Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

    Percy Bysshe Shelley, known for his complex and inquisitive intelligence, wrote the poem Ozymandias where there is a ceaseless exploration of meanings and has a lot of philosophical speculations. The poem was written with the intellectual inspiration of Shelley’s strong distaste to tyranny, and according to my source, alludes to the modern rule of England. Here, the structure of the poem can also be seen as Shelley’s sign of rebelliousness. Contrary to the conventional structure of a sonnet, it goes against the accepted format and the rhyme scheme is hard to follow. Also, the punctuations are noticeable to be indicating a longer pause in reading it.

    The speaker in the poem met a traveler who told him a story about the ruins of statue in his antique land. The poem is actually about the persona recounting what the traveler has told him, this is the central image: the persona recounting what the traveler is recounting. The traveler is describing the place and how Ozymandias looks like. This gives us a suggestion that despite the degrading ruin of Ozy, he is still able to ensure his legacy by transcending history, by becoming immanent with the nature itself. Hence the image, Two vast and trunkless legs of stone/Stand in the desert. This could be seen as a subjective description however, because of its vividness, the description remains faithful to the visage. Readers are not actually bothered by the twice-removed information the persona is conveying. “Sneer of cold command” establishes that the statue was attributed to a royal man. Here Shelley uses expressions to animate the inanimate object and making us think that the sculptor of the figure was able to capture the persona’s passions. The emotions and expressions in the image of the statue survives and were vividly stamped to this lifeless thing, that even the sculptor’s artistry we are able to suppose. While some critics may find this as an incoherent imagery, I would like to think that Shelley has a greater purpose for writing it this way and that his deviations actually pose greater intentions. (That I will discuss in the last paragraph.)

    Shelley uses words that evoke double meanings and also chooses them for a double irony. The hand that mocked them.. The word mocked here functions both as crafted and ridicule. It could be read as the sculptor’s hand that well captured the royal man’s face or the sculptor that seemed to be ridiculing it for we could suppose the traveler may find the statue unpleasing now. Noticeable also is the inscription `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:/ Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’. This also functions both as an assertion of power while at the same time ridiculing him. Power because from these words we get a sense that Ozymandias was a great King before, however it could be now seen as ironic (speaking from the traveler’s point of view) because Ozy now is ruined and it is now not something to marvel at.

Wrong and Wreck were capitalized also. This gives us an idea of how great or big was the wrong and wreck created to this statue. The last line …stretch far away also, when read, gives us a long sound. This suggests that the ruin is infinite and boundless. Such also gives an effect of letting the desolated setting come back into view.

    Considering that Shelley had a strong Romantic Worship of Nature, here we see that Shelley firmly believes that a human body can die but the spirit lives on. Like why do I say so? It is because the point of the poem is that Ozy will always be remembered. The tale of the traveler was a frame of human imagination and was mimetic which is if we think is an artistic trademark. However, creatively, the sculptor of Ozy, was able to make Ozy immortal (because even the traveler, the persona and the readers could very well have a vivid image of Ozy). Hence, this brings to a conclusion that the poem was not really a praise of Ozy rather, a PRAISE OF ARTISTS. Because what he is actually saying, great people loose their authority and in time will become only a memory, but an artist’s works ENDURE FOREVER.

    Love it!

]]> http://hartsy.wordpress.com/2008/02/07/shelley-exults-artists-ozymandias-and-the-workmanship-of-his-style/feed/ 0 hartqt http://hartsy.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/the-new-word/ http://hartsy.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/the-new-word/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2008 02:13:27 +0000 hartqt http://hartsy.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/the-new-word/ ]]>

Magni Nominis Umbra (L) the shadow of a great name

My First Name

Cus i wroye Boyit on notebook

    teacher told me E and Bogart laugh, Look!

        Teacher wrote E, told he was magna, silent G

            shhh, principal’s coming, fall in line like how you pee.

                Magnifico! Lolo watching porno did not see the E,

                    multiple choice assignment, eenie minnie mynie moe, teacher will not see.

                        Here comes Munina! Time to play mama and papa

                            No! virgo intacta, Munina X my drawing, no mama.

                                Instead, read book from my papa, say Munina

                                    and play Latino Latina in kalye pasang-awa.

                                    Magni nominis umbra, say this to Bogart

                                    tell him he wears a bra, he is big but BoFart.

