I buy most of my books in bookstores. When I do order a collection of poetry online, I tend to order the cheapest copy available. Not just to be frugal, or to take the most advantage of online shopping, but because many of these books come used, often by students who have filled the margins with notes. These notes are usually Hella Basic. Which is fine. It might be their first time experiencing poetry. Or they were forced to take this class and have been told to take notes, but have no idea what parts of a poem are important. Or they are experts and their notes are well-researched and fascinating, and drive me to explore more. The copy of Yusef Komunyakaa's Talking Dirty With Gods that I received was Hella Basic. But without me having to do any editing, they produced a poem I quite like. These are the notes with the linebreaks, punctuation, and capitalization as they appeared in the book. Stanza breaks occur when there are many notes for one poem, although there are some stanzas that represent several poems, which only had one note in them. A Young Reader's Guide To Yusef Komunyakaa's
Talking Dirty With Gods, As Written By A Young Reader Beastly man Virgin huntress legend that Judas in the Bible hanged himself on. He stands for a betrayer -a skinning knife monster made of different parts God of doors that had 2 heads formalist - relation to title? sociological - sum up main points? painting river of the dead shorebird not too high, not too low consequences of childlike behavior --> (indecipherable) copy animal's abilities -King of the gods -cares -makes himself off as the victim -entertainer ladies man promotes peace promotes social interaction -fire center of attention -large disastrous fire -trickster -player -used many disgui - bull sheperd eagle Zeus = Jupiter -singing -thrumming -playful flirtation -goddess of marriage wife of Zeus -twins raised by wolves & are the founders of the city of ROME -nipples -a museum in flame }we start believing our lies <strike>he gets aroused</strike> -act of having weight Romulus kills Remus to her children necrophilius DEAD :City of the dead city Museum b/c that's where all the artifacts are: The sarcophagi vials of ash, etc. -b/c its the city of angels wealth, <strike>& business</strike> is busy -partial shadow <strike>+ an eclipse</strike> -egyptian god <strike>the end</strike> of the afterlife/death -a stone coffin -EARLY ARCheologists -a sailor that was always drunk traitor -A faun-like God of sheep & flock. He was <strike>in</strike> linked to God of <strike>Isis</strike> Thionisis Also known as the one that discovered music Greek God Of Lust [He made people fall in love (like Cupid)] - you are in on it. you're part of the process -a poet -crazy love -------difficult to define <strike>rampant</strike> }He wAs pAn being moved on -a RiveR (no control) a handsome, seductive, jealous maRRied man a nobleman frequently in love affairs. (mAnwhoRe) -wishes -intimacy -touch - sexual ---longing ---dry die > obstacle He desires For her to speak Of him intimately --wants to hear her say his name -obsession --battle ? -Killing of Babies -mostly women female Babies T: women try to escape the fate lives they live ---out of the dead curled milk - sour action of having sex -action of having sex -engage from -past...upbringing crazy? sounds? of sex? -condom? -cum? -virgin? -dildo? -porn? - - Americans - open to sex non-Americans-closed -sexual implication -pain reliever -enjoying -pleasure pain of last love death connotations, sin + temptation? -->demon in the form of a man (indecipherable) woman to seduce one in dreams -not 1st time! -->not pleasant -->familiar scent -->sex, intimacy }bold but afraid -abusive sun ] -->actress, model 50s & 60s -->art of Dadaism --. Surrealism -improper - most evil time (opposite 3pm - most holy) --? -->soul, (indecipherable) --inability to move on -->dirty doves in chimney creator of -trap -found in chimney -->fire, burning, escape, dirty secretive sneaky Traditional spAnish. Remedies -old person or old ways CHIldren or meN
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Sadly, poet John Ashbery died this week. He wasn't a huge influence on me or my writing, but I often enjoyed how he chose to evoke feelings rather than use a traditional narrative. To celebrate his memory, I read one of his more recent collections, A Worldly Country . Here are twenty prompts based on the first twenty poems from the book. 1. Worldly Country: Imagine a day where complete chaos has run over the world. Not a violent apocalypse, but a day of complete inexplicable weirdness. But just One Day of it. The next day, everything's back to normal. What caused that day? And what happened during it? Will we ever know how it got back to normal?
