So about that book… that I uh… ‘borrowed’.

Just kidding, it will be put back safe and sound next week (most likely).

You see here, Maria Lima is my adviser — and never have I ever had a meeting on time with her. This is a fortunate thing, because it allows me to browse the Welles/English Department library. I always noticed the books on the shelf, but never actually got up to take one down. This past Wednesday was different. I found an April 2016 Poetry Magazine — and started reading. The poetry was extremely refreshing. I want to talk specifically about my favorite poem in the magazine, which I am pasting below.

Maybe I’m just not that argumentative, but argument(/persuasion?) never occurred to me as a motivation for writing poetry before. Well, that’s not entirely true. I think we’re all always trying to argue, if not justify our or our speakers’ point of view, emotions, and experiences. Articulation is what I always thought the ultimate goal of poetry was, not that an argument can’t be articulated (that may be the only thing an argument can be).  It’s up to the reader to let my words in, where as arguments command entry. Arguments came to me as secondary to the content, probably because I thought of arguments as content. But, now looking to things like Through and sonnets, I think of arguments as a form that works beside the content rather than behind it.

All this ties into our discussions of politics. I think politics boils down to interaction of ideas using people as the medium. Ideas only matter if we share them, after all. But I’m not so sure the people part is so necessary. It may be more akin to the interaction of ideas through language. In that sense, poetry is just an interface for ideas to collide as much as presidential debates or dinner tables.

That being said: if arguments are a form, then politics dominate content even if they lack content.

Politics still scares me some, though. Mostly in the sense that politics (more so than general arguments) is rhetorical/can be refuted and that there’s more to the world than language. Feelings can’t really be refuted and language is only a tool for description. Language is more like a container than its contents. Rhetoric scares me. Rhetoric is using language for language’s sake; it takes a step past interaction into the realm of persuasion. I don’t really want to change anyone’s mind. Politics is such a weak force compared to experience. So, I’d rather deal in experiences. Language interests me insofar as it communicates experiences, not so much in the ways we use it. I’m still interested in politics because of its ubiquity, but I can’t see it as anything beyond a means to an end. Language is such a funny thing, still; it’s the best way we have to communicate ideas, but by that same token its the very thing that muddies ideas. We’d be perfectly articulate without the need for language, but we need it and we have to deal with it.

This one was felt like it really rambled, but maybe that helped my argument in a hyperbolic sort of sense?

Thanks for reading.

As a black women, it is impossible for me not to think of my body as inherently making a statement. It takes up space and receives judgement, whether it be good or bad. It’s really hard for me to voice the feelings that society has given me about my body into a poem. I feel like in conversation because my thoughts are so scattered on the topic, it is easier for me to articulate myself because a conversation is more fluid. With a poem, I feel like my thoughts have to be more fleshed out and specific. The words have to be more exact because I can’t really explain myself more if all people have to go off is the poem and nothing more. I am always hesitant to write a politically charged poem because I don’t think my message will come off exactly the way I want it to and these are topics that I don’t want their to be any confusion on my intent.

In light of midterms coming up, I’ve noticed a very strong political undercurrent, the likes I have never witnessed before. Of course I’ve seen it during 2008 (age 10) , 2012 (age 14), and 2016 (age 18), but I’ve never seen this high stakes fervor in the midterms. I don’t intend to go in depth about the state of politics in our country, which I can happily discuss in person or in a message conversation. I’m intending to write about how this impacts me as a writer, and how I mused about this as I was writing the poem for my writing assignment.

Continue reading “Midterms (no, not the exams)”

As time progresses and I begin to reach the middle of my Fall semester of my Senior year, a million thoughts began to run through my head. The one thought I have that has been pretty prominent, is what I want to accomplish when I graduate, and where my degree can take me.

I started this process by going back and looking at the first poems I have ever written. In doing so,  I realized how much my writing has improved. My old writing isn’t necessarily bad, but it definitely is not good. Seeing this improvement made me realize that my writing can only improve in the future.

I was always concerned that I would not be a good writer, and who is to say that I am right now. Seeing my improvement has given me the confidence that my journey as a poet is blossoming and improving every day.

With that fact in mind, seeing my improvements has given me the courage to apply for my MFA. I am currently looking into different programs that I believe will best suit me. Part of being a successful writer is confidence, but it is not grown over night.

In middle school and high school, my two self-proclaimed favorite bands were Guster and CAKE. I didn’t know why I appreciated these bands, exactly, but along with the “alternative” likes of Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, Sufjan Stevens, and the Weepies, they did something to my adolescent mind. Something I liked, something that quickly released dopamine through my brain cells to create contentment and relaxation. Part of it was that these bands reminded me of my older sisters, who would play their music. But once I decided I liked the music for its own sake, there was a reason behind it.

