poetic license

hmm. i suppose i wouldn't be the only one to comment on how strangely time passes. a little more than a month and yet it feels like a while. only a number of weeks and yet i still recall the details of the last time i wrote.

i did not get a 4.0. instead i got a 3.88. it's a little embarassing to admit, but i did not know that a + or - affected one's gpa here. being a third year, i should know this, but i did not. so in effect i got what i wanted last quarter--straight As. but that was a straight consisting of two A- and three A. like i said, the pursuit of perfection in college is impossible. but i am very proud of those set of As and i am already hoping to do the same this quarter, now that i know it can be done.

it is approaching the end of week 3 in this new winter quarter. i have a number of exams and papers and presentations that need doing by next week and the week after. i am very behind in my reading, but that's never really bothered me. at least, it doesn't bother me enough to actually do the reading. when i consider how much work other students put into their classes i feel like a veritable slave. i actually go to class, i actually buy the books, i actually pay attention and take notes. oh yes, and i actually take the exams and write the papers. but this quarter doesn't compare to last quarter and the going is much harder. if i wrote earlier to record my first impressions of my new classes, you'd get an earful of complaining. but now i am gradually getting accustomed to the new environments.

i'm taking a class on Milton's Paradise Lost. i've always wanted to read it and i knew that if i took a class on it, i would be forced to read it all the way through and not shirk as i would inevitably do if i tried to pick it up for recreational reading. Milton has no place beside my harry potters and chrestomanci books. well, i am already shirking, and this is for mandatory reading. i know that if i just force myself to begin reading it again, i could read it for hours. but its just so hard to start it. i can't help but approach it and listen to it and read it with awe and admiration and i like it. but it takes too much to read sometimes and it was never written for the reader's enjoyment.

i'm being taught by all women this quarter. and let me tell you, each of these women have their own distinctive characteristics. none of them are normal. not one. all of them do something, say something that sets them ridiculously apart from other more normal women. these are not the kind of women you'd bump into in the supermarket or the street passively. these are the kind of women you notice and stare at and wonder how on earth they behave the way they do. they are not normal. i don't mean to be unkind, but i just can't stand some of the things they do. i can't stand the way my bio teacher keeps huffing and puffing after an explanation as if trying to explain her lectures is so hard for her to do. i can't stand the way my french teacher only wears gym clothes and then proceeds to give us unreasonable amounts of homework and contradicting us in class. i can't stand they way my paradise lost teacher sounds apologetic when she lectures. she has this wavery voice that sounds like something is caught in her throat and she's just about to erupt into a bout of coughing. and i especially cannot stand how my writing teacher makes US teach the class: how we must sign up for dates to present a poem and piece of fiction to the class while she just sits and listens. for the past two weeks, we've been taught by our peers. they provide the questions, the activities, the writing prompts. if she is the head of the Creative Writing Program and she's being paid to teach, why doesn't she?! why are we paying her, taking her class if we're teaching ourselves? this is not an independent study course. she is the professor and i think she should assume her position properly.

that writing class--let me tell you. it just doesn't compare to last quarter's. this class is full of english majors and naturally that means a number of things. that means that there is automatically that undercurrent of ambition, that tension between students trying to outdo other students, trying to prove their worth or their superiority. our professor, after all, is the head of the Creative Writing Department. as a result, one student goes out of his way to make her laugh instead of doing any work. he is lazy and arrogant and even though he's got a good mind, he doesn't use it and when he does, he makes sure he uses it in an instant where he proves someone wrong. it is the worst kind of deceit to keep your intelligence hidden, then to bring it out to show someone else up. his fellows call him self-deprecating. i could call him much worse for the kind of arrogant displays he puts on in class. he is that odious mixture of leisure and intelligence that puts people who work hard into shadow. everyone in that class has something to prove, even i do, but they are so much more forceful about it. and a very great number take advantage of what i call poetic license.

it began with the evil Romantics, so i'm told. poets of Romanticism believed that to be a poet was to be able to understand things that other lowly folk could not. to be a poet was to be enlightened, to have more understanding. they valued things like obscurity and passion and less constraints. their beliefs were made even more perverse in the 70s when hippies lived in farm-like utopias in new mexico where they lived on vegan diets and smoked marijuana all day; when musicians found inspiration in drug addictions and thought they were making music. everything, everything from the Romantics on has lead people to believe that artists of all kind --poet, novelist, painter, etc.--are above the rest of humanity. that is poetic license. you go to an art gallery in new york and the painter has used his own nail clippings in his work or his own hair, his own feces and all this he uses to create a picture that many people would say a child could make. this is that loathsome obscurity that people so admire. "he's an arist" they say, "that's art." or they might even say, "it's like poetry". that is poetic license, when people admire what would otherwise be nothing because they believe the person who created it, created art, did it for the sake of art. or because they believe that person is an artist. its the same for literature, music, and maybe even film and photography. the more obscure the better because after all, the artist understands what us lowly viewers do not and so it shouldn't make sense to us. and don't tell me that you haven't met someone who took advantage of poetic license. don't they always say that the musicians always get the girls? the actors who wear all black, the poets who smoke cigarettes in cafes, the photographers who wear thick-rimmed glasses and wear tweed jackets--they get the girls. because under the parameters of poetic license, that artist is supposed to be passionate, he's supposed to be deep. i can't stand it.

give me a poet in this day and age who could write a 1000 line poem in heroic couplets on the topic of literary criticism. give me a musician in this day and age who wouldn't lord it over us mere mortals that they can make music. give me a writer that could make me weep. i want to be moved. Wordsworth talks about the pathetic, the passionate, but his poetry doesn't move me. he writes to prove his views on industrialism. how can you be moved when you are staring at a painting with the painter's hair mixed in with the paint? does andy warhol's art move you?
people use the word "poignant" all the time without really knowing what it means. if you look it up, it is much fiercer than anyone imagines. something that is poignant is not like something that is passionate. passion affects the entire body, the entire thing, it is overwhelming. something that is poignant is keen it is not necessarily something overpowering in magnitude, but it is just as affecting. that is because it goes right to that spot where you hurt the most. it is derived from a verb meaning to pierce or prick. if seeing that painting makes your heart ache as if it is being pierced, then perhaps that artist has a right to poetic license.

i have been told two things about writers: they must steal as much as possible when it comes to writing and they are poor. the starving artist to me is the epitome of poetic license. they refuse to get a paying job and instead they wait to be published in order to earn their money because at least then they could say that they are truly a writer. get a job so that you can buy food and pay for your own place. once you have some source of income, then attempt to be published. be practical for heaven's sake. even great artists need the essentials. you may transcend those of us who work for a living, but will all that wool-gathering feed you? i think not.