Artist's Statement- attempt 1

Initially, my thought was to compose an essay explaining my poetry in the most concrete of terms in an attempt to draw upon the logical mind of the audience.  Poetry can be logical, mathematical, scientific; if I want I can write a fourteen line ababcdcdefefgg sonnet in iambic pentameter.  I can write something so beautifully precise in meaning, a tribute to the mental process of solving for x, pristine and leaving nothing up to interpretation.

Then later, I can sneak back in, break into the CEO-esque mansion of a wordwork with a ski mask over my hair, wearing all black and feeling like a ninja, though I hear ninjas really wore blue.  I can spray paint harsh words over the perfect white walls, "cock," "motherfucker," "whore."  I can break all of the fine china and use the pieces to tear the curtains.

Sometimes, it can be fun.  What isn't interesting about limiting yourself so severely only to break free, pumping your fist to the skies and screaming "liberty!"?

Often, there is no time for rules.  I don't need to be the Übermensch to feel iconoclastical.  I must have pen and now or the words will burst out of me like a non-verbal Tourrete's, fingers scraping the verses into the walls.  Words divined in a purposeful order; subjectivity is dead.  How can I take credit for something I did not create but that has been created through me?  It is a wonderful way to be objectified, not by men but an ineffable something we so lovingly refer to as inspiration.  Oh, for a muse of fire!

Experimentation is nice, so juicy and sensuous.  To wake up at 3:15 a.m. for an entire month, pouring one's sleep thoughts onto a smeared page in an unreadable print.  Waking up with the tell-tale blue or black or gray or purple poet's pinky.  Such a happy insomnia.  Then to compose lists of words and phrases from the touching creations of others, "puedo escribir los versos mas tristes esta noche," "it is not your pen you are looking for," "you soothed me like cake and milk."  Your pen can sooth me with the saddest lines.  Tonight, you are looking for cake and milk.

Often, I want to get a point across, want to make my words rile the masses into a 100,000+ anti-war rally.  Let's march on Washington because I'm queer, Latina, in chronic pain, and I am mad as hell!  So many things I am so pleasantly uncomfortable describing with poetry; let me describe for you the importance of the purple pen I stole from a college recruiting event, it makes such pretty lines.  But to incite, yes, that is where I am.  My purpose as creator or medium for creation.  Let me create empathy.  Who will love this poor brown girl, I want to ask.  I will ask.  I am asking.

Wikipedia tells me that my artist's statement must explain, justify, and contextualize my body of work.  My work is an extension of my body, and isn't work at all, but a serious play.  Explaining myself seems like something a naughty child ought do, justification feels like something for which to strive-- I will one day justify myself on this earth and then I will die, and my context is as fluid as this earth and my body - "I was about to slip down the sink like grease."  Multiple subjectivities, striving, oozing.

I am a malleable poet/ess playing with canon and neologisms, dreaming of successfully lulling the "I" to sleep, one day.  What further peace of spirit can be desired?

Six-Word Memoirs 2

Some more of these.  Because I don't have any posting ideas.

Aspiring lady pirate, disillusioned,
sells boat.
-Diana White

Wasn't noticed so
I painted trains.
-Mare 139

Angry guy gets law
license, sues.
-Bryan Gates

With three cats
  I'm never unloved.
-Cynthia Macdonald

Left a desert for a
wasteland.
-James Shore

The image was large with silence.
-Elizabeth Raab

He left me for good eventually.
-Audrie Lawrence

Mistook streetlight for
   the moon.  Climbed.
-Zack Wentz

Wanted to live forever,
died trying.
-Syona Luciferina

Revenge is living well,
without you.
-Joyce Carol Oates

Artist's Statement

Okay, so I need an artist's statement, both for the Hedgebrook application and MFA program applications.  So I'm going to follow the "How to Write an Artist's Statement" suggestions, free writing it up here.

1. Take five minutes and think about why you do what you do. How did you get into this work? How do you feel when work is going well? What are your favorite things about your work? Jot down short phrases that capture your thoughts. Don't worry about making sense or connections. The more you stir up at this point, the richer the stew.

