When I watched them falling the other day, it resembled people scurrying through the malls on Christmas, or perhaps a deeper meaning of lost souls searching to find happiness before they die, die meaning dissolve into the ground and take life form as water. You see, it's all connected in a sense. Some snowflakes fall rapidly, others fall with a sort of grace, as if they are dancing the one and only dance and they make it the most beautiful dance they can ever do. Bumping into one another, like people do, some join together to make an even bigger snowflake. So sincerely white with patterns perfected by God. As if they are pieces of heaven we can see before we actually go. Like a preview of what it is to be up there. All white, full of grace, miracle like, and impossible. Sometimes they freeze in their own form on objects that are man made. I noticed them frozen to my car the other night, how beautiful that was. For me to notice it was almost a sort of fate because it was so late, my eyes were tired, and they weren't a noticable area to look. On the top of my car, frozen stiff to the paint they found a place to rest for the night. As if the life they lived free falling through waves of wind had disintegrated from their memory. Clean slate beginning, from dancing to being painted on my car, so miniature, so prolonged, and so stable.

To be honest, this would be the first time I feel I am actually aware of enclosing something, though I may have done this already in the past, I am now beginning to understand, though not fully, what it is to enclose. I am enclosing with ideas of my own that are subject to change over the years. After listening and reading and re-listening through the final blog for English 240 where Professor Moss made her final statement to the class in an audio file, I have yet to dive deeper into her words and how I come to understand them. Though eventually hope to grasp it with more force. Words that resonate is how she states the question "Where have my students arrived?" "Where are they now, and how have they documented this path?" Again, this documentation is something I am learning to be better with, but find I have been doing it all along with my own journal I started last year. Its value to me continues to increase.

I have begun to become more aware of my surroundings and nature that engulfs me everyday. Professor Moss likes to use objects to contain ideas, or enclosure, for example the infamous Fork. I too have found myself trying to find tangible items that I encounter and interact with daily that exemplify what connections and bifurcating systems look like. I will continue to add to these collections of things that relate to my life abstractly. I find myself drawn to trees, the seasons that change in these trees, and water. These things have much deeper meaning to me than ever before. and images of trees I see daily like this . These are images found through google search engine for trees.

I am drawn to them because of how they begin as small as a seed that contains a tree, or perhaps encloses a tree inside of it. Like how we are born as humans as an egg, and inside that egg is the human we will become over time. Such an extraordinary process that we can relate to with our own life. And the years that these tree remain, they withstand existing long before we arrive, and long after we depart this earth. These trees are historic and everlasting. The way that trees show bifurcation from roots to the very top of its branches. The image above this one shows this well. Look at how they bifurcate so beautifully. Looking within myself, there are bifurcations I contain and extend just like that. I am constantly growing and bifurcating, I may always look the same, but never do I remain the same.

These interactions never stop, but continually extend through the space we take up. Furthermore, water is something I have found myself so drawn to. The book New England Days that Professor Moss brought in one day was an illuminating book to me. Afterwards I went to go pick it up to have it in my own hands to look at for as long as I needed to. I can't help but be attached to Paul Caponigro's words on the page about the ocean. As Professor Moss said to me last class time, it's as if I too would have arrived at these words one day as my own. I feel as though I could have written this down the road. Here lies an enclosure for myself.

"I think that I will never tire of watching wave after wave splay itself on sandy shores or become breakers amongst the rocks, because deep down within myself I have an inkling that one day a certain wave will appear that will bring me, a secret message from the great deep.
The sea has the power to turn me back on myself, enabling me to see the tides of psychological ebb and flow in my own world. Since change is a given element of the sea, the many moods I entertain and which individually vie for a position within me can be seen as impelling moments of varying intensity and duration. The sea reminds me of my own depths, its shape and color shifting endlessly, simultaneously moving yet stable."

Paul states this so beautifully and it instantly had given me an experience of illumination. I look at water this way, the ocean, the way water has a type of fluidity so musical and enchanting. The way it forms to any container, the way it ripples as if it is how it breathes, these motions I find myself drawn to. The characteristics of water, the ocean, the sea, any body of water has found meaning to me. The reflections I can get lost in, wondering if these reflections in my mind are telling secrets or talking back to us. Quite mysterious and sustaining for me. and here from google images as well. These movements that happen without even thinking, like how we breathe is something I find myself attaching to. Water is everywhere, connecting bodies of land like a bridge, depth we can't always see,reflections that extend us into our world we can not touch, for touching causes rippling. Clear but never clear...can not hold it for it will drip through your hands like how we can't hold our faith in our hands we just believe it is there. It cleanses me. I feel a connection to Paul's words of how he feels a connection with the waves that splay, a secret message being given to him. How it's constant shifting and changing but always remaining stable resonates to me. It's so voluminous his words, and thus find them illuminating.

