blog

Again the winter is upon us, crazy things have been happening in the world. For example it snowed in Vegas! According to the reports from the McCarren International Airport they received over 3.6 inches of snow. That is the most recorded since records on that kind of thing started to be kept. And in Vermillion we are facing another night of heavy snow that could possibly delay all the students trying to get home for the winter holidays. But it is much better to be late and alive then early and dead as my old dog ruff ruff use to say. Apparently over in the Middle East it is a grave insult to show the sole of your shoe to someone. So the Middle Eastern who chucked his shoes at President Bush was apparently making a very strong statement. Now however the silly Iraqi is begging his prime minister for a pardon because apparently it is against the law over in Iraq to disrespect a foreign leader. So this dude is trying to get some kind of get out of jail free card. I think he should have looked up the rules before he decided to throw his shoes at our President. I mean I know that President Bush is not popular over in the middle east he is not even popular here in the states but how big of a doofus do you have to be to throw shoes at a leader of a country? He is just lucky the secret service didn’t taze or do worse to him after he chucked those loafers. Didn’t we have a plane bomber with a bomb in his shoes? I hope they put him away for the stupidity of it. While they are at it they should put Cheney and Bush in prison, I am not really sure why but I just feel like they must have done something to deserve the clink. Cheney is creepy and I hate the way Bush looks at the camera and does his little “yeah I don’t know what they hell im saying “ shrug.
Another idiot who made the news recently is the Illinois governor Blagovich or however that is spelled. Honestly why is every single politician seemingly either corrupt or well on the way to corruption. Did this num-nuts really think he could get away with selling a senate seat ? I am just glad that the FBI was monitoring him and knew that he was trying to pull these kind of shenagins. And now his lawyer is going to stretch out the proceedings as long as possible, all the while the regular joe plumbers (haha) will end up footing the bill again. As if the trillions of dollars we just loaned out to the banks auto industry and loan giants wasn’t enough grief to have to put up with. And just who is going to pay all those taxes back? Well tell you what it will not be me because I am headed for either Canada or the Moon, whatever ticket I can punch first.

Blog

As one of the most American of holidays, thanksgiving continues to be a time of celebration between family and friends. Some holidays have other deeper meanings, maybe the birth or death of a historical figure or even a celebration of victory in war. Instead I believe that thanksgiving is more a time of reconnecting with those people in your life who are there to help you through the tough times that arise in your life. For the pilgrims that could have been the Native Americans that helped them to survive those first tough winters, but for me thanksgiving is all about spending quality time with my family and friends. Since I am so far away from home and don’t get many chances to actually connect with them I really like to spend as much time as possible hanging out with my family when I am finally home. This includes sitting up in my little brothers room and trying to spend quality time with him talking about school while he plays video games or even watches the television that I gave him. Or another activity I enjoy when I am home is just sitting at the kitchen table with my mom playing cards while she tells me the latest hijinxs that her students are getting into during class. The best thing about coming home for Thanksgiving is helping my dad cook the turkey and all the fixings that go along with it. Well that and the all day football that follows the turkey spirit.
A couple things happened differently this thanksgiving; this is the first thanksgiving that I have had a serious girlfriend around for the holiday and for some reasons it just made the holidays go by much faster. Also every single flipping football game this thanksgiving was a total blow-out. That was probably the worst thing that could have happened to me, sitting down and nodding off to football while digesting a mass of turkey that could have put a giant to sleep is one of the highlights of my holiday but for some reason even though the games kept getting blown out I couldn’t fall asleep. Now this throws off my entire game plan for the night, because if I don’t sleep and get that nap in I have no energy to go out at night and party with my older sister. So what could I do? Well like any good American would do in the Thanksgiving spirit, I sucked it up, drank some coffee, went downtown and made some bad decisions with my sister. But it was fun, taking pictures, taking shots, and shooting some pool. Just spending quality time with another fun member of my family. However the thanksgiving could not be complete without going to the ol’ gf’s house and meeting her entire family tree all at once. This could be a time that goes terrible or a time that serves to further cement the relationship. Luckily for me it was the cementing and not the terrible time that happened. When you factor in the turkey, football, family, friends, and significant others Thanksgiving in one of the most American of holidays.

