I Wish I Had A Blue Dog

I am so happy with the poems we have been reading so far this semester. Just had to say it.

In the poems having to do with nightmare magic, I found that my favorites were those that had one magical element that was kept throughout the story. Having only one mystical element left no space for confusion, but most importantly it allowed me to grow close to the element; I felt empathetic towards many of the creatures.

Rachel McKibben's section of Three Wishes-- A Blue Dog-- filled me with emotions. Mainly bad ones. Part of why this worked so well was because of the way the reader began to empathize with the dog as bits of it were ripped away. One can know that the poet has done a good job when the mystical being seems rather normal, when the humans seem animals for licking its fur and dismantling the poor animal's body.

Selachimorpha also was haunting. More so. There are so many horrid events, but at the same time I found myself in awe of the way light images were used throughout. For example: the salt, with sea shells, spilling teams of hermit crabs that scuttle across the floor, and more. Loving those images amongst the tragedy makes me hate myself a little. Maybe that is the point, maybe the little shark-boy hates himself too.

In both of these examples, it is the singularity and the story-telling that allows the mystical to become normal. I seem to find that the more powerful of the two, at least, it is those poems that tug at me a bit more than the others. A single story allows for an intimacy with the character that might be lost if a poem becomes too busy.

On Selachimorpha by Rachel McKibbens

I usually keep my composure while reading poems, even when they're sad. This one made me burst into tears. The sequence of tragic events following the innocent opening words, "Billy, whose father sells firecrackers to kids from an ice cream truck," is an extremely sharp use of juxtaposition which kickstarts a kick-ass poem.

The magic in this poem lies in not only the multiple supernatural occurrences, but in their placement in the story, one happening after the next. When you think it can't get any worse, boy were you wrong.

"When they burn your house down, you stand in the front yard to watch with the neighbors."

The worst part of a mental breakdown is how your sane self has to watch your insane self take over. You're standing there, next to everyone else, watching your own life crumble, as though you're not the one crumbling. Because you're not you. 

The magic in this poem, to me, is its ability to convey emotion truer than if its happenings weren't a lie. There is no girl-shaped puddle of salt water all dressed up. There are no hermit crabs scuttling out from your mother's head. Kids at school did not cut gills into your torso, and you did not turn into a shark. But to anyone who was ever raped, harassed, abused, bullied, depressed, or experienced any kind of dark emotion that resonates with this poem, all that these supernatural events convey is true. The emotion is natural, and thus, the natural is brought forth, out of the unnatural.

Week 5 blog post

The nightmare poems are able to manipulate time by using few transitions. This allows the reader to move throughout the poem, knowing in their minds that the big changes in topic are changes in time. For example, in the poem, Ten More Wishes, there are no transitions between the sentences, forcing the reader to create time and space transitions on their own. In the poem, A Blue Dog, there is only one overarching magical element. Although other magical things occurred in the poem, the dog appearing in the backyard was the start of the magic and directed the rest of the magic. I feel like I experienced the magic as stronger when there is only one magical element because then I can follow its development throughout the poem. It confuses me when there are too many magical elements because I cannot grasp what is really going on in the poem. It makes the poem feel like a mosh pit.

Week 5: Connections

As I read the nightmare poems and thought about warped space and time, I realized that the manipulations that make those poems magical and disturbing are ceating new connections. The (Soma)tic exercises are very different from the nightmare poems in many ways, but those also create this sort of magic between seemingly unrelated objects. In Aphrodisios there are the penny and the orange juice, love and poverty. In You In Your Soup there is the idea of food becoming the consumer.

In Lucky You the voice "you" makes all sorts of connections in its panic/fear/confusion: "no plankton swim in" when you are suddenly underwater in shock; the "huge black HA HA HA's" in the sky; the grave robbers. The connections that made all these relevant are what felt most magical and strange. In reality more things are closely connected than we usually note, but it would seem that magic unearths hidden connections and forms new ones.

Week 5- magic in a distorted reality

Unfortunately we have to write our blog post without any class discussion. We do not get to hear the thoughts about the poems from the perspective of our peers. The poems this week were really interesting to me. Two that really stood out were "The Session" and "The Principles of Magic". It could be because last week I attended a meeting about the stigmas of mental health and disorders. The dialogue that occurred there seemed to be slightly related to this particular readings.

"The Session" appears to be a dialogue between a man and his therapist. It seems like he is suffering from trauma and he has yet to face the situation head on. The therapist seems to be attempting to get him out of this "fantasy world". When you think about magic in a real world sense, it is a different dimension of reality. This man appeared to be talking in circles about himself and children, while the therapist was trying to talk "sense" into him. This poem reminds me of Peter Pan and the kids went to Never Never Land. They knew about their experiences, but when we they came back to reality other people thought they were crazy. The man in the poem was misunderstood by others so it made him appear as an outcast or "psycho". That feeling of being outcast has a negative effect and could very well lead to suicide. This poem to me shows how we should watch how we treat people, including our facial expressions and body language to certain ideas they may have.    

Poems this Week

My blog this week is not so much about one particular poem or line but rather at what reading these poems have done for my understanding of the world of poetry. I find poems that I am not able to extract a meaning to be the most interesting because they appear to be some challenging word problem in math that I feel more satisfied when I am able to achieve it. Additionally, I really enjoy poems that seem like they combine many different sentences that have no correlation to each other. When I read those types of poems, I smile and shrug because I have no clue as to what the author is saying. However, upon second, third, and fourth read I am able to distinguish a few of the lines and still find the poem as funny as I did before. The comedy of a poem is best achieved through simplicity. I feel when a poet tries too hard to be funny when writing, the poem is not funny whatsoever. In poetry, I believe a lack of effort contributes more than thinking. Perhaps this is why poetry is considered the freedom of thought...

I Object

The use of everyday objects in poetry is becoming more intriguing to me. It has been becoming so because everything is relative. Relative to a person is often how we make it. By this I mean like in The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams,

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

the "so much" refers to people. Poetry involving everyday objects captures how the object related and/or was through the eyes of a certain person. Whenever we read a poem about an object, we make the author's view into our own, and it is thus two times distorted. Im beginning to realized how different each vision is, how people can see the same thing but entirely different worlds; this is why such object-poems are important.

Conrad's "The Right To Manifest Manifesto" started well with the title and only got better. I agree that, especially when it comes to poetry, but often in many aspects of life, we see everything for the impact it has on our own lives. Even the things we don't take notice to pertain to what they mean in our own lives. Which is why I love Conrad; if anything affects us, why are we not writing about it? Dirt, pesticides, storms, grocery stores, garbage (although garbage is a science--I won't dwell in on that)--they are left alone too often, because of our own ignorance. But they do have meaning in relation to people; it is a job as poets to take notice and discover those relations.