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Rice University's Undergraduate Literary Magazine

Formalist Friday: The Haiku

12/1/2017

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No one has time to write epic poems-- it’s finals week. So let’s scale back our length and talk about a short and sweet poetic form: the haiku.

Haiku are one of the easiest forms to remember. The only rule is that it must have a 5-7-5 syllable structure. Everyone knows this one. But to be honest, I couldn’t name a haiku before writing this blog post. Damn my euro-centric education. So I did some heavy duty research (lol no I did a few google searches) and here’s what I have to share.

The most-cited example of a haiku is by Matsuo Basho:
“An old silent pond...
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.”

Simple, but effective. Here’s another few I really liked:

“From time to time
The clouds give rest
To the moon-beholders.”
- Matsuo Basho

“Light of the moon
Moves west, flowers' shadows
Creep eastward.”
- Yosa Buson

“Don’t weep, insects –
Lovers, stars themselves,
Must part.”
- Kobayashi Issa

And here’s one that every student can relate to: “I Want To Sleep” by Masaoka Shiki.
“I want to sleep
Swat the flies
Softly, please.”

A lot of traditional haiku have natural themes. They capture a fleeting moment of beauty.
So in the midst of the flurry of stress that is finals, take a moment, capture some beauty. Scribble a poem in the margins of your chemistry notes. It’s as simple as 5-7-5.

A Finals Week Haiku:
A quiet commons
Fresh sunlight soft on the ground
Unseasonal warmth.

​Written by Megan G.
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Formalist Friday: The Villanelle

10/27/2017

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In this day and age, poetic form gets a bad rap. Somewhere along the line, free verse poems became considered modern poetry, and everything else kind of fell by the literary wayside. Sonnets are for Shakespeare, rhymes are for kids, and when was the last time anyone cared about a trochee, anyway?

Free verse poems are great, but I’ve always been drawn to fixed form poetry. So today, I thought I’d share one of my favorite forms with you. (Yes, hello, it’s me: the annoying girl in your English class who raises her hand to talk about the significance of enjambment).

Here, have a villanelle done by a master. This is “Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath:

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Haunting, right? Part of the reason this poem works so well is its form. See the way she repeats some of the lines throughout the poem? This is traditionally represented as:

A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2

A1 and A2 are those repeated lines. Lower-case a and b are for rhyme scheme. Her “a” lines rhyme on “dead, head, red” and her “b” lines on “again, in, men”. This interlocking of rhyme scheme and repetition makes a villanelle easy to spot.

Other examples of villanelles you may know include “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas and “If I Could Tell You” by W. H. Auden.

Forms make you think about words in a different way. When you have limited mobility in one dimension, you have to get creative with the others. In the case of the villanelle, what’s limited is how many different lines and rhymes you have to work with. What’s not limited? Subject matter, meter, voice...the list goes on. Using forms is a great writing exercise because it forces you outside your comfort zone.

Here’s a challenge for you: try writing a villanelle. Plath wrote “Mad Girl’s Love Song” in college, after all, so why not give it a go? It doesn’t have to be your favorite thing you’ve ever written, but I guarantee you’ll be surprised by what you come up with.

​Written by Megan G.
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I Interview Rice Students About Poetry

10/16/2017

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In "I Interview Rice Students About Poetry", I, you guessed it, interview Rice students about poetry, that oft perplexing arrangement of words.
 
How would you define poetry?
Student 1: I guess poetry is the use of words to paint a picture of something?
Student 2: Poetry is for people who want to express a sentiment but don't have enough words to make it prose.
Student 3: Words?
 
How frequently do you read poetry?
Student 1: Never.
Student 2: (laughs) Every goddamn day.
Student 3: I don't really read poetry, but I used to watch a lot of spoken word shit.
 
Can you name any famous modern poets?
Student 1: Rupi...shit.
Student 2: Shel Silverstein.
Student 3: Modern poets? What do you mean by modern poets?
From the last 30-40 years.
Student 3: There's that one guy...Robert Frost. Oh, Dr. Seuss, Dr. Seuss!
 
What do you think poetry's role is as a creative or artistic genre?
Student 1: Its role is to allow people to express themselves in a way that they might find typical writing limits them.
Student 2: I think that it's good for expressing emotions, because sometimes you write too many words to where you lose the feeling you're going for. So I think that poetry is good for feelings. Like in the ambiguities, it lets people understand what you're trying to say.
Student 3: It's like an outlet for expression...I guess. I don't know, poetry's weird. It's like, you can literally make some grunts, and then title it 'Grunts', and that's a poem.
 
