10's, Week 11

Place Narrative

My Sanctuary

You are a place that goes places. Never in the same stationary spot--in fact, it'd be odd if you were. Two doors for access and windows to spare. Your blazing blue exterior causes many to stare, while your gray insides bring comfort. The warm sun trapped by your lid, envelops me. Many come and go inside your warm embrace, but no one as much as I. I see you nearly every day to make barter. My songs and care for your services. You gladly accept, as always.

Strangers judge you by your nationality, but I don't mind. You have seen many places and taken me with you. You are strong and you are fast. No stranger to the elements you stand tough and endure. Daily you provide me with a sanctuary to meditate or share with you my vocal abilities (both good and bad).

At times I use you in vain, but it's only temporary--if I could, I would be the only one in this plac, because you are my place. No matter who I share you with, you are mine. Others have places like you, but you are you and you are mine and together we can conquer anything.

10's, Week 10

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• A brown horse laying in the sun like a dog in a fenced-in field.
  
• A plump, brown squirrel hunched over on a brick gate, chewing a peanut open with his mouth.
  
• An ominous, gray curtain of clouds hovering over I-94.
  
• Orange plates of fish wrapped in round, seaweed-rice packages revolve on a metal conveyor.
  
• A group of students gathered on the Diag in Ann Arbor, clapping and cheering as the major speaks.
  
• A collection of tween girls on either side of the neighborhood street with colorful balloons in hand, nothing but the wet cement between them.
  
• A silver pot of water rolling with green and white and orange vegetables.
  
• Two pounds of milk chocolate, packaged and shaped like a friendly bunny.
  
• Ghosts of outfits lie on the bedroom carpet like war casualties.
  
• A stack of folded papers in a wire cage, each the same as its neighbor below.
  

10 "Treasures":

• "Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is." --Carl Jung on "The Shadow"
  
• "Where we live, the skies are heavy with sleep. Sometimes high-flying jets come down encrusted with it, like bees dusted with pollen." --Stacy Levine, "Sleep" from My Horse and Other Stories
• "The best art and writing is almost like an assignment; it is so vibrant that you feel compelled to make something in response." --from Learningtoloveyoumore.com
• "For a brief moment it seems wonderfully easy to live and love and create breathtaking things..in the same way that the ocean gives the assignment of breathing deeply, and kissing instructs us to stop thinking." --from Learningtoloveyoumore.com
  
• "Don't look back, all you'll ever get is the dust from the steps before." --Zooey Deschanel (of She & Him), lyrics to "Don't Look Back"
  
• "Well alright, it's ok, we all get the slip sometimes everyday. I'll just keep it to myself in the sun." --Zooey Deschanel (of She & Him), lyrics to "In the Sun"
  
• "Sunshine, we all see the same sky. Looking, learning, asking the same why?" --Belle & Sebastian, lyrics from "Song for Sunshine"
  
• "Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant." --from Posterous.com
  
• "If anyone's curious what I look like with a beard, it's this ?:^(0) Coincidentally, that's also my ATM pin number." --Conan O'Brien, from his Twitter
  
• "America likes stuff that's familiar #healthcareforeveryoneisscarycauseitsnew." --Sarah Silverman, from her Twitter
  

Photobiography

Learning To Love You More:

Assignment #11: Photograph a scar and write about it.

This is a scar from a surgery I had in April 2008. In hopes of fixing my malformed foot I regretfully and apprehensively underwent a lapidus bunionectomy. After six months of crutches and wearing a big black boot, this is what I have to show for it.



Assignment #27: Take a picture of the sun.




Assignment #50: Take a flash photo under your bed.

Shadow Narrative:

Photograph, illustrate or write a narrative for your personal shadow.

Sappho Collaboration

"Aiga"

Spangled is
Your skin glistening in the sun
The earth with her crowns
Stretches far and wide
I would lead
You down the winding paths, between stones stacked like
Wedding gifts,
The land was called
Aiga,
A peaceful,
Non-evil
Sanctuary for us from the
Paingiver
In our lives, like
A vine that grows up trees
We
Channel
The emergence of
Dawn



**The 10 Sappho lines are in italic and were taken from 168C-175 (p.345-9) in If Not, Winter.

10's, Week 9

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• A white note card on the speckled, gray concrete sidewalk that simply reads "leap".
  
