Improv-ing -- Week 8

I'm going to try to improv Beginnings by James Wright

Coddled by the heat rising my shirt.
Yellow skin teased by the heat rising from
cindered sand.
I watch
Juice dripping from baskets of shriveled fruit
Cowering from sleeves of the sun’s limbs.
The old man sitting an old wine barrel
pokes the strings of his Lute
Forged from petrified wood
Held together and gristly goat hair and torrid cattle skin.
Destitute fingers longing to be coin quenched.

Sign inventory -- week 8

BEGINNING
James Wright

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field
the dark weat listens.
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moon's young, trying
Their wings.
Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone
Wholly, into the air.
I stand alone by an elder tree, i dont dare breathe
Or move.
I listen.
The Wheat leans back toward its own darkness
And I lean toward mine.


I think the way the poem is written depicts what is going on in the poem. the words, and the length of the sentence are quiet, and still. The words that are used, feathers and slender, are really delicate, kind of like new beginnigs.

Calisthenics -- Week 8

I just compiled some more vocabulary this week.
The theme is Imhotep

-he was an egyptian polyman. He was an expert in a number of different subjects ( architect, medicine, preist, and he was a 'government official'

-First recognized architect

-Served under the pharaoh, Djoser

-Designed the first great pyramid

-He was one of few mortals to be depicted as a part of the pharaoh's status. There was a legend of famine for seven years, and he as thought to have a part in the flood of the Nile

- He was the first person to make medicine into an official disapline

- first known to use columns in archetecutre

First person to use stone dressed buidlings

-used lintels (horizontal structural member, such as a beam or a stone, that spans an opening such as windows or doors or between two columns)

Junkyard -- Week 8

"he evaporated under the twisted tentacles of the sun"
-- i tweaked a line from Kyley's poem

"Gawking at the old man whose feet are khaki with sand cinder.
Hands longing to be coin quenched.
His destitute fingers poke the strings of his Lute made from petrified
wood, torrid cattle skin and gristly goat gair."
-- a line i really liked form a poem i'm working on

""between the trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
of her face, and now she teps into the air, now she is gone
wholly, into the air."

-Beginning by James Wright (p249 in vintage)

"our neighborhood sun-cured..." (Days of 1964 by james Merill)
i thought this little snippet from this poem was interesting. I'm working with some sun imagery in my poem and it seemed to fit pretty well. two thoughts came to mind: 1) the neighborhood is being cleansed by the sun, and 2) it's being aged, kind of like sun dried tomatos.

free entery week 8

Fifty-seven and stuck at fourteen.
Born a poor street child in Memphis, Egypt.
Now Ruler of the Field of the Fare
Pharaoh of Lakeview.
Yellow skin and bald head covered in green head dress.
Washington decorated. Royal carpets lay before him made of checks forged
with the names of those
buried in pieces behind the Third Dynasty.
Checks held together by safety pins.
Holes poked in the bare toes of the children born
from wandering wombs and a broken heart.
Snagged in their tracks leaving the carpet Hollywood
red for the children to scrub away with bare hands.
Imhotep.
The man called papa, whose DNA is colored different from the miniature
people who scrub his feet.

Keep the growing yellow bald spot on your head coved
with head dressings of Benjamin
That hide the past. Soon revealed and escape.

Calisthenics -- Week 7

I really liked Erika Meitner's idea of researching a topic you know nothing about to compile new vocabulary and information about the topic. SO i wanted to do that again. I went to Alex Grey's Lecture at the University of West Georgia last night and he spoke about a painting he did that i thought was really interesting. It was about the metemorphesis of a caterpillar to butterfly. The backbone of a lot of his work also has a lot to do with 'sacred geometry'. The way he explained it was interesting, but i didnt know anything about that process before his lecture. SO, i did some research.







Molting: Shedding skin



instar: the intervals inbetween molting. (there are 5 instars)



Imaginal discs -- the layers of skin that the caterpiller has. After each molt, the new skin is thicker and tougher.



Pupa / Chrysalis -- cacoon stage



Crochets -- groups of hooks on the caterpillar's prolegs



Exuvia -- name of the molted cuticle.



Diurnal—active during the day (enlightenment symbolism)



Puddling—Butterflies gather, or puddle, at damp spots.

Free Entry -- Week 7

Circle the Square. Now you have the Sun
around the Earth. Residents in our own
fingerprints, we wander through the mazes
forever stamped on digits. Dip them, all ten,
in ink. Stamp another’s cranium;
Hyphenated humans.
The Journey is from one single point to another.
Follow the dots. One. Two. Three
paths now become apparent, moving equidistant from the other two.
Differentiating strange hallways and enigmatic chambers

The first instar is very small. It’s only job is to feed.
Eat the eggshells first.
The second instar’s head capsule has already separated from the body.
It’s second layer grows the larger,
Tougher, layer of skin that protrudes from beneath the old.
Molting.
This is done three times.
Chrysalis contain imaginal discs that shift within the cocoon
trying to find where they fit,
Like a jigsaw puzzle while the chemicals
of the metamorphosis stage initiate
Disintegration.