Jamie+Murphy

"Poetry is the silent voice that is heard everywhere inside of us..." - Unknown
 * #1. Introductory Quote **

She's tall with confidence yet shy and quiet with little to small words my eyes reflect hers, with an understanding she watches over me even when I'm not looking with every step I take she is there. Without her desire, I would be nothing the courage within her keeps me hoping for the best that could be her heart is bigger than love itself and sacrifice is nothing new to her she can and will do anything I'd be lying if I said she wasn't my hero.
 * 2. Ode to the women in the cape by: Jamie Murphy**

**Sonnet by : Jamie Murphy** Oh sometimes I dream of another world I've began to realize that world is mine Or at-least that is how it has been curled the presents in the air were all so kind i'm going to the source of evil and finding the hope in this misty air

raised by the determination to love with two ends to the same story <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">"come dance with me darlin, come on now" <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">"you got it, you can do it on your own" <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">silly without a care to hold on to <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">keep on, laugh your heart out <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">"your eyes are it's brightest when your smile's true" <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">she's outgoing without a dought. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">inside yet so loving <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">still stern and strong <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">" Do it for yourself, independency is key" <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">He's got it down, that sence of right and wrong <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">I was raised by <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">the over-loving sweet hearted <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">kind, tall, woman I call mom <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">at the same time by <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">the sometimes big and scary <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">yet kind and loving guy I call dad <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">**Poem of choice: Jamie Murphy** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;"> It is dark and yet it is still so bright, with the clouds illuminating the sky warmth slips through my skin from a breeze in the city of buildings so high green its appearing, sprouting through the grey barren ground smell <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;"> blissful scent of spring is becoming more profound <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">lovetis the season to capture it, don't let it slip awayspring a smile on my face, that's real and true. It's here to stay
 * I was raised by: Jamie Murphy**

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> When writing I like to use enjabments because it keeps the reader wanting to read more and more, since the topic continues onto the next line. I like to write about emotions and feelings because it seems more natural and easy for me to write about. I don't tend to use too much of a rhyming scheme. I would much rather get my thought and feelings down into poetic terms, than have to worry about certain little things rhyming. Although, when I do use a rhyming scheme I use the Shakespearian rhyming formula. This way the words get switched up and it's not the same rhyming throughout the whole poem.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: verdana,arial,'lucida sans',helvetica,geneva,sans-serif;">#3 Artist statement: **

<span class="TITLE" style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #ff0000; font-family: verdana,arial,'lucida sans',helvetica,geneva,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Blues I <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">am lazy, the laziest <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">girl in the world. I sleep during <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">the day when I want to, 'til <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">my face is creased and swollen, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">'til my lips are dry and hot. I <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">eat as I please: cookies and milk <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">after lunch, butter and sour cream <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">on my baked potato, foods that <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">slothful people eat, that turn <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">yellow and opaque beneath the skin. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Sometimes come dinnertime Sunday <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I am still in my nightgown, the one <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">with the lace trim listing because <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I have not mended it. Many days <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I do not exercise, only <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">consider it, then rub my curdy <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">belly and lie down. Even <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">my poems are lazy. I use <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">syllabics instead of iambs, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">prefer slant to the gong of full rhyme, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">write briefly while others go <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">for pages. And yesterday, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">for example, I did not work at all! <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I got in my car and I drove <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">to factory outlet stores, purchased <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">stockings and panties and socks <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">with my father's money.
 * 4 Three poems of choice by Elizabeth Alexander:**

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">To think, in childhood I missed only <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">one day of school per year. I went <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">to ballet class four days a week <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">at four-forty-five and on <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Saturdays, beginning always <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">with plie, ending with curtsy. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">To think, I knew only industry, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">the industry of my race <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">and of immigrants, the radio <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">tuned always to the station <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">that said, Line up your summer <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">job months in advance. Work hard <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">and do not shame your family, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">who worked hard to give you what you have. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">There is no sin but sloth. Burn <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">to a wick and keep moving.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I avoided sleep for years, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">up at night replaying <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">evening news stories about <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">nearby jailbreaks, fat people <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">who ate fried chicken and woke up <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">dead. In sleep I am looking <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">for poems in the shape of open <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">V's of birds flying in formation, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.