                                    No, I’m afraid, Boyit does not fight says our maid

                                   Gago if Boyet does not fight, he’ll have more band-aid.

                                Write the E, even if teacher does not see

                               get that name right, that’s your Identity.

                            Copy Ms. XYZ, I’ll bring umbrella and eat my Lomi

                          perhaps beat Bogart in spelling bee

                        la vendetta for my disappointed Daddy.

                    Munina, goodbye, I saw your panty.

                Tomorrow I’ll tell magna, small letter e

               and write Boyet with Bogart’s pee.

Day 1

Wringing one’s mind

John Donne. Metaphysical, tough enough to admire and the pleasure you get to them has to be first a hell of purgation, a violent yoking of feelings. Well it seems fine for me though, for the insights you’d get a hold are truly beyond hell.

Love, how these guys loved to talk about love, yet here, I think it is on a different light. The paradox, it seemed to me, that he is actually speaking about the paradox of paradox. He seems to express thoughts about the reality of reasoning.

He thinks that none can or will agree

That any loves but he;

Yes, when you love, it is only you who knows the feeling and that is why we may find Philip Sidney’s sonnet to Stella not that convincing enough. Because if we take a second look on it, it is no more than the persona who can feel and speak about his love, to the truest meaning of the word

Grand Abstracts—Love and Death. I’m still trying to think, though I believe he’s pitting these two up. Nonetheless, I do think his poem is a good piece to decipher and I still need more dose of violent yoking here… Wow, I’m awestruck yet at the same time too this is too heightened that I find it hard to make sense out of these things.

Could I be writing like this that is why, sometimes it appears that my poems are abstracts and God, Riddles? I think I’m going to get John Donne the next time around. So long!

10:01

Day 2

Random Thoughts

([More of] Paradox, Fleetingness and Sweet Talks)

The poem is like a puzzle and its pieces reveal the picture not by the figure but as to how they weave and connect each other. There seems to be a rhetorical device of argument employed here. He is even more philosophical as to how he views love and death. By being a lover also, he asserts that he could not affirm that he loved before just as one cannot say he was killed yesterday. The persona thinks it is only he himself who knows the feeling. Paradox—where does it come in? Here it is: though love is a universal feeling, one cannot say to another as how one should love or what love is exactly. This is especially similar to a writer taking an advice from his fellow writer.

There is a danger of putting across one’s own experiences as the general rule; for every poet’s way of going about his work and his experience of being a poet are very different.

This is actually the paradox of a universal feeling.

Meanwhile, everything for the persona is transitory.

Such life is like the light which bideth yet

When the life’s light is set

Hence, as he loved and died, so he becomes nothing more but an epitaph and tomb. It’s cynical though, yet even in his death, the ultimate truth is still reached: dead men speak their last and could say that he loved and died once.

Considering it to be addressed for a woman addressed by a lover, it would be most certainly flattering. John Donne courts as I remember in THE FLEA very intellectually that I think women hardly say no to his wits.

10:04

Day 3

Shut up, perfect lover

The Perfect Lover. Is there any such here in the world? Give me a buzz, I’ll push you to the nearest pothole.

That is may be why Mr. Donne tells us that it is only this perfect lover (if he thinks he is perfect) that could affirm the perfection of his love. People are good at faking now.

Love is a shared feeling here yet the perfect lover (duh, perfect) and persona perceives it differently, thus appearing as a philosophical argument to the true nature of love.

I think love is just too vast to hold and too familiar to describe. The images. There is no central image here, aside from the grand abstracts of love and death that holds it, it is only the logical progression that ties the poem. Yet Mr. Donne gets away with it, for as much as we yearn for images so he rather gives us arguments thicker than metaphors. Mr. Donne is giving the experience itself to us. Analyze the hypocrisy in the affirmation of love. One must not deceive itself for being conceited that it is only you who could feel it. (That is why I do not bother myself with people who think virginity is just a candy to share with a visitor. I myself know what should I do with it, yet I cannot force people to think the same way that I do. I learned it here man.)

The philosophical underpinning of this poem is still yet to be uprooted. It is still a long way to venture for I know that John Donne is more than what I’m just thinking here that he is. Oh God, he squeezes my entrails, inside and out.

10:23

Day 4

Margot Marfori speaks for me

Paradox. The statements seem contrary to common sense but yet are perhaps true. The nature of loving: no one can judge what a lover or who he should be for such feeling is intrinsic only to the one who claims it.

