People Watch: How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse

After watching and reading about zombies, I would say I’m very much an expert on the ways of the zombie. Read on to learn about my observations.

 

Be really fast. If you can run fast, great, but it’s better to have a jet plane or sports car…Zombies hate fast food, and you’ll be able to make your getaway in style.

 

Crossbows are better than guns. You see, zombies are attracted to noise and the sound of gunshots is annoying as the Mexican Hat Dance to zombies. Like us, they immediately run to shut off that stereo AND the person stupid enough to play the song. You want LESS zombies, not more so put away the gun for when you really need it.

 

Be afraid of dark and creepy buildings. Zombies don’t like the wide open sky—it scares them. Plus, have you learned nothing from horror movies such as 28 Days Later (oh boy, what a crappy film)? Dark and creepy places are a big no-no.

 

When all else fails, go UP. Zombies are a little like drunk people—they go down. If you find that the streets are crowded with zombies, high buildings are always best to hide out in.

 

 

Do you have any other observations? Leave a comment! FYI, just so you know, I am just a zombie scholar…I wouldn’t survive two minutes in a zombie apocalypse. J

Bookwormy Wednesdays: Original Zombie Stories

Remember how on Monday, I was ranting about my very unoriginal zombie story? Now, I’m going to talk about a few original zombie stories. There are two that I really love: The Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy by Carrie Ryan and Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion. I’ll talk about what they did right.

 

The Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy is about how humanity is still clinging to life by a thread centuries after the zombie apocalypse. They have managed to survive by corralling themselves into fenced-up towns and the rooftops of tall buildings in the cities. Any attempt at communication and non-local government has long collapsed. The three books are narrated by different characters and they each have very unique perspectives on the world they live in.

 

First of all, this trilogy is different from the rest of the zombie slush because of the time period it’s in. Most books take place during or right after the zombie apocalypse, but this book takes place centuries after zombies have taken over the planet. It’s fun to speculate what society would be like after such a long time living with zombies, and Ryan’s take on it is very interesting. Ryan also created very strong, unique narrators for the books, and they each have a very different outlook on life and the broken world they live in. I already talked about the importance of strong MCs. There’s also one important thing in her book that not many zombie stories have: a message of hope. It shines out between the lines, and the book seems to say: “As long as there is hope and love, humanity will survive.” For someone like me, that is a very comforting message.

 

Warm Bodies is probably going to end up being one of my favorite books. I had to put the book down to write this blog post, and I can’t wait to get back to it. Anyways, the book is about a young zombie named “R” who is in a sort of existential crisis. He’s a zombie, and he’s not sure if that means he’s dead or alive. What defines life? R goes hunting one day and he eats the brain of Perry Kelvin and relives his memories. In his memories is a girl named Julie, who is just a few steps away from him. R can’t bring himself to eat Julie’s brain so he takes her back to the hive to keep her safe. R falls in love with Julie and he starts to feel it slowly transform him.

 

I haven’t finished the book, but I hope R becomes human and that he lives happily ever after with Julie. The book is based on Romeo and Juliet so I’m not sure if there will be a happy ending…But I can dream, can’t I?

 

Really though, I never thought I could care so deeply for a zombie…Isaac Marion has gone where no writer has dared go before and what he has given us as a result of that literary bravery is unconventionally beautiful. I would have never thought about telling a story from the perspective of a zombie because I thought they wouldn’t have much to say. I was wrong though. If a person (or zombie) can’t express their thoughts perfectly, that doesn’t mean that their thoughts are imperfect. I’m actually ashamed of myself because people have often made that assumption about me. I will not discriminate against zombies anymore!

 

Back to the point though, here is what Marion did right. First, it was obviously a very original story. Second, the writing is exceptional. Sometimes I would find myself reading a sentence over and over thinking, this is my favorite sentence ever. It’s so beautiful. Also, like Carrie Ryan, he’s asking very important questions: “What does it mean to be alive? What is the nature of love?”

