My contribution to the “short, picture-focused dramatic sentiment” subgenre of poetry.
Image credit: By Michelle Tribe (originally posted to Flickr as candy hearts) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
“An Easier Way to Get Out of Our Little Heads” (A Self Portrait)
I know they’re better at scuba diving, that’s for sure!
The quarter’s drawing to a close, folks! And with it, my comfort zone-extending melange of writing assignments of both the prosaic and poetic variety. However, I’ve filed this post under both the “poems” and “stories” categories because it’s of a form that’s not quite either: a literary self-portrait. In English 384 (the class that brought you “Above”), we were tasked with taking around two pages to write about ourselves in the manner our myriad course texts–from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons–had set an example of: by marrying subject and syntax to produce the word-based equivalent of a portrait.
This piece wasn’t stream-of-consciousness, but it was surprisingly easy, because whatever I thought was a good idea usually worked, by the very virtue of it being my thought! So in writing about myself, I tried to mimic the style of my own thoughts and personality: rambling, worried, thoughtful yet lighthearted, and careening between oddly specific tangents and vague emotional aspirations. It’s possibly the most explicitly personal piece I’ve ever shared on here, but hopefully it still entertains you as well!
After all, all I want to find is…
AU Issue VIII Launch Party!
Well, I’m not in it, but that doesn’t mean you should count yourself out!
Be sure to attend the AU Issue VIII Launch Party on March 15 at 6 pm at University Bookstore! You can register for the event on Facebook (and like AU!) here. Enjoy trivia, snacks, and readings by fellow AUers.
“Dour Number One”
…so don’t swat it in the process of looking for more!
Poem number six, coming right up! This one’s prompt was for a “sonic poem” that values rhythm and rhyme over coherence, and the possibility of a rap-like piece was suggested if not recommended. As such, the exercise became something of a welcome excuse for me to practice my hip-hop chops, though a performance of this “on tha mike” is pending, because I’ll admit the beat isn’t perfect all the way through. Still, I kind of had fun with it, and I hope the sentiment I injected still makes sense in-between all the alliteration and assonance!
Notes&Sketches 