Wednesday, January 26, 2011

My First Poem, i would appreciate some feedback :-)


Off to war oh lover mine
My heart I gave in haste
Friend or foe oh Dreaded Time
You with him I do not waste 

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Another Aesthetic/Anti-aesthetic

This appears to be an interesting battleground/debate in the form of a book--has anyone read it? What did you think?

The Marriage of Form and Content



Opus consternates – post-
pernicious insertions – per-
haps haphazard in its
Over-elaborated and hazard-
ed (as in a game, homo ludens after all)
construction. The work. Form-
ed, perhaps stylishly, orphaned moment
of effect effortlessly wrought, the genius
– between his laric dancers –
in all manner of ire and in-
dignation against even muses
now, no longer faithful, no, no
longer hewn in the mold of the pro-
phet, the priest, or even the ad-
dict. An older man. Bewarn-
ed of dogs and rags and loose
pussies (as the wise man of Memphis
in his ditty sings). I, too,
want to see scenes (a lararium!)
from my works in mosaic
– or fresco even – adorning the walls
of Pompeii.




1/6/2011
Neapolis




Saturday, January 22, 2011

Das Gift by Ossimori Gallery Event


Design company, Ossimori launched Spring/Summer 2011 collection in the center of Florence on January 20th. This time to the surprise of their guests, they themselves were a part of their installation. The Italian design company made up of two artists, Misty Evans and Jessica Turner, is becoming known for their artistic approach to fashion. “Concept is just as important to us as design. We want clothes that are expressive, individual, limited, luxury, and meaningful. We are artists first, our designs follow our artwork. Our collection is very autobiographical in terms of imagery and theme, however we try to be true to ourselves in a way that is important and meaningful to our customers.

We chose “love” or “amore” for our spring line, because it’s a universal discourse. Of course, we express the emotion in a very Das Gift sort of way, and approach it from less discussed angles like obsession, lust, confusion, vulnerability, and anger. Things we have all experienced while “in love” but things you won’t find in a Disney movie, or on a box of chocolates.”

Being true to their art is an understatement. The two women stood naked inside mesh fabric tubes suspended from the gallery ceiling with a male model as part of their public installation. On the wall space was a two foot wide collage of eyes that the girls had cut out. On the floor around the wall space were hundreds of hand written letters expressing obsessive frustration such as, “Saying I love you has certain consequences, Why did you make me hurt you?”. Audio whispers through the speakers, “I love you, don’t go, I’ll die without you, where are you going, come back, I hate you, stop looking at me” echoed through the gallery space.

Afterwards the artists joined in the event in the ballroom upstairs where 9 models stood like mannequins to display the spring collection. A video of Turner poisoning her dinner date played on the wall, a violinist seduced the crowd, while interns passed out Perseco and sweets. “It was a success, we received great feedback on our work, the installation turned out well (in spite of us freezing to death), we managed to create new accounts, and sell a few pieces. Honestly we were very happy” said Turner.

The spring collection can be found online, or in select boutiques in both the US, and Italy. For more information you can contact them via their website at http://www.houseofossimori.com

An Update


Welcome! again to an editorial post from your forum moderator. A new semester has just begun and I have done a lot of work over the Christmas break searching through the SACI alumni pages and facebook in order to contact as many former students of this course as possible so as to invite as many interested parties as possible to join this forum. therefore I want to welcome all newcomers, both former and current students alike! We now have 27 authors, a growing number surely but only a drop in the bucket of the more than 1,000 students who have taken this class over the eleven years that I've been teaching it. Therefore, let me remind all alumni to actively search out any fellow students with whom you might still be in contact and make sure that I have their email address in order to invite them to participate, or that they contact me directly.

To anyone who wants to join the community: First of all, I need your email address. Once I have it, I must official invite you to become an author of the blog through the blog itself. You get an email from Google and, if you do not already have an account, they will ask you to make a profile (if you are a private person you can block it from view) and accept the invitation in order to become an author of the blog. Any former student or extremely interested stranger may email me with a request to join at leefoust@gmail.com.

