Somadict

dreams are prisoners the brain is wired the embers of mind set on fire and night slips by the wake of a quire sing softly with passion for song oye va canta m'illumina I've been inspired by Ezra Pound. Ever heard of the language Esperanto? So i'm messing with words based on meaning, not familiarity. Perhaps I'm losing all meaning in the attempt? also, I originally wanted to say in the wake of a choir, but thought of acquire and tried mixing the two to get a whole new meaning that can be felt but not said until the word is placed in context.

Letting quotes jumpstart your muse

Hey everybody, wanted to post on this for awhile now.
Think back to when you heard somebody say a quote, any quote.
Think about how you it made you feel and how you interpreted it.
Think back to any connections you made between your life and the quote.
I've always been inspired by a great quote, it makes me feel like I can
do anything, or it really stands in my mind making me think.
Try taking one of these quotes and letting the muse run with it... see
where you go!
Quotes don't need to be from whatever great person... you don't even need to
know who said them... You could even use your moms quotes.

"You're a wizard Harry!"

I'm a what? What am I?
Large brown man pushing in my door
You fool, standing like i'm the last
Stronghold to wizardkind.
Why don't I have a choice?
I'm who I want to be.
The boat you row is one of lies!
What is this, a school!
Oh, now i'm supposed to love magic? huh? why?
Because i'm forced!
Who is this goof with the red hair, and hand-me-down robe?
I'm beginning to like this kind of stuff
Yeah i'm fitting in with people here
Much better than the real world
But this world is real to me
No matter how unreal it is
To those non-wizards.

That was kind of forced, apologies, but the point is to let something strong take hold of you, and write your thoughts

Inspiration on the Muse

Now, well into the semester and looking back on what inspired my muse and what didn’t work for me and relating to some other blog post, I am realizing that it isn’t the easiest to just tap into one’s muse on command. I feel like there has to be a certain concentrated mood and/or feeling to really get good raw material to create a good bases for one’s poem. I have noticed when I am feeling really intense of a certain feeling whether it is: happy, angry, sad, embarrassed, etc. I seem to come up with my best work. What really worked for me was when I was in a bitter or upset mood and I listen to music that kind of mimicked my mood. The lyrics sometimes help me describe how I was feeling and I seem to be able to work of that better than just sitting in a silent non-stimulating room. I keep on going different places or working on my poetry right after class so I’m kind of in the mind frame.

There once was a man....

Hey everybody, today i'm posting about the limerick poetic form. I became more interested in this poetry form because I am always forced to drive through a very small town called Limerick (You can't blink, or you'll miss it)... now as I drive through this "town" I always manage a fleer and eject a chortle and say to myself: "Isn't a limerick a poem?" Yes, I looked into it a few days ago, and thoroughly enjoyed what I came across.

A limerick is a humorous/vulgar metrical poem of 5 lines with a strict aabba rhyming scheme; the feet are either anapestic (uu/) or amphibrachic (u/u, one of the other 3 syllable feet we haven't learned about). Limericks utilize a lot of repetition, internal rhyme, assonance, and puns. We can somehow trace roots of this style to Ireland (where my dead maternal gram-gram is from!) and England. Some dude named Edward Lear popularized this poetic form... he was very well known for his nonsense! Heres an example:

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket
But his daughter named nan
Ran away with a man
and as for the bucket Nantucket

notice the pun???

VULGAR LANGUAGE WARNING!!! bad words are used in the next few lines. If you don't feel comfortable with them, don't read the next italicized passage.



Here is a more ribald version of the limerick (and my obvious favorite):

There once was a man from Nantucket
whose dick was so long he could suck it
and he said with a grin
as he wiped off his chin
"If my ear were a cunt i'd fuck it"

VULGAR LANGUAGE HAS ENDED!!! no more bad words are used in the following lines

Heres a little something I put together:
My friends don't believe that i'm Jewish
My bat-mitzvah shows them i'm newish
They all know i'm kosher
the pork couldn't be grosser
So good that I am oh so Jewish.

y'all should try it out it's really fun!

