The second Audio Assignment I chose from the DS106 Assignment Bank is Poetry Reading, a 2 star assignment that requires you to:
Poetry is meant to be read aloud. Select a poem – it can be a personal favorite or one you find randomly – and read it aloud in a way that itself makes it a story. Then at the ending of that poem extend it or connect it to a story — this has to be more than just reading a poem to be a story.
I selected “Insomniac” by Sylvia Plath. As I explained in a previous post, I love Sylvia Plath’s poetry. Its very much influenced by her experiences with depression, anxiety, and suicide, all of which seem to be hinted at in this poem, and all of which we share in common, along with her verbosity and love of big words…I admit that this poem is a little on the academic side, but the words resound with me:
The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole —
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon’s rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.
Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments–the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.
He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue —
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.
His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.
Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.
The “story” element of the assignment comes from me reading a few lines before an after the poem that contextualize it into an individual person’s life story. I usually use first person for stories, based on the kind of subject matter I talk about, but in this particular instance I found it especially fitting to not only use first person but to actually use a diary format that imitates the writing style of a depressed teen. It’s my way of telling my own story, even though its not my exact personal experience. My own high school diary does not sound nearly as poetic, and I wanted the diary portion to mesh neatly with the cadence and tone of the poem.
Listen here via my Soundcloud:
TRANSCRIPT
Dear diary,Â
Today was a long, awful day. Had to wake up extra early to make it to school on time, and I was still late because it was raining. But I did find a neat poem in that book Zack suggested to me. It’s called Insomniac by Sylvia Plath, and goes like this:
The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole —
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon’s rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.
Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments–the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.
He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue —
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.
His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.
Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.
So now I’m sitting here, repeating the words over and over to myself like a lullaby. The rain is beating rhythmically on the roof. I wish I could fall asleep, but at the same time, I don’t want to because I know I’ll have to wake up. I wish I didn’t have to wake up. I’m so tired that I could sleep for a hundred nights, even though I can’t fall asleep. I didn’t even forget to take my Prozac! And Tylenol no longer seems to knock me out.
Its times like this that I wish I were dead.Â
N.B. Insomnia the disease actually does tend to worsen many types of depression, anxiety disorders, etc., while they can in turn cause insomnia. Its a vicious cycle.
I decided to experiment with Audacity, which I downloaded  earlier this week as suggested by Professor Polack in the Week 3 Guide. Even though I liked the other method better (outlined in this post for the other audio assignment), I still see why Audacity is useful if you have a good computer microphone.
