Holy new layout, Batman. It's so... girly.
Ireland update: I'm going, and Josh is going with me. Hooray! My conference is two days, but I'll be staying in Ireland for a week. Any recommendations of must-see places?
Ireland update: I'm going, and Josh is going with me. Hooray! My conference is two days, but I'll be staying in Ireland for a week. Any recommendations of must-see places?
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
was totally worth it...it made me feel allllll better! 
Actually that long poem of your's sounds pretty interesting, if a bit off beat(but then, thats a pretty good thing, I think
It got me thinking about what a similiar story would sound like today. Around the same time I started getting really annoyed with the coffee shop in Marquette that I went to. There were a lot of good people there, but there were also a lot of pretensious assholes who prattled on and on about 'their art' and wrote poems about peace, love and the like. I remember thinking that their hair would turn white if they ever were confronted with a true epic, guts, glory and all.
The two ideas kinda mixed in with a love of mine for older forms of things. I'm not really much of a poet and I find that I need a lot of structure to do anything that has even the semblence of being good. So I thought I'd mix this old German style (which I adored; alliteration is so much more fun to say that rhyme), with my idea of a story told in a bar, and also that I'd make it really bloody to scare the hell out of the guys at Emma Joes (in my mind I say Hippies tearing their ears out and screaming. This actually happens most of the time I read poetry, but this time it would happen for a REASON!) I figured it would be about 10 pages long and pretty tongue in cheekp; a fun little exercise I could tell my kids about someday.
So I started outlining a story. I figured that the closest we had to warbands were the old Lumberjacks and then a needed a good villian for my heroic lumberjack to battle (I figured Sigismund would be a good name as a tip of the hat to the Volsungs). The funny this is though, that the more I outlined the story, the more I actually really came to like it. I've had a life long love of mythology, I used to have my Mom and Dad read me Greek myths as bedtime stories since before I could read, and it melded perfectly with what I was doing.
Two and a half years later I think I'm almost done with the damn thing. Where as once it was supposed to be about a typical German hero who liked to drink and brawl as much as he could I've now got the tale of Sigisimund Blonde-Beard; a young lumberjack who's father was the foreman of his company. One day his father Deitrich(another nod to the old german cycles) realises that something horrid is about to happen and sends his Son and several other jacks ot a local town for supplies. By the time they return the camp has been attacked and destroyed by the Wendigo, a cannical giant who is the epitome of the winds and blizzards. Sigismund cries vengeance and goes out to slay the beast even though he's been told that it means certain death (which, it of course does; heroes in myths don't live happy lives and sadly Sigismund isn't to different). I won't go into all of it here because it would take much to long and then I'd be no different from the previously mentioned pretencious guys who prattle on and on about their own work. I am pretencious, but I do my best to hide it
Now, this isn't to say that what I've written is any good, but the story is strong enough that I've stuck to writing it far longer than anything else I've attempted. Which, in and of itself, is a good thing. Also the poem has really become a bit of a love ode to my beloved Wisconsin and the UP (yes, I am passionately in love with Wisconsin. Yes my friends have told me how weird this makes me, many many times. I think it has something to do with growing up Irish).
Anyway, I need to get going because my computer is in my parent's bedroom and my Dad actually needs to get some sleep (poor guy). I'll let you get going, but you should e-mail me some of your work one of these days; be it orginal, or some of your papers about lit. I like reading other people's stuff and maybe it will help remind me of when I was in college and not locked away in the frozen Tundra of Alaska