2. To Be Affronted (directly from the text of the poem): Imagine a movie that is the same/as someone's life, same length, same ratings./Now imagine you are in it, playing the second lead,/a part actually more important than the principals'./How do you judge when it's more than/half over? 3. Streakiness: Imagine that it's not people who prefer to go out in good weather, but weather conditions that prefer to come out only for certain people. What's their criteria? Do clouds have a different agenda than the wind? 4. Feverfew (directly from the text): What if we are all ignorant of all that has happened to us? 5. Opposition To A Memorial: Describe, in detail, the quality of an intangible concept. For example, what would "I can't find my cellphone" look like if it were a house. How would you envision "How am I going to explain this to my mother?" 6. For Now: Forgive yourself for something you did out of ignorance. Still keep yourself accountable, and lay out a way you can, in some way, account for that mistake. 7. Image Problem: If your life was a novel, let's assume it was divided up into chapters. Where does your fist chapter end? Why there? 8. Litanies: Make a short list. A list of days, or seasons, or flavors in a single packet of Skittles. Something manageable. Now decide which of those things is The Best of them, and offer that thing praise, and excuse it any shortcomings it might have. 9. Like A Photograph: Everyone reading this has, at some point tripped, and then carried on as if nothing had happened. If you have mobility issues, maybe your transport very temporarily stopped working. What was your inner-monologue like immediately following the issue? Did any part of your actions or speech betray that monologue? 10. A Kind Of Chill: Even non-human animals must get bored of their jobs from time to time. Narrate a nature documentary of an animal with ennui. 11. One Evening, A Train: Dismiss someone or something from your presence. Let it know, in no uncertain terms that they/it is not only no longer needed, but no longer allowed near you. 12. Mottled Tuesday: Something is about to go horribly wrong at a grocery store or retail establishment. Watch it unfold. Tell us about it. 13. Old Style Plentiful: Passive Aggressive Notes was a popular website about a decade ago. Write an extremely passive aggressive ode to something or someone you like, but which is driving you crazy. 14. Well-Scrubbed Interior: Is there a part of you that you feel is understaffed? Maybe your temper could use more employees, or your heart needs a new manager. Write a want-ad to fill the positions you can afford to fill. 15. Cliffhanger: In all plays, even Hamlet, the scenery/is the best part. Describe the scenery in your favorite play, movie or book. Focus on the scenery. If you can somehow make that tell the story without using any dialog or describing people's actions or motivations, then you are a true professional. 16. The Ecstasy: If history was a single building, what would it look like? Would you want to stay there? For how long? 17. Filigrane: Give an evacuation order for part of your past. Explain how it will benefit from leaving you. If the spirit moves you, give it conditions for the possibility of its return. 18. Ukase: Write a celebration of nature using a thesaurus for at least 1/3rd of the words in the poem. You don't have to slot the frilliest words, just the vocabulary you wouldn't commonly chisel. 19. Casuistry: What would happen if morning didn't come when it was expected? What would come in its place? How would you handle it? 20. Andante Favori: The end of summer can be a depressing time, particularly when you're a kid and have to say goodbye to all of your summer friends (or are summer friends mostly a construct of living in a seasonal economy tourist trap?). Tell us about how the change of a season affected your emotional well being. My John Ashbery books mostly sit on the shelf, muttering softly to the neighboring books. I think A Worldly Country could tell by the way I lifted it from between its neighbors that its author was dead. I read through it, maybe for the first time since I bought it. Maybe for the first time ever. I came up with a series of prompts based on the writing. And now, here is a poem that was slated to be a Maggie Nelson interaction. It may also end up being a Maggie Nelson poem , but for now it is definitely a John Ashbery interaction. 2. Burying My Head In The Pillow
