Not Much More than a Mixtape
It’s been a while since we looked at it, but I didn’t realize how many posts I still need to complete and I’m going to talk about “Love and Other Catastrophes: A Mix Tape” by Amanda Holzer. This was my first choice for my poetry analysis paper topic, but after looking into it a little more, I kind of realized that I had nothing to argue.
For starters, this reminded me of a type of poem I studied in my creative writing class last year, the cento. A cento is 50 lines of direct quotes from other poems put together to create a new meaning. The one I wrote, for example, was based on Oscar winning movies; I took a line from 50 Oscar winners and made a poem revolving around saying goodbye to loved ones. So, when looking at this poem, I couldn’t help but make comparisons. The first thing I noticed was that the… I guess, citations(?), were mashed together with the actual lines of the poem. This irritated me because I was used to,
---------------- (citation)
---------------- (citation)
---------------- (citation), etc,
and it made things infinitely neater. Even now, I’m trying to look back at any random spot in the poem and I can’t make my way through all of the clutter that the citations cause.
But onto my main point: I can’t help but think that this isn’t exactly a poem and was meant to merely be read for entertainment. I know some people argued things like, “She started with happiness, and ended with sadness,” but isn’t that a bit obvious? I feel like this was literally meant to be a fun look at how song titles can create a story, and looking any further into it is just overdoing things.
For starters, this reminded me of a type of poem I studied in my creative writing class last year, the cento. A cento is 50 lines of direct quotes from other poems put together to create a new meaning. The one I wrote, for example, was based on Oscar winning movies; I took a line from 50 Oscar winners and made a poem revolving around saying goodbye to loved ones. So, when looking at this poem, I couldn’t help but make comparisons. The first thing I noticed was that the… I guess, citations(?), were mashed together with the actual lines of the poem. This irritated me because I was used to,
---------------- (citation)
---------------- (citation)
---------------- (citation), etc,
and it made things infinitely neater. Even now, I’m trying to look back at any random spot in the poem and I can’t make my way through all of the clutter that the citations cause.
But onto my main point: I can’t help but think that this isn’t exactly a poem and was meant to merely be read for entertainment. I know some people argued things like, “She started with happiness, and ended with sadness,” but isn’t that a bit obvious? I feel like this was literally meant to be a fun look at how song titles can create a story, and looking any further into it is just overdoing things.