 

So basically, if you want to tell a good zombie story, you need to make it stand out. Zombies have been done to death and the idea is rotting like a corpse. Make your ideas come to life. The zombie apocalypse raises very interesting questions about humanity, hope, and existence. They’re not just dead husks of people that you gun down, they’re symbols. If you ever want your zombie tale to sell, you must make people think.

 

Next on my zombie reading list: World War Z! I can’t wait to see the movie, it looks way cool. I also want to read “Generation Dead”. I think it’s a satire of something, but I hear it’s really good and funny. :-D

Paige's Pages: Writing About Zombies

Hi everybody, I completely forgot that it's a blogging day. O.o Sorry for the late post.

Some people love Edwards, some love Jacobs, but if there was a zombie in Twilight, I would totally be on his team. I love zombies, and someday I hope to publish a YA zombie novel. I thought "The Dead and Dying Embers" would be that story, but I'm not too confident in it. The sequel might have had a chance at being a good zombie story, but the first book was not strong enough. There are several reasons why:

1. I was telling the story in first person, but there were four people I was telling the story through. You have to be a pretty talented writer to pull that off, and I'm not there yet. Two characters were pretty well-developed, but one was a rip-off of Katniss (at least that's what people told me), and the other seemed to have no personality. If you don't have solid narrators, it's hard to keep people interested in the story.

2. It was just another zombie story. Lots of people like zombies too, not just me so there is a lot of competition out there. My story plot was this: Get from point A to B to see if there's still hope. The immune in the group gets kidnapped by the dystopian government. They get the immune back, but there's a small problem: they have to overthrow the government AND fight the zombies at the same time. The more awesome part is in the sequel that I never wrote.

3. The plot was too quickly paced. "The Dead and Dying Embers" was my last pantser book EVER. I don't write well when I don't have a plan. It's easy to get lost in your excitement. Yes, yes, I know zombie attacks are awesome, but PATIENCE, padawan. PATIENCE. The scene will get written, but you need to make sure the scene is done well and that it is perfectly paced.

If you like to write about zombies, learn from my mistakes. Really, what I learned from writing "The Dead and Dying Embers" applies to any novel you plan to write. My three rules: strong narrators, original story, and perfect pace. If you have those in your book, then you're good to go.

People Watch: Deaf People

Deaf people certainly have their quirks…Here are some weird things I’ve noticed.

 

At Gallaudet, we call this specific trait of deaf people, “Deaf Time”. Deaf people tend to be fashionably late A LOT. I think this is improving though.

 

Deaf college kids like to party. Gallaudet is the number 5 party school in Washington, D.C., and we only have 1,500 or so kids.

 

One thing I really like about the deaf culture is how there’s a real sense of community. If one of us falls, the community helps them back up.

 

Deaf people really love “The Cupid Shuffle”. I’m serious. They ADORE it. Every time there’s a party, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE gets onto the dance floor. I don’t get it.

 

Feel free to add your own observations. J

Bookwormy Wednesdays: Deaf Characters

I admit that I haven’t created any deaf characters for my novels and stories even though I am actually deaf myself. There are a couple reasons why I haven’t done so though.

 

The first reason is that I just wasn’t ready to. I didn’t think I could write a believable deaf character because I’m not a very good deaf person myself. I’m hard-of-hearing and was homeschooled/mainstreamed for a lot of my life. It would have been hard for me to get that unique perspective.

 

The second reason is that I didn’t have a reason to. Many people plop deaf characters into their stories just because they’re deaf. There’s not really a specific reason why the character has to be deaf. A good example of plopping is the TV show, “Switched at Birth”. Why does Daphne have to be deaf? She could have just as easily been hearing. I’ve only seen one or two shows so I might have missed an important reason. Maybe the family didn’t want a deaf child so they secretly switched the babies or something like that. What I understood is that the hospital made a mistake and that’s it. I kind of scratch my head at those kinds of decisions.

