Infinite

I put the roots of sky inside my jar

And powered up the sunset and infused

The college thoughts with liquid birdsongs

The drops of stars upon the daisies served as base

I used the thorns and stitched the northern lights

Alas, I stood upon the smoldered steps of night

With the Universe painted on my hands

I close my eyes and almost laughing find

The city of Rochester ebbing into smoke

The willow and the ash and maybe birch

The clock-tower stands possible

Air, blow me to the innocence of time

****

Well this is the last day of April. I've had a fun time writing poems and reading Sam and Val's posts as well. They did a great job with all the poems and their commentary is really intense and deep. Both of them are very impressive and talented people and I find myself in awe of them quite often.

Flattery aside, this poem is me putting aside all my stress and trying to see the bigger picture. The quarter here at RIT is almost ending, as you all know, and it's been a hell of a time recently. But I guess if you look past it and see all the amazing things that we've done or are doing or will do, it's amazing and beautiful. I've learned so much this year considering academia as well as social. I'm so thankful for all the friends I made this year and I will miss them terribly over the summer. 

Sappiness aside, I don't know if I have much more to say. It's been a long week and it's only Tuesday. But my whole life is opened up to me with so many opportunities. If I put away the stress, my potential is limitless, and it's the same with all of you. So don't worry yourselves, you are loved, and you can make it through weeks 10 and finals. 

Godspeed. ~Sarah xo

But Not I

Can a man be a fraud?
Sure! When his honor's at stake,
not everyone measures up.

But not I

Can a man be a cheat?
Yeah! If profit's at stake,
we all want our share.

But not I

Can a man be a liar?
You bet! If a man's in a pinch,
he'll worm his way out.

But not I

Can a man be a sloth?
Oh yes! To choose play over work,
is what everyone does.

But not I

Can a man be complete?
Why not! It seems everyone has
a woman of their own.

but not i

Yes, I know, this is outdated. I do have a wonderful girlfriend now and I love her to death. Anyway, there was a point in time where I was rather down-trodden and a little lonesome. I am glad that has passed, and I'm glad I got at least this poem out of it. Hope you all enjoy! 

Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman

Robert Frost - Wind and Window Flower

Lovers, forget your love,
And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.

When the frosty window veil
Was melted down at noon,
And the caged yellow bird
Hung over her in tune,

He marked her through the pane,
He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by
To come again at dark.

He was a winter wind,
Concerned with ice and snow,
Dead weeds and unmated birds,
And little of love could know.

But he sighed upon the sill,
He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within
Who lay that night awake.

Perchance he half prevailed
To win her for the flight
From the firelit looking-glass
And warm stove-window light.

But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the breeze
A hundred miles away.



Hi everyone! So today's little touch of love comes from the great Robert Frost (aptly named, as a lot of his poems had ice themes. Go figure). Frost has some of my favorite imagery, and he does so well personifying some rather obscure items; in this case wind and a potted plant. I'm pretty sure we're supposed to sympathize with the wind in this poem, rather than the plant. I'm not really sure, but the plant sounds really aloof. That might just be me though. This wind is looking in on her every night (wow, that came out really stalker-ish) and all she can do is sit there and think "wow, I'm a plant. Go me!" When she finally realizes that the wind wanted her, she falls over and pouts. Go figure. Anyway, moral of my story today: don't be a plant or the wind, they both suck.


Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman

In the Mind

Sunset’s red, redder than nervous terror
Don’t be afraid or

Alone.

Sun blazes embers through eye corners
“You too are human, even though you’re mad,”
He says softly through radiation.
Like a vivid hyperbole
The sun plunged into April’s freshness
And stumbled from open windows
With a voice of happiness

And fear.

“Don’t deny me; you’ll know I will find you.”
A feverish jauntiness
Obliquely reeling shrieks
Like a refugee forever on the run
But the sun is always

Watching.

Staring back at the existential abyss
That haunts me so and trying
To grab from it a sense of self
Half wanting to keep walking
Half asleep only
Half looking at it in times


***

This poem was a bit spontaneous. And unedited. So I'm sorry if it's not super good. I might edit it later, and make a series poem out of it. We'll find out.

Over the past few days I've been listening to a musical called Next to Normal, which is about a woman who has bipolar disorder and hallucinations and how it affects her life and that of her family's (I don't want to give any spoilers if any of you want to listen/see it on your own. I know I already told Sam how it goes). It's really intense actually. I really appreciate modern musicals covering topics that are more controversial: Rent, Spring Awakening, Equus, and Hair to name a few others.

Recent days I feel like I am going insane with all the work I'm doing and all the food and sleep I'm not getting. I suppose I'm not actually going crazy, but it certainly feels like it. 

