Wreckage of Reason

"Numbers" is by Gwen Hart. In each of the eight stories about her and her husband, Hart uses numbers as an avenue to explore their relationship. Most contain numbers that are significant to her intentions, but 4 does not. In story 4, there is a conversation between a woman and her husband about the pictures on their refridgerator of Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman. Her husband says that Robert Redford is missing and should be on the fridge. The numbers in story 1 are all reversals of each other and are 27 apart: "14 and 41, 25 and 52, 36 and 63, 47 and 74, 58 and 85, 69 and 96." It is probably a reference to their age difference and the older will probably be dead. Story 2 reference's Dominique Swain, who played Lollita in the film of the same name. Her husband says "The actress who played Lolita. That was no sixteen-year-old girl." She responds emphatically that it was definitely a sixteen-year-old. This is hinting at the idea that her husband is attracted to this young girl, making him analogous to Humbert, the incestual step-father. In each story about her and her husband, Hart uses numbers as an avenue to explore their relationship.

In "Cottage Life" the author, Marsha Tupitsyn, has three characters: the woman writing this piece (it seems like a letter), the reader is the person this piece is addressed to, another man (referred to only as "he") and his brother. The woman says:
"A Truro cottage had me in its corners. you chose a ridiculous sized house. Like a little cottage for elves. Meanwhile, I'm almost six feet tall."
This is the only reference in the entire piece to a cottage so the title implies that the events that happen in this story are the result of living in a "cottage." The "cottage" was too small for this woman, who may be tall, but is most likely a reference a a confined, sheltered life. She doesn't seem to be too fond of the reader, indicating she had a lot of shame or negative feelings toward her body and her appearance. Referring to a birthmark, she says "Showing it to someone new mortified me every time." In the same paragraph she introduces the man, who is awestruck and emotionally moved by her physical beauty. She ends up living with this man in a house that is small enough that they cannot "keep our fights to ourselves" when his brother comes over. It is interesting that she ends up in a small house again, but she does not seem as negative about it, despite the fights.

Fiction Packet 2

The title of Brian Evenson's "Internal" is a three-way play on words. The story is about an intern who is sent by two different doctors into isolation to secretly observe their brothers. The intern begins to analyze himself/herself more than the other person (in the first instance, there wasn't anyone to observe). So the focus becomes the intern self-diagnosing, hence "internal." After reading the story you get the impression that this intern may actually be a patient, so the intern may actually be interred at a at a facility.

The idea that the intern is actually a patient hinted at near the beginning when Dr. Rauch refers to the intern as "hardly the typical intern" and the other interns do not explain anything, they just shake their heads. Another indication is that in the intern is always in isolation, never living with anyone. The only mention of color in the story is when the intern describes his first room as "The walls are ill with dirt, cleaner white squares scattering them..." By the end of the story, the intern is definitely disturbed, projecting his motivations on to the person in the other room and plotting to stab the other in the eye when they try to observe.

Evenson also manages to mock Psychology as a psuedo-science throughout his story. Dr. Rauch has a system of pure types and each person is a combination of these pure types. The problem is that "Rauch has declared the types infinitely expandable." Making his system incapable of making generalizations. The intern then analyzes himself according to "Eater of chowder type" and "giving the address type." The generalizations are so specific they would be functionally useless. Dr. Kagen's system is no better, analyzing posture to understand "the patient's basic conflict." The intern spends a considerable amount of time arranging his body into a posture that conveys mental health and stability.

Evenson uses words like "covert" "mystery" and "conspiratorial" which gives the reader a certain degree of paranoia. Paranoia and isolation are two characteristics of people with schizophrenia, and by the end of the story Evenson had me feeling a little crazy too.

Re: Roberson

Response to "Someone opening a window"
Test
Envision      Utopian   possibilities
on the riverbank
            of hypothetical bliss
perceptual bliss

Dive in
Scalding
this trojan gives no pleasure
very nice      HELL      lovely
expectations
                                                                                                  experience

Empathy.
One of a million
deal.


Response #2
Can't                                                                             sleep
  Can't stay                                                                 alert
     Can't pay                                                           the bills
           can't turn                                                  the lights on
                      the sink                                          is dry
                               keys                               don't fit
                                  hun                           gry
                                       cra                   zy
                                         crazy       hunger
                                           hungry craze



                                          don't blame me

"The Japanese Man" "Ungulated" "The Colonel"

I can really relate to "Ungulated." My parents have a 1/4 acre hobby garden and they have gone to great lengths to prevent animals from eating their vegetables. I have helped my father set up the 5 ft fencing and for a couple of years we even electrified it. I have experienced the pushing through the pain of erecting a fence for the protection of your vegetables and can easily put myself in the gardener's shoes. I like how the story ends with "She digs in her hooves" referring to the deer relentlessly trying to get into the garden and also how it refers to the gardener buckling down and getting to business. "Ungulated" might be a play on "strangulated" or just a reference to the deer, which are a type of ungulate along with camels, llamas and alpacas.