Here already is evidence of how English 240 and limited fork poetics has extended itself into my life, overlapping how I think and observe my surroundings and how I interact with that. Beginning to do this more and more has made me feel a connection I have never felt. A connection of how I look at the world around me, and how this world is continuously something I should question and observe from many points of view. I will never know everything, this is important to realize, but what I do know is that wanting to know what I can and piecing these together as best I can will create a mapping for myself and my life. Like those ropes that are weaved together for obstacle courses that you can use to try and walk up, this is how I see it in an object form. I have enough rope connecting each other to gain a foothold that can propel me in any direction I choose, but there is always a chance of falling through a hole or seeing that there are holes that are allowing the connections to create footholds. It is an accepted and necessary part, like my knowledge. I will always have many gaps, but I will still be able to gain a foothold, but just recognizing there are these gaps of unknowns and mystery is allowing for me to know in some sense. I hope you can follow that. Here is a good picture of this rope type ramp.
Like a ladder system in some sense.

As Andy Goldsworthy puts it in one of his youtube clips of Rivers and Tides he says "Thats a way of understanding, seeing something you've never saw before that was there, but you were blind to it"-Andy Goldsworthy, I really understand this quote now, I feel like limited fork poetics has introduced this to me. It has shown me another way of understanding and it's beautiful. And the product of an act of making is essentially in everything we do, and in what Andy does, constructing art out of nature, and only nature, he has created his understanding, his touch with life. He has made art and poetry from within and used nature as a means to express that, he can articulate why this works for him, why he is making art, and that is really all that matters, that should be the only criteria used to judge his work.

Just watching these video clips of him in action I sense and feel just from how he acts, speaks, and does how this making he is doing is the root of him, the very bud he can grow from. It's once again, illuminating to hear him speak about how art keeps him grounded and nourished,as well as see him interact with nature. When he picks the snow piles up and throws it, this is something I have done before but never took the time to really look at it. It is beautiful, and there is something there now I can see that I may not have seen before. It is also like one of the poems in Paul Caponigro's New England days, the page he writes about listening, and everything has oneness if you listen. This too was something that vibrated me inside, took hold of something, and this happening within me can not be seen, only I know what it felt like. This occurrence is like the experience one has making poams or poems, the product of the experience you have creating it is just the by product.

Furthermore, I know this class has spent time analyzing or realizing how small our world really is in the grand scheme of things, and until I had the chance to see and realize this I awakened the awareness of my own life and where it is among the stars and so called time or direction we live by. Professor Moss's post on the big bang or the wormhole shows how speck like we are, here is the post This post inspired me to do more research about the cosmos, and how our universe fits in the overall big picture. This knowledge has also shaped my thoughts on poetry and making, and overall how I go about living each day. This you tube video is like a mapping of the cosmo calendar and our existence stands in this calendar.

Quite extraordinary.

P.O.A.M
Product of an act of making.. this can not be categorized no longer because to me everything in poetry is a poam. Life is a poam, a system of interactions where the empty spaces or margins, or areas of unknown are just as important as the areas where objects manifest or can be seen, touched, heard, felt. The areas where we can not do this allow for reconfiguration, growth, and infinite possibilities. After listening to the enclosure audio about ladder systems I have to say if I listened to this 3 months ago in September, I would have been completely lost, and confused. It probably would have made no sense to me. But now, here I am making my enclosure, and this audio has helped me to shape my enclosure and add to it to make it something, something that allows for change to occur. And that knowing change and reconfiguration will happen within this enclosure system I have created an enclosure that will welcome this change and grow with it. Once again, these spaces, areas of unknown that are still a part of the system, for example the space between the ladders that connect at one point are necessary for the maker. The maker should not disregard it in any way, for it allows the shape of the ladder and its structure to occur. Throughout this audio file, Proforker Moss revisits the word opportunity and how there are endless of opportunities and choices to the maker, and depending on what you're working with and also what you are not working with impacts your making. For example, as a human being, if you are born "Normal" or with the blessing of being able to use your five senses, we rely heavily on our sight. Our world is a visual one, we must see things to believe, to do, to make, and so forth. After learning about the system of limited fork poetics and the concept of interacting systems, and systems that bifurcate and the endless possibilities of making, I have come to see that our societies emphasis is on visibility, and on the margins are those without this ability. For example, going back to the ladder structure, its as if the society said that ladders must resemble the stool like structure, and lean against one another to make a point. If it is done any other way it is wrong. It is like stating to the blind, you are the wrong way, and that is why you are to be on the margin. Now I see that the inability to see things adds to your configuration where there might be more empty space, but more room for change and opportunity that a majority of others will never have. They will never have this because they don't have the means to work in this manner, where as you, the maker (if blind), have different ways of making that one with eyesight may never utilize because they don't have to. The book "Shooting Blind" is remarkable and supports the fact that the maker being blind has produced something one with sight may never choose to make or think to make. This book has shown me what they see. Here this space between the visual and non-visual people lies infinite possibilities of making. Just like space in print poems, the way the space is utilized, and the shape it takes is so very important to the poem and what meaning it can take on. This space is just as important as the actual print word on the page.
Like in the sestina, the shape, and the form is essential to the content. The reconfiguring we did with Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish" proves to me how shape, and space are just as important as the words in the poem. This space can be linked back to the space between ladders giving it the ability to be a ladder. And often times, what we can not see(space), is where worlds occur that aren't realized to us because we can not see it. We can not limit ourselves, we can not forget to innovate and seek the margins, we can not forget that we are in control of our making.

