Trot/Reflection on "Speed Rounds"

Alrighty, folks--so I'm about there--maybe a slight tweak here and there, but peep the following:

My mastertape is sketching relationships through the simultaneous prisms of science, christian religious imagery, and musical imagery (both in terms of theory and allusions to extant works).

My notes: "Extant works" will be narrowed (soon) to Pop (which will allow me a lot of variety in terms of what's "popular"), or R&B (as I'm currently obsessed with what I dub "guilty pleasure" R&B, or R&B that is essentially varying degrees of overtness in terms of baby-making-music™). Either way, it will encourage me to a) listen to more music (oh darn!) and b) incorporate what's already in this ol brain into new poems (can you say new jack swing, baby!).

In terms of the speed rounds:

I did this twice--the first time, I was re-doing my trot (oops), but I think that helped me narrow my scope. In terms of actual writing creative works, some felt "better" than others--specifically, "Logical Analysis" was still very helpful/resulted in some intriguing stuffs to investigate, but I was surprised how much "life" my poem from "Animism" gained--a talking bra = FTW.

My "Negatives" poem feels...sloppy, as it was weird trying to find opposites (or stuffs with enough contrast) to fit the either...or...this format. "Hesitation" was "ok," but I definitely need to build on it. "Olfactory" yielded some ideas that I have to tease out, and "Polytopes" may also be saucy. I think each poem does have something to salvage, and it is a lot clearer with these poems (versus using my normal process) that there is still tons of work to be done. I do enjoys the rigors of requirements, but with so much of the style choice out of my hands (and not topic), I felt it much more difficult to generate things. But I still generated things, which is cool. And I really enjoy the revision process, as I've begun to treat poems I'm supremely dissatisfied with as nothing more than glorified word banks, cutting and moving as needed. For these specific exercises, I will try to stay as true to the translated original as I can...but maybe some creative rule-breaking here and there may be warranted.

Also, I should be getting awesomer as the semester progresses, as I shouldn't feel like death in the coming weeks. Been sick since school started--hopefully it didn't show (or catch!).

-Glenn