impressions: howl.

alan Ginsburg starts his three part phenomenal poem, with a dedication  For Carl Solomon. 
alan Ginsburg who was in a mental institution as an alternative to jail met carl solomon there, who was at the time, receiving shock therapy and going through excruciating conditions.
the two became friends and bonded on their love of literature and hatred towards the establishment and common fears and loss.
Ginsburg, though speaking to solomon in some of the poe howl, I think didnot direct it all to solomon.
first, I am not going to analyze the poem because I think poems shouldn't be analyzed and even if they should they surely shouldn't be by someone like me.
and so this is merely an impression of this poem made me feel:
it started off by describing, in hyperboled mania the terrifying human condition of those driven by madness and mania and it didn't seem like he spoke of them as mad men, but merely as men.

"who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or
purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and
endless balls"
"who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before
the machinery of other skeletons"
"who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside
of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next
decade"
in explicit details and extremely unique and grasping style Ginsburg painted a portrit of the gutters of society, the voyage of everyday life, giving a voice to his own terrifying experiences, and how ones own mind, own people, could drive them to utter, incontrolable chaos.
and carl, much like him, much like everyone of equivalent uniqueness and slight difference, had to go through utter hell.
Ginsburg was a homosexual liberal in the 50s who wanted to experience life and instead had to be in hiding,  could only be released for the mental institution if he were 'not be gay anymore' carl was an extremely (like Ginsburg) sensitive, intelectual radically thinking writer, both absolute misfits of society had t succumb to the feelings described in this poem, to 'howl' as Ginsburg pointed "who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waiving genitals and manuscripts"as a cry of injustice.
at the end of the poem, which was my personal favorite part, due to its overruling melancholia and sorrow, immensely well put metaphors and smilies, visual language that forces you into the situation, Ginsburg adresses carl about rockland, the mental institution where they both were:
"ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the
total animal soup of time--"
"Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother"
"I'm with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under
our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
 I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col-
lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're
free night and won't let us sleep "
howl was, and is one of the greatest poems of the 20th century and has been compared to walt whitman's  field of grass.
I personally saw a great resemblance to the wasteland, in its spot on, grim description of darker times, in a long avant guard pattern that kept people, years and ears later, wondering about the meaning behind the genius;s masterpiece.

impressions: the sunset limited.

"black: what. we done opened a can of worm here? what you got against being happy?
white: it's contrary to the human condition"
somewhere in the ghettos of new york cities is an apartment rather small and low classed, sits around a table a rural folky black man and a well educated white professor, conversing back and forth some of life's ultimate questions, pulling each other backward and forward into the others firmly engrossed belief.
this play (or novel in a dramatic form as the critiques like to say) was deeply moving chiefly for the reason:
it seemed like an internal monologe.
the monologe we all get when questioning the world, questioning the purpose of existence, questioning the actual possibility of genuin happiness or if it is merely built on how many illusions you could rap your self with.
while: a professor of darkness, finds himself in desire of death, of end, and peace and quite and apocalypse to all things as disgusting and pointless as dreams and hopes.
black: a folksy seemingly simpleton who has found Jesus in the very roughness of prison violence.
and so on their dialoge goes n to represent universal thoughts in the most poetic of language and word formation.
Cormac Mcarthy as always, keeps me intrigued and gives me literature that always leaves me displaced.
"if people saw the world for what it truly is. saw their lives for what they truly are. without dreams or illusions. I dont believe they could offer the first reason why they should not elect to die as soon as possible."

impressions: Franny and Zooey.

