To: To: After That

Meta-fiction. I guess that was the word to describe this book. For me, it probably had to be one of the most confusing books I've had to deal with. I mentioned in class that I felt the author did a lot of "thinking out loud" and that seems to be the theme of this book. Gladman talks about various topics, mostly about her other book "After That". In this book, she likes to talk about her writing process, and how its changed, and what's going on in her life right now. She tries to make a time line of her work, and how it took her years to finish up some of her work. Also what seems relevant is that due to the time that it took her to finish some of her work, her writing style changes with the culture in which she lives and the form/style that she learned over the given time. I thought that this was particularly interesting considering if I was writing a book, how difficult it would be to finish it year by year and retain the same writing style.

That in mind, I can say that the book again was extremely confusing. It's almost as if you were able to make a documentary type film, and then make a documentary about it, this is what To After That would be. I didn't get a full chance to read every last page since Amazon gave me the wrong book. I recall this happening to somebody else from Barnes and Noble. Pretty upsetting, but nevertheless from what I did read I found this book interesting, in a confusing "what the hell is going on" type of way.

Short Stories and Poems

I'm a little late on this post, I suppose that's a good way to start...

Anyway, the first thing that I would like to talk about are the poems that I wrote on any recent events. The two that I chose, probably the most obvious was concerning the miners in Chile. The poem is called Sixty-Eight since that's how long the miners had to wait before I believe the first miner was brought up. I thought it would be particularly simple to write about this event considering that being trapped anywhere for 60+ days would bring out a lot of thoughts or memories.

The second article that I wrote about had to do with a family that had their newborn taken away from them just after his birth. Yes, that's right, Social Services basically kidnapped a family's baby after it was born. The reason that was given is that the father was an Oath Keeper (protector of the Constitution) and police said he allegedly had a violent history. That's awfully funny, because I'm pretty sure Social Services don't take away children that are in poverty, or for any other reason I've ever heard. It's an awfully disappointing story but I thought it would also be good to write about considering how emotional the event really sounds.

The other thing I wanted to briefly talk about was the short stories. We mentioned only one in class and that was the Liquor Store story. I felt adequately about the story, but some of the other ones that caught my humor were the Misdemeanors and The List of Famous Hats. I didn't get a chance to read Every one of the short stories, but Mystery Stories was also interesting to discuss in class.

I think that's all I wanted to say about these topics. If I feel the need to add something I'll edit it sooner than later.

Blood Dazzler

Reading the Blood Dazzler can seem like quite a chore after some time. The authors writing is very organized and uses a wide range of vocabulary, and captures the feeling of Hurricane Katrina from the storms point of view. When I say capture, I mean that she does quite an extensive job of bringing the feeling and emotion of the storm. The poems are written as the storm becomes a tropical storm, and then a hurricane, and the poems reflect these stages.

The only problem that I have with her reading is that the word usage makes the poems especially difficult to read aloud. Words that are not commonly used are placed together and sometimes when reading you can't help but feel like your reading random words placed together. The capturing of the storm and the storms "eye" are usually highlighted, but the problem of poetry comes back into the light.

Here we have poems, which are great in their light, and spread many emotional feelings, sufferings, and grievances. Then, in the real world we have a city that was built with very poor infrastructure, didn't receive proper support and funding to help the victims of this flood, and thus caused the results which are still being seen today. While the poems, as stated before, capture MANY of the devastating effects of a hurricane, I'm still more offended by the lack of planning and environmental care that actually made this hurricane a category 5 (or was it 4?). Either way, you can write a poem about a burning building, or you could build a building that's fireproof. Maybe it would take away from the actual poem, but the suffering would be minimal.

*Edit: Turns out it was a category 3, which considering the impact the city was built worse than expected :)

Adjsiaojdoijwaioejwaoidjsojdsioajorewnakjdnsa!!!!

Okay, so I couldn't really think of an adequate title.

Anyhow,  this part blog post will be a reading response to various work in "Writing Down the Bones". After reading some of the material, I have to say that doing some of the things recommended is awfully tough. The author (name slips my mind at the moment) makes a lot of suggestions about writing down as much as possible at almost all times. In one of her stories she talks about how she had all of these journals/diaries and notebooks stacked high, mostly with all of her writing filling the pages. She states that whatever is on your mind should be written down and that one should do writing practices just writing down everything imaginable.

I admit that she seems awfully enthusiastic about these ideas and this grand concept of writing down everything possible and doing practices and comparing writing to physical activities, but I've personally tried this and after about 10 minutes I usually find myself staring at a piece of paper just writing squiggles. Not necessarily words but in 10 whole minutes, I find it hard to write down every thought that enters the mind. I personally dislike some of the advice that the author gives because I typically try not to devote much of my life to writing poems or abstract thoughts.

Some of the other stuff that was presented in class was pretty neat though. Sharing various poems and reading them, pointing out what we like about them. I thought it was okay. At the end of my day I still see poetry as poetry just as politics are politics. Hopefully we will step into the creative writing aspect of the class, since I'd much rather explain how a tree can cut a saw in half, rather than seeing how abstract speaking can spin its way around the classroom.