Scary Poems

Where are all the scary poems? Why are poems not scary? What did Edgar Allan Poe do to them?

I will tell you what ol' Eddy did to scary poems. First, take off your shoes.

Yeah, doesn't that feel nice? Bet your feet are thanking you.

thank you! thank you!

Now, take off your pants. Come on, nobody's looking. You're alone. Just you and the internet.

Yeah, you feel free.

Yeah, you're beautiful. Take it all off, you'll feel free. You and the internet and your body and the air in its caress and its love always surrounding you.

Breathe in the air that hugs you. When you breathe you inhale your scent and the scent of those who've held you.

Now your body is a poem. The light on your body is the light on a poem.

Now forget about the rabid, dark poet trapped between your walls. Ignore his haggard breath as he churns his limited air into toxic carbon dioxide. His mad cries growing pale and soft as melted ice cream.

Poor sweet Eddy. No one cares to hear that ol' cow bark.

There's a new scary poem in town.

There's a new everything now.

Hybrid texts?

Bringing it back around to teaching...  I can appreciate all of what Susan has to say, and also JT's comment about studies relating learning to student-teacher connections.  That's a helpful way to look at it.  It doesn't matter so much what we're teaching or how, in the end, but maybe what matters more is the human connection that emerges (which is to some extent out of our hands?).

Question: does anyone have suggestions for hybrid texts that are appropriate/accessible enough for undergraduates?  I've been teaching Don't Let Me Be Lonely and Incubation: A Space for Monsters, and the students connect to them to varying degrees.  I'd like to add to that list or switch them out-- in an attempt to keep myself from becoming too "settled" in my teaching.  Problem is, I haven't had much time for reading lately.

(Although I did recently read Eileen Myles' Sorry, Tree and Dodie Bellamy's Barf Manifesto and Dorothea Lasky's Poetry Is Not a Project... maybe more on those later, as I'm still processing... and those aren't for teaching as much as for writing (for me, at least)...)

I do think that in teaching hybrid texts to undergrads, I run the risk of simplifying these very complex books.  I think only a small number of students, in the end, "get" the complexity.  The rest probably just discover a different approach to reading and writing.  I wonder if it's enough to be happy with that discovery, for them, or if I'm doing the texts a huge disservice?  I also have to add that this essay by our own L.M. on her own blog has been SUPER helpful in teaching hybrid texts, and it's the only outside source I bring in (it's really just a composition class, by the way-- "Writing About Literature").  If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it!

It's March Again

It's March again, which means it's April and now time to prepare for Christmas. Once again, the world will turn to the Christmas tree. Mighty, mighty Christmas tree.

Ohh, conical flora of year's dusk. The history of decorating the tree with ornaments is the same as the history of dyeing eggs for Thanksgiving. It all began one Sunday six years ago in a Winnebago outside of the White House.

FDR had just launched the robots. USSR secret operatives were crawling toward the red, metal door. China had for the first time successfully cloned the Dali Lama. If I were to say the world was in a state of violent indecision, I believe you would agree with me.

Then one man came onto the scene. A saint among devils, you might say. This man was a traveling tree salesman known informally as good ol' Nick Fury. He was planning on burning all the world's evil to the ground.

He had guts, but Kaczynski-style. Except he did not have the genius IQ. So instead of making the world cower in fear, he snuck into millions of houses, stowing colorful trees in each one. How did he do it?

Not even he knows. He was black-out tripping, Ambien-style. Now who looks like a fool? Yep, you.

Don't ask stupid questions.

Just keep rocking it.

Going forward.

He thought the trees would explode. And they did explode. They exploded with happiness. Presents-style.

Now every year, mid-April, but we call it March, 4 or 5 days before new-years-day, we celebrate his so stupid it's brilliant idea which ended the cold and hot wars which cured presidential polio.

We celebrate this by putting up trees.

Tree explosions.

My Puppet Said To Erase

There was a kind of an essay here. The author has removed it because she wanted to write something else here instead. It will appear at some point. Posts must be allowed to change, like teenagers.

desire

in the context of becoming a human being i've started decorating. I MADE THIS AT 7:45 AM:

i'm writing a book to the object of my desire and so far have written 30,000 words. each one begins dear object of my desire followed by a rave. the letter is like a pistol. only shooting outward and i can't tell who it's hitting.

JG wrote on montevidayo "when i'm writing desire makes me sick" to which i think yes. exactly. and the way feeling sick. feeling bulimic. feeling nauseous is what i feel when i write. like i want to vomit on the word.