Experimental Poem

The Acrostic Chance method (number 8) of experimental poetry
Chill Factor by Sandra Brown
3 8 9 12 12 6 1 3 20 15 18

Chill Factor

Collar up to his ears, which were
Here simply to escape
In the general direction of the
Load these boxes into your trunk
Load these boxes into your trunk

Fingertips. The latex gloves had
A record
Collar up to his ears, which were
The road. She
Of the relief that
Right shoul-

Doing a poem in the Acrostic method for me was enjoyable because I didn’t really know what was going to come of the poem. The first book I was going to use this method on was The Stars My Destination; it did not work for me because the book started on page seven instead of the necessary page one. However this was quickly remedied when I grabbed Chill Factor by Sandra Brown. While this book was my girlfriends, it did have the added bonus of starting on page one so it would work for this experimental poetry assignment. Going through the title and finding the corresponding lines was almost like putting together a puzzle that you have never seen before. I was anxious at first to see if the poem would actually make sense until it clicked in my brainium cranium that this poem was supposed to be experimental and it did not have to make sense. After that I just skimmed through the book writing down the lines with an understanding to how it was going to work out at the end. After finishing the poem and reading over the finished project I was very happy with how it turned out. The only thing I would have changed is the last two lines because, as weird as this process was the rest of the poem actually worked. My favorite part of the poem was the last two lines of the first stanza, which read: “Load these boxes into your trunk.” I still cheese out when I read those because I think of Steve Carrell’s line from 40 year old virgin, “I hope you have a big trunk because I am putting my bike into it.”
For many mainstream critics that do not like the idea of this kind of experimental poetry I say to them, “Sit down, shut up, and mind your own business.” Who is to say or decide what in the end constitutes poetry? I believe that the final and finished product and what they release to the public in the end is up to the poet. It is the poet’s creation, not the critics that is released to the public. Language is not something you can nail down, and since this is true (in my opinion) poetry is also not something that can be cut and dried. The poem that I wrote for this experimental exercise doesn’t even necessarily have kind of deeper meaning. And while I know this poem doesn’t really mean anything that does not necessarily mean that the reader won’t get some kind of deeper meaning or connection from the poem. The basic idea that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”; I believe can be applied to any poem experimental or otherwise. As long as someone gets something from the poem it is worth the work of either writing the poem or in my case paging through the book and finding lines. I do believe in the end that this poem is successful in challenging the notions of mainstream language or ideology because it leaves the meaning and understanding up to the reader, who in the end is actually (in my opinion) the final judge of the work. And as the poet, and the reader of the poem I must say that I enjoyed writing the poem just as I enjoyed reading it and trying to figure out what it actually meant.

11/02/08

This past weekend amazing things happened. One such thing was one of the better holidays, Halloween. For me Halloween is on the same level as saint patricks day. In both holidays outrageous clothing is worn, and ridiculous drinking ensues. I guess in the case of Halloween however the girls get to dress up in sexy outfits so that is usually pretty awesome. I bet when Jorie Graham goes out for Halloween she dresses up as a sexy nurse or something fun like that. Speaking of Jorie Graham, she has some very interesting poems that a person could read. One that struck me in particular is entitled “The Surface” and to me it seemed to be about Jorie Graham and either her imagination or maybe about the unconscious part of a person’s being. She uses the analogy throughout the poem of a twisting and spiraling river that seems to carry in it either the or messages that a person has in the form of fallen leaves that are carried on down the river. This poem could also be about the writing process in that she draws from someplace inside her self, the words, ideas or messages that she in turn sets free down the river. I could see that being the case in the last few lines of the poem Jorie wirtes “I say iridescent and I look down. The leaves very still as they are carried.” Or maybe I am completely off and it’s a poem about her fishing for a catfish or something. I did like how often Jorie uses the idea of a “Big Question” in her poems. It can be hard for a poet to write about the big questions because they really have no set or only true response, so in a way you are expecting more from the reader when you use those questions.
A lot of her poetry however is not really my cup of tea. The form that she uses for some of the poems seems a bit off to me. I am not completely sure what it is about the rhythm but it doesn’t seem to me to flow as well as some of the other authors. I also feel that some of the stuff is a little bit forced. I did not really like the poem “Fission” but I did think it was nice and retro when she writes so well about the early times before instant messaging and 24 hour news. That must have been a huge deal to the people of the 60’s when the President got shot. If any thing like that happened nowadays a person would be able to find out about it almost before the tragedy was completely done. No need to go to the electronics store to watch tv, instead just get on the internet with your phone or other mobile device, and almost instantly you have the ability to get the updated news. This class has been interesting in regards to the variety of poets we have already convered, I really enjoy being able to read all the various styles that we have already covered.

