Just like any form of art short creative essays is a big hit and miss. It turns out just like most forms of art creative short essays is mostly a miss. I was very excited to get to this part of the semester but I have found myself heavily disappointed by the readings. I mostly because I got my hopes up. The first two essays we read were my favorite prices during this class. They were clear, detailed, beautiful writings that left me breathless and inspired. Everything else has left me as annoyed bored as I was reading poetry. I think most of these readings have been perfect in a literal sense. They are carefully planned, artistic, and brilliant sequences of words. Yet they miss that thing that makes literature great. The fact that a person can sit down and put meaningless abstract symbols on a white background and bring out true sympathetic emotions is amazing. And very, very difficult to master. An author gets lucky getting it right once. Most just put down words, and readers read them and appreciate their wordiness and move on.
The readings assigned for this week are wordy articulate poems. I like some of the images they bring about, but they leave me not feeling for the characters or the authors. They are self indulgent and self centered writings. Like the authors main problem is that they care what other people think. Zach Savitch's Crumbling Expectations is aptly named. It starts off so good, so poignant, and personal. But as one reads on the language falls apart, and I was left feeling a little betrayed. This seems to be on purpose, to make a point, but mostly misses it. He could have just continued writing the story, clearly define what he's getting at and artistically touched every reader that comes around, but instead he loses people by being "artsy". There is no sense in this, except to try to stand out I guess. Sometimes creativity get's in the way of true art. Kristine Prevallet's Essay on the Sublimation of Dying is in my opinion the second worst thing we've read all semester. Beautifully written gimmicky mush. It reads like she had this cool idea to separate the essay into different parts and be all wordy and hip. Then leaves it there. She's has a frame work of something that could be really good, but does not fill it in with anything interesting or well thought out. I feel like maybe she should stick to poetry and not call this an essay. If I read this thinking I was about to read a epic poem I would be about to go to bed a lot happier than i am about to now. These essays have crumbled my hope for essay writing as an art. Why can't people just be happy with the way the world in as it is without making the story look cool on paper. A good story is good because it makes the reader think, and sympathize with and have compassion for the author and the characters. It is good because it draws you into the story and leaves you with that sad feeling that this brilliant piece of literature is about to end. Like when on a warm summer night standing by the railroad tracks waiting for the train to come by, we get excited by the bigness of it, the incredible strength of human kinds inventions. We watch half in horror half in awe as the huge thing speeds by and are left a little sad while we watch the blinking fred grow smaller into the distance. I want to read essays that leave me watching the fred until it's gone around the bend. I don't want to read essays that make me constantly hoping for the end to come.
