Wishing for Winter

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.

e.e. cummings

will work for books

providing of course, that I don't have to pay for food, clothes, housing, internet, tuition, you know...

Yesterday I went to a poetry reading, and afterward I decided that I wanted to buy a book from the poet.
It was 28 dollars.
"Oh," I complained, "I wish that I had endless money to spend only on books of poetry!"
"Don't we all?" said my friend Niki.

Then today I wandered through the BYU book sale, and read through a dozen beautifully illustrated children's books.
"Oh," I said to myself, "all I want are hundreds of these lovely books for my children to read, and hold (and likely scribble and chew on)"

I continued walking through the sale and found a heavy book filled with mouth-watering photographs of chocolate.
"Oh," I may have actually said aloud, to myself, "I wish I had a million dollars to spend on cookbooks, and then ingredients, and cook tasty things for my family."

So. I need several million dollars to spend on books.
and bookcases.
and food.

Here are the three books that I've recently added to my I wish booklist:





l


So if you're thinking to yourself "I don't want to buy Becky and Travis bathtowels or kitchen knives for their wedding," then please feel free to buy us cookbooks (Julia Childs, Martha Stewart and themed cookbooks are my favorite. Theme examples: cupcakes, chocolate, or pies), or children's books, they're almost as pricey as cookbooks! ooor buy a beautiful book of your favorite poetry.

Love, love, love! books.

I'm sitting in my poetry class

and I can't decide if I should drop it.
My teacher is clearly crazyish.

Her class will be super hard.

BUUUUT, I WANT TO TAKE THIS CLASS.
This class is writing and studying contemporary poetry.
I want to read the books that we have to buy. I want to write poetry and have it be critiqued, because I am good at reading poetry, but I'm not very good at writing poetry.
I love to read poetry, and I love to write it, but this class seems to go beyond what is okay, or sane.
Sane at all.
Crazy.
I think after I check out my Hemmingway class that I will choose between them, and decide which class will be harder and which teacher is more crazy.

Also, that is a picture of Mary Oliver, one of my favorite contemporary poets.

first day of school

It's only ten. But I already have things to say.

I set my alarm for 7.
It didn't go off. Luckily for me, I woke up of my own accord at 7:15.
I was not only finished getting ready, but already bored by 8:00.
I didn't have to be on campus until 9:00, so I left early and bought some stamps, paid my rent, and clocked into work a half hour early.

Then, you know that sinking feeling when you realize that your easiest class of the semester will NOT be the easiest class of the semester, but maybe JUST AS HARD as French, which will kill you.
And that you have to buy 14 books, and print off a 13page syllabus for one class.
You know when you realize just from one email from the professor that she will be crazy, and then you do what you should have done MONTHS ago, and look her up at ratemyprofessor.com.
And you find this:

WORST TEACHER I HAVE EVER EVER HAD AT BYU! Avoid her at ALL costs. She grades ridiculously, has no lesson plan, completely scatter brained and then expects the class to care about the curriculum and reading. Tests are outlandish, papers are ambiguous, and she is 100% feminist in her teachings. Stay away from this teacher.

or this:
AVOID HER!the tests are so subjective and take over 3 and a half hours if you are fast. she assigns 1200 pages to study per test, and the quizes and tests are based on memorization, not if you understood the material. it is obvious she's been an editor her whole life! not a teacher! I'm an A student and I failed!

or THIS:
This is the worst class and teacher I have ever had or even heard about. She is ridiculous. I have never had worse than a B in any English class before, and I have had 12, and she gave me a D. She grades completely arbitrarily, and is a feminist. She changes her syllabus 4 times throughout the semester. She should avoided like the plague.

And you realize that you need to get OUT of writing poetry, even though it will screw up your whole schedule and you really were looking forward to it.

But here's the good news, I found a class that I am required to take as an English major, a focus on an American Author, and this semester they are doing two such classes. One on Edgar Allen Poe, which I sadly, cannot fit into my schedule, and another on Hemingway in Film, which fits perfectly into my schedule.

Good thing I'm an English Major/Film minor.
That sounds ideal, (and rate my professor let him off pretty well, too!)
I only have two classes today. Is it silly that I'm SUPER psyched for classes?

p.s. Today is my baby sister's first day of COLLEGE.
Dang girl.

p.p.s. Speaking of babies, we have a baby here at work today.
He is drooly and gross, and cute, of course.

out of the dust

Beginning: August 1920
As summer wheat came ripe,
so did I,
born at home, on the kitchen floor.
Ma crouched,
barefoot, bare bottomed
over the swept boards,
Because that's where Daddy said it'd be best.

