Indecision

I am currently rereading The Unraveling Strangeness by Bruce Weigl and wondering why he believes we are so alike and wondering if he has a wife, if he lost his author's bio while flapping his hands wildly at Mr. Death, an intangible character who seems to haunt most of his poems, and if his small moments of genius structure should follow him more closely in his other work.
I wonder if such a wondering sentence is too long for a poet's introduction.

The question is do I like Bruce Weigl's Unraveling Strangeness.

Sometimes.

For example:

Weigl's poem "My Pants" is gravely comical and beautiful and describes a few personal quirks of aging, the pleasures and pains of it. The structure is interesting with its use of white space and two line stanzas. The words are deceivingly simple. The flow is lolling and easy... until the sixth stanza when the subject unexpectedly changes from first person to second person, from recalling personal experience to asking the reader rhetorical questions. Perhaps Weigl is asking himself the question of "What are you going to do?" but there is no transition for warning for the subject change. For a mere two stanzas he turns the poem to enforce the idea that his personal experience is also happening to the reader, then leaves me wondering where I went in the poem because Weigl switches back to first person for the remainder of the poem.

The other problem I have with this particular poem is Weigl's comparison of a little boy to a bullet and a scream. He makes what I believe are awkward comparisons like this one throughout the book. Maybe a little boy being like a bullet or a scream hits home for someone else, and maybe I'm too dense or unimaginative, but it is my project, and I have to distinguish differing theories and practices on structure, language, subjects, etc. And considering that the rules of poetry are gray and fuzzy, a haze in the distance at best, taste and personal style play a major role. So I'm telling you what I like and what I don't like, which has little to do with whether Weigl is a good and bad poet.

Here are the things I dislike in most circumstances regarding poetry:

1. the use of "you," unless speaking to a character already mentioned. E.g.: You, Mother....

2. lack of personal information preceding the poetry. I like to know everything - places, people, events, social status - that the author mentions. It gives the poem a complete meaning. Gary Soto is very good at keeping the reader in-the-know, while Robley Wilson was terrible at it and Bruce Weigl is good at it sometimes.

3. reading about an experience that the author could never possibly experienced but writes as if he has.

Those are the only ones I've discovered so far. There are lots of things I like about poetry, and I'm tired.

Later I will write about my replacement poet for Robley Wilson, Robert Hershon.

Basalil

Joe, in a draft

If you were a zephyr
that blew in August

You’d be a breeze of banjos
and awkward harmonies,

carrying the scent of sun-warmed
strawberries

And the sheepish crying of a boy,
fresh with the fear of bees and honeysuckle flowers.

-With much love,
Basalil

Billy Collins, You Led Me Astray

In truth, I'm no good at mother's golden rule: If you don't have anything good to say, don't say it all. No, no good at all, especially when it involves writers.
In college, it seems that students are still children enough to twist their new-found knowledge into specific, though most likely fluid, opinions which they enjoy bashing into each other for mere reactions, myself included. I love arguing about F. Scott Fitzgerald's work. He makes my skin crawl.
Even if this phenomenon remains among students and filters out of them through time - the time when they are no longer hot-headed students, obviously - I still believe in breaking mother's golden rule when it's necessary, like, for an honors project. But no worries, Mother, I'll try to be elloquent.

In Billy Collin's Poetry 180, I read a most beautiful poem by Robley Wilson called "I Wish in the City of Your Heart." It's short, sensual, odd... and it excited me to read more. However, Billy must have picked the best of Robley Wilson, and the book I chose must have been either the leftover sludge or have misplaced its informative foreward, explaining why war was a main theme and why the author felt obliged to write on concentration camps and other subjects which I seriously question as personal experience. Maybe it's just my student taste, but I can believe in a poem when the poet makes it personal. You don't have to write a war story to capture my attention or sympathy or heart; you merely have to write a few beautiful words like Wilson did in "I Wish in the City of Your Heart." If I wasn't so ignorant on copyright laws, I'd lay out this fantastic poems right here, right now; I love it that much.

But Everything Paid For, Robley Wilson's 1999 collection of poetry, hurt me to read.

