I'm not sure what the blog is supposed to be about this week so I'm just writing about whatever I want, which is to say, my thesis.
I think that it's definitely coming together in a way that no other collection of mine has done. Although I'm still having issues articulating the thread of my collection of work I think that it's there and that it will reveal itself to me as I continue to work on it. I feel like every poem is a step closer to the revelation of some grander meaning, like every piece rounds out the collection as a whole so that each part is a commentary on the whole.
At the moment I think the whole thing is best articulated as a collection of pieces that deal with perception, and specifically on moments in life (my life) that have shifted my point of view of the operations in the world.
I think that's the most concise way to put it. I've been talking to people outside of Mills and outside of academia about it and that's really the best way to explain it. However, I found that it's also useful to describe my influences, which I made up retroactively. Kind of. I think that Beth Lisick and Miranda July influenced my work because of the following two reasons:
1) I was reading/ went a reading of their work in the time that I was developing and writing my thesis
2) I think that the way that they deal with the day to day is really interesting. Mundane things become evocative. There are interesting and even twisted views of their lives that are hilarious, terrifying, and beautiful. I like that. I want to do that.
Bonus Reason) They're both from the Bay Area and I really like to rep that.
The major issue in my thesis at the moment is mainly: having the time to do it! and the conspicuous lack of sex. If I was doing a deconstructive criticism of this thesis I would say: Why is there no sex? Is she intentionally avoiding sex? The answer is Yes, I was.
I think the idea was that I could just create a piece of work about my shifting perspectives on the world without being bogged down by the topic of sex. I think that I succeeded to a point. I think that by leaving sex out, I also left out a bunch of relationship poetry without leaving out romance. I didn't want to write about relationships or emotional others because I didn't want to go on about it forever as I tend to do when I get on to that facet. In other words, I didn't want to get stuck on poems about how much I loved or hate my ex-boyfriend. Still, I think that I touch on romance in my work and I tried to do it in such a way that it was the kind of romance that is not specific to me.
I don't really know how to bring the sex in, but I think that it will work it's way in if I keep writing. We shall see.
Showing posts with label lupe martinez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lupe martinez. Show all posts
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Voice - Salinger's Once a Week Wont Kill You
Lupe Martinez
http://www.freeweb.hu/tchl/salinger/killyou.html
In this short story Salinger uses a lot of insinuation and restraint. These techniques build the tone of the story slowly so that the context of each action is revealed as the character does more. Although one could say that’s true of all plots, I think that these techniques are particularly useful in this piece because Salinger is using the pacing of the story to show the mood of his main character.
He begins with the very simple action of packing; his main character is serious and brisk but not necessarily urgent. He is formal, almost business like with the woman in the room although eventually we learn that he is his wife. The reader sees a different side of the main character when he is with his aunt, there is a tenderness to the moment that was absent with his wife. What does this mean? I think it’s meant to show that the Young Man has more respect for his aunt than his wife She is more mature than his wife who has never stopped speaking to him in “italics”. Moreover, Salinger bluntly describes the aunt as having “an intelligent face” while his wife seems more childlike because she had been married (?) with him for “three years and she had never stopped talking to him in italics” that is, she never stopped putting emphasis in her speech. His wife also specifically puts emphasis on terms like “horrible” and “anything” that are reminiscent of the adolescent view of concepts in infinitives like “forever” and “always,” a sort of exaggerated sentiment.
Still, Salinger’s voice comes through most in his syntax. His sentences are generally short and are used to describe. When Salinger describes the young woman’s arms he says “They were brown and round and good” and when he describes the house Salinger says “a flight of wide, thickly carpeted steps.” His sentences contain small details that, I think, are meant to make the things he describes common place. This situation happened to everyone; many sons, and husbands, and nephews went away to war. Moreover that it also happened to anyone. In the details of the story he describes a young man who owns a house and has a hired cook, and can support his aunt, all of these things seem to imply a an upper class. The main character and his family are people of means. Salinger does not reveal the character’s names he lets them identify each other. The narrator only refers to the characters as “the young man” and “the young woman” and “the aunt” and “the nephew” so that each character is identified through some kind of quantifier. I think this is because Salinger is trying to imply that this situation affected these types of people and those who are relative to those people. I think this is furthered by the fact that the characters identify and name each other, we learn that the Young Woman is Virginia because her husband calls her name, the Young Man is Richard because his aunt identifies him and the Aunt is Rena because her nephew identifies her. They are important to each other, to the narrator and to reader they are just people living in war time.
I think Salinger’s use of insinuation is also part of his voice. The insinuation does two things for the story. The first is that it implies that war is understood, the characters see war as inevitability. This is shown mostly when Richard’s aunt says “I knew this would happen two years ago…” Not only in her statement but also in her use of emphasis, in that she speaks to him in italics, it’s something that the women share, knowledge of the inevitable. The second aspect of the insinuation is that this is how Salinger is communicating with the reader. Salinger mentions Sousa marches on the radio, George Washington the first American general, March 1944, and “the last one” all of which eventually lead the reader to the realization that Richard is going off to fight in World War 2.