"god instructs the heart, not by ideas but by pains and contradictions"
-de causadde
franny and zooey, much like most of salingers work, was plot-less, unconventional , controversial , and downright brilliant .
its one of the many artistic things that cant be ignored at all, you either deeply love it or just loath it.
it is composed of two short storis, franny, and zooey.
I did enjoy zooey more than franny but franny was a lovely introduction to zooey.
it more than anything, in the form of grasping dialoge, present to you a series of difficult question and undeniable points, represented by the glass family, a famly of geniuses.
literally, sky high intelligent quotation, child prodigy, geniuses. who represent to you the world from the perspective of someone intellectually superior.
I think, personally, that yes, it is much more difficult to bare the little flaws of  society when you are very intelegnt, but, most of all, we all feel that, we all see what franny sees in peoples inflated ego, wanna be attitudes, and endless desire to obtain certin 'tressures'.
"I mean treasure is treasure, for haven's sake. what's the differance wither the treasure is money,or property, or even culture, or even plain knowledg? it all seemed exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping and-and it still does! sometimes I think that knowledge- and it knwoledge for knowledg's sake,anyway- is the worst of all, the least excusable, certainly."
and its most frustrating, to want endless things, and to stop and ask our selves, why we even want them.
franny, after being over exposed to the self-superior sense of higher education and the liberal artistic beliefs of the english department, repels from the idea of people basing their whole lives on being constantly admired.
she loathed their ways of dressing and speaking and assuming self worth for the lates book they have read.
she turns to a less known book about a pilgram who travels his country looking for a scholar who would explain to him what does it mean in the bible when it says "pray without ceasing".
franny becomes so incanted and gripped by this book, this book that hold a massage interlay different from the usual literature she is exposed to, the endless babble about love and depression and such things.
the pilgram's books massage was nothing but finding inner peace through this "jesus prayer" for it to be said over and over again until it becomes part of the person.
"the starters tells the pilgrim that if you keep saying that prayer over and over and over again-then eventually what happens, the prayer becomes self-active. something happens after a while. I dont know what, but something happens, and then you're actually praying without ceasing. which has a really tremendous, mystical effect on you'r whole outlook. I mean that's the whole point it, for more or less. I mean you do it to purify your whole outlook and get a new conception of what everything is about."
says franny, insecurly, with manufactured disintrest to lane (her boyfriend), who is much like them all, very 'english department'.
the book later on goes to show you the dark and tragic, the mysterious life of the glass family, Seymour who at 31 killed himself, leaving a Haiku that says " the little girl on the plane/ who turned her dolls hed around/to look at me" and then their is buddy, the self-isolating writer, there is bo bo and the twins and zooey and franny.
over and over, it speaks of the struggles anyone remotely different faces with fitting in, with finding a purpose with understand life.
it channels the ideas of why is it that we want knowledge or society, or culture or even religion.
why?
after pages and pages of raw, unhindered dialoge so realistic and approachable, after living the struggles of zooey and franny in their attempted communication of separate points of views.
we collaboratly come to the realization that:
despite how ugly things and society and egos and pretense, despite their illusion and homeliness, despite the very despicable feeling they stir.
they exist, and we are all a part of it.
I can pretend to write this review cool-ly like most other reviews but I wont.
this book was very very moving to me personally, I also face those who make me wonder why I would ever pursue anything in the arts or attempt to obtain knowledge, they make me wonder why is it so wonderful when it is exclusively being exploited for self-indulging reasons and sheer ego inflation.
"I am not afraid to compete.its just the opposi. dont you see that? I am afraid I will compete- thats what scares me. thats why I quit the theater department. just because I am so horribly conditioned to accept everybody els's values, and just because I like applaus and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I am sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I am sick of myself and everybody els that wants to make a splash"
zooey, who is just as intelligent as franny, just as good-looking as franny, and has had the same uprbining as franny, who also is an actor, serves as a great adviser to her predicament, having gone through the exact same situation of repellent, and confusion tells her, who has against her advise secretly atended a play if hers, tells her, that she is very talented, and that if she is so intent, to be 'god's actress' that 'what could be prettier'
(I will keep my personal beliefs out of this, but) we have all at one point or another thought of god, but I dont think this was the actual morral of this book, franny glass wasn't looking for god she was looking for peace and content, and not having to live her life on the audience's applause and admiration, especially an audience she dosent like.
the idea is, to be peaceful and content, is to do what one loves regardless, always regardless. to believe that despite objects and peples obvious flaws, its all beautiful, regardless.
"but I'l tell you a terrible secret-Are you listening to me? there isnt anyone out there who isnt Seymour's fat lady. that includes your professer Tupper,buddy. and all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's fat lady. dont you see that? dont you know that goddamn secret yet? and dont you know-listen to me now-dont you know who that fat lady really is?...ah, buddy. ah, buddy. it;s christ himself, christ himself buddy."

My top 10 favorite poems (no specific order)

-annabell lee (edgar allen poe)

-art one (elizabith bishop)

-when you are old (w.b.yeats)

-the love song of j.alfred prufrock (t.s.eliot)

-love letter written in a burning room (anne sexton)

-bluebird (charels Bukowski)

-there is pleasure in the pathless woods (lord byron)

-the rood not taken (robert frost)

- a song to my self (whalt Whitman)

impression: a good scent from a strange mountain.

