The Imitation Nation!

I am imitating two very talented writers for my essay of sorts.

I am doing Susan Allen Toth's going to the Movies. With her I am trying to imitate her sentence structure. I want to capture her tone, her utilization of touch, the potential for physical intimacy...I wanted to have a strong vehicle throughout the piece like she does in hers so I made my about "talking about theatre." It's not quite as clever as going to the movies but I think it will work. I'm a little concerned because it's a pretty close imitation, but I'm moderately satisfied with it.

The other person I'm imitating is Charles Simic. Fun stuff I learned by looking him up on google! He is from Yugoslavia and he's actually famous for being a poet. He has a great black and white photograph of him in circular specs, looking an awful lot like John Lennon but yet not really at all. I'm trying to emulate his sense of humor, the interplay of family, the way he uses dialogue, the way he utilizes hyperbole and superlatives. His was a lot of fun to write. I challenged myself to make the setting completely different from his and I think it turned out. Although I'm not sure how much of my voice actually ended up taking over...

Here's a fun Simic poem! It's called "Against Winter" We can all get behind that, AMIRITE?! I think you'll find it's a very different voice from 'Dinner at Uncle Boris'.' I was surprised myself. Enjoy! He's still got his humor, though.

Against Winter

The truth is dark under your eyelids. What are you going to do about it? The birds are silent; there's no one to ask. All day long you'll squint at the gray sky. When the wind blows you'll shiver like straw. A meek little lamb you grew your wool Till they came after you with huge shears. Flies hovered over open mouth, Then they, too, flew off like the leaves, The bare branches reached after them in vain. Winter coming. Like the last heroic soldier Of a defeated army, you'll stay at your post, Head bared to the first snow flake. Till a neighbor comes to yell at you, You're crazier than the weather, Charlie