a poem i wrote during lit crit tonight

Wordsworth's passing shadows

drinking gets rid of shadows
of consciousness keeping in check;
ethanol molecules pumping brainbots away
with each heartbeat

An examination of a photo blog

I find photo blogs most interesting under certain circumstances: I know the person "writing" the blog, the blog tells a story, or the photography is really beautiful or well done. The photo blog of Christine Lebrasseur has a lot of really well done photos. I'm particularly fascinated by her use of color. So many of her photos have an amazing vibrancy to them! I can't imagine how wonderful it must be to take photos like these every day.

There are a few photos in particular that I'd like to discuss. 6 a.m. has a brilliant orange train stop contrasted with the almost black and white one. Somehow the camera didn't pick up the colors in the left side of the train station. The reflection and shadows in this picture are very pleasing to look at.

Christine also has photos that hold a story. The photo Pure tendresse makes me wonder about the girl playing the violin. How long as she been playing? Is she any good? Does she like taking lessons? Or even I wonder if she likes to play in the rain wearing red rain boots. This is definitely a photo with an inner poem--a poem I'd very much like to write.

magnetic poetry

purple moon dream s
almost cloud wild want ing
that leave s you
only summer journey ing
and a whisper of autumn thunder

analysis of analysis

One of the cites on my blogroll is neither poetry or photos. For the most part, g r a p e z is a poetry analysis blog. I tend to enjoy the analysis on this blog, but it's also a good source of interesting and discussion driving poetry. The post for today includes analysis of "Dear Jim" and "If You Cannot Be True"; I agree with one analysis and the other I disagree with.

"Dear Jim does indeed have some promising moments. There are certain lines that beautiful and well written. As a whole, however, they don't make sense together. The lack of coherence makes the poem difficult to enjoy the whole way through (a serious issue for a short poem). g r a p e z's analysis was brief and very fitting.

g r a p e z also analyzes "If You Cannot Be True," a poem that I rather enjoyed. Sure, the title is a little weak, but titles are hard to write, so I don't fault this poet too much for that. Also, the imagery in this poem is very well done; the use of "golem" in the first line gives the reader the necessary mental image to prepare them for this poem. This poem also has an interesting sound particularly in lines four and five ("thumb's inkprint" and "pupil's pinprick").

Even though I disagreed somewhat on "If You Cannot Be True," I still think g r a p e z is a great blog with interesting analysis and links to discussion-worthy poetry.

"cruel velvet drapes"

--for Zack

"cruel velvet drapes"

i remember that line
you said
you stole
but it's beautiful and i'll steal it too

hold yourself to royal purple
lush and entrapping
don't ever escape from the violetpalace of words
with weeping or gnashing of teeth
memories of academic conquest
improving the world one art (please) at a time

alone in the car

alone in the car

whether wandering highways or empty streets
starry nights or sun glared days
music always blasting
(unless CD batteries are dead),
I sing my aloneness to the windshield
cracking from pebbles or cold--

a cold aloneness

warmed by blasting engine vents
ugly cello sounds
spiritlife melodies
emotional connections made on my own

songwriting

I was just listening to one of my new CDs--The Ugly Organ by Cursive--and I realized that I usually assume the characters in songs are referring to the songwriter rather than being fictional. This realization troubles me somewhat because I have been trying to move away from this assumption when I read poetry. I should try to work against that assumption for songs as well because poems are just as likely to be about their authors than songs are likely to be about their authors.