 

My math teacher wrote about a hard-of-hearing character in a deaf school once so that she could show people the positive and negative sides of being able to hear in a Deaf world. That’s a good reason to put a deaf character in the story. I’ve seen stories where a person becomes deaf, but they use their strengths to overcome that obstacle. That’s a relatively good reason. Just make sure you’re not putting a deaf character into your story just because you think it would be cool or interesting. They have to be important for the plot.

 

In July, I’ll be writing my first ever story with a deaf character in it, so I’m excited, but a little nervous at the same time. Here’s a short synopsis of what I’ve come up with so far:

 

One day, six teenagers committed suicide by jumping off a bridge spanning over a canyon. They're gone forever and no one knows why they did it, but the event has shattered the lives of the people who live in the small town of Summerland. What the people of Summerland don't know though, is that the kids took a secret with them.

 

Two years later, fourteen-year-old Jonah Harrison still feels responsible for his sister Jenna's death. Jenna would take Jonah to the meetings with her and he knew these meetings were wrong, but he didn't have a clue as to what they were saying. Jonah is profoundly deaf, and Jenna's friends threatened to kill him if he said anything to someone. His sister even interpreted the message for him to make sure he understood.

 

Jonah never told anyone what he saw at the meetings because only six of the seven people that went to them died, and the missing person is the boy who threatened to kill Jonah if he told anyone.

 

Just when Jonah is starting to put the past behind him though, weird things start to happen to him. Weird, creepy things, and he's worried that the seventh person wants him dead. So Jonah sets out to find why his sister committed suicide, and what he finds just might change his life forever.

 

I love books with secret societies in them…My only problem is that I’m having a bit of writers block on what the secret that changes Jonah’s life is exactly. I have ideas, but they’re not BIG enough ideas.

 

The point of including a deaf character is because that the fact Jonah is deaf means that he does not know a lot of vital information because he can’t hear. He still has enough information to know more than most people do though. I am not sure if Jonah will go to a deaf school or a mainstream school yet. I’m even considering making him homeschooled like Rain (the MC in my MG novel) was.

 

Another tip when including deaf characters is to not try too hard. They don’t need posters of Marlee Matlin and Matt Hamill hanging in their rooms. You don’t need to tell the story of Laurent Clerc and Thomas Gallaudet in your book. Just relax and remember that deaf teenagers are a lot like hearing teenagers. If you’re not familiar with deaf people, then stop by a deaf school. Don’t write what you don’t know.

Can you think of a few books with deaf characters in them? Were they believable? Were they important to the plot or were they "plopped"? Did the author seem to know their stuff? Were they trying too hard? Ask these questions the next time you read a book with a deaf character in them.

 

Good luck, and I hope this helped!

Paige's Pages: Literacy of the Deaf

I believe that learning English or the native language of their country is important for deaf and hard of hearing children, but learning a sign language is more important in the early stages of language development. After deaf children learn sign language, they can learn English or the native language of their country. Speech is a nice skill to have, but it is not as important as learning to read and write.

 

Let me emphasize that deaf children should learn a LANGUAGE. Not a code such as Signed Exact English or Cued Speech. It doesn’t help them and it wastes time that could be spent learning two languages. Yes. Deaf children need to be bilingual if they are to ever be a part of the hearing world. No. Teaching them two languages isn’t “confusing” for the child.

 

There’s one phrase in an article by Francois Grosjean that I really like: If the child is blind, language input must be auditory. If the child is deaf, language input must be visual. If the child is deaf-blind, language input must be tactile. There is a specific window for language development: 0-7. A child can learn language after age seven, but they will never be a native speaker/signer of the language. It’s hard to learn language, but acquisition is natural. I took a French class last semester, and I had to learn grammar and syntax through videos, exercises, and repetition. I was LEARNING a language and it was difficult. I’ve forgotten all the verbs and signs I learned so now it feels like the class was sort of useless.

 

There’s another phrase about language that I like: if you don’t use it, you lose it. Sign language should always be the first language a deaf child learns, but if they don’t learn English right after or at the same time they learn sign language, English won’t be a native language either. If deaf children don’t use English as much as they use sign language, then they won’t learn it at the same level as educated hearing children do. Deaf children must USE English and sign language. What happens a lot for deaf kids is that parents/the schools use too much of one language and not enough of the other.