"The Colonel" by Carolyn Forche was fascinating. It was written from the perspective that the reader is listening to a guest at the Colonel's house for dinner recount their experience. It is a military-occupied location that can grow mangos, and has a Spanish speaking population. The military is committing human rights violations, chopping off the ears of people. The ears are collected in a grocery bag and are placed on the table. When the Colonel wipes them off the table and says "As for the rights of anyone, tell your people to go fuck themselves." The some of the swept ears hear the Colonel's comment, which may be referring the maid and some of the ears were "pressed to the ground" indicating they were listening for the coming revolution or revolt.

"The Japanese Man" by Sharon Krinsky shows the emotional disconnect between our own suffering and the suffering of others. When the person is dreaming that they are the Japanese man, they cry for their own bad fortune, but when they are not the Japanese man, only an outside observer, they do not cry for his misfortune even though the know what it feels like. 

Homophonia and other things about City Eclogue

In The Open (p63) Roberson uses the homophones "razed" and "raised" on the first page. The first part of the poem seems to be about the racial desegregation of public schools and the white flight that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s in the United States. By using homophones Roberson leads the reader to compare the two phrases in which the words occur and also to switch their places, allowing for a double meaning.
"Their buildings razed.     They ghosts
       Their color that haze of plaster dust"
This line deals with the white institution ("building") of racism being demolished or destroyed.
"A village packing up and leaving raises you with
      the catch"
As African American families moved into all white neighborhoods, the white families would leave, effectively re-segregating the neighborhood. I can imagine that moving into a mixed neighborhood with the intention of raising children together without racism, only to have the racism re-established in such a passive-aggressive manner would be destructive (razing).

Idyll (p87) is a cynical piece about how you can have your idea of perfection as long as you don't look too closely. It reminds me of "The Lady's Dressing Room" by Jonathen Swift, where after he sees his mistress' makeup, she is no longer attractive. Swift then communicates that you shouldn't look too closely at something you find beautiful. Roberson uses the same warning, don't look too closely, in the setting of a city and comments on the effect of having large numbers of people believing that the idyll exists:
"               the more people
the more lidded certain sound"
indicating that the more people there are, the facts or "numbers" are more muffled or hidden.

Seclusion from the outside world is the theme of Someone Reaching Through A Window. In the first few stanzas Roberson describes someone shutting their window and contrasts how "the open expansiveness of arms" is not a welcoming gesture, but a body position used to shut out the rest of the world:
"the reach for not being
there         open to the street"
He then proceeds to describe someone hiding under a blanket, cringing and in a panic. Throughout the poem  Roberson focuses on the process of isolation:
"the tucking out from inside;    light
nerve   line  and impulse to hear
pulled in"
The person under the blanket seems to be overwhelmed and unable to handle the sensory input from the outside world.
I didn't notice any references in the poem to any outside ideas, so this poems seems to be about one of those people in a city and who are hiding from it at the same time.

May Poetry Packet

From the May Poetry packet I liked Shakespeare's 130, Harryette Mullen's Dream Cycle, and Ted Berrigan's XVI.

I really liked how tongue-in-cheek Shakespeare's sonnet was. On one hand he is saying that his love is completely independent of his mistress's looks, which can be seen as something positive, but he preceded that by telling the reader that there is nothing particularly attractive about her. In fact he uses words with negative connotations to describe her, words such as "wires" for hair and her breath "reeks." She sounds charming.

Dream Cycle caught my attention with one phrase:
"It could freeze my teeth
crystallize a sigh"
I find the idea of freezing a sigh in place is very intriguing. I'm guessing that the ice cream truck is symbolic for the vehicle or method to remember your dreams.

XVI by Ted Berrigan talks a lot about ice and I liked the adjectives he used to describe it: "troubled ice," "doom ice," and "ice laden." I think he is referring to the sun with a feminine gender in an arctic setting and I'm not quite sure what "Smother of a sword" refers to, but I found his language interesting.

Hello

So, my name is Lance and I am a senior Biochemistry major here at EMU and I'm looking forward to this class as a departure from my "normal," as it is definitely outside of my comfort zone. I have been in college for over 6 years now and I am very much looking forward to graduating in December. I spend my free time delivering pizza for the Dominos across the street from EMU, writing music, playing my acoustic guitar, playing soccer and capoeira, a Brazilian martial art. I do not have time to breathe, but that's how I like it... kind of.