Juliet Cook's Blog, page 99
July 6, 2017
and so on and so forth
I used to think that there was always a very valid and potentially powerful point to creative expression via poetry and art (and sometimes I still think so and still feel that way), but a lot of my creative expression is very personal (which I'm usually fine with, because that's how I write and create).
But lately I've been thinking that even if my poems are a meaningful form of expression for me personally, they might not have much of a larger purpose (and they're still valuable to me if they don't but...) I mean, who wants to hear a middle-aged, middle-class white woman go on and on about her body issues and her anxiety and her depression and her anger and her relationship issues and her uncertainty about whatever the heck love is and so on and so forth?
Granted, I'm technically poverty level, but I don't feel poor, so I'll always consider myself middle class. Granted, I'm technically disabled, but I don't directly focus on that in my poetry and sometimes it upsets me when people seem to encourage me to focus MORE on my disability in my poetry, because maybe I already AM focusing on it in an indirect, semi-abstract sort of way. Sometimes I think that me feeling like I barely exist and that I'm not particularly meaningful is a sort of side effect of the brain damage of my stroke, because I don't remember feeling so pointless when I was younger, but maybe I always felt that way, or maybe I would have felt that way when I got older anyway, whether or not I had undergone such a brain fluke.
But it makes me feel a bit weirdly uncomfortable if people seem more interested in my brain damage rather than my poetry - because of those two parts of my life, I most definitely prefer the poetry, whether or not it interests many others.
But lately I've been thinking that even if my poems are a meaningful form of expression for me personally, they might not have much of a larger purpose (and they're still valuable to me if they don't but...) I mean, who wants to hear a middle-aged, middle-class white woman go on and on about her body issues and her anxiety and her depression and her anger and her relationship issues and her uncertainty about whatever the heck love is and so on and so forth?
Granted, I'm technically poverty level, but I don't feel poor, so I'll always consider myself middle class. Granted, I'm technically disabled, but I don't directly focus on that in my poetry and sometimes it upsets me when people seem to encourage me to focus MORE on my disability in my poetry, because maybe I already AM focusing on it in an indirect, semi-abstract sort of way. Sometimes I think that me feeling like I barely exist and that I'm not particularly meaningful is a sort of side effect of the brain damage of my stroke, because I don't remember feeling so pointless when I was younger, but maybe I always felt that way, or maybe I would have felt that way when I got older anyway, whether or not I had undergone such a brain fluke.
But it makes me feel a bit weirdly uncomfortable if people seem more interested in my brain damage rather than my poetry - because of those two parts of my life, I most definitely prefer the poetry, whether or not it interests many others.
July 5, 2017
something or other
I never really related to adults who seem to think/act as if age and life experience makes us more important and fills us with vastly meaningful knowledge to place upon others, whether others asked for that knowledge or not.Maybe it's partly a parental thing (I don't know; because I'm not a parent - and I also know parents who don't act this way), but whatever it is, the people who seem to think that their own knowledge will really empower others often seem to start acting that way before they're even 30 years old.As for me, sure I can share my own thoughts and feelings and ideas related to/derived from my own life experiences with others to an extent, but I'm not going to act like I'm some expert on anything, because ultimately, I'm just me. I've never felt like an expert who gains enough powerful knowledge to tell others what they should or shouldn't do for themselves - how they should feel, how they should act, who they should be. How about they just be themselves and don't be too stagnant?I mean, if anyone asks me a question, I'll try my best to answer, but not from some angle that seems to imply that my way is the way everyone else should think or act or feel.I don't think of my own life experience and knowledge as steadily increasing and rising up (or down), I feel like I'm mostly moving in the same slightly contorted semi-circle shapes, sometimes slightly rising, sometimes repetitively falling, but mostly just semi-circling, but trying not to be too stuck.Even with my poems and art, I'll feel really excited when I initially write a new poem, but usually it doesn't take long after that before it doesn't feel new; it feels more like I'm repeating different variations on the same subject again and again. I hope I'm not too stagnant or stuck - but I think it's more of an always moving mentality, even if I'm repeatedly moving in similar directions.I actually love when people share their own genuine thoughts, feelings, experiences, and ideas in a personal passionate expressive sort of way.But back to those who feel the need to share their own seemingly vast knowledge in an expert-like sort of manner, who the heck knows everything they need to know in life when they hit a certain age? NOBODY. In fact, I don't think anybody knows everything EVER.Maybe people who tend to limit their own lives in certain ways feel the need to limit other people's lives in similar ways too. But what do I know? That's just my own opinion on something or other.
