Poems for Tuesday and Lawrence Hill...

Firstly, I would like to say that I am glad I am not the only one who didn’t really understand the poems for Tuesday. I spent a long time reading through Hejinian’s “Three Sections from My Life” and tried to find a connection or a string of thoughts that held the prose poem together. I thought the stream of consciousness feeling of the poem was kind of cool—at times a connection could be seen between consecutive thoughts but other times it seemed that only the writer could justify why the adjacent thoughts were related. There were a few common themes addressed throughout the sections of the poem, including colors, animals, personal (and somewhat intimate) thoughts (almost like personal memories), commentary on writing and the concept that time is passing as the poem continues. I also noticed while reading the poem that on p. 147 of the poem Hejinian says “A pause, a rose, something on paper” and toward the very end of the poem (p. 150) she says “There was a pause, a rose, something on paper”. This was the only real progress I could see being made toward a resolution within the poem. While it wasn’t much, the parallel between these two phrases was more satisfying to me because so much of the stream-of-consciousness-style poem seemed so random and detached. Otherwise, I liked how Hejinian alternated between short and long sentences. It made the prose of the poem flow quite well and accentuated its stream-of-consciousness style.

As for “Blah Blah” by Harryette Mullen, I agree with Hadley. I didn’t really see the point either. I even read the poem aloud… which sounded kind of weird, but it made the flow of the poem a little more obvious. Still, I couldn’t understand what the significance of the poem was. I tried to analyze the poem, but really didn’t come up with much other than I noticed that the letters E, U and X were missing from the poem. I am looking forward to discussing the poem in class. Maybe if we pool all of our insight as a class we can come up with a deeper meaning for Mullen’s poem.

Lastly, I would just like to say that I saw Lawrence Hill speak tonight and I really enjoyed it. It was nice to hear him read portions of his novel, but I especially liked the question and answer session. He had some great answers in relation to his writing techniques and a lot of insightful questions were asked. It was interesting to hear a writer’s perspective on the experience of writing a novel. I appreciated the fact that he says he writes a lot and then has to cut down what he has written in the editing process, to the point where only about half of what he has written ends up in the finished novel. I can definitely relate to this! It seems that he and I have similar writing styles. He was great and I am looking forward to reading Someone Knows My Name!

See you all tomorrow!