#w todd kaneko

[asoftepiloguemylove]

suddenly childhood ended and now i am supposed to know how to live

Franz Wright Entry In An Unknown Hand / Elena Ferrante (tr. Ann Goldstein) Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (via @luthienne) / Jenny Zhang How It Feels / Anna Kamienska Astonishments / unknown / Gabrielle Bates & Jennifer S. Cheng So We Must Meet Apart / W. Todd Kaneko The Day After / image; SZA Blind / Ethel Cain Dog Days / @darkerthanerebus / pinterest

[faecaribou]

Michael Afton Web Weave

Jukebox the Ghost, "Under My Skin" // Taylor Swift, "seven" // Elizabeth Jennings, "Song for a Birth or a Death" // the unsent project, to mom // Rick Riordan, Demigods and Magicians // Grail Quest #3: The Gateway of Doom // whispertothem00n, "The chain bound" // Anne Carson, "Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides" // W. Todd Kaneko, "THE DAY AFTER" // Audre Lorde, "Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde & Pat Parker" //

Third Michael Afton Web Weave ( 1 - 2 - 3)

[blizzardsuplex]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY POETRY PARTNER-IN-CRIME, @powderflower! I hope you enjoy your day, have this edit :) Thank you for the opportunity to learn a lot making this, and also for the privilege of being your friend! Let's talk more ;)

[text from the poem Heart of the Texas Tornado by W. Todd Kaneko. Images, from top to bottom: Tornado Over St. Paul by Julius Holm; A field of Blue Bonnets, late afternoon sunlight by Julian Onderdonk; Richard Humphreys - The Boxer by John Hoppner; The Goddess Melissa Reclining By A Beehive In A Landscape by the French School]

[cl0udbursting]

2022 reads!

since everyone is doing this, i figured i might as well join in! i track my reading through thestorygraph and aim for 30 books in a year, though i don't usually count shorter texts read for class or the plays i skim when looking for material in my acting classes. favorites in each category are bolded. feel free to ask questions on any of these!

FICTION: 

House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski

Detransition, Baby – Torrey Peters

Sula – Toni Morrison

The Infinite Noise – Lauren Shippen

A Neon Darkness – Lauren Shippen

Some Faraway Place – Lauren Shippen

Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn

Paradise – Toni Morrison

Gideon the Ninth (Reread) – Tamsyn Muir

Harrow the Ninth (Reread) – Tamsyn Muir

Sharp Objects – Gillian Flynn

A Psalm for the Wild-Built – Becky Chambers

This is How You Lose the Time War – Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid

A Room Called Earth – Madeleine Ryan 

Nona the Ninth – Tamsyn Muir

Frankenstein (Reread) – Mary Shelley

Hell Followed with Us – Andrew Joseph White

Dracula (through Dracula Daily) – Bram Stoker 

Eartheater – Dolores Reyes (trans. Julia Sanches)

My Heart is a Chainsaw – Stephen Graham Jones

Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 

NON-FICTION:

Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right – Angela Nagle

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Reread) – Alison Bechdel

POETRY: 

War of the Foxes – Richard Siken

Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology – W. Todd Kaneko & Amorak Huey

Life on Mars – Tracy K. Smith

Anglo-Saxon Judith – Unknown

Beowulf – Unknown

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – The Pearl Poet

PLAYS:

Cloud 9 – Caryl Churchill 

How I Learned to Drive – Paula Vogel

Mr. Burns and Other Plays – Anne Washburn

In the Other Room (The Vibrator Play) – Paula Vogel

Becky Shaw – Gina Gionfriddo

The Skriker – Caryl Churchill

The Tempest – William Shakespeare

This is Our Youth – Kenneth Lonergan

Bully – Amina Henry 

The Merchant of Venice (Reread) – William Shakespeare

The Marriage of Bette and Boo – Christopher Durang

Measure for Measure (Reread) – William Shakespeare

[genderdrift]

Thank you Ilanot Review...

And many thanks to Marcela Sulak, Jane Medved, Alison Powell, and W. Todd Kaneko for nominating my poem for Best of the Net!, “I Made a Roof out of the Wolf” in the Want Issue http://www.ilanotreview.com/want/poems-cassandra-whitaker/ 

[southernageless]

Blog Post 4 - Image and Metaphor

Happy Monday All!

When writing poetry, I tend to jot down all my ideas that I want to be included, slowly piece those ideas in an order, and lastly add in those words that really make the piece pop. That addition is usually imagery words or metaphors.

Amorak Huey and W. Todd Kaneko state that “the image is perhaps the building block of all successful writing” (p.69). I agree with this thoroughly. When I read a piece, if I can’t in someway see or feel what is happening, it is hard for me to follow. Imagery gives writing that extra dash of something that brings a piece to life.

The next is metaphors. I always struggled with these going through school. I know a simile used like it as and that was about all I could remember. Huey and Kaneko define it as “a comparison between two things in order to make a rhetorical point” (p. 83). I was never taught the rhetorical part of that, which is where my struggle was founded. Metaphors can be used to give words a deeper meaning. Instead of saying “life is a long journey with a lot of choices,” you could say “life is a Highway” because a Highway has exits and lane changes and stop and go and so on.

These elements of writing can make or break a poem. Overuse can make a piece seem forced or confusing. Underuse can drain a poem of its meaning. It is impute find a happy medium.

[bowlsola]

Blog Post 10: Reflection

As the semester winds down to an end, I can’t help but feel as though it went by rather quickly. If this course were extended another semester (and if I had room in my Spring schedule for it) I would not mind at all. I feel like I gained a lot from such a short amount of time in this class.

