of pigs and coins

Why can’t it be square or triangle?
I remember Bonifacio and the tamaraw
in the octagon before, I liked it
better than today’s little round tokens.

Round and round the circles they
roll as they reached the ground
when they fall, from my the pig
coin bank upside-down, stabbed

by a little butter-knife on the
little hole where the round little
coins seem to come out more than

come in, some dull some shiny.
I wish they were not round and
smooth so the stern faces of dead
heroes who fought to be in the coins

will have reason to frown in the dark
bowels of the smiling butchered pig.

Marxism Notes:
The speaker of the poem is a child which explains the focus on the childish details of the coins and the piggy-bank. However, the child has given his opinion of the matter of poverty as he declares that he wish that the coins are not of round shape. This suggests his resentment to the idea of cycle of money. He’d rather that the coins were simply kept hidden in the piggy-bank.

the kiss

Bottle on the
table, half-filled
with water.

Thirsty Amy
approaches the
bottle.

Her lips touch
the opening and
she drinks.

Jim shows up
smiles. She has
kissed him through

The bottle of
clear mineral
water.

Structuralism Notes:
The structure of this poem is somehow derived from the example of John Donne’s metaphysical poem The Flea. In this case, the conceit is actually the bottle of water in the table that both Amy and Jim partook of. Despite the differences of the form, there are still structural similarities like the male’s will to dominate the female and the phallic symbol which is the bottle also suggest meaning to the poem.

not travelling

Here’s another one of my most favorite poems by master ee cummings. I remember my classmate Aaron presenting this poem in front of our class for our American Literature Class. I have to hand it to him. Even our professor, Dr. Genevieve Jorolan-Quintero remarked that the way he performed it was so good that it felt that it was the poet cummings himself was reciting his poem to us. A big hand for Aaron!  

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

ee cummings

stream of cons

I’m done! I’ve finished passing the necessary requirements for my embarkment. I just wish I won’t get rejected. I really want to be part of the workshop. Oh well, I’ll just cross my fingers here.

For the whole day I’ve been typing and typing and typing. Encoding my aunt’s hand-outs for their month long seminar about Early Childhood. When I’m not typing, I’m playing Minesweeper. It’s probably the only computer game I’m good at except perhaps Solitaire. I know that just sound pathetic.

Inspired by Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, I’ve started reading books with the “Stream of Consciousness” technique. It’s a way of writing where its the writing is not necessarily linear or logical. It’s actually topsy-turvy but it shows how candid and how the mind actually works. It works like crazy hell!

For example, I’m typing at the moment but I’m actually thinking about the blue dirt in my third toenail. A human’s mind is like a multi-tasking surfer. It works simultaneously. That’s basically more or less the Stream of Consciousness.

Read Woolf’s The Mark on the Wall its a long long work but it all revolve around the goldarned mark on the wall which in the end looks like a snail for her. Cool huh?

Some writers resolve on the Stream of Consciousness because of their deep dark desire to deviate from language and grammar. Some don’t use punctuation marks and doesn’t follow the right spelling and syntax of the language. I tried doing it, check my other blog not correct but correctless.

You may find it weird and odd but you know what, I wouldn’t care. It’s all my brain. Just for the record, NO! I didn’t bother editing any of the posts there. If you want nothing but random words and thoughts, that blog is it.

i am a lord of the rings fan

Elen síla lumenn’ omentielvo!

I’ve got four reasons why J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is one of my favorites:

1 The story, of course. The work is told in an omniscient point of view that centralizes on the plot of the whole story. The focus shifts from character to character and situation to situation. In one chapter, the hobbits are being featured then the mighty people Gondor. The different twists and turns keeps you on the edge of your seats! It’s a real page-turner.

2 Characters. As we all know, LOTR is under the fantasy genre of literature. Tolkien perhaps took the characters’ nature from him. He made Hobbits from Tolkien’s attitude towards simplicity and tobacco. Elves are probably derived from his wisdom and experiences. Men, of course, from the human nature within him and Dwarves from his interest in crafts. If you cross read with Tolkien’s Silmarillion which is a prologue of the LOTR, you’ll learn more of the origin of Gandalf and Saruman. Their order of wizards is actually called the Istari. Sauron isn’t originally evil. You’d understand more about the poems’ origins in the Silmarillion.

3 History. In Middle-Earth, Tolkien is god! He made everything there. It’s wonderful how he pieced things together in such a way that everything there fits! He even bothered making a timeline and history of events after the book! The different locations are accurately mapped and the different family trees particularly of the hobbits were expertly illustrated with everybody accounted for.

4 Language. Being a linguist, Tolkien was actually capable enough to make his own language. Languages, actually. He made Quenya, Sindarin, Adunaic, etc. along with dialects! Beautiful, beautiful words springs out of the pages!

Le hannon a tholel!

cooking 101

I love food.

I envy people that can cook really really well. For me they are living legends! My father and two of my brothers are excellent cooks. Give them the right ingredients and materials and they would serve you the best dishes that would make your mouth water.

