An Anvil to The Mind

I have a thing for short poems, I'm practical (fancy for lazy) and I like things to come and go and say what they came to say. so naturally i think i felt attracted to poem # 12.
"The butcher-boy puts off his killing clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market" (Whitman) from the very first line the gory scene unfolds that makes anybody want to boycott beef. And then Whitman describes another type of working man: "Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil"(Whitman) and again this yucky image comes to mind of unattractive men with sweaty armpits and hairy bodies and it is simply disturbing.

You read a line and then regret you did but read the next one anyways. Addictive. Thats how all writing should be.

Whitman vs. Rotten

I read the rest of the poems and found them all to be great, but they made a mistake by putting the first poem first, since the rest aren't as great so you end up disappointed in a sense. This poem is basically a pat on the back is you can relate. The unexplainable feeling of feeling good in you own skin (and your own perfume) that hasn't come around so much since... well, since the Sex Pistols. 'Modern' poetry is all about butchering you ego and mutilating your self-image until there is nothing else but a rotten pile of what used to be a pretty little person.

I have a sensitive sense of smell, which is great when it comes to walking into someone's house for the first time and breathing in all that irreplaceable scent, but it can be a dread when walking into an airplane that reeks of unclean cushions and coffee-like substance. I love perfume and I really like how the poem talks about everybody's own perfume, your own signature scent that we need to learn how to love and be fond of.

http://www.bartleby.com/142/14.html

A Simple Soul (1, 2 &3): A Bird, A Flame

The first thing I noticed was that Flaubert uses a lot of describing. He carefully details dresses and loafs of bread and surroundings in general such as people and houses. "This house, with its slate-covered roof, was built between a passage-way and a narrow street that led to the river." (Flaubert)

The author doesn't really play with the sentences, but is rather objective and focuses more on being detailed and having smooth paragraphs. The vocabulary is not hard to follow although it is formal and uses unusual words as in "The path led at first through undulating grounds, and thence to a plateau, where pastures and tilled fields
alternated"(Flaubert). In the former quote, we find description again: its seems to be a big part of his style since he uses descriptions even to move around his characters.

I think the book is situated in the eighteen hundreds but I can never be completely sure. The way Flauebert show the lack of power of Madame Aubain and the way she is treated as her (dead) husband's accessory rather than his thinking, living wife, shows an old school way of thinking.

It was pleasant to read through his writing because it has a certain amount of poetry without getting impossible to understand. "She found it hard, however, to think of the latter as a person, for was it not a bird, a flame, and sometimes only a breath?" (Flaubert). Sometimes descriptions can get a little bit old, but most of the time the words are so carefully chosen that it keeps you hooked.

The Brat and the Book (Gary Lutz)

First of all, I'd like to point out that I absolutely love how much creativity the author put into his choice of words. As he is talking about style he uses a lot of style himself and plays with structure and vocabulary to make his experiences with writing come alive.

In my childhood I was exposed to a lot of story-writing since my grandmother, who used to be a journalist, had dedicated herself to writing children's books and once in a while she would write short stories for fun. She used to teach me songs and words and since my parents decided to raise me speaking spanish first, she gave me my share of english every once in a while. I used to brag to my dad by sitting down with any storybook and reading out loud to him.

I have come to realize through my few years of writing that style is a very important, if not the most important, part of writing. There are no printed rules about style and authors can play with it however they please. Style gives identity to the story and leaves a little bit of the author behind in every piece. "the words have to lean on each other, rub elbows, rub off on each other, feel each other up" (Lutz) When you write you want people to remember what you said because maybe you were lucky enough to cause an impact by putting ideas under a new light. I personally try to really carefully choose my words and the order they should go in, I love to play with adjectives because that is how you really get to show unusual ways of showing things.
"The content words comprise the nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and most verbs: they are carriers of information and suppliers of sensory evidence." (Lutz)

I think Lutz managed to give a great description of how writing feels like. I don't agree with him when he says that "The sentence, with its narrow typographical confines, is a lonely place" since to me it is more like a wide open space with endless possibilities.

O_O ----> http://www.believermag.com/issues/200901/?read=article_lutz