Writing poetry is the decluttering of the mind.  Without it, thoughts would be so crowded as to begin seeping out the pores.  Words symptomatic of a raging mood would escape the lips at the most inauspicious of times.  "One shot or two?" "The glowing nightlight of her teeth lulling me to wake!"  It is the only science that makes nonsense in such a liberating manner; poetry is not math.  It is the art of conveying a two-thousand page tome thought into a 14-line emotion.

2. Make a list of words and phrases that communicate your feelings about your work and your values. Include words you like, words that make you feel good, words that communicate your values or fascinations. Be loose. Be happy. Be real. Think of these as potential seasonings for your stew. You don't have to choose which ones to use just yet, so get them all out of the cupboard.

• illumination
• freedom
• necessity
• lifeblood
• clearing
• echoes
• clarity
• dreams
• raw emotion
• catharsis
• healing
• conversations with God
• cleaning
• honesty
• reconsidering

3. Answer these questions as simply as you can. Your answers are the meat and potatoes of your stew. Let them be raw and uncut for now.

1. What is your favorite tool? Why? 

NA

1. What is your favorite material? Why? 

NA

1. What do you like best about what you do? 

The feeling of creation and inciting emotion in others, empathy-building. 

1. What do you mean when you say that a piece has turned out really well? 

I mean that someone has read it aloud as I imagined it to flow in my head.  They have demonstrated a true reaction, whether pleasant or unpleasant.

1. What patterns emerge in your work? Is there a pattern in the way you select materials? In the way you use color, texture or light? 

NA

1. What do you do differently from the way you were taught? Why? 

Sometimes, I purposefully choose to crowd my poetry with words, let them run over each other messily, capturing, I hope, the multiple voices in a three-dimensional crowd.

1. What is your favorite color? List three qualities of the color. Consider that these qualities apply to your work. 

NA

4. Look at your word list. Add new words suggested by your answers to the questions above.

•  evocation
• provocation
• voices
• multiple subjectivities
• capturing
• releasing
• empathy
• reaction

TBC!

Weird Day at the Y

It was a weird day at the gym today.  Many reasons.  I suppose they were all smaller things, but together it added up to a strange sort of occasion.

First, for the past few weeks pretty much three-four people show up for Tai Chi.  Because of that, we've been able to play with SWORDS.  Okay, they aren't real swords but canes, but still, they're meant to represent swords.  Anyway, today, there were about 12 people!  Everyone seemed to return from vacation all at once, and there were three new students.

Then, when I got out of Tai Chi/Qigong, I went to the locker room to change into my real work out clothes, and I not only skipped over my usual row (the first one) altogether, but skipped the second and went straight to the third row.  I wasn't even thinking!  Why would I subconsciously do this?  Any deep insights?

In the locker room, two little girls were singing a really random song we used to sing in high school, the Weenie Man Song, which goes like this (if it's wrong, just chalk it up to changing times):

I know a weenie man
He has a weenie van
he sells most everything
from hot dogs on down down down down
Someday I'll join his life
I'll be his weenie wife
Hot dog, I love that weenie man!
Break it down
Weenie, weenie, weenie and a bun bun bun
and mustard too (repeat)

I ran into not one but TWO people I haven't seen in a while.  One is my friend S, with whom I was able to practice Japanese- hurrah!

I also read poetry while working out for the first time, and burned way more calories than usual.  How can this be?

AND my usual shower had a broken soap dispenser (le gasp!), so I had to switch.  Not that it was such a big deal-- the usual shower had a hot/water faucet that wouldn't stick.  Always had really hot showers, which are not ideal after a work out.

Plus, I was randomly stopped in the lobby on my way out by a lady who watches Big Bang Theory.  She was very amused by my new Bazinga! shirt (pictured below).  I wonder, if I keep wearing this shirt, will all of my fellow nerds come out from the woodwork, let their freak flags fly?

I can think of nothing else.  Good night!

Not Quite What I was Planning

So, it turns out there's a series of books called Six Word Memoirs.  I talked about six word stories a few posts back, and thought there might be a book of them.  Anyway, hurrah for successful search engine-ing.  I am including my favorites here (I might have to post more later, for it grows late!).