In the poem, the sun is suppose to be the craziness because it's always with you when you're awake. It's a part of your every day. And it burns and it's everywhere. And then the abyss is the change, getting help. I suppose that once you get into a routine, it's scary to have a change. Especially when the changes mean medication or therapy. People aren't defined by their problems of course, but it's scary to think about that the person that you think you are, isn't who you actually are (?). Are my words making sense?

Lemme know you're opinions and things. Hope you all have a great week. I'll try and post another poem soon-ish. Godspeed. ~Sarah

The Poppy and the Pansy

Quiet, the Poppy walked into the room;
her sight so soft and delicately hued.
Silence hung in the air, fragrance imbued.
Chills spread, ripples of her softest perfume.

The tired old cantank'rous Cattle, whom
if he's observed is shown as coarse and lewd,
hides his face, and like all of those so shrewd,
appears to be a flower, full in bloom.

Now if this Bull was naught but coarsely grown
the Poppy must refuse the Bull's advance,
for if the Bull's allowed a second thought
the Pansy's love is caught twixt fought and flown.
And Poppy's life now ever shall be caught
in Cattle's hell, bereft of Pansy's chance.

So, I apologize for missing my post on Thursday, it was kind-of a hectic day and I didn't get time to post. This poem I decided to write after reading a novel about a woman with two suitors. The novel was all about the story from the woman's point of view, so I wanted to throw in a poem about the story from the suitor's perspective. In the novel the suitors didn't really have characters, they were more images or symbols than people, and I felt that rather unfair. Yes, I know, this usually occurs with the genders switched around, but it does happen this way so don't snark at me about it. 

I don't know how many of readers have experienced this situation in their life, but I have on multiple occasions. There are a few times where I've finally plucked up the courage to ask someone out, only to find that they're already taken. Once it happened before I actually asked her, but the other times I had have the awkward "Oh, well, I'm already taken" conversation. If you haven't already experienced this, I envy you and hope you never have to. Anyway, enough jibber-jabber for now. See you all tomorrow with another poem! Happy Saturday 

Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman

peppercorn

fool thinking a blushing arm that bent
round you in bed, that would extend to me

across a room still crowded with the breath
of friends and pet the dizzy hair above

my pretty little head, could help defend
or even wave away the tiny mess

of rainclouds and the slush-stained galoshes
from the snow globe in my chest

my life is energy dispersed as waves
in a hundred million years I will 

explode into a retarded smudge of protons
and reform into cast-away planets

full of dust-choke and nebula-bound sky where
the highs and lows no longer bear the sayable

but I'll hold on like a sinner to a prayer
like the humble flint in an old man's eyes

with bones bent forward leaning
in osteoporosis reaching for a little more

but living is no reason to continue, everything
begins and everything is desperate

****


Guys, tomorrow is Friday. I'm so thankful. 

The weather is so nice today and I'm really happy about that too. It was the Rochester wind that drove me inside to finally get work done and I poem instead oops.

The first part of this poem is about the past. It's pertinent for today I suppose. 

The middle part is about the future, and how people don't really matter, and if there is any meaning, there are no words for it. 

The end is what humans do, we hold onto every little thing and make something so important out of it, whether it has significance or not. Perhaps it out of stubbornness, perhaps out of not wanting it to be proven nothing matters. 

Things matter, I think you can make meaning out of things but they can only have meaning to you. Like I have a bouquet of roses in my room that are dead and wilted but I keep them because of the memories; to everyone else they are probably seen as trash. Plus, I've had experiences that I can't really explain to other people because I know they wont understand, they wont be impacted by the experience or feel the significance because it's mine. 

"All men have the stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travellers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all the stars are silent. You--you alone--will have the stars as no one else has them." ~The Little Prince

For those of you who haven't read this book it's fantastic. It's a French children's story actually, but it's really philosophical and has a lot of depth. To me, it's the meaning of life. Genius. 

That's all for today. Have a great Friday tomorrow, you deserve it. Godspeed. ~Sarah

William Carlos Williams: The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I know. Late again. Bahhh. Was busy multivariabling last night, but I probably could've done this at some other point in the day.



So in my late desperation this morning (in which I should be studying for that same multivariable) I flipped open John Green's The Fault in Our Stars with the intention of finding this poem, but ending up going too far and just reading the ending which was making me extremely sad. For those of you have read it (I think you should if you haven't, although I disagree with Isaac's sentiments on love, and his opinions annoy me a bit now) I'd say it was one of the sad parts with Hazel and her parents. Bad idea to read, I haven't seen my mother in months and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to see her this summer. (My folks moved to Arizona, I'm going back to my hometown outside of Buffalo. This stupid summer coming up.) This is a poem the Hazel says at one point to try and distract Gus, because it is a poem she remembers, although all she says on it is, "Williams was a doctor. It seemed to me like a doctor's poem." She's a little bit busy at this point in the book, so I'll excuse her for not going on a long rambling spiel about it. When I was looking it up I thought it had been an ee cummings poem, but I guess not.