It must be a wonder, how writers are able to convey their feelings through distant readers by using only words. And yet, even the readers know that it is just a fiction or a movie, the feeling of inevitability is still there. How wonderful the human mind. How wonderful even more are those who are able to control it.

My oh my, writing is not an easy business. Profitably speaking and emotionally considering, it is an endeavor we all wish to pursue yet obligatory needs takes us back. I remember Margarita Marfori. Edna Zapanta–Manlapaz in her paper The Song of Ourselves: Writings by Filipino Women in English believes that no one can fully claim that being a professional writer in the sense of writing, is her sole source of livelihood. Yet guess what, Marfori tells us, that she is a writer, a visual artist, lami kayo magsulat. It was then I also discovered that she was very blessed (and she is thankful for it) for having the financial base to do it.

Considering all her writings, she proudly writes about Davao; her memoirs and creative connection to the place. This I think is what we should be doing. Come on, so much has been written ‘bout Manila! And her perception in writing a story (as she told us that she is not necessarily a feminist type of writer voicing out women’s endless problems and oppressions, rather, she thinks [and what should a writer be thinking] that every one has a story tell, even if it is a man or a woman, everyone has an insight) made me really have a high regard for her! It felt good listening to someone like Margarita Marfori, speaking your writing endeavors. She is an inspiration.

10:14

Day 5

Perplexed, perplexing

The poem is talking about the ephemeral nature of love and death. To love and to die is but a one time experience.

Such feelings cannot be experienced anymore for as he dies, death seemed to be the finality of all the events in his life, like the fire that burns solid matter.

It gives me a feeling though that the speaker died for his love. It seems that he is addressing the poem to all those who obstructed his love for his dearly loved.

The poem is truly metaphysical. The surface alone is not enough to reveal the poem’s insight. I’m still perplexed reading it.

The epitaph and tomb keeps on ringing my head. How he loved and died is but now written to his grave, yet admirably and even though he is already dead, it is only in the later part that he welcomes the thought that he should die.

Yes this could be unspoken words of a dead man and he speaks is so as to finally welcome the thought of death.

10:25

Day 6

The Paradox of Me

The absurdity of me is that I overlook a lot of my works to give rise to what I thought was a better work. Yes, it was only what I thought.

Here, I would try to rework my forgotten Haikus. Glad to find them still with me.

Lollipop

Licking it up and down

shining the lump and hard surface, devouring

with desire, the crystal face.

The Light

The priest’s headlights just shone

at the back of the 7^th whore,

t’was almost like, a halo.

Sacadas Men are

the cellar spiders that toil

all day, eve and May, yet never,

out of its small way.

10:22

Day 7

Remembering my Playhouse

Love with the excess of heat, more young than old,

Death kills with too much cold;

Is John Donne saying here that heat makes old lovers feel young? Hmmm.

Such life is like the light which bideth yet

When the life’s light is set,

Or like the heat which fire in solid matter

Leaves behind, two hours after

It seems to me that the life he is referring here is the life full of lies. Yes, all that you have lied about will just peter out and even so die out because they are nothing but lies.

Say how much percent of a writer’s work is a lie? As for me, I don’t believe that you’d have to be a pilot for you to write about maneuvering an airplane. I think that one can write about killing, sex or rape without really having to do one. (Though if you have tried one, that would be certainly helpful) Well my point here is that IMAGINATION is very important to a writer, just as how defamiliarization is too. In this case, why would we write about walking in a park, falling in love for the first time and oh so mundane, ordinary events if we could write something surpassing than these? Well we could still write about those unexciting things and this is where imagination plus insight formula comes in.

I really admire writers who are able to create their own world. The recent one I just fell in love with was Neil Gaiman. It’s admirable how could he create such characters and settings by just listening to his cat (or in the real sense), by making his imagination work.

A writer creates a new world, I yearn to do that. Where my creations (characters) are my puppets that have strings attached to my fingers and they all run in a make-believe playhouse where I am the God and they interact according to my will and goal.

I’d give a tap on my shoulder someday as I am able to write like that.

10:10

Martin Aveditch drugged of leather leaned back to mutter: whose sole’s finest and ought to price best?

Slippers of the Labor man, whose content toes wave from his flaked feet,

keeps him up day and night to carve a patient art,

bailed us out from Flintstone’s plight and so we have honeycombs to start.