Wait, that's not elloquent enough for Mother.

Everything Paid For had many elements/techniques that made me groan and throw the book to the floor, which is truthful but still not elloquent. Sorry, Mother.

Oh my God, Lindsay gets to see Sufjan Stevens in concert in St. Louis in September and she just now told me. I have to check the internet to see if I can still get tickets and go. Oh man, I have to see Sufjan.
Sorry, I'll finish later. This is Sufjan we're talking about.

-Jess

The Man

Most of my generation vaguely remembers Gary Soto as a short fiction writer who we had to read in late grade school or junior high. He was that one guy who sometimes used spanish words, forcing the kids who cared to delve into their emerging second language skills just to complete a sentence, even when the word we struggled minutes over was something as simple as amigo or abuela or adios (the one word we felt proud to know automatically as if we were Mexican ourselves). Who knew, however, that Gary Soto is actually The Man.
I'm currently reading New & Selected Poems by Gary Soto as part of my honors project. It's a thick book for poetry with an artistically flat cover - one I wouldn't be mesmerized by, in fact, probably not one I would even pick up off the shelf. And that's why I shouldn't look at covers. But the inside... the inside makes The Man. The Man owns words and makes words new. I have already stolen the preface title: Sizing Up the Sparrows. Soon, perhaps, I will be brilliant and write something as beautiful and no longer be a theif. But those skies look rather rusty.
The book is a dense 177 pages with poems divided into 7 chronological sections. So far my favorite section is "Black Hair" but here are some of my favorite poems, just in case you want something to Google:
"The Tale of Sunlight"
"The First"
"Her"
"The Widow Perez"
"Morning on This Street"
"The Trees That Change Our Lives"
"Heaven"
"Small Town with One Road"

And here's a little taste of Soto:

"I say it is enough/To be where the smells/Of creatures/Braid like rope/And to know if/The grasses rustle/It is only/A lizard passing."
from "The Space"

And this is why Soto is The Man and the first poet in my project.

I hope you are intrigued, just as I am.

Basalil

New Last Name, New Superman Movie, New Blog... Hold onto Your Bellybuttons, That's a Whole Lotta New

Well, Basalil is now the fourth Zephyrs to ever grace this planet. That's right, I'm married, and who wouldn't want to inherit such an incredibly made-up last name? Zephyrs: like the Greek god of wind. It goes quite well with the similarly made-up first name Basalil. It also fits well with my real name: Jessica Zephyrs. Do you like it?

So I decided it is time to establish a new blog.

In an attempt to be more scholarly, globaly aware, and all-in-all out of the sticks, I will try to also establish a ring of local (Springfield, MO... maybe even an area as wide as the "midwest") writers and poets who exchange ideas and news and writing through blogs, and considering that most of the writers who have already committed their souls to this project have blogger accounts, a Blogger blog is, for no other reason than stated above, necessary. We'll see how this project falls apart.
(I'm a writer. I'm incapable of being optimistic.) :)

In a further attempt to bore my small audience and to keep myself on top of things, I will also update on my honors project which began last week and will end sometime in the spring of '07.
What's Basalil's honors project?
Oh, I knew you wanted to know. Well, in short I'm reading books by three comtemporary poets of my choosing, studying everything about their writing that I can think to study, interviewing them because they're still alive, and then writing about this process and findings. In the interim, I'll be writing my own poetry and about that process.
Man, that was sssoooo entertaining.

My uterus is schluffing (sp?). I bet that's more entertaining.

In other news:
I am reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, and it's amazing so far. (Yay, I got to use more hyperbolic adjectives/adverbs.)
I am looking for a job. Hint, hint, you Springfield employers. My skills: uterus battling.
Joe and I are planning a day hiking trip. For details, ask Joe. He's the one who's actually planning.
I make delicious quiche.
And flat bread.
Joe makes delicious coffee with lots of cool whip.

I'm losing the utero battle. I must go and defend the battlegrounds.

A la sinistra,

Basalil

"There will be no balls without meat." - Alton Brown from Good Eats