The prof wants to know how changing genres (tweets, microfiction, haiku, formal poem) impacted my "writing and meaning making."

I'll be honest: as a writer, none of these genres fell within my "happy zone." I'm not a poetry person, I don't think in terms of short stories, and tweeting my thoughts/status/whatever feels downright unnatural. Every one of these pieces has, in some way, been dedicated to obstructing meaning. I don't make a habit of baring my soul online, or in general; so no matter the veracity of the tweets, they rarely slip below surface level.

On the bright side, at least I know I'll be working with some sort of fiction for the idiot Twitterive.

Changing tweets to microfiction, I was just trying to make something vaguely entertaining, so I found the weirdest line I could and put it in a bizarre context. No real deep meaning intended.

The Anzaldúa-inspired microfiction was probably the closest I got to "feelings" with a slightly auto-biographical twinge of meaning; but this idea was also a small part of a multi-genre paper I did for Writer's Mind, so it's not like anything was a secret.

With the Anzaldúa exception, I don't think I really started anything with a plan. Yes, I was changing meaning, but there wasn't a clear "meaning" to start with, so that's no surprise. Planning-wise, especially on the poems, I picked lines as I came across them and figured out what they said as I put them together. One-step process. Yes, there were moments I wished I'd had other words to work with, but you work with what you have and don't dwell on it.

Wow, this really makes it sound like I just slapped everything together without any thought whatsoever. Ouch.

I honestly don't know if I'm trying to create or distort meaning with any of these pieces. Maybe a little of both. Oh well, hopefully I'll have a better idea of what I'm doing with the idiot Twitterive. :)

This post contains two haiku, composed of lines from the microfictions in my last post, and a "found poem" which is comprised of words/phrases/what-have-you from 10 of my tweets...which you'll see below at some point. Cheers. (And I swear, if this thing keeps messing up my formatting, there will be violence.)

Haiku #1:
Keeping her mouth shut
Sometimes she wishes she were
Down the silent hole


Haiku #2
We’re making progress
Masked in peeling charcoal paint
Down a narrow hall


Found Poem, created from the following tweets:
1. #twitterive #wrt1 This does not sound like a recipe I should have any part in cooking...food burns around me.
2. #twitterive Not claustrophobia, but stifling. Invisible weight. He tenido bastante. Por favor, no más. Headache.
3. #twitterive Watched a hilariously violent movie last night. Dreamed a psychotic (but non-violent) workplace job after. This scares me.
4. #twitterive Homework always inspires anxiety...and the sinking knowledge that I'll leave it til the last minute, increasing anxiety.
5. #twitterive Gray shapes materialize from within a milky land cloud, slowly becoming clearer, darker, more defined. It's pretty cool. :)
6. #twitterive House is quiet. Not the quiet of all asleep. The quiet of empty. Oppressive. Not silence, but nothing.
7. #twitterive Just read about a friend's trials and triumphs with tea, as well as a *gasp* guy who cooks and folds laundry!
8. #twitterive Estoy contenta; estoy en mi sótano con una taza de té (Inglés té del desayuno)...y con mucha tarea. Buen, nada es perfecto.
9. #twitterive Empty offices, silent but for the hum of heaters and tower fans. Warm enough to make you sleepy, cold enough to make you work.
10. #twitterive Rain pitter-patters down the chimney, dozens of pings and plonks against the metal, an onslaught of percussion and symphony.

The Actual Poem:

I should have watched.
Trials and triumphs,
Anxiety perfecto, invisible knowledge:
The quiet of empty.

I dreamed darker silence.
This scares me.
I watched  symphony materialize.
I’ll leave it.

An onslaught of cold,
Sound enough to burn,
The last minute defined,
But nothing.

By the by...homework assigned Monday and due Wednesday is pure malicious evility. (Yes, evility.) That alone may condemn both these class readings to the spot of pavement over which passes a large, heavy, unmerciful bus.