Poem Of Modelness

October Walks

Cold and windy October Days
Chilly walks Chilly talks

Lauren, a blast from
My past.
Strolls languidly next to me
Holding onto the leash of her
Hound dog

Actually Leonardo (woof woof)
Does most of the walking.
Pulling and tugging on the leash.
Hurrying Lauren and I down the block.
Stopping it seems
To sniff the rapidly changing trees
Or corner bush that catches his fancy
Ahh, contentment in October.

Could this day get any
Better? Of course Lauren replies
She lights up a Camel Light takes a drag
And passes it to me.

The smoke gusts in the October winds.
We walk, we talk
Sharing the smoke
Sharing the beautiful October day.

I decided to write the modeling poem in the style of Frank O’Hara and his classic “Lunch Poems”. Lauren (a good friend of mine) was out walking her dog and I decided to join her. For me it seemed like a great time to get some inspiration and write the poem. I used the poem “A step away from them” by O’Hara as one of my sources. I really enjoyed the way he was able to make the reader feel just as if that person was walking next to O’Hara and experiencing all the different bits and pieces that make his poems so relatable. Unfortuanlly for me I did not see anyone else on our walk besides Lauren and Leonardo so those are the only other people/ pets that are mentioned in my poem. I didn’t want to copy completely off of O’Hara so I had already decided that while it might make writing the poem easier if I wrote the poem about going to Mr. Smiths café or some other kind of eatery, instead I just wanted to take a slice out of my day, time that I usually spend doing just another normal every day thing. Creating a poem out of a trivial task for me is the essence of O’Haras work. He would just write his compelling poems about small jaunts he would go on, say to lunch (aka lunch poems) or about the interesting people that he would pass or talk to throughout the course of the day.
Another aspect of O’Haras work that I enjoyed would be when he refers to name brand items. For example in his poem when he references back to Coca-Cola instead of saying soda or pop or whatever they called that stuff back then. I tried to do the same in my poem when I wrote about what brand of cigarettes versus just writing out cigarettes or ciggys or whatever. O’Hara often also refers back to the weather of the particular day he was experiencing. Again I tried to recreate that in my poem by writing about what month it was and how windy it actually was. I tried to show this when I wrote about the smoke being caught up in the wind, also near the start of my poem I mention that it was a cold and windy day. The only thing I wish that would have happened differently in my poem could maybe have been the introduction of some other person. However the sidewalk was empty, and all the neighbors were shut up inside their own warm houses. All in all I think I enjoyed working on this poem, I think my favorite thing was waiting for a good time/inspiration to write this poem about. I had no faith in my ability to mirror Berryman, (way to difficult to write about mr. bones and such) but I am happy with the way the poem turned out and look forward to writing more poems in the style like O’Hara does in his Lunch Poems.

