Filed under: cw posts
i lay
on the ripples and waves of the sheet
we made with our eyes closed.
Filed under: cw posts
Egypt- ca. 1800 B.C
Death is before my eyes today
Like a man recovering from illness,
Like a convalescent walking afield.
Death is before my eyes today
Like the scent of the myrrh
Like sitting under a boat’s sail on a windy day.
Death is before my eyes today
Like the smell of lotus flower
Like sitting on the bank of drunkenness.
Death is before my eyes today
Like a foot-worn path,
As when a soldier returns home from a campaign.
Death is before my eyes today
Like a clearing of the heavens,
As when a man is enthralled by the unknown.
Death is before my eyes today
Like a man is yearning for his home
When he has passed a long time in captivity.
DAY 1
The line “Death is before my eyes today” is the first line of every stanza. The repetition of the line is a manifestation of convincing his self (the speaker of the poem) who may be an old man because his words contain wisdom in them that only those who are experienced can ponder on. I get the sense that the persona is tired. The idea “Death is before my eyes” gives me the look of tired eyes and that his remaining strength he spends in ranting about existing—just because his strength is not enough to kill himself. However, it could also be that he is still not sure if he wants to embrace death.
DAY 2
I have an impression that this poem is easy to read since it is so usual. Or is it? It describes death in similes like a list poem. Although I can tell that not all similes in the poem have the same intensity as the other. The one with much impact to me is, “Like sitting under a boat’s sail on a windy day”. But rereading the line, I have second thoughts. Or is it my personal sentiments getting into me because I have a fear in sailing, be it a fair or windy day? Sailing is worse but sailing in a windy day is worst. It is death. But as what I wrote, I have second thoughts about the line. Without my sentiment, it is plain. It does not describe death. A windy day must transform into a storm before it can be as intense as death.
DAY 3
I noticed that each stanza’s second and third lines are always in pair with each other. They are in pair in a way that they share the same idea. For example, the first stanza works hand in hand to convey an idea of death as a healing or an emancipation from illness. This means that the persona’s view of life is suffering. And death is finally the end of it. The first stanza seems to be the ruling idea of the whole poem. Death is finally resting from “a boat’s sail”, from “drunkenness”, from a “campaign”, from “being enthralled”… and finally in the last stanza, it encloses the poem as death being a home.
DAY 4
It seems to me that the poem has so much life in it. While the word, “death” is present in every stanza, the lines that are supposed to work to describe death are alive. If the lines are looked into individually, they all represent experiences of life. They all represent an image perceivable by the senses.
DAY 5
The fourth stanza, when death is “Like a foot-worn path, As when a soldier returns home from a campaign”, views life as a war or a campaign. Death is where the path of life as a war leads.
DAY 6
The images of the poem express the long wait of the persona for the moment of his/her rest. Death, as he repeats is “today”. By repeating the line, “Death is before my eyes today”, strengthens the power of the “now”. It is the strong impulse of the moment that the persona sees before his/her eyes what he/she has been waiting for.
DAY 7
Maybe it has something to do with the familiarity of the lines that I now perceive death differently. It is clear to me that death is not the opposite of life (as shown in the lines which are alive), but a part of it. It is a natural thing. And while many people are afraid to die, the persona of the poem asserts with much conviction that death is already before his eyes. The speaker describes it in a rather light and comforting way to end.
Filed under: cw posts
In my poem, Let My Cat-Insticts Out The Bag:
Last night I had a mouse-chase going. I laid still
between the sofa and shoe rack
in case it will come out nicely
out a hole in that roomful of papers,
boxes, cans and dusts.
The whole time I did not flicker an eyelid.
It might scamper right before me
and I will miss it.
Until the wait expired and settled
as a false hope—I closed my eyes.
Finally sensing the cold floor
appeasing my hairs down
to my very skin. And the night was
silently devouring me
to sleep. But I did smell it—
It tickled my whiskers down through
my wary nose. Ah! I heard it too!
But my instinct was swifter
than my eyes that it was Browny
I mistook for a mouse.
My heart leaped a hundred miles
that I screamed
the moment away and ran
like Uncle Cheetah. Until I found myself
a safe place up near that hung pictures. Thank whoever!
I do not want my nine lives to be
all gone at one time,
you know.
we were asked in our CW101 class to make a poem that would exercise the element called point-of-view. The instruction was to assume a point-of-view of an animal or an inanimate object. Our teacher presented a sample poem (in a point-of-view of a bear?) that I considered painstakingly upon writing my own poem. My decision of choosing an animal’s point-of-view, (particularly a cat since we have one at home) was greatly infuenced by the sample poem.
Since I am still a creative writing student, if ever there really was a creative process coming from me, it was channelled in a way that will fit to what our exercise demanded.
The first stage of the creative process is called preparation (during which the problem is looked at from different angles and when a number of thought changes occur). In this stage, I looked at the sample poem as my model poem. Since it was an animal’s point-of-view, I discarded the choice of choosing an inanimate object and stuck with the idea that I would write from a perspective of an animal. I thought of possible animals I think I am capable of assuming its thinking. I thought that it would be practical to assume a domestic animal because they are closer to me and by that I know them better. I thought of house-lizards on the walls, house-flies, mosquitoes, then finally I was disrupted by my grandmother’s cat entering my room. Then I decided a cat would be fine.
The second stage is called incubation (no voluntary or conscious thinking on a particular problem happens and “ series of unconscious and involuntary mental events may take place”). This was probably the then-what? stage. After I came up with a decision to write about a cat, I suddenly felt tired of thinking—almost frustrated because I realized I do not have something in mind. Frustration is effective sometimes. It let my mind wander. I felt the pure need to come up with something. Then I just stopped. Then something came up. The muse made its way, I guess.
The third called the illumination stage ( a “happy idea” appears “together with the psychological events which immediately proceded and accompanied that appearance; the incubating idea “becomes definitely related to a specific goal… and the picture is first sketched”). This was the time when I started writing my lines. It was almost like Sigmund Freud’s dreamwork, wherein every detail seemed to happen in real life one what way or another. I always spotted my grandmother’s cat just outside my room waiting for the mouse to come out the hole in the corner. And the lines just flow. The determining what to write was more difficult and more time consuming than finally writing it. I came up with a narration.
The third stage is called the verification (the idea obtained in illumination is elaborated and revised to its exact form). This was the part when I did changes on verbs. Some lines I omitted and changed the cutting. Then when I felt I could not do anything about it anymore, I decided to stop and abandon the poem that way.
