decision

[kleenexwoman]

I think I'm going to take a while off before I apply to grad school. Not a really long time, maybe just a year and a half, and then see how that goes. This semester has been kicking my ass, and while I've grown as a writer, I think I need to take some time off and work on writing poems for myself instead of for assignments, and work out where I want to go with my fiction. I also need to do more research on which schools I want to go to instead of just skimming their webpages, and work out what I want to do with my writing. I'm rushing into grad school because I don't know what to do with myself if I'm not taking classes, and I don't think that's a good thing.

Also, I guess I'm getting my cap and gown on Thursday, so I'll be walking after all. Eh.

Comments

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Good on yer. Best not to rush into things. Just don't get bogged down into a rut. Keep yer rhythms in motion, and you'll do fine.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Yep. I can't let myself stagnate.

[sir-dave.livejournal.com]

Yes. Very good sense. The problem with learning about writing is that it can become contrary to actually doing any.

It took me about four years to get from my first attempts at poetry to the kind of quality that I now require of myself as a matter of course, and for me the hardest thing was to maintain perfect rhyme over a really long poem. No formal education was involved at any point (though I did have a quite fantastic critic), but I did write over 100,000 words of poetry, and revise the lot at least three times.

There are relatively few female poets to be found that have really made a mark, but my own favourite poet of any kind is Christina Georgina Rossetti. If anything I write more like her than anyone else, too.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I found that I've changed my style of poetry a lot by learning about it, and trying to imitate what works for the poets I admire has been an interesting experience. During one whole class, I focused on Wisława Szymborska; she's definitely my favorite female poet, maybe even my favorite poet in general. Her work is very clear and witty.

Y, most of the female poets whose work has been widely known have come from the modern era, like Plath or Sexton...both of whom were nuts, sadly, but a lot of the modernist or Beat lady poets were considered to be mentally ill by their families even if they weren't. It's really sad how female writing has been largely marginalized.

Have you ever heard of Anne Bradstreet?

[sir-dave.livejournal.com]

The name I've heard, but I have no idea of the content.

I can't think of anyone I respect who was not already writing in 1918, though; Dylan Thomas has some nice tricks, which I've shamelessly used myself, but basically he wrote gibberish clothed as art; the exceptions are 'Do not go gentle', which is about exhorting his own father to be in death the same asshole that Dylan so admired as a child, and 'Remember the procession of the old-young men'. That is scarcely known - Dylan wrote it as part of his war work for the sound track of a film about pre war Wales. Either the copyright was swallowed by the owners of the film, or more likely Dylan despised it, because it made sense. That is a pity, because it's one of the best poems in the English language, and had he been minded to write more like it, he would have enriched the language, but he followed the trend to write nonsense instead. At least he kept rhyme and assonance, but almost nothing he wrote, excepting the above, means anything at all - and anyone can write rhyme and assonance if it doesn't have to mean anything. I prefer Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, who cheerfully wrote nonsense and called it nonsense. For a more learned opinion on Thomas, see Professor Douglas Hofstadter, who rips all pretence of meaning from 'How soon the servant sun' by attempting to translate it.

And Dylan Thomas is for me the pick of the bunch since 1918. But it's true that I have not made great efforts to read more since that date. I was given a book by Seamus Heaney, and consider it devoid of inspiration, yet he's got a big name.

I am glad if other people can enjoy modern poetry, but it drives me nuts.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I think you would like Anne Bradstreet. She was a Puritan poet writing in the 1600s, and she wrote about nearly everything that happened in her life--her children, her children getting sick, her house burning down...

This (http://www.annebradstreet.com/the_author_to_her_book.htm) is the prologue to her first book of poetry, and this (http://www.annebradstreet.com/verses_upon_the_burning_of_our_house.htm) is the poem she wrote about her house burning down.

[drworm.livejournal.com]

Yay, I think this is for the best. And you can come to Kent State and check out whether it would be amenable to you. :)

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

\o/ I can't wait! :*