Poetics

I'm at the language fair now, desperately trying to upload and scan and post and read, all while people read over my shoulder. Here we have a poem about poetry, which is rather appropriate for today. I'm still not sure whether I'm going to the performance, or the open mic tonight because funding is still complicated. Anywho, today's cookie goes to the first person who can tell me the name of a poem, by one of the poets I mention in this poem.

Oda

"Oda a Los Calcetines"

I have blogged about this poem before, but last time it was in despair, now I have a message of hope.

When I began this process I struggled over the memorization. I had a mere two weeks to get this poem presentable. It had been nearly a week and I was barely halfway through the poem. But I kept on trying, knowing that I had a responsibility as a poet to do this poem justice. Soon I had the poem memorized, and recited to my teacher. She handed me back my poem, with numerous words highlighted. I have always thought I have excellent Spanish pronunciation, but I was ignoring accents, accenting the wrong syllables, and pronouncing "z"s with the English sound, instead of the "s" Spanish pronunciation. How could I have gone through four years of Spanish not saying "sapatos"?

But again I pushed forward, and corrected my mistakes, and soon had the poem memorized with the correct pronunciation. On Tuesday after school, I performed the poem for my teacher and one other teacher. I appreciated the slightly larger audience, and the other teacher gave me some good advice on pacing. By this point I was brimming with confidence. I did the poem perfectly when walking to and from school, and so on Wednesday I performed it for my Spanish class.

I rocked it. I owned the class. All the other's reciting poetry were boring, and barely had it memorized. I don't mean to be mean, but they only had fifty words, while I had 200. I had fifty words of my poem in the first two days. I was doing excellently, but then I got near the end, and my mind went blank. What was the next line? It was in my head, but I couldn't get it to come out of my mouth. My teacher refused to prompt me, because they wouldn't at the language fair. I thought for a bit and repeated some lines, and soon figured it out and was on my way. I finished the poem, and was complimented but I felt like I had failed.

I took a look at the stanza that I couldn't remember and figured out why it refused to come into my mind. I didn't know why it was there. It made no sense why the poet would have put in those lines. So I read the English translation, and figured it out. Not only did it help me to get it memorized, but it also improved the quality of the performance.

The next day in class I recited it, and this time I really rocked it. I went all the way through without messing up. I was still pronouncing the z wrong in one of the words, but it was minor. I'm working on fixing it as we speak. That afternoon I met at my teacher's classroom to practice some more. She asked if I wanted an audience again, and I said "sure, if you can round one up"

Five minutes later she returned with nine or ten teachers, and the principal. Most of these teachers knew little to no Spanish. But they seemed to enjoy themselves. They could tell it was a good recitation. After I finished, one of the teacher came up to me and asked me about the poem. It had already been mentioned that the title was "Ode to my Socks" this is our conversation.

Her: "So did he like his socks or not?"
Me: "He liked his socks, but his feet were bad, compared to the socks, his feet paracieron inaceptables, they seemed unacceptable."

I never intended to use the Spanish from the poem, but that was the easiest and most natural way to describe it. I am beginning to think in Spanish. Thus is the power of poetry. I wish I had got the chance to do this as a beginner to the language.

Today I am doing the poem for another of my teacher's classes. I'm not worried. Then the language fair is tomorrow. This should be fun.

Today's cookie goes to the person who can tell me who wrote this poem.

Festival

Below is the information, for Sunday's slam. There are also some things happening Saturday, which are not important enough for their own post, but I will mention them here. I am competing in the Southern Arizona Language Fair. So if anyone wants to come to the UofA to listen to me recite a Spanish poem, let me know and I'll give you further details. Saturday night there are two potential events. One of them is a performance at the Tucson Poetry Festival, by a few different awesome poets. But it costs ten dollars to get in, which is great price, but I don't have that money right now.

So if that event doesn't happen, I will be going to the Tucson Premier Open Mic. I am sure that it is actually happening this time. I don't know anything about it, other than what is on the Myspace paged linked above. If it turns out to be awesome I will start promoting it, and attending when I can. There is also an event Sunday, morning, but I am still trying to figure out what it is, so I will post details later. Until then here is the details for Sunday's slam. By the way, I will be reading something new there.