This line struck me, in addition to the entire blog on Enclosure Professor Moss created system of enclosure

"Innovation and aesthetic expression partner easily and of necessity when changing situations (forms of systems) support and/or even demand interaction, resulting in systems of enclosure in which modifications may be anywhere from subtle to profound."

Here I am, I have arrived at a place I never knew I could go to, December 16th 2007, and I have just begun my journey now aware of another world possible. I have begun reconfiguring and the possibilities are endless. I have enclosed here only the start of interactions that will only grow and expand, innovate and at times stand still. It is my responsibility to do something with this now, how illuminating.

courtesy of google images of infinite.

I have much more to say, but for now... this is all I have.. the need to write more about this will occur in due time when I have fully digested what I am constantly thinking about.

-Other illuminating moments was the time i spend with my sisters. We are very close. THey are my best friends, I would die if I ever lost them. Well, since I'm away at school, I don't see them as much anymore and find myself homesick missing them often. Well when I was home, we laid around together doing absolutely nothing, nothing at all, but just sharing that time and company with them made me feel illuminated. So lucky to have a bond so strong with my siblings, and feel them as my backbone in life. A feeling I can't describe, but it is absolutely beautiful and extraordinary our connections and relationship to each other.

-I get illuminated just looking outside my kitchen window and seeing the same view after so many years. I have aged, yet i barely notice anything different about this window I stare out of. I have changed though, looking through this kitchen window while drinking my coffee in the lazy morning, my mother talking in the background and me staring. I look and notice the years have happened, I have grown up so quickly, and this beautiful scenic view I meet with in the morning has reminded me of how beautiful life is when you take time to notice what has always been there. Peace of mind is how i feel when i look at the woods that face my house.

-Spending moments with my mother discussing life...i also don't see my mom that often, nor talk on the phone with her much. She's not really a phone convo person, so i wait till i get long breaks from school to talk with her face to face over coffee, food, ..or just about anything. Her words have never meant so much to me until now.. i am older, and realize how much sense she has always probably made, even though when I was younger I had a hard time seeing that. She is such a beautiful women, so strong, elegant, and full of grace. I hope I can amount to her amazingness someday.

-my sisters artwork... she is so talented, and never shares it with us, i have to search her portfolio to see her latest stuff..man she has grown so much in every way. I stole a piece out of her portfolio this morning to hang in my room..now i have a piece of her here with me all the time, just looking at the drawing fills the room up with her presence and style.. i love it. It's different than having her picture up hanging on the wall, this is something she did, she made this herself.

-Dancing with an old crush out at the bar the other night. This was a crush from elementary school. Never have I ever thought in a million years I would run into him again, and share a moment with him as I did. It was so surreal. He goes to school in New Jersey, studying to be a surgeon, it had to have been like 11 years since I last saw him. It absolutely stunned me. We werne't ever really friends either oddly enough. We always knew of each other. He went to my elementary school, one year ahead of me. He lived in my neighborhood, and one time I remembered we played together with neighborhood friends one summer day when I was probably 9. It is crazy. Well we somehow got to talking, and caught up. We went to dance and probably danced 3-4 songs together. IT was so great!! that moment dancing with him, on the dance floor, feeling really good, and knowing that I looked good was illuminating. Here at this very moment in between the beats, I felt the rhythm in my bones, and held his hand in mine..i felt like I was right out of a movie. I was dancing in that moment, thinking of nothing else, smiles so big my cheeks hurt mixed in with laughter. It was indescribably great. And then he was gone, gone forever maybe, who knows the next time I may run into this guy. It could have been the last dance I would ever have with him. BUt let me tell you it was the best dance I could ever have with him. I bumped into other old friends from the past and it was wonderful.