• Three giant post-consumer plastic bags hanging on a wood fence, each labeled for the appropriate plastic they contain (by number: 1, 2, 3).
  
• Ten pairs of shoes lined up in a row along the wall next to the front door.
  
• A mannequin head on display in a vintage store window, pale-faced with bright blue painted eyes, elaborate with painted eyelashes and rosy cheeks.
  
• A team of women pick up the countless necklaces off the shop floor from the fallen shelves.
  
• A line of people waiting outside State Theatre, under the neon-lit marquee that reads "CLOCKWORK ORANGE MIDNIGHT TIX SIX BUX."
  
• Various antique family glassware, stacked inside cardboard boxes, newspaper separating one piece from another.
  
• Globs of green toothpaste stick to the porcelain sink bowl, left for someone else to clean.
  
• A stack of pristine, white paper waits uniformly in the top of the gray printer for the day it will be called to service.
  
• A refrigerator filled with brown paper sacks, Tupperware, and stacked Styrofoam containers of wasted food that will wait until garbage day.
  

10 "Treasures":

• "The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." --Nelson Mandela (from an Honest Tea lid)
  
• "Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use." --Wendell Johnson (from and Honest Tea lid)
  
• "Choose being kind over being right and you'll be right every time." --Richard Carlson (from an Honest Tea lid)
  
• "Consider the letters of the alphabet and all of their various phonetic interpretations. Each individual character has its own history, its own stages of evolution, and its own place among the others. Some stand alone and others are hopelessly paired. Some are virtually unemployed while others are over-worked and abused." --Anatole France, "Alphabet" from The Garden of Epicurus (read from The Arcades Project)
  
• "Randomness: There are an infinite number of random entry points to this project. It can be accessed in countless contexts. Try going here and seeing that you can find interesting in the list of keywords." --The Arcades Project
  
• "The relationship between the mental landscape of the interior and the physical landscape of the exterior is a crucial aspect of the flaneur narrator's effectiveness as a literary device." --Walter Benjamin (from The Arcades Project, an analysis of Thoreau)
  
• "To great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives." --Walter Benjamin
  
• "In a shop on the Rue LEgendre, in Batingnolles, a whole serious of female busts, without heads or legs, with curtain hooks in place of arms and a percaline skin of arbitrary hue--bean brown, glaring pink, hard black--are lined up like a row of onions, impaled on rods, or set out on tables. . . The sight of this ebb tide of bosoms, the Musee Curtius of breasts, puts on vaguely in mind of those vaults in the Louvre where classical sculptures are housed, when one and the same torso, eternally repeated, beguiles the time for those who look over it, with a yawn, on rainy days. . ." --J.K. Huysmans, Croquis Parisiens (from The Doll, The Automaton)
  
• "Boredom waits for death." --Johann Peter Hebel
  
• "Waiting is life." --Victor Hugo
  

10's, Week 8

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• A grey-haired man in black robe behind a desk, centered between the American flag and Michigan's state flag, speaking to a man miles away via the 40" LCD television mounted on the wall.
  
• A blue sign overhead that reads, "Aisle 9: Breakfast Foods, Candy, Healthy Living."
  
• A closet rack tangled with hangers and shirts, with neat stacks of folded clothes above on the shelf.
  
• A gray unshapely stain on the concrete, the wet shadow of ice once there.
  
• The brown and gold couch pillows scattered all over the living room carpet, like stepping stones.
  
• A white ceramic bowl sprinkled in ashes and crumpled up cigarette butts like a battlefield.
  
• Burgundy water, white with foam, running down the bathtub drain as she rinses her hair under the running water.
  
• Seven brown boxes stacked crookedly on top of one another and banished to the corner of the room.
  
• A red plastic box that reads "City of Ypsilanti," overflowing with empty cardboard food boxes and plastic milk jugs.
  
• The green number ":23" glowing on the microwave where the time should be.
  