Hey y'all,

You're going to the Tucson Poetry Festival this weekend, aren't you? I figured you were. And since you're already planning to be there, I know there's no way you would miss the FREE, OPEN SLAM with a $100 PRIZE!

Sunday, April 13, 2008
8:00 pm (show up early to get on the list--wait, you'll already be there watching the rest of the Festival)
THE HISTORIC Y, 300 E University (just west of 4th Ave, near Epic Cafe)
Hosted by Lindsay Miller

Did I mention the $100 PRIZE, donated by none other than the lovely, talented, and generous Jo, of Bentley's Coffee fame? And hey, since we're not gonna be at Bentley's this weekend, why not stop by there this week if you have time for a cup of coffee? They are wonderful and supportive to us, so let's show the same love to them.

This is the LAST qualifying slam for the 2008 Slam-Off. Poet standings to follow in a separate e-mail.

See you Sunday! It's gonna be a big one, so bring your friend, bring your loved ones, bring your enemies and we'll make them judge.

Lindsay

Daffodils

There is no cookie today, only a poem. Not my poem, just me reading someone else's.

Conspiracy

As promised I have recorded another one of my poems, and am posting it for your enjoyment. This poem is also in the playlist, that you can access by clicking on "Recordings" to your left. Today's cookie goes to the person who can tell me what the natural enemy of the subject of this poem is. (Yes, there is a right answer to this one)

Edit: The poem that was originally here is an older version that is not as good. The newer version can be found here.

Bread

As promised I bring you yet another ninja comic. This time the entire post is dedicated to it, instead of being buried amidst old men, and the like. If you need help translating my scratch, let me know.



I have decided to make a recent running joke, into a somewhat continuous thing, in the hopes of garnering more comments to feed my inflated ego. But don't worry, there is something in it for you. I am giving out cookies. Virtual cookies, but nonetheless, cookies. People who get them will get recognized in a later post. Today's cookie is for the person who can come up with the best explanation for the last frame of today's comic.

Retreat

I have just returned from Lake Havasu, from the last retreat that I will take with my youth group. Fun times were had by all, but I didn't get to read any of my poems. Oh well, I'll survive. I have a slam in a week, so I shall just have to wait until then. I will post details about that event when I get some more details on it. I will try to post another recording of a poem sometime soon. There should be another Ninja Comic tommorow as I plan to go to the library, so I can use their scanners. I also have plans for another series of posts, but I think I will wait until Blogger adds scheduled posting. That will make these series, much easier. In other news I intend to buy a domain name soon for this blog. I may build a website later, but for now I will just host this blog at www.faldwin.com or maybe www.faldwinthebard.com. What do you all think?

L

The title is the roman numeral for the number 50 (It is also the alias of a brilliant, international detective. If you know who I'm talking about, cookies for you! But I digress) The reason that fifty is important is because this is my 50th blog post. *CONFETTI*

But instead of boring you with my words I will give you this quote that I got by googling "50 funny" and choosing the first result.

“In at least one way we are atypical bloggers. That’s because we just keep on posting. The typical blogger, like most people who go on diets and budgets, quits after a few months, weeks, or in many cases, days.” (Stephen J. Dubner)

Time

Yet another of my mortal enemies.
This afternoon I set out to record a Spanish poem, so that I could make it into a video for spanish class. I have very good Spanish pronounciation, and still after an hour of trying I couldn't get through the poem without mispronouncing any words. So I took a break. When I came back I thought I made it through the entire poem without messing up, but then when I listened to it I discovered I pronounced "oro" like "ora" At this point I gave up, and made to head off to the library.

Even though I couldn't make my video for spanish, I could at least do some other stuff, like work on my dad's website, scan a ninja comic or two, and perhaps finally start working on my teacher's website. But as I am about to head off my mom informs me that I must buy cheese, for the retreat this weekend that will keep me from a functional computer until Monday afternoon. I still have math homework, and I still have to memorize that poem for Spanish that I can't pronouce right.

I've put a great amount of effort into avoiding this kind of schedule overload, and yet it is happening. I blame society's obsession with time.

Short

Yes, this really is the whole post.

Threesome

Because I am not really able to commit to anything, I have decided, instead of the traditional, one subject per post, this post will be about three, totally unrelated things.