I want to learn! I’ve tried. Don’t get me wrong, I can cook. Just not that well. I can follow the recipe but the outcome seems to be not good enough. I even plan on enrolling on a culinary school. Just a few quick courses might help me improve.

Speaking of culinary schools, I’ve stumbled to this site that’s made for those who really plan on finding great chef schools. They’ve got bio-sketches of chefs and they feature the best schools for culinary! It’s the perfect site for interested people (like me) who plans to learn a trick or two in cooking.

how i read a poem

There’s no definite way of reading a poem. There are a lot of critical approaches but the way to read the poem is always subjective. In my AH4, our instructor JC managed to simplify things in her own way. On my CL121 with Sir John and CL122 with Sir Nino, things got a little complicated.

Let’s not complicate ourselves. Here’s what I’ve learned in reading poetry. Here are some rough tips in reading poetry. If you see it defective, I would be more than glad to hear from you.

In reading poetry I…

…better be in a good mood. It’s hard reading poems when you’re distracted.

…read it first. I don’t try to understand it all at once. I just read it and let the words flow. Then, I read it again. And again. And again. I guarantee on your second reading, you’ll see a different poem.

…concentrate on the text first. It is important to look at the poem in a literary basis. Do not jump to conclusions or derive meaning just yet. If the poem said “the rose was torn and ravished”, don’t think of an abused woman just yet. Instead try focusing on the image of the flower torn into pieces.

…take note of the how the poem was written. Look at the line breaking, they actually mean something. Is there a rhyming scheme? Is there a meter followed? How many stanzas or how many lines? Is it a sonnet or an epic?

…depict a setting or a scene. The poem should have one. Feed on images. Where are they? What are they doing. What are the things around them that’s telling you that they’re in a cemetery, hospital, school, cabaret, house or hell? Try to figure out who is the speaker. On verbal address poems, try to figure out the addressee.

…check the symbols. What do they stand for? What could a flower, necklace, wolf, clock, elevator, angel, monster or drop of water mean? Try not restricting yourself to one line of thinking.

…capture the emotions. You’ll get it through the poem’s tone and the way the speaker is talking. Most importantly, try to relate that emotion with yourself. Did you also lose your mother? Did you also skin your cat alive? Did you manage to cut yourself into pieces? Did you ever talked with an alien? Something like that.

…learn more about the theme of the poem. Is it about drugs, sex and rock & roll? Is it about death or time? Is it about rejection or loss? What do you think the author is trying to tell you?

…understand the author and the time. Who is the author? Where did he live? What century did he live on? Why do you think he wrote the poem? Was he inspired by his one night stand with a complete stranger? Did he lose his wife? Or did he really make a poem for his books to sell?

…know if there are other poems like it? Then I compare and contrast them.

Those are some of my tips for now. I really have this feeling that I missed some important points. But generally that’s it! I’ll post another post like this if I remember some points.

I hope this helps!

purple pad craze!

I just realize something. For the past few months, I’ve been discussing a lot about Creative Writing and other related and/or unrelated stuff. But I still haven’t even given you a chance to see some of my works. Well, to make it up to you, I’ve got great news!

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to PurplePad!

PurplePad is our Creative Writing Blogsite featuring our works for the past semesters. Yes, it’s a requirement but I would have done one like it anyway. It’s all Professor Jhoanna’s idea to publish our works online.

On that site we’ve got collections of poems (narrative poems, mytho-poems and tankas), flash fictions and memoirs! It’s a one-stop amateur literary site.

Authors or my classmates and I have our own page with direct links to their works. You’ll definitely see their faces there! Learn more about them and get aquainted to the budding writers of the century (hehe..)!

Our teachers and mentors are also listed there. We couldn’t have done it without them.

We’d really want comments and criticisms from anyone who can spare some. Writers actually love them. They hurt sometimes but we like it! It helps us in our writing if people read and critique our works.

Check it out! PurplePad!

neruda’s turtle

Here’s one of my favorite poems by Don Pablo Neruda. I like it because of the character in the poem which is, of course, a turtle. The metaphor of the turtle tells us a lot about life. Here’s The Turtle by Pablo Neruda translated by Jodey Bateman.

The Turtle

The turtle who
walked so long
and saw so much
with
his
ancient
eyes,
the turtle
who ate
olives
from the deepest
sea,
the turtle who swam
for seven centuries
and knew
seven
thousand
springtimes,
the turtle
hooded
against
the heat
and  cold,
against
sunrays and waves,
the yellow
turtle
plated
with severe
amber
scales
and feet for catching prey,
the turtle
stopped
here
to sleep
and didn’t know it.
So old
that he kept
getting harder,
he quit
loving the waves
and became rigid
like a clothing iron.
He closed
the eyes which
had defied
so much
sea, sky, time and earth,
and went to sleep
among the other
stones.
 

books and bookcases

Cabinet! Bookshelves! Furniture!

Library! I would definitely want my own library. For a Creative Writing Major like me, libraries are like temples. We love books. It’s an understood fact that you can NEVER write well if you are not an avid reader of books. You should definitely love the smell of books.

