This is a difficult Blog. After class last night I came up with the marvelous idea for a new poem. Normally, I think of my Blog space as somewhere I can get immediate gratification. If I must write on this thing anyway, I want it to take shape and form. How do I create a space where I talk about my own poetry without providing 'spoilers' for the next poem I submit?
I can't say for sure that I will be able to create a happy, happy, joy, joy place where I talk about my writing without talking about my writing. That seems slightly off to say such a thing but I want to be able to share that I've come up with my next self thought stroke of brilliance. Do I continue to subject my family to my word frenzy? They love me for that you know. Not really. Perhaps I will just continue to seek their perplexed placated smiles.
So, having a space to write about poetry and my poetics without discussing my work is not the place I'd hoped to create. I guess I could talk about the reading here.
Here's something to talk about that nobody but me may be interested in. I think of myself as musically diverse. Love myself SOME rap. One song in particular that is poetically brilliant, Ghetto Vet (clean version) by Ice Cube. I have listened to this song about thousand times. He's got a verse that I completely did not get until recently. The content of the song is phenomenal. People think about gangsters and thugs and how terrible they are etc. But what if that's your life? What if you've been exposed to just that? I don't get all freaked out I suppose. I have a cousin that lived that life. I never would have thought as we were growing up that he would join a gang. I had another cousin that never even got out of high school, he was shot dead at school.
What does this have to do with Ice Cube and the song Ghetto Vet. It is a brilliant portrait that he paints about someone who was shot and survived. He creates a vivid imagery that tells a story about this gangster that survives only to spend the rest of he life disabled. Who thinks about them? Anyway, the entire song always made sense to me until recently when my aunt and I were having a discussion about King hospital in L.A. Bam! I got it, I understood something about Ice Cube's song that I'd never seen before. What's my point? I guess the most important thing I want to say is that if it is the brilliant poetic nature of Ghetto Vet these things stay with us and we take pieces of work with us. We can't help but gravitate to work that moves or perplexes us. The thing that most impresses me about Ghetto Vet is that if you have no idea about living in L.A. there is no way that you would ever get Ice Cube's song. It was two verses that made perfect sense but he reached beyond and connected with a specific group of people.
I shall regret when I push publish post.
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1 comment:
Let me clarify; you don't need to create a clean, well lit, happy poetry place. Poetry places are rarely so sterile and dust free. Talk about your ideas, as you have here. If you think it might interfere with our reading of the next poem, you can always create a draft and publish the draft after we discuss it in class. But at the same time, this raises a question, to what degree is any context--even our presence in class as ourselves--too much in creating textual 'understanding' of a poem? This is an important question/problem/issue; is pure anonymity the answer? Probably not.
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