 

Helen Keller said something like this that kind of disturbed me when asked whether she’d like to be deaf or blind: I’d rather be blind because it separates me from things. Being deaf separates me from people. This is not true. Lack of a language separates you from people. If you teach your child ASL and English at around the same time that a hearing child learns language, that barrier between your child and the rest of the world will shatter.

 

Parents of the deaf, please remember this when making decisions about your child’s future: if a deaf child is not bilingual, it will be hard for them to be part of both the hearing and deaf worlds.

People Watch: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“It’s just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.”

This is my favorite quote and it’s something Bill is saying to Charlie. I explained it in my previous post, but this is a really interesting observation. Sometimes I would use thought as an excuse to not be productive. Thought really is a passive leisure activity though, like TV. You may be learning (or not) from your thoughts, but if you don’t do anything with your thoughts, they’re useless. If you want to be a philosopher, write your ideas down and share them with the world.

 

“’He’s my whole world.’

‘Don’t ever say that about anyone again. Not even me.’ That was my mom.”

This is reflective of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Her philosophy says that we should live for no man and ask no man to live for us. In a way, she’s right. We should live for ourselves. However, you can’t take this philosophy too far like Howard Roarke did. The reason I hated “The Fountainhead” and stopped in the middle of it is because Keating couldn’t make decisions himself and Roarke was a cold rapist (yes, he did rape his girlfriend) that needed to learn to interact with people. You can’t live like Howard Roarke. You have to interact with people if you ever want to reach your goals. Despite what Kant would have us believe, it’s impossible to NOT ever use people as a means to an end. Just understand that you have to help others reach their goals too.

You should live for yourself, but live through the world. That’s participating in life. You can’t cut yourself off from people like Roarke did and call that living.

Okay, soapbox over! J

 

“Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve.”

It’s true that if we have lousy self-esteem, we’re going to get lousy lovers. I don’t know…I think love is more complicated than this. Sometimes it’s not about self-esteem, it’s about how you can love someone all you want, but you can’t make them love you back. However, what I think this is saying is that we deserve someone who loves us back, but if we don’t let that person that doesn’t love you back go, then we can’t ever find or see the person who does love us back. If we can’t have that person who doesn’t love us back, then we go without love or we settle for second best. What’s important though, is that you tell/show the people you love that you love them. It’s like what Sam was saying to Charlie at the end of the book. If they don’t love you back, so be it. At least you know. There’s other fish in the sea, and you can let this one go.

 

“I just think it’s bad when a boy looks at a girl and thinks that the way he sees the girl is better than the girl actually is.”

I thought this quote was really interesting. I agree that the beauty of photographs and art comes from the subjects and not the artist. A camera lens doesn’t create beauty, it captures it in a unique way. We all offer different perspectives of a person or object, but the person/object being observed is beautiful, not the way we observe them/it.

 

“I just hope I remember to tell my kids that they are as happy as I look in my old photographs. And I hope that they believe me.”

Happiness is only relevant if it’s what you’re feeling at the moment. You can’t compare it to anything else. It’s easy to fall victim to nostalgia and believe that the present has all these problems compared to the past, but the past had its problems too.

 

The following quote is paraphrased. “You know that moment when you feel not alone? When you understand that other people think the same thing about a person you love, that many other people have read the same books that you have and come to the same understanding about them? Sometimes it’s comforting, but sometimes it just pisses you off.

“I was very grateful to have heard it again. Because I guess we all forget sometimes. And I think everyone is special in their own way. I really do.” –Charlie on being called special. It’s interesting how sometimes we want to feel special and how sometimes we want to feel connected. I noticed that people usually want to feel connected about bad things (oh, other people have gotten in trouble, not just me) and they want to feel special about good things (no one else feels the same way that I do about The Fountainhead). Sometimes the bad things just take over and you need to be reminded about the good things that make you special.

