Week 2: Fluorescence

              This week in creative writing we started the book Fluorescence. This book was written by Jennifer K. Dick and is a bunch of poems that tell a story. I had no idea what this story was until reading the back of the book where it says how it is about a train crash and explosion. It is a very short book but there is a lot of things to unpack on each page.
              The first poem in this book starts at the beginning. The first line is literally "I want to begin at the beginning the beginning of begin and just begin". After this poem the next one is titled "Anatomy" which was one of my favorites. It read almost as a journal entry, I especially liked how it opened talking about different body parts. The next poem is entitled "Identification". This poem introduces you to the train wreck in more detail even though it is still hard to figure out what exactly happened.
              The second chapter of poems actually didnt have any titles. It was a trickier section of poems of read but you can still pick up some things. One of the things she talks about is an explosion and how the bomb squad came. My favorite section is page 21 which is very spaced out for dramatic effect. It reads "Sometimes only a body is necessary. Sometimes only the body is. Sometimes my hands hold tight, so that". I am not really sure of the entire meaning behind it but I believe she was talking about a body in the explosion.
              The third chapter we went over is the shortest one so far. It was probably the most depressing out of the three chapters. She also spaced out in this one for dramatic effect as well as used paragraphs occasionally. I found it to be my lest favorite of the three chapters mainly because I could not understand it as well.

Week 1: Poetry & Sonnets

               This week in Creative Writing we went over some sonnets and poems. We first studied several poems written by a variety of authors in a variety of styles. Some of the poems were darker and morbid like "Where it Passes Untouchable". In this poem the author seems to be talking about a murder and says that "Blood powdered my fingers, speckled my cuffs. There were also poems that talked about things like the ocean and were able to make it come alive. In "Geology of Water" the author does just that when he says things like "plates shifting in their cobalt sleep".
               One of my favorite poems from this handout was "The Scent of Verbana" by Hinako Abe. This poem was really well written and very interesting. The pyramid shape it is in immediately caught my eye, it also looks like an hourglass. The other thing I love about this poem is that it is unpredictable. For instance, when the author talks about how the other person will be in a metal coffin being pulled up a hill by dogs.
               The other packet we discussed in class was the one about sonnets. These also had a variety of authors the most famous of them being Shakespeare and Ted Berrigan. Both of these authors had very different styles mainly due to the fact they were written in completely different time periods. My favorite Shakespeare Sonnet we read was 118. In this sonnet I thought it was very interesting how he framed the whole thing around the stomach and appetite and sickness. He used words like sweetness, ills, sick, poison, sweetness, palate, appetite and other words to illustrate this.
               Some of the other sonnets we were given were written by Ted Berrigan. We noticed in class that sonnet XV was actually written to be read first line then last line then second line then second to last line, and so on and so forth. I wouldn't have noticed this unless we had in class. It made the sonnet make complete sense and I actually enjoyed it then .

Intro

My Name is Landon Cook. I am a transfer student from Washtenaw Community College and I am currently attending Eastern Michigan University. I am currently doing sales at a gym. I am going into business/marketing.