10 "Treasures":

• "Someone will remember us I say even in another time." --Sappho, from If Not, Winter by Anne Carson (147)
  
• "As long as you want." --Sappho, from If Not, Winter by Anne Carson (45)
  
• "And on the eyes of black sleep of night." --Sappho, from If Not, Winter by Anne Carson (151)
  
• "With what eyes?" --Sappho, from If Not, Winter by Anne Carson (162)
  
• "Whiter by far than an egg." --Sappho, from If Not, Winter by Anne Carson (167)
  
• "Spangled is the earth with her crowns." --Sappho, from If Not, Winter by Anne Carson (168C)
  
• "People dull their wits with gibberish, and cannot use their ears and eyes." --Heraclitus, Fragments (4)
  
• "From the strain of binding opposites comes harmony." --Heraclitus, Fragments (46)
  
• "The way up is the way back." --Heraclitus, Fragments (69)
  
• "Applicants for wisdom do what I have done: inquire within." --Heraclitus, Fragments (80)
  

Body Part Narrative

One in Ten

I'm here in line with the others, usually unnoticed. My twin on the other side, more valued, I feel. The pressure of pens and pencils weigh down on my daily--so much so I've changed shape. When decorated like the others, my paint always chips first. When bowling I'm the only one who aches the next morning, enlarged with blisters. I do a lot, but receive no special praise because I am merely one in ten.

Poem Box

"Cantiga 12: Birth of Venus"

From Cosmic Canticle by Ernesto Cardenal

Who'd have said that out of such confusion
there would one day emerge such a beautiful and fragile filigree,
life.
Fresh from the sea like Venus
life.
The sea was born from the wedding of hydrogen and oxygen
and life was born from the sea
in the salt transparency
molecules transforming into protoplasm.
Venus dripping, fresh from the sea.
The composition of our blood much akin,
according to Cousteau,
to that of sea water.

The salt of sweat and of our tears
is from the sea
...dripping.
Even now our bodies gush sea water.
Hence our need for water. Thirst.
Venus gushing water--the first algae.
Then the first prints in the sand.
The first eyes opened
and already the earth was green.
Plants. (From gas and water and sunlight).
The stench of mud and crushed leaves
created the sense of smell.
Toads and frogs were the first to hear.
Life came out of the sea, which explains
this oceanic to and fro in our veins.
And the moon's hold on us.

Life came out of the sea
like a bather on Corn Island beach.
Coconut palms in the foreground,
against the blue, the blues,
bluest of blues and
green swathes
like light-green rivers between the blue
dark blue
blue-black patches,
and the sky is scarcely blue at all against so many blues
and on the shore, on the stones: crystal, colorless, crystal;
closer in, sugar-like sand,
and coconut palms with coconuts in the foreground.
And the female bather saunters towards us
dripping wet.
Life came out of the sea. Venus gushing water.
That's why our blood is salty like the ocean
and the proportion of salt is the same.
And likewise the sodium, the potassium in our veins
come from the primeval ocean.
Gushing blood and tears.

10's, Week 7

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• Hand to dog's ears to dog's back to French fries to mouth to jeans. Repeat. Hand back to mouth, this time one finger at a time.
  
• The collection of snowflakes melting on your dark brown hair and big blue scarf as you walk through the door.
  
• Countless bare, brown trees sprouting up through the snow-covered, round Pennsylvania mountains, like hair on a scalp.
  
• Buildings covered in bright LCD screens, flashing advertisements for several blocks. Banner atop of sign atop of LCD screen.
  
• Three slips of white paper, each with numbers and punched holes, clipped to the back of the seat ahead.
  
• An abandoned 18-wheeler resting on its side in a snowy ditch, like an animal carcass.
  
• Five Chihuahua puppies wrestling through mountains of shredded paper in a glass window that reads: "Le Petit Puppy," hand painted in gold letters.
  
• The golden sun shines through the gutter's bars revealing a collection of things long lost: a pair of sunglasses, some bracelets, pens, markers, lids, gum in the mold of a particular set of teeth, plastic wrappers, a metro card, cigarette butts, and plastic utensils.
  
• A window of mannequin heads, wearing wigs in all colors: from brown to pink to green.
  
• A crinkled-up, blue umbrella broken and forlorn in a pile of snow.
  

