30 in 30: The End

Well, I think I have to end this series. Sad face, I know, but I'm just too far behind to catch up, especially given the amount of school work I have on my shoulders. Any writing I do should be for school, unfortunately. I'm not going to stop writing poems, of course, just for the time being. I'll try to squeeze some in here and there, but don't expect any consistency until I get some breathing room. I've learned from this endeavor, though, that I really enjoy poetry, regardless of how good I am at it. It's a very footloose vein of self-expression, despite its sometimes rigid format. I expect to be writing poetry on and off for, hopefully, the rest of my life, but expect more academic posts in the near future.

Whisnant on Moral Responsibility

Rebecca Whisnant, a radical feminist and professor at my school (University of Dayton), claims that one necessary aspect of any fully responsbile moral agent is self-value. In her essay "Woman Centered: A Feminist Ethic of Responsibility," she proposes her own theory of "self-centering" as a way of obtaining proper and actual self-value. She draws her theory partially from recent work by Harry Frankfurt, of which I'll provide an example:

This wholehearted identification means that there is no ambivalence in his attitude towards himself. There is no part of him - no part with which he identifies - that is opposed to or that resists his loving what he loves.

Moral Psychology: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory, p. 209

This particular picture of self-love, i.e., endorsing and identifying with what one loves, is viewed by Whisnant as "distinctive of how one must approach one's own loves in order to be properly self-valuing." (p. 209) Self-centering involves more than this brand of love, but no other aspect of her theory seems to me as controversial as this. Take, for instance, a man consumed and obsessed with pornography. He is ignorant of the relavent moral issues, so he feels no guilt or shame. In fact, he and his buddies all share in the same perverse enthusiasm. Assuming he is content with other aspects of his life, this man is, according to Frankfurt and Whisnant, self-loving, self-centered and a fully functioning morally responsible agent. Do you see the obvious problem here? Whisnant is full-heartedly opposed to pornography and has devoted much of her life to researching and uncovering the direct harms it causes. If she condemns this man, she contradicts her own theory, because he should be functioning as a morally responsible agent, but he is obviously not. This paradox applies not only to pornography but to other immoral habits as well, such as stealing, drug abuse, etc.

It seems to escape this dilemma we must either draw a line between love and immorality, finding a way to demonstrate their incompatibility, or declare those who profess love to any immoral acts as morally inhibited, diminished or incompetent in one way or another effectively disqualifying them as candidates of self-centeredness.

30 in 30: Day 13

Prompt: write a poem about a hobby.

Form: Rime Coueé

Beloved, comfort me this day,
Corrosive thoughts I must convey-
Piano, holy voice.

All my distress you will allay,
Such graceful, tonic notes you play-
Time and I, divorced.

30 in 30: Update

I know I'm still slacking. My classes are pretty intense at the moment, and they drain nearly all my energy most days. I will still write as often as I can and hopefully catch up to where I should be before day 30. Sorry!

30 in 30: Day 12

Prompt: (modified) describe a ritual.

Form: Elemental Ode

Rain! Today?
Why must you
Threaten
The resolute?
Soak the wills
Of us goodhearted
And lust for our despair?
Forced umbrellas
Resist your reign
Lest their hearts be drenched.
You feed the fields
But flood the streets,
A muddled pool
Of dampened spirits
In your wake.
Too ambitious,
You fill to overflow!
Don't you see?
We, composed of you,
Are destroyed by you!
Plop where you want;
The day is yours.

30 in 30: Day 11

Another stupid prompt. This site's program needs redeeming. Borrowing another from the same site as always.

Prompt: riff on the theme of origins.

Form: Fibonacci (They're short, so I wrote two.)

In
Vain,
Giant
Fingers point-
ed toward the Earth.
"At last," he said, "let there be life!"

---

Time,
Space-
To know
No other,
No one could achieve,
Bar each other, no one could be.

30 in 30: Day 10

Another stupid prompt... stealing one from here again.

Prompt: write a poem about a memory.

Form: Shadorma

Crippled girl
Alone by the wall,
Her soft face
In mourning.
Crippled not by broken bones,
But by my leaving.

30 in 30: Day 9

Prompt: use the word "secret" twice in your poem.

Form: Rondelet

My heart will break
Like theirs, such secret deaths they die
My heart will break
Innocent lives you need not take
Like glass concealed, a clever guise
The secret shatter, helpless cries
My heart will break

30 in 30: Day 8

Just so you know, day 8's prompt was stupid, so I borrowed a prompt from a different site.

Prompt: write a poem about something that's missing.

Form: Roundel

I wish, for once, for starry skies,
Hovering winds to carry us
Into warm air and cricket's cries,
A whisper from your lips.