June 29, 2017
NEW in The Rising Phoenix Review - Trap
"I don’t want to be a body stared at
and held down and screamed at
and told what my body does or doesn’t deserve."from my poem "Trap", now up at The Rising Phoenix Reviewread more HERE - https://therisingphoenixreview.com/2017/06/29/trap-by-juliet-cook/
and held down and screamed at
and told what my body does or doesn’t deserve."from my poem "Trap", now up at The Rising Phoenix Reviewread more HERE - https://therisingphoenixreview.com/2017/06/29/trap-by-juliet-cook/
June 28, 2017
Another Copy of Thirsty Bones
Eileen Murphy's copy of Thirsty Bones by Sarah Lilius, next to Bulletproof by Wollfgang Carstens. 
:)Get your own copy of the new Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, Thirsty Bones, HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/522735584/new-thirsty-bones-by-sarah-lilius-2017?ref=shop_home_feat_1Get your own copy of Bulletproof HERE - http://www.greybordersbooks.jigsy.com/bookstore
"EILEEN RECOMMENDS: Thirsty Bones by Sarah Lilius from Blood Pudding Press and Bulletproof by Wolfgang Carstens from Grey Borders Books. You'll enjoy these poems, I think, like I did."
:)Get your own copy of the new Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, Thirsty Bones, HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/522735584/new-thirsty-bones-by-sarah-lilius-2017?ref=shop_home_feat_1Get your own copy of Bulletproof HERE - http://www.greybordersbooks.jigsy.com/bookstore
"EILEEN RECOMMENDS: Thirsty Bones by Sarah Lilius from Blood Pudding Press and Bulletproof by Wolfgang Carstens from Grey Borders Books. You'll enjoy these poems, I think, like I did."
A Copy of Thirsty Bones
John Burroughs' copy of Thirsty Bones by Sarah Lilius, surrounded by other books. :)
Get your very own copy of the new Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, Thirsty Bones, HERE -
https://www.etsy.com/listing/522735584/new-thirsty-bones-by-sarah-lilius-2017?ref=shop_home_feat_1
Get your very own copy of the new Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, Thirsty Bones, HERE -
https://www.etsy.com/listing/522735584/new-thirsty-bones-by-sarah-lilius-2017?ref=shop_home_feat_1
June 24, 2017
NEW The June Thirteen Myna Birds flock has arrived!
Just in time for the last weekend of June, the new June flock of Thirteen Myna Birds has arrived!It starts with two teaser piece poems by Sarah Lilius, which also appear within her new Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Thirsty Bones"!Then it includes 13 new poems by Sarah Nichols, Susanna Kittredge, Peter Braddock, Donna Dallas, Matthew F. Amati, Allison Grayhurst, Christian Sammartino, and Chelsea Jones!"blood pixels are starting to look real these days - A tree of eyes - sickness in my mirror is all I see - The glass comes down trapping me inside - I should cut and open the void - meet reality by screaming at tombstones - Death is too loud - Is it burning like an enemy in our closet or like a miracle denied? - like a parcel for someone else - Into the first gear of grief - chopped off hands that came to him empty of gold - the ant crawls up your leg - your arms and back printed in rows of purple butterflies - I heard the reporters lying - my naked body burning - The spaceship exploded"HERE - http://13myna.blogspot.com/
June 17, 2017
NEW Thirsty Bones by Sarah Lilius (Blood Pudding Press 2017)
"Moments make girls
into women with blood
down white thighs.Make a boy into Zeus without honor.
His act done in secret
because that’s what gods do.We dwell on packages
made of sticks and stones,
bones and flesh."from the poem "Leda's Repression" by Sarah Lilius,within her NEW Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, Thirsty Bones
Available HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/522735584/new-thirsty-bones-by-sarah-lilius-2017?ref=shop_home_feat_1
into women with blood
down white thighs.Make a boy into Zeus without honor.
