Robin's voice

Last class Matthea asked about our relationship to the voice in our work, how do we dance with it? what does it look like? Mine and I are engaged in a bloody fight to the death. He/she is a grotesque, skinless, reptilian version of myself. Illustration by Sam Weber. It's a little more melodramatic than I'd like to be but what the hell...

A few ( recent ) pics by Sarah

My graphic novel poem by Sarah

Frame 3 (1st frame with bubbles)    Bald man:  You must be Johnny John John.
                                                      Nonbald man: Why yes I am!

Frame 4   Bald man: It says on the fronter that my coffee will taste like marbles.
                Nonbald man:  Oh, how interesting.



Frame 6   It's raining green jelly beans outside!
Frame 7   I wish I had some jellybean coffee...
Frame 8   OMG! My portfolio is talking! What?
Frame 9   Okay! I'm coming in! (Whistles as to an attractive woman on the street.)

Sarah's book spine poems

Strange understanding
What happened to Amy?
flying at night
in the penny arcade

What are big girls made of?
Secrets of loveliness,
a weekend on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,
glass, irony and God

The fact of a doorframe:
The world is round
today

I Began To Imagine The Goats Were Meat

The book I was trying to think of that is told from the perspective of the witch in Hansel and Gretel is called The Magic Circle. I'm planning on rereading it if anyone wants to join me.

In searching for the book, I came across this. I wish Mrs. Gold was my third grade teacher. I particularly like the retelling of The Billy Goats Gruff.

And here's my slightly altered comic, based on a conversation with a five-year-old.

book poems by amanda c.

The Voice at 3:00 A.M.

On Writing

Real Ghost Stories

What the Living Do

Birds of America

Living in Storms

fire to fire

Like Life

The Drama of Being a Child

The Shadow of the Wind

Ruined by Reading

on mystic lake

The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

Dancing in Odessa

Hopscotch

The Art of Racing in the Rain

Drown

American Psycho

If the River Was Whiskey

Night Out

Etiquette

Otherwise

The Hours

Talk Talk

Don't Let Me Be Lonely

Book Poems

These are fun, I can't wait to do more:

I Used to Know That
To Kill a Mockingbird
rosie
In the Night Kitchen (,)
The Plague
Girl Interrupted
Phone Calls From The Dead

The Golden Mean

Since You Asked
Consider Love
Sunny Side Down

Gods, Graves, and Scholars
Call it Sleep
Ordinary People
White Noise
Waverley
Runaway Horses
Leaving Home


And here is the poem by Louise Gluck from my memorization:

The Rock

Insignia
of the earth's
terrible recesses, spirit
of darkness, of
the criminal mind, I feel
certain there is within you
something human, to be
approached in speech. How else
did you approach Eve
with your addictive
information? I have paid
bitterly for her
lapse, therefore
attend to me. Tell me
how you live in hell,
what is required in hell,
for I would send
my beloved there. Not
of course forever:
I may want him
back sometime, not
permanently harmed but
severely chastened,
as he has not been, here
on the surface. What
shall I give him for
protection, what
shield that will not
wholly screen him? You must be
his guide and master: help him
shed his skin
as you do, though in this case
we want him
older underneath, maybe
a little mousy. I feel confident
you understand these
subtleties--you seem
so interested, you do not
slide back under your rock! Oh
I am sure we are somehow related
even if you are not
human; perhaps I have
the soul of a reptile after all.

And on a side note in relation to the poet's relationship to their speaker, I was thinking, or maybe hoping, that everyone’s speaker has something that makes them whole that the writer doesn’t have— something separate from and outside of the writer that completes them.