Individual Practice - Jasper Biggs

Memo

The sun set as Alfred struggled to unlock his front door with shaking hands.  He could hear the parakeet calling from inside.  Did he feed her today?  He couldn’t remember.  He didn’t really remember having a parakeet, but then again, there were a number of things he didn’t remember.  He tried another key as he pushed his glasses further up his nose.  He set down his bag and tried to steady his hands.  Finally, the lock clicked and the door opened.  He walked inside and turned on the lights.  After making a cup of chamomile tea, he made his way upstairs and went to bed.  The following morning, he went out to get the paper.  There was a bag beside the door.  He took a look around to see if anyone had recently left it and then, concluding that it had been left for him during the night, he excitedly brought it inside.  Alfred emptied the bag one item at a time onto the kitchen table.  Whoever left this gift knew him very well.  He decided to arrange the things around his living room.  The lava lamp would look nice above the mantle.  His dear Martha—God rest her soul—would have loved its purple globs floating around in the amber liquid.  The navy sweater was just his size, and not only that, but it had a line of elk along the front.  He smiled in delight as he hung it up.  There was also a single place setting’s worth of brown stoneware dinnerware.  It perfectly matched his other dishes, and as he placed them in the cabinet, he realized that made a complete set.  Once again, the giver had known exactly what he needed—he had been one place short.  At the bottom of the bag, he found a number of old books and some records by Frank Sinatra.  He placed the books with some others on a shelf and started one of the albums.  With that, he put on his hat and went for a walk.  The sun was just setting when Alfred unlocked his front door with shaking hands.  He walked inside, sat down and turned on the news.  As he fell asleep, the anchor described a mysterious thief targeting antique stores.  Among the recently stolen items was an elk sweater, a lava lamp, a number of other strangely unrelated odds and ends, and a yellow parakeet.  

Individual Practice - Dan Fawcett

Car Keys

He's treated me poorly all these years. Stuffing me into his pocket - with the lint! I'll snap in half next time I'm in the ignition.

~

Duct Tape

They really screwed up this time. Punching a hole in the side of the universe isn't an easy fix. But I always patch everything up.

~

Melpomene mused more morosely.

“My maidens and menservants cannot

make me merry,” she cried melodically.

“Was that a minor key?” I thought.

I held my hand behind my ear. “It has to be.”

I listened, but surprisingly she did not.

I stretched my ear close, yet what I heard

Was wild and weird. It was not

Her normal, melancholy dirge.

“My mythic metaphors miss the mark.

I wish for inspiration.” And then two worlds merged.

“Mortal,” she meant me, “I want something dark.”

Could a more morbid command be given?

For the most malefic art.

To implant ideas in the mistress of depression?

- Dan Fawcett

Individual Practice - Emily Roulund

Burdened Shoulders

I walk through the streets
Carrying bags of stones on my shoulders.
Every now and then, they force me to my knees.
I cannot bear their weight long.

My bones are weary,
My shoulders bruised and cut
By the sharp corners of the rocks against my skin.
My knees - they are scarred, scraped and muddy,
And the wounds are filled with pebbles glued in with dried blood.
The ground is unforgiving.

Individual Practice - Mary Kate Reynolds

My name is Judas

If you have the choice
between immortality and a heart--
choose heart.

And if the cost of singing like the angels
comes through an instance of petty treachery--
pluck out your tongue.

When the beauty of the gods
comes to take you away,
run to the graveyard,
and live your life in ashes first.

You choose to walk away.

Choose, you insufferable blessed.

Choose that dishonored road,
soaked with love's blood at every step.

Love? I've never let it touch me since.

Individual Practice - Elaine Phillips

Europa:

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Individual Practice - Jennifer Ross

Accessory Cloud

When I look at the sky I see my mother's pie
Next to the pie, a glass of ice-cold milk

One week without my mom's cooking
I was at summer camp

Bugs in my bunk bed--
I hid in my sleeping bag

I brought lots of candy with me--
Without candy I would go crazy

With candy I get high
Giggles and stomach-grabbing churkles
My whole body jiggles
I could as well be Santa Claus

Egg product for scrambled eggs
Pancakes, supposedly cooked there on the stove
Taste like they came out of the microwave

Times like this I miss my mother's cooking
When I look to the sky I see her face grinning over me
Her heart a warm cinnamon roll

Individual Practice - Christian Bearup

The Liturgical Scent of Polycarp

+++

Son of God adopted,
Odor of procession,
Greeting death, a rival,
Greeting censer, silver,
Bind yourself to swinging
Tomb of scented triumph.

+++

Flame eat fire--God eat sinner!
Host of Christ--skin like timber!
Coals are hot--man won't die--
Sword in side.
Blood of saint--blood or wine?

 +++

My patron came and said to me,
"Your flesh is wounded, cruciform."
My devil came and said to me,
"From flesh let blessed soul be torn."

Poem In Conversation with Joseph Cornell

This poem, by student Robbie Kirkendall, was written for two voices. Classmates Candace Arce-Lindsay and Juliet San Nicolas read it in class last week.

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Twitter Poetry Collab

Pentameters by Pentametron.

Juliet made the following video for this class, for her cross-genre conversation piece (#3): a film inspired by (and using lines from) Frank O'Hara's poetry.

“Anything that helps you to see. Anything that makes you look.”

Flannery O'Connor's cartoons, in The Paris Review.

Image Text Collaboration

The students were required to create a work that combines text and image with image to be privileged. They were to organize the work around the primary delivery structure or site of authority of image, ie, picture plane (canvas, photo paper, design field) or sculpture. The images and text could be their own or found.