A try at tanka

driving in winter
racing the plow to keep speed
slip and slide on snow
hands clenched in silent prayers
cars spun out litter ditches

headache

headache

pillow damp with sweat
shapes blur from watering eyes
plastic vomit bag

the grease of time

the grease of time

smell of latex, dirty underwear, and feet
grabs an my nose hairs.

he groans and rolls away from me.
I glance (for a moment) at his neoned silhouette.
stand up--
grope in unfamilar dark for soggy panties.
I find his t-shirt
and put it on instead.

i fall asleep

wake up to rustling
the lamp glow filmed by dust
and the grease of time
"Oh. There's my undershirt," he says.
"Do you want it back?"
"No keep it. It probably smells like you anyway."
bends over to tie his Nikes with a
stabbing glare from the gold band on his left hand
illuminated by the light filtered through the aging
lampshade and flickering bulb

after his headlights fade down the deserted street
I try to inhale the remainder of his scent
but only smell sterile hotel sheets

Analysis of 38

The poem I'm analyzing today is a haiku. I generally like haikus because they are brief and simple, and when done well, they are incredibly beatiful. I also prefer haikus that are about subjects other than nature since haikus were traditionally about nature; an urban or indoor subject matter tends to challenge the form.

Anyway, I like "38" because it merges the indoor and the outdoor. Also, because I enjoy rain and often miss Oregon winter moments, this poem speaks to me. Even without the poet using any smell imagery, I can still smell new rain and moist air. The sound mentioned in the poem carries the scent to me, so that even as I sit in my increasingly cold bedroom, I remember rainy winter evenings on the West Coast.

an artist's deception

an artist's deception

staring at the sea
dear oceanmoments
sharp rock teeth bite gray sky
and bare feet
salt stinging skin and lungs
surf sloshing

I am there again.
Transported by a painting
in the IKEA Superstore.

My first piece of analysis

(When I'm excited about my new project, I'll post more than one comment in a day. Today, I am excited about this blog!)

Today, I read a poem posted mr. zack schwartz on his blog. This poem is almost bare in its details--stripped down so that only the important words remain. I prefer and respect poetry like this, vivid yet simple.

Something else that mr. zack does (that I actually might try doing in my own poetry) in this poem is combining two words to make one descriptive word. In "THIS IS THE LAST TIME?" the word "manyloved" says more than "many loved" would. By combining the two words the reader is forced to use many loved as an adjective describing heart rather than only using loved to describe heart (changes the meaning, yes?).

I have to say that I don't know what the last two lines mean and I don't know how they relate to the rest of the poem. I think they fit (at least they sound right), but I'm not sure what to make of them. But I do like the poem and I really want to understand these lines. Perhaps I'll return later to see if I can understand these lines better.

A Haiku and a New Beginning

childhood dreaming
reading The Secret Garden
crisp pages turning

I have been approved (and not just my credit card)

My project has been approved. Starting later today, when the computer with my pictures on it has internet access, I will be posting a poem. Roll up your socks, roll down your sleeves and prepare for Tiffany's poetry stylings.

driving drunk

driving drunk

illuminated pathways of drunken paradise
swirling shapes of snowflakes like Star Wars stars stretching past windows
like the words tipping off the edge of the screen
thoughts aren't fully formed--
truncated like a mock turtleneck--
unfinished phrases slip through drunken fingertips like my youth

poems when?

This blog is about to become my semester project for blogs & wikis. Right now I am trying to take lots of photos (preferable ones that will be "decent" for online posting) and so it might be awhile until I post another poem. But after I get started on the project, I hope to post almost everyday. I know you're waiting in antici...pation.

another rant about poem persona confusion

Today at my FRV meeting I had discussion about poetry personas. Someone, without thinking about it, I'm sure, assumed "facts" about a person's life based on smashing two of their poems together to draw a conclusion. Okay, so a lot of poets actually do write about their lives. They've got to have something to draw on. But it's very annoying to me when people make these assumptions (as I ranted about in this post) . So I got loud. I think I scared some of the people on the board.

