Classmate Response 1, Week 5

In response to Taylor's Original Prompt, Week 5:

I like what you're doing with the verbs here, just in the first sentence alone: release, unlatch, shrink. “Prevent” doesn't seem to do as much as the other verbs but it still keeps from being too flat, too predictable. Perhaps something punchier, something more exact?

I think some good ol' fashioned enjambment might do this draft some justice as well. For example: "I stand in awe of this halo" is such a great line and could probably stand on its own, but the line that follows it is something too abstract. Tie it to something physical--halo of what? Giotto frescoes? Imagine this:

I stand in awe of this halo

of Giotto frescoes, seeking and blue

Perhaps not that, but at least it illustrates what I mean about the lines.

After that, it gets a little muddle. Who is telling you of everything bad in your life? Francis? So much has happened in between that line that I  have to read back to understand what I am being told. "Everything bad in my life" sounds tired, cliche and abstract. Be specific if you can or else just take the line out altogether.

Who is the "you?" I like this idea of being built and I think it could be the draft's center. As a sidenote, Sydney is introduced a little too late and pretending to be a reader who doesn’t know Sydney, I would be so confused by her sudden and specific appearance consider she pretty much brings you the ending.

Original Prompt 1, Week 5

Finished improv of the Beth Ann Fennelly calisthenic. Think I'm going to tighten this a great deal for my portfolio.

Untitled

Though we stood, delegates, in the red spot, though I

boxed under the weight of glances, those glassy eyed saints

penetrating soul and skin from frescoes, and later

traced the golden arches that interwove

every crevice like a great seeping parasite—

still I never found God.

Ten minutes in Saint Ignatius, stoked in glory

and I couldn’t stop comparing it to the Duomo.

When, in our Spoleto town, the spiny pins

punched holes through the stony skulls of cherubs

and the tiles danced in dimmed red, echoed song,

even in the glare of Lippi’s guilt, I watched

a hand of intimacy unfold.

Living for five weeks in the old country,

where every soul has grown and known the quaint

qualities of Christ etched in concrete walls

and crumbling bell towers, I wonder, recurring,

if it could be my spirit missing.

In Gubbio, every street doused in a majestic

grayscale, I tugged my empty knapsack closer

and drifted, hotel-bound, to wait out dinner.

The bedroom, neat, but the bathroom drowned

in clean white tile, soap dish to bidet while the ceiling:

a top-turned wave of sterile seafoam.

After dinner, covered in the thick beads of paint

poured from the still swirling, still dark sky,

I longed for color. The pop of bright. That open

amenity where, if I sprawled out along the floor,

I could stare into the endless churn of steady ocean.

I showered, and just before climbing out I glanced

out the sliver of window grooved above the spicket,

that tumbling expanse of Gubbio that offered, bold-faced,

the all-seeing presence of God: a cathedral cross

that peered, omniscient, into the bathroom.

In another church, this one sporting the pickled carcass

of Saint Ubaldo, I took a pew and traced thought

to yesterday, that bathroom: the blue-green like a filthy

well, water lined with algae, mold. What a vision then,

that cross that broke through, vast and pure,

from the bottom of that roiling hue, encased in glass,

a shrine and me, half-naked in a bath towel—

the sole attendant. A man lifts beside me, crosses himself

before he picks through the aisles to pay respects.

I shut my eyes, afraid to meet his gaze, and in the wooden

seat I bow my head to remember how to pray. 

Memory 1, Week 5

My friends and I huddle around the dining table, snickering and glancing. I look behind Meagan who gives me this careful smile over the rim of her coke, one eye closing slightly in what looks like a frozen wink--her version of scrutiny. I spot them, two boys, not even all that good-looking but available, nodding heads and sinking big bites into their burgers. "I feel like such a creeper." Megan giggles, tossing her hair in just a way that she can glance back at them. One of the boys brushes crumbs from his blue shirt and we all bend our heads together again, fight laughter. Kyleen then takes to texting, her dad I think, and it gives me the idea to pull out my own phone. "I'm going to do it," I tell them, feeling proud in my own slickness, "I'm going to take their picture." They look at me in wide-eyed surprise, then Megan tilts her head slightly. Her way of giving me the go-ahead. They were now completely cleared for the shot. I don't know why I took the picture. As I said, I didn't find them attractive, not even remotely. But there was something thrilling about it, the idea of capturing someone, of stalking someone, without them having the single bit of hint. I lifted my phone casually, pretended to text while I opened my camera. Kyleen chewed her straw and waited, disbelieving. Megan tried not to move her head and thought pumped through me like a transformer. I hit the capture button. I made them mine.

