"oulipo" poem

At first glance, oulipo poetry (to me) was a bit weird and hard to understand; but after learning that they made some poems mathematically, such as the Pi one, I was astonished. When you read a poem like that it makes absolutely no sense at all; but after learning that the poem is made with your own directions it made more sense. When we had to come up with our own way of setting the poem up I had so many ideas I couldn't decide which one to pick. So I went with this one: It is made up of two quatrains. The third letter in each word starts the following word and so on. Each quatrain alternates:
first quatrain: 4 words
3 words
2 words
1 word
second quatrain: 1 word
2 words
3 words
4 words

My own poem I came up with:

Turquoise raises sea above.

Out towards waves

Vast sea

Achieved.

Horizon.

Reactions astonished.

Tomorrow make believe kalology.

Lingering, glowing, outstanding scenery.

(Kalology means the study of beauty.)

Wierd Words

When we were given the sticky notes and directions my mind went blank. I could think of a few but they were too boring, so I wrote some crazy ones down. We all then randomly picked out four off the board and I picked ones that actually fit together in some way. My words were: volumptuous, flabbergasted, minature, binoculars.

For Christmas this year Charlie was given a pair of binoculars from his parents. The next morning he woke up and ran to his window to try out his new binoculars. At first glance everything was so minature and he couldn't figure it out. His mother laughed and showed him he was looking through the wrong end. Once he looked through the right end he was flabbergasted by the voluptuous pumpkin sitting on the next door neighbors doorstep. He ran down stairs to go touch that pumpkin...

Pantoum

I researched the Pantoum poems. When I read the definition I was lost in it. The way it is set up makes me wonder who exactly made up both the name and the structure to these poems? After researching the Pantoum I found the strict structure to be very complicated. This is the exact structure:

1 2 3 4 -lines in first quatrain
2 5 4 6 -lines in second quatrain
5 7 6 8 -lines in third quatrain
7 9 8 10 -lines in fourth quatrain
9 3 10 1 -lines in fifth and final quatrain

After reading that I became more confused. It looks easy but when I tried thinking of an example it wasnt too easy after all. So I looked an example up and found this:

My body betrays me
Messages missed
Connections break down
Short-circuiting wires

Messages missed
I stumble and fall
Short-circuiting wires
My hands curl like claws

I stumble and fall
Ribs crak on the tub
My hands curl like claws
Flip-top cans don't

Ribs crack on the tub
Connections break down
Flip-top cans dont
My body betrays me

When I found that poem I was so excited, because it made the structure of a Pantoum sense. This poem, I thought, was a great example of Pantoum, it was straight forward with the words, but in some way it painted a strong picture in my head. Out of all the types of poems, my favorite was an Erasure. I think I liked the idea of it because it can be from someone elses work or any writing for that matter, and you can make it into your own poem just by picking words out of a paragraph or short story.
Did you have a favorite? If so which one(s)?

More With Music

As we listened to the song in class it reminded me of some song out of a Disney movie. The song was hard to understand with no lyrics, but when I listened to it an immediate story popped into my head. In my opinion I thought that the song was about two people meeting each other at sometime in their lives. How the two are uneasy at first about their friendship/relationship, and then through time fall in love. They go on adventures and find different things along their way, some things amazing and worth their time, others scary or just not fun at all. In all they are on the adventure together which makes them happier. I saw in that song, from the beginning, what became a love story. They meat each other and end up falling in love!
The song has ups and downs, it gets louder at times and quiet in other parts. I felt that those sounds and those ups and downs are what create that picture or story in a persons head. The way it has the high (happy) pitches to low(sad) pitches goes to show that there is emotion in it, its just up to the audience to decide what that emotion is and create it into a story. If you analyze any orchestral song with no lyrics, it pretty much leaves it up to the audience what the story is about unless that song is used for a movie or has a story behind it. For example, in "Fantasia" it has some talking in it but it is mostly a musical with pictures to back it up with. But most of those songs in the movie are geared towards the adult crowd and Disney production played those songs in the movie the right way to get children attracted to music without lyrics. I think that movie was made to get kids thinking more creative, to get them thinking more about the music than the lyrics and their own opinions on the stories

Parody/Satire

When I sat down to write/think of something that is an example of parody/satire, I admit it, I had to look up exactly what they both ment then I went from there. Once I found the definitions of both, I read Andrea's example on parody of "Oprah out of control". It helped me get a clue to what I was looking for.
After analyzing everything, a movie popped into my head that would be a great example!! It is one of my favorite movies and it works perfect. It is a funny movie that makes fun of a serious series of movies. The movie is Austin Powers. All the Austin Powers movies are a play off of James Bond movies. In the movies he acts like James Bond and goes on little missions. Eventually there is "the girl" that keeps him from finishing all the way, and then the "evil/bad guy" that gets in his way. All in all it is a funny movie that makes fun of a serious movie that has been popular since 1962 when James Bond first came out.

Blog #1

The poems that we have read so far have gone right over my head. It seams that poems get so complex that a reader has to read it many times just to understand the "gist of it. I don't know about anybody else, but when I read poems I don't have the creative mind to think of what it means in my thoughts. When I do think of an explanation it ends up being the total opposite of everyone else's and I feel its the wrong answer. I know everyone has their own opinion and own way of thinking but it seems to me that I always go wrong with the poem themes.
The first few poems that we read on Monday were very complex in their wording and made no sense to me. After listening to every ones opinions on what the poems meant I had a small sense of what it could be about. In "Tying the Knot" my group and I thought that it had to do with tying the knot with death; but when we heard the others perception we changed our minds from what we began with. In the other poems, I truly could not get the point of them. Even after the groups described their thoughts, I had no idea to what the poems were about.
I feel that poems are a way for the artist to let out feelings and write about intimate feelings, but I am the person that needs to read a poem over and over again to understand what it means.