeks of / white lab coat bleached over and over to / human, faint stain at the cuff." and 15 when "My breath's still there, a breathing. / The last poor racket I made probably, dreadful / middle of the night." As a not-scientist Boruch is giving humanity to death.
These Cadaver poems are an interesting contrast with Hemophilia/Los Angles, the shadow of scientific knowledge takes the disease from individual level to a larger organism, the city. The structure of scientific patterns of vastly different magnitudes are often similar. This poem plays with that idea in a striking way.

Week 8

I was not able to attend class and join the discussion of the poems with the class, but through individual reading this is what I learned. From a few of the poems this week, they come off as sad and depressing as they deal with different mental issues. The poem "Teaching about Diseases" uses puppets to reach out to us. This is unique because when you think about puppets, you think of people who can not do much on their own. Instead they just simply go through the motions and that they do not have much control. The idea of mental issues is they they do consume you and take over you. It can be noticeable that you are going through tough times, but you are often ignored. In the line, "Chin up, shouts the puppet master" shows that you are conditioned to try to not even show and and act like everything is okay. This speaks to the treatment many people with mental disorders experience. They may need special care, but never receive it. The conclusion of the poem shows how when they die, its never due to the fact they did not get the treatment they were supposed to, but because "everyone eventually dies".

Cadaver Speak

I surprisingly enjoyed Marianne Boruch's Cadaver, Speak poem mainly because I am excited to hear what other people thought was going occurring. What I found very interesting was the aspect that the past few poems we have read during the science phase of the course have been corresponding to biology and in particular health related fields. Since I do not really enjoy biology, I was wondering if maybe there were a few physics and/or chemistry poems that we could discuss during class. The line that stuck out the most to me was "she pressed my aorta-the crack of hard plastic." I really liked this line because when one presses a heart, the sounds usually mentioned would be of the feeling of pressing a rubberish surface. However, the crack of hard plastic may correspond to the ribcage or some other bone that is shattered in the process. Maybe the crack is of the knife hitting the hard heart. I really liked the way the author used the character in the poem to display the everlasting rush that occurs during surgery. One of my biggest fears is waking up during a surgery and feeling everything because the anesthesia did not work, so this poem actually brought out emotions I wouldnt usually have.

Vanishing Ability to Use Words Correctly Syndrome

Reading Holub, an advantage poets may have when using science, as opposed to an only-science scientists, is control. Holub says in his essay that poets use words "as a means of ordering, controlling, and consolidating the uttered experience of which they are themselves the main part." Poets then get to make what they want of the science, whereas scientists may THINK that they themselves may not do that, because to do so would be unscientific.

I found myself unable to focus on Holub's poems first time around. Maybe I'll get 'em next time. I found myself caught on particular phrases, which may be a disease within itself. In Teaching About Diseases I liked the idea of puppets having diseases and also wearing boots. In Vanishing Lung Syndrome the final stanza was solid, "lost in a landscape / where only surgeons / write poems. I was brought back to the title and I'm not saying surgeons cannot be poets, but surely they are not the only ones and if poets are disappearing then poets are the lungs with which we BREATH. Which brings me back to the first stanza, a fantastic image and the whole idea is pretty much tied together nicely with a bow. Why does the science of this work? I think the science of this is cool, but it is the poetics of this poem that makes it worth anything.

Week 8: Immunologist as Poet

The mystery of communication leads to the phenomena of interpretation of the reader. In both science and poetry, there are interactions between words and ideas that give both the writer and reader intellectual freedom. The multifaceted meanings of words and phrases allocate a small or large space of personal interpretation. This gap can be intentional or it may be unintentional, either way it is almost inviolable. Yet, with these didactic thoughts, poetry evokes "parallel plays of feelings, thoughts interest" between the reader and the poet (Holub 56). The actual and potential readership triggers the response in the reader. The goal of a certain 'truth' is apparent in both science and poetry, yet the truth the reader interprets will always vary.


One of the poems by Holub that I enjoyed the most is "Teaching About Diseases." Angelman Syndrome is a neuro-genetic disorder that causes severe intellectual and developmental disabilities. It often causes seizures and sleep disturbances. This disorder is caused by deletion in chromosome 15, and it is called "Puppet Disease" because children with this disorder usually have a happier demeanor. Holub, does a play on words throughout the poem. The first stanza he states that it is "thread like," as if it was a physical puppet. He also describes the puppet to have mournful fur coats and huge ears. I am curious about who is to puppet master? Science or God?

Medicine in Poetry

After reading Holub's poems and views about poetry and science, I feel that I must agree with a few of the points made while at the same time disagree about some points. For example, Holub states that sciences bar all secondary factors associated with writing or speaking; and that they are based on a single logical meaning of the sentence or of the word. He goes on to say that poetry tries for as many interactions between words and thoughts as it can. While I do feel like science is a bit more systematic than poetry, I do feel that it also tries to connect thoughts every bit as much as poetry does. Different variables can correspond to different results that spur other thoughts that lead to other experiments. One aspect I do agree with is that poetry is often more controversial than science in that it spurs thoughts of emotion in individuals, while I feel like in science this is extremely limited.

Additionally, I am a strong advocate of very unconventional lines in poems. One of the lines that made me chuckle was "Diarrhea is like intellectual melancholy". At first I found it to be disgusting, but once I extracted (get it?) what the writer was trying to say, I feel like intellectual melancholy is essentially the breakup of similar thoughts that are not connected. Holub uses a lot of poems involving medicine, a trend I found to be very interesting and hope we will discuss in class on Monday.

Science is Fun!

After reading the poems today in class, and conducting our own experiment with mathematics and symbols in poems, I think I am definitely gaining a greater appreciation for the use of science and poetry. I enjoy certain scientific concepts such as physics and chemistry but I tend to find astronomy and biology very boring. The experiment we used today really brought together my idea of magic and science in poetry. Since I used mathematical symbols to create a poem, I was getting in touch with my passion for math but at the same time the way in which I used the symbols was a form of magic. My poem was inspired by 26 points to specify but took a different approach because I felt the reader should be able to discover what I am speaking about without me blatantly stating it. I am beginning to feel a stronger connection for poetry, which I never deemed possible at the start of the course.