For my poetry class, I have to write another imitation...

And I'm doing Eliot.

It's probably all sorts of insane to even think of attempting, but I've got a good start, I think. Get excited to see the final version, which I will definitely be posting here.

Absolutely. I think the last song on it is one of the best pop-punk songs ever written.

The poem may or may not come together, but I do have fodder for writing for awhile. Blech. I'm not going to tell you about it because it wouldn't be any fun, then, to try and discern it from the reading of poetry, heh.

Bukowski's fiction is phenomenal. I'm a big fan of the poetry, and admittedly did get into him thanks to Chiodos, though I've mostly grown to be a fan of him based on his own merit.

The evolution of Henry Chinaski would be interesting to study. I was actually thinking of maybe writing my thesis--or at least a paper--on it (before we had this conversation), because it's so fascinating. It would also be cool to examine the Bukowski-Chinaski connection.

HWM and Tales Of Ordinary Madness are the prose books of his I have. Both great. I think they show his knack for informal formal representation (if that makes any sense) and how he has so genuinely captured his own misery in the world he lives in. It shocked me how affected I was by both his prose and poetry, to be honest.

I started writing a poem of formal similarity to "Howl" this evening in the wake of a traumatic event. Maybe I'll post it at some point. It's pretty ridiculous.

Here's an interesting question:

What do you think of Charles Bukowski?

I must admit, I'm a fan, though I think he is at once the most overrated (by the "scene" and by angry white young adults in general) and underrated (by the academic community) contemporary/modern poet. Sometimes he writes utter shit; other times, he says brilliant, beautiful things.

I've had this conversation before, but it wasn't with someone who could approach it from an artistic perspective, or from a perspective so immersed in the artform of poetry.

So, what are your thoughts?

Milton did Paradise Lost

Donne wrote contrived poems about sex and contrived poems about Jesus. I'm over him.

Dante is fantastic. I wish I could read his poetry in the original Italian; I feel like it would hit me harder. I feel the same way about most translated works, though. Rimbaud and Baudelaire are probably the most beautiful in their native French.

I haven't had any time to post there since I signed up, and I'm pissed I can't change my username from the dumb one they assigned me, but I'll let you know when I do post.

I feel really guilty for not being able to comment on YOUR stuff as readily; I've been ridiculously swamped, and as soon as I get the chance, I will definitely have some things to say. Promise! Being in 2 plays and now doing wardrobe for a third is not conducive to lots of free time. Sigh.

(It's the same guilty conscience I have about the reviews I write for here; I always get so backed up because of work...)

I don't know if I'll have a chance to write any new poems in the next few weeks. I have a rough draft of a one-act play due for my creative writing class, and I'd like to make it something good. I kind of want to do a pointed satire of the whole workshopping process as it is done in that class, where people use the author's work as a vehicle for their own self-indulgence. I was told I used too many big words in my short story earlier this semester. that was my biggest criticism. There was ONE word I probably could have done without (tintinnabulation), but...yeah. It's messed up, and the professor's attempts to rein it in haven't worked as well as I'd like. Maybe I'm just bitter and pretentious.

BU? Awesome. I looked there, but ended up falling in love with American University after a campus visit.

I totally understand where you're coming from. Most of my favorite authors are of the modern era; in fact, Shakespeare is probably the only one I truly adore who is pre-modern. I respect Marvell and Sidney, but I hate John Donne and a lot of the other poets of the time. Gerard Manley Hopkins is far superior at metered verse than they, to be sure--are you a fan of Hopkins? I'm kind of a whore for his alliterative prowess.

At any rate, I figure I should warn you that i have a critical essay due for my poetry class in the next few weeks, so I might be throwing ideas at you about various things. I'm not sure what I want to write about yet, especially since there's a length limit, meaning writing about Eliot would be nigh-impossible. I might go with Mina Loy. I dunno. Expect me to be discussing it with you in the next couple of weeks.

Since I've signed up on Poets.org, I've been getting the poem-a-day thing, and I must say, I'm pretty disappointed thus far by the two I've received.

I honestly am of the belief that Shakespeare is the greatest of all writers. Ever. Never has anything that he has done been rivaled or surpassed. His poetry is brilliant, and his plays serve as functional poetry. Ah...And the Shakespearean sonnet is probably one of my all-time favorite forms of poetry. I absolutely adore so many things about so many different poets, but at the end of the day, Shakespeare is my favorite writer. It's weird, especially considering how much I love free verse and how open-minded and progressive I can be when it comes to literature.

How about you? Feelings on Shakespeare?

It's a great poem. The thing that stuck out about it most was how she tried to distance herself from the experience as much as possible, using a dead poet who wrote in a different language--Baudelaire--to describe it, but in doing so she also showed how closely in tune she was with her surroundings.

I saw your newest post. I wish I had some damn time to sit down and go through it and give a detailed critique. Hopefully I'll be able to sometime soon; god damn school.

And, in response to your first post on my wall--yes, I am an English major. Literature and Theater double, in fact.

Like half the class forgot the books that had Elizabeth Bishop anthologized--probably because they didn't read it, which is typical but stupid of them nonetheless--and the professor decided it would be good practice for the final, which is an on-the-spot explication.

I think I had a really good angle about "The Bight"--that Bishop uses stilted rhetoric and stark, impersonal imagery to reveal an ironically personal attachment to the goings-on. But still...pop-explication? WTF

Fair enough. Consider the conversation moved.

I had a pop-explication today in my poetry class. It was so odd...we were handed "The Bight" by Elizabeth Bishop and told to explicate it in a half hour.

lol wat an O'TOOLE! yea he is pretty *** noggish.

hahaha, yeah that was the point of the team, to be cute. the ones you may not know are Jumpluff (the green puffball), Porygon2 (sexier version of original porygon), and Teddiursa (resident Teddy bear).

Emperor's New Groove is wonderful indeed. The llama is somewhat unrelated, but works well with it. I just happen to love llamas I suppose.

Thanks for using the word 'prowess' to describe my writing, but I wasn't an English/Writing major (or minor for that matter). I was a Chemistry major, but I took two poetry writing classes as electives. The 'advanced' class really was almost entirely English/Creative Writing/English grad students so I'm sure that ended up helping a lot.

What brought you to Boston?

yes, granada hills, ca.

alright thanks