 * Paccant **

Maryland State Correctional Facility for Women,

Baltimore County Branch, has undergone a facelift.

Cells are white and un-graffitied, room-like, surprisingly airy.

This is where I must spend the next year, eating slop from tin trays,

facing women much tougher than I am, finding out if I am brave.

Though I do not know what I took, I know I took something.

On Exercise Day, walk the streets of the city you grew up in,

in my case, D.C., from pillar to post, Adams-Morgan to Anacostia,

Shaw to Southwest., Logan to Chevy Chase Circles,

recalling every misbegotten everything, lamenting, repenting.

How my parents keen and weep, scheme to spring me,

intercept me at corners with bus tokens, pass keys, files baked in cakes.

Komunyakaa the poet says, don't write what you know,

write what you are willing to discover, so I will

spend this year, these long days, meditating on what I am accused of

in the white rooms, city streets, communal showers, mess hall,

where all around me sin and not sin is scraped off tin trays

into oversized sinks, all that excess, scraped off and rinsed away.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;"> Crash

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;">I am the last woman off of the plane that has crashed in a cornfield near Philly,

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;">picking through hot metal for my rucksack and diaper bag.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;">No black box, no fuselage, just sistergirl pilot wiping soot from her eyes,

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;">happy to be alive. Her dreadlocks will hold the smoke for weeks.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;">All the white passengers bailed out before impact, so certain a sister

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;">couldn’t navigate the crash. O gender. O race. O ye of little faith.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;">Here we are in the cornfield, bruised and dirty but alive. I invite sistergirl pilot home for dinner

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;">at my parents’, for my mother’s roast chicken with gravy and rice, to celebrate.

**#5 Close reading analysis**
<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">**Blues** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">This poem uses a bluntly put, list type of, format in order for the reader to catch on quickly. This poem uses different little stories to express the bigger picture of her caught on laziness. The author uses descriptive scenarios such as, “Sometimes come dinner time Sunday I am still in my nightgown, the one with the lace trim listing because I have not mended it”.This is one of the many small stories used to get the understanding of her feelings. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Paccant <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">This poem is addressing the author herself. She is expressing her feelings towards how she is thinking about her surroundings in the correctional facility. Each line in the stanza has about the same amount of syllables, give or take. Though nothing else special, since this author seems to be more straightforward with her poetry. The author writes about how she doesn’t understand the reason of why she is in the facility. She rewrites opposites such as “sin and not sin”. She also rewrites about the metaphors of scrapping off tin trays, referring to the lunch and metaphorically speaking about maybe her feelings. She has the correct use of capitalization and uses a great deal of punctuation for things such as names of things, and states. She has a lot of pauses so she uses many commas and colons. Just like in the other poem she had written, she uses enjambments. She likes to write as she thinks, I’m assuming since her thoughts continue onto the next line with the use of commas. This has an affect on the reader. When the poem is being read by the reader, when looking at the poem as reading along it looks easy to read. The structure of her poems are nice because they are easier and more understandable to read. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Crash This poem is about the experience she had on a air plane and how she interacted/ felt with the women pilot who stayed with her. The structure of this poem isn’t too complicated. She has about the same amount of words on each line. For each stanza there are two lines. There are not many. Although her use of “ o gender o race, o ye little of faith” makes me picture the whole scenario and how the white people on board figured since she was a black woman pilot they had no faith in her saving them from the crash. It makes it easier to understand and yet it’s still kind of clever. She uses enjambments in all of the poems I have read by this author. She writes in a continuing flow and this creates an on going reading for the reader. It makes them continue what the have began reading so it catches them in.