-

2).Shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age.

3).Shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.

4).shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.

This line is particularly interesting to me and I chose to map this line because of how it initially jumped out at me after the first time I read this poem. The different ways you can map this selection can greatly alter how the poem takes shape and feels. I am partial to the way that Elizabeth Bishop has the poem structured, for the other ways don't apply as much volume, or do enough justice for what is being stated. Number four though, in particular is arranged in a very unique way. Its structure works for some of the poem, but not the entire piece. Sectioning off parts of the poem spatially can apply emphasis on certain details and really give a spotlight to certain aspects of the fish. The pauses and breaks also elicit a different way of hearing and feeling the poem and the details that follow this fish encounter. For me, I would say to keep the rhythm and images flowing, the Bishop format seems to do the poem justice in allowing one to follow the details and stay focused on each word to build upon this fish. I lose track of images when words are placed too far apart, as well as lines that are too long. For certain instances it works, but for a poem that packs in so much heat and detail, I think the quick 3-4 word long phrases make the images of the fish stick longer.

The sestina-

After reading Sestina by Bishop, I had to read it over a few times and still don't quite understand this poem. I notice the form the poem takes on is like a short story. The stanzas are always six lines long and the thought isn't always finished at the end of it. It seems like such a simple form yet to make a sestina really work, I feel like they always resemble story like ways, or like a step by step experience. An instance perhaps, here it is about the grandmother and child's interaction by the stove with the almanac, and the rain with tears. Symbols present themselves and are cyclical in a sense. I like the structure since it is quite simple, and you go about reading it as if you were to open up a novel. The spacial arrangements are what the eye usually expects so you can really focus in on what is occuring in the play by play scenario. What I think hinders the sestina is that it is so structured. There is no room for space arrangements or indentations,etc. This can hinder the poem for the fact that it may limit what can be written. For example some poems written need to have spatial arrangements to convey what is being said, whereas other poems may suit the sestina like style. How is idea served with this mapping? That question is a tough one so I'll answer it as best as I can, I feel as though the idea is very centered, and lies within the stanzas. The images aren't presented and focused on detail, but what seems to matter most is the feelings presented between the child, the grandmother, and tears. It's almost as if it is seen very one sided,told by the viewpoint of the Grandmother, does that makes sense? I may be confusing myself. My ideas about the continued purpose of such a mapping is to convey feelings or a memory. Not so much elaborated details of beauty, but an image of emotions that strike one. Subtle images of expressions and feelings intertwined with the objects presented in the scene that play off the emotions that brew.
The relationship between map form and idea form in the two different poems are different approaches but still arrive at delivering meaning of some sort. In the fish, there is constant delivery of descriptive images and detail about this fish, we are waiting the final climax of the poem in the end when the rainbow is finally reached, whereas in the sestina poem, the reader isn't hit with all these descriptive details, but rather very handpicked details that matter the most in the scene that show the emotion behind the story. Each descriptive part maps something that needs to be told or added to create the final climax of the tears the grandmother knows. These are tears she only knows, and in the fish, these are the exact images that the writer keeps close detail of. The way we can arrange the poems or remap them are in fact a huge deal in how we go about interpreting the poem. Sestina takes on a form of six lines in each stanza, this is carefully crafted to fit the details into the poem and achieve its purpose. If you were to arrange the sestina spatially, I don't think it would recreate the same idea or meaning to the reader.

WOW... after reading the cheat help, I am blown away at how difficult this poem is to write. The fact that Bishop made her sestina so good, I didn't even notice the placement of the same six words repeated throughout her stanzas. This is truly an art. I would like to try something like this, the closest I've come to writing a poem with a form that entailed specific rules to follow was the Villanelle. I enjoyed it, and I think I also posted it here somewhere. I love that line about poets refusing to write poems with form, I agree that you need to find every opportunity to do something with whatever the requirements may be. If you only look at the limitations you are surely missing out...

I remember him, every day less and less, but I remember him.
He is found in my dreams, and his name is scrolled across objects that he labeled when
labeling was something that mattered to him.

His voice resonates in my ears as I sift through crowds.
My heart continued to beat when his stopped. And my life continues to move
as his does somewhere I can't see with my eyes.

