Monday, March 14, 2005

say yes mean no oh oh

i am empty wide open
i have no words to say
i am empty wide open
blank, white, standing
i have no words to say

i feel like blowing wind
whispering, struggling
against everything it can
trying to say something
but only shrieking softly

are my words all used?
are my words all abused?
am i just a strong wind
being choked to death slowly
till i cannot make a thing move?
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Sunday, March 13, 2005

my bottom right wisdom tooth is coming in and it hurts, my entire jaw aches

I bought a $100 DDR dance pad today. I needed a new pad, the cheap $20 one I had wasn't working as efficently as it had in the past, so I decided to get a really nice pad. I played on the pad for about 20 minutes and it rocks.

I also finally bought some new music. . .it has been forever since I've done so. I bought Damien Rice's O, Bright Eyes' Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, and Dresden Dolls' self-titled album (since Karmi had mentioned they were worth hearing).
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Thursday, March 10, 2005

wrote this when i wasn't feeling good

for all i've written:
flying dreams wishing wells
pacts of blood flowing passion
for all i've written
i bet it doesn't matter at all

the world shall keep spinning
and as i realize i'm dumber than i believed
i'll let those who think they are smart
take their higher-up positions

for all i've written
it'll be erased
by time's fucking hands
by this world's logical functioning

i would like a mess
i want a mess
to make beautiful
but all i see
is endless organization

i see roads leading nowhere
i see a man and a woman holding withering hands
i see crisp, green money like blood
i see buildings, all too square
if only it would crumble

the words i could say
will die in me
in the tombstone that is
my head
no funeral because no one cared

i'm almost crying
but i'll never cry
i'm too dead to realize i've been reborn
too dead to be myself
it's okay, no one cares anyway
words are dead these days
they can no longer move the world

they could move me
but my movement
just makes me burn
with hate
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Tuesday, March 8, 2005

e.e. cummings paper

Any comments will help. I have yet to make my works cited page and although the paper is somewhat close to finalization, it isn't yet. I can still tighten up the language, among other things.

---

E.E. Cummings was a poet, painter, and man. His use of style and technique has been ridiculed, as well as praised, by critics. Cummings was always about the individual. He began with a traditional poetic style, as of that of Keats and others. From there, he began using his emerging style. At first this new style was very compressed, even foreign, but in his later poems it is refined and near wholeness. To further understand Cummings' poetry, a deep analysis of his various uses of language and typography will enrich understanding and let one see the beauty of his poems.

Cummings used language in many ways. One was by juxtaposition. By juxtaposing two terms together, he was able to form a new word. Although mainly lingustic, it is also typographical: words such as greentwittering have a certain aesthetic quality to them that makes them interesting to eye (Maurer). Most often, though, juxtaposition is used to speed up the tempo. An example of this is in the well-known poem, "in Just-":

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

Another way it is used is to produce telescoped (two or more images uniquely compressed together to make them seem as one) imagery:

(past now float he--shes chiselled from darkness,
slicesofnight with greyrockfaces-also)once,
a spoolhat priest with a bellhat(all got up fit
to, why it's. . .with redder than orange than
redorange petticoats)bride

"Slicesofnight," "greyrockfaces," "spoolhat," "bellhat," and "redorange" all juxtapose two words together and make interesting, telescoped imagery. Also, by juxtaposition, Cummings may create a new concept by two unlike descriptives, such as timeshaped or flowerterrible (Maurer). Other times, he telescopes two images together so tightly as to create a portmanteau (a word made by combining two words together - brunch is a good example) word, such as unknowndulous, a combination of undulous and unknown (Baum).

Metonymy is perhaps one of the most interesting devices cummings uses. Metonymy is a figure of speech. It substitutes a different word for another, such as "wheels" to refer to a car, or "Washington" to refer to the United States Government. But Cummings doesn't use metonymy in quite the same way.

Cummings' early books are full of favorite words. Thrilling, flowers, utter, skillful, groping, crisp, keen, actual, stars. These early words are often used as metonymies. Flower and other words are metaphorical shorthand for concepts Cummings finds worthy. Flowers mean growth, existing. Stars stand for the fixed beauty of nature.

As he progressed in his style, Cummings began using more abstract words as this "metaphorical shorthand." Yes is used as a noun. It is everything positive. If is something hesitant, not certain, not complete:

yes is a pleasant country:
if's wintry
(my lovely)
let's open the year
both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure, when violets appear
love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april's where we're)

Metonymy is based on reduction. Cummings was heavy on compression of language: using as little words as possible to say the most. Therfore, he uses metonymy. It creates a certain thrill when read. It has a type of novelty. It says much in a few words. This peculiar use of language is just like an author's use of symbols, adding meaning with each use (Baum).