10 "Treasures":

• "Because we dream of where we walk and walk to where we dream, we are always lost." --Guy Maddin, My Winnipeg
  
• "My father died, with nothing left to do, he died." --Guy Maddin, My Winnipeg
  
• "Back to the task of disentangling myself from this town." --Guy Maddin, My Winnipeg
  
• "Quickly covered up by the forgetfulness of our snow." --Guy Maddin, My Winnipeg
  
• "Everything that happens in this town is a euphemism." --Guy Maddin, My Winnipeg
  
• "IF I JUMP I THINK I CAN MAKE IT." --Peter Vidani, "Not Quite"
  
• "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." --Dr. Carl Sagan
  
• "You've lost your muchness." --Johnny Depp (as the mad hatter) in Alice in Wonderland
  
• "Leave my head demagnetized; tell me where the trauma lies: in the scan of pathogen or the shadow of my sin." --Charlotte Gainsbourg, lyrics from "IRM"
  
• "And these songs that you sing, do they mean anything to the people you're singing them to, people like you." --Charlotte Gainsbourg, lyrics from "The Songs That We Sing"
  

Color Association

Still

What lay behind the '70s mint green motel door labeled "480D" in gold paint is a man who dreams of times already passed, wishing to forget the time passing through. On top of the starchy, rough bedding of the full-sized bed, he lays waiting. He lies for hours, staring at the water-stained ceiling, bubbled up in the corner and peeling directly above him. No one comes. No one ever comes.

As the sun sets, it casts an organic shade of red over everything. Leaking in through the white slatted blinds in his motel room, a pattern of red horizontal lines attacks the wall. A reminder that time waits for no one, and that he is no exception. He turns over onto his right side, bringing his knees close to his chest, and releases the air in his lungs in one long sigh.

He stares anxiously at the long blue vein running up his arm. Thoughts endlessly racing through his head, he's paralyzed from the chaos. His mind in uproar against his body, he struggles to resist.

A hard-shell slate green suitcase sits by the door for its third day, unopened, completely abandoned. Waiting by the door frame, it urges him to leave, to move on, to start anew.

10's, Week 6

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• A brown leather glove lies alone in a puddle in a parking lot, abandoned unknowingly.
  
• A corner of white Frigidaire appliances glow green with the numbers "10:16."
  
• A large brown truck that reads "UPS" in gold letters, waits at the end of the long, icy driveway.
  
• Two twenty-something guys with tousled brown hair sit next to each other in armless brown leather chairs with their heads down, reading in front of a wall of books in the "Biography" section of Borders.
  
• The murky brown mud oozes a lighter brown liquid, while holding the shape of shoes previously there.
  
• A grey-brown squirrel climbs the porch banister flaking with white paint, and hunches over a pile of peanuts on the rail surface.
  
• A pile of boots, gloves, and ice skates sit by the front door, icy and melting.
  
• A brown liquid drips in a steady flow from the top of the machine into the clear glass pot, giving off steam.
  
• The rusty "Peninsular Paper Co." sign sits behind a frozen river of ice and snow, snow gathering on the tops of each letter.
  
• A man in light blue jeans, a red puffy coat, white sneakers, and a green and yellow beanie that reads: "Vernors" races across the street in the slush of yesterday's snow.
  

10 "Treasures":

• "Every lover is mad, we are told. But can we imagine a madman in love? Never--I am entitled only to an impoverished, incomplete, metaphorical madness: love drives me nearly mad, but I do not communicate with the supernatural, there is nothing of the sacred within me; my madness, a mere irrationality, is dim, even invisible; besides, it is entirely recuperated by the culture: it frightens no one." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  

• "I-love-you has no usages. Like a child's word, it enters into no social constraint; it can be a sublime, solemn, trivial word, it can be an erotic, pornographic word. It is a socially irresponsible word." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "In the manner of what happens in singing, in the proffering of I-love-you, desire is neither repressed (as in what is uttered) nor recognized (where we did not expect it: as in the uttering itself) but simply: released, as an orgasm. Orgasm is not spoken, but it speaks and it says: I-love-you." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "I love you. Je-t'aime/I-love-you. The figure refers not to the declaration of love, to the avowal, but to the repeated utterance of the love cry." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "Like desire, the love letter waits for an answer; it implicitly enjoins the other to reply for without a reply the other's image changes, becomes other." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "No answer. Mutisme/silence. The amorous subject suffers anxiety because the loved object replies scantily or not at all to his language (discourse or letters)." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "The slightest amorous emotion, whether of happiness or of disappointment, brings Werther to tears. Werther weeps often, very often, and in floods. Is it the lover in Werther who weeps, or is it the romantic?" --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "Why? Pourquoi/why. Even as he obsessively asks himself why he is not loved, the amorous subject lives in the belief that the loved object does love him but does not tell him so." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "Love at first sight is always spoken in the past tense: it might be called an anterior immediacy. The image is perfectly adapted to this temporal deception: distinct, abrupt, framed, it is already (again, always) a memory (the nature of photography is not to represent but to memorialize)." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "When two subjects argue according to a set exchange of remarks and with a view to having the 'last word,' these two subjects are already married: for them the scene is an exercise of a right, the practice of a language of which they are co-owners; each on in his turn says the scene, which means: never you without me, and reciprocally. This is the meaning of what is euphemistically called dialogue: not to listen to each other, but to submit in common to an egalitarian principle of the distribution of language goods." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  

