Condensed Epics: The Evolution of Long (Epic) Poetry and the Attention Span
April 2009



We don’t have the attention span for long poetry.

"Meadowlands" is an epic for a generation conditioned for Attention Deficit Disorder.




( cut for a long paper, saying what's just been said )

Images, Robert Hass and A Decade, Amy Lowell—An Analysis
February 3, 2009

( cut here for intense little paper on Imagist poetry )

Shadow Theater
Je rêve of shadows
Mix reality with lies
Forgotten past times
Nostalgia wakes me again
In darkened rooms, there’s light

My discomfiture
Proof I’m an insomniac
But I am dreaming
Crisscrossed shadows on blank walls
Restless echoes of past life

Bed swallowing me
Whole body drowned in pillows
Si c’est un confort
But the shadows ever rage
Restless again and again

our last poem had to showcase what we learned over the semester. as i learned pretty much nothing i didn't already know, i got to write out whatever the heck i felt like writing. poetry snob, yes. but since i made myself have bigger challenges than my professor offered... *shrug*

this deals with a big talk i had in astronomy lab with this kinda awesome guy named peter. we're killing time talking about the lab and it got turned into this big joke about becoming a superhero based on all these cosmic rays that shoot through us every day. seriously: you calculate than over a million muons pass through you a day, and they're irradiated particles that move so fast, time moves slower for them.

so while we were in class, we end up talking about the hulk, superman, spiderman, mystery men and how "my mommy calls me special" and pretty much anything to kill all the time we didn't feel like spending sitting there.

a sestina is 39 lines, with 6 end words rotated each stanza. so they have to have the lines end a certain way.

p.s. peter's awesome. i think he likes me.
Astronomy Lab Sestina (You’re a Superhero) ( insert awesome music here )

"wordplay." it's supposed to be puns, spoonerisms, malapropisms, etc. basically you taking on the english language. i set out to do something completely insane. look up "contronyms" on your google. you'll get a couple of websites about words that have their antonym AS ITSELF. examples include "cleave," which means both to adhere to and to separate from; "left" as in to leave or what remains; "bolt" and "fast" which both have to do with leaving and with standing still. are we clear here? good.  shape based on the word "cleave".  Discursive means to move from topic to topic coherently... or to move from topic to topic randomly. Discursive
( poem under the clickety click )

a sonnet usually consists of a rhyme scheme, 14 lines with a turn around the end of line 8 and the beginning of line 9.
a curtal sonnet is, mathematically speaking, precisely 3/4 a petrachan sonnet. rhyme scheme: abc abc dbcd b. 10 and a half lines.


Long Distance

I liked you better when I was reading between your unlined
A4 pages and halted wooing on my computer screen…
Meeting you virtually after our summer romance.

I liked you as, textually, your gentleman's armor shined
More clearly than it did when we were nineteen,
Foolishly giving each other a chance.

Enchanting virtuality gave way to the reality of you
Caught in still-framed glances: long and lean…
Your water-reed legs, your arms in open stance—
But changed. Your character formed anew.

Alas! loss unforeseen.

Prose poetry, any topic...

Like the End of the World
You want to take a Mental Health Year.

Disappear to a different page in your atlas and see the sights somewhere else. England Paris Belgium Cairo Tokyo. Anywhere but here. Anywhere, so long as it is out of this world when it's ended. You cannot stay home anymore, because if you do, you will have to hear everyone talk about it

again again again. There is no more cohesion, no brotherly love. There is just them. And you, standing separate, because you cannot talk about this again. And you cannot take that anymore. To stay home means that you will have to sit and watch her have a twenty five year project that could last her a lifetime.

You cannot stay home.

Welcome to the end of the world. Where there is no more love between You Your Sister Your Brother Your Family. There are secrets lies manipulation nature-versus-nurture

divergence. Lines of best fit for data that makes her immature, and you mature. Lines that make you a liar and she a mother. Lines that lead you along until there is no cohesion in the family and all there is to say is that you loved each other.

Once.

9/22/08
Three Dong Opera

Cataracts of woven basket hats spill forth into the ring,
hungry for a glimpse of Saigon's Nightly Sideshow.
See the man who can play a trombone with his toes!
The bearded woman, the snake handler and the albino.

The need to attend is like a fever, a virus they can't shake,
soothed only by cheap won-ton soup in sawdust air.
They crowd the stage, curving themselves amoeba-like,
to forget their woes during Saigon’s Freak Night Fair.

These hollow men, with greedy mouths, raise up such a clamor
from splintering rows of their broom handle seats;
The callused and paper-cut hands of working men
applaud the grotesque, the acrobatic feats.

In porcelain counterpoint, the albino stops all action on the floor,
jangles coins in the kitty, and calls out a hopeful question.
But there only comes the broken shuffling of feet
to hear such an importunate monetary suggestion.


underlined words were the word bank to be used for this poem. a dong is Vietnam's currency.