Restraint comes with the insinuation but it does more for the tone than for the insinuation. The tone reflects the character’s feelings. He speaks in short sentences to his wife, small curt responses to his wife’s ramblings. On the other hand, he speaks tenderly with his aunt and tells her a story about his college days. This shows not only his feelings at the moment before he leaves for way but how he wants to leave each of the members of his family and consequently this builds the reader’s understanding of the character’s personality.
http://www.freeweb.hu/tchl/salinger/killyou.html
In this short story Salinger uses a lot of insinuation and restraint. These techniques build the tone of the story slowly so that the context of each action is revealed as the character does more. Although one could say that’s true of all plots, I think that these techniques are particularly useful in this piece because Salinger is using the pacing of the story to show the mood of his main character.
He begins with the very simple action of packing; his main character is serious and brisk but not necessarily urgent. He is formal, almost business like with the woman in the room although eventually we learn that he is his wife. The reader sees a different side of the main character when he is with his aunt, there is a tenderness to the moment that was absent with his wife. What does this mean? I think it’s meant to show that the Young Man has more respect for his aunt than his wife She is more mature than his wife who has never stopped speaking to him in “italics”. Moreover, Salinger bluntly describes the aunt as having “an intelligent face” while his wife seems more childlike because she had been married (?) with him for “three years and she had never stopped talking to him in italics” that is, she never stopped putting emphasis in her speech. His wife also specifically puts emphasis on terms like “horrible” and “anything” that are reminiscent of the adolescent view of concepts in infinitives like “forever” and “always,” a sort of exaggerated sentiment.
Still, Salinger’s voice comes through most in his syntax. His sentences are generally short and are used to describe. When Salinger describes the young woman’s arms he says “They were brown and round and good” and when he describes the house Salinger says “a flight of wide, thickly carpeted steps.” His sentences contain small details that, I think, are meant to make the things he describes common place. This situation happened to everyone; many sons, and husbands, and nephews went away to war. Moreover that it also happened to anyone. In the details of the story he describes a young man who owns a house and has a hired cook, and can support his aunt, all of these things seem to imply a an upper class. The main character and his family are people of means. Salinger does not reveal the character’s names he lets them identify each other. The narrator only refers to the characters as “the young man” and “the young woman” and “the aunt” and “the nephew” so that each character is identified through some kind of quantifier. I think this is because Salinger is trying to imply that this situation affected these types of people and those who are relative to those people. I think this is furthered by the fact that the characters identify and name each other, we learn that the Young Woman is Virginia because her husband calls her name, the Young Man is Richard because his aunt identifies him and the Aunt is Rena because her nephew identifies her. They are important to each other, to the narrator and to reader they are just people living in war time.
I think Salinger’s use of insinuation is also part of his voice. The insinuation does two things for the story. The first is that it implies that war is understood, the characters see war as inevitability. This is shown mostly when Richard’s aunt says “I knew this would happen two years ago…” Not only in her statement but also in her use of emphasis, in that she speaks to him in italics, it’s something that the women share, knowledge of the inevitable. The second aspect of the insinuation is that this is how Salinger is communicating with the reader. Salinger mentions Sousa marches on the radio, George Washington the first American general, March 1944, and “the last one” all of which eventually lead the reader to the realization that Richard is going off to fight in World War 2.
Restraint comes with the insinuation but it does more for the tone than for the insinuation. The tone reflects the character’s feelings. He speaks in short sentences to his wife, small curt responses to his wife’s ramblings. On the other hand, he speaks tenderly with his aunt and tells her a story about his college days. This shows not only his feelings at the moment before he leaves for way but how he wants to leave each of the members of his family and consequently this builds the reader’s understanding of the character’s personality.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Fight the good fight
First, I was walking with a mission
Although
it was an aimless directionless mission
it was my mission and it bulstered me up
I was righteous with my task
My belly burned with hunger and fulfillment
Purpose
Coming across a young man
Wth grey hair and a conscientious heart
I stopped to let him preach to me
About saving people from torture
From the comfort of my own home
From the comfort of my bank account
For ten dollars a month
And I forget how much time has passed
Since I looked him in the eye
I am staring across the street at a news woman
And her cameraman.
I hope I look good and noble
Talking to this man with a cause
And think to make a mental note
To call, to say
Dad check the news on channel 4
I might be on it.
Then I finally do look him in the face
And realize
Its my turn to talk
And I stand there frozen
Caught as though I was
Clipping my toenails on
on the floor of his room
Staring out the window
I might have crawled through
This conversation is becoming
A cracked rubber band
Baking in the heat of its own importance
How odd to talk about money and torture
And long hours standing on the street
Without water or food, in the sun
It must be torture
And yet, I reject him
I shake his hand and walk away
Fight the good fight.
Although
it was an aimless directionless mission
it was my mission and it bulstered me up
I was righteous with my task
My belly burned with hunger and fulfillment
Purpose
Coming across a young man
Wth grey hair and a conscientious heart
I stopped to let him preach to me
About saving people from torture
From the comfort of my own home
From the comfort of my bank account
For ten dollars a month
And I forget how much time has passed
Since I looked him in the eye
I am staring across the street at a news woman
And her cameraman.
I hope I look good and noble
Talking to this man with a cause
And think to make a mental note
To call, to say
Dad check the news on channel 4
I might be on it.
Then I finally do look him in the face
And realize
Its my turn to talk
And I stand there frozen
Caught as though I was
Clipping my toenails on
on the floor of his room
Staring out the window
I might have crawled through
This conversation is becoming
A cracked rubber band
Baking in the heat of its own importance
How odd to talk about money and torture
And long hours standing on the street
Without water or food, in the sun
It must be torture
And yet, I reject him
I shake his hand and walk away
Fight the good fight.
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