"I read this now while I am hidden in the storage shack, invisible, socked with sweat like it's that time in saigon between the dry season and the rainy season, and I know my father will be here soon. the lawn mower s over there in the corner and this morning he got up and said that it was going to be hot today, that there were no clouds in the sky and that he was going to have to mow the lawn. when he opens the door, I will let him see me here, and I will ask him to talk to me like in these letters, like when he was so angry with some stranger that he knew what to say."-robert olen butler a good scent from a strange mountain.

the ripping of a culture, a country and the mash up of two will almost defiantly result in a dramatic and perhaps disastrous aftermath.
throw in a war, the russians, the communists, the total opposite upbringing of the westerns and the easterns and you get a very beautiful portrayal of what it would be like, to have to leave you'r home and adapt to a new life along with all the other day to day obstacles one faces.
this book was a representation of the Vietnamese aftermath and how people handeld that, be it the americans or the Vietnamese, yes.
but this is book is about so much more.
it almost never limits its self to the issues of politics rather life at large and how politics can merger it's self within it.
it channels issues of jealousy, infidelity, sexism, racism, couple struggles, understanding ones self and ones place in society.
above all it does it in such a soft little whisper of a way.
its so embalming and sweet, enriching and fulfilling, a very unique experience.
one of the very few books that combines being critically acclaimed, a light read, and a life companion.
olen butler is one of my favorite authors who truly deserved a pulitzer prize for his subtly wonderful work.
"I am nearly one hundred years old, but I can still read a man's face, perhaps better than I ever have. I sit in the overstuffed chair in my living room and I receive these vistors and I want these people, even the dull-witted and insincere ones-  please excuse an old man's ill temper for calling them that- I want them all to be good with one another."

a list.

here is a list of some of my favorite authors, poets, from new found to classic and so on:
- robert olen butler
- j.d.salinger
-t.s.eliot
- Elizabeth bishop
-steven wallace
-ann sexton
- jeffery eguinaides
-raymond carver
-angus wilson
-grace paely
-jane austen
-Charles buckowski
-harold brodkey
- guy de mupessent
- f. scott Fitzgerald
- cormac mcarthy
- william carlos williams
-john keats
- (obviously) william shakespear
-william blake
-willaim wordsworth
-samuel Coldreg
-samuel beckitt
-sara Tisdale ( way underrated)
-

impressions : the death notebook.

"it makes me laugh
to see woman in this condition
it makes me laugh for america and new york city
when you'r hands are cut off
and no one answers the phone"
 death is to ann sexton, in this thin poetry volume, much larger and vaster and more frequent then the mere process of decaying and ceasing to be, to ann, a clinically depressed poet, a women deprived of her rights, the function of everyday living, the very stale motions and actions taken, are death it's self.
"once upon a time we were all born,
popped out like jelly rolls
forgetting our fishdom
the pleasuring seas
the country of comfort
spanked into the oxygens of death,
good morning life, we say when we wake,
hail mary coffe toast
and we americans take juice
a liquid sun going down
good morning life.
to wake up is to be born.
to brush your teeth is to be alive.
to make a bowl movement is also desirable.
la de dah,
it's all routine"
ann sexton, being the free spirited, feminist, intellectual she was, was doomed for her mother's life of the 1960s rural suburbs,  terrifying as it is, to have children and a household, and a kitchen when all that is on her mind, is death and poetry, the poetry of death, and the death of poetry.
"if my mother had lived to see it
she would have put a WANTED sign up in the post office
for the black, the red, the blue I'v worn.
still, it would be perfectly fine with me
to die like a nice girl
smelling of clorox and duz.
being sixteen-in the pants
I would die full of question."
once more, she was clearly oppressed, 60's society patronising her for her sexuality, assuming she is to be a housewife, a cleansed, pure unpromiscuous housewife.
with a much, much forgotten life.
bu ann was anything but.
sexton had had a very disturbed history with mental illness and eventually ended her own life.
as many other poets and artist, has drawn a beautiful, melancholy, poetic, perhaps distraught picture of death as a sort of salvation.
despite my disagreeing with so many things she believes (our religious beliefs for one)
I believe i total unbiasedness when it comes to jugging a work of art.
this was defiantly beautiful in its accurate, romantic portrayal of sexual oppression, and exploration of possibilities of life and death.
at times even, stark, pure anger.
"give me some tomato aspic, helen!
I do not want to be alone"