"Dubliners" by James Joyce
"An Encounter"
As the prof has requested that we focus in on place, I'll try. I confess, though, I'm not as big of a description person as I used to be. There are still some authors/genres where I can read pages of intricate detail and love it; but in general, give me the basic idea, let my mind do the rest, and get on with the stupid plot already.

That said, Joe Dillon's back garden, where the narrator played Wild West with the other boys gives a sense of freedom, of adventure. This seems to be the narrator's chief escape, and it suffices...for a time. Then, "true" adventure calls. The faraway takes on a romantic quality. If I could just get there, I'd have a real, exciting adventure. School or adventure? Need the question be posed?

But throughout the journey, out on the open water, open streets, the time and money to stop and buy snacks as they wished, I was a little underwhelmed by the boys' adventure. The shift from the usual sights to the open "unknown" seemed to be a setup for the reader to feel the freedom, independence, and novelty of it all that one might expect the boys to feel as well. But it just fell flat for me. I'm not sure if I didn't get enough contrast between settings 1 and 2 or just didn't catch on all that well.

Then the old man stepped in and spoiled that (kind of there) sense of freedom and comfort, perhaps because he was both crazy and an adult. There went the authority-less day. For me, it created unease in the boys and the reader, which I suppose was the intent. The old man was the ancient, cracked chewing gum some unwatched child had stuck on an masterpiece of an oil painting of an open field. There was a bit of suspense, not knowing where the story would go next. 

It built up all sorts of expectations for me and then just stopped. What's with that? Sure, I suppose we saw a miniature nod toward friendship and separating-the-men-from-the-boys and be-careful-what-you-wish-for, but come on. That's it? That's how you're going to end it? All that lead up with the crazy old man, and it goes nowhere. Not that everything has to have some amazing fantastical end, but a little more conclusion/closure would have been nice. (They never even made it to the all-important Pigeon house!) Seeing the story drop out there made me feel like it had wasted my time, and you're never too inclined to look farther for signs of merit once that's happened.

"Araby"
Since I spent forever on that first section, the speedy version.
- musty, littered (feels downtrodden *readstalkerish*) priest's former apartment where our enchanted lad (semi-stalker) watches for his lovely lady: made me think that, like the kid, maybe there was something good in it, maybe it was just a waste of space/time
- this kid, muttering and crying to his love on a rainy night by a broken pane...reminded me "Don Quixote" (which I'm presently reading in another class). His obsession with a girl he hardly knows/speaks to combined with his melodramatic moments/speech and stalkerish habits? Gee, no wonder I never sympathized with him.
- dark, mostly closed up, depressing bazaar...waste of the kid's time and effort, a fruitless journey...No wonder I came out of this feeling the same. Waste. Yeah, kid, be ashamed...and get over it.


Micro Fiction by Jerome Stern
I appreciate the difficulty of writing a fully developed story/plot within the constraints of this genre...but some non-endings work better than others for me. (Again, short version...in keeping with the brief tradition of the pieces in question.)
- Wrong Channel: limited environment details, but effect...well, it's obviously making Barbarita nervous. Significant. (Seriously, though, the doctors aren't a little more suspicious about important terms possibly lost in translation?)
- Mockingbird: First, may Peter die. Betting good money the prof loved the color refs. Some of the descriptive language, particularly in metaphor, was interesting ("island of silence bobs to the surface" p. 43). Was a little too vague and abstract at the end to work as a non-ending for me.
- Land's End: An amazing amount of description for such a short piece. And the way everything is described, as someone else's or used by someone else, builds on the idea of not belonging, of being a stranger. (Can kind of relate to that one, so we'll let this escape the book burning. 'Nother Don Quixote ref...)
- Waiting: A ragged, broken down environment for a ragged, broken down woman. Interesting. The job (and parent) strike me as a snare in which the the sub is caught...a very tight snare, upping the pressure more and more til she snaps.