Sing leaves to sleep, dark specs of dust,
Whilst awake, shield from them your eyes.
Come close to me, dear, if you must.

Night-flames, I beckon thee arise!
Release your voice in this bright gust
And seek to soothe the fireflies,
A whisper from your lips.

30 in 30: Day 7

Prompt: write a poem that involves an animal.

Form: Prose Poetry (warning: extreme alliteration)

Beefcake, be that befitting, is what you'll be, you bag of bones bound in blubber. You bait my heart and benumbing hands with your bulldogged begging. Your batty eyes bewilder me and beckon the laceration of my nails. Your body beats and jerks as I blemish your black and brown brush. You thump your bunion against the boards- relentless banging, you brash beast! Be still. The bumping in the basement will bother the boys. Alas, I bid farewell but bereave you not of your badgered bliss. Barge to his bedroom and beseech my brother; beguile that bairn, the master of the pugs.

30 in 30: Day 6

Prompt: use the same (or similar) words in both your first line and last line, but change the order or the meaning of the words from the first line to the last line.

Form: Free Verse

You look at me, I look away.
The table sprung for miles
As the head's gaping mouth
Took freedom from our necks
With paralyzing fire.
It bullied the bulletin
And ripped the racks,
Spilling markers to the matting.
It flipped our folders
And gripped our pens,
Filling empty space between blue lines.
Seven and a half decades of minutes
Crawled from face to face. They
Left their mark with bloodshot eyes,
Making for the door.
The auricularly mannered ingress
shut. It's shut for but two days.
I look at you, you look away.

30 in 30: Day 5

Prompt: pick three words that you absolutely love the sound of and set out to use them in your poem.

My words: beyond, salvation, colossus.

Form: Distich

My time is dying, a death unfair, moving
Beyond the scope of books and study.

Beyond the standing pen and paper,
The soaring colossus that is my room.

Beyond that colossus, that fetid death,
It dies to find salvation.

Salvation found beyond itself, hidden
In hearts unseen. Unseen by that colossus!

That hungering beast, with such false passion,
Seeks pretentious looks and grandeur.

To that I die, admit my loss, no more
Time to waste. I meekly seek my savior.

30 in 30: Day 4

Prompt: write the final line to your poem first, and then write the poem to get to that ending.

Form: Tanka

Beckon me once more,
Chilled air. How the light dances,
Swings between the trees!
Guided by a curling hand,
A willful wind tossing leaves.

30 in 30: Update

I know that I'm behind a few days, and for that, I'm sorry. My excuse is that I've been home for fall break and have been terribly preoccupied with old friends and a paper on Kant due Monday. Tomorrow, though, I'm going to make it top priority to catch up to where I'm supposed to be. Just giving you guys (however few you are) an update and apology.

Special thanks to Angie for holding me to my word!

30 in 30: Day 3

Prompt: write a poem that begins with a proclamation.

Form: Kyrielle

I will not let my body rot!
To waste I know that I will not.
Like if to then I have forgot,
Day's sweat and blood my body needs.

Such simple food I should intake,
Yet I never fail to mistake
Nutrients of green beans with cake.
And so for this my body pleads.

A day spent out below the sun,
An afternoon spent on a run.
Why do I fail to see this fun?
Such a healthy bodily deed.

I hate the type of man I am,
One who does not do what I can.
Instead of heeding healthy plans,
On trash and filth my body feeds.

30 in 30: Day 2

Prompt: write a poem that begins with you waking up.

Form: abababcc, no meter

Down my face, a sweat bead slips,
A moistened trail, a salty stain.
An ardent smile, brown hair to miss,
So surreal and full of pain.
A jolt of life as her hair flips,
Lucid à lonely once again.
Too many times, this splendid love
Is day's first blush, too quickly snubbed.

30 in 30: Day 1

Today I found this blog series called "30 Poems in 30 Days." The idea is obvious: to write 30 poems - one each day - in thirty days. The catch is that the author of the series announces a topic, prompt or guideline each day that you must follow. The series is annual, and it's already been concluded for this year, but I'm going to undertake it a month late, anyway. Call me out if I start to slack! I really want to do this.

Day 1's prompt is to "use the word Pattern in the first line and/or the last line of your poem."

Form: Free Verse

Patterns of a private campus,
Like muck, grimy and malodorous.
An infectious disease with the greatest of ease
Spreads the plague of uniform thinking.

In vain I left my coat at home,
My aegis from the sludge.
My boots, as well, sit in my room;
My body is a sponge.

Every day I tread the waters,
A straw in my mouth just in case.
I absorb the foreign manners of life
Unwillingly, but am sure to throw them up.

Be transformed! Renew your mind!
I hate what I see,
Such thoughtless thought.
Do not conform to the patterns of this world.