blastedgoat

that is the lie my friends, i could never lie to you…

most of you don’t even care that i talk the way i do

or that i write the words i write for you. if you knew

how i stress each letter, that i stress over every line

maybe you wouldn’t just walk or click on by.

i am in the mood for talking nonsense,

which is a wonderful sense to have.

i always used to write about my day

but the only one who ever read about it

is no longer my best friend. he has a little wife,

i was invited to the wedding. it was strange,

his fiance has celiacs  just like my ex-fiance,

but he never sticks to his diet.

i know too many people in this town

but i don’t recognize any of it at all,

its all totally different now.

i drove by my old house today,

the house i lived in when i was six.

it was tiny and grimy, just like i remembered.

i only remember moments my mom took pictures of…

and maybe a bad dream, looking over at the bars

of my brother’s crib and asking one of dad’s friends

(i think it was brad) to draw a star for a school assignment.

i remember cutting my hair at the base of my neck,

listening to the neighbor boy who liked to swear,

kissing my dog on the mouth in the yard,

bits and pieces of a swing set, and climbing trees

with a friend who oddly enough i don’t remember at all.

all these things happened when i was six

before we started and ended our life together

as a family in a new house, a big house,

a house most people know by sight if they

had ever driven down Broadway.

i used to be so proud as i squinted in the distance,

“look you can see our house from here.”

i used to look in the side-view mirror or my mother’s

beat up blue pickup truck pretending i was the star of all

my own movies that played only in my head.

each new “home” was just another set…
another setting for my next book…

it’s shit-tastic remembering all these things,

what have i lost? what was i worrying about

when i was six and when did all these things became

the past? what will today be when tomorrow

is long-fucking gone? will i ever be an old woman

shriveling in her recliner…or can i live on forever

in these moments if i am willing to write them down?

am i going insane or just walking around half-asleep again? do i wear my hair in stranger places on a bobbling-head? a characature, less mature than i am. i still turn over in the morning to avoid the sun pouring. citris sourness, stinging eyes that flutter like warm butterflies. i drift out of bed and creak down the hall like an old woman. i take out a frying pan and proceed to eat my brain on drugs, any questions? i do not answer questions the first time they are asked before 9am. i hear clowns or something more sinister laughing from the closet. i throw my cat-pillow but she is heavier than i remember so she lands close enough to encircle my head again. i see a familiar number on the loud buzzing face, i can’t ignore it. it drives me crazy. my finance catches up to my quiet footsteps. his face begins to buzz behind me as i brush my teeth. his eyes are darker than mine but i have more to hide behind mine… i think.

I say this, but to you it means that or worse, nothing.

A tree obscures a power-line, fried potatoes tower
over trembling pieces of yellow corn. Tassels grab
clouds that rip. Contents pour, orange juice scum
lingers on the lips of a tall glass. Stringy pulp tastes
a bit like the dream I had after falling asleep to the radio:

A boy I adore lies beside me on a floral couch,
leaning in as his girlfriend watches television.
He tries to hold my hand where she can’t see
before we kiss I hear a buzz and am sucked into

another scene… I wander hallways wondering
where everyone went. I find them being served
hot meals behind open stall doors of a crumbling
elementary school bathroom: chewing in unison,
flushing between bites. It is only now that I realize
I have lost all ability to tell time. Stop. Before you fall

and break your concentration, straining for understanding,
teetering on a rickety step-stool somewhere near the Z’s…

I find myself reading this back wondering where it all went wrong…

I unholster my gun
to become my hero
and his hero
and his hero’s hero—

Pull the trigger
and write another fucking poem.

I pondered existence–wished for a stray car to POP over the curb,
taking me out in several seconds. 3, 2, 1 dots arranged on a sidewalk,
shot like a loaded gun. Roulette amid little daisies and chalk outlines
of hand-traced turkeys. It’s not a sidewalk really, more of a shitty little
footpath next to University Ave.

