Metapoetry
Poetry is easy
if you remember
there are no rules.
What’s hard is all that fancy stuff,
like rhyming,
and meter,
and acrostics,
and shape poems,
and haikus.
I can sound really poetic
without counting syllables.
But does that really count as poetry?
Isn’t it just prose with
random
line
breaks?
Is this poetry for the lazy people
who could never write a sonnet?
I wrote a sonnet,
once.
It wasn’t very good.
This is easier.
I’m back!
I just found my old blog after about ten months of not posting (I stopped after the class ended). Reading through everything inspired me to start writing again, so I think I’ll revive it. We’ll see what happens.
Who’s There
I wrote this in English class last year. It starts with the opening line of the source of my blog’s title. For anyone I talked to about terminology: I decided to just leave it with “bell-ringer”, at least for now.
“Who’s there?”
Silence. He stood for a moment, in case a reply might come, but none did. He continued walking, eyes straining to make out anyone who might be approaching through the heavy darkness. Of all the nights to be on watch, why did he have to get the moonless one?
“Just my luck,” he muttered. Wait. There it was again: a faint rustling. It seemed to be coming from the woods on the other side of the river. He edged carefully toward the bank, trying at once not to sink into the mud and to catch a glimpse of the noise’s source.
At the bank he paused, contemplating crossing over to investigate further, but the noise seemed to have stopped. He sighed deeply, and picked his way back through the mud to his assigned path.
As he rounded the next corner, a shadow as large as a horse but as light as a sparrow darted to the wall. It paused momentarily, as if considering the wall’s solidity. It then slid into the wall, turning the mossy stones solid black for an instant, then appeared on the other side. As it stalked silently into town, it left the wall a few shades darker than usual and reeking of dead bodies left out in the sun. A passing bird flew by the town, then, suddenly, dropped from the sky as it passed over the wall. By the time it hit the ground it was only a pile of bones.
The blood-red sun rose slowly, wading through the thick air still lingering from the night. The city started to wake, sat up, yawned, stretched. Nobody seemed to notice that the morning sunlight was a little less clear, a little less bright, the shadows were all a little deeper. So nobody noticed as one of the shadows peeled away from the rest of the blackness and crept from an alleyway. It snuck toward the old church, whose bell tower loomed over the city like a much older brother. The shadow slid silently through the old wooden door, aging it even more so that it looked centuries more ancient than the surrounding stones.
The thing slunk up the tightly winding staircase of the tower, gliding slowly but inexorably up to the belfry. The bell-ringer pulled the long, thick cord, but no deep chimes rang out from the bell above. The bell-ringer peered upward, searching for the cause of the silence. He nearly fainted from the dread fear that enveloped him.
The huge iron bell had darkened from its usual silver to a deep, shadowy black. The bell-ringer rushed to the staircase that led to the church below, but the tower was already starting to collapse around him. He screamed, but no sound left his throat; it was smothered by the darkness spreading from the bell above.
As the stones of the tower fell to the ground, they blackened and melted into a puddle of blackness on the old dry grass of the churchyard. The blackness seeped into the ground, into an old grave that had been dug before the ancient tower was even considered for construction. Eventually no sign remained of the tower, only the grave with the dark, blank headstone.
The Writing Life: chapter four reflections
Hooray! A short chapter! Fewer rambling, long-winded extended metaphors!
Aside from that, this chapter is actually quite confusing. The dream itself is interesting, but the point that Dillard tries to make by it at the end is unclear. She learned that a typewriter can spontaneously combust?
The Writing Life: chapter three reflections
First of all, I really like the quote at the beginning of this chapter: “Another day, another dollar; fourteen hours on snowshoes and wish I had pie.” I, too, wish I had pie.
Another quote that interested me: “[A writer] must have faith sufficient to impel and renew the work, yet not so much faith he fancies he is writing well when he is not,” (page 46). What about the situation where the writer thinks that his work is crap but keeps writing anyways and it somehow turns out well? That seems to happen to me too much.
“My work was too obscure, too symbolic, too intellectual,” (page 54). I’m glad that she, too, recognizes this. Now if only she’d do something about it . . .
Morning
I spent most of last night doing journal entries for psych, which somehow gave me a stroke of creativity on the bus this morning. I wrote this in about ten minutes during that bus ride.
My alarm beeps. I open my eyes. I push the button to make it stop. I am not yet awake.
I get up. I go to the bathroom. I wipe the morning gunk out of my eyes. I am still not awake.