The capital of sleep has been walled off by whatever tyrant is currently wearing the shiniest tiara. The passengers on the train that no longer stops there don't even bother to look up from their crossword puzzle to reminisce about what isn't so much lost as currently unavailable. Twenty-one down is a thirteen letter imaginary word for the shade of whatever color you imagine represents the exhaustive collapse of willpower to try and improve society. No one has solved it yet. Even the birds obey the wall's strict existence. The trees argue over whether the sun will even bother to show up tomorrow since all of mornings checks have bounced this month. Don't forget your sweater. Not that you're forgetting things. I'm just saying that today would be a terrible day to start. Visual formatting is important to me, so when I first opened Jon Pineda's Little Anodynes, I was skeptical. All of his poems are little gutters of words two inches wide. All of his poems. I was skeptical. The quotes on the back of his book are arranged in two two inch gutters. I was skeptical. But I like his amuse-bouche style memoirettes. Though the poem they inspired ended up being much longer than his. A History Of Smoke
The third time your roommate almost burns down the house in a grease fire You wake up to a smoke filled bedroom Worse than onions rotting on the kitchen counter Inexplicable spoons buried in the soil of house plants You are gagging awake There is no fire yet just smoke Get out Turn the stove off and douse the pan obviously before you go to work smelling like irresponsible Like the failing restaurateur desperate for insurance Work all day with that resin of averted tragedy clinging to what you will later remember as what used to be your favorite shirt When you get home blow out each room Soak the curtains in perfumed soap Buy a new filter for the vacuum Mop every surface in the kitchen until every sponge is kombu Keep the roommate Evict the behavior Try and remember a brand of cigarette that you both hate the smell of Say parliaments are your father’s whiskers left in the sink Newports are the last roommate who tried to burn down your house Not with a grease fire but with candles and grief and the haunting of a dead mother Grieving with smoke Cooking with smoke Everyone you love is charcoal briquettes Wood chips at the base of your temper Everyone kindling Say camels are tomato flavored fruit roll ups People forget tomatoes are fruit Don’t linger on fruit as an insult Don’t consider yourself a tomato Don’t imagine your past as smoke Say salems are You know what don’t say salems at all not because of its proximity to witches Their burning Their smoke Don’t say salems because of course another ex asked you to buy salems and hide them Openly gay Closeted smoker Only in emergencies you were to produce a single salem He already had a lighter waiting He was a state of constant emergency You were a telemetry nurse A cigarette machine Say you never love the fire just the aftermath The stench Say cling again but don’t know for certain if you speak of the lovers or the smell Stay up all night trying to understand yourself Lose your sense of chronology until you can only remember when you are by the flavor of cigarette wisping or pluming or whatever word describes the barely visible traces of burning tobacco but fail to consider the weight left in its tiny wake Remember the camel lights who lived in your bed just long enough for you to quit smoking You hated the smell of camel lights for a decade You hated the smell from the moment you met him You were always a marlboro man Masculinity dreamed up by an advertising executive who believed filtered cigarettes were too feminine The circumcised cock as a cowboy hat Your addiction was always rock hard They say you never quit wanting cigarettes and mostly you think they’re right After two hours in a dead car with a stranger who had ruined her life ruining one of your friend’s life you called the man you stupidly loved and begged a cigarette for the first time in ten years The first inhale was like kissing him again Wrong the moment your lips parted so you kept them together for as long as you could Breathing each other You made it halfway through the cigarette before giving him the option of taking it from you or letting you crush it beneath your shoe He didn’t want it back You haven’t wanted a cigarette since But you buried you face in his pillow every time he left his bed that you slept in breathing in everything killing him as if it was keeping you alive It was so familiar The first man you stupidly loved was the same brand But you were so younger enough to be happy dying with each other You couldn’t taste the rot of you The first day the world turned without him you slept on the couch with his fucken marlboro spiced sweatshirt over your face to block out the unrelenting morning He told you he’d call you and maybe you’d beach day Or maybe you’d smoke on the patio until night wisped You waited by the phone until you couldn’t decide whether you were angry or sad And when you found out he decided to die without you you soaked his sweatshirt with the butane of your grief |
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