I think it's simplicity that really makes this poem stand out. In trying to remove the formatting after copy/pasting it in this post it all turned into one singular line of text, yet it doesn't feel any less than a full poem.


That, and it's really vibrant, I think. A weird word to use on a poem, but the red wheelbarrow and the white chickens really stand out. Those two lines really contribute to the imagery, but I think it's the "glazed with rain water" that really seals the deal. Now that it's raining here a lot, I'm used to that thin layer of water that covers the benches and things after it's rained. "Glazed" is a good way for Williams to put it.

Why does so much depend on this red wheelbarrow? A lot depends on all the little things in our lives. Sam left his laptop in the lounge late at night a couple of days ago, so I took it and returned it to him on academic side the next day. He hadn't even noticed it was missing which surprised me, because my laptop takes up the dead center of my desk, which, at the end of the room by the window, is kind of unavoidable. If it weren't there and it should be I'd be freaking out. I'm stupid enough to have gotten myself locked out of the room a few times this year, except by now Emily is smart enough to not lock the door even when she's leaving if my keys are sitting on my desk. During our CS Midterm Adam was just starting to get sick and was dying with his nose running, sitting next to me during the exam, but I was able to help him out a little bit with some of the tissues in my purse. Adam, in his own right, can use his phone to access his desktop, submit our CS project, and code in C. (He has an iPhone though... Android all the way haha).

So while I think being materialistic is pretty bad, we have to acknowledge that sometimes it's the little objects in our lives that get us through. The red rain soaked wheelbarrow, so that we may feed our white chickens. I think I'll wear one of my flower hair berets today. They're pretty, and they kind of make me happy to wear. I've been complimented on them, so I guess other people do too.

It's always the little things.

I'm going to be late to Spanish,

-Val

Emily Kagan Trenchard - In Which I Call Upon Tycho Brahe

In Which I Call Upon Tycho Brahe


Tell them about your pet moose
that got so drunk at your party it fell down the stairs
and broke it’s foreleg.
Tell them about the instruments.

Tell them about the nights you stood with chin
pointing to the heavens and lips quietly mouthing
the positions of the stars. Tell them the stars
are not just stars. The heavens, neither perfect nor immutable.

Tell them about your nose, sliced off in a duel,
and how you covered the windy hole in your face with a brass replica,
lashed it to your head with leather straps,
kept it and the twitching raw skin beneath well greased.

Tell them how you taught a generation to see. Tell them
two good eyes were all you needed to chart the heavens,
and for everything else, there was your psychic midget named Jep.
Tell them the answers are there, in the charts.

Tell them about the commoner you refused to actually marry,
though she gave you 8 children and wore the keys to your castle on her belt.
Tell them at their death stars, too, do not go quiet; they are as furious
and destructive as drunken men of means; they all fall in on themselves.

Tell them how you passed on those charts like Pandora. Like, what now?
Like the boy Kepler could be anything other than what history needed.
Tell them those ellipses were drawn from his gaping mouth.
Tell them you were for Kepler, as Kepler was for Galileo, and how

he cracked open the head of a God by smashing it against the sky.
Tell them how you loved a good party.
Tell them how the wild and ethereal world
is always in attendance.


Hello everyone! I figured as I've been doing some fairly heavy poetry recently, I'd do something a little more lighthearted today, and what's more lighthearted than picking on Tycho Brahe and everything that was wrong in his life. Brahe was kind of a mean person, especially his habit of getting in fights with anyone who disagreed with him, and his lack of ability to socialize beyond stargazing. As the poem says, he did have a lover who bore him eight children, though he would not marry her because she was a commoner. I just wanted to post something to brighten everyone's day, so have fun reading and go out and enjoy the brief moments it's not raining here in Rochester.

Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman

John Donne: The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deny'st me is;

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea, our two bloods mingled be;

Thou knowest that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead.

Yet this enjoys before it woo,

And pampered, swells with one blood made of two,

And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, yea, more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;

Though parents grudge, and you, we are met

And cloistered in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that self murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?

Yet thou triumph'st, and sayest that thou

Find'st not thyself, nor me, the weaker now.

'Tis true, then learn how false fears be;

Just so much honor, when thou yieldst to me,

Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

John Donne just hit on a girl using a flea as a metaphor. That girl wasn't having any of it and killed the flea, so take that John Donne. You're not getting any today my friend.