I came too fast for the doctor,
bawling as soon as Daddy wiped his hand around
inside my mouth.
To hear Ma tell it,
I hollered myself red the day I was born.
Red's the color I've stayed ever since.

Daddy named me Billie Jo.
He wanted a boy.
Instead,
he got a long-legged girl
with a wide mouth
and cheekbones like bicycle handles.
He got a redheaded, freckle-faced, narrow-hipped girl
with a fondness for apples
and a hunger for playing fierce piano.

(very quickly, let me say, I did NOT write that poem. It's the beginning to the novel Out of the Dust)
I mentioned this briefly in my last post, but now I would like to write about this to a greater extent.
First, as you may know, I want to be a young adult's author, because novels for young adults are SO good, and also, that seems to be all that I can write. (oh, I just realized, that sounds like I'm saying everything that I write is SO good, that's not what I mean. I mean that everything I write happens to be about children who are about 13...)
So I've taken to hanging out in the Newberry section of the library.
When I actually was a young adult, (12-18ish, folks) I did not read Out of the Dust for the simple fact that I love to judge books by their cover, and the cover of this book is generally unappealing.
It was recommended to me, and I was not interested.
Oh what a fool I was!
So Out of the Dust is the best of both worlds because it is a novel written entirely in poetry.
This poetry does not rhyme, and this poetry is not obscure.
I'll give you an example. or five.
Some, like the first one, are very story-like. Some are very poem-like.
But all of them tell so much to the reader in just a few simple words.

Fifty Miles South of Home
In Amarillo,
wind
blew plate-glass windows in,
tore electric signs down,
ripped wheat
straight out of the ground.


Debts
Daddy is thinking
of taking a loan from Mr. Roosevelt and his men,
to get some new wheat planted
where the winter crop has spindled out and died.
Mr. Roosevelt promises
Daddy won't have to pay a dime
till the crop comes in.

Daddy says,
"I can turn the fields over,
start again.
It's sure to rain soon.
Wheat's sure to grow."

Ma says, "What if it doesn't?"

Daddy takes off his hat,
roughs up his hair,
puts the hat back on.
"'Course it'll rain," he says.

Ma says, "Bay,
it hasn't rained enough to grow wheat in
three years."

Daddy looks like a fight brewing.
He takes that red face of his out to the barn,
to keep from feuding with my pregnant ma.

I ask Ma
how,
after all this time,
Dadddy still believes in rain.

"Well it rains enough," Ma says,
"now and again,
to keep a person hoping.
But even if it didn't
your daddy would have to believe.
It's coming on spring,
and he's a farmer."

It's so beautiful. I read it in just a few hours, and I think I might actually read it again before I have to return it. There's a reason this book won a Newberry. Karen Hesse is lovely, and this book is perfect and unique in it's style.
It makes me want to write today. Just spend the whole day writing.

Cycles

I noticed I go through writing cycles.
For months I won't write a line of poetry, though I spend all my time scribbling away at my book.
and then, one day, I wake up, and can't write the last thirty pages of my book, because all I have a mind for is verse.

That circle has begun to repeat itself.
I am back into poetry phase.
NO, MY BOOK. I need to finish it, but I don't want to right now.

Yesterday I wrote a poem for Shakespeare as I walked across campus.
It is a haiku:

your poems are dumb
your plays are super boring
I hate you, William

these are the kind of gems I provide when I am in poetry mode.

among others.

also, I received no less than SEVEN (yes, seven) books of poetry for my birthday.
Thank you, friends.

Edward can't read Bella's mind because she doesn't have one

(that title is unrelated to this post.)

(mostly)

I have been working the last several days in the same art class, (this is an art class of adults, mind you, they're all already in their majors and everything.)
and I've heard several interesting things.

First, I heard two women, both adults discussing nude modeling.

Woman 1: I was in a sculpting class at UCLA where we were supposed to be sculpting a nude person, it was so offensive and repulsive that I dropped out.

Woman 2: I know, why does anyone thing that nude art is okay?

W 1: It's not! It's only okay when it's for medical purposes!

W 2: I went to a lecture where a woman discussed how nude art glorifies women! More like, objectifies, and disgraces women, it's THE MOST disrespectful thing someone can do to the human body!

W 1: I went to a gallery last week, and the artist was there, and he showed me this beautiful, life-size painting. The colors, the lighting, the strokes, the proportions, everything was perfect, but the model was naked! He said, "what do you think?" I told him, "She needs a blanket." He looked at me, like, psh. He thought I was so uncultured and .... [trails off, and murmurs the word bigot]

W 2: Why don't people think that is pornographic?

W 1: All nudity is obscene.

Please remember that while this was happening, I was a few feet away, modeling in a bikini (because that is BYU's policy), and feeling like an object, but only because they seemed to think that I could not hear them. I was not a person, I was just the model.

and Really? the most disrespectful thing you can do to the body is PAINT it?