 

“And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn’t really change the fact that you have what you have. Good and bad.”

Everybody suffers and no suffering is ever trivial. There may be kids in China dying of starvation, but you still have to take care of yourself and make your life better.

 

Here’s a really interesting poem: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1035166-the-poem-what-did-it-mean-to-charlie

And here is my response: http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/00/pwillen1/lit/msysip.htm

            Some people just never learn to deal with their rock, I guess.

Bookwormy Wednesdays: Stephen Chbosky Speaks at SBWC

My mother gave me a newspaper article about this guy and when I saw that he was going to speak in Santa Barbara, I knew I had to go. I couldn’t afford to go to the conference, but the lecture was open to the public, and I thought I would learn something about writing YA lit if I went. I fought to get an interpreter and read the e-book as well as watched the movie of “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” so that I’d be able to fully participate in the lecture. Unfortunately, the interpreter was unskilled, tired, or not familiar with writing terminology so I didn’t understand much. I tried to explain what he talked about to my parents, but I found myself stammering because I only had these shiny stars of ideas and I was trying to make them into a constellation. Hopefully, writing these ideas and stories out will help me make sense of them. Of course, I can’t discuss everything, but here are some chunks that stand out in my memory.

 

 

One thing I am always self-conscious about is how I’m a slow writer. It takes me a year or two to crank out a book. I’m not as prolific as Stephen King or Nora Roberts. Mr. Chbosky isn’t either because he wants to find the right words. I remember that he said sometimes he would write out 45 pages for a letter and then shrink it down. He would write and then rewrite, which is a lot of work and it takes up time. Really, he was writing the book in his mind throughout his life so he just needed to piece everything together, find Charlie’s voice, and write the right words.

When he finally felt that “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” was just right (which was back in the 90s), there wasn’t really a market for YA. Now, it’s a hot market so lucky us! He gave his manuscript to his film agent hoping that he might be able to sell it, but the agent told him that it would never sell or something negative like that. Eventually, he sold the book to MTV and “Perks…” is now a modern classic! Never give up on your story if you feel it deserves to be read by the world.

The world loves his story, so it’s good that he didn’t give up. He had some stories to tell about his fans, but there was one I really liked about what a friend of his did after he read the quote, “We accept the love we think we deserve.” The friend was so inspired by it that he told this girl he’d loved for a long time that he loved her. Now, they’re husband and wife! Isn’t that a great story? I hope I have stories like that to tell someday. I’ve moved people to laughter and tears, but never to actions like that.

Of course, Mr. Chbosky was asked whether he outlines or not. That question is more common than “how are you?” in the writing world. He said that he was half a pantser (someone who doesn’t outline) and half a planner (someone who does outline). I missed what he said about that. I personally think that you shouldn’t let the outline completely take over your story. It’s good to at least have some sort of plan, but let it be flexible. Go with the flow, see what happens. Stephen King’s “On Writing” mentions this, and he is not a fan of outlining. He prefers pantsing because then the story feels more real, but it helps me to have some sort of plan. Really, I think it’s a personal thing. King kind of scares me because in his book he sends the message that it’s, “My way, or the highway!”

 

Mr. Chbosky plans to write another novel. He didn’t say much about it, but he says that it’s a tribute to one of his favorite writers: Stephen King. J He also said that he wants to direct the movie of the book and hopes to do that for every book he writes. He even is considering writing another book about Charlie and Sam when they’re older.

Mr. Chbosky is of course, a novelist, but he is also a screenwriter. He has written “The Four Corners of Nowhere”, which went to the Sundance Film Festival. He wrote the post-apocalyptic TV show, “Jericho”, which is pretty well-known. Unfortunately, it got cancelled. He also wrote the screen adaption for the film of “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”. He also directed and was a co-producer (at least that’s what I understood) for the movie. Not many authors can say that they directed the film for their novel! It was interesting to hear a little about screenwriting as I don’t know much about it. It’s really quite challenging as you have only thirty seconds or so to introduce characters. If you ramble, you lose the audience. I had to write a screenplay for class once and got a B. I’ve never been confident in my screenwriting skills, but I think it’d be fun to write a TV show or something.

