Measuring Cups - Andrew Bird
Seth Studer (the premarital kind for your ex-Vagrants) received a full-ride-scholarship-plus-spending-money offer from Tufts University, a prestigious Boston college. He listed the figures, and they make my brain roll around in its sac of juicy fluid; the sum of money they want to give him per year exceeds the amount I've lived off of since moving out of my parents' house at 18. It's a crazy honor, but one he deserves.
Hi, my name is Peter. I am lazy and insignificant. I have no job and an irritating amount of excess body fat. School is draining the life force out of me, and the cosmic loads of cloud diarrhea (aka snow) streaming past the window are depressing. I write poetry and prose, or at least I try. However, I find other things like complaining about school or playing WarCraft III easier and less fulfilling. I anticipate my life to take a mundane course after college. I expect to work an hourly job with a nametag pinned to my uniform for several years until my first novel sells a modest amount of copies, enough to generate some income. From there, I will devote more time to writing until I can support myself with it. Surprisingly, none of that life plan includes anything learned while in college. I'm giving time, energy, and money (aka life) to the Academy of the Undead for no reward. At least most majors get something in exchange for their souls, but my particular concentration doesn't. That sounds like the title of a Books song: "Nothing for Something."
Now I have to go workshop poems from my Intermediate Creative Writing class. Most of them suck. It's difficult to critique bad poetry because poetry is an intensely personal art. How do you say, "Um, I'm not discrediting your heartache, but you suck at expressing it"? I don't know, either.
I should finish my laundry.
Hi, my name is Peter. I am lazy and insignificant. I have no job and an irritating amount of excess body fat. School is draining the life force out of me, and the cosmic loads of cloud diarrhea (aka snow) streaming past the window are depressing. I write poetry and prose, or at least I try. However, I find other things like complaining about school or playing WarCraft III easier and less fulfilling. I anticipate my life to take a mundane course after college. I expect to work an hourly job with a nametag pinned to my uniform for several years until my first novel sells a modest amount of copies, enough to generate some income. From there, I will devote more time to writing until I can support myself with it. Surprisingly, none of that life plan includes anything learned while in college. I'm giving time, energy, and money (aka life) to the Academy of the Undead for no reward. At least most majors get something in exchange for their souls, but my particular concentration doesn't. That sounds like the title of a Books song: "Nothing for Something."
Now I have to go workshop poems from my Intermediate Creative Writing class. Most of them suck. It's difficult to critique bad poetry because poetry is an intensely personal art. How do you say, "Um, I'm not discrediting your heartache, but you suck at expressing it"? I don't know, either.
I should finish my laundry.
1 Comments:
All the time. Found text poetry usually lacks inherent meaning beyond the arrangement of the words themselves. I wrote a piece awhile back like that called "Wet Feet." I incorporated meaning into it after the fact of the writing, which is odd and slightly paradoxical but true nonetheless.
Beyond poetry, most academic texts and newspaper articles are well-written but very shallow.
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