Perhaps most worth mentioning is Cumming's use of compression. His use of compression daunts some of his poems and makes them nearly unaccessible to the reader unless they read closely. His earlier work deliberately violated a reader's traditional expectations. Instead, he chose to write individualistically. His 1952 "nonlecture two" exemplifies this: "so far as i am concerned, poetry and every other art is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality." When readers would write for explanations of his poems, he would answer them, but harshly (Thompson). Eventually Cummings' attitudes towards his reading audience changed, and his style became more reader-accessible.

With the poem "listen," first published in 1923, it is written in a way as to show something as it is happening. To Cummings, the use of language is not faithful, conventional syntax is historical, and is written as if the thoughts, feelings, and sensations have already happened (Baum). But in reality, there's no order to it. It's just an explosion where the senses are attacked all at once. This was Cummings' aim with the compression of language - he tried to recreate an experience from the ground up, without falsifying temporal order, but by writing something as if it were happening right in the poem (the numbers indicate the line spacing):

1listenthis a dog barks andthis crowd of people and are these steeplesglitter O why eyes houses the smiles5cried gestures buttered with sunlightO, listenleaves in are move push leaves green are crisply writhea new spikes of the by river chuckles see clean whymirrors cries people bark gestures10come O you if come who with listen runme with I quickListen13irrevocably14 (something arrives)15noiselessly in things lives treesat its own pace, certainly silently17comes1819yes20you cannot hurry it with a thousand poems2122you cannot stop it with all the policement in the world

When reading this, we feel just as disoriented as we would if the events were happening to us. But it is nearly unreadable, and those who haven't read a lot of cummings probably won't be able to swallow it. In its final 1967 version, "(listen)," Cummings carefully rewrote the poem. It is much more reader-friendly, and asks the reader to participate rather than demands (Thompson).

(listen)
this a dog barks and
how crazily houses
eyes people smiles
faces streets
steeples and eagerly
tumbl
ing through wonder
ful sunlight
--look--
selves, stir:writhe
o-p-e-n-i-n-g
are (leaves;flowers) dreams
,come quickly come
run run
with me now
jump shout (laugh
dance cry
sing) for it's Spring
--irrevocably;
and in
earth sky trees
:every
where a miracle arrives
(yes)
you and i may not
hurry it with
a thousand poems
my darling
but nobody will stop it
With All The Policemen In The World

Cummings' later style considers the reader in mind. The poetry is conventional yet screams Cummings at the same time. The poem retains its feeling of everything happening at the very moment, but is much more focused.

Cummings was also a painter, and tried to bring the aesthetics of the painters to his poetry. His way of doing so was mainly through typography. The most remedial among these is his use of capitalization. Like Emily Dickinson, he capitalized important nouns for emphasis. However, unlike Dickinson, he did not capitalize the beginning letter of every line in his poems. The reason for this is he didn't want to give unnecessary emphasis. He also didn't capitalize the pronoun "I" as it is traditionally. His use of "i" showed his individualism, and segregates the author from the speaker of the poem. This leaves him free to put emphasis where it truly belongs.

Cummings also employs spacing as a typographical tool. Cumming's use of spacing is often to slow down the tempo. Its other uses were to squeeze more meaning out of a poem, and to put extreme emphasis on a particular word by alienating it from parts of the poem. Below is a poem showing how spacing may be used to strain more meaning from a poem:

l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness

There are many layers of meaning to this poem, but our concern is with spacing. The very look of this poem because of the spacing is like a leaf falling in a spiral pattern, then lying on the ground. Also, the letter "l" looks like the numerical "1" on a keyboard. That is one of the main points of this poem: when a leaf falls to death, it falls alone. Also there is "l(a," the french pronoun for "the," which shows even more oneness. Then there is "one," which immediately catches the eye. If Cummings would have just written the poem regularily, it would just read "a leaf falls/ loneliness," but instead he brings the spatial and aesthetic qualities of the painters and crafts something wholly beautiful, short, and full of meaning (Semansky).

Another typographical tool Cummings used was punctuation. Cummings' use of punctuation is tied into spacing in the sense that they slow down the tempo. Some critics proclaim Cummings dots his poetry with too much punctuation, but the punctuation serves as a minor time control. His use of parentheses is also very important. It's another technique of immediacy he uses, which helps to show something instantaneously happening. He usually uses them in pairs, but will often put down only one parenthesis as an opening or closing mark. This shows that the poem is only a fragment of something larger, as if hinting at something unsaid (Baum).

Cummings brought the aesthetics of the painters to poetry. He himself was a painter as well, and followed in the footsteps of the cubists. His techniques of immediacy take apart a moment and put it back together, just as the cubists (only they used an actual image), and try to make others see it as he saw it. His early poems were somewhat romantic and traditional, but his later poems show him to be a transcendentalist like Walt Whitman or Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his style to be anything but traditional. His other techniques and his developed style showed him to be a unique, original poet.
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Monday, March 7, 2005

beauty

II
how pretty things are
when they are true
to themselves
so, i say, go -
write with your flesh
and tendon and bone
so, i say, go -
dream with your
wishes and desire and want
so, i say, go -
drink sweat, eat words
consume passion
guzzle determination
get drunk off love
and wear only yourself
amid these pieces of cloth
you wear
amid this face
you wear
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the insomniac, pt. 2

He was under the covers, peeking his eyes out. The room was wearing darkness. He looked at the digital read on his VCR: it was 4:00 a.m. 4:00 a.m., and he was still up, while most everyone else on this side of the globe slept.