 

The interviewer let people in the audience ask questions too so I asked: “One of my favorite quotes in your book is, ‘It’s just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.’ I’m not sure if I quite agree with it because isn’t writing thought? I often feel like my thoughts are not complete unless I put them down on paper. Do you agree with this quote?”

 

I made sure to pay special attention because I knew the answer would be very important to me. First, he said that the teacher intended to tell Charlie to “get off the wall” and start living. That was my interpretation too, but I’m a philosopher. I want to see if this idea would work in various situations, and Stephen said that it doesn’t. I agree with him. Without thought, there would be no progress. Thoughts are the fuel for action. However, if you don’t do anything with your thoughts, they’re worthless. When thinking about what Bill was trying to say to Charlie though, Mr. Chbosky said, “Look, you’re a young person, and there are things that I know that you don’t just by age. There will come a time when you have a heart broken by a boy or something and it’ll feel like the worst pain in the world, and it is. It gets better though. Don’t dwell on those thoughts and let them prevent you from participating in life.” I completely agree with him. Sometimes life sucks. I have been in the wallflower zone and it is not fun. I went through a Charlie-esque period (although it wasn’t about a boy), but I got off the wall and moved on. My life is much better now. I just wish I moved on sooner.

You know you’re deaf when you’re sweating while trying to listen to somebody. J After his answer, the interviewer started to talk about a quote she liked when Charlie was with his grandparents, but I missed what it was. It’s too bad. I would have liked to have known.

I unfortunately didn’t catch a lot of the writing advice. Sometimes I would catch something and then think about it so I would miss chunks of it. L Talk about thought preventing you from participating! What I understood though, was great and will always be important to me. I will always remember that we laughed a lot, so it really was a lot of fun.

Paige's Pages: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

I read this book recently so that I could go see Stephen Chbosky speak at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference and it is one of the best contemporary YA books I’ve read. Only John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars” can compete with it. I’m glad Mr. Chbosky came or else I might have not ever read Charlie’s (the MC) story. I was also fortunate enough to meet Mr. Chbosky and he is as great a person as he is a writer. I hope he stops by “Page by Paige” to read the posts this week. The Q&A with him at the SBWC was great, but unfortunately, I did not understand a lot. The interpreter the conference hired was honestly not that good so I think I understood somewhere between 50-75% of what was said. Oh, how I miss the D.C. and its wonderful interpreters! I think I got the general message of what he was trying to say for each question though, thankfully. I will write about what little I understood on Wednesday, but now I’m going to focus on the book itself. I have a lot to say, so hang in there!

 

“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” is an epistolary (Yay! Fancy English major word!) novel composed of Charlie’s letters to an unnamed “friend”. Mr. Chbosky explained in the Q&A that Charlie was not really writing to just his friend, he was writing to the world, so knowing the person Charlie is writing to is not that important, but I think everyone’s curious as to who the friend is.  

 

It’s also clear that J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” influenced this book. Holden and Charlie have a lot in common, but Charlie does not say “goddamn” as much as Holden, haha. J They are both coping with mental health issues and the loss of innocence. They also are trying to figure out how the world works and how they can “participate” in life. I am not saying that Charlie is exactly the same as Holden though. Charlie and Holden are both unique and real characters in different ways.

 

When reading “Perks…”, I did see a little of myself in Charlie, but I feel like I’m going through what Charlie went through in college and not in high school. I went to a very small deaf school and I was the hard-of-hearing nerd that everyone avoided. It’s hard to find an intelligent deaf person (because many deaf kids are exposed to language much later than hearing kids) so I just focused on school, Academic Bowl, and writing. Me and my few friends observed life around us and I lived in my own little world. I have never had a boyfriend. I’ve never been kissed. I’ve never did drugs (and I don’t plan on doing so). I had a hell of a Peter Pan complex, but otherwise, I was a good kid. I still am. I have a full-ride scholarship to Gallaudet University. I don’t regret (most) of my choices in high school.

