Amanda's Comparative Lit Blog

To start, it is important to note this is the title poem of the collection Recalculating. In his book, it seems like he spends most of his time working through his ideas on the world of poetry–how it is written, packaged, received, manipulated, regurgitated. This poem falls in line with that, intersecting his language with…

Imitators of the world My mother is afraid of all writers and poets. Every time I have a pen and paper she turns to me and squeezes her eyes together forming a sharp contrasting crease in her brow. “You aren’t writing about me, are you?” Always the question. To her, poets are imitators of the…

I created a word cloud based on a recent article 07/17/15 I found through Mark Nowak’s blog that he keeps updated with news reports on coal mining disasters and other events/articles that may relate. If you’d like to look at his blog it is interesting to see how relevant and prevalent this issue is, as…

I saw an update to AWP and noticed the keynote speaker! https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/featured_presenters I’d also like to insert the description of Rankine’s work they provided in the bio section: KEYNOTE SPEAKER Claudia Rankine Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric (2004). She…

Everything shaded everything darkened everything shadowed is the stripped is the struck–     I they he she we you were too concluded yesterday to know whatever was done could also be done, was also done, was never done–   The worst injury is feeling you don’t belong so much to you– What is a…

I wanted to do a close reading of this poem because in general, I felt like we could have spent a great deal of time on Zolf, and I must have read “The Barber” seven times before really forming a picture of what potential narrative it is telling. The barber One soldier danced into the shop,…

>tell Galatea about love You’d rather know what she thinks on the subject. >ask Galatea about love “What do you know about love?” (As long as you’re catechizing her, you might as well be thorough.) “That it makes people behave like idiots,” she replies harshly. “That it takes more than it gives.” Ok- Emily Short-…

>ask Galatea about life “What do you know about life?” you ask her. (General questions: you can almost always find ones that haven’t been anticipated.) “Nothing,” she says, “except what I saw of his; and that seldom made any sense to me. He told me that people are born, and that they die, and that…

To begin, I tried to think about how manipulable words are. We can repurpose them. Words are tools. If you’ve seen the new tv show rendition of Hannibal, there is one line that echoes in the minds and hearts of viewers: This is my design… Will Graham has the ability to empathize with serial killers…

There were four children in my house this weekend, so the doors were constantly opened and left open. This became problematic because light attracts all kinds of bugs. When we were eating, 6-year-old Celia cries in horror as a bug lands on her face which prompts 2-year-old Jay to try and catch it while 5-year-old John grabs…