Blog 10/26/08

Class on Friday was a bit of a surprise, not only did we have a guest student (the potential graduate dude) but we also had a actually poet laureate read to our class. Maybe the best thing about that poet was the fact that He was your (Lee Ann Roripaugh) dad! So that was pretty cool. I wish he would have told more stories about you growing up, I really enjoyed the “icebox” poem story. That is a great way to get into poetry and it is a even better way to be able to acknowledge that you’ve been published. In particular i enjoyed his Yellow Willow poem, with his great explanation that the willow looked like it needed a poem written about it. At least I think that is how he got his inspiration for the poem. I first thought that maybe his book title “Learn to Love the haze” was a bunch of poems about the drug culture (60’s maybe?) but upon actually hearing some of his poems I think I will have to change my mind about that.
The modeling poem is due this Monday. I at first was fairly hesitant as what type of author I was going to emulate but after looking at the two separate styles, John Berryman vs. Frank O’Hara I had to go with the lunch poems. I don’t know what it is about O’Hara and his poetry but for me it seemed really accessible. The pacing of the various poems seemed fluid, and he didn’t seem to have any weird pauses or breaths in his writing. For me that is a deal breaker, if I can’t read the poem and “hear” the pauses it throws me off and I end up reading the poem five more times trying to figure out the breaks and pauses. I have found that if I am struggling with the pacing of the poem, that it helps reading the poem out loud either to myself or to the potted green plant I have in my room. He never complains about the poems so that is a plus. One of the things I enjoy most about your (lee ann) teaching methods is the excellent control you have when you read the poems out loud in class. I always feel like I am butchering the poems when I read them out loud, and for me it can ruin the poem if it is being read in a particularly bad way or in a way that doesn’t utilize the pauses as well as you do. Sometimes the loudest part of a poem can be when nothing is said. Pretty deep stuff.
Seriously though, your dad was awesome, and it was great to be able to listen to him and his particular style of poetry. I think you definitely should bring in outside readers as often as you can, that is just the best way to experience the different types of poetry in my humble opinion. Oh yeah, and I lost my cell phone downtown on Saturday night, so if anybody finds it (it is a cell phone with buttons on it) please don’t try to call me, instead just mail it to me.

Ps. Do you think we are going to touch on or look at Charles Bukowski at all? He is one of my favorite poets and I am pretty sure he could be considered confessional.

Blog 6

Reading Mr. John Berrymans dream song poems, I was again struck by how often some of the best of the contemporary poets had such life changing events coupled with very hard times dealing with depression. I do not know what it is about depression that seems to motivate those poets into writing the great works that they have written, but I do wish that it didn’t take such tragic events to get the great texts that they have produced. In particular his dream song number 153 in which he writes about being angry at the god who in his words “has wrecked this generation.” He lists the names of many poets, about five in all that ended up either taking their own lives or otherwise dying in a tragic manner. Such as Randall Jarrell who was in a car accident that was more than a little suspicious. For me one of the more tragic aspects of this poem is how John Berryman eventually ended up committing suicide. He did this by jumping off of a bridge in Minneapolis after struggling with alcoholism and depression. A line from that particular poem that stuck with me “We suffer on, a day, a day, a day.” For me this is very poignant. I really feel that for many of those poets they did suffer on, day after day, until they decided to finally take that fatal step and end their own lives. I wonder if any of those great poets could have been saved if they would have had access to modern medicine. Or would that very same modern medicine rob from them the genius that set them apart from the rest of the flock.

Another aspect of Berryman’s poetry that interested me is his frequent references to a Henry. Henry apparently is a white man who like Berryman seems to suffer from some sort of irreversible loss. While Berryman’s loss can be traced to the tragic suicide of his father, I am not sure if Berryman ever acknowledges what tragedy befell Henry. Henry also has a friend often referred to as a Mr. Bones. While Henry was a fictional character I believe that he helps to mirror some of the very real feelings that Berryman was struggling with on a day to day basis as he himself aged. I was impressed by how strictly all of his poems followed along with his scheme. All of them seem to follow a pattern of six-line stanza that employs lines one two four and five in pentameter and lines three and six in trimeter. All in all Berryman wrote many great dream poems, unfortuanlly like to many poets in the past and even up to today he was driven to end his own life prematurely before he could publish more work other than his Dream Songs.

