My critical eye is closed, for now.

The two previous blogs were fairly ambitious. I engaged in some tertiary texts and made an argument or two--albeit creatively. I would likely classify those entries, if the necessity presented itself, as critical responses.

Enough of that, though.

While it has taken away the time and desire to build up the family blog in general, the writing I'm being asked to do in graduate classes is purely criticism. It is all argument, all the time. Thus far this semester, it has consisted of weekly prompt addresses (roughly three pages, on average), a response paper (nearly four), and the continual building of an MA thesis (stalling around page eight, currently).

Always, I am arguing.

Aside from the data spawning my thesis, my arguing is focused on the work of two distinctly prolific writers: Shakespeare and William Carlos Williams. Since enough has been said on the former--and since I'm slogging my way through an undergrad course to fulfill a requirement, let me address a few things about Mr. Williams.

The man is a machine (he often writes of cars and loved his typewriter, ironically). He wrote in all genres and forms throughout the span of his life, and did so while tending to and entertaining a family. Oh, and did I mention he was a full-time practicing pediatrician? He admits, in his quite funny and digestible autobiography, he'd typically come home late after work, head full of notes and thoughts, then bang out eight or ten pages before bed. It's somewhat frustrating to read of his nonchalance with this habit, actually.

If you're not familiar with Williams, as I wasn't upon registering for the course, you'll enjoy knowing he hung with a talented crowd. He did not leave with the other expats during the first War, though he visited them. He spent considerable time with Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, E.E. Cummings, Gertrude Stein, and many others. He hated the fact that T.S. Eliot gave the poem "back to the academics," and considered his famous The Waste Land "[T]he great catastrophe to our letters."

If you do know Williams, hopefully you know more than the one about the wheel barrow, the one about the plums, or the one about the fire engine. If not, seek context. I beg you.

I enjoy where I find my head after reading his work, regardless of genre. There's play, humor, and ambition in the autobiography. The poetry and prose in his early books is a departure from the familiar. It's imaginative; his unabashed veracity, inspiring.

It's enough to be critical for the class. But here--here, there can be fun. Here's some of what I'm making from these thoughts.

River there placid,
friend to winter on
calm, clear, brisk
days of February--
Me here
on this levy
in jog, between
your stillness
and the workers flooding
the freeway, whose
rumble and
roll and
rhythm
have replaced you.

----

she has folded the magazine pages
back upon themselves to better
facilitate her reading--
the glossy stack curls from the
spine and creates
from this angle
the shape of a heart.
and the pages tell
the story of a
war.

----

in seeking the
poetics of the run i see
instead webs
fled by spiders
desiring simpler means
of survival. bound up
in rhythm too
s t e a d y
for word,
i submit

to be lost in breathing.

----

drowning steady hums
from fixtures in my kitchen
the teapot whistles