Ok, here are three more. These are still dealing with self-esteem and self-image. The first one deals with eating disorders. I spread it out, and tried to give it a blissful feeling until the last two numbered lines, impling restriction and guilt.
The second tries to deal with the implications of make up again, about how it's kind of like armor, and allows those who wear it are able to present a strong front, no matter how they really feel inside.
The third tries to talk about expectations for "beautiful" people, and how we are pushed to arrive at these unrealisitc expectations. The lines are arranged in a way that is more strict and claustraphobic than the other two, and attempts to clump words and phrases together in the same way that bodies are rearranged in photoshop before they appear in billboards. Again, none of them are longer than 40 syllables, and hopefully seem kind of rough and scratchy. Let me know what you guys think!
The descriptions of the poems you provided were really dead on for me. I've read some of these before while you were writing them, and I definitely think the structure of these heavily influences the tone and the message of all of them. It's like I have to read it 2 or 3 times to find all the little different meanings of each one.
ReplyDeleteI especially liked the makeup one, and if you wanted to break it up, it would be cool to see maybe the different poems for each piece of makeup.. (i.e. a poem about just mascara on eyelashes or eyeliner or concealer or foundation) ..a lot of these words have double entendres that would be really fun to play with and split up.
Anyway, I think you're doing a really good job, and I enjoy reading all of these poems a lot. Keep it up!
I was really interested in your work once you told me about your plan for the large project last week. I have to say that what truely struck me was the food poem you included this post. I love the line "chick/en casserole/ quivering" it associates food with disgust but not immediate disgust but a sort of unappetizing lingering psychological disgust.
ReplyDeleteI like the topics for your other poems as well, I also like some of the line breaks you make. I was wondering if you make your line breaks for specific effect or if it is based on feeling.
Are there any meanings attached to the number of spaces? Syllables? I know you said all are under forty, but I was curious if there was a deeper meaning in the numbers. I know I wrote a poem that had a coded message in the number of syllable in each line that only a couple of people got. I'm going to add it to my chap book and I thought you might have maybe a different kind of message in the underlying numbers. Either in spaces or syllables.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason it reminded me of Stein. Just for using everyday objects like food I guess, heh. In any case I love the shortness of them and the roughness as you say due to the breaks and changes in form, as well as that use of the ordinary. It forces you to think and go back and reread, to consider both the piece as a whole and the each word, each characteristic it possesses in the frame of things. The images are vividly significant, so I think it's enjoyable to try to tease out the deeper meaning underlying the familiar.
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