stone against skin August 21st: don't touch that dial, world! it seems to me that once you stop walking you don't want to know, you stop wanting to see your eyes get used to the same old story once you stop talking to strangers —Voice of the Beehive, just a city

Dream: I had strangely erotic dreams about being in bed with Gypsy and Jessica. Then they both went someplace, and I was babysitting Raven, but she turned into a pair of kittens. I was worried, but then Jessica came back, looked at the kittens, and said, "It's all right. She does that sometimes. Kittens means she likes you." Subtext!

Reality: Imagine my surprise this morning when i hit my company's Web site and discovered that there's a picture of me on it! I, of course, swiped the picture of me and it's displayed off to the right there. The other interesting thing that's happened is that I'm a Swanky Pick, which means...ummm...I'm not sure what it means, except that Taber likes my site. *heh* And I'm linked from the Swanky main page, which is pretty rad. So if you're reading this because you followed the link from Swanky, hi. ***** Work continues a bit slow--we're trying out some new processes while we still have a little bit of wiggle room time-wise. Come Monday, we expect to be swamped. ***** I'm almost to the end of the Hofstadter book, and he's writing about how he think much modern poetry is, well, crap. Mostly because he believes that if it doesn't rhyme, it has no place calling itself poetry. After all, he argues, poetry is language under the constraint of rhyme, rhythm and stanza. Remove those constraints, and what do you have? Prose with line breaks. Now, my initial outrage aside (because as a writer of much free verse, I have a stake in people considering rhymeless poetry 'real poetry'), I have to admit that he does have a point. There is much modern poetry that's poetry only because it's way too short to make a decent short story, and those puzzlingly beautiful words just don't fit in anywhere. But as I think more on it, i have to disagree with the eminent Dr. Hofstadter--I think rhymeless poetry has constraint, but it's a different type of constraint than the traditional constraint of rhyme. Because, face it--rhyme has been trivialized in english. when we hear rhyming verse, we immediately think "lyrics", and we immediately think "trite". English has so few words that truly rhyme that we hear the same words over and over again in the same configurations, and it's boring. Some poets use feminine or slant rhyme, instead, and that's a fine choice. Slant rhyme, in particular, results in interesting juxtapositions of words and thought-provoking movements of rhythm. But the rhymeless poem is one that can be just as good as the rhymed, and more to the point, less immediately trivial. There are other constraints--constraints of form, acrostic constraints (though acrostics seem to lend themselves to rhyme, for some reason), rhythmic constraints, and content restraints--writing a love poem without once using 'love' or any of it's synonyms, for example. We don't need to try to fit our words into the straitjacket of English rhyme in order for them to be constrained. Hofstadter claims that obsfucation has become the goal in most modern poetry--the fewer people who "get" you, the better you are. I contend that poetry has, instead, become more diverse and interesting because of the richness of culture that we have to draw upon and refer to. Neener, Doug. ***** The Tide went up in flames. No, really. As in an actual fire. We are so removed from the actual tragedies all around us, insulated by our cozy little virtuality. ***** And, as usual, i'm off for the weekend. saturday I've got a bunch of places to be, but Sunday i'll be in to work for a few hours. It's been a light week, and I need to make up a little time. Nordstrom is opening its new flagship store today and saturday. Awwyeah. I am such a consumer.

"Um, guys, what are you doing with that camera?" the moment: CD: Voice of the Beehive, Let it Bee Book: le ton bon de Marot, Douglas Hofstadter Outside: give me NORDIES! NORDIES! Doing: calling down the wrath of...umm....someone. Link: Babylon Park—only funny if you follow Babylon 5 and like South Park. But it's really funny if you do. {{previous}} | {{next}} stone against skin archives | reads | backstory | cast | why? home   your assignment: think of something you used to enjoy doing. ask yourself why you haven't done it lately.

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