Sometimes I think he's still waiting for me when I come home for short breaks that
become less and less as my age gets harder and harder to represent with candle sticks on birthday cakes.

They say that increased time numbs the pain, and it does exactly that; it is faking it all the time
Constant layering.
what lies underneath has never changed, only festered
and to suction what tends to leak out every now and then
feels like knowing something is wrong with you and never trying to fix it.

It has now become a part of you.

Sometimes I speak of him in the present tense
and words used to describe him funnel out like rapids from my lips
for fear someone might catch verbage that signfies no longer (the hads, and was's)
I avoid it entirely, this goes back to layering, and numbing, I have perfected it.

And for those that catch the hads and was's,
I hope they have the decency not to ask because articulating
that he has passed away amplifies the sting, and instantly the good job
I have done numbing it has spilled its remnants(evidence) all over my face, digging deep into my gut.

It's like being that sad painting you stare at and feel hurt, yet I am living and breathing.

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Somewhat mirrors the format of The Red Wheelbarrow

I. So much depends upon
Fall Leaves
Stealing time
beneath your feet.

II. Fall leaves
adjacent lives
whisper secrets
Decoded by
withered souls.

III.

Fall..

fall leaves dance in the wind

a twirl pool of autumns colors
hypnotizing me as I walk briskly
with faint goosebumps; a welcomed chill

a morning where dew finds a home on the
crisp green grass

soggy tennis shoes yield damp socks
rolled shoulders provide extra heat

diverse leaves find a home with each other on the ground
skipping across sidewalks
others matted in gutters

Scurrying squirrels search silently

Trees behind schedule stretch across the sky
emphasizing the patches of gold found like skin pigmentation

A mere bystander making my trek..gazing at the beauty that
I discovered this morning, just like I do annually, always oblivious to when
the first leaf hinted that it was about to change like a chameleon

making life move as it does..

nostalgia for past falls and how quickly it slips through my hand

as quick as I told my mom not to hold my hand in public

and how new lovers find my hand to grasp
as we meet sidewalks
that bare a new home for cold leaves

covering the ground like moss
giving lovers walking something to notice at their feet

as they move in sync ..

underneath the harvest moon's glow

IV.

His four seasons

My memories of him are woven within the works of my mind
Spiraling in my heart like fall leaves rise and twist when the wind changes direction

Sometimes I am strong enough to reminisce
But most often times it hurts my heart to much to think deeply about him

Because it still hasn't hit me that I will never see his face again outside of pictures and dreams
Nor hear his voice say "Okay baby" muffled because death has chosen him to suffer first
Tears flood in and squeeze my mind

He was the only man in my life that loved me unconditionally
And told me I was beautiful when I had seemed to forget
And told me to slow down when I am in a rush because being so hurried can
get you in trouble
Giving me those lessons of life through passing seasons and repetitive car rides where he
lectured loud because he was wise far beyond his years

as he would say "I've been around the block a few times, I know what I'm talking about"
and back then I took those priceless sermons for granted reading signs outside windows of cars that took us through the passing years

The color of his words painted my mind and sculpted works of art, and damn he was proud of it

And eternally I will harvest the roots of his existence that stay anchored in my heart
and anyone who knows me can know him too.

In hours we are programmed to sleep, my mother is awake. When I have suspended my mind into a dream forgetten when my eyes open She is racing between strangers who depend on her and her heart.

Her veins, pulsing with strain that packs in heat from working 40 years 24 hours a day 7 days a week--her back throbs, head pounds, and she carries baggage under her eyes. This is my mother on a good day.

She learned how to cope with these pains because she has no other choice-quitting is a route that doesn't exist for her.

While I read to transition into sleep, she reads thermometors and removes soiled sheets.

As I take swigs of water, she pours water for others besides herself.

Heel toe, heel toe. She moves at a pace my heart races at.

I wonder how a human can be built to withstand year long storms of destruction and still wait for that day of sunshine.

Her routine is programmed internally scaring me like children fear the dark.

While hot water splashes across my face in a shower I own in the night hours-she washes her hands with hot water to wash away the bacteria from impatient patients.

Her day ends when it's suns turn to seek and nights turn to hide.

She knows one thing, and one thing only. Work hard, sheet metal hard, depleting your life expectancy hard.

Deliberating about what she does everyday makes her feel sorry for herself so she doesn't think at all -just does.

She plunges in icy cold water day in and out dreaming of the day or next lifetime she can waste wading in warm sand bars where she sinks tired feet into silky sand erasing years spent standing

Here she never has to fight to breathe.

What working hard builds is hope that never dies.