A note on posting/formatting: I have updated the editing tools here to make it easier to post and to format our posts. Quick primer to newcomers to the blogosphere: First you must log into the site. Next hit the "new post" button. This will give you a page with two windows, one which shows your post in html format and the other in a preview mode. Obviously, unless you have had experience with html and laying out websites, it's considerably easier to use the "compose" box: you will find many formatting tools now at the top of that box such as bold, italics, justification, font style, color, and size. Feel free to add pictures or video to your posts as well. Also, there is a command that looks like a torn page which allows you to post a longer text and break it at a certain point so that only the first few paragraphs or so (you decide where to insert the break) show up on the main page of the blog and the other pages remain viewable with a click on the "read more" button--this will keep the forum easily browsable for people with shorter attention spans (wink).

Labels: I have been tagging my posts with their topics and categories (i.e. "place to submit poetry" and/or "Florence" or whatever seems salient). Feel free to do this to your posts so that both topics and categories will show up in the "Labels" column on the left which acts as a kind of browsable table of contents for all of our posts. 

For creative posts will you plase tag your post with 1.) your name, 2.) the title of your piece--in quotation marks for poetry--and 3.) the genre in which you are working--i.e. poem, short story, creative non-fiction--again to fascilitate browsing by form, topic or person or to find a specific piece. Now you know that if you are looking for the work of a certain student, a particular form, or even a topic, you can browse by using the labels list on the left.

A plea: Besides posting work, notices, youtube videos, whatever should be of interest to your fellow creative writers, please also take the time to read some other people's work and comment. As self-gratifying as posting on the internet can be, there's nothing more depressing than returning to your post and seeing no comments and wondering if anyone but you has even looked at it. Chime in, even the simplest thumbs up means a lot.

Thanks to all who are participating and forza/coraggio! who will be the next to post?

Lee

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Three Minute Fiction: Laughing and Crying

NPR is holding a writing contest that I think sounds pretty cool. You have to write a fictional story, 600 words or less, during which one character tells a joke and one character cries. Submissions due by Sunday, Jan. 23rd. See below for more details.

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/08/132744031/three-minute-fiction-round-6-laughing-and-crying

Thursday, January 13, 2011

A Girl Named Jimmy

My eyes adjust slowly to the evidence of a successful massacre, tiny bodies torn, tattered, mutilated, triumphantly displayed across the dark hardwood in every direction of the room. The palette of artificial skin tones and polyurethane hair create a neutral rainbow of disheveled parts, of limbs twisted into compromising positions. The pulling, and ripping must have taken a while, which explains her absence. I chuckle and smile, proudly

The door makes a loud thud as I shove it all the way open to enter my baby sisters room. An arm flies through the air landing next to the tiny spider-man themed bed nestled against the left hand wall from where I stand. I step forward and something soft gives way under my weight. Flipping on the light illuminates an abdomen. I step to the right only to land on a head which rolls out from under the ball of my foot and smashes the face into the ground, it makes a “pop” as the eyes come out, sending me off balance into the little wood dresser against the right hand wall. The framed group soccer photos fall to the ground, along with a little league trophy that lands on top of a severed leg. I put everything back together. There is giggling in the walls.

“Mitra?” I call out.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Ode to the Semicolon

Below is a poem I wrote while in college but I've never done anything with it. Ruthless critique encouraged. Ego stroking accepted. Thanks for reading!


Ode to the Semicolon

The semi colon is a double edged sword:
it unites; it divides.
The semicolon is the esoteric symbol
which brings together the elite who know and can apply its function;
the semicolon is the eighth grade English class exercise
printed in the book at the gates of heaven,
where it will divide the souls who can make the ultimate transition
from those who choose the terminal destiny of a period.

The semicolon is the bivalve in the brimming ocean of punctuation.
It’s clauses connect like shimmering shells,
while it sits in the center—
a muscle admiring its beautifully balanced sides.

Bipeds who do not know the proper use of this prodigious piece of punctuation
should seek alternate means of marrying closely related independent clauses
in order to avoid inbred sentences.