I'm not really sure what else I want to comment on this. John Donne is really kind of huge in poetry, but I only know him because in a Scholarship Essay for the Exchange Club of the Tonawandas (Shoutout, didn't win the main prize but they as an organization were very nice to me and the other people I knew who were Student of the Month) I tried to use "No man is an island" as a proverb, and one of the ladies from our local group of the Exchange Club who were kind of our mentors  scolded me for not giving Donne the proper credit. When I expressed my surprise that it wasn't just some anonymous proverb she kind of went on a John Donne spiel in which she mentioned this poem because, and absolutely no disrespect here, she is clearly one of those people who is at the age where they don't really have the most concern for prudence anymore. I wish I could remember her name because she was really awesome. She apparently taught English at Tonawanda for almost a decade, and still cared deeply about Tonawanda as a community, which was nice. The fact that she thanked us for not being as snobby as NT didn't hurt either, hahaha.

But yeah, other thoughts on this poem are that the more things change, the more they really kind of stay the same. Silly guys will try and get girls by saying stupid things. I remember my English teacher Mr. Mercer always trying to highlight how bawdy William Shakespeare was. I think when you're first starting Shakespeare it's kind of a surprise how racy he really is. I mean, think of the porter complaining about alcohol affecting his love life in Macbeth. Shakespeare's happy to go there, to walk that line, and it's not surprising, because Shakespeare was a twenty year old guy. Granted, a really talented, eloquent, twenty year old man who deeply understood the human condition and was deft at social satire- but he was still a twenty year old guy who made penis jokes. Mr. Mercer would have you know he was actually quite good at it. Right now I am likewise reminded of Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream messing up his line and saying that the lion deflowered poor Thisby.

The fact that guys haven't changed doesn't make it any less amusing to watch John Donne hit on a girl while using rhyming language like "Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pampered, swells with one blood made of two,". But at the same time, it's kind of nice to be reminded, even with silly things like this, that people haven't changed all that much throughout the centuries.

Nobody's used any insect metaphors on me yet, so I guess that's reassuring.

Dulce Et Decorum Est ~ Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.


This is another poem that I found thanks to a class, and I am quite thankful for that. Wilfred Owen was a sad story. He spent his early life in school to become a poet, and he met quite a few professionals who enjoyed his poetry. Unfortunately he was in college at just the wrong time to be drafted into WWI. He fought the war while still writing poetry and sending them back to his family, who compiled them into a book for him. He died in the war, one week before the armistice was signed. A large amount of his poetry gives vivid descriptions of the war and of the death and destruction therein. I won't write too much about this poem, as it does a fairly good job speaking for itself. I will say this though, if you can read this, and still feel that war is a good option, you should read it again, and again, and again. Read it so many times that you close your eyes and can see the frothing figure on the cart, writhing in agony, and slowly dying from the inside out. Then tell me war is a good option.

Signing off ~ Sam Zimmerman

Coming Home

Memories leave a bad taste in my mouth

That tequila went down so smooth long ago

But leaves a bitter odor on my lips this morning

And a raging creature pounding in my head

The ghost of you is everywhere

You’re voice rides along the ocean breeze

Brushing my face softly, caressing my poor soul

It’s not the salt in my eyes that triggers a tear

You cut my hair like Samson’s

And no one could doubt you improved me

You made me your own, but without a column

What am I suppose to hold onto?

Maybe I shouldn’t have told you anything

For you’d rather the history books forget

But I can’t destroy the memories, I am weak

Clinging only to the wind and empty sheets

Happy Sunday erryone! Hope you're ready for Monday (cuz I'm totally not, lol oops). 

For a lot of people, especially college students, going home is the best thing in the world. And yeah I can agree it's pretty great, I love seeing my mom and sister, and my dad too. They are all so wonderful and supportive and I couldn't get through a day without thinking about them. Recent days have been really stressful and calling my mom and sis really helped. My friends too. I miss them to death and I can't wait until summer break to go and see them. There's just a lot of people I need back in my life who are miles away. There's one person specifically that I haven't seen since Christmas break and it's driving me insane. I'm glad I'll get to see them in, like, 5 weeks I think though. 

But there are, how to put this, bad memories in that house. My room specifically. I hate my room because that's where I went throughout my middle school and high school life when I felt lonely and sad and depressed and anxious. And now it's as if the walls have absorbed that and are now emanating it.

I've always found the story of Samson really interesting. As a kid I remember learning that he couldn't cut his hair or have wine or else he'd lose his strength. I think it's actually cut his hair and women? I don't know, there are a lot of variations. The main point is the hair. According to scriptures, a temptress named Delilah seduced him and cut his hair causing him to lose all of his powers. His weakness was women and he couldn't see the trap that had been laid for him so that he couldn't destroy the columns or something like that (Idk the story 100%). 

