(no subject)
I am always talking about poetry now - no really, no hyperbole! - because it is the only class that I really care about or that makes me feel (anything) and makes me think about death and memories and living inside of an old burned down house or heart or head.
Reading all of this Margaret Atwood for class tomorrow and listening to this Mount Eerie album that has me feeling all floaty, like I could slip out the window and up up up. Did I mention that I met Margaret Atwood once? I did. At a reading that became a signing, in an old church, and she signed a copy of a book that I wished was a different book, a more meaningful book, but I was so happy to meet her and she was tiny and fragile looking. More like an old woman than I thought. But she had a good, booming voice that was still sharp around the edges.
Anyway, I have to construct this response to these Atwood poems and so far all I have are a bunch of notes next to her poems that look like this:
how wrongness manifests itself in everything ... especially in a woman's body ... memory as a thing/space to preserve or escape? ... to live in a photograph? ... so many things can be paralyzing, all of life and not just death
I never understand how to read poetry so it always comes out wrong, like something inarticulate and ordinary in response to the most ordered and thoughtful words you could ever read or even know. There is usually a question mark next to everything, because I am never certain and always questioning my responses, like my thoughts, like my words, like my body, like my whole self. And always thinking: too much? Not enough? Is this right? Is this it? Now? Now. Now? Hours and years of question marks punctuated with little sighs of endings and being complete, consoled.
WORD VOMIT.
But this is good;
There will be a last time for this also,
bringing flowers to this white room.
Sooner or later I too
will have to give everything up,
even the sorrow that comes with these flowers,
even the anger,
even the memory of how I brought them
from a garden I will no longer have by then,
and put them beside my dying father,
hoping I could still save him.
Please never stop existing, Canadian death poetry.
Reading all of this Margaret Atwood for class tomorrow and listening to this Mount Eerie album that has me feeling all floaty, like I could slip out the window and up up up. Did I mention that I met Margaret Atwood once? I did. At a reading that became a signing, in an old church, and she signed a copy of a book that I wished was a different book, a more meaningful book, but I was so happy to meet her and she was tiny and fragile looking. More like an old woman than I thought. But she had a good, booming voice that was still sharp around the edges.
Anyway, I have to construct this response to these Atwood poems and so far all I have are a bunch of notes next to her poems that look like this:
how wrongness manifests itself in everything ... especially in a woman's body ... memory as a thing/space to preserve or escape? ... to live in a photograph? ... so many things can be paralyzing, all of life and not just death
I never understand how to read poetry so it always comes out wrong, like something inarticulate and ordinary in response to the most ordered and thoughtful words you could ever read or even know. There is usually a question mark next to everything, because I am never certain and always questioning my responses, like my thoughts, like my words, like my body, like my whole self. And always thinking: too much? Not enough? Is this right? Is this it? Now? Now. Now? Hours and years of question marks punctuated with little sighs of endings and being complete, consoled.
WORD VOMIT.
But this is good;
There will be a last time for this also,
bringing flowers to this white room.
Sooner or later I too
will have to give everything up,
even the sorrow that comes with these flowers,
even the anger,
even the memory of how I brought them
from a garden I will no longer have by then,
and put them beside my dying father,
hoping I could still save him.
Please never stop existing, Canadian death poetry.