10's, Week 5

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• A Chinese couple cozy in a corner booth at Denny's, watching a biography of LeBron James via YouTube on their white Mac, drinking coffee, and sharing the banana split situated in the middle of the table.
  
• A large brown door under yellow lights on Main Street in Toledo whose glass reads: "310 1/2."
  
• A giant green peace sign written over all the other text on a white bathroom stall wall.
  
• Tiny lumps of solid white chocolate, drowning in the surrounding sea of warm, melted white chocolate.
  
• The endless pattern of stacked issues of Rolling Stone against the gray carpet.
  
• A cascading splatter of yellow on a tall, mountainous pile of snow.
  
• The diagonal-lined shadow the spiral staircase manifests on the plain white wall.
  
• The strategic stack of clear glasses and white ceramic bowls in the white plastic dish rack.
  
• Long, lean icicles dripping down the gray siding, coating the wall in bumpy ice.
  
• A brown-haired girl reading a book, nested alone in friends' coats and purses in the stands of the ice skating rink.
  

10 "Treasures":

• "I cannot classify the other, for the other is, precisely, Unique..the other is the figure of my truth, and cannot be imprisoned in any stereotype (which is the truth of others). Yet I have loved or will love several times in my life. Does this mean, then, that my desire, quite special as it may be, is linked to a type? Does this mean that my desire is classifiable? Is there, among all the beings I have loved, a common characteristic, just one, however tenuous (a nose, a skin, a look), which allows me to say: that's my type! "Just my type" or "not my type at all"--cruising slogans: then is the lover merely a choosier cruiser, who spends his life looking for "his type"? In which corner of the adverse body must I read my truth?" --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• '"Am I in love? --Yes, since I'm waiting.' The other never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game: whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely: I am the one who waits." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "Game: there were as many chairs as children, minus one; while the children marched around, a lady pounded on a piano; when she stopped, everyone dashed for a chair and sat down, except the clumsiest, the least brutal, or the unluckiest, who remained standing, stupid, de trop: the lover." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "The power of language: with my language I can do everything: even and especially say nothing. I can do everything with my language, but not with my body. What I hide by my language, my body utters. I can deliberately mold my message, not my voice. By my voice, whatever it says, the other will recognize 'that something is wrong with me.' I am a liar (by preterition), not an actor. My body is a stubborn child, my language is a very civilized adult.." --Roland Barthe, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "Love has two affirmations. First of all, when the lover encounters the other, there is an immediate affirmation (psychologically: dazzlement, enthusiasm, exaltation, mad projection of fulfilled future: I am devoured by desire, the impulse to be happy): I say yes to everything (blinding myself). There follows a long tunnel: my first yes is riddled by doubts, love's value is ceaselessly threatened by depreciation: this is the moment of melancholy passion, the rising of resentment and of oblation. Yet I can emerge from this tunnel; I can "surmount," without liquidation; what I have affirmed a first time, I can once again affirm, without repeating it, for then what I affirm is the affirmation, not its contingency: I affirm the first encounter in its difference, I desire its return, not its repetition. I say to the other (old or new): Let us begin again." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "Repression: I want to analyze, to know, to express in another language than mine; I want to represent my delirium to myself, I want to 'look in the face' what is dividing me, cutting me off." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. The emotion derives from a doubt contact: on the one hand, a whole activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is 'I desire you,' and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion (language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand, I enwrap the other in my words, I caress, brush against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the relation endure." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "If I acknowledge my dependency, I do because for me it is a means of signifiying my demand: in the realm of love, futility is not a 'weakness' or an 'absurdity': it is a strong sign: the more futile, the more it signifies and the more it asserts itself as strength." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
  