Aveditch now older, drank his tea and so utter: whose sole’s finest and ought to price best?

Dorothy’s Shoes, got as she freed East and for Munchkins’ is most feat,

flies the gaping kid to Kansas sight and behold an enduring art,

that so our minds had a better might and to mundanity, we part.

But Labor man by hands hollowed Louvre, that so we revere Mona Lisa

But Dorothy lived to tell the tales behoove, that so we forget not Egypt and Pisa.

Hence, Aveditch worked back to polish these, equal in his hand.

For Dorothy lived because of the paper made by Labor man,

And so Labor man we esteemed, because of Dorothy’s wand.

Both shoes are the finest, for it, humans and Aveditch lived best.

Day 1

Take it from Dorian Gray

This “youthly idle rhyme” is spontaneously flowing and is not at all bothering to hear as you recite it aloud. But what I think is rather bothering are the numbers beside each line. Well, it could have significance, like, the persona who was an old man, his days are numbered—naah, not working and does not serves the purpose. Cut, cut.

The apparent renunciation I initially spotted here is the persona’s rejection to beauty. Beauty, yes, time is its slayer. Beauty is a badge you long did wear but as the gray hairs are slowly weaving your head, age steals your steps and it’s already time to take off that badge. For it seems to tell, that age takes away all that in your youthful years, you have faithfully sown.

If this is so, then what is the purpose behind taking care of our bodies and prolonging our lives, if old age by the end of the tunnel crushes all these preparations? Couldn’t it be the other way around? I think it’s faultily perceived. Because I think that what you have plant in youth will grow what you reap in old age and will not, at all times, bear nothing. In this case, memories, experiences and even healthy lifestyle pay so much by the end of the tunnel.

Futility keeps ringing in my ears. All things and actions have their purposes and consequences, respectively. And beauty, I think, though transitory is not something we just pointlessly preserve. It sometimes adds color to the sketch of your life that you would most love to look back and treasure during the gray years of your life. And though it fades, it carves scar that takes death to annihilate. Yet even the death it could transcend. Beauty is immortal. Artworks are immortal. Artworks capture and freeze beauty. Both artworks and beauty transcends ephemeral things. They go hand in hand.

Beauty then for me appears to be a certain ingredient in your life that makes it more than just the word life. Beauty is not at all a vain thing to preserve. I myself believe that good things are obtained from such a fleeting thing. It’s a matter of perspective.

11:03

Day 2

Endless list of to-do’s, to buy’s and more to-buy’s

(Humans unsatisfactory nature)

The feeling evoked to me seemed cynical. The persona is at the point of his life where he is in the closing rituals of his life, yet it appears to me that he seems not at all satisfied to the life he has lived.

Aside from that, he mentioned interesting things to note. Transitory abstracts of nature like beauty and youth. Also were the lusts, toys and fancies. This gives me an insight that such is the hard reality of the human nature. Life is not inherently sorrowful because we have fun, desire and desire. But these things’ impermanence ironically makes our life imperfect (because we continually want what we don’t have) and thus, we become unsatisfactory ever more.

With regards to his metaphors, they are really well created. How I wish I could write like that. Sardonically speaking yet utterly true. Bittersweet. The above mentioned abstract notions were defamiliarized and drawn to life, fresh and anew from dusty cupboards.

However, as to how the poem is printed to the page, it somewhat bothers me. Especially the lack of spacing to the lines. I think it’s not at all spontaneously written to be un-spaced liked that. Perhaps because I am very particular for the purpose in employing indention or spacing, in terms of the appearance of the work. Because that technical stuff matters, then it should correspond with the whole effect you are trying to achieve by your work.

Even though, it’s still good. I like the very idea of an old man sketching his grave.

10:55

Day 3

The Writer’s P270, 000 Rolex

How time races, kills and outlives a man is a mystifying wonder. It can cheat you of your life so quick while it can also dry your eyes out for trying to count its ticks. We live like earthlings walking barefoot to the dial and at times, hopping off the long-hand of the clock. I’m struck. I just realized that in living life, one mustn’t run so fast that he’d forget where he’s heading to nor not to live life in mundanity as if waiting when you are going to fall to the foul hole.