Your classmate ~Chance M. Carmichael~

Ellen Hopkins

Some of you might know who Ellen Hopkins is and for those of you who don't I figured I would try to enlighten you to the world of Ellen Hopkins. Ellen Hopkins is an award winning author. She wrote twenty books for children and about 7 young adult books so far. Now you may be wondering why even talk about her if she isn't a famous poet but in a way she is. The 7 young adult books that she wrote...they are written in verse. Her entire book is completely written in different forms of poetry. Each of her books are about 600 pages long but there naturally isn't that much written on each page. Poetry is usually vague and can have many meanings but Ellen Hopkins poetry novels are vague compared to a real novel and yet they capture you in a way a real novel is unable to do. Most of the poems are in free verse and some of them due to the spacing there will be a secret sentence. I'm going to leave an example if it below. While she writes she will leave one word in each stanza off by itself so that when you read those words it means something else. I couldn't find anything about why she writes her books in verse and she does write poetry. I have read some of her poetry but there is nothing better then the poetry in her books. The books are very intense. They all deal with very real topics and situations. They can be slightly depressing (according to my old roomate) but I find them captivating. I love to read and I love poetry and when I found these books I couldn't put them down. I highly recomend looking into at least one of her books. It will give you a good insight into a differnt kind of poetry that not many people are able to do. I myself only know of Ellen as someone who writes books in poetry form but who knows maybe it will become the "cool new thing". In case you are interested her books are: Crank, Burned, Impulse, Glass (which is a sequal to Crank), Identical, Tricks and Fallout (which is her newest book and is the third and final book for Crank and Glass). I have them all and am completely addicted so if you have any questions about them or just morbid curiousity about what the books are generally about to figure out which one you might want to read feel free to just ask me! Here is an excerpt from her newest book Fallout just to give you a taste of her style:
SO YOU WANT TO KNOW
All about her. Who
she
really is.(Was?) Why
she swerved off
the high road. Hard
left
to nowhere,
recklessly
indifferent to
me,
Hunter Seth Haskins,
her firstborn
son. I've been
choking
that down for
nineteen years.
Why did she go
on
her mindless way,
leaving me spinning
in a whirlwind of
her dust?

Since I was in Middle School, I have always been interesting in writing poetry. Around this time, there was a show that I enjoyed watching that was called Def Poetry. This show gave me a greater interest in poetry. I am a real fan of spoken word poets. The link below is my one of my favorite spoken writers performing on Def Poetry, hope you guys enjoy this poem as much as I do. Oveous Maximus- On HBO Def Poetry- Uncensored This class really brings out a different side of my writing. While checking in with my Muse, I connect to everything that is surrounding me showing my inner deepest emotions. I am very shy and almost never want to share my work in class, I hope to soon overcome that fear and be able to open up and read my poetry aloud in class.

So, I wanted to share a poem on here. I randomly wrote it while sitting indian style, in the fall wind with a cup of tea. I have found that connecting with my muse has become easier with practice, agreed? Also in learning about the different elements found in poetry and being able to recognize them I have found that they have helped me grow as a writer. I've gotten some really good base work from picking one element like we do in class and writing a poem using just that. It has also lead to me being able to better understand the true meaning of it. I really enjoy the fact that i see the improvements in my writing. In connecting with my muse and just writing whatever comes to mind, the elements seem to just find themselves coming out on my paper without me even meaning to. I like that it is becoming more natural rather than forced. Anyway, here is the poem that I'd like to share, and feedback is always welcome : )

"The Flow of Fall"

I unhook the rusty lock of my

white crackled paint door

the cat door knocker staring at me

as if to say "good morning" or

"get me off this wooden plank, its starting to hurt my back."

Its saturday-which means the new york times includes a magazine

and there will be tea with honey

from the bear container

distorted-from 3 extra seconds in the microwave

I take my tip-toed steps outside

as if the whole house is sound asleep

but leaves-they crunch-with any steps on days like this

my sigh I see in frosty air holds words from unsaid thoughts

of wonder- do they feel the same way i do?

a flow of fall plays hide and seek in my eyes

but tears give away their spot too soon

so it runs instead to safety-or more pulled

to the tip of my nose

leading to my first breath, the first smell of the season

that finds my perfect morning.