• "The lover's discourse is not lacking in calculations: I rationalize, I reason, sometimes I count, either to obtain certain satisfactions, to avoid certain injuries, or to represent inwardly to the other, in a wayward impulse, the wealth of ingenuity I lavish for nothing in his favor (to yield, to conceal, not to hurt, to divert, to convince, etc.). But these calculations are merely impatiences: no thought of a final gain: Expenditure is open, to infinity, strength drifts, without a goal (the loved object is not a goal: the loved object-as-thing, not object-as-term)." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
• "To be jealous is to conform. To reject jealousy ("to be perfect") is therefore to transgress a law." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse

10's, Week 4

10 "Verbal Photographs:"

• A metal conveyor belt buzzing, carrying orange plated containers of sushi past each table.
  
• A red and black "All Sales Final" sign on the metal detector in the entrance of a pawn shop.
  
• Floor to ceiling knick knacks and novelty items for sale.
  
• A glass case of golden, diamond rings on display. The boxes holding rings from $49-$149.
  
• A brick wall and full parking lot from a tall, narrow window.
  
• Four twenty-something-year-old men standing in front of a 46' Samsung 1080p tv, strapped with plastic guitars, microphones, and drums, Rock Banding.
  
• An ocean of empty brown and green glass bottles on a white granite counter top.
  
• A "No Parking" sign, graffitied over with "Parking for J. Poodle Only."
  
• A railroad track covered in fresh snow, untouched, like it was put there for someone.
  
• Two twenty-something-year-olds racing around an apartment shooting Nerf darts at one another with their Nerf Maverick Rev. 6's.
  

10 "Treasures:"

• "Just for the record, the weather today is partly suspicious with a chance of betrayal." --Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
  
• "Always do what's next." --George Carlin
  
• "There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past." --George Carlin
  
• "So it is not the awareness of words following one after the other that is its primary constructive principle, but perception of their togetherness." --Max Bense, Concrete Poetry [from "Visual Poetics" reading]
  
• "People have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love." --Chuck Palahniuk
  
• "The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly." --Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
  
• "Deliver me from Swedish furniture. Deliver me from clever art. May I never be complete..may I never be content..may I never be, perfect." --Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
  
• "Isn't life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?" --Andy Warhol
  
• "Concrete poetry does not entertain. It holds the possibility of fascination, and fascination is a form of concentration, that is of concentration which includes perception of the material as well as apperception of its meaning." --Max Bense, Concrete Poetry [from "Visual Poetics" reading]
  
• "The world is only to be justified as an aesthetic phenomenon; and if there is such a thing as an aesthetic conception, it is an artistic one." --Max Bense, Concrete Poetry [from "Visual Poetics" reading]
  

Visual Poetics: Sorted Books

"AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH ALWAYS LOOKING UP Where the Sidewalk Ends"

"Turned Out Two Wrongs don't make a Right"

"long past stopping HAND TO MOUTH CANCER IS A Bitch"

"THE ZOMBIE PULP Breakfast of Champions"

Collage Poem

A Reminding of Those You've Forgotten


Fragaria Ananassa.
Fragaria Ananassa! You say her name as though you don't know who she is!
But you know.
Oh, you know.
One moment with Fragaria and you'll remember.
Her undoubtable sweetness makes your tongue tingle and your jaw cringe.
Some stop at her hair, but you'll dare.


Haliaeetus Leucocephalus.
You'd know 'im if you saw 'im.
American to the fullest, he's honored by many.
Truly fond of the west coast, he's free and happy.


Hora Fugit.
Short but tall, he's regrettably memorable.
A love-hate relationship, most have with him.
Without him we're lost, with him we find ourselves worrisome.
He's wise with reason and teaches us all.


Tagetes Patula.
Golden-haired and French, an unlikely combination that invoque l'amour.
A look into her eyes is like observing a waterfall,
the water spilling down from an unknown place
a million currents of water mixing together as one.

________________________

* Fragaria Ananassa is the genus name for strawberries.
* Haliaeetus Leucocephalus is the genus name for the bald eagle.
* Hora Fugit is Latin for "time flies."
* Tagetes Patula is the genus name for the French Marigold.

