Flash

9 Responses to Flash

1. Jana says:

   04/03/2011 at 10:09

   Thanks a lot for this detailed com­ment. I’m pretty much into close read­ing and it helps a lot to get feed­back con­cern­ing these matters.
   I had­n’t con­cidered an off-rhyme so far. Nat­ur­ally, I’d seen it and heard of it before but it some­how was­n’t one of the options I’d thought about. I do see its poten­tial, though. It actu­ally expresses much bet­ter what I wanted to express. A prop­er rhyme at this point actu­ally pro­duces again an echo and to have an off-rhyme blocks the sound that somes from ‘shoot’. No res­on­ance — which is actu­ally the best-fit­ting thing. Great!
   The plur­als I chose as I had those yawn­ing cracks in the paper in mind. I saw many of them and wanted to express this kind of plur­al­ity. A sin­gu­lar would make it more abstract, then, and allow for a read­ing that emphas­izes the black­ness, infin­ity, depth. Have you got the same impres­sion? ‘Whites’ I put in plur­al for an agree­ment in terms of rhyme. I don’t see a prob­lem in ‘the whites’ as it is, from a lin­guist­ic point of view, a com­mon prac­tise to have nom­in­al­isa­tion of adject­ives as in ‘the rich/the poor’. To me it seemed to add some indi­vidu­al­ity to the white rect­angles as opposed to the black ones as they receive an ‘extra treat­ment’, so to speak. Maybe a bit forced :-)…
   Thanks for the cla­ri­fic­a­tion con­cern­ing the Itali­an son­nets struc­ture. Good to brush up my know­ledge here. And great to learn about the com­plex over­all struc­ture of Cum­mings poem, I had­n’t noticed and am quite impressed now!
   I was won­der­ing wheth­er it would be a good idea to ask all par­ti­cipants of the Love Poetry sem­in­ar to write a love poem in, say, week 2? I just think its such a great exper­i­ence to do so and it really helps to fully grasp this kind of genre. Every­one who has con­sidered them­selves the things we just dis­cussed will def­in­itely approach poems in a dif­fer­ent way (too ideal­ist­ic? too optim­ist­ic?). At least many of those. Poems could be handed in anonym­ously and read out by someone oth­er than the author. As well, they could be pub­lished here under a pseud­onym. A spon­tan­eous idea, what do you think? Had you planned some­thing like this at all?

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   • Therese-Marie Meyer says:

     04/03/2011 at 12:22

     It is a very good idea to have people write their own things — but from past exper­i­ence I doubt every­body will want to — and it would exert undue pres­sure onto those who can­’t or are not pre­pared for this effort in a sem­in­ar. If at all, I’d sug­gest they post them here, and yes, that was quite intended!
     Most of all, I’m glad my feed­back was help­ful: I really do like your poem!

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     • Jana says:

       05/03/2011 at 09:33

       True, it’s likely to be a rather intim­id­at­ing thing to be asked to write some­thing when just about to read poems by some of the great mind of all time.

       It was prob­ably the enthu­si­ast­ic art stu­dent inside me who has grown up (uni­ver­sity life) being asked to present work, exhib­it things, receiv­ing com­ments and ques­tions… Cer­tainly some­thing you need some time for in order to feel secure in this position.

       Still, I’m look­ing for­ward to any­one else who is happy to leave some­thing behind here. It’s a great idea to have this blog. Very pro­gress­ive and, hope­fully, most encouraging!
2. Jana says:

   03/03/2011 at 17:38

   I com­men­ted the wrong art­icle, nev­er mind. It is sup­posed to be read along with the Cum­mings one, sorry.

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3. Jana says:

   03/03/2011 at 17:35

   The Colon in ‘Love’s Function’

   And the even­tu­al circles are to diverge,
   press­ing floods of art through a nar­row passage,
   streams of let­ters break the prin­ted barriers
   as prom­ising car­ri­ers of a Mind’s message.