Poem Frustrations

Alright I'll be the one to deviate from the norm here and write about some of the frustrations I have with poetry. Everyone else has been very positive so I want to take a more devil's advocate approach. While the poems are getting easier to read and my writing has improved I still have some problems. I think mainly it has to deal with the contemporary works that we're dealing with. I guess when I thought of poetry I had a particular image in my head.

Poetry was something stylized, something different. However, to me it seems like a lot of contemporary work seems, for lack of a better word, lazy. A lot seems very experimental. It's like looking at the Mona Lisa next to a painting where someone attached balloons full of paint and threw some darts at the canvas. You can see the effort in the Mona Lisa. While I understand that modern poems are trying to get at the heart of the human emotions, I still tend to prefer more classical styles. I like something that rhymes, something that has structure. Something abstract I can interpret. I don't like a poem where it seems like someone wrote a paragraph and then just hit "Enter" every so often. For example:

So I woke up this morning and had a piece of toast, it was a very good piece of toast, I enjoyed it very much, I would much like tomorrow to have a similar piece of toast, perhaps I shall. Unfortunately I am out of bread. I should go to the store tonight so I have my piece of toast for tomorrow.

vs.

So I woke up this

morning and had a piece of toast,

it was a very good piece of toast,

I enjoyed it very much,

I would much like tomorrow

to have a similar piece of toast,

perhaps I shall. Unfortunately

I am out of bread.

I should go to the store tonight so

I have my piece of toast

for tomorrow.

By the contemporary standards we have learned in class the second one is a poem. I have repetition in the "piece of toast" phrase, you can feel my joy in having such a good piece of toast, and my sadness when I realize I am out of bread. However this poem has one fatal flaw; no one cares. The paragraph is extremely boring and putting it in poem form doesn't make it any more interesting in the long run.

Thus concludes my rant. Also I wrote my "Piece of Toast" poem using muse work, perhaps the best thing this class has taught me thus far. :)

Fun!

I really enjoyed our last class! I find that I like Wallace Steven's poems a lot! I actually even copied one of the ones from the book and taped it to my wall at home; its just so beautiful and interesting. Some of his poems, to be honest, like the black bird one do not really hold my interest that well, but I really do enjoy the way he writes. I love how he uses colors in his poem; it really brings the image home and connects with a part of my muse that surprises me. Writing in his format, I was able to write in a very new and exciting way. I was surprised at the end on how my poem turned out. Usually, at least for me, all my poems have a similar feel and voice to them. Basing the poem on Steven's really transformed my writing and I am very pleased with how it turned out.

Writing using animal themes

When i began writing poetry for this class, i realized that many of my poems were based on a lot of animal themes. Me being a zoology major i believe plays a key role in this. For example, during one exercises in class i began to write about a lioness on a hunt. Titled "predator and prey", i found myself describing in great detail a hunt that was about to take place. I found myself writing more fluently and i understood the poetry framework if you will, at a easier pass. When connecting with my muse and thinking of a lion hunting, a whole lot of ideas just screamed out at me. I feel that writing good poetry is built out of that persons interest or even career field because of the greater connection and understanding of that certain theme that would take place.

Growing Understanding of Poetry

In response to what we discussed today in class, I would just like to riff a little bit about how I've come to understand this art form a little better. Koch's writings about the poetry language have definitely increased my ability to read a poem correctly. Growing up in the information age and reading a lot of prose my eyes tend to just want to blaze down the page, instead of taking all of the language in. In years past I've read a handful of collections and tried to write my own poetry, but I always felt like I lacked a fundamental understanding of what I was attempting to do. Now after being exposed to an eclectic assortment of poets I feel like I can comprehend a poem and appreciate it to marginally greater degree. Though I wish there were more examples of modern poets in the texts, just so I could get a sampling of our current era as well. I still need some work though. I've been often finding it kind of difficult to find a tranquil place for actually sitting down and reading poetry (for the only time I have any free time is in the evening where I can't sit outside and read). As you all know dormitories and the 24 hour room aren't ideal places for contemplation and appreciation of artwork. Although I find writing much easier and therapeutic. I can just blare ambient music or jazz and jam on the pen and pad. When reading poems the music distracts me too much.