It's possible for someone to create prose without having this difficulty about persona/writer confusion. Why is poetry like this?

stupid question

stupid question

you sit in an armchair
living room lit by citronella candles outside
i see your silhouette as you raise blackberry brandy to your lips
liquid darker than north pole winter nights
slides to your stomach, your brain
your lips fade into the shadows as you smile

"who is your favorite poet?" i ask
completely aware that's an impossible question
and your lips disappear again in darkness

"ah, tiffany," you say
but leave my question
floating the air like a dragonfly whisper

Don't assume my poems are facts

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the confusion that readers often have with the persona of a poem and the writer of a poem. There are some subjects that make people assume that the persona and the writer are identical. But this is not so. I'd request that when you read my poems, you don't assume I'm writing about myself. Sometimes I am, but usually I am only thinking of myself in some sort of abstract way. Perhaps an emotion I'm feel sparks an image or sometimes it's even something as simple as a smell triggering an emotion, which builds to images. Poems may hold truths (I certainly hope mine do), but they aren't necessarily factual.

learning the art of sleeping around

a cloud of sex and cigarettes
pervades my memory of my mother--
her toothy grin like a drunken Cheshire Cat
with a man in the background
saying "hey baby" to her
twelve year old daughter

turtleneck(ing)

underneath my panties drawer
is one I've labelled "hickey shirts"
for those weary one-night-stand
mornings that leave me bruised
and battered wondering whatever compelled me
to give of myself so freely

ownness drive

ownness drive

headlights alluminate snow stretched curves
street sign says "FORGET-ME-NOT CT"
--that's where I'd convict you
of flirting with me one night at a party
only to leave me imagining you face
stroking it with my memories,
alone in a cold king-sized bed
or during those quiet moments of days that last too long
(the nights are even longer)
with tears uncried, bubbling at the lids
and yearned desires kept safe in a box

happy days stuffed with smiles
yet you remain in the corner of my thoughts
an empty room blasting artificial noise

A preface to my new poem

When I asked my roommate if I could take a picture of her door and explained that I had written a poem about her and her boyfriend, it kind of creeped her out. If you read this, I'm sorry! It was meant to be a sweet poem and not at all creepy.

a poem that gives its own answer

morning nap

i met my roommate's boyfriend on the stairs
his eyes still crusted with sleep
he slid off his shoes
set down his bag
and walked to the room of my dozing cohabitator

as he closed the door and climbed in her bed
i wonder
what makes a man do that?
leave his own nest
warm from his own safty
and curl up
joined in the arms of another

one night drunken haze soup tears in the eyes of a vomitting beauty one night intoxicants line the tables moved out of the way for cards revelry instances to be unremembered camera flashes of photos camera too slow to catch the images of spinning bodies whirling flowing through the night of drunken haze soup

Seaside carousel

memories of childhood
shiny lights and glossy paint
in bright, bold hues
swirling magically as if in some fantastical dream

the Seaside Carousel
a monument to childish dreams
cotton candy afternoons
and raspberry snow cones in the sun

A crappy poem about Burgerville (that made me really hungery)

Okay, so I'm trying to write a poem every day and I don't have a lot of photos to choose from to inspire me. Until I take more pictures, my blog is going to have a lot of crappy poems. Perhaps I should be spending my afternoon taking pictures instead.



Burgerville

euuummm! gooy cheese on that hot, hot burger
juicy tomato and pickles ooze out the corners of the mouth
spilling onto strategically placed napkins that
once in a while will fail

toe tapping jukebox in the background
swishing to fifties music
sucking down a chocolate milkshake that taste like God prepared it Himself
(of course He didn't.)

I don't want a slice of Heaven.
The portion would be too meager, too poor
for my elevated tastes

An ocean poem

Off-season beach adventure

peace and serenity--

is squishing your toes in damp ocean sand
on a stretch of shore
held captive in marshmallow fog

is scraping off sand granules
clinging to feet numbed by winter waves
and knowing you are part of nature still

Current blogging idea

I've had a new idea about how to go about writing poems. Rather than stealing the photos submitted to Jones, I'm going to take pictures myself and use them to inspire poems. This way, all the work will be my own, which I think is better than collaborating with Jones. It does, however, sort of nullify my blog title, but I think that's okay. The poems can be in the style of my previous Jones poems. Okay. That resolves the title to my satisfaction.