writer | teacher | filmmaker | publisher
Thoughts of mine
In preparation for this release from Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus, and Travis Barker, I went back in time (in my mind) and tried to listen to blink-182's complete discography with the ears of each era. In doing so, I made some interesting observations...
Kenji C. Liu’s Monsters I Have Been is a wild ride through his denunciation of toxic masculinity and praise of gender fluidity. The method he uses to express these, however, is almost laughable in its strangeness; while shockingly original, it lacks a necessary accessibility in communicating its message(s) to readers.
This book is equal parts about culture, family, and self-discovery, and likely every reader can relate to the struggle with those things. Not every poet can bridge the gap between their own experiences and others, but Blanco does it expertly by incorporating food, speech, music, and the smallest physical details in his poems.
Although the intent of individual poems in this ambitious collection is not always clear, Smith’s found poetry drives home the reality of harms done to the people of this country, especially to black people enslaved by white people.
Right now, each semester will cost me just over $9,000, after my $1,000/semester scholarship is subtracted. Each year, two 10-day residencies occur on campus in LA, which will cost me about $2,500 in terms of plane tickets, lodging, transportation, and food (and that's a low estimate).
As the minutes ticked by, more and more people seemed to give up. Even I started to doubt he would appear. But then the black SUVs with the flashing lights started to show up in front of the barricades and the metal loading door and we knew he must be close.
Continuing the tradition of last year's summary in poems, I present to you the 2021 edition. This year was actually even more difficult for me, emotionally, than 2020, but equally productive in terms of writing, apparently.
Poetry Postcard Fest is an annual event facilitated by what is now known as Cascadia Poetics Lab, which I learned about from founder Paul E. Nelson. Basically, you pay $15 to be put into a group of 30 other people around the world who have agreed to write a poem a day for a month and mail each one on a postcard. Sounds like fun, right? Well, it was, but once again, it seems my expectations exceeded reality.
I know, as a writer, it behooves me to spin a yarn on this event, but for now I'm going to be lazy and let my dad tell the story.
On Feb. 16, 2021, I had an idea for a feature film. In the next 12 days, I filled out a beat sheet, note-carded every scene, digitized those notes in PowerPoint (revising all the while), researched locations, watched half a dozen movies and several interviews with famous directors and screenwriters, and wrote the first 47 pages of my movie.
Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum 