Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Updates from Week 2

  • Episodes of TV shows watched: 4 (2 Samantha Who?, and one Gray's Anatomy, even though I gave it up...oh! And Idol)
  • Long Meetings Attended: 1 (and it was three hours! And it was still going when I left!) I hereby give up meetings for the rest of the summer!
  • Appointments with students: 3 (two with the same student, one was my mistake the second she didn't show up to, plus an email from another student who wants to meet but I don't want to....)
  • Movies watched: 1 (Leatherheads at Brewvies with HighTouch)
  • Exercise done: 1 run, 2 swims (all done grudgingly. I'm burnt out. Burnt out!)
  • Writing = Despair: I've done nothing. Noooothing. I read some of the novel I started five years ago. That's right. Five years!! Lame-O, with a capital Lame.
  • Poems written: One. And here it is. Wala!
Poem in Which I Defend my Dislike of Vampire Novels


Maybe I don’t like vampire novels because I’m afraid of needles

or maybe it’s because I don’t like blood or the idea of holes

in my neck, or anyone else’s for that matter, and maybe I don’t like

vampire novels because, generally, they read as if they were written

by vampires, in the dark, in rooms cramped as coffins, with little or no

sunlight, no happiness, no hope for a life free from black clothing

and steak tartar, and I don’t have anything against the goth look, in fact

I like black, but the prose! Those novels are written as if

it’s enough just to have the vampire: he’s a vampire! or she’s a vampire!

but in any case there’s a vampire! and that’s it, no further need to explain.

A friend wrote a vampire novel, but it wasn’t scary, in fact, I think it was comedy,

and all I remember was that the vampire worked in catering or played tape ball

and that seems like the only valid use of a vampire in fiction, if he’s not, primarily,

doing vampire stuff, like stalking girls who are pale to begin with, or biting

women’s necks and draining them of blood, which seems unrealistic, frankly, given the sheer

volume of blood in even one single person, and I don’t like that vampires

are so much like mosquitoes, which, to my knowledge, no one has ever written a novel

about, why can’t mosquitoes be main characters? They like to suck blood

and they hang around at night, in the dark, being annoying in much the fashion of vampires,

where’s the novel about a mosquito who falls in love or the mosquito who can’t

die but instead breeds in the dank water of Okefenokee and falls in love only to kill

the one he loves (perhaps with malaria)? It’s a story we’ve heard before,

the vampire plot. John Gardner said there are only two stories: someone goes on a journey or a

stranger comes to town. Most vampire novels are both, as in a vampire

(the ur-stranger) comes to town and then everyone goes on a journey. But aren’t vampire

novels about our fear of the body? Aren’t vampires just another metaphor

for death and sex and the unknown? I’ve seen the vampires, and I tell you,

I’ll take my chances with sex and the unknown.

3 comments:

ErinAlice said...

I don't care for vampires either except for David Boreanz (SP??) on Buffy. I love him.

Lisa B. said...

Hello, I love this poem, and so agree with you about vampire novels! Vampire tv shows, like Buffy, however, are awesome. Excellent work , you ultra-talker.

Nik said...

This is one of my faves. I need to watch the whole Buffy series though. Perhaps that should be on my to-do list??? Where is that list?
Thanks for writing a happy poem that made me imagine tiny vampires writing in their cramped coffins.