But let's think about that. I think all adults, at least men (some ladies), have an affinity for wine and women. And it seems to me that that is what adulthood is about, or at least it plays a significant roll. It also means responsibility, accountability, and other things but I want to save this theme for another post. God gave Samson strength and told him the parameters, but what is a meer mortal to God? I don't care if you're athiest or not, but gods do not fall to pressure, they just don't. Humans do: they are imperfect. Just because they are created to God's image, doesn't mean that they perform the same actions. Gonna throw some science at this situation and say just because they have the same genotype doesn't mean they have the same phenotype.

Anyway, Samson told Delilah that his weakness was hair and she cut it. 

There's a song called "Samson" by Regina Spektor (aka one of the best artists in my opinion). Here are part of the lyrics:

Oh I cut his hair myself one night

A pair of dull scissors in the yellow light

And he told me that I'd done alright

And kissed me 'til the mornin' light, the mornin' light

...

Oh, we couldn't bring the columns down 

Yeah we couldn't destroy a single one

And the history books forgot about us

And the bible didn't mention us, not even once

You are my sweetest downfall

I loved you first

It is apparent that the songs is sung by Delilah. But it is not sung by a temptress. It is not sung by an evil women. They seem to have a relationship, they seem to love each other through this. And he doesn't seem to care that his hair has been cut. He likes it. He doesn't want the responsibility to have God-like strength. He wants to be human, he wants to have Delilah, and is that so terrible?

Another song is Hallelujah (where the best version, again my opinion, is the one by Jeff Buckley) where he sings,

But remember when I moved in you

And the holy dove was moving too

And every breath we drew was Hallelujah. 

Every breath they drew was Hallelujah. That sounds heavenly, that sounds rejoicing. There's nothing wrong in loving someone and loving someone so much that you'd give up anything to be with them, including a God-given gift. But this poem, the one I wrote forever ago before this rant happened, is about how, yes, I let someone cut my hair (metaphorically and physically-ish) and yeah, I came to actually prefer it. I didn't mind that they changed me in fact I like to think that they made me a better person, a stronger person than before. Maybe Samson felt that way too, that Delilah made him a better person. It's when she left him that he lost his strength. 

So this has turned into analyzing a biblical story so I'm going to stop now. But please, let me know what you think, of the poem or the analysis in the comment section.

I hope you all have a great week and I'll post again soon-ish. (I'll try not to make it so long next time). 

Godspeed. ~Sarah

Miss Emma's Dilemma; or A Trip Through the Mist

lord viper crawled on scaffles of scissors in
a copse of the firewood fern with fireflower fragrances
a blanketing blaze the
zen of the zacatecas purple light

a black star crashes the bad babysitter
ah-pen-yen aeon flux

the an gel a rome ah of at shit she

the rainbows and fireworks of the 4th
a RAMBO movie fickers in the red dirt
------r----a----z----e----d------
Miss+Emma_friend#Viking
ingredients:
                 Vitamin A
                 Vitamin K
                 Vitamin R

can you see the china girl chasing the tiger
its chinese red scales wasted
on those sixty-two untainted

ç®3@m 0ƒ †h3 Ç®0p.

HE gets shot with the silver bullet
the egg drains from his
Egyptian limbs

A wake-up call
emergency gun unavailable
HE is encased in embalming fluid

Nowhere to turn but to the sunshine
Elvis - guide me




Hi everyone! Well, Saturday is here again so I wanted to post one of my own poems again. As you have probably noticed, this one's a little weird. I wrote it as an attempt to see how bizarre I could make a poem while still having it make some semblance of sense (yay alliteration). I just re-counted and in the 27 lines of this poem, there are different 41 drug references. I'm not going to list them out, that would take a while, but basically if it sounds weird it's a drug reference, from the "bad babysitter" to the "emergency gun." The main story behind the poem was supposed to be that the speaker was experiencing a drug overdose, and no-one was able to save him. I hope you enjoyed it, see you tomorrow with another poem!


~Sam Zimmerman

Emily Dickinson: "ONE need not be a chamber to be haunted,"

ONE need not be a chamber to be haunted, 

One need not be a house; 

The brain has corridors surpassing 

Material place. 

Far safer, of a midnight meeting

External ghost, 

Than an interior confronting 

That whiter host. 

Far safer through an Abbey gallop, 

The stones achase,

Than, moonless, one’s own self encounter 

In lonesome place. 

Ourself, behind ourself concealed, 

Should startle most; 

Assassin, hid in our apartment,

Be horror’s least. 

The prudent carries a revolver, 

He bolts the door, 

O’erlooking a superior spectre 

More near.

