A pool of tears have accumulated near by from crying. Why does it have to be like this? Why does the class have to come to a close! --Haha, totally not crying, but I will miss all the new people that I've met in the course, and you too JD. Who could ask for a more understanding and compassionate professor? Winter semester has been one of toughest times in my life thus far. I'm only 20, so I have a lot of better times to come--hopefully! With the passing of my grandmother, trying to maintain school work, two jobs, and babysitting, you could only imagine how hectic things have been! I want to thank JD for extending well needed deadlines and overall being such a sweet person.
The phrase that keeps running through my head is "Show!--Don't tell!" Before taking this course I had no idea of how much showing--being descriptive and placing your reader in the scene, could change a writing piece for the better. Thanks for drilling that into our heads, haha.
I wish everyone the best of luck with the rest of their classes, our paths are bound to cross once more. The sky is the limit!
Sometimes I pick up a book solely for how it looks and feels, alone. Yes, I know--one shouldn't judge a "book" by it's cover, but I often do, sew me. The cover would have been more appealing if the field of roses and clear skies overhead wasn't thrown off by the huge Don't Let Me Be Lonely sign. If the sign is such a pressing issue (which, I am aware that it is indeed an issue because it displays the title) then it could have at least been in a different font perhaps? Anyway moving on from the fact that I didn't agree with the look and feel of the book--the content was worth reading.
Rankine wrote in such a way, that I could image everything happening in a step by step sequence as if I were there--though, every time I encountered a picture of a television set, I grew irritated, alright, we get it already, you don't watch t.v. and when you do it acts as a muse for your writing.
The passage I could most relate to in her compilation of....writing, is ironically the one that started off the book (pg.5). I talks about how she hadn't known anyone who had died until her mother had a miscarriage. My mother also had a miscarriage, three to be exact. Unlike the nonchalant shrug that the mother in the book gave in response to the questioning, my mother cried. It was painful, she had lost a life that she was excepting to care for, nurture, and watch grow into adult. She cried and displayed her emotion outwardly. What the mom in the book and my mom had in common, was the fact that they were both hurting.
One thing I love other than the fact that Rankine pulls the reader in to her reading as if they are actually with her during the events, is that she leaves us at random cliff hangers. She engages is into the content, deserts us, and leaves us thinking. A perfect example is (pg.103):
The Sunday I turn forty the delivery guy pulls the front door shut as I pick up the phone to call my parents and thank them for the lilies. "A lovely flower. I carried them on my (birth) day and now I place them in this vase in memory of something that has died," Katherine Hepburn in Stage Door. My parent' housekeeper answers the phone.
May I speak to my mother?
They're still at the funeral.
Whose funeral?
Is everyone you know alive?
While reading that the fact that "birth" was in parenthesis struck me as strange. After finishing the passage and analyzing it's magnitude, I realized the significance of the word being separated by the parentheses. One: Because the passage leaves one thinking about the inevitable; death. And Two: Rankine wanted to give the reader a heads up of what was to come in the learning process; while dissecting the piece. Another aspect of the small piece, is why didn't the narrator know that her parents would be at a funeral? Isn't it ironic that they are attending some unknown person's funeral on the BIRTH date of their daughter? Are this family as tightly nit as the flowers portray? Were they just sending the flowers because they didn't have the time to actually plan an outing with their daughter on her birthday; simply separated by distance? Where is the communication in this family? Who died? So many questions left unanswered to ponder.
In closing, I appreciate Rankine as a writer and am glad that I've been exposed to her writing, even if the style of the book isn't all that great--the content, the questions left in ones mind, the feelings evoked, is what matters.
My infatuation with Asian culture, admiration for a certain Japanese Anime series, Samurai Champloo, and a line that I often quote that describes my lifestyle, alter ego, and character; "Geisha by day Samurai by night," immediately drew me into Goldberg's chapter entitled, The Samurai, before I even knew what the content would consist of. From the title alone, I knew that it'd impact and influence my perspective on writing in a positive way.
Goldberg states that,
"when you're in the Samurai space, you have to be tough. Not mean, but with the toughness of truth. And the truth is that the truth can never ultimately hurt. It makes the world clearer and the poems much more brilliant."
After reading these words, I immediately took my lime green highlighter to it. I tend to highlight things that I find intriguing, thoughts that may be useful and in the future, and moments that I find myself sinking into a pool of enlightenment after reading. This was definitely one of those sinking moments. I was always taught that the truth is something that "will set you free" or how "the truth hurts". While both of these teachings about truth, are true (5 points for word play, haha) Goldberg's shines light on the after match of it all. After one is hurt by the truth, then is set free by this truth, this truth illuminates an ignorance once held and shines light on ones past clouded mind set allowing ones world to be like crystal, "clearer" and for writers a head rid of ignorance and filled with enlightenment (like that of the enlightenment that I just encountered after reading Goldberg's passage) is a step closer to her/his poems becoming richer and "much more brilliant".
Another admirable thought that I'd like to keep from this reading is, "Write one good line, you;ll be famous. Write a lot of lukewarm pieces, you'll put people to sleep." Ha! Classic.
(Below I've pasted two videos that express my adoration for the ways of the Samurai. These videos are songs from a genre of music that I appreciate greatly--Jazz Hop, it's a fusion of both Jazz and Underground Hip Hop. Underground Hip Hop differs greatly from Hip Hop and Mainstream Rap from in both it's entirety and integrity. Underground Hip Hop is poetry, spoken word, adjoined with music to enhance emotions escaping to be portrayed by the poet/culture and to engage the audience while also enlightening them. Enjoy!)
I always have thought of clowns as sinister creatures. This story confirms this theory. While reading the very detailed description of the veggie made clown a feeling of eeriness hovered - alluding to a wacky or weird ending. Words like "dark" "derelict" "unknown" and "motionless" also gave way to the feeling of the story.
When the narrator mentions how she "watched the landscape innocently, like a fool, like a diver in the rapture of the deep who plays on the bottom while his air runs out." I felt as if the narrator was conveying a sort of back handed pessimistic view through an optimistic shell. What I mean by this is, children are innocent and naive, it takes very little for them to be fascinated, they hang on to the little things in life and are content - but children, while being naive to reality have a looming sense of trouble ahead, this trouble being growing up, hitting puberty, and realizing the world is full of mysteries and pain and in general isn't really cracked up to what it's seen to be in the young eyes of a child. Young eyes, this is what the narrator has when looking out the window on this journey, she travels because she doesn't want to be able to grasp reality, she wants to see the eclipse, to be taken away and feel closer to that unknown hemisphere, that unknown universe that possibly is a captor of pain, such as that of the earth.
A theme of death lingers through the essay with descriptive words like, "motionless" "deathly" "pale" "skulls" "winter-killed" "lusterless" "colorless"....While describing something the is supposed to be beautiful in all of its defects, she uses cold vocabulary and gracefully brings up the theme of the eclipse.
A pool of tears have accumulated near by from crying. Why does it have to be like this? Why does the class have to come to a close! --Haha, totally not crying, but I will miss all the new people that I've met in the course, and you too JD. Who could ask for a more understanding and compassionate professor? Winter semester has been one of toughest times in my life thus far. I'm only 20, so I have a lot of better times to come--hopefully! With the passing of my grandmother, trying to maintain school work, two jobs, and babysitting, you could only imagine how hectic things have been! I want to thank JD for extending well needed deadlines and overall being such a sweet person.