Blog 4

This year marks the fifth year that I have attended this prestigious university. For some odd reason each and every year the University of South Dakota raises the amount of green backs required of me to keep going here. But do I complain? Of course not, because with all of those tuitation hikes we have been assured that the University would spend the money on the best of student services. What services you might ask, well let me tell you. For starters wrap your mind around this. Division One. BOOYAH! That’s right we are now considered a Division One school, for starters that means we get to compete against those darn Jack Rabbits over in Brookings. Before we made the change to Division One I believe that the vast majority of students at USD felt like the change to Division One needed to be made to keep the school able to recruit as many new and incoming freshman as possible. They made the change to Division One, since then we have been getting a new Business School, a new Medical Facility, and even a brand new Student Center. I have even been hearing wild rumors regarding a new and improved athletic facility to take the place of the dome. I have even heard that the new athletic facility will have a ice hockey rink, this might even allow the University to raise up the hockeys team expectations and finally fully support them. It might also allow for maybe drunken ice skating. That is when you get really drunk and attempt to ice skate with your buddies. Maybe even play a game of ice ball, or ice broom, or really pretty much any kind of fun ice battle game.
Homecoming is coming up, or as the locals/ students / everybody calls it, “D-Days.” Now I think that stands for Dakota Days; and it is usually a pretty good time. The week is a lot better for those of us who are over the age of twenty one, it is a little safer walking the streets inebriated if you have permission from the state to drink legally. The bars do get way to crowded for my taste; all the alumni come down to watch the football game and that really makes the bar crowd a hellava lot older. Grey hairs all over the place, cougars, cougars and more cougars. That week should be a challenging one regardless because of the tests I will be having that week. You would think that teachers would know that it is probably one of the worst times of the year for studying or testing or even quizzes for that matter. However I am looking forward to that guest speaker that Lee Anne is bringing down. It is always fun to hear great poetry from different sides of the country. I hope that we get some speakers in who read and or write in a style similar to Charles Bukowski, in fact I hope we get to read him sometime this semester as I believe that his style is very confessional in form.

Blog 3

I wonder what the older generations of college graduates thought about those generations that come later. Is any kind of common ground even available? Are the ties that bind those of education, or might something else be the common factor? Sometimes I believe that they only thing we have in common with those other graduates could be the social times spent drinking. I can’t imagine going to college and writing a paper, but instead of doing the paper on your personnel computer you have to go to the library and rent or borrow a type writer. I can’t relate to that, I can’t relate to the research methods they would have had to use. No electronic journals, no helpful websites that show how exactly to write a paper in APA or MLA style. Really the only thing that we have in common is the personnel freedom and responsibilities, that come with drinking copious amounts of alcohol in social settings (aka the local bar). For the longest time college has been one of the main ways that a young person (of either gender) is able to go out experiencing life on their own for the first time and what do they normally do for the first month? Well in my personnel experience that first month is spent walking around town trying to figure out the best place to drink, and trying to find a upperclassman to get you a steady supply of booze. Not that school or homework is not a priority for incoming freshman, its just that not everyone has the same priorities anymore.
A big problem with college anymore is that most kids coming straight out of high-school really don’t consider all the other options available to them. They have been told by school guidance counselors, and by their parents, pretty much everybody has been telling these kids that the only way to succeed anymore is if you have some kind of college education. While that is fine for some people it definitely is not always the best idea for the majority of the kids coming to college. Back in the day if you had a undergraduate degree in a field you pretty much had a guarantee that you would be able to find a successful job. Now people need to up the ante a little bit; its all “masters, masters, masters.” Its like a undergraduate is the equivalent of the old high school degrees, and a masters nowadays is the equivalent of a undergraduate degree. Instead of going to USD for four years and amounting a sizable student loan debt, I could have attended some kind of general trade school, maybe welding, or electrician, or some other kind of blue collar work. Instead I have been sitting in classes, learning and memorizing things that I probably won’t have any kind of real use for in five years anyway. It seems like the fact that you got the degree is enough, almost like it lets your future employer know that you are trainable and able to do the work for the job that you hire on to.
I wonder what the college experience will be like for the generation after mine. Computers that synch automatically with your brain? Degrees that are not worth the paper they are written on? Or maybe a change in the mentality surrounding the drinking culture of a college town. My bet is that the sky falls, the aliens come down, or the government kills everyone. So why worry?

Blog 2

As I read more and more poetry that was written in the confessional style i am struck by how well the authors are able to reflect actual thoughts and feelings that could be reflected by the people reading the poems. The taboo and often shocking topics blew the collective minds of the Americans who for the first time could read a poem and not have to conjure up dreary and dated images of Greek mythology; instead they could bring to mind the cheery thoughts of abortion, suicide, depression and other personnel dramas that until this time had not been much covered in American poetry. While Robert Lowell was a extremely influential originator of this version he was by no means the only figure writing in this style.