THEN a different set of women had THIS conversation:

Woman 3: Bleh, my last professor was trying to convince us of the merits of abstract art in my last class.

Woman 4: I hate abstract art, how can you understand it?

W 3: You can't. No one really likes any art besides realism.

Really. How neat.
Then I overheard another girl say that Twilight was good literature.
Kill me.

But don't worry, it's not just the art students. Remember this class? American Lit for English Majors.
Well the other day in this class, we read a short story.
When we discussed it, this was said:

Girl: Was the main character in this story white?

Prof: Yeah, of course. Why do you think there was so much racial tension with him and the African Americans in the story?

Girl: Well, if he was white, then why was he so poor and nomadic?

Prof: There are white poor people.

[moment of confused silence]

Girl: Even in the south in the 40s?

Really? REALLY?!

Then today after reading Sylvia Plath, a girl said, "I don't think this is poetry."

Prof: That's valid. Why not?

Girl: Well, it's very depressing, and poetry is supposed to be uplifting.

Prof: Not all poetry is uplifting.

Girl: If it's not uplifting, then it can't be poetry.

BkserbfiDBVEJkjbrfkjwergkrKJBEFehwfk.
ARGH!

The liberal arts.
The LIBERAL ARTS!

who named them such?
these are supposed to be the most liberal sections of all the student body, are they not?

No fear, Shakespeare

I was against Sparknotes for many a year.
Hard to believe, isn't it?

I freaking LOVE Sparknotes.
Is that bad for an English Major?

Maybe that's not so bad as the fact that I despise Shakespeare.
Sparknotes has this beautiful thing called "No Fear, Shakespeare."
It is the best thing ever invented.
It's probably how I'm passing my Shakespeare class.
This is how it works.
Click on it, because it's super funny.

This is the tempest.

They have almost all of the plays on here.
Except the one I need.

Come on, Love's Labour's Lost!
Anyone know where I can get a modern English translation? I'm in no mood to trudge through that play right now.
Bleh.

ask and you shall recieve, leeper.

Yes. This is for Leeper who said "If you're quitting facebook, you should write on your blog more."
You convinced me. I can't stop anyway.

Well, you might regret this, because this post is about poetry.
my favorite.

these are my two favorite poets. I don't care that it's cliché. Frost and Sandburg.
I want to relate an incident that occurred in my American Literature class the other day.

Our homework had been to read Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, and Wallace Stevens. The class was in an uproar. They ALL hated it. It seems that I am the only one in the entire room that had an unconditional and heart-wrenching love for modernist poetry.

"What does it MEAN?" they asked. "We don't understand The Emperor of Ice Cream, what is Birches about? The Red Wheelbarrow is DUMB! The chickens are irrelevant, and the imagery is stupid."
They ripped apart my soul, and stomped on it.
The teacher tried to explain, "You are looking for a reason." he said. "This isn't about reasons. As mormons, you believe in Truth, with a capital T. But this is poetry. This is relativity."
They only bellowed the louder. "This isn't poetry!" they called.
"It's not about reasons!" I exclaimed, and they turned in horror. "They arrange the words to create and stir emotions, and feelings. Read the words, and let them do something to you. Don't look to do something to the words."
"But what does it mean?" they asked again. Each of them searching for the clarifying couplet at the end of a sonnet.
One boy raised his hand.

"I did like Grass," he admitted. "By Sandburg. I thought it was beautiful, and hopeful. Surrounding the death, there was new life. However bloody, there was still green and springtime."

Kill me. You did not.

That is not even remotely what that poem is about. Let's take a look.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo,

Shovel them under and let me work--

I am the grass; I cover all.




And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?

Where are we now?




I am the grass.

Let me work.

We forget. We forget and we kill again. The grass covers up the bodies, until Gettysburg is nothing more than a monument and a speech. We don't remember and we kill again.

"What does that mean? 'I am the grass?'" a girl asked. Her brow furrowed.
"It's a poetic form."
"Why is he the grass? What does it mean?"

Oh my goodness. If someone asks that again, I will go crazy.
What does that mean?

books i read today instead of working

the book thief

carl sandburg

emily dickinson

harry potter and the chamber of secrets

the never ending story
--okay that was a movie, about a book.
--and Paige cried when the horse gave into sadness, and got sucked in the mud.
--i made a joke about it
--i said, "oh no, he got sucked into quicksad."
--only sophie laughed.

Charles Baudelaire

I have recently found several quotes that I absolutely adore by Charles Baudlaire.
I have posted a few on my blog but here are some examples:

Music fathoms the sky.

The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, and which life reveals, is the most living proof of our immortality.