10's, Week 3

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• A bearded man with a guitar strapped around his shoulder stand alone on stage. Under the pot light, he opens his mouth to a three-tiered crowd of over 3,000 people.
• Settled dust coats a white Woman's size 10 Minnetonka box under the bed, locking in the mementos from better days.
• A mountain, erect with food and porcelain, grows larger and grimier between each visit.
• A tangled knot of silver and gold chains settles at the bottom of the grey patent leather purse, engulfed by the black polyester liner, drowning in eyeliner, a wallet, pens, keys, and tampons.
• Three Smart cars parked in a row on East Liberty Street, taking up only two parking spots.
• The two of us hovering over the double sink vanity, spitting out our toothpaste and rinsing off our toothbrushes, almost in unison.
• A fresh row of lines in the carpet from the brush of the vacuum's bristles sweeping over it.
• A swirl of white breaks the solid black liquid as you pour creamer into your cup of coffee.
• Sitting on the futon in grey sweatpants and a grey t-shirt, you peel an orange like a kid opening a Happy Meal.
• An entire closet not filled with clothes, but instead stacked white boxes filled with an elaborate collection of comics.

10 "Treasures":

• "Our teeth have their origin in sharks but later as mammals we acquired lips that could suck and because of those lips that could suck we acquired kisses." --Ernesto Cardenal, Cosmic Canticle
• "If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't." --Michael Pollan, Food Rules
• "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper." --Michael Pollan, Food Rules
• "Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does." --Michael Pollan, Food Rules
• "Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs, and other mammals]." --Michael Pollan, Food Rules
• "Time's not a clock constantly ticking away present-past present-past but a clock that has ceased to beat. Time doesn't pass, but we pass." --Ernesto Cardenal, Cosmic Canticle
  
• "Only love is revolutionary. Hatred is always reactionary." --Ernesto Cardenal, Cosmic Canticle
  
• "It is said that words alone have specific uses, not sentences.." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
• "When you have craved truth as you crave air, then you will know what truth is." --Roland Barthes (quoting a Buddhist Koan), A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
• "Waiting is an enchantment: I have received orders not to move. Waiting for a telephone call is thereby woven out of tiny unavowable interdictions to infinity: I forbid myself to leave the room, to go to the toilet, even to telephone (to keep the line from being busy); I suffer torments if someone else telephones me (for the same reason); I madden myself by the thought that at a certain (imminent) hour I shall have to leave, thereby running the risk of missing the healing call, the return of Mother. All these diversions which solicit me are so many wasted moments for waiting, so many impurities of anxiety. for the anxiety of waiting, in its pure state, requires that I be sitting in a chair within reach of the telephone, without doing anything." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
  

10's, Week 2

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• Coming to a stop behind four other cars as the red lights blink and the black and white striped gates lower, the 2:30 CSX train passes by, its horn echoing through the trees.
• A fourteen-year-old shag-haired boy stands in front an open door revealing shelves of food, staring into it like it's a work of art on display in a gallery.
• One-eyed tunnel vision outlined in gold, peering into the apartment hallway.
• Sitting in the window seat of a frozen yogurt cafe, a man in a red puffer coat, skinny jeans, and gray knit hat walks his bike past on the other side of the glass with two six-packs in the basket of his bike.
• A half-eaten, chocolate muffin lies alone on a sheet of napkins, abandoned on the granite counter top.
• Flecks of hazel sparkle in your bright blue eyes as the sun hits them.
• As the cold air engulfs me, the brown hair on my arms raises as if struck by lightening.
  
• A series of yellow arrows pointing left are planted in the snow-covered ground, where the gray, salt-dusted concrete curves.
  
• A small crowd of visitors sit around an open stove top as the man in uniform and chef hat works vigorously to feed and appease the guests.
  
• The long white vertical blinds dance as the breeze behind them sneaks in through the open doorway.
  