Yet by how time makes us grasp the importance of things and people that is utterly unexplainable too. Hence, we have those World War I sayings such as “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” or <^{fill in something urgent}> or suffer later. As in the case of photocopying readings—Pay now or die later. Yet the good thing about it, that is being time-conscious, is that it makes you evaluate your life while at the same time keep track if you are on the right path. We cannot keep on forever running. Even race cars have their pit stops.

If these things are so, then the poems and stories must be the great freezers of time. As it makes you look forward by rediscovering things, it also adds another hue of color to your palette without actually having to stop or overrun time. Time stops as you are robbed to a writer’s world and there you would also realize that by only pen, paper and words, you can completely be somewhere where even the faintest tick of the clock is not heard. It’s immortality.

The aged lover must have lost so much yet it felt good to know that he was actually aware of what he lost and also of the things he realized. (i.e. the importance of Living life. Capital L.)

10:42

Day 4

To Muse or not to Muse

As the persona scornfully gives up his youthful energy, there he mentions as how his Muse does not delight him anymore as it used to before. It brings up an allusion to the writer’s life; do muses really leave when you get old? I have read writers that wrote in their later years and still, they were pretty good. Like Joseph Conrad for instance. Do these muses have a certain refrigeration time or expiration date or do they have particular lunar cycles to follow?

Personally, I believe in Muses.

For the greatest the fool is, the Pencil more blest

And when they drank, they always write best

<BLAKE>

To be possessed by them is a heaving sensation set off by a spontaneous overflow of emotions that creativity bleeds out of your pores. Oh yes it does.

Yet I also do not limit myself to the idea that you could only write when the muses are there. Because sometimes, you do have to summon them or better, you could write as if you had muses. Souls could write with or without muses.

For me, writing is not sorely about inspiration. It also needs discipline and perhaps, tranquility. Muses rarely visit us, but I think if we train ourselves to be a Writer at All times, whether with pen or paper, with coffee and smoke or none at all, we can still create a story or a poem, right at the very hub of our hearts.

Writing is more than a hobby and is not a lucky shower day of Muses. Rather, Writing is living to write and transform all the walks in your life into a worthwhile experience whether in word or vision; you bring out the world fresh and anew, always the departation from triviality.

Writing is defined more than we think it is. Some writers live it while others dies, forever doing it.

10:24

Day 5

Selections and Select

Let’s talk about secret meanings! Wow, poems fascinate me. It’s a dexterously crafted work, for the words and devices employed aren’t just for ornaments, but to convey a singular effect.

Maybe that is why I find hard to create poems. At times, I become OC in sharpening my poem or I just let my Muse rape me—both instances making my output rubbish. I am hindered by a barrage of words, so many free associations and possibilities screaming to my head that I become lost as to which best insight is to write and which words are fit to say.

The things I want to speak are like a vast stretch of prairies and savannas that so I find it hard to see the oasis of poetry. I always create and create that I could not select.

Lord Vaux’ poem has tons of secret meanings. Caesar Ruiz Aquino’s In Finland is like a fireworks display—has so much to tell yet still spontaneously beautiful. Both of these poems I have recently read—they are playful, simple to grasp yet subliminal in their secret meanings and moreover, echoes great souls.

I still have more poems to battle with. Kill me.

10:39

Day 6

The Sewer Tank-divers

The Aged Lover renounces more than love. He renounces life. He is giving up. He is belittling himself (and come to think of it, he’s an Artist!). That’s how I don’t want to die.

Maybe he did not realize that his toils could surpass his death. I think that’s no good way to face your death. It’s actually worst than trying to fit your ass into your own coffin. Waste to dust? Hey, we aren’t wasted, we return and ain’t a waste, that is, if you have live your life fruitfully. It gives us a lesson though.

But I love the thought that he is actually aware of the human’s ephemeral nature. …for such a guest most meet. (That is his death) …ere nature me compel.

The images are actually eerie, riding to the harbinger of death, hearing the summon of the knell? Even though, he is actually brave enough to face it and not all can do that. Accepting death as a part of human nature, yes that’s a good perspective to life but definitely not this: thinking yourself as no bigger than a baked bean in this world. That’s not at all a way to identify one’s self. Every one has their purpose, even the sewer tank-divers.

I’m believing that I’m not born for nothing.

10:22

Day 7

Renunciations

The rhyme scheme is admirable; he was able to sustain it and is not at all interrupting to the ear as I have said in day one. How Lord Vaux gives life to the concrete things is also admirable. The crutch, the pick axe, spade and sheet, the knell—simple things they are, they all emanate by the poets brilliance. They contain meanings and evoke feelings that are not solely achieved by plain words. It has to be Lord Vaux speaking of it.