The Muse

We talk about the muse a lot in class, and are expected to conjurer it up in a matter of seconds. My own experiences I have never been able to really bring the muse to the page in class writing the exercises. The only thing that could come to mind were random stories that may unfold after seeing one random thing out the window. But recently being sleep deprived I started writing and I actually felt inspired for the first time and I believe I turned out some of my best writing. At the time at least being sleep deprived does tend to leave room for errors and mistakes, but the basis and the raw material was some of my best writing. But the fact is that it was sort of a revalation when the muse finally came over me and guided my fingers writing. thoughts coming to me and going onto the page in a matter of seconds. the fact that the thoughts were coming in so clear. I guess it really takes the experience to prove to some people that things really happen.

Change of Seasons

One thing I have noticed over the past couple of weeks is how the change of seasons has served as an influence in my poetry writing. Walking from class to class, I constantly get bombarded with all sorts of new ideas to write about. Whether it be the leaves changing, the brisk air, the warmer clothing or the apple cider now in the dining halls, I find it necessary at times to mention it in my writing.

I don't know exactly why it seems easier to write about the change of seasons. Perhaps it's experiencing all the senses around me and then writing about it: seeing the leaves change color, hearing the crunch of leaves underneath my boots, tasting and smelling the foods and drinks that bring out the essence of autumn and feeling the cold air work its way through several layers of clothes. Nevertheless, the change of seasons is something many experience, and there's something about it that is very appealing for me to write about.

This neat thing called visual poetry

Hey guys, I've come across a beautiful and exhilarating form of poetry called concrete poetry. Concrete or visual poetry depends on more than just words to convey a message... it also uses structure and pictures to help augment its meanings and usage of words. The way the poems lines are organized gives additional meaning to the poem that might not have been inferred by the reader. It also seems to be a way that a poet uses to force the reader to think and see the words in the way that the poet intended it be viewed. I'll provide an example of my own work I just finished after reading some of these poems (I had to insert it as an image, I hope everyone can see): might be a little hard to read. Here are the words: ~the waves carry me away to unknown places everyday, somewhere exciting! However, in my short, short existance I realize that the waves dont move~ Analysis: The lines are placed in steps, showing the movement of time. The last words are spaced out giving a wave effect. The tildes (squiggly hyphens) before "the" and after "move" are also a wavelike effect. Come on guys comment back and see if you can make your words paint me a beautiful portrait of your inner selves, or feel free to compose a somber elegy of unknown tribulations. your friend ~Chance Carmichael~ Examples: Making your own days, pages 234 and 235 http://www.poetrytodayonline.com/online-poetry/concrete/ http://www.poeticsolutions.com/pips25.html http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/visual/cannot_cross.html <--- check this one!

Revision..

Poetry/ artist expression, in any sense, has always been something of a hit or miss for me. I have always enjoyed writing and creating art, however have only felt really inclined to do so when inspiration hit. In the past, I would feel really compelled to paint something in particular and I would sit down for six or so hours and paint until it was finished. The same held true for poetry. Though inspiration tended to hit primarily when waking in the middle of the night, I would sit in one setting, write, and be done with it. Thus the revising process was something I was unfamiliar with to a degree. The only revising I had done with my writing was for essays, and thus revising left a poor taste in my mouth. Though some of the revising I have done in this class has left me with the same structured feeling (ex. revising in pentameter, ect.) I have seen many of my poems transform into something different, yet beautiful while revising. I can now appreciate revising and will continue to use it throughout this class on many of my poems. After the class ends though, I don’t know how much room will be left in my life for revising. The benefits of revising do not seem to outweigh my enjoyment of raw emotion, as much of the poetry I write is for therapeutic sake. Perhaps if I were to ever intend to share my poetry with others or try to publish it, I would use revision, but for now my personal poems will remain untouched.