10 "Treasures":

• "So it goes." --Kurt Vonnegut
• "I hate cynicism. It's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen." --Conan O'Brien, The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien
• "Une femme sans amour, c'est comme une fleur sans soleil, ca deperit." Translation: "A woman without love wilts like a flower without the sun." --Newsstand woman, Amelie
• "Anybody who ever built an empire or changed the world sat where you are now, and it's because they sat there they were able to do it." --George Clooney (as Ryan Bingham), Up in the Air
• "That's life. If nothing else, it's life. It's real and sometimes it fuckin' hurts, but it's sort of all we have." --Natalie Portman (as Sam), Garden State
• "The development of new wonders is not like the production of canned goods. Some things appear to be wonders in the beginning, but when you become familiar with them, are not so wonderful at all." --Donald Barthelme, 40 Stories ["The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace"]
• "We asked ourselves: How can we improve the show? We auditioned an explosion." --Donald Barthelme, 40 Stories ["The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace"]
• "But fools are hard to find." --Donald Barthelme, 40 Stories ["The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace"]
• "Losers are people who are so afraid of not winning, they don't even try." --Alan Arkin (as Grandpa Edwin Hoover), Little Miss Sunshine
  
• "On me dit que nos vies ne valent pas grand chose, elles passent en un instant comme fanent les roses. On me dit que le temps qui glisse est un salaud que de nos chagrins il s'en fait des manteaux pourtant quelau'un m'a dit." Translation: "I was told that our lives are not worth much, they pass in an instant as roses fade. I was told that the time that slips is a bastard that is making topcoats from our grief." --Carla Bruni, "Quelqu'un M'a Dit" lyrics
  

Found Poem

You were a teenage hipster smoking cigarettes
We traded pleasant words and a cup of coffee

Chemicals
A pleasantly awkward feeling
And a stick of gum

I roll my fingers through his hair

Our mouths o-shaped
A little tongue

I float

10's, Week 1

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• Being the only four people in the hockey arena not on the ice, cheering in the stands.
• James sitting on the edge of the futon in the dark living room, talking endlessly across the room to me about his adventures from the former night.
• An air hockey game under black light. The girl's white shirt glowing like the streaks of blonde in her short hair, a glow from her mouth as she smiles. Across the neon green table, the yellow puck races toward the boy in a black leather coat, smiling under his black baseball cap.
• My pristine black flats on the gritty black, wet concrete stairs of an Ann Arbor parking garage with a glimpse of yellow paint peering through.
• Driving behind a blue Oldsmobile with a handicap license plate, going five under the speed limit, a red Cobalt speeds up from behind me to pass the both of us.
• Two squirrels standing at attention on a fence line, staring me down as I walk past.
• My 11-year-old sister in her skinny jeans and Abercrombie t-shirt, sunken into the oversized couch pillows texting on her phone with the TV on.
• Chris' head tilted back 20 degrees, he stares cautiously at his face in the mirror as he runs the silver Remington electric shaver up and down his lower jaw line.
• A small ball of brown and white fur, curled up at the top of the spiral staircase peers down the steps with lonely green eyes.
• An unopened orange Pixie Stix inside a black empty mailbox.

10 "Treasures":

• "What's in a star? We are. All the elements of our body and of the planet were once in the belly of a star. We are stardust. 15,000,000,000 years ago we were a mass of hydrogen floating in space, turning slowly, dancing. We are universal, and after death we will help to form other stars and other galaxies. We come from the stars, and to them we shall return." --Ernesto Cardenal, Pluriverse: New and Selected Poems
• "A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that "great wits have short memories:" and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day's reading or conversation." --Jonathan Swift, A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet
• "Fragments represent the state of in between-ness, the source of all creative thought." --Lauren Albert, FragLit
• "The Romantic form of poetry is still in the process of becoming. Indeed, that is its true essence, that it is always in the process of becoming and can never be completed. It cannot be exhausted by any theory, and only a divinatory criticism would dare to want to characterize its ideal. Romantic poetry alone is infinite, just as it alone is free and recognizes as its first law that the poetic will submit itself to no other law. The Romantic kind of poetry is the only one which is more than a kind--it is poetry itself. For, in a certain sense, all poetry is or should be Romantic." --Friedrich Schlegel
• "I've always felt that space is a good fill; gaps can be very emotional." --Ringo Starr, Ringo Starr: The Drums Are Where the Soul Is [NPR Interview]
• "I don't want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover. No matter how it ends, now matter how it starts." --Thom Yorke [Radiohead], "House of Cards" lyrics
• "Come and open up your folding chair next to me. My feet are buried in the sand, and there's a breeze. There's a shadow, you can see my eyes. And the sea is just a wetter version of the sky." --Regina Spektor, "Folding Chair" lyrics
• "The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself." --Albert Camus
• "Take care of the people, and God almighty will take care of himself." --Kurt Vonnegut
• "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love and be loved in return." --from Moulin Rouge