Truly, poems can ostranenie-zed the things we thought we really know. It always occurs to me that if I could write speak and act like that that would be a whole new being even still of the same fabric. How Lord Vaux presents death not as a monster or a refuge, but an inevitable ending to all of us, that I think is also good. Death is extensively written nowadays, yet some typically look at as our life’s monsters and at times our only asylum. Now, it becomes cynically positive to me.

If there is one thing I’d remember in this poem that would be its spontaneous rhythm. I can ever utter the line without looking at it, everything seems free-flowing. That’s good poetry I think.

I have read a renunciation poem of Rosetti, but I think this is far better if this is a renunciation poem. The renunciation to love is two ways. It hates its youth for making him feel so loved but then lose it as he ages, while he also recognizes his predestined path, that so he accepts it. Renunciations are definitely poetic ways to say no.

10:20

The hissing Fluorescent, The hook for the shower curtain to be,

The unbolted cover of the toilet seat, The toggling flush rim,

The belcher-ing faucet, The washbowl with a mound of used undies,

The missing piece of the puzzled tiles, The dislodge jalousie

                                                                                    breaking the shoot of sunlight.

The collapse of my honeycomb.

            Life’s sole and perpetual “motion machine”.

<A Sumer Poem>

Sr. Nino. I only got five daily entries here. You see, it was not until last Friday that I knew the poems still have to be taken from Abad’s Appendix A. Trying to be honest here. ♪♫♪

Day 1

Into Nature

A poem randomly picked. The poem seems to be pitting up nature and the human emotion. The speaker admits that he is not able come to her lady as she desperately calls him in the wilderness. But what was more apparent was that, the nature though un-summoned, is able to come as the woman desperately needs. These have got to be general impressions.

The nature. Since we have been created and sexed, it has always been there. But the idea of man needs woman and vice versa, and even man needs man and vice versa, has disregarded this notion. We have been constantly allying each other, providing needs and completing the incompleteness within our selves. What we have forgotten in turn was that the life’s most basic answers were just in the wilderness, grasses and waters.

Is nature a manifestation to God? As I would like my being a Christian to interfere here, God is definitely in each of every spec of the world’s most wonderful creations. And that if he hears every time we weep, then he’s got to be the nature that almost everyday comes into us and interfere us. Such interference is both in a positive and negative way, though whatever it is, people like me don’t try to rationalize everything. It’s not a divine shit but an affirmation to the truth that there is a vacuum in each of our hearts that only God can fill. Don’t blame me for this. I’ll live up to this belief till the day someone explains to me how that Drug Lord (in a convention I met) easily converted himself that night into a Christian.

10:23

Day 2

Living up to the truest sense of words

By how it personifies presence is admirable. Perhaps nature is the best thing to compare, maybe that is why romantics were so in loved with it. But I also could agree. Nature has the life’s most wonderful beauty, like the complete objects that stood not alone—stones, grasses and flowers—that were always together and how the sun could shone loneliness to the dews in the blades of grass and then onto each other. Nature is itself a beauty.

But the poet’s world is golden as one critic would say. His imagined world surpasses the natural beauty and can create a world that is beyond what has merely been said and seen. I agree more in this part. For even though language are the only poet’s tools he is able to fashion a thousand leagues under the sea that transcends human history.

However, they too can go hand in hand. Just as how the poet recreates nature, so the nature can nurture the poet’s mind. Hence, both are integral to a subliminal piece that uplifts every reader’s soul.

I too would want to write that. And I think I have to start it by being confident that my poems have a spark in them and by believing in what I could do more as a poet. I have to live like a poet/writer in the truest sense of the word.

10:05

Day 3

Of Songs and “Inanna Women”

I was thinking why couldn’t the poems be as much as popular as the songs? Songs may ebb and flow, but poems are enduring and each day they give you another fresh insight. I have lately proven it.