His act done in secret
because that’s what gods do.We dwell on packages
made of sticks and stones,
bones and flesh."from the poem "Leda's Repression" by Sarah Lilius,within her NEW Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, Thirsty Bones
Available HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/522735584/new-thirsty-bones-by-sarah-lilius-2017?ref=shop_home_feat_1
June 14, 2017
NEW in The Rising Phoenix Review - Doll Blood Spattering
"This modern doll group is better than everyone else.
Even if their doll brains are evil, mean-spirited, laced
with fake frosting and more dirty than rats.Even if their doll group agenda is to secretly slink
their long doll tails behind the back of their fancy frilled skirts,
load those tails with venom, then use them to lash out,to slash out the hearts of individual dolls who don’t fit in
to their scene. If one of these modern dolls offers you
a smile and uses the word love in your face, it is fake.Love love love love love love love has been programmedinto their pretty rotten doll teeth..."
from my Doll Blood Spattering, up at The Rising Phoenix Review.read more HERE - https://therisingphoenixreview.com/2017/06/13/doll-blood-spattering-by-juliet-cook/
Even if their doll brains are evil, mean-spirited, laced
with fake frosting and more dirty than rats.Even if their doll group agenda is to secretly slink
their long doll tails behind the back of their fancy frilled skirts,
load those tails with venom, then use them to lash out,to slash out the hearts of individual dolls who don’t fit in
to their scene. If one of these modern dolls offers you
a smile and uses the word love in your face, it is fake.Love love love love love love love has been programmedinto their pretty rotten doll teeth..."
from my Doll Blood Spattering, up at The Rising Phoenix Review.read more HERE - https://therisingphoenixreview.com/2017/06/13/doll-blood-spattering-by-juliet-cook/
June 13, 2017
NEW in Maudlin House - a poem by j/j hastain and Juliet Cook
"...This cocktail won’t stop
sparkling and sizzling in between
my fine lines. The driver
asks me if my lips are stuck
with red punch. The driver
tells me to get out of his car and jumpinto the punch bowl and eat
a dead fish shaped like a jelly bean
covered in sea salt frosting and slime."
from Tobiko Inquiry, a poem by j/j hastain and I, up at Maudlin House today!
Read more HERE - https://maudlinhouse.net/tobiko-inquiry/
sparkling and sizzling in between
my fine lines. The driver
asks me if my lips are stuck
with red punch. The driver
tells me to get out of his car and jumpinto the punch bowl and eat
a dead fish shaped like a jelly bean
covered in sea salt frosting and slime."
from Tobiko Inquiry, a poem by j/j hastain and I, up at Maudlin House today!
Read more HERE - https://maudlinhouse.net/tobiko-inquiry/
NEW! Thirsty Bones by Sarah Lilius is now newly available from Blood Pudding Press
Thirsty Bones is a NEW Blood Pudding Press 2017 poetry chapbook, containing 20 poems by Sarah Lilius.A powerful emotional political statement about the female body. How it can be viewed and treated like a toy, victimized, abused and then just overlooked or ignored. How it can live on, fight back, and will not be silenced and will not feel obligated to keep its own experiences or genuine feelings or individual self a secret.How nobody else should think they have the power to be in charge of your own body based choices.***"Rape, you are an animal.
The media gives you cookies,
you’ve grown fat, snarling from the cave.
I open my eyes to your terror.Your world has been created.
We need to cut the power to your brightness,
lights flicker, this lightning is not fireflies
wild against dark sky, waiting for palms to cup.We need more sound. To open our chests, display
lungs and let out the words.
Women, your screams, even muffled,
weren’t silent. They grow inside, canyons of dirty sound."from the poem [ ] Culture***Get your own copy of Thirsty Bones HERE - https://www.etsy.com/shop/BloodPuddingPress?ref=seller-platform-mcnav§ion_id=20952110
The media gives you cookies,
you’ve grown fat, snarling from the cave.
I open my eyes to your terror.Your world has been created.
We need to cut the power to your brightness,
lights flicker, this lightning is not fireflies
wild against dark sky, waiting for palms to cup.We need more sound. To open our chests, display
lungs and let out the words.
Women, your screams, even muffled,
weren’t silent. They grow inside, canyons of dirty sound."from the poem [ ] Culture***Get your own copy of Thirsty Bones HERE - https://www.etsy.com/shop/BloodPuddingPress?ref=seller-platform-mcnav§ion_id=20952110
