Tag: Elizabeth Bishop

Personal Stories

Moving from One City to Another: LA to San Diego

Right now, I’m sitting in the office at the close of the day, typing this blog post, because I don’t have Internet in my new place yet. (I’m in that weird limbo period of moving when nothing is really set up yet except for the bed I sleep in.) Currently, I’m looking out a window that is overlooking downtown Ocean Beach, San Diego, and I can smell patchouli seeping into my window from the hostel down the street. Once the wind blows that away, I can smell the ocean, which is almost 500 feet away. Soon I will drive to my new apartment. Everything, right now, is new to me, and even the slamming of a glass door and the sounds of guitar music on the street below are a part of a new experience.

Design By Joseph Lapin. But not the photo.
Design By Joseph Lapin. But not the photo.

What I’m trying to say is that moving is strange. One moment I live in one city and know a bunch of people, then I move to another city and know others. Moving is an art that I’ve learned to master. Since I was 17-years old, I’ve lived in Detroit, Europe (for a small amount of time), Miami, Central Florida, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Huntington Beach, Massachusetts, and every time I move, I learn something new about myself and the skill of packing up. Here are some of the things that I have learned while moving.

What is Lost is Often Found

I lose things. It’s one of my biggest flaws. When I was in college, I used to leave my cell phone in restaurants and airports, and they wold never be found again, and sometimes I get lost driving home because I’m too deep in thought or enjoying a piece of music. Now hold on, I’m not saying I’m a loser; I’m just saying that I’ve misplaced some things over the years. If you’ve read Elizabeth’s Bishop’s famous poem “One Art,” then you know “the art of losing isn’t hard to master,” and it’s something that most people do all their lives. Obviously, losing people and pets will never be easy, but as long as I know that my home isn’t permanent, then I’m not worried about losing, because whenever I move, I’ll find the object I was looking for and say, “So that’s where you’ve been this whole time.” I can’t even begin to tell you about all the Mac power chords and books that I’ve found once I started moving boxes around. I’ve come to understand that most possessions, well, they’ll turn up one way or the other. Continue reading “Moving from One City to Another: LA to San Diego” →

Writing

Want to Hear a New Poem? Plus Two New Pieces Published

When I was at FIU completing my MFA, I was taking a poetry class, and we were studying “The Masters” of modern poetry.  Our professor hand selected each one of the masters, which included Theodore Roethke, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, Frank O’Hara, and a couple of contemporaries influenced by these poets.  Well, I learned a lot from this class, but what I got most out of the class was our exercises on imitation.  I saw the process the same as repainting a famous image.  Also, in the class, I found out that Bishop and O’Hara are both from Worcester County — my hometown.

So one of the poems I chose to imitate was Elizabeth Bishop’s, “In the Waiting Room.”  Well, the first line goes, “In Worcester, Massachusetts.”  When I read that, I nearly lost my mind.  I grew up in Worcester County.  And the poem was beautiful.  It was about a moment of awareness, of understanding the complexities of normalcy and horror, and I knew I wanted to try to imitate Bishop.  So I wrote, “In World History Class” — my tribute to Elizabeth Bishop.  That’s the poem above.  Hope you’ll like it.  I’ve been working on it for a couple years, and now I’m looking to try and publish it.

Also, yesterday I had two new pieces come out at the OC Weekly.  Here they are: Flying Lotus Concert Review and Zombies Take Over Long Beach.

One more thing: I saw this hilarious video from the Florida/Georgia game this weekend.  It’s of Coach Muschamp freaking out on his tight end.  He’s such a spaz.  Dan Le Batard called him “The World’s Angriest Ventriloquist.”  Check it out.