Status Report for Bill Bronson - 9/27/10

Working on the book that will gain me fame and fortune and allow me to escape the torment of the working world. Home all day typing all my notes from paper into Word, arrange them by place, order them chronologically. I have finally gotten rid of all the written notes and should be done this week with my voice recorded notes. Then it is just a matter of putting it all together and plugging the holes, fleshing things out. Hopefully I will have something to start submitting to agents this winter and beat my self imposed deadline of next summer. The story is there in the notes, it's just a matter of putting everything in order, developing what needs developing, and cleaning it up. It's very exciting. I would have never had been able to get half of where I am at if it wasn't for unemployment, thanks be to God for Allied Electric. The great thing about it is that I don't have to get it perfect before I can submit it to people, although you should get it as perfect as possible to reflect where you want the story to go, to give agents a more than general idea of the story you want to tell. Then when they see some potential in it, they have you sit down with a professional editor to perfect it so we can all make some money. It is very exciting. If I was wearing sweatpants I would be embarrassed. Will post more to my blog. What is up in your perfectly normal and sane experience of the world, my brother?

Professor's Response to my "Speech" poem.

"You have written a poem that is all idea. Important ideas, certainly, and clearly strongly felt by you, but I’ll be darned if I can find a single, solitary ITEM-THING-something that can be touched or smelled or tasted or heard or seen—anywhere in this poem. Even the river and mountain are metaphoric, not real. I imagine you saw the parts of speech as a sort of list. It is, but those items do not provide the sort of “thingness” that this approach to poetry looks for. The idea is to use things to explain abstractions and ideas. You try to use abstractions to explain ideas! A catalogue driven approach would have listed all the titles of the books you have encountered, from Run Spot Run to where you are today. Or a list of imaginary places in books that have captured your imagination. Or a list of teachers. Or even your earliest words. Once you have that list, you could organize, analyze, and present y0ur ideas within those items,  commenting briefly. That’s the catalogue’s approach. This, unfortunately, no matter how heartfelt. Is not. Have you looked at one of the student’s poems in the Workbook about learning and teaching words to his little brother? It is more metaphor than catalogue, but it does transform the abstract into the specific!

If you choose to revise this for Module 6, I would keep only the concept of “speech,” and find a whole other approach".

It makes sense to me. Another example of me thinking I know what I'm doing and not bothering to read the required readings before doing the assignment. 

Second Assignment for English 206 Poetry. "Speech"

                                                               Speech.

I read books that teach, that entertain,

to distract, and escape from

Schools that introduced them to me,

tried to teach me to interpret

Sentences that carry me along a black river in white,

to another idea or imaginary place,

further down the page,

across and over a paper mountain,

and dive into an ocean of

Words my teachers said were

nouns,

verbs,

adjectives,

adverbs,

pronouns

formed out of

Syllables I seem to create arbitrarily out of the

Letters A through Z,

the confusing jumble in between,

to a child told “no”,

a parent thinks

“to someone you will always get it wrong”. It

Sounds like beasts, calling for companionship,

warning and challenging competitors,

expressing some redundant mood or feeling.

What does it matter?

Learning this language of

Misunderstanding?

Translating it all into Understandable

Noises carried in the air,

on the wind going nowhere,

disappearing somehow,

like myself in the world,

my words

misinterpreted,

ignored,

maligned,

mocked,

absorbed

People talking without saying anything

I have been talking my whole life but

Am I understood?

Do I know what I mean?

Does what I say matter,

or do I make noise to comfort others,

as I comfort myself before the blackness comes,

the same blackness of words that sit upon this page?

English 206. Poetry. My first assignment.

   Being Taught Loneliness       

   conquering colorful video games

   stoic speaking television standing in the corner

   silent serene house until Grandma came home

   muscled mute G.I. Joes resting in the basement

   debilitating delicious fried food

   How does a boy learn to become a Man?