Hey guys. I know, I know, I'm late. Even by our blog's West Coast time frame. If this were a video project I guess I'd be subjected to punishment of some sort, but unless one of you suggests something, I think I'm free. Yesterday was oversleeping a bit, working an Accepted Students Open House, CS Lab Class, Physics test, Racquetball (I actually scored some points, aww yeah) then working on the CS Project. We kind of called it quits at midnight, and I wasn't really coherent enough to be blogging at the point, you can ask Adam.

So this morning I was looking around and was going through some Emily Dickinson (because she seems like someone I should use) when I found this, which really reminded me of my Writing Seminar Final Research Paper, which I think I'm going to talk about. That's right, I'm late and I'm reusing old material. Oh well.

So my Writing Seminar class was a study in Mysteries, and at one point we read Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Our Final had to somehow use another work we did not read in class and be related to some topic we had discussed, so I decided to compare Jackson's Hill House with Stephen King's The Shining, because they were similar and I wanted to read/write about Stephen King. It ends up that King was inspired by Jackson's Hill House to write The Shining, and when I found that out I was like, oh, I've hit the research paper jackpot. 

The thesis of my paper was that King and Jackson were able to create truly terrifying stories by treating both of their respective houses as characters in the stories. Each house (err, hotel in one case, but that's really only semantics) has a history, its own personal motivation, and serves as a mirror for the emotions of the people inside it, which made them more real and all the more terrifying.

King has a book called Danse Macabre in which he discusses the horror genre because it's something very near and dear to his heart and he likes writing about writing almost as much as he likes just writing (His memoir/guide book On Writing lives in my purse). In it he discuses how there are two types of horror: external and internal. External is when the horror is caused by some sort of outside force, a giant plague tearing apart and wreaking havoc through the town. Internal horror is the more psychological stuff, the character study of an individual going through personal hell. The external horror has the pro of being able to do anything, because it's a mystical, outside force, it's capable of any atrocity you can conceive of, it's not bound by physical limitations. But that also takes away some of the realism, draws against the willing suspension of disbelief. That's where the internal really benefits; it has the emotional draw because it's so real and personal. It's a person, a person who could be you, you could be inside the story. What King ends up arguing is that haunted houses, despite their connotation of cheap tricks or the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World, are prime for combining both- they can be the ghosts of slamming doors, changing hallways, blood filled corridors if we're thinking of Kubrick's The Shining film adaptation, but it can also be a result of the psychological states of the people inside it. Eleanor Vance's insecurities written on the walls, Jack Torrence's greed and lack of self control ripping his poor family apart. The grandeur of external horror with the intimate, personal fear of internal.

And that's where we get back to the poem. Dickinson is saying here that internal demons are so much worse then any haunts or spooks of your local, deserted, decrepit house. That's very true. But sometimes, with writers as talented as Stephen King or Shirley Jackson, you can get the worst of both worlds, a double whammy. An even worse nightmare- the supernatural working with ourselves, hidden behind ourselves, to come at us from every angle. The things that hurt of the most, ubercharged by forces we can't even hope to understand.

I'm going to stop now at risk of rewriting my 10 page paper, but I did want to bring up that the funniest part of Hill House is when two new people come to the house, and one of them makes a point of cleaning and getting his gun ready. "I shall have with me a drawn revolver", he says, "do not take alarm, ladies; I am an excellent shot—and a flashlight, in addition to a most piercing whistle." Wow Arthur. Good job. What are you going to do, shoot the ghost? That'll show it. Hill House is really kind of disturbing, but it's not without its humor. The other person keeps whining that the ghost won't talk to her via old school Ouija board because the rest of the group isn't behaving. " 'Planchette,' she said bitterly, 'will not speak to me tonight. Not one single word have I had from planchette, as a direct result of your sneering and your skepticism;' ".

Have a good weekend everybody, I should probably get school work done before job work.

-Val

ee cummings - little joe gould has lost his teeth and doesn't know where

little joe gould has lost his teeth and doesn't know where 

to find them(and found a secondhand set which click)little 

gould used to amputate his appetite with bad brittle 

candy but just(nude eel)now little joe lives on air 

Harvard Brevis Est for Handkerchief read Papernapkin no laundry 

bulls likes People preferring Negroes Indians Youse 

n.b. ye twang of little joe(yankee)gould irketh 

sundry who are trying to find their minds(but never had any to lose) 

and a myth is as good as a smile but little joe gould's quote oral 

history unquote might(publishers note)be entitled a wraith's 

progress or mainly awash while chiefly submerged or an amoral 

morality sort-of-aliveing by innumerable kind-of-deaths 

(Amérique Je T'Aime and it may be fun to be fooled 

but it's more fun to be more to be fun to be little joe gould)

Hi everyone, happy Thursday! I figured it was about time to break out the ee cummings. In order to really understand this poem, you need some background. Joe Gould was an actual person who graduated from Harvard, and the rest of his short life on the streets begging for money, claiming that he was writing an "oral history of our time" (mentioned as "little joe gould's quote oral \\ history unquote", but mostly he was drinking a lot and doing drugs. A lot of movies, novels and poems have been based on the story of Joe Gould (go figure, doesn't sound like that interesting of a story). 