Continue reading ““Ramona” by Guster: a desire for intimacy”

Literature cannot exist in a vacuum. Everything which is written and put out into the world is a product of a history of other works; it comments on, and is shaped by the culture and context which created. I’ve been thinking about this more than usual after David Herd’s visit. Through is grounded in a place, in a context. Herd saw something happening in the world which demanded to be recognized, recorded, and he felt the need to do what he could to bring it to light through his work. We talked with him in class about what we, as poets have the right to write about. By the end of his visit, after hearing him read and speak to the work he has done on Refugee Tales, it became clear to me it was less about a right, but about a responsibility to say what is difficult. Continue reading “What we have the right to (ekphrasis, epigraphs, artistic responsibility…)”

After reading David Herd’s Through, as well as having time to talk with him in our class, and finally getting to hear him read in Doty, I went home thinking about the ways language is fluid. Herd talked to us about how a Prime Minister in England had hoped to treat the issue of illegal immigration with hostility. And although I’ve forgotten the woman’s name who served as Prime Minister, and her words here are paraphrased simply from Herd himself, Herd seemed to take issue with term hostile. And reasonably so, I suppose, as you’d hope that a leader of a nation would want to treat people in their country with hospitality, rather than hostility.

Through, then, seems like Herd’s way to counter this movement of hostile language, or perhaps to counter the disregard of the weight of language. I don’t want to get too political, but in watching Donald Trump’s campaign and eventual presidency, I noticed, as I’m sure much of the world did, that he’d altered expectations regarding the lexicon in debates, speeches, and interviews for a presidential candidate. He’s mocked a disabled reporter, referred to his opponent as a “nasty woman,” he insulted ABC News reporter Cecilia Vega more recently by stating that she’s “not thinking. You never do.” So while you may be in support of his presidency or against it, I think it’s clear to everyone that Trump has taken liberties with language as the POTUS, in a very public and informal manner, that’s unprecedented.

Through doesn’t comment on the Trump administration, to my knowledge, but I think many of the issues Herd speaks to, which are largely in regards to the U.K., are relevant here in the U.S. Whether we like it or not, language will remain fluid and the battle that Herd is participating in might never come to an end.

Next semester, I have decided to branch out. Well not really, my main motivation behind that decision is because I almost, basically have to. With the rule that you cannot take three of the same genre workshops in a row, without a directed study or whatever the fine print is… I found myself struggling in filling out my application. All I have ever written is poetry. However, my poetry is all Creative Non-Fiction.

With this in mind, I set out to apply to the CNF track (fiction was an absolute lost cause…). I emailed Lytton in a panic, per usual, and he assured me in my choice of this endeavor. My poetry literally is CNF… I just had to omit the line breaks, add more of a theme, and string together some sentences… easy enough, right?

I sat down, with a blank word document, thinking about what to write about. I had a few things in mind, and of course my train of thought always conducts itself onto my family… which is fine because my family, specifically my dad, is my muse anyway. So I wrote about a very specific incident in my family’s life, and I just kept writing and writing, until after ten pages, it was ‘done’.

I was proud of myself for doing this, and it was so satisfying to complete this application. The writing however, was not just the ‘string together a couple of sentences’ mantra that I originally thought. Obviously, it was much more than that. Trying to recall the specific details, and thinking of ways to phrase the syntax of my sentences was an interesting feat. Usually in poetry, if I’m stuck, I just make my diction more concise by taking out small words — those of which that don’t matter in poetry such as ‘of, it, my, the’ … but in CNF — you can’t really do that. So, the ‘cut your darlings’ technique — my go-to — was not as reliable this time around for the sake of literal grammar, which doesn’t apply in my usual genre. My style of writing was also more scenic, rather than abstract and imagined — as it should be. So, again, it was a different experience overall, but I do indeed feel accomplished.

I asked for feedback on my piece, from a trusted friend, and after taking their critiques into consideration, I was ready to submit my application. I even wrote a small note on my cover sheet, saying “I already took poetry twice, time for a new genre” with a smiley face. I was nervous I wouldn’t get in, so I felt this need to debrief and defend myself in a weird way. But no worries, a few days later, I found out that I indeed made it into the track!

Now that I am admitted into a CNF workshop I have NO IDEA what to expect. But, I sure am excited.

Julia xoxo

Last week in class, I brought in a drawing of a bicycle as a symbol of my experience in reading David Herd’s Through. (I thought about bringing in a bicycle but I don’t have one, and also that seems like a drag.)

The bicycle seems like an apt symbol for me as, evidenced by the title, movement is vital to Herd’s book. Within Through, Herd moves through a lot of things: time, space, borders, so on and so forth. He does so at varying speeds, oftentimes referencing walking. For me, though, the experience of reading Through felt more like riding a bike; moving at such a speed that the images and letters you are passing are, at times, recognizable, and at other times, totally foreign. At a walking speed, everything is readable, and at a driving speed (car, train, bus, whatever) things are rarely ever readable. Through, for me, felt like the middle-ground. This isn’t to say that I didn’t understand half of the book. I think more than that, it is to say that half of the book wasn’t written for me. That same half of the book may or may not have been written for you. Herd, in my estimation, provides so much content and so many nouns, proper and otherwise, that it becomes inevitable that the reader will grasp onto some, but not all, of what he is saying; I would reckon, too, that Herd doesn’t want us to grasp onto everything. He renders just enough of his text inaccessible that we, as readers, are able to begin to understand the feeling of inaccessibility in being an immigrant or refugee, for whom language (in addition to things like borders and countries and jobs) is rendered inaccessible, fleeting, appearing to move faster than they are.