Week #11--My Response to Sydney's Free Write

Pauline said...

I really enjoy your specificity in this draft, Sydney, and the humor of the "sneeze" factor countering the drama of a breakup. Favorite lines:

"bucking your ego against mine"
"odd pubes patched in the small of your back"
"pointer fingers as wiper blades"
"lost in a wrinkle of regret"

Problematic for me, however:
"skin leopard" on a "pasty frame"?
"calcium stained teeth"?
"play-doh mushed into mold"
this could be contracted into "play-doh molding into the very nothing you are"
Another contraction might work in "rustled laughter like the falling leaves"

Great word coinings in "chesti's" and "crink"!

Can't wait to see the rewrite on this one. It's rich!

Week 311--My Response to Jenna's Free Write

You,re right, Jenna, it's prosy but has great phrases of specificity that you can turn into more contracted syntax:

"the ground's saturation of leaves"
"suspended in air" instead of "balanced for a moment"
"They" instead of "the girls"

Keep "corners that cross and bend"; "everywhere is downtown"; "waiting to be unwrapped" = awesome language.

I find "tree-dropping' confusing, and "Families" don't usually appear in Thomas Kincaide paintings so suggest you either change the word or add 'cottages' at the end of that sentence.

I think it would be fascinating to read more about Gianna's "Hispanic lore" and perhaps
how one or more of the prostitutes operates when a customer drives or walks up.

Good luck on this one. I think it's a 'doozy'!

Week #11--Free Entry

                            YU55

I’m sorry we missed one another yesterday.

I was busy making dinner when you rushed by

and caused all those astrofolks to scramble

to their telescopes so they could catch a wee

glimpse of you. You must have been in a big

hurry for when I sat down to eat, you had already

faded into a blurb at the end of the news hour.

Now for somebody so eager to make a name

for yourself you seem somewhat elusive.

Maybe you should work on your social skills

before you come back in 2045. In fact, you

should spend some time with Venus when

you visit her in 2029 and pick up a tip or two.

She has a pretty thick layer of bozone but

a really soft heart once you get to know her.

She can teach you all about love and beauty,

and I’ve heard she can be a pretty hot momma

around sunrise and sunset—just the ticket

for an peripatetic, pockmarked planetoid

like yourself, who just needs a gentle push

to get on the right path. Ask her for some sulfur

to treat your acne but take care she doesn’t try

to lasso you into her orbit. You see, she lost

her only moon some time ago and has spun

retrograde ever since. I’ll look forward to your

next visit, but in case I’m not here, I’ll leave

the porch light on for you. Oh, and watch out

for the attack cat. He might mistake you for

an airborne ball of yarn. God speed!

Week #11--Junkyard Quotes

“I’m such a moody foody…”

Owner of Frank Ski’s new restaurant in Buckhead.

“Trash Miners Risk Lives Seeking Gold”

Headline on Charter’s homepage 11/5/11.

“catma”

coined word to signify “a weakly held belief,” as opposed to “dogma”: a strongly held belief, according Dr. Goodword  on 11/8/11

“creeping”: hiding in photography so that only a portion of the body shows

according to Ellen DeGeneris on her show 11/8/11.

also, “I’m from the days when wood paneling went all the way down to the floor and pants came up to our armpits.”

Week #11--Improv #2

My rendition of Dr. Davidson's handout improv:

Dealing With It

There’s a basketball court in Brooklyn

and a diner on the corner where

one letter doesn’t work, making

the sign read Lary’s instead of Larry’s

but hell everyone is missing something

and I have to deliver this mail before 5:00

to all the customers on my route without

riling up any racial reactions like when

old man Benedict sic’d his piebald mastiff

on me for not bringing his mail to the door

only we have to use the cubicles assigned

to each tenant at the street or we’re breaking

the damn law—that’s how life gets fucked up

y’see when rules don’t work for everybody

‘cept those who make ‘em and I guess it’s

the same wherever you go whether it’s

Guyana or Trinidad near the Antiguan border

or it may be even worse in Jamaica and Barbados—

but damned if care about anywhere while I have to

negotiate this piss-infested machine of a city

where all the parts have to be greased daily

or it grinds to a freakin’ halt

Week #11--Improv #1

my riff off of York’s A Natural History of Mississippi (p. 26)

The Natural Order of Things

A touch of blue from the clouds

and from the lake a ripple that rolls

the water into receptacles, swamps,

refineries, and rivers until each vessel

reaches full pool. Water always

needs controlling, holding back

or calling forth, repelling by roofs

and umbrellas, irrigating by farmers,

turning on and off with twists of a knob.

Long ago, it became so rambunctious

that it spit us onto land, reviled

by our complaints about the over-

abundance of salt and the shortage of sushi.

It did not really need us for anything,

but we could not survive without it.

So we devised ways to make it

work for us, rather than admit to it

how much we appreciated its cradle of love.

We sat on it in ships, we bridged it with

girders and bottled it for drink, even

dredged it for sand. For the duration,

it has patiently succumbed to our clumsy

attempts to color and shape it to what

we think it should be. But water reserves

its capacity to remind us, every now

and then, who is boss. After all,

it runs in our veins. One day, maybe

we will reconcile our differences.

Until then, water remains our ambivalent friend.

Week #11—Sign Inventory

"Shore" (pp. 82-87 of Persons Unknown)

            by Jake Adam York

Narrative in second person voice

Sounds dialogical but “you” cannot speak back

multiple repetitions of “water” reinforces “That water’s everywhere”

“touch” or “touched” appears three times

negatives infiltrate the syntax:  “no ward, no neighborhood…can’t be touched,” “where you’d never arrive,” “that yard which is not here anymore,” “There are no answers. / There is no one to ask.” “but no one stops,” “but not a killer,” “leaving nothing but a name.”

use of diminishing descriptors for victims:  “epitaphs, only names, dates,” “burned on an inch of film,” “forgotten mile,” “an alleyway,” “an empty lot”

Speaker’s forensic-like tone turns philosophical:  “There are no answers. / There is no one to ask.”

Poem’s tone sounds fatalistic through use of verbs of finality:  “as if the line had slipped”; “”you are burned on an inch of film”; “where the flood has grazed”; “a place even the maps might forget”; “where you last touched the earth”; “where you rose up, / Biblical”; “called you home again”; “abandoned as a name”; “collapsed under its weight”; “this field…that has forgotten everything”; “the steel drawers click shut.”

assonance/alliterations in “spill of a city”; “slipped through some scar”; “the steam of afternoon, / the smell of everything”; “slumped….sleep”; “sniper stood”; “reaching…rubbled”; “wells your walking’s made”; “watch as the water.”