We climbed muddy tire treads avoiding cappuccino puddles,
I looked into his and knew everything was going to be alright.

Maybe we’ll get lucky and we’ll both live again
Well I don’t know, I don’t know…

The best things in life are black & white:
chessboards, old movies, piano keys,
chocolate & vanilla ice cream twist cones
from 4 Queens, the dice you found on
the sidewalk, even the King of Pop.

“Who knew when they made that Simpsons
episode that Jack-o would turn into a white
guy if you kept him out past midnight.

Speaking of the Simpsons and pedophiliacs,
I’ve seen episodes older than you are.

I would be a hypocrite for telling you I never
slept with anyone eight years older than me.

At least now I sleep at night knowing they found my
dead boyfriend’s body after only a few days of looking.

That summer I put off reading the next Harry Potter, I didn’t
want to associate the two but it turned out I do anyway.

DON’T WAKE UP he’s running into the house to grab her jacket.
She examines ruby-red mary-janes and flashes green eyes in the mirror
He returns to her, engine purring, she’s old fashioned, crisp as candied
apples. His foot drifts off the pedal…the convertible takes a hard corner.

Bright are the stars that shine,
dark is the sky, i know
this love of mine will never die…

Tall trees pulse with jagged scars
against a grey and static sky. She snaps
a picture as they begin to spin,
a flashcube exposes tangled necks
hanging from the rear-view mirror.

I really enjoyed our interview with Maria Gillan because I feel I can trust a poet like her to the truth about the world (which is not necessarily the definitive truth but what memory recalls as truth, a combination of how things are remembered and how that changes over time.) Maria said “memories are clouded and shaped by the people we are,” but was insistent that she doesn’t make things up.” Her poems were easy to follow and relate to possibly because she no longer “hides behind” poetic devices, which was something I did as a young writer. I remember when I first started writing poetry at age thirteen and how after reading those poems years later I discovered how bad they actually were! I was inspired by all the opportunities her work has provided for young (and old) poets and I am hopeful that I will continue writing my whole life and someday maybe even be good at it. I am an autobiographical poet for the most part although I might lie in a poem if it is necessary (but of course I would never change the meaning or hide a part of myself from the reader.) It was interesting to hear her say why she doesn’t write about her daughter since artistic integrity is something I always try to keep in mind. I think I can take a hint from Maria and stop being so vague about everything, except when it is appropriate for the poem I am writing. I don’t make poems confusing intentionally, but I wrap my mind around each word and cut poems down to the necessities (when I have the time!) if I have learned anything in workshop it is that people might not read every word as carefully as I write it so I have to make it understandable so they will see what lurks behind the actual words (in connotation-land). (I will have you know that I had to stop writing this review for five minutes to write a poem for that title, yay!) Anyway, back to the interview! I felt connected with her immediately because of our shared interest in the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My fiancé makes fun of me for reading them and watching the television show that was based off them but there is something so about them. There was one episode in which Laura submitted a book to be published in a contest but the editor ended up changing the book to make it more “exciting.” Laura gave up on publishing if it meant “lying” about the people that were most important to her but she did get the stories of her youth published much later with the help of her daughter. There is something to be said for simple stories that give a snapshot of a person’s life and that is what I find when I read Maria Gillan, she has a narrative style and honesty about her work with the added bonus of the reader being able to pick and choose which events they want to experience or to read them all as they were arranged by her. I saw a lot of my mistakes in the examples she provided of herself (trying to be T.S. Eliot… and in my case also trying to be Edgar Allan Poe!) I am learning to love my own voice and am inspired to learn more about Allan Ginsberg and his background because I could relate to what we talked about briefly in the interview. My life is ripe with poems and I don’t need to travel to Oz to find memorable characters, they were around me all along…

Modernity is reliant on visible evidence this is reasonable due to the shift from a faith-based medieval society to a reason-based modern society. Religious faith requires a belief in something a person cannot see with their eyes while science is the opposite. Science relies exclusively on what can be counted, measured and tested. Elizabethans had the ability to visualize abstract concepts such as the character Revenge in The Spanish Tragedy. While the earliest plays we read were still preoccupied with gruesome deaths and violence that trend started to change as the plays became more modern. It is not that modern audiences don’t like blood and gore but that we became so desensitized to violence due to overexposure.

