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.