A Report from the Scene: UCSD MFA First Years on May 25, 2011


So in line with this continuing series of "reports" from the events, I took notes at the recent end-of-the-year performance for the students finishing their first year at the UC San Diego MFA in Creative Writing.

My idea is to become more of an active listener-participant at events that I attend. Appropriating words from readings and performances and making a kind of listening poem or participative, collaborative text. Moving away from listening perhaps towards writing. Trying to redefine listening as an active act that implies writing as well. Writing moves closer to listening and makes the listening an act of copying and recycling. And since I am often copying in the dark or writing quickly (so as not to be noticed and given judgmental stares), I make mistakes, I rearrange, I mess up. Then when I am trying to turn my handwritten notes into a computerized blog post, another layer of trouble arises. So much troublein the world (Bob Marley dixit). In the end, they are pieces of a moment, a bit of an experience of listening (Dolores Dorantes dixit). The spirit of recycling.

Here are my notes from the event:


Here are the retypings/rewritings of the notes:


From Amy Forrest

1. Gin rummy picks a
blemish, fiercely .
2. Edie watered a
fluid arc an orb.
3. Susie the organist plays a
other wife and second grade teacher.
4. Pill box hat fucked a
secretary with blank eyes.
5. Frostie freeze frowns a
pushed back chair.


From Kara Ford-Martinez

Take a Sentimental Journey. Go away, I'm getting out. The urine soon. Her children carry her to her clatter as she tried to raise her old pickle jar. I have my glass of wine and disleveled hesitantly. The crowd was cheering wildly.


From Jennifer Lorene Ritenour

What do I need gold for? Pearls made me young again and kiss me first. What does it feel like? Swim up to the beach in the sand. Toes shaken with a knife. She doesn't like him floating inside of her. The bleeding head hung low. A nuisance making her hungry and sick while holding her. Screech.


From Allie Moreno

To take to steal
to move to probe
to explode my name
muddies the hurt
untitled hold sky.
To broom the want
roof drink like
the pillows. I read
her I do that I
didn't no capital
the traded lemon
conditions buckle
the broke rewrites
wasted uncomfortable
munching cuddly
deamon we often
conjure spearkly peeling
the river spools.
I want to, my voice.


From the Franolous Voeltz

Borders rip blanket
still over your fingers
snow tacky flake
all six kilometers
jerry canned game.

Today people live in rooms never touched by death.

A seagull found
shimmering geese
safety time one
tell me one third
boot dance duck
shape juice out.
A river jump
off naked flesh.
Never asked blood.


From Sean Ryan

Bermless friesling cocktail erasable flowers
grass the gripping receptacles ontics the Camry
the joists and drusses migrate erasing relations
curving concrete un-self-yielding to images
of signals worn carpet ashtrays signals toilet
paper ownedness crashes ontics douchebag's
sarong its sari assasin to its own visibility.