What's your least favorite poem?
Student 1: I pulled this up because I read it in sixth grade and I was really mad at poetry then because I thought it was really stupid.

The Red Wheelbarrow
By William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

And that's the whole poem! That makes me really angry.

Student 2: Also William Carlos Williams: I find this super funny because from what has been described to me about this poem, they just found it on his desk after he died, and
no one can figure out if it was an actual poem or just a note on his desk.

This Is Just To Say
By William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold


Beautiful.
 
What is something about poetry that confuses you?
Student 1: So you know when you're little and you learn that poems rhyme? And then you get to fifth grade and they stop rhyming. And that just like really threw me off.
Student 2: If you only keep reading Shel Silverstein, you never have that problem.
 
What makes a poem good?
Student 1: Not The Red Wheelbarrow poem.
It makes you feel something. I know that sounds really corny, but when I read Rupi Kaur, I'm like, holy shit, do I feel it. When I read Milk & Honey, I just like sat there and was like, this woman just put her whole life on display for everyone in the most beautiful way. And that's why I struggle with the genre of poetry because I feel that very few poems do actually make me feel the way her writing did.
Student 2: I really like the extremes to which you can go with poetry, which was kinda why I really liked Shel Silverstein. His poems are always weird, and I feel like people don't write enough weird poems.
Student 3: When it speaks to you. When a lot of people find that they can connect with it.
 
Written by Sanvitti S.​
Inspired by The Adroit Journal’s We Ask Our Parents About Poetry.
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What is Ekphrastis?

4/21/2017

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​Ekphrastic poetry has come to be defined as poems written about works of art; however, in ancient Greece, the term ekphrasis was applied to the skill of describing a thing with vivid detail. One of the earliest examples of ekphrasis can be found in Homer’s epic poem The Iliad, in which the speaker elaborately describes the shield of Achilles in nearly 150 poetic lines:
                                                           
And first Hephaestus makes a great and massive shield,
blazoning well-wrought emblems all across its surface,
 
And he forged on the shield two noble cities filled                            
with mortal men. With weddings and wedding feasts in one
 
And he forged the Ocean River’s mighty power girdling
round the outmost rim of the welded indestructible shield.                                        
(The Iliad, Book 18, lines 558–707)
                                                           
In addition to the descriptions of a work of art, an ekphrastic poem usually includes an exploration of how the speaker is impacted by his or her experience with the work. This week, I encourage you to test out this fun poetry form!
 
To get you started, here’s some of my favorite paintings I studied in my Art History class this semester.

Written by Ellie M.
This will be the last R2 blog post of the spring semester, as classes are now over for the 2016-2017 school year. We'll have more blog posts after the summer. Thank you for reading! We've loved sharing our thoughts with you. 
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It Is Really Up To You

3/25/2017

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Once asked to write a full story in six words, legend has it that novelist Ernest Hemingway responded: "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn." In this spirit, Smith Magazine challenged writers to explore a new way to tell stories when they published a novel called Not Quite What I was Planning: Six Word Memoirs from Writers Famous and Obscure.

Every page is packed full of six word phrases that strive to tell the story of your life—some part of it or all of it—in exactly six words. Smith Magazine believes six word memoirs are a powerful tool to catalyze conversation, spark imagination or simply break the ice. Whether they are happy, sad, or just plain silly, writing and reading six word memoirs offers hours of entertainment.

Here's some of my favorites:

Her dreams kept her reality warm.

I still make coffee for two.

A crush on John Kransinski. Unrequited.

Springing forward and I'm already behind.

Some cross-eyed kid, forgotten then found.

Grandma's candy jar was always full.

Sounded much better in my head.

Most powerful words: thanks and sorry. 

Too much vanilla, not enough chocolate.

My second grade teacher was right.

You could spend a lifetime brainstorming.
​

So this weekend when you have a little free time, give six a try—and make your words count.

by Ellie Mix ('20)

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Why I Like Reading Books Written For Ten Year Olds

3/22/2017

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I grew up in a library. My mom worked behind the scenes while I sat among stacks of books all day, devouring story after story. The heaviest reading I’ve done in my life was during these days of sunny childhood and nonexistent homework. I grew up on adventure, on dragons and lady knights and magic and courage, mostly in the form of juvenile fiction.

​When I eventually made the move to young adult books, I began to find it harder and harder to pull a random book out of the shelves and want to sit down and read it straight through in a night, and it wasn’t until recently that I realized why.

