National Poetry Month: Late but Here!

So, it’s a little late to be discussing National Poetry Month, considering the last day of it is Monday, but, if you haven’t already done something to celebrate, pick up a book of poetry this weekend, or even better try to compose a few lines yourself. Please, whatever you do, don’t scoff at poetry as too removed from common experience, too difficult, or too… literary. (Boy, if there was ever a loaded word, it’s literary.)

If you choose to indulge in some poetry this weekend, don’t feel like you must read “the greats” you were taught in high school. Classics are classics for a reason, but they aren’t all there is to literature. Try some Ogden Nash for humor. Watch video of slam poetry, which draws on the rhythms of hip-hop music. (If you’ve ever seen a slam poetry jam, you’ll know that no one could possibly accuse it of being removed from everyday life.) Try a verse novel, like May B. by Caroline Starr Rose or Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai. Or, like me, you could read through Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled.

Now, I can’t give this a proper review, because I haven’t finished reading it. In fact I’ve only gotten through Chapter Two of Part One, but I’ll give as much review as I can. The book so far is thorough and approachable. There’s no laugh-out loud comedy, but subtle jokes occasionally punctuate the prose and poetry. I was pleased to find that, though this book is ostensibly geared toward a general audience, Fry insists on explaining and using proper terminology, thereby giving the reader a stepping-stone to further study.

One thing marred the experience for me, though. Fry starts the book with repeated pleas for the reader not to be afraid of reading or writing poetry or of literary terminology. Now, I recognize that as a writing tutor with an English degree I’m not really Fry’s target audience, but I must ask: Who is? Anyone who picks up The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within is probably someone who wants to read and write poetry, who wants to learn the terminology and who isn’t afraid of it.

So I ask, anyone who cares to comment, what do you think of Fry’s book, other books on writing poetry, or poetry in general?

Writing is everywhere: lyrics critique, also a poll

Disclaimer: Well, as you may have noticed, this is not a comic. I began this blog as primarily that, a blog. Then some illustrations crept in, then a comic or two, until finally it was all comics. The trouble is, my process for creating these comics is rather time consuming, even though some of them are very simple in design and concept. I also rather missed the writing for the practice it gave me and for the pure enjoyment of writing for an audience, however small. So for the moment, I’m resuming a hybrid approach: half blog posts, half comics. I hope this will not only diversify but also improve the quality of the content on this site. With more time between comics, I’ll be able to produce better quality drawings.

For some time now, I’ve been working on a shiny new website using the full version of WordPress available from wordpress.org, instead of the free-hosting version available from wordpress.com that I’m using now. It’s going to be a bit more time until I’ve got things just the way I want them with the new site, so until that time, I’ll leave open a poll on this site (It’s in the sidebar.) and see what is more popular: all comics but less frequently, all blog posts, or a mix of the two. But that’s enough disclaimer, back to entertainment…

I’ve done a post before on ridiculous song lyrics and, yes I’m doing another, but this time it’s not the quality of the lyrics I’m whining about, although I could do a number on them. Rather, it is their erroneous depiction of the world of dreams. Yes, it’s “These Dreams” by Heart.

Now, Heart can’t be entirely blamed for this. Heart just bought the rights to the song.  Still everyone involved in the production couldn’t possibly have missed the problem here.  Below, I have included an excerpt of the lyrics:

In a wood full of princes

Freedom is a kiss

But the prince hides his face

From dreams in the mist

Ok.  Who has dreams like this?  What’s going on here?  A wood full of princes, really?  Are these the dreams of an eight year old girl as imagined by The Disney Corporation at it’s most sickeningly cute?  I don’t know about you but my dreams go a little more like this:

I hurtle down the road toward McDonald’s, desperate to get there before breakfast ends and I am forced to wait a whole lonely day and night until I can get my hashbrown fix. But then, to my dismay, as my car bounces along the highway, the doors buckle inward. The windshield, floor, and ceiling melt away like butter in the morning sun. What’s left of the car curls around me and then puffs up. Finally, I am left standing on the asphalt, a pedestrian in an innertube.

Now, this type of setback might discourage some would-be Mickey D’s patrons, but not I. No, I calmly toss the hunk of rubber aside and spring into cloudless sky. I soar over the town and swoop down through the McDonald’s parking lot and straight into the building. By that point, however, not only is breakfast over but my grandmother has begun a hula hoop routine balanced atop of one of the spindly tables. When she spots me, she shifts her hoop from her leg to her arm and stretches that undulating arm out of her way as she points an authoritative finger from the other hand in my direction. She murmurs in a stony voice, in a tone of utmost gravity, “Don’t forget the nickels.”

Then I open my eyes to the dawn of reality. I’m about halfway through my shower before I can put together all the pieces of what I’d just experienced and I decide that I’ll never fully understand it. I dress and eat my far less exciting breakfast of cereal. In the quiet of my ordinary kitchen, I wonder if I should get some coffee somewhere. Just as I step out the door into the spring air, I hear a metallic clink and feel a crunch under my foot. There on the doormat a pile of newly minted nickels glitters.

Later at the coffee shop counter, the barista stares unblinking with narrowed eyes. Behind me a mother with a wiggly toddler shifts her weight from foot to foot. A man with a briefcase coughs. I count out my stacks of coins with precision.