Internet comes to town but libraries will definitely stay. There’s nothing like holding the hard copy in your hands. I know the Internet is easier to operate and more accurate at times but it also has its lapses. You definitely cannot use the internet without electricity. That’s one.

Here’s the thing. I plan on buying a lot of books! And I would really want them to be stored in a place where they’re neatly arranged. My books would never be placed in a termite infested cabinet. I’m going to purchase the best bookcases for my books. I know this company based in the UK who’s known for making gorgeous and wonderful furniture, wooden or metal. The furniture are so durable that they are actually guaranteed 8-15 years!

They also offer office furniture good for professional people. You don’t actually need to fret because the furniture are quite affordable. What’s an office without trusty filing cabinets, right?

I want quality in my furniture and this site offers quality in their products!

master ee cummings

There is nobody like ee cummings! I mean it. Among the many poets I truly admire, he is really stands out. His poetry is like none other. Everything in his love poems are new that they are almost music. What first attracted me was his deviation to the proper structure of grammar. He breaks language like he breaks glass and the shattered pieces are beautiful!

You don’t even have to ponder to is with so much effort. The poems reeks with charisma and style that would definitely blow your mind. It blew mine. Try to google him and his poems in the net. If you want to be in love, learn cummings. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

Here’s one of my favorite poems made by him (soooo beautiful):

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

cali-fashion

I really admire those parents who support their children’s dreams. Usually parents choose the courses their children should take up in college. A very popular issue is when a child announces to his/her parents that he/she would like to enroll in a fashion school.

Parents usually raise their eyebrows in this decision doubting any probability of a secure future ahead of their child. But like I said I admire those parents to deviate to this “tradition” for the sake of their child’s passion.

Speaking of fashion schools, there’s this site that features fashion schools in California and other places in the US. The site specializes in finding and reviewing the different fashion schools in the area. The site features fashion schools in Los Angeles, too.

The site also features top designers and a quick guide to the different fashion schools in California. There are fashion articles available for the visitors to learn more about fashion industry. If you have any desire to study fashion particularly in the said areas, then that site is definitely for you.

the night they called me pablo

Here’s Pablo Neruda’s Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines which is the poem that I recited during the second Sinews and Syllables last February 29:

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write for example, ‘The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to a pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another’s. She will be another’s. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

That’s probably one of the saddest love poems I have ever experienced. And I had the honor of performing it! However I sure do wish I wouldn’t be feeling the exact feeling of the poem, of being left alone by the one you really love. I would really want to recite it in it’s Spanish version. I really do LOVE romantic languages! I wish I could learn all of them, from Spanish, Portuguese to French! I don’t know if Quenya and Sindarin (from LOTR) are romantic, but I want to learn them, too! Here’s the poem ala Espagnol:

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: “La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos”.

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.

Oir la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.

Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.

Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.

La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.

De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.

blog cash

Blogging is becoming more interesting. Our professor required us to write our own blog. I actually appreciate that. Blogging is like an instant publisher of your write-ups. Some people express their feelings through their blogs. Some just maintain a blog for the fun of it. It’s interesting to note that a lot of people get paid for blogging. One way to earn money is to advertise on blogs.

In this business there are Advertisers and Bloggers. Advertisers promote their product through blog advertising. Bloggers, on the other hand, promote the products the Advertisers offers. Bloggers makes reviews or/and downright advertisings of the things the Advertisers want them to advertise to their readers.

A lot of my friends are asking me how to earn from their blogs. You can actually visit this blog advertising site I know of. You can register for free and it’s just a few clicks away. This site’s basic job is to connect Bloggers and Advertisers to agree upon a certain project. It’s just like an online partnership between an employee and an employer through blog advertising.

It’s actually a nice sideline while blogging. It’s a win-win situation. You get to do what you want and at the same time get paid for it. It wouldn’t hurt learning more about blog advertising.

the flea

Here are some pictures we used in the video Darsi, April and I made for the interpretation of our poem The Flea by John Donne which is actually a project by the goddess professor Jhoanna Cruz last semester under British Literature I:

 

Now, we’re taking up British Literature II under another John–John Bengan. It’s obviously a level 2 of the course but the way it was taught was way different. Both are actually good teachers.

John Donne’s The Flea is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, of all of his poems. It is a metaphysical poem which makes use of a metaphysical conceit. A conceit is like a metaphor or more likely a comparison between to objects or ideas that would seem awkward at first glance. Take for instance in The Flea, Donne made a conceit of between the flea and marriage. Or the flea and love perhaps. Or virginity, I’d daresay.

Professor De Ungria casually remarked that it’s quite easy to make conceits. You just have to think of two unlikely things to be connected and connect them with perfect sense. Yes, I thought “Easy for him to say, he’s a famous poet already” but then again, it made me think. I really am hoping to join the Dumaguete National Writers Workshop this summer. Why not try it, right? I like metaphysical poetry.

I don’t think I can give you a close reading of The Flea. I’d rather have you figure out the meaning of the poem. Yeah, I know I’m such a kill-joy. But on the contrary, you might actually thank me for letting you enjoy the feeling of having to figure out Donne’s poem by yourself.

Trust me, it’s an exhilarating experience.