This week in class we went over some of the material from the book "Writing Down the Bones" by Goldberg. We also discussed some of the Ted Berrigan Sonnets. I really liked this week's activities because we looked really deep into poetry and the writing experience for the writer. Goldberg really inspired me to write more often and in different settings to expand my creativity. I'm going to talk about what I liked about Goldberg's book and critique Ted Berrigan's Sonnets.
Sonnets are honestly one of my least favorite forms of poetry. Now this doesn't mean that I don't like them, I just prefer other styles over sonnets. The Ted Berrigan sonnets were some of my favorite that I have read so far. They are really funny, and when we really dissected them in class, I got a really good sense for his style of writing. His sonnet XV nearly blew my mind when someone in class pointed out that the sonnet was sentences organized in an alternating order. Having such a hard time reading it the first time, it finally made sense! LIII was the other sonnet we talked about in class, and I found it to be my favorite of the two that we discussed. I didn't really take any meaning from it, I just found it to be really funny and I like how the words were arranged.
When reading Goldberg's book, I found there were lots of sections that I could identify with. There were also lots of great ideas that I would like to use in the future to help improve my writing. One such set of ideas on page 21 called "A list of topics for writing practice" gave me a ton of really good options. They were not modest ideas either, which I really liked. The human brain is very expansive, so I believe these questions get to the heart of every area of interest. I also liked the section titled "composting", which talks about how writing can be multi-layered and takes looking through every layer of your life to truly have a good understanding of your writing. To me this makes a lot of sense. If you look deep into your life, you are more than what you give off as your perception or aura. When you write, you want to write from that place so it doesn't appear as just lines on paper that have no real meaning or relevance.
So far I have really enjoyed this class. I like all of the writing and poetry exercises that we have been doing. I haven't done them since high school, so it feels very rusty right now. Hopefully as we progress on, my writing will open up a little more. Right now I feel really blocked up in my process and can't find any good inspiration. I'm going to use some of the things Goldberg mentions in her book and see if that helps me.
No comments:
Post a Comment