Any man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul.

Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors, I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust.

Anybody, providing he knows how to be amusing, has the right to talk about himself.

As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.

So, who is this charming man that I felt so embodied much that I feel?
Well, wiki tells me that he was a French poet in the nineteenth century. He did not believe in Love, only Lust. He did not believe in marriage. He frequented many prostitutes. He was in love with his mother. "A controversial figure in his lifetime, Baudelaire's name has become a byword for literary and artistic decadence."

What a dandy, huh?
Want to see the charming man's photo?
I give you Charles:
ahhhh!

Check him out. He's a winner.
Wiki on Charles
Quotes by Charles

if you were confused

I changed my other blog from rebeccah-louise.blogspot.com to rebeccahlouise.blogspot.com

see? no dash.

sorry for the confusion. I just like it better the other way.

check it out if you haven't recently:
it's raining today and i love you

On Planning Ahead

You know how in young women's you made lists about your future spouse?

Or when you used to babysit as a twelve year old and some people had these weird rituals they went through with their kids before bed, that you had to step into? Example, one family had a little jar with song titles and scriptures next to the kid's bed, and the kids got to take turns pulling out little slips, and then singing and reading together.

I always loved that. I thought to myself "I will do that with my children."

You know in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, how Francie and Neely read a page of Shakespeare and a page from the Bible every night?

I always try and think of things that I will do with my future children. For years I've said things like, "I will read poetry to my children before bed, and great literature, and while they may read little kid books, they will only have literature before bed."
I still hold to that.
At least when they're little, I will read them Wordsworth and Keats, I will read them Beowulf if they want stories that have monsters in them, I will read them Tolkien if they want an adventure, but every night I will try to read them some literature. And more importantly, every night I will read them poetry.
About two weeks ago, I bought a beautiful, too-expensive leather bound journal. Since then, I try to copy a poem into it every night before bed. Not my poetry, of course, but great poetry.
Then, all the poems that I love will be in one place, and I will read my children a poem from the book every night.

Haha, oh my iTunes just sang, "You read your Emily Dickinson, and I my Robert Frost." (It's playing The Dangling Conversation, by Simon and Garfunkel)

These are the poems in my book so far, any suggestions? What poets and poems do you love? I literally have hundreds of pages to fill.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, In a Back Alley, The Altar, I taste a Liquor Never Brewed, The Evening of the Mind, Simon Lee, "They", Sweeny Among the Nightingales, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?, I Am a Little World Made Cunningly, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, and Ode on a Grecian Urn.

today I wrote a Children's Book for my sister

Katie Mae Kitty
was the littlest cat
she had three older sisters
and a brother, at that!

Katie Mae Kitty
could not go to school,
she could not use the oven
or swim alone in the pool.

Katie Mae Kitty
felt smaller than small
she thought, if she could,
she'd grow a hundred feet tall!

She'd do what she wanted
and go where she pleased
and Katie Mae Kitty
would never be teased

Katie Mae Kitty
would have fish every night
she'd drink chocolate milk
and stay out all night.

So Katie Mae Kitty
sat down with her mother
and asked if she could
be as old as her brother.

She asked to do what
the older cats do
to use the remote
to swim in the pool.

And Katie Mae Kitty's
Mama Cat said,
"If you're a big kitty,
you sleep in your own bed.

"Your mama won't wash you,
or sing you to sleep,
so think to yourself
what you want to keep.

"You can't keep your toys,
but that's not so bad,
the worst little bit
can hardly be had.

"Katie Mae Kitty,
listen and think,
your mama can't hold you
if you grow up too quick.

"Your sisters can't take you
up in their arms.
Your brother can't keep you
safe from all harms.

"Your daddy can't have you
sit on his lap,
and your mama will miss
her littlest cat."

So Katie Mae Kitty
thought of the pool,
she thought about fish,
she thought about school.

Then she thought sadly
of her family's paws
her daddy's, her sisters',
Her brother's and mom's.

Those paws couldn't hold her,
tuck her in at night.
So Katie Mae thought,
she thought hard, and thought right.

"Oh Mama Cat,"
Katie Mae Kitty meowed,
"I think I'll only do
the things I'm allowed.

I don't want to be bigger,
I don't need more fish
I just want my family
to love me like this.

I want them to hold me,
and take care when I'm ill
I don't want to be bigger,
but a little cat, still."

And Mama Cat pulled
her little cat close
and gave her a kiss
on her little pink nose.

Katie Mae Kitty
was the littlest one
of all seven cats,
but she had the most fun,

Because every night
her mom cleaned her fur,
she tucked her in tight
and started to purr.

And as Katie Mae Kitty
falls fast asleep
she thinks of the things
that she wants to keep.