The first topic is yet another one of shame. Normally the last Saturday of the month would also be the fourth Saturday. But this weekend it was the fifth Saturday. You might wonder why this is a topic of shame. If you are not wondering, than I am incredibly impressed. Cookies for you! (virtual ones) For those of you cookieless people still in the dark, I will explain.

The Tucson Premiere Open Mic is held on the second and fourth Saturday of the month. Thinking that this past Saturday was the fourth Saturday, I showed up planning to read poetry and found the place nearly abandoned. Confused, I hiked back to the library (a five minute walk) and checked the website. The event was still being held on the second and fourth Saturday. Some part of me must have realized that, because I looked for a calendar online, and soon found that it was indeed the fifth Saturday of the month. We need to go back to a lunar calendar. All the months have the same number of days. It would simplify things greatly.

Our second topic is the one that I mentioned before. Ninja Comics! As promised, here is yet another ninja comic. If people have difficulty reading my chicken scratch I will gladly translate.



Now we move on to the third and final subject of the day. This was an image created by an online generator. I think I look pretty good as an old guy, don't you think?

The Old Timer’s Machine

Have a go, and see what you look like when you’re old

Shame

Once more I have neglected to cater to the needs of audience. Once more I have failed to provide a recording of one of my poems. I realize this is the third week in a row, but their is good news. I don't have any other recordings available to post. This means that next Saturday I will have something original to post. Until then here is a recording of me reading, "Danse Russe" by William Carlos Williams.

Realistic

Two thing happened recently that inspired this post. The first is the meltdown of the family computer. Because we have little money and my brother has access to a computer teacher willing to help us, we decided we would simply buy all the parts we needed and save a whole lot of money. Which we did. But in the process I learned a great deal about computer hardware. Trying to decipher all the massive lists of specs to figure out if all the parts you just chose will work with each other is a complicated task. But I found it to be quite enjoyable. (Yes I am a computer nerd, it says so in my profile to the left)

The other is a post I did recently entitled "Dream" in it I maxed out all the stats on a Mac Pro, and found that I could finally accomplish my dream of world domination if only I could scrape up 23,000 dollars. Today, as the post title indicates I am doing a slightly more realistic build. This time of a PC. These were the rules I set down for myself.

1. I must spend as little money as possible
a. Exception: Because I am trying to be realistic I decided that I would spend up to five extra dollars per product in the name of increased performance
2. The sum of all the parts must be able to result in a fully functional computer.
3. All parts must be available on Newegg.com
4. No monitor, mouse, or keyboard is neccessary. (I already have those)

So after much head scratching, clicking, and replacement of products, this is what I ended up buying.

A black and silver case with included power supply ($38)
An 80 GB hard drive ($36)
An AMD motherboard with an onboard graphics chip ($40)
A CD-ROM drive ($12)
A 512 MB RAM stick ($10)
A 2.2 Ghz AMD processor ($45)

Even when you add in the price of shipping the total comes to a paltry sum of 210 dollars. You might wonder why everyone doesn't do this. Just figuring out what to buy took all of my nerd powers. Then you have to put it all together, without breaking any of the expensive parts. It doesn't require years and years of training, but you need to know what you're doing.

Then comes the operating system. There is no way that this thing would run Vista, and it would have a hard time with XP. Plus both of those operating systems cost money. I built this system with If I ever happen to come across a spare 200 bucks I might do this, if only for the sake of testing the limits of my nerdiness.

If anyone that know about building PCs is reading this, I would be much obliged if you would check my work. As far as I know it will all work together, but you never know.

As I write this post I realize that this computer needs a name. I've always like the idea of naming computers, but never had the chance. I have decided that this computer will be called Siddhartha. This is both because of its spartan nature, and because it is the book I am reading right now.

I realized also that the computer I am typing this on needs a name. It is an older iMac, that I got as a gift. I have decided to name it Freen. I have three reasons for this. The first is that it was free, so that is in the name. The second is that Freen, rhymes with sheen, which reminds me of the eternal Mac sexiness. The third reason is that Freen rhymes with green, which is the color of the speakers and side panels.

Wow, this has been a long post. If you've made it this far I'm impressed. But fortunately for you, this post is over. I'm off to read Siddhartha.