Now that we have backstory, we can delve into the poem itself. The first two lines are meant to emulate the nursery rhyme of little bo peep ("little bo peep has lost her sheep and doesn't know where to find them"). A few other points probably need clarification to:

"nude eel" - supposed to sound like new deal

"Harvard Brevis Est" - Harvard is brief (in latin)

"a myth is as good as a smile" - plays on the phrase 'a miss is as good as a mile', but also insinuates that Gould was keeping secrets

"Amérique Je T'Aime" - "America I love you", a reference to a popular song at the time under the same name.

Now that we've got the verbiage out of the way, we can get into the meat of the poem. Most of what I got out of this poem is the college reference. "Harvard Brevis Est," our time as college students is brief, and when we get out, we better not end up like "little joe gould" who doesn't have teeth to his name. That's one of the reasons I went to RIT, to have a better chance to not be jobless. I also like the last line, which basically insinuates that it's much more fun to be the fooler than the fool. I hope you all end up liking this poem as much as me, even with the insane second stanza. Until I post again,

Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman

A Rush

Write me a love letter

And I’ll write one for you

My will eager soars for a chance with romance

To the point of foolish rhymes

My tender dizzy aspirations climb

I sigh

For moments to meet words with a flurry of blush

Deepened with a natural flush

Of blood pounded out by fevered heart

I can feel your nearness and our possibility

I will make you melt with thoughts of me

I’m

            Itching

                        Fingers twitching

My lips bite themselves thinking, guessing, wanting

Wondering

            Will you hold me

                        All night long?

Will the way you speak my name make me believe in God?

Whispering I’m waiting

Small slips of my soul reaching

Feeling a sort of empty

That doesn’t cut too deep

Because, I swear

            When I close my eyes and think of you

                        I taste heaven. 

Happy Wednesday erryone! Haven't posted in a few days so I thought I would. 

This poem is really unlike most things I write since it doesn't end in dark and doom. Normally I think this kind of writing is tacky and teenager love crap, but I'm going to share it with you anyway to show that I like to try new things sometimes. It's so easy to convey angst, it's so easy to write when you're angry because it's so concrete. You can boil in anger if you're not careful, and write pages upon pages about it as it festers. But writing when you're happy and not make it sound like you're from Kansas (you know, because corn?), is hard. Granted, everyone has felt that irrational (maybe rational) feeling of love (or lust) in their life and can understand such writings, but that doesn't make them any less nauseating. I hope this poem didn't make you feel sick.... 

In hind sight, here are some religious motifs in it, not sure if on purpose or not, nor if they are intended to be blasphemous or apprehensive about love and stuff but... Please critique if you'd like or give me an opinion, I like hearing other people's views, and I hope that y'all have a great rest of the week! Godspeed. ~Sarah

William Wordsworth: The Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A Poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

 

It's finally spring! I know, because it has rained but been far above freezing for the last three days. I personally am really happy that it's Spring, because I miss the sun a lot (Florida was a little lacking in February) but now, if the rain lets up, I can be out in the sun either eating lunch or running each day. If it doesn't let up, then at least I can enjoy the nightly thunderstorms, because lightning's awesome.

 

Daffodils are one of my favorite flowers. The lilac is my absolute favorite, as we had a giant lilac bush outside my childhood home, but I also really liked the wild daffodils that reappeared each spring in the back yard. Sure, roses are nice (I have a rose ring/ hair clip) but spring flowers like daffodils are so nice for much less cost. I really like flowers, but I'm pretty cheap- carnations are cool too. Also, reason #89 why RIT ended up being the perfect choice despite my real lack of effort deciding, Rochester's the Lilac Capital of the World, and I am SO looking forward to the Lilac Festival in May. I'm going, someway somehow.

 

I guess if I'm actually going to talk about the poem I want to bring up the really awesome opening line- "I wandered lonely as a cloud." Clouds are nice and majestic in the sky, but one reason that it's easy to lie on a soft patch of grass and make shapes out of them is because of the space between each cloud formation. Clouds are awfully removed up there in the statosphere, and we love their beauty and variation, but only from far away. They're free drifting but alone, and the metaphor is really appropriate for a person out meandering on their own.