Elizabethan dramatists manipulated cultural symbols to promote their plays in the revenge tragedy genre each new play was often more gruesome than the last. The Atheist’s Tragedy retained the religious tone of the early modern period by leaving the ‘revenge’ up to God. This is made clear when the ghost of Montferrers tells Charlemont to abstain from revenge and is confirmed when D’Amville’s life is taken by the axe that he intended for his nephew and his fiance.

Edward II shows that early modern audiences were somewhat interested in celebrities and the lives of rich people. Edward II’s death was very gruesome and modern audiences would have a big issue with its portrayal on stage due to its views on homosexuality. Audiences didn’t need to imagine much in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, at least not in the way of Touchwood’s endowment but modern audiences are offended by penises and hardly ever allow a perceptible package to be surmised. When you start talking about flaccid penises you get into weirder territory but in any given “blockbuster” one might see a menagerie of bare tits. That is something you wouldn’t see in early modern drama because all the ‘women’ weren’t really women and were played by men. Another interesting aspect of Chaste Maid is the fake funeral which turns into a celebration. This further illustrates the movement from tragedy to comedy and the emptying of especially ‘sad’ emotions.

A Woman Killed with Kindness puts a modern twist on a failing marriage, reducing ‘revenge’ to guilt. Anne is not killed by her husband in rage but kills herself by allowing her substance to waste away. Heywood also does something interesting with the staging and introduction to the play. He says the sets will be bare and incomparable to the real deal. Heywood wanted to draw attention to that specific element so when the scene was revealed as somewhat spectacular the audience would wonder what was missing and be able to imagine the scene even grander.

The Tragedy of Mariam skipped the production aspect of the play altogether. Cary wrote one of the earliest ‘closet dramas’ which I see as the predecessor to the modern novel. The play was intriguing because it forced the reader to visualize the action because there is very little description of action or scenery in the play. The White Devil was written just before Cary’s Mariam and was supposedly based on an earlier ‘closet drama.’ Although it was a huge failure, Webster gave plenty of reasons: the audience was just plain stupid and didn’t get it, it was also the dead of winter and the actors were horrible. The play was written in 1612 and was revived and published in 1631. Webster included his editorial notes and basically said everyone might not like it but a reader of the play should be able to better imagine what he was going for.
The identity of the author of a work became increasingly important in this time period. Authorship is a mark of modernity and originality is also valued. While early plays were often based on other works there was a growing sense that an author’s personality or beliefs could influence the overall interpretation of the piece. As a result playwrights began commenting more about religious and cultural issues.

Behn’s play The Rover was the most modern play we read in several respects. Her identity as the author allowed audiences to read into her words. Interestingly while I was looking for resources I stumbled upon something that said Behn was inspired by an early ‘closet drama’ called Thomaso from the 1600’s. Thomaso was a comedy, as was The Rover and as we have stated modernity is accepting of comedy because it empties the viewer of everything. In modernity religion is usually only talked about humorously and once grim concepts such as death are also mocked or excluded. In the two plays we attended this semester, Three Sisters and The House of Blue Leaves were vastly different but were able to illustrate this. Blue Leaves was more modern and much funnier and the death seemed to shock the audience. Three Sisters started out in a way that you knew what to expect and death was a major theme.

Overall I really enjoyed this class and am now am more likely to think twice about the kind of entertainment I like and the reasons why. Thanks Dr. Swan, I will see you next semester!

and just so everyone knows Dr. Swan was nice enough to give me an “A”