Interesting is the title. Inanna’s Journey to Hell. As I have read in its short introductory sentence, Inanna was the wife. But why hell? Couldn’t Inanna be now happy now that her husband isn’t coming home? What I mean here is that, not long have I realize in our gender lit class that in marriage, sometimes yet utterly, women do give up most of the things that men don’t have to. How unjust! And now with Inanna, the poet assumes that she burns as her husband doesn’t go home? That it may not be always so! Yes, women do need men; however, we sometimes can pleasure all by our self. Whatever happened to the fact that our lips can rub itself and give pleasure*.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say here was that, women shouldn’t be always treated as this weak and helpless people. We do have power but it can’t just surface in this patriarchal-polluted society. Oh no, I’m not ranting here. I won’t for the reason that in myself I admit that I need men. But women should not always be typecast with those degrading slash trivializing slash marginalizing terms. That’s it. I believe I have said enough. What is not there will follow.

* Maam Jhoanna said something about women’s ability to auto-pleasure using the lips of their vagina.

10:24

Day 4

Futile Attempt

The tall grasses parts

as if a comb had scoured it.

The sun blazes upon them

sagging its blades,

stiffing the soil.

He sees them as knives,

pointed to his front teeth.

He can hardly spit it out.

But he runs through it.

Scuffing his face,

tearing his throat like a flower

to its traces.

He was halfway when he thought to

look back.

He remains still and bleeds with his hot tears.

He does not think.

10:08

Day 5

How Seeing makes you a Better person

The images in the poem for me appear real and are not hackneyed at all. I do think that there is a big difference between reality and clichés. Clichés are what people associate to the things that they almost see everyday but then do not appear as anything evocative at all and are sorely still mundane. However, we can always turn that hackneyed idea to a real one that is fresh. Defamiliarization is the word.

I’ve been trying to ostranenie-zed everything that I see. After all, there aren’t glasses sold for poets to aid them in seeing with vitality. This is just a matter of perception wherein some are lucky to be born with, some are fortunate to have learned it while some are star-crossed to never know it.

An antique piano could be the only dignified furniture in a broken family.

An idle diary could be the spoils of time.

Fear for humiliation could be a jump to a heap of corpses.

Being unsure to move could mean a slit in your soft spot.*

It is after all fun to always see things (though I’m quite sure only some of the above images works) in a different light. These could make you a different person and that this is not what you always get when you know that words are your only tools.

10:07

*that is your Achilles’ tendon

∞ ∞ ∞

 I wanted to see mice

that I slit my eyes to see

Beauty and Lies

DAY 1

Love need not be cheesy

I am above all struck by the image and the feeling it evoked. One thing I admire in poems is those that are able to capture the mundanity of things and transform it into a fresh insight.

The grasses—so many times have we seen such living things, but never did I know that a much-talked about and “gasgas” abstract concept of love could be made tangible by likening it into grass. I also noticed the sounds it stresses: “grasses”—particularly sounded like a feeling of many, ssssss, and the “mountain”, in the poem was a long line, yet at its preceding line “increases” brought it down. For even though we know that grasses are everywhere (the weeds most exactly, grow mostly where humans don’t want it to), we hardly apprehend its value and inner worth as a grass. Grass, grass and unrequited love. A lot of love is like this! God’s love (Oh I really hate those people who hypocritically deny their faith to God), Parent’s love (which now, as I am growing up, I begin to value) or maybe the love behind every food served in canteen (though commercialize), the habaler’s cautiousness or even the—oh no I just hung up, somebody called my muse!

As for now, I can say that is poetry happens all the time, then love is in some way, all around.

10:47

DAY 2

Grasses suck

The grasses—I particularly remember the feeling of walking in grasses. Unfortunately, such is not a happy feeling for me for I get annoyed when the blades of the grasses touch the skin of my feet. They are like knives to my feet and irritate the hell out of me. Hence, if someone would say such to me, I’d certainly be not that impressed, because for myself, I do not really like grasses.

From here, I thought, how is one will be able to make a good poem and then be sure that your reader would have the reaction? By substantial I mean, the feelings you just wanted to evoke and not those unnecessary ones. But then again, these may be the reasons why there are critics in the literary world and the deconstructionists are alarmingly multiplying. I fear these people, for if grasses irritate me, these guys suck my ego up and I’m not pretty sure if I can pop back. Is this really how one feels when one is unsure of all of his actions? But I want to be a writer, what I am not just sure is if I am on the right track, please, let someone shake my head. Am I not just merely a grass to be stepped on? Or a grass, weed that most people hate about?

Tsk. Tsk. I myself could be a grass; I wasn’t able to see that coming until I hated them. I’ve got to read between these lines so that I would make it till 25. Nobody wants to rot.

