Eng 3409 Week 3

Practice One:

Immediately I’m hit by the panel with the children playing with the hijabs. I can hear the children giggling and arguing. I’m transported to playgrounds of my youth. Also, the panel with Mom’s sunglasses and how they’re recontextualized in just a few frames from these symbols of justice and freedom to something closer to shame and hiding. The image of the beard in the panels about closing schools is also very arresting. I noticed that many of the faces have expressive mouths for the minimal line usage, so it’s quite a contrast when there is just that block of black obscuring the mouth. Almost as if he no longer really has his own voice. Just a parrot for the state.

Practice Two:

I’m seeing the poems as big as hills laying haphazardly along the 5. A route I drove often. The tower of babel image is haunting. As if that’s what’s left after god smote us to obscurity, but conversely the image of the chorus of voices is stirring. I see the trees, the cold shoulders of lovers that don’t cut the mustard, willow trees lapping at the river of words…quite beautiful.

Practice Four:

Feels like OG is crystalizing a moment for herself. Inspired by her grief after the move and the loss of the pooch. There is no mention of the move and for this version of OG in the memoir it hasn’t happened yet. We just get to bask in that grief for a while. Enjoy the cigarette and whatever feelings (a mild disdain?) she has for this neighbor. We get to see and smell the flowers she grew so effortlessly and kind of commiserate in the wilting of the neighbor’s crop.

I enjoyed her focus on the melancholic images. Makes the splashes of color and the eventual bird catharsis hit harder, feel brighter. Then just allowing the feeling and the moment direct the word choice and where it went. What was happening was really none of the neighbor’s business, but we’re wrestling with making a connection the whole time until birds broke the doom and gloom thinking.