Blahg...

So I haven't composed a blog for a long time. In fact it's been 13 days. On my other blog it's been since Jan. 25th. Even in my classes I've noticed that I just haven't been devoting the same strong effort that I have in the past. Sometimes in the middle of class my mind wanders away. This is pretty embarrassing. In my last semester here at MSU I was hoping to stay motivated and avoid that dreaded senioritis that plagues so many students. It seems that I may be infected...

Wait! Don't give up hope for me yet! There has been a silver lining to the dark cloud of my motivation. I have recently diagnosed the site of my microscopic infection-- and I believe it is stemming from Eliot's Four Quartets. Ever since we began to look at the poems I have felt an overwhelming inspiration take over my mind. I began a poem largely inspired/stolen from Eliot and now it has taken over my life. Whether or not the poem is going to be "good" doesn't matter. It's just important to know that it is a life-drain.

The premises of the poem is rather simple. Two people, you and I, began in a garden hedged by two rivers (I won't tell you which two but leave it to you to figure out) and each walks in an opposite direction around the world. You walk east and I walk west. The length of the trip takes approximately 24 hours-- they leave at noon on one day and arrive back at the same place at noon the next day. However to put the poem in such a simple box would, I think, damn it to a simplicity that it seeks to go beyond. You'll see what I mean when it's done and you have read it.

This blog doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the topics of either class (I'm posting this blog on each class blog). I have mentioned that I'm inspired by Eliot's Four Quartets. Maybe that's where the thoughtfulness is-- tying my experience in writing to Eliot's. However, I don't really want to do that. I want this post to stand on it's own legs whatever they may be, I'm not really sure. I can even know that it won't come to some tidy conclusion after this (it's a little messy). I can look over the whole apology/justification/self-pity/thing because this is the paragraph I'm writing last even though there are two that follow it (have you ever wondered what authors composed first and last and in the middle or have you always thought they were writing the book as you read it?) In fact these are the last words I'm typing; the last period of the author falls in the middle.

In my past experiences with writing poetry that I really devoted time to it has been a trying process. It isn't even that I want to be writing but that I feel I HAVE to. I don't feel inspired to write all the time but when I do feel inspired, like in class, the poem just takes over. It's like having selective mono towards other literature pursuits. Another way to think of it is like a big sponge-- it just sucks up all the motivation that comes along when it comes along. This poem is no different... perhaps it is even worse.

I hope to finish writing it soon or, at least, get it to a point where the changes are so precise that I'm no longer under the burden of the large construction. Recently I finished one of the poems four sections-- a relatively large achievement considering it totals about 1/3 of the poem. When I get it done I will try to post it on the blog (the structure might be kind of hard to format in the blog... I'll probably have to give it some sort of preface). Odds are some of you won't like it or think it's all that poetic or whatever. Hell, I'm not sure whether or not I will like it. But, when it's done, at least I will be able to move on my life.