On my way...

to be reunited with my Papa.

poems/interviews/etc to follow

feeling inspired to write a collection of poems revolving around my family

starting with a poem about my father

as a drunken but loving and absent but golden-hearted hero

called



HAMARTIA

2 December 2009

in winter

we sleep with our feet touching

so that some part of us is

naked together

September 1, 1939 by W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,

The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:

What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

[emphasis mine]

Excerpted from "My Bondage and My Freedom"

"Aliens are we in our native land. The fundamental principles of the republic, to which the humblest white man, whether born here or elsewhere, may appeal with confidence, in the hope of awakening a favorable response, are held to be inapplicable to us. The glorious doctrines of your revolutionary fathers, and the more glorious teachings of the Son of God, are construed and applied against us. We are literally scourged beyond the beneficent range of both authorities, human and divine.

American humanity hates us, scorns us, disowns and denies, in a thousand ways, our very personality. The outspread wing of American christianity, apparently broad enough to give shelter to a perishing world, refuses to cover us. To us, its bones are brass, and its features iron. In running thither for shelter and succor, we have only fled from the hungry blood-hound to the devouring wolf--from a corrupt and selfish world, to a hollow and hypocritical church."

-- Frederick Douglas, Speech before American and Foreign Anti- Slavery Society, May, 1854.

LearningzZzZZzzzzzZZzzZzzzZzzZzz

What helped me most with my learning process this semester was the emphasis on collaboration and peer review, alongside your encouragement to use our own voice and develop forms of writing that work toward the content of our writing. Additionally, I found the way you planned the assignments out to be very helpful. Though it was a lot of work, it never felt like it was going to crush me, it was paced out very well. Alongside pacing it out well, you also checked in with us frequently; having drafts due consistently made sure that I was on top of my projects, so I never experienced the stress derived from procrastination. However, it did help that this was my favorite class: I never felt like procrastinating on my animated writing work. Beyond all of that, I really loved a lot of the writers and writings we were introduced to in this class, many of which I took inspiration from--especially DiPrima and Maso.

I think what helped me most in the class was having content that was riveting, which I could derive meaning from in intersection with the prior knowledge I brought to the class, in combination with a form that was the right blend of flexibility and control for my personality.

Getting work done in this class was never burdened by stress or anxiety...I always felt excited to do the work for this class...sometimes, toward the end of an animation I would feel stress or anxiety about the resolution to it, or the inability to do with it what I would like to within the time constraints, but maybe that just shows that I am becoming more of the kind of writer/teacher Sirc describes in the article you made available to me: a constant reader/writer/reviser, my work developing a strong life inside of me, giving birth to countless visions and revisions.

SHRT & LNG ANMTNZ: FNL VRSN

For your viewing pleasure:

Lines

&

Girl Island

Love,

Erin

The Last Break-up Poem I Hope to Ever Write

Yesterday afternoon, as I walked to my Wednesday evening class, I wrote a poem in my head. I was thinking about how "writers" might process an ended relationship differently. For example, someone who is into astrology might say "I should have known the moment s/he told me s/he was a Libra. Air and fire is a dangerous desire." (And I did say that latter part...in a song I wrote while waiting for the bus in 2007--"his wind will blow your flames so wide, from yr heart's burning no one will be spared/others said there's more fish in the sea/he said 'don't risk yr world for me'/but I'm not a fisher of fish/I'm a dreamer in a jaded skin/and I let you in I let you I let you in.") I have determined in retrospect that this relationship was completely unworthy of such eloquent, poetic measures.

So, anyway, I was thinking about a sign that is maybe more important: who their favorite author was. In the instance of the specific relationship I am talking about in my new super romantical poem, this is especially important. So, here is the last break-up poem that I hope to ever write, a goodbye to the genre, if you will, as I do not wish to ever separate from the sweet prince I currently run with.

America

1 Dec 2009
for Nikki Wallschlaeger

"What is Left" by Cherrie Moraga

What I Have Learned in This Class

This class has been very a much needed reinforcement of my ideas, strategies and abilities. I feel like everything I wanted to do I was allowed to do, that I was encouraged to have my voice and to develop it, from start to finish. It was very refreshing to be able to write how I want to write, in the way which is most effective in my eyes, which feels the most true to what I am saying, without the distance of the academic voice and inevitable lapses in the transmission of meaning it creates. This class has helped me realize ways to engage others in writing, as well as to incorporate technology into my future classroom in radical and innovative ways that I can sorta get behind...though I still don't think I will ever take students to a computer lab without first fostering a discussion about electronic waste and groundwater pollution and how it disproportionately affects people in less developed countries who cook their dinner in the same pots with which they melt down metal from computer scraps. (Gotta gotta get up; get down.) You (Anne) have proved what I have always thought might be true: that the best way to teach is to create a space that people want to create in. Thank you.

Response to Final Project Feedback

People like the way the text flows...the making of a word and the remaking of a word by adding a letter or two. (It is totally true that I never realized the phrase "I can" is contained within "American" until I made this project. Fitting.) Others dream of expatriation, think the wooden womb cutout works perfectly because something that is carved seems so much more permanent, which is what "the fatherland's" mothers seem to want for their daughters: "an American identity that is permanently carved into our skin." People like the images used to illustrate the text generally, think they work well...want me to consider keeping the images up longer so viewers may contemplate them. Others dream of expatriation and would like to come inside my own. How very flattering...they think my animation works well to support my writing. :D Yaaaaaay.