media consumption log: december '22

 

Media Consumption Log:

December 2022

      It's been an embarrassingly long time since I've updated this blog. Seriously. I've cycled through at least eight different versions of myself between July 2021 and now (happy belated one year of not-posting, for those keeping track of my blog-hiatus-anniversary). I've questioned whether it's worth it to keep this platform going, considering my utter lack of engagement, but I've realized that, if I am going to try this writing-for-a-living thing, I ought to have an online presence that's bigger than just my 900-follower-book-Instagram, which is also kind of defunct. So, don't call it a comeback. Maybe call it a return, or a slow descent into Blogger madness. Or something like that. 

        I'm going to ease in by posting my media consumption log for December 2022. I started keeping records of movies, television shows, books, authors, and artistic inspirations/whimsies once I began my gig as a Young Teaching Artist over at the Gloucester Writer's Center. Taking on such a role demands an ability to speak articulately and off-the-cuff about my current obsessions as an artist. More than that, I find that it's just good literary practice to identify what you're drawn to. After all: anything and everything in an artist's life is fodder for their art. 

    In the poetic literary mishmash that is my brain, it's sometimes difficult to sort through everything I'm thinking about. My thoughts aren't so much tides in an ocean or clouds moving against the sky as they are birds caught in the wind, their change in patterns dependent on a thousand factors we'll never fully understand. I figured it would be easiest to keep a living, visual record of what I'm interested in, why it interests me, and how it's influencing my art.

        

      

  

Books

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

The Haunting of Sylvia Plath by Jacqueline Rose

The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath (re-read)*

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (re-read, taught)*

Marilyn Monroe Essay Collection

Severance by Ling Ma

My Story by Marilyn Monroe

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein

Michigan Quarterly Review Winter 2023

    "On Why I Cannot Promise" by Carl Phillips

    "My Mother's Generosity" by Denise Duhamel

    "What My Mother said in the ICU" by Denise Duhamel

    "Hearing Loss" by Morgan Hamill

    The Gardens of Narration by Tayseer Abu Odeh

    Hanging Fire by Elmaz Abinader

  

Podcasts

The Polyester Podcast

    Keeping Up With The Kinky Crafts

    Has Marvel Killed the Movie Star?

    Will the Rise of Ugly Beauty Save Us All?

    The Death of Nuance

    The Fall of the Wife Guys

    Society of the Spectacle

    Digital Retrofuturism and the Influence of Internet Nostalgia

    The Death of the Influencer

    Toxic Masculinity Deep Dive, Parts One and Two

    Is BeReal ushering in a new era of authentic social media?

    A Forensic Deep Dive Into the Ick

Movies

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Funny Girl

⅔ of My Fair Lady

The Prince and the Showgirl

Artistic Inspirations/Whimsies to Follow

Marilyn Monroe. I wrote a poem in her voice for my Craft of Poetry class, leaning on her private writings, the annotations she made in her scripts, and quotes from others about her presence to create a long, stanzaic poem exploring what it means to define self in a world/culture that was so quick to objectify and define her. I wonder what the difference is between a female/feminine writer "speaking" as Marilyn and donning her voice in a creative piece, vs. a male/masculine writer "speaking" as Marilyn. Might there even be a difference? I am also thinking in particular about her objects: her Ferragamo shoes, underlined copies of her books. Her need to be protected, her disinterest in sex despite her almost-permanent status as a sex symbol in the American consciousness, her complex relationship with religion, her conversion to Judaism prior to her marriage to Arthur Miller. 

Found poetry and appropriating texts. Again, this came up in my Craft of Poetry class. I am interested in the idea that there is no such thing as a truly original, independent text. All works inform one another. There is another theory that everything you have read or will read already exists, has already existed. I am interested in how this alleviates the pressure artists often place on themselves, but also in how even the most mundane, arbitrary and oft-disposable pieces of text can be used or re-used for writing. For instance, postcards that have already been filled out by someone else. Grocery lists abandoned in shopping carts at the grocery store. Did the original author remember to get eggs, milk, and iceberg lettuce? Road-signs, cryptic and peeling, advertising long-folded businesses. Social media posts. Direct messages on dating apps. Is it all "fair game"? Has it always been, or is this a new development, considering our culture's rapid shift into a complete and utter lack of privacy? 

    

Writing about my body. Trying to feel, not dissociate. Hold myself there, in that present moment. Not surface until I can, at last, feel my lungs burning. It's too easy for me to write the thoughts, the blurry periphery of an experience, a feeling. But to write about the actual physical sensation, beyond a shallow description? Impossible. Was my body ever my home?

        My goal is to update this blog in these waning days of winter break. I'd like you to be able to access my upcoming readings, events and workshops, and I'd also like to create another page where you can check out Work/house (my thesis, chapbook, and online story).

        See you soon.