Reportage 1, Week 5

I had to dig up notes from my journal for this:

The train station pulses with some mechanical heat, diluted sea air nips at our sweaty necks and disappears. My shoulder groans under the weight of my carry on. Beside me, a man studies the even off-white of the concrete, his ear pressed against his phone. Though whispering, his voices bounces before it drowns in the emergence of an oncoming train. We wait as the tires screech to a halt, some noise I've remarked sounds like souls being ripped apart and then train stops and gives like releasing the great sigh of its burden. A conductor or attendant emerges, sharply dressed in a black jacket, red blouse. She approaches but her eyes are dancing across the spill of her passengers, tired and quick. We stop her, hold out our tickets and it unfurls in her hand. She gives us a stiff smile and a glance, studies it, nods and asks us to follow her. She stamps over to the departure sign and her heels rebound from one side of the walkway to the other. Her hand reaches out and her finger trails, following the quick though still exhausted gaze of her eyes. She points, looks at us and mouths the word, "oveste," west, and hands our ticket back to us. We thank her and she offers us that same tense smile before disappearing in a clack of shoes and a blur of dark clothes and hair.

Image Junkyard 1-4, Week 5

1. Three dogs--shoulders and bodies bent in a mock cycle of man, the progression and regression of evolution--how one dog sits, staring beyond shack-tops and red tile, beyond leafy sprouts of grass into the great split of sky defining horizon. A thin-wire gate runs needles across his back.

2. She peers over the wooden fence, its criss-cross bars creating a gestalt of landscape--a break of tree tops, dark green and trembling, and the promise of some hidden cow whose bell assault the airway, that thin bit of space between the leaves.

3. Clouds branch, fingers breaking off and forming crowns, the mountains resting like heaven's thrones and the whole thing cracked by the crumbling promise on concrete walls and a rumble and groan of distant thunder. The mountains, first green, disappear into shades of violet and mechanical blue.

4.The rhythmic clack of train tracks, the hum and metallic tires pulling forward some great weight like an abstraction, love or truth, which bursts forth from the gravel and wood chips like a single flower, three orange petals spread in some elusive trinity, the slight wave of the train's pass and the only glow of color near the train tracks.

Reading Journal 1, Week 5

Well, Gomorrah. What has this story accomplished using Italy without making me paranoid of every train ride and motorcycle or without putting the fear of God (and Naples) to mine? It's a hefty read, jam-packed with a great deal of information. I guess what I'm drawn to is the inevitable distancing the book provides while still expecting me to be engrossed and invested in its details. In fact, Gomorrah almost asks me to take a closer look at my own involvement in the criminal developments and that could be the most intimating and dissociating factor. For example, the first chapter investigates the shipment and creation of illegally-produced clothing goods and how we, as Americans seeking out Italian name-brands, add to the demand for these familiar and luxurious, though often false brands. It brings a bit of self-inquisition to light--am I buying these clothes? How many of my jeans and shoes were made in the heart of the Italian crime center? It's a little disconcerting, and the constant heart-breaking details only add to my guilt--Pasquale's suffering, the death of Emmanuele, and so on. In a sense, I feel just as much condemnable and involved in the lives of these people as I feel like I do not want to know them. If that is what's going on in Naples, I surely don't want to be a part of it. Sad, but true.

Classmate Response 1, Week 4

Response to MacKenzie’s Reportage, Week 3:

I’m pretty sure only you could write a bit about buying panties and leave me so engrossed. I love the idea of an experience transcribing discomfort across language barriers. So far, we’ve all delved into the difficulties of overcoming our inexperience with Italian, but I like that this time you tackled something that’s just as difficult in our own native language as it is in Italian—a sort of equality of experience. I think the opening paragraph could move a little more quickly, just a few cuts of unnecessary words or phrases. (sidenote: I love the verb “waffle”. I could also be severely missing waffles, but that’s another story). I’d like to see more about the shopkeepers. What makes the tall one intimidating? Her spiked heels and her height? Doesn’t seem enough. I’d like to see more interaction between these two ladies, between these ladies and you? And I realize the experience makes you feel alone and alienated, but Megan’s presence drops so thoroughly from the piece that I wonder if it really needs her at all? Some places for expansion: that moment where they are watching you outside the store, I’d like to see more on that. Why do you think they are watching you? What does that feel like? What are they thinking and how does that change once you come in the store? Or does it change at all? I’d like more investigation into why you feel so compelled to gather the nerve to go into the store in the first place. What does the green bra do for you? How does Megan feel about all this? The end seems kind of abrupt and I don’t quite understand the triumph. What was really accomplished here? What was the big goal, the big battle? And what happened to the others?