   And soon the brittle paper begins to rive,
   all mean­ing gone now, quick and quicker.
   See! Linger­ing fonts on the crack­ing sites,
   the emp­tied lights grow thick and thicker.

   - Burst — into shapelessness.

   Now, waltz­ing rect­angles blackened and whites
   slowly fade and dis­ap­pear into yawn­ing nights.

   Like cornered sol­diers they fired and shoot
   incess­antly ’til all is mute.

   This is, then, my exper­i­ment­al starter. Might not be an Itali­an son­net, though 😉
   Funny thing was that I had a rather sim­il­ar impres­sion (con­cern­ing the colon) when I first read the poem. I felt like: Oh gosh, what comes next? Then, loads of of men­tal images popped up (I’m the visu­al kind of per­son con­cern­ing per­cep­tion, any­way, I guess.) and I thought I just give it a try and write something.

   PS: I’ve figured out what the prob­lem was. Appear­ently, the blog does­n’t like copy & past­ing from oth­er doc­u­ments. Might be an uber-mod­ern inven­tion of the past couple days 🙂

   Reply
   • Therese-Marie Meyer says:

     03/03/2011 at 18:00

     Wow — con­grats!! For a spon­tan­eous one, this is lovely! Here’s a sug­ges­tion though: why do you shrink from the “shot”/“mute” off-rhyme at the end? It would shift your clos­ure into past tense after the pre­vi­ous stan­zas’ present tense (“See… burst” — which I really like, BTW!) quite nicely, plus be a rhet­or­ic­al mir­ror to what you mean to con­vey with that final­ity of “mute”.
     And a second ques­tion (read: insi­di­ous sug­ges­tion ;-)): Per­son­ally, I don’t see a sense for the plur­als in the “whites”/“nights”. Gram­mat­ic­ally, it ought to read “white” — as in the adject­ive — and that would make “night” the cor­rel­a­tion. Is there a reas­on you would want a plur­al there? Because, what with “rect­angles” & syn­tactic­al cor­rect­ness, you don’t need it. (This is pre­dic­ated on my read­ing of “blackened & white” as an apos­i­tion to “rect­angles”.)
     BTW, Cum­mings is only an Itali­an son­net if you con­nect the colon in a neat circle to the first line/title. If you instead read the first line/title as just spaced-apart first line of a quat­rain, you end up with an Eng­lish son­net, quat­rains first, couplet at the end. I like that bit: Cum­mings is noth­ing if not tricky. & I see a sim­il­ar strategy in your “Burst” to “nights” ter­cet stanza! Cudos!!

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   • Michaela says:

     04/03/2011 at 18:27

     I really do think this is won­der­fully writ­ten and if I were to find a word for it it would have to be ‘intense’!
     Intense atmo­sphere, intense words!

     Com­pli­ments for your choice of verbs which exude such dynam­ism and are very picturesque.
     Also the single line “- Burst — into shape­less­ness” strikes me as some­thing power­ful, like a caesura to the whole poem, reliev­ing ten­sion and pav­ing the way for some­thing new. Very nice!
     As I have told you, I had a few prob­lems under­stand­ing this line:
     “the emp­tied lights grow thick and thicker.”
     I must admit that even after your explan­a­tion it does­n’t make much sense to me, but I sus­pect that I simply can­not get my brain around the picture!
     And maybe I would have chosen ‘squeeze’ instead of ‘press’ in the second line but this is just peanuts.
     Thanks for shar­ing the pic­tures in your head with us and con­gtrats for a truly lovely poem!

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     • Jana says:

       05/03/2011 at 10:02

       It does­n’t let me post for some reason.
       I wrote some­thing, pos­ted it and it some­how was­n’t pro­cessed (sim­il­ar to the instance I described before). When try­ing to send the com­ment again it said that I had sent it before.
       Thanks a lot, any­way, for your com­ment, Michaela.
       I might stick to sem­in­ar time, then, for the moment. 😉
     • Therese-Marie Meyer says:

       07/03/2011 at 10:31

       Sigh.