Journal 5 - Coral

  Before I start the journal, I'd like to say thank you for reading my workshop poems and giving your input on them. I haven't been able to say that during the actual workshop, but I do appreciate your input and it'll help me make them better. I'd also like to thank you for listening to the poem I read out loud and I'm sorry I got emotional again. It came out of nowhere and I couldn't hold it down. But I thank you for being patient with me and trying to comprehend what I was trying to say in the poem. Anyway, I enjoyed all of your poems and I'm glad I was able to listen them. The two that I chose stuck to me because the first was able to make me laugh, and I like to laugh, and the second was able to make me smile because I realized if you find something that gives you peace, then you shouldn't be able to be afraid of anything, even surgery.

Tyson: "A Letter to Jack from Ohio"

I'm not going to lie: I totally thought you were writing about an actual person, Tyson. I thought it was like a family member (brother) or a "close" family friend or someone like that. Everyone else seemed to have gotten who you were talking about before me and I finally got it at the very end. I think it came when I heard "Frost" and it kind of clicked at that point. The details and scenarios you used to describe "Jack" were so realistic to me of a deadbeat douchebag you might know in your life and I was sitting there thinking, "Whoa, real talk right now... Dang." Didn't even cross my mind that you were talking about the weather. Very good job in shaping the weather into a person to fool me, Tyson. I very much liked your poem.

I agree with your feelings about this crazy winter we've had this year, Tyson. I just want it to be done and over, but it doesn't want to go apparently. Also, anytime I think about this winter, I think back to a few pictures on Facebook that has Elsa from Frozen being the culprit of the winter and some of those links said that it was Disney's way of advertising for Frozen. (Disney's World Domination Plan). I'm pretty sure you didn't think of that when you wrote the poem, but that's what your poem makes me think of. I think that idea's funny and I think your poem is funny.

David: "Blonde Beauty"

The word I thought about probably the whole time about your poem, David, was "stark." There are quite a few places in the poem that had pops of color and detail that worked, it's just the word that stuck in my mind. When I realized what the subject of the poem would be about, surgery, I thought of how straight and to-the-point surgery is and how in the environment there isn't much bright colors and bare minimum details that go with a hospital setting. In your poem there were points that got straight to the idea you were going for and kept the story moving forward and quickly and I think that's what I liked about your poem so much. I don't have specifics, but maybe in the beginning you were listing everything you did before you left would be an example. And it's why stark was stuck in my mind.

I relate to your poem in the sense of I know what it's like to have to go through surgery. And I'm sure my younger sister would relate as well. I don't know how many people go on with their lives and not have some kind of surgery done on them, but I think it can't be many. I'm glad you were able to find a sense of peace after your surgery with that blonde nurse. It must have made your recovery go a little smoother and faster having that peace with you. I do admit that I was smiling at the end of your poem because you weren't in terrible pain when you described the warm brightness you felt when you saw that nurse again. It makes me think that if someone can find their peace at the end, or even the beginning, of surgery, they won't be so afraid it.