Hey everyone!

As you all know, I am attending NC State university for my master's degree in English. The spring semester ended last week, my grades are finally in, and the results are complete and utter happiness!

First of all, I got a VERY positive review from my mentor, which means that the school will not hesitate to let me have a whole class of freshman all to myself in the fall. Yay for professor Finken!

Secondly, I got a hard-earned A in my contemporary southern literature class. To be honest, this class was so enjoyable that it seemed easy to get the good grade, but reading 10 novels and writing 2 papers in one semester is definitely NOT easy!

Thirdly, and most happily, I got an A in Theory and Composition (AKA the 511th circle of hell). I have not ever worked harder in a course, but I honestly did not expect more than a B+ (for various reasons, including some less-than-tactful comments I made to the professor about the dullness of the subject).

Anyway, when you add it all up, that makes for a 4.0 semester! I haven't had a straight A semester since I was in community college, and let me tell you, graduate school is NOT community college!!! Needless to say, I am much more proud of myself than it is spiritually healthy to be, but I hope God will forgive me, I am just so excited! :-D

On that note, I'm off to begin my well-deserved summer break!

The Arrest of Motion

My chemicals are ceasing.

Dawn is the end of every night,

My eyes see the sun in the roses,

My mind sees the sun every night.

Blue ovals, water and wait.

My chemicals are racing,

Everything, everything and everything too

In the darkness that sleep is erasing.

My eyes see the sun in the roses,

My mind chasing dawn in the night-

My chemicals are waiting.

Water and wait, darkness and night.

Dawn is the despair of the night,

My mind and the roses are racing.

Everything, everything and everything too

Cacophony

The bitch has set up a camp for whores
inside my peaceful village
She clamps down and chews up
every slut for miles
Her infestation has even fucked the exterminator--
I don't know how she slips her syphillis-slicked existence
beyond my gates,
But she does it every time,
even when the moon is full.
Maybe if I finally just call her a cunt
She'll stop cumming on my wedding dress.
I'll burn her fucking camp down if I have to,
And when I blow away the charred remains
It will reveal the white bone
that is finally all mine.

Sonnet on Marriage

One by one we filed down the lighted aisle
And bound our hands in gold. We tried to hide
Behind the rehearsed lines, but all the while
Each step we took echoed a loud divide.
Took the tulips home, hung them bright side down
Here by our new door, here where light lies long.
One by one and red by red, petals fell down
And me by me and you by you, we went along.
But day by day came you by me then us,
To loose our hands and draw new lines and see
The lighted aisle, now memory and trust,
Where you by you began our you and me.
Each step we take now fills our life with sound,
A unison where we by we is found.

Without Ceremony

Except ourselves, we have no other prayer;
Our needs are sores upon our nakedness.
We do not have to name them; we are here.
And You who can make eyes can see no less.
We fall, not on our knees, but on our hearts,
A posture humbler far and more downcast;
While Father Pain instructs us in the arts
Of praying, hunger is the worthiest fast.
We find ourselves where tongues cannot wage war
On silence (farther, mystics never flew)
But on the common wings of what we are,
Borne on the wings of what we bear, toward You,
Oh Word, in whom our wordiness dissolves,
When we have not a prayer except ourselves.

by Vassar Miller

So, I'm back on an E. E. Cummings kick. (Did you know he hated that people started putting his name in all lower-case letters?) I go through this probably once or twice a year, where no poetry is good unless it twists and turns and delights like Cummings. I can imitate writing styles fairly well when I try, but I cannot write like Cummings. It makes me like him even more.

Anyway, the problem with liking Cummings as much as I do is that so many people just don't "get" him. I remember one time in particular when I asked a woman I know to read my favorite Cummings poem, and her response was a vague, blank smile that told me she didn't get it at all and was too embarrassed to say so. Either that or she didn't get it and therefore thought it was bad but didn't want to hurt my feelings by saying so.

In light of this, I am posting one of my favorite Cummings poems, and while I am not going to tell you what it means, I will give you a direction in which to begin. As you read, read slowly. Cummings likes to switch word order, so while it may not make sense at first, sometimes it is as simple as switching two words around in your head to make it sound "normal". Also, think about the meanings of simple words. For instance, a line from my favorite of his is, "her each here is such an everywhere." Think about the wonder and wideness of everywhere, and how her presence in the small space a person can occupy instills the same awe in him as something like the vastness of the sky can. Just try these two things and you may discover the treasure that is E. E. Cummings.

[somewhere i have never travelled]

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

BASICS

1.[first name] becky

2. [middle name] lee
3. [last name] finken

4. [age] 25

5. [DOB] 8-28-80

6. [height] 5'3ish
7. [shoe size] 8

8. [eye color] brown

9. [hair color] blondish

10.[weight] ... more than i'd like it to be

MUSIC

11.[rap or rock] both

12.[blink 182 or greenday] neither

13.[eminem or 50cent] eminem i suppose

14.[coheed cambria or bright eyes] no clue
15.[tbs or fob] huh?

ILL WRITE A BAND AND YOU GIVE ME A SONG FROM THEM

16.[greenday] time of your life
17.[Sugarcult] ???

18.[jimmy eat world] the middle
19.[hawthroneheights] ???

20.[PapaRoach] ???

21.[the blood brothers] ???

22.[HelloGOODbye] ???

23.[weezer] the sweater song!

24.[yellowcard] ???

25.[the killers] mr.brightside!!!! god, i love that song!

PICK WHAT MOVIE YOU LIKED BETTER

26.[independeceday/waroftheworlds] independece day for the Will Smith aspect!

27.[thritheen/meanGIRLS] mean girls

28.[the notebook/a walk to remember] the notebook made me weep like a little girl!

29.[NapolianDinamante/BillyMaddison] Billy Maddison

30.[freakyfriday/confessions of a teenage dramaqueen] i haven't seen either one

Favorites

40.[tee vee show] Grey's Anatomy and Big Brother are my 2 faves

41.[movie] american beauty

42.[artist] monet, if that's what you mean.

House of Silence by Philip Levine

The winter sun, golden and tired,
settles on the irregular army
of bottles. Outside the trucks
jostle toward the open road,
outside it's Saturday afternoon,
and young women in black pass by
arm in arm. This bar
is the house of silence, and we drink
to silence without raising our voices
in the old way. We drink to doors
that don't open, to the four walls
that dose their eyes, hands that run,
fingers that count change, toes
that add up to ten. Suspended
as we are between our business
and our rest, we feel the sudden peace
of wine and the agony of stale bread.
Columbus sailed from here 30 years ago
and never wrote home. On Saturdays
like this the phone still rings for him.