"You'll never get me!" he yelled, prying his eyes out again, looking around his room. "I know you're out there! Might as well go!" What was out there, he didn't know. He felt something's presence.

When he was younger, he was sitting on a curb, rolling a coin along it. He remembers his friend's brother telling him about the devil, and how at night he came to you. He knows now that he was just saying that to be a jackass.

Nonetheless, he had had many sleepless nights where he'd kick, scream, and go giddy with fright, because he swore any moment the devil would walk in, burning red, with horns, and a large, booming voice that would make him cower with fright.

There was no devil here. Whatever presence he felt was either his imagination, or. . .something else.

He looked out there again. He saw nothing. He went back under his covers. Under here it was his own world.

Suddenly, he heard a scuttle. Shocked, he came out of his covers, and accidently hit his bruised leg on the side of the bed while doing so. He winced in pain, holding in his desire to verbalize his pain.

"Who's there?" he yelled. Then, there was a squeak, and the thing was off and running.

He breathed heavy, his heart thudded in his chest. "It was just a - just a mouse."

Being awake so long, he was hypersensitive. "Just a mouse. Calm down. Calm. Down."

His heart stopped thudding so loud, his breath gained some kind of normalcy.

He sat there for a while. Then he got bored again. He eyed the time. It eyed him. 4:24, said the VCR.

It was time for a 4 a.m. snack, he decided. He began walking upstairs cautiously. His eyes panned around everywhere, looking for something, anything hostile. Especially that damn mouse. . .he'd have to buy mouse traps now. That mouse was as good as dead.
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Saturday, March 5, 2005

lacerate

I'm a surgeon as well, but my scalpel is words. I don't have a PHD at it yet. I still have a ways to go. I'm not afraid to carve you up. I aim for the heart, but I end up cutting it open, making it bleed all over the place. Sometimes I take your brain out and place your heart where you brain is and your brain where your heart is. Sometimes I go into secret places of you that you yourself never knew. I am crude at my art. I probe around with a dull scalpel that needs to be sharpened. I touch you with nervous, naive hands. From what I can do now with just my words, once I mature at my art I will be unstoppable. Your blood is on my hands, your pain is in my head. This is the reader and the writer becoming one. This is the endless sacrifice. It trickles from my hands to the hard floor in a shallow pool. Look in and see a reflection of you.
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Friday, March 4, 2005

Questions you must answer

1.If you couldn't write, what would you do?

I think I would very well die.

2.How dear is writing to you?

It is dearest to me. It's my carissima*, and without it, I would be nothing.

*latin for dearest

---

I can't wait to go to college and focus on further developing at writing.
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Thursday, March 3, 2005

DDR LOLZ!!111!1

I played DDR MAX2 instead of DDR EXTREME. MAX2 is so much harder than EXTREME. I still have a long way till I get as good at DDR as I'd like to. At least I've mastered most of the songs on EXTREME on Heavy.

I'm pretty sure my body shall ache tomorrow. I've been pushing myself at lifting weights, and my legs have been achy lately from the 2 miles I run each day (I've also been speeding that up). I still suck so much at bench. . .I can only do 95 about 6 reps. Getting better at weight lifting takes a long time. Oh well, one day I shall be stronger and more physically beautiful etc etc.

Mmm. I shall sleep. Been staying up too late.
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Wednesday, March 2, 2005

DOG

God punched in @ heaven
--beep beep--
then,
he had to piss

while He pissed d
own
on
ear
th
He looked in the
mirror

his nametag
said HI, MY NAME IS
DOG

He laughed (haha)
it caused a
MIGHTY WIND TO BLOW
@ 65 m.p.h
some people died
because of this

He went to the pearly
gates - opened them -
let his customers in

"HELLO, SIR," he bellowed
to the first customer
"HOW DID YOU DIE?"

"wind," said the customer

"WIND?" bellowed God

"yes."

"I THINK YOU'RE LYING," God said
"WIND DOESN'T KILL PEOPLE LIKE THAT
SO EASILY!"

"but, but"

God pulled the lever
the customer fell down
down
d
o
w
n

as the customer fell
a signed passed by
in a BlUrR

it said: "WELCOME TO HELL,
POPULATION 6 BILLION."

up above God laughed:
he had realized he killed
some people
it was nothing, he would
just send them back
d
own to Hell:

to earth

God's workday dredged on,
& once it was over an angel offered
him some angel dust

so he took it, and used it
& while sniffing angel dust
accidently killed more people

he slept soundly that night
as his high wore off
while outside the gates
people laid and slept and were cold

these people had been sucked straight out of the sky
& died in space
when god sniffed in his angel dust
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