10:17

DAY 3

If I am to answer the poem

I feel like writing too about love.

Selfish love is the many arrows that killed one,

            forgiving love is the canyon that killed, one to many.

Love had to be the most understandable feeling in the world, though written so many times upon the pages of every kind of book, to be able to see it, needs more than a second look.

By the way, is unrequited love the only hub of this poem?

DAY 4

Being technical here

I would like to focus tonight on its imagery. Why does this poem work to me? First thing compared were the grasses. We all have a mental picture of how grasses look like, but love? Nah-ah, not yet. Now, the next line.

Hidden in the deep mountain.

Because it is a mountain and not a hill, it is certainly big. Deep because the grasses don’t just surface and we hardly notice its presence as compared to that of mountains.

Its abundance increases.

Grasses are surprising on how it could easily multiply. Subsequently, the poet gives the insight to the image.

There is none that knows.

For even though the grasses are of great number, we hardly notice or even see them, for what we instead choose to see, are those great, big things that we forget the small, important things.

Answering my question yesterday, this poem is not just solely about unrequited love. For if we delve further to its lines, it is mostly about the small things we ignore or choose to ignore. I say so because why there are those who says that his love is would unnotice if we are sensitive? Why would the grasses be mostly the things we ignore if we people truly and heartfelt are aware of its presence?

I leave that question to the day it is answered.

DAY 5

The art of making a grade six understand your art¹

I am beginning to absorb the poem. I even say it out of the blue!

If poems are all concise and short and everywhere, I would truly be able to appreciate them every second of my life.

Though I want to write Short stories (S is in capital to mean that I prefer those as in short stories such as microfic, flashfic), I’m still afraid to try my creativity with poems. Well, maybe because I had some not so good critiques about it. But surely, if I want to create one, wherein even if it is as short as this poem, I want it that my readers would instantly grasp it and even memorize it! My idea of art is not that of an elitist construct. Though the problem with literary works and art is that they need education before one can appreciate it unlike the music, I’d still would want to change this perception and try to make my works comprehensible that even a grade 6 student would understand it. Yes it is the readers for whom we should truly write. I want to see them transformed by the insight they get at each work I let them read. That is what you call fulfillment in being a writer!

If poems slash writing had to be that easy.

10:01

DAY 6

Dare to Haiku

The poem is a haiku, and it is certainly an “image-evoking” poem. For I believe that haikus in themselves contain vivid images. Also, the haiku, being the oldest in lyric poetry (as I have read in Abad), the poem has to have a certain pattern of rhyme, that is 5,7,5 if I got it right. But since this poem is perhaps an English translation, then the rhyme may be somehow changed. But then it’s amazing, for though it is translated, it still retains its image as in those haikus that I’ve read in AH4.

I remembered the haiku of Richard Brautigan (You’re just a Xerox copy of all the candy bars I’ve eaten). It’s amazing though that such simple analogy is full of images—I have an idea. Why don’t I write haikus? But I still need some back-up lesson as how it works or maybe try and try until my haiku would be in the same shelf of all the haiku works.

Haikus, I guess, is the sweetest, concise and evocative of all poems. It employs no ornament or vain caprices; it is in itself a poem. Sweetest? Yes it’s sweet, like that of the one liners or epilogues of Oscar Wilde, though his are sarcastic. Oh God, I think I’d still need some pushing further.

Let’s try some haiku sir!

10:06

DAY 7

Who’s talking here?

The persona. Sometimes, its hard to identify the persona in a poem. I would like to think that the persona in this poem is a male. (can I include my mental picture of him?) He is wearing a black coat with a white undershirt and paired with jeans. His voice, as I would like to fantasize is of Allen Ginsberg! (I have heard him in tape in his poetry reading in one of our class) He’s very gentlemanly in nature and sweet in words, witty in conversations. oops, I think I am going too far with this!

What about the poem? Why couldn’t be that a woman who’s a persona of it? Maybe the tone. It seems as if a man as I read it aloud. Well, I do think that wouldn’t really make a big difference. But if it’s a guy who would be saying it, that’s more impressive! And maybe because men are just fond of saying such to impress women.

I’d definitely not forget this poem. It’s only 20 words yet it screams so loud, it wouldn’t be lost to the shelves of my favorite poems!

Poems are also one of the many wonderful creations of man, and they make life, More Beautiful.

10:00

1 Sounds a not so good title…