An overwhelming number of YA books revolve around idealized relationships, probably because that’s what sells. Romance has its place, of course - it’s fun to read! This isn’t, in itself, a bad thing. The real issue is that these books are not marketed as romances, yet tie their characters’ happiness and fulfillment to these frequently toxic or codependent relationships, not to their own individual growth throughout the story. Their genre is labeled “science fiction” or “fantasy,” not “romance set on the high seas masquerading as an adventure novel.” More often than not, I find books (not marked as romances!) that would be virtually plotless were it not for the relationships they chronicle. You too can be enraged at the system! You can tell when you’ve found a story like this pretty easily - the action will find its resolution when the main character achieves the seemingly secondary goal of defining a relationship with the brooding hottie they embarked on their journey with (bonus points if the main character hated them for the first twenty pages, then realized their eyes sparkled a certain way in the firelight and there will never, ever be another for them). Most of the time, this pervasive “subplot” ends up taking away from the independence of female main characters - on whom most of these hidden romances are centered - by validating them only with the love of another.

This trend is not the fault of any one book or author, but the industry echochamber as a whole. Romance is a hook. But romance is also a genre - a valid one! - that is currently missing quite a few books that I’d argue have been mistaken for more plot-based publications. From where I stand now, it’s obvious that the books I read when I was an unknowing YA reader shaped my perspective on relationships for many years, and I still struggle with unrealistic expectations about what a relationship should mean to me. I was sure that finding the “perfect” relationship would grant me the happiness and self-actualization I’d seen through the eyes of so many of my favorite YA characters. I compromised my self-worth and core values constantly, not realizing that perhaps my understanding of the world was a subconscious reflection of what was probably the biggest deception of my childhood. When I thought I was reading about a girl trying to solve deadly mysteries, I was unknowingly consuming these underlying messages that would stick with me for a long, long time. I am not alone in this. When a society consumes such media to the depth and breadth that our society does, these patterns of idealizing relationships are consistently reflected in our cultural reality.

There is something so valuable about a story that empowers its main characters to succeed, regardless of their relationship status, and that’s why I’ve found myself coming back to J-FIC after all these years - stories that can be dark and fantastic without forcing their heroes into love for the purpose of ratings. I promise I’m not a cynic - I’ve just learned that relationships aren’t everything and, frankly, I think it’s a little tragic it took me 19 years to do it.

Written by Kristen H.

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Social Media Poets

2/15/2017

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Poetry is one of the most flexible art forms. You don’t need anything else beyond an idea and a few words to get a point across that usually can’t be expressed any other way. It can be quick or long or profound or pointed in order to become whatever it needs to be, which is why it’s so oddly fitting that poetry has infiltrated social media. Facebook and Instagram have their fair shares of independent poets and writers that are easy to miss if you don’t know where to look.

I found my current favorite poet on Instagram months ago. Her pseudonym is f.d.soul and she operates in a blessed ring of supportive feminist Instagram poets much like herself. F.d.soul just published her first collection of poetry, bound under the name “indigo.” It’s the first poetry book that I’ve ever bought for myself, and definitely will not be the last. Her style is indicative of the greater trend of social media poets - deeply personal, yet short and to the point. The bite-sized poems are the kind of thing you wind up seeing on Pinterest in the form of a tattoo on someone's back, which speaks to the immense relation that f.d.soul and her colleagues are able to produce with such limited space. The platform itself forces a kind of succinct profundity - any social media poet that can't quite grasp the punch-in-the-gut line is left in the oblivion of social media irrelevance, ensuring that successful social media poets are, for the most part, schooled in this precise confessional style.
​

It's a new world where our poetry comes in the form of Instagram posts, but honestly, I'm here for it.

Written by Kristen H. ('20)
Picture
Picture
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Choose Your Own Adventure

1/27/2017

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One of the most in-demand books from the bookshelf in my third grade classroom was a “choose your own adventure” book. It was a tattered baby-blue paperback and we passed it around from kid to kid. You chose a character at the beginning and then followed them through a haunted house story of some sort. The exact twists and turns of the story were chosen by you. Depending on how you chose, you were led to one of several possible endings.

(If you want to continue this post, go to paragraph 2)

Recently I’ve been re-reading some of my old favorite books, and through this endeavor, I’ve been realizing that literature isn’t as static as I thought. Yes, it’s words on a page. And yes (barring translation discrepancies) those words will be the same from read to read. But each time I read a book, I focus on something different. A different character grabs my attention. I trace a different motif or metaphor. Different moments come to the forefront. I come to a different conclusion about the end.