 

My only other commentary is that I like the idea that maybe we as humans need nature to be a part of our existence. I brought it up in Sam's original poem about trees that nature seems to have significance in a lot of human lives. Nature is something to keep us grounded and appreciative of the beauty and grandeur in life, which is maybe why we're drawn to things like trees (my favorite thing to draw on Sol's boxes when I'm bored) or fields of daffodils. Not to sound like a hippy here, but sometimes I think we need to just forget about the millions of little minutiae that we occupy and worry ourselves with just appreciate something as simple as the flowers coming up for spring, or the fact that somewhere in the RIT forest someone took the time to spray paint the words"I LOVE TREES" on several trees, the entire phrase only visible from one specific location.

 

It's Spring everybody, go out and enjoy it.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner - Randall Jarrell

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Randall Jarrell - 1945


If anyone who was in AP Literature at NKHS is reading this, I hope you connected this to Catch-22 like I did. For those who haven't read it, Catch-22 features a character who was blown to pieces in the back of a plane (Snowden).

Back to the poem, it took me a while to actually figure out a lot of the double (quadruple?) meaning behind this poem the first time I read it. The four interpretations I got out of it were as follows:

1: Man's mother dies, he enlists in the army, he's in a battle in a plane and gets shot

2: The "mother" is the main part of the plane, and he was forced into the turret where he was shot

3: Mother dies at childbirth and man gets sent to an orphanage. From there his life is completely controlled by the state, where he spends his meaningless life until he dies.

4: The entire poem is about his birth, where "mother's sleep" is conception, "woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters" is the chaos of the real world, and (he might have died in birth, or his birth was his death) he was forced out with a steam hose (a common practice in 1945).

All of these interpretations feature one thing, this man's life was meaningless. He did nothing of importance; knew no-one of importance. No-one cared about him when he died. Even the brevity of the poem suggests the fact that he was unimportant, only worthy of five measly lines. Even through his unimportance however, we still feel sorry for his death. I think that Jarrell was trying to imply that even the most worthless people should be missed and should not be forgotten, although many are.

Tyler Knott Gregson: Untitled

Tyler Knott Gregson is someone who I discovered through Tumblr by seeing one of his love poems. The vast majority of his poems are love poems and the sad, lonely hearts of Tumblr love him all the more for it. As someone who wouldn't necessarily call love poems their thing I can't deny that his stuff on love really is truly fantastic. Tyler Knott Gregson is someone who deeply understands love in all of its forms, and I would highly reccommend any of his works, although forewarning that you will have intense feelings of all kinds. A lot of time my breath catches in my throat reading some of his stuff, not going to lie. 

Sam and I are discussing doing a week of just love poems, and if that's the case then you'll probably see him again from me, but I don't really want to talk about love at the moment, I think.

I like this poem but I'm not sure if I completely understand it. What exactly is the swimming supposed to be? As previously stated a lot of his stuff is about love, so swimming could be falling in love, except then what does that make the treading water? If the treading water is living life, just getting by, then what exactly does that make the swimming? 

Something about the swimming is taking risks, I feel like I know that much, especially given the "trying to keep your head above the water" line. There's trying to float and then there's keeping your head above water- the latter definitely has the anxious connotation of trying not to drown. There's a sense of danger there that's kind of carried over to the swimming part. 

And swimming is kind of dangerous, especially with how terrifying drowning would be. My mom's deathly afraid of water- has never gone swimming, never been in the ocean, can be in a pool, but not comfortably and especially not at a point where she can't stand with plenty of room between her head and the water. I used to be thankful I didn't inherit that, except now that I don't swim all that much and I need to learn how to drive and probably have her driving anxiety, I think I've changed my mind. It comes up fairly often in Would You Rather stuff if you'd rather drown or be burned alive, and I always choose being burned alive. I've had people tell me that burning would be so much more painful and so much worse and you'd be watching your flesh melt but at the same time, drowning just seems terrible. I don't have my Mom's fear of the water, but I can appreciate the sheer terror of drowning.

(In my opinion the worst way to die is Death by Molasses, by the way. It's like drowning except worse, because molasses.)

Yet we shouldn't forget how much we love to swim. Swimming is a risk of not swallowing water or knocking yourself unconscious or a million other things that can go wrong when you're underwater, but it's a freeing experience of propelling yourself and cutting through liquid and floating and it's something that we should keep doing. Whatever swimming is supposed to represent here, our lives should still have a measure of risk in it. There's something comparable between the feeling of zipping across a pool underwater and the feeling of taking risks. In Brave New World the Savage complains of no love, no hurt, and how are these people living with no risk? Mustafa Mond calmly explains that monthly or so citizens have their blood flushed with endorphins and adrenaline and then flushed out, and they merrily go about their lives. They realized that the sense of risk was necessary, but took care of it in other ways.

So may we never forget how much we truly love to swim or to take risks, for that matter.