Throughout my college career, I have only attended two classes that centered on creative writing: one focused on creative fiction, and the other focused on creative nonfiction. With the exception of these two classes, my writing has exclusively centered around academic writing (research papers, analytical papers, etc.). It wasn’t until a few months ago that I reflected on this decided that I needed to branch out and explore different forms of writing, hence why I enrolled in this course.

I really enjoyed the process of writing poetry, more so than I though I would. Poetry, as an artform, has often alluded me; I’ve always been able to find appreciation in poetry, but struggled to break it down from an analytical standpoint. After finishing this course, I’ve come to realize that I enjoy writing poetry more than I do reading it. The most satisfying and rewarding part of the poetry writing process would have to be the revision stage. I loved going back and revisiting each poem, using the feedback received from my peers, and seeing my work from a different perspective. It is a very rewarding experience to look back on older work and see where it is lacking and reshaping and reimagining it.

In addition to practicing poetic writing, I also enjoyed reading about the art and craft of poetic writing. Amorak’s Huey and W. Todd Kaneko’s book Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology proved extremely useful and I plan on keeping it in my library to reference throughout years to come. It also features a lot of great contemporary poetry that I can use as mentor texts to see what works in modern poetic writing.

This was a very enjoyable class and I hope to continue practicing poetry long after this class is over.

[writernotwaiting]

Where the Sky Meets the Earth

by W Todd Kaneko

A man can’t die where there is no earth because there will be no place to bury him. His body is the sky and understands the language of birds. His body says the earth is made of everything that has fallen from Heaven while no one was looking. He promises to defy gravity and then return home. A man can’t reach for the sky and not feel he is falling. It goes on forever and the birds talk about the awesomeness of flight while the oxen labor in the fields, while the cows eat grass and dream of slaughter. A man can’t talk about flight because one day, there will be no sky, just the body covered in earth. And now the sky is empty of birds. And now the earth is covered in flowers.

[via poets.org]

[dayshines]

from Elegy for Mr. Spock by W. Todd Kaneko

[theomnipotentslimshady]

A man can’t die where there is no earth because there will be no place to bury him. His body is the sky and understands the language of birds. His body says the earth is made of everything that has fallen from Heaven while no one was looking. He promises to defy gravity and then return home. A man can’t reach for the sky and not feel he is falling. It goes on forever and the birds talk about the awesomeness of flight while the oxen labor in the fields, while the cows eat grass and dream of slaughter. A man can’t talk about flight because one day, there will be no sky, just the body covered in earth. And now the sky is empty of birds. And now the earth is covered in flowers.

“Where the Sky Meets the Earth” by W. Todd Kaneko

[missedstations]

“All the Things That Make Heaven and Earth” - W. Todd Kaneko

The soil, the livestock, our memories of the war, everything flourishing before it vanishes—breath severed clean from our bodies, our shadows sunset-deepened and woven with dirt, whole family trees succumbing to the blight. My grandfather returns to life, back still bent by history’s quiet yoke, his memories of camp forever decaying into the tiny garden behind my house where my father’s death is the soil, where silence blossoms now all year round. Or the soil is my grandfather eating darkness, the spectral memory of camp that feasts upon my father and his father, me and my son. There are no such things as ghosts—I tell my son this every evening as he gazes up the dark stairwell towards his room. What will be waiting for us when my boy is old enough to ask where he comes from? What will we find when our memories of camp finally molder back into the ground?

[lifeinpoetry]

My father died a year ago and I’m still writing poems to bring him back

to me—

— W. Todd Kaneko, from “Elegy for Mr. Spock," published in Split Lip

[andreablythe]

Culture Consumption: March & April 2022

Culture Consumption: March & April 2022

Hoo, boy. Time slipped right by me. I was planning to do my Culture Consumption for March on time, but then the next thing I knew it was April. In addition to putting two months together, I’ve done a lot media consumption over the past two months — which means I’ve got a huge stack of things to talk about. I’ll try to move through it all as quickly as I can. If I have the wherewithal, I’ll try to…

[motherground]

Where the Sky Meets the Earth

A man can’t die where there is no earth because there will be no place to bury him. His body is the sky and understands the language of birds. His body says the earth is made of everything that has fallen from Heaven while no one was looking. He promises to defy gravity and then return home. A man can’t reach for the sky and not feel he is falling. It goes on forever and the birds talk about the awesomeness of flight while the oxen labor in the fields, while the cows eat grass and dream of slaughter. A man can’t talk about flight because one day, there will be no sky, just the body covered in earth. And now the sky is empty of birds. And now the earth is covered in flowers.

-- w. todd kaneko

[slateblueearthbelow]

A man can’t die where there is no earth because there will be no place to bury him. His body is the sky and understands the language of birds. His body says the earth is made of everything that has fallen from Heaven while no one was looking. He promises to defy gravity and then return home. A man can’t reach for the sky and not feel he is falling. It goes on forever and the birds talk about the awesomeness of flight while the oxen labor in the fields, while the cows eat grass and dream of slaughter. A man can’t talk about flight because one day, there will be no sky, just the body covered in earth. And now the sky is empty of birds. And now the earth is covered in flowers.

Where the Sky Meets the Earth | W. Todd Kaneko

[gregsantospoet]

Thank you to @toddkaneko for referencing “Hulk Smash!” in this essay about diction in poetry alongside @maggiesmithpoet’s outstanding and viral poem “Good Bones” in the new book The Strategic Poet: Honing the Craft (Terrapin Books, 2021) edited by Diane Lockward. Hulk is humbled, honoured, and grateful. 💚 Photo credit: W. Todd Kaneko. . . . #gregsantos #hulksmash #toddkaneko #maggiesmithpoet #dianelockward #poetry #poetrycraft #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity https://www.instagram.com/p/CVB2TicN1WG_ljLfWHTDA0VR1u5TW4vEm8XJFY0/?utm_medium=tumblr