As silly as it sounds, literature and literary theory essentially hinge on the same mechanics as “choose your own adventure” stories. Good books make you want to read them again in new ways-- they require it. They are puzzles with many solutions. They are a place you want to visit again, not to see if everything was as you left it, but to move things around. Good books call you to explore more (and yes) to adventure.

There is a reason that book was popular in my third-grade classroom. It literalized the fact that there are multiple readings of the same text. I remember waiting to get passed the book, but I also remember waiting even more eagerly to see how my classmates would read the book, to see if we got to the same ending or different ones. I feel that way in my English classes now. Reading is wonderful and exciting. But the magic of how the same words can manifest in entirely different ways will never get old.

Written by Megan G.

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Feeling Frazzled?

11/30/2016

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Whenever I get really really stressed, doing something creative always helps me unwind. With finals looming ahead, everyone might need a little literary study break! When you find yourself feeling frazzled, I encourage you to try some out some blackout poetry.

All you need is a loose newspaper article, a book page or a magazine you are willing to part with, and a sharpie! Your goal—create a brand new story using the existing text in front of you. To begin, glance down at the page and box in any phrases that for whatever reason, really strike you. Now, see if any of these phrases fit together. The catch? You can’t move any of the text and you still want the poem to read correctly from left to right. You can choose whether you want to make a broad story out of just "big" words like nouns, verbs, and adjectives or if you want to create a more coherent narrative using big words and little words like "is," "of," and "the" to move the story along. Once you have a stanza or two marked out, you are ready for the fun part! Blackout EVERYTHING ELSE on the page, and feel all of your angst instantly melt away. If you want to get super fancy, you can even create pictures on the page to match the feel of your brand new poem.

I love blackout poetry because you can create something uniquely your own that stems from writing that’s already out there. There is something special about finding secret messages in unlikely places, and I swear the entire process is ridiculously therapeutic.

Have fun & happy last week of classes! ​

Written by Ellie M.
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Ergodic Literature: A Novel Take on the Novel

11/7/2016

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For the entirety of this semester, I have been trying to read one book (an ambitious goal for an English undergrad, I know). The book sits on my desk with a bookmark a laughable third of the way through. While I’ve finished more books this semester than I ever have, I can’t get through this one. The wrinkles around the crushed base of its spine look like a furrowed brow.

The book is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. I honestly can’t really offer a good summary (the Wikipedia page makes a good effort: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves), but the bare bones of the story involve a mysterious death, Russian-nesting-doll-like layers of stories and their narrators, a lost documentary about a hallway, and a house that defies the laws of physics.

It belongs to a class of books termed “ergodic literature”. This format requires extra work on the part of the reader. You have to search through the piece to read it properly, perhaps skipping forward or backward, or turning the book around to see the words. In House of Leaves, this ergodic element comes in the form of misplaced text and footnotes. So many footnotes. Sideways footnotes, hidden footnotes, footnotes in different languages. Footnotes with their own footnotes, footnotes left by different narrators. Footnotes that spiral outwards from the center of the page, footnotes that are poems and pictures, footnotes that cite books that don’t exist.

That is what’s amazing about this book: it can’t be reduced. It is dependent on the format that it takes. The experience of reading it is so integral to what the book actually is that you can’t separate the two. It defies Cliffs Notes and eBook format. In an age that prizes convenience and digital, there is something so fascinating about forcibly returning to the analog. It feels like a new genre, yet it takes an almost old-fashioned approach.
I’m wading through the book at a snail’s pace. The plot and the format require it. It’s confusing and challenging and convoluted, but incredibly immersive. It makes me think about the physicality of reading. Searching through the footnotes makes me feel like part of the story. I am confused along with the characters. I explore the mystery with them. When they do research in the story, I do research, too. The confusing layers of narrators couple with this ergodic effect to blur the lines between the reader and the story to create something that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

Reading in small chunks is new for me. I’m a self-professed speed reader. I can honestly say that I have never been so defeated by a book. But I really, really have enjoyed it. While reading slowly originated in my frustration, it has morphed into a kind of purposeful rationing. I like this story and I don’t want it to be over. I’m saving it, savoring it.

Reading in a new way and challenging myself has made me fall more in love with books all over again. A lot of times, I think we tend to limit ourselves when it comes to literature. We say “I like this kind of book” or “I read in this way” and then self-confirm by seeking out only what we know. But the experience of reading outside of your comfort zone is too good to pass up.

So if you feel stuck in a rut with your reading or writing, try something different! Try a new format. Read a different genre, or read in a different way. Think about the process and purpose of reading in a new way. And if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, pick up an ergodic novel. You won’t regret it.

Written by Megan G.
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