Watching quietly from
every door frame
-Nicole Resseguie

I still make coffee for two.
-Zak Nelson

Forest peace, sharing vision, always optimistic.
-Jane Goodall

    Danced in
    Fields
of Infinite
Possibilities
-Deepak Chopra

I'm enjoying
    even this
downward
    dance.
-Colum McCann

  Found true love,
married someone
    else.
-Bjorn Stromberg

Hedgebrook

How could I not know that Hedgebrook is located on Whidbey Island?  Honestly, all these years living in the Seattle area, and I have to hear about this in passing from a woman at work?  Hurrah for wonderful colleagues!  In any case, where are all the hard core feminists?  Gloria Steinem's a part of the project, for goodness sake!

End rant.

Anyway, in case you don't know, Hedgebrook is a writer's "retreat" (according to Steinem, it is isn't a retreat but "an advance."  Oh, Gloria, you are always so beautifully eloquent) for women.  It sounds just lovely.

Taken directly from their About page, because these are writing ladies, and if they wanted me to terribly paraphrase in a late night blog post, by golly, they'd've not spent so much time making their description so gorgeous:

Mission: Hedgebrook supports visionary women writers whose stories and ideas shape our culture now and for generations to come.

THE ALCHEMY OF TIME & SPACE, SOLITUDE & COMMUNITY
Located on beautiful Whidbey Island near Seattle, Hedgebrook offers one of the few residency programs in the world exclusively dedicated to supporting the creative process of women writers, and bringing their work to the world through innovative public programs.

The gift of time and space in solitude cannot be overestimated. It is essential to a writer’s process and difficult to carve out in daily life. Having her own cottage, with meals provided, enables a writer to give full focus to her work and go deeper into her writing process.

Hedgebrook was founded on Virginia Woolf’s belief that giving a writer a room of her own is the greatest vote of confidence in her voice. What we’ve discovered in the ensuing decades is the power of community: bringing women together is equally important in nurturing and informing their voices, and emboldening them to speak.

At the end of a day of writing, all six residents come down to the farmhouse kitchen and share a meal, their stories, histories, breakthroughs and roadblocks. They give advice and feedback, and challenge each other to take risks. A community forms around the kitchen table, bonds deepen through conversation, and writers leave knowing they are part of the larger Hedgebrook community in the world.

I am going to apply to be a writer in residence, because I figure, the absolute worst thing that can happen is that the ladies say "no" (well, it could be Ruth Forman, that might be the absolute worst just because I love her so insanely much).   Anyway, getting admitted would mean that I could stay at Hedgebrook for two to six weeks for free, and just work on my poetry.  Doesn't that sound absolutely perfect?  Having an opportunity to create in unity with a bunch of talented women?

Ah~

So let's think, what do I need to get together (here's hoping it's similar to an MFA program).  Oh, wow, this looks a lot less intense than I was expecting- hurrah for saving trees by not having seventy page applications :)

So, I will need a writing sample- 10 pages all together of any genre or mixed genre or multiple genres.  I'm thinking one short story (3/4 pages) and some poetry.  Then I'll need an artistic statement- oy.  I am always bad at making myself sound good-- just say no to self-flagelation of the two-dimensional variety!

The website says that they judge submissions based on three criteria: 1) quality of writing, 2) originality of voice and strength of prose, and 3) "an eye toward diversity in all areas."  Well, anyway, it won't hurt to try-- hopefully I can at least get some feedback on my writing.  I think I better focus on my artist statements this week.  Let you know how it goes!

Due date: September 23rd!  Don't let me forget!

Reading Books!

Gah!  I am so far away from my goal!  I vowed last September to read one book a week for the whole year, adding up to 52 books for the year.  At the end of July, I am only at 39!  Yeek!  I did not count books for school, because that seems cheat-y, nor did I count picture or comic books.  But still!  This is what happens when you start and never finish too many books!

The post is here: http://mandyofthesea.blogspot.com/2009/12/well-reviews-just-wont-happen.html.

Anyway, my vacation leads straight into the end of this goal period, so I'd better get kicking while I'm gone!  August needs to be a big reading month as well, luxury-wise.  Oh dear, but I've got so many books to read for school, capstone, GRE prep, oy. 

I definitely didn't come close to the movie thing- but it wasn't a year goal anyway.  Tra la?