I take a shower. The warm water should energize me. It doesn’t. I am still not awake.
I make breakfast: a hummus sandwich. It’s an easy thing to make without being awake. I eat it. I rinse the plate. I am still not awake.
I return to my room. I open my closet. I pull out clothes. I put them on. The end effect looks planned. It couldn’t be because I am still not awake.
I brush on some makeup. I hope it will hide the fact that I am still not awake. It doesn’t. I try styling my hair. That doesn’t work either. I am still not awake.
I slip on shoes. I grab my backpack. I head out the door. On the dark walk to the bus stop I am still not awake.
The bus pulls up. It stops. The doors open. I enter. I swipe my pass. The bus driver smiles. I smile back and take my seat. I am still not awake.
The bus stops. I get off. I walk to my next bus stop. I sit on a bench. I wait. I read a book. I wait. I am still not awake.
The second bus arrives. The get on-swipe-smile-smile-sit sequence repeats. The bus pulls out. I read more of my book. I am still not awake.
The rhythm of the bus is monotonous. It lulls me. I almost fall asleep and miss my stop. Now I am even less awake.
The bus arrives at school. I grab my backpack and get off. I walk up the hill and through the door. I walk down a hallway and through another door. I sit down at my desk. The teacher says it’s time to begin the test. I wish I was awake.
The Writing Life: chapter two reflections
I liked this chapter more than the first one because this chapter seems to have more of a coherent point. There are also a few good points on which I wholeheartedly agree with Dillard. The biggest one is her argument on page 26 that a writing space should not be appealing, in order to let the imagination create without too many outside influences. I personally can get distracted by my surroundings, so I agree that finding a non-distracting writing space might help me to focus more.
The major issue I have with this chapter, however, is that now that Dillard actually states her point she does not explain her reasoning. She makes several categorical statements without providing any sort of justification. An example is on page 33, when Dillard writes, “Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading—that is a good life.” I do not see how Dillard can make such a grandiose statement without at least explaining why she does. I, for one, would call a day spent reading a good day.
Old(ish) Character Sketch
I wrote this in class back in September, but it was just handed back today. I had forgotten how much I loved writing this (it was one of my favorite assignments from this class) and I decided that I wanted to share it.
She looked like she didn’t belong, didn’t expect how we go about things here. She tried to seem as small as possible, he petite frame slightly hunched over her primly crossed legs. Her little brown ankle boots were the kind snobby people would be willing to buy for $1000 just because they had a designer label. They were blatantly out of place among all our discount-store sneakers. She had a crisp blazer delicately printed with dainty purple flowers; we had baggy grey sweatshirts with broken zippers. Her hair was neatly pulled back into a little bun at the base of her delicate neck, any rebellious strands thoroughly controlled with bobby pins; those of us who bothered with hair had messy ponytails, leaving half their hair hanging in their eyes.
She kept her head bowed as she wrote, only occasionally glancing surreptitiously around the room. She was clearly sure of what she was writing: she used a new blue pen rather than stooping to pencil like the rest of the class. That would have indicated that she might ever have the need to erase. She kept the paper on the edge of the desk, leaning away as if to avoid whatever disgusting souvenirs the last student had left stuck to its surface. Who knows how old that pre-chewed gum is now?
The Writing Life: chapter one reflections
This book is schizophrenic with metaphors! First Annie Dillard is talking about inchworms and then in the next paragraph she has moved on to the dangers of prayer. And all this is supposed to be a metaphor (or metaphors) about being a writer? I don’t see the connection. The descriptions are beautiful with a great attention to detail, and only sometimes end up sounding long-winded, but they seem rather pointless. Maybe I’m not enough of a writer to understand. Which leads me to my other issue with this book so far: Dillard seems unbearably pretentious. One section that especially bothers me is on page 19, where Dillard argues that authors should never aim their writing towards people who don’t like to read. I disagree. Reading is good for the mind and should be something that everyone does, regardless of whether they are intellectual snobs. Books aimed at people who don’t normally like to read can help teach them to enjoy reading, which is definitely a very worthwhile endeavor.
On a side note, I enjoyed this quote from page 13: “Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagara Falls in barrels, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars.” My response: “Some people juggle geese.”
A Collaborative Story
This is a story that I (along with five friends) wrote today. We each wrote a sentence or two to continue the story and included a corresponding illustration. Our minds are interesting, to say the least.
Words, Words, Words 