In college, I have friends that have gone through similar experiences in high school. Drugs, sex, and parties are all around me and my friends and I help each other cope with the craziness. You need someone to talk to when college life gets a little overwhelming. I still don’t have a boyfriend, I still have never been kissed, and I have still never touched drugs or alcohol. I now have what I call a “Sisyphus complex” instead of a Peter Pan complex. I have professors that help me participate in life more, and I’m starting to understand what “the real world” is like.

 

So I guess I understand some of what Charlie is going through. I know what feeling “infinite” is like. Just the other day, I went open-water swimming with my group and the water was so clear and beautiful. I stayed in the ocean a little longer just flipping and twirling in the water because I was happy. In that moment, I felt infinite. I don’t know if I have ever loved someone the way Charlie loves Sam, but I do know what it’s like to love someone who does not love you the way you love them. I understand that it’s okay and that sometimes people don’t love you back, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop loving them. You just have to be careful about what you do with that love and that you don’t hurt yourself or that person with it. I’m not sure if Bill the teacher would agree with me here, but I agree with me. Charlie and I also needed the courage to find our own way to participate in life instead of just thinking away our years.

 

“Perks…” really is an important book. Charlie is wise and intelligent beyond his years and has a lot to teach people about. The book is extremely well-written with an authentic voice that rings clear throughout the book so writers can also learn a lot from this book.

 

Of course, I didn't say all of what I wanted to say, but there will be two more posts on "The Perks of Being a Wallflower". Wednesday, I'll talk about the Q&A, and on Friday, I'll talk about some of the interesting things Charlie has noticed about people. Oh, and in case you haven’t figured it out, it’s “Wallflower Week”. J

People Watch: Poetry Style

Most teenagers like to write poetry instead of read poetry. I have piles of angsty rhymes and I bet all of my readers do too. The weird thing is that I now enjoy reading poetry more than writing it. I’ve noticed that a lot of my peers at college are going through that same change.

 

I seriously think Pablo Neruda never came of age. If I read his poetry, I always roll my eyes because it seems as angsty and idealistic as the average teenager’s poetry. He just happens to be good at rhyme and meter.

 

A lot of people pretend to know a lot about poetry, but they’re lying. If you meet one of these people, they usually say that their favorite poet is Robert Frost.

 

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? If you’re a desperate guy, you should always read your girl this poem because come on, eternal life through writing is like…the best present a girl could get! Better yet, write your own sonnet! Iambic pentameter is so sexy and it is totally not cheesy.

 

Do you have any observations related to people and poetry? Go press  the comment button! Don’t be shy! :-D

Bookwormy Wednesdays: Billy Collins

    

Hi everybody and welcome to Bookwormy Wednesdays. For these posts, I will write about books and authors, obviously. Today, I plan to talk about Billy Collins because it’s poetry week AND I got to actually meet him while I was at school in the D.C. It was awesome! I have copy and pasted my blog post for class (my professor had us do English portfolio blogs) onto here so enjoy!

 

“I’m really kind of at a loss for words, so just bear with me here. Running the Billy Collins field trip was quite an experience. He is one of my favorite contemporary poets so when I saw that he was doing a reading here in the DC, I knew I had to go. I also thought my fellow English 208ers would like to go see him, especially since we read his stuff in class, so I suggested that we go on a field trip. Everything surprisingly worked out well. The only thing that went amiss was how a few students missed out.

 

Reflecting on the actual experience though, it was surreal…I loved the poetry readings—my favorites were the one about the lanyard and the one about how everyone says to him “I see a poem coming.” I guess it’s because I can relate. I remember how my little brother would make all these homemade gifts for my mother and people are always telling me what I should write a poem or story about.

 

Asking Billy Collins a question was pretty nerve-wracking, but I was curious to hear his answer. I was watching the interpreter make his border collie face and I thought “why do people say the beauty of literature is lost in translation? If anything, it adds to the beauty,” so I asked him what he thought about his poems being translated into ASL and whether he thought it captured something that his words did not. He gave a pretty interesting answer too.

