christine’s blog

I enjoyed everyone's nonfiction and fiction stories.  There isn't anything I didn't like about any of them.  All of the fiction stories were creative and engaging, and I enjoyed reading each and every one of them.  The non-fiction pieces were all insightful, deep, and intelligently amusing.  Everyone's stories rocked, both within the fantasy/fiction realm and out in the real world.  These are works of art that I will not soon forget!

Poem 1

This poem is very sad, yet sweet.  I want to know who this person is.  I love how she is happily remembering this person instead of being all emo and saying "Ohhh, whyyy?  I'm sad and I'm cryyyying".  That is probably how she is feeling, but she turns the sad emotions into fond remembrances.  I like the rhyme scheme as well.

Poem 2

I can really feel the anger, confusion, and despair in this poem.  A cheating boyfriend is NEVER a fun thing to deal with, and she very effectively puts those thoughts and emotions into print here.  Though I hate cheaters, I love this poem.

Maybe a title should be added to both poems, but I wouldn't change anything else.

"The Dry Fountain of Creativity" 

I like how she rhymes each word at the end of every line.  I think it's ironic that though she's complaining in the poem of not being able to be creative, she's being quite creative with her word choice. (Irony isn't a bad thing, I promise!)  The title is what makes it.  I really like this poem and wouldn't change anything about it.

"Heart and Mind"

I like the way the poem is set up.  It's all mid-aligned, which I think is more effective than putting it on left-align.  I like how she's saying that though one can know about love, it's not the same as actually experiencing it.  The title is appropriate for the comparison; you use your head (mind) to know about love, but you use your heart to actually experience love.  Excellent work!

Poem 1

The metaphor of the girl being the sun and the boy being the ocean is BEAUTIFUL.  The descriptions are phenomenal.  The last four lines bring the descriptions together very well.  I love the last line the most.  Excellent word choice! I wouldn't change anything about this poem.

Poem 2

I'd like to know more about this little girl.  Is she the poet's little sister?  The not-so-explicit way of telling this tale of siblings adds an element of mystery to this poem. I really like it. I like the Ozzy reference ("My music bit the heads off bats.")  Nice personification!  There really isn't anything I would change about this poem either, except maybe putting a title.

"Rupert"

I like this poem, but I have one small problem:  Is Rupert a dog that chewed up a book, but has now gone missing?  I don't know, maybe I should read over it more carefully.  The poem is very metaphoric and descriptive, but (to me) the metaphor is unclear.  It's not necessarily the way she wrote it; I'm just not good at deciphering metaphors.  I can tell you more when I decipher the metaphor.

I can't find her other poem; when I get a hold of it, I will edit this critique.

"The sweet unknown"

This poem is very sweet.  I love the imagery of the coast and the horizon in the first few lines.  I like the way he italicizes some of the words to add emphasis.  The only thing I didn't particularly like about this poem was the repetition of "of the sweet unknown".  Maybe he should take out the free-standing lines?  Still, a very good poem overall.

"I miss you like the sun misses the moon"

Another very sweet, romantic poem.  I like this one tremendously.  The italics and dashes were perfectly placed, though I think the last two lines should be more even instead of the next-to-last line being so long.  I love the metaphor of two people in love missing each other.  I also like how he suggests that it would be more appropriate if his lover were the land and he were the sea, or if his lover were the soil and he were the tree.  This poem is amazing!

I never thought that a piece of nonfiction could turn into how Richard Selzer describes a simple cutting tool.  The very first image--"One holds the knife as one holds the bow of a cello or a tulip--by the stem.  Not palmed nor gripped nor grasped, but lightly, with the tips of the fingers." (p.262)--blew me away.  I didn't even know that creative nonfiction was supposed to be like that, but this poem is the perfect example of a good creative nonfiction piece.  He goes on to compare a surgeon to a poet, "...the scars you have made on countless bodies are like verses into the fashioning of which you have poured your soul." (p.263).  He continues to make medical metaphors and similes of this knife, goes on to describe different types of knives. I didn't like the knife's comparison to rape, however.  It was quite disturbing to be honest.  But the final lines--"The knife rests.  And waits." (p.268) were an abrupt ending that I wasn't exactly expecting.  Overall, I liked this piece.  Some things I wouldn't have put in there, but then again, I am not the author of this piece.

"Imaginative writing has the power to also to take us inside the minds of characters to show us directly what they are thinking."  (Burroway 89)

As a child, I read countless books (mostly because I had loads of free time).  Most of the books I read were very realistic because the author had taken the time to make the main characters come to life.  The characters' thoughts, everyday routines, and emotions were what made those books so memorable. 

"As poet Paul Engel famously said, 'writing is rewriting what you have rewritten.'"  (Burroway 207)

This is the part that I look forward to least when I write something.  It's a necessary evil.  It seems like you've been working on a piece forever, only to read the so-called finished product aloud and trash most of the story line.  It is terribly time-consuming, but it must be done if you want your story to be up to par.  Rewriting countless drafts is probably what got most writers published, so it must be worth it.

"One of the things that happens when you give yourself permission to start writing tis that you start thinking like a writer.  You start seeing things as material."  (Lamott 136)

Everything--an incident, a flashback, a smell, everything--can be used as material for a writing piece.  This is what I am experiencing now as I advance toward writing better poetry and prose in this class.  The piece itself isn't always that great at first, but it will become noteworthy after some refining.  And index cards are just the things to start off with.