Several women also contributed to the field. Plath and Sexton are both exemplary examples of this. Both wrote poems dealing with issues related to women. Topics ranging from masturbation to menstruation are covered in the poetry. I am of the opinion that this form of poetry could also be somewhat considered a form of written psychological help. Often people use this form of poetry to write and reflect on everyday occurrences or even to help focus on a life trauma. It is a healthy practice to think critically about those issues that give a person the most stress. Unfortunately the confessional poets have a bad habit of committing suicide. This could be due to the rather manic state of mind that these poets wrote under. Extreme bouts of euphoria coupled with debilitating depression commonly happened to these writers.

Iron Man is a movie that I recommend viewing to anyone reading this blog. While being widely unrealistic it still provides that much needed entertainment factor. I wonder what the poets of the confessional style would say to Tony Starks antics. Like when he makes his original Iron Man suit. In the movie the director shows his building of the suit in several stages. However most of the time he is shown using old school metal working tools. Then this weird doctor opens up his chest in order to implant a device to keep metal shards from reaching his heart and killing him. Tony somehow turns this into a device to “power” his body with more energy. Using his vast scientific knowledge Mr. Stark is somehow able to make his first suit and then use the suit to escape from and then destroy the holding facility.

Another movie I watched tonight is a superhero movie as well. Except this superhero movie involves a giant green man who you would not like when he is angry. If you guessed The Hulk then you have guessed correctly. This is the Edward Norton version of the movie, not the piece of crap CGI movie they made back in 2005. The Hulk is always a pretty cool hero though, always warning the bad guys to back off before unleashing the awesome fury of the green mean machine. All in all it has been another great Sunday night/Monday morning, good football, good movies, and now a finished blog entry.

Blog 1 09/14/2008

Blog 1 (09/14/2008)

As we learn more and more about the Middle generation poets I am struck at the change I see in the writing styles employed. The previous generation of writers, the New Critics, employed a wholly different style of writing then what was to be found in the Middle Generation poets. Allusions to Greek poetry and myths, the use of formal language, as well as the use of exact rhyme are all descriptors of the New Critic writing style. The Middle Generation of poets instead focused the poetry on topic that hit much closer to home. These poets would often write as if they where the speaker of the poem.  Taboo subjects of that era like depression or love affairs, or even mental illness often became the focus of the poetry. The Robert Lowell is a Middle Generation poet that we have covered who could be considered one of the originators of this particular style of poetry.

Lowell’s work was not always of this style he originally was a student of the famous new critic John Crowe Ransom. Luckily for us Lowell felt constrained by the rigid New Critic style. One of his poems that he did write in this style was presented to class. This poem entitled “The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket (Part II)” was in my opinion extremely well written. This poem is not nearly as classical as the New Critic poetry of the time. I particularly enjoy the word choice employed throughout the poem with all the references back to the sea.  Lowell didn’t show the rest of the traits of the middle generation until his classic book of poetry “Life Studies” in which he developed a more personnel speaker. One that was as if the person speaking was the actual author of the poem; with this tone in mind he would write about deeply personnel or even taboo subjects.  These poems and the poets who write them are considered to be of the “confessional” strain of middle generation poets.

In class on Friday we worked in groups looking at several of Lowell’s poems. The poem that my group was given is “Fall 1961” from his collection For the Union Dead which he has admitted as a ”volume of poetry written within, from , and about depression.”  What struck me with this poem is the use of color that is employed by Lowell to help set the stage. “of the orange, bland, ambassadorial face of the moon on the grandfather clock.” Color is used again when Lowell describes the orange and black orioles nest. As a group we decided that the nest was a metaphor for the safety that can be found in the simple act of waiting for something to happen. In this case it was the days spent waiting for nuclear war to explode over the Cuban missile crisis. Another line that I think strikes anyone who reads this poem references back to “We are like a lot of wild spiders crying together, but without tears.” Such powerful words that I believe he borrowed from his daughter or some such thing. Now I wasn’t positive on the meaning behind wild spiders that cry but without tears but it certainly sounded cool.