 

Later, we had the opportunity to actually meet Billy Collins! I got my favorite poem by him signed and we even got a picture with him.”

 

My favorite poem by him is “Forgetfulness”, which is kind of depressing but true. Everything floats down the river Lethe and blah, blah, blah. I’m supposed to be teaching you about poetry so I’ll copy and paste his poem “Introduction to Poetry” onto here. I even taught this in class so hopefully I do a good job explaining it.

 

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

 

or press an ear against its hive.

 

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

 

or walk inside the poem's room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

 

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author's name on the shore.

 

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

 

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

 

So basically it’s saying that we should experience poetry instead of simply trying to understand it. We can never truly understand a poem in the author’s perspective so we should try to develop our own understanding of it. Ironically, I’m doing exactly what the author is warning me not to do. I don’t think people like to read poetry his way though. People like to understand what the poem means to the author so that they feel like they’ve solved a puzzle. Plus, their freshman English teacher tells them to torture poems so most people aren’t exposed to this type of analysis. English majors are exposed to this, but then they are told to analyze poetry the other way.

 

Billy Collins has a lot of great poems to torture so I enjoy reading his stuff. Most of his poems are humorous on the surface, but if you look closer, they have an interesting deeper meaning. I recommend his book “Sailing Alone Around the Room” as it has a lot of his more well-known poems from his other anthologies along with some newer poetry.

 

I really wanted to insert the picture of me with Billy Collins and my professors, but Blogger was mean and wouldn't let me. :-(

Paige's Pages: On Writing Poetry

First, I want to explain the “Paige’s Pages” posts on my blog. These are the posts that appear on Monday, and they will be pretty random. They’re just my thoughts on various topics, but usually they will be writing-related. Usually, haha. :-) This week is Poetry Week on my blog so the posts will obviously be related to poetry in some way.

 

Now, for my post!  

 

I have never really thought of myself as a great poet. I have all these seemingly wonderful ideas, but they never get put down on the page exactly the way I want them to. Before, I would cram my words into a specific format, and the rhymes always seemed forced. Later, I loosened up a bit and let go of format, but something always felt wrong with my poetry. Sometimes the words did not flow the way I wanted them to, sometimes I just felt like they did not capture the feeling or image in the right way. I want to feel attached to it somehow, but I don’t know…It feels like a puzzle piece that does not fit into me in quite the right way.

 

Oh, I have the perfect poem for this! Behold, Margaret Atwood’s “You Fit into Me”:

 

“You fit into me

like a hook into an eye

 

a fish hook

an open eye”

 

Doesn’t it send chills down your spine? –shudder- Atwood is probably not talking about poetry, but poems have countless interpretations, despite what your English teachers may have you believe. Just wait until I tell you all about Billy Collins this Wednesday…So fun!

 

There are two ways something can fit into you. It can fit perfectly, or it can fit not so perfectly. You can say that something can fit not so perfectly in different ways, and I suppose that’s true, but as Ed Sheeran says (I am obsessed with this guy BTW), “Pain is only relevant if it hurts.” The worst pain you could possibly feel is the pain you feel right now. For every poem I’ve written, I feel pain because it fits into me like a fish hook into an open eye.

 

There is one poem though, that fit into me like a hook into an eye. A necklace clasp into its eye. It became a beautiful string of words, glittering with sparkling jewels and precious metals. When it fits into me, it brings about a different sort of pain: the pain I felt back then, which becomes the pain I feel right now. It’s relevant again.

 

The only problem though is, it’s only perfect to me, not to other people. No one will understand the pain that I feel when I read it. Being a poet, being a writer, being a person is a lonely job. I suppose the reason we write poetry is because it’s enough that we, ourselves understand even though other people may never completely get it.

 

So when you write poetry, strive to capture that image or feeling in exactly the way you see/understand it. If you capture it perfectly, then you’ll know because it fits into you like a hook into an eye.