Author: Erika Bell

Let’s Talk About Poetry

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I’m taking a creative writing class that is focusing on the creative side of poetry, and it got me thinking about the vastness of poetry, and what it gives us as readers. Now, I’ve been a poetry reader for a good chunk of my life, but I wouldn’t say I understood everything I read. I then took a class a year ago where our focus was analyzing poetry and prose for it’s deeper meaning, what was this writing trying to say and why? Going from an analytic mind in regards to poetry to a creative one is kind of scary. The world of creative writing is a large one, and it can entail some of the weirdest facets of a person’s mind and soul, as well as some of the greatest.

Sometimes it seems that the best poets are those who have come before us, from the 18th-20th century, and let’s not forget Shakespeare. Never forget Shakespeare. Poetry from the past has become so relevant to the present it’s scary. Poems about anger, joy, love, heartache, washing dishes, just about any topic of life and death has been covered somewhere in the realm of poetry.

Poetry from the past has lined up a set of expectations for poets in the 21st century to reach and overcome. It has to be creative, witty, meaningful, and somehow inconspicuous so you don’t know exactly what they’re saying, but then again you do.

I read poetry because it reminds me of the romantic connection that I have with writing. It sounds silly, but when I read poetry, I feel like I’m reading a personal piece of something in someone’s mind, and some deeper connection about life and its many ups and downs is brought to light. With it there’s a rhythm, a power, that a novel can’t always get at, and a song can’t always thoroughly explain. Find a favorite poet or a favorite piece and thrive on the energy that either brings to you.

To delve into the repertoire of poets then and now would be to wide a margin to cover, but I do encourage the practice of reading poetry for the sole reason that it allows its readers to take a quick and, I’m not going to lie, effort-filled journey, through a story they’ve had yet to experience. Collections of poetry are like personal notes addressed to you that open up the crooks of someone’s imagination just for you to enjoy.

Here are some poems from a couple of my favorite poets:

Homage to my Hips by Lucille Clifton

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

Dover Beach  by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.


Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.


The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

A Little Nostalgia

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With a new year beginning, feelings of nostalgia are bound to arise in place of past events, people, and art. As the years go by we are graced with new and upcoming artists and artwork that brings about change within how we view certain aspects of life and ourselves. With the start of a new year, it becomes a question of what will be created or discovered this year, that will completely trump anything we’ve ever seen before? What will challenge our views or enlighten our minds? Yet, there will always be a deep appreciation for what art has done to get us where we are today.

Take these photo sets for example:

School Break (Detroit)

Photo Credit: BoredPanda.com

A New York Minute

batmanpride.tumblr.comMacauley Culkin in Home Alone 2: Lost in New YorkTom Hanks and Meg Ryan in You've Got MailPatrick Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost

Photo Credit: PandaWhale.com

I loved these photographs because they elicit feelings of nostalgia for the past and greater times, especially when it comes the time for new beginnings. What I also loved was the artistic quality of them and coupling two eras of moments that are completely different from each other.

In art there should always be reverence for artistic history, and what got us to where we are today, but let’s also keep our minds open to whatever creativity can bring us in the future.

Psychedelic Boat Ride

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I’m a media buff if you haven’t noticed by now. I find art to be most interesting in the way it has developed with technology and is presented to the masses. In the 70’s original version of the highly-acclaimed Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, there are many elements of artistic innovation that have never been done before. The candy room, the orange oompa-loompa’s that belted out impromptu jams at the drop of a chocolate bar, and the most intriguing scene to me—the boat scene.

The psychedelic boat trip captures all I ever expected the 70’s to be plus an ontological approach to questioning life. I love that this was a kid’s movie. The boat trip uses a creepy Dr. Suess adapted tune, the flashing of bright lights in a dark tunnel, the indistinguishable images of monsters, and the complete fear of the passengers, to create an artistic message that what we fear is always with us. However, we choose to live in this blind oblivion with candy and the beautiful aspects of life to avoid our fears.

I find the art in the scene to be the true grit of what is visually happening, and what Willy Wonka is saying. He’s not sugar-coating his words, no pun intended. The insertion of the Psychedelic boat scene in the midst of all of the happy and carefree feelings that the movie permits, makes the scene even more noticeable and questionable.

I’m not quite sure what the scene exactly is saying through the visually graphic and trippy images, and I don’t think anyone will ever know unless they ask the writers of the film themselves. My little interpretation of the scene is that it utilizes art as a means to evoke fear and change within people, but we all know from the story only one child truly captures that change.

Here’s the scene in all its glory:

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: Psychedelic Boat Trip

Classic vs. Modern: Fairy Tales

Erika Bell 4 Comments

I know my fair share of fairy tale stories thanks to Disney and the countless classics that grace my shelf at home. Cinderella meets her prince charming and lives happily ever after, or Snow White battles the evil queen with her seven dwarfs, ultimately falling in love and living happily ever after. Fairy tales have been around even before Disney took the world by storm with animation and musical classics. Like many folklore origins, fairy tales have been passed down through oral diffusion and reworked to appeal to certain audiences.

The classics that we know so well, Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Little Mermaid, have created a belief in society that what happens in these stories, a beautiful girl going through turmoil and eventually finding love and happiness, is something that we all hope to be true in our lives. The classic films gave a hope for those who wanted something special to believe in, yet they also gave a falsification of reality that modern adaptations have felt compelled to expose.

Once Upon a Time, Shrek, Snow White and the Huntsman, all have reconstructed fairy tales and made the stories we’ve all held dear into modernist takes.

Once Upon a Time follows the story lines of almost every fairy tale character from the classics, and how they are connected to the curse that has fallen upon the main characters. The television show’s take on classic fairy tale stories is inventive and dramatic. The story may twist what exactly happened to each character, but it does so in hopes of finding a greater happiness for all characters.

Movies like Shrek and Snow White and the Huntsman can be considered nods to the classic stories as well. By reinventing the main characters and creating new ones, the stories give the genre something more than just magic and good to believe in. The movies give the fictional characters power, physically and mentally, that helps them fight the evil that will inevitably cross their paths.

These fairy tale adaptations have brought the power that the modern-age has developed when it comes to cinema. No longer is the sweet and innocent story line what captures audiences’ attentions, it has become about the mystery, the intrigue, and the idea of complete failure in order to reach that happily ever after. These adaptations don’t solely rule out the happy ending, but the turmoil that the fictional characters go through is more complex and more hard to overcome.

When you compare the classic tales of magic to the modernist tales of vengeance, you can see the difference decades have made on the idea of the good vs. evil. Movies and television are not wrong in giving such well loved stories new ideas and depth, but there is a clear understanding in what has changed about the beloved fairy tale story. Time. Times have changed and so have the ideologies of what makes a fictional story believable.

Trend-Setters or Trend-Stoppers?

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I love high fashion. Ever since I was a pre-teen my obsession with foreign designers and unique style icons emerged, and I can’t seem to shake it. With high fashion comes trends that are transferred from the runway to the people around us (studs, color-blocking, ombre, etc.). Trends are great, they keep the youth of this generation flowing with creative ideas like decades of the past (70’s hippie, the 80’s, 90’s grunge, etc.). However, with the waves of trends and styles that drift in and out of our generation, I feel that we may never reach the heights that the 70’s or 80’s have reached.

The 80’s was a decade in fashion known for vibrant contrasting colors, excessive makeup, wild hair, and leggings (ah, where they were born). Since the beginning of the 21st Century, the trends that runways have produced and brought to the masses have yet to create a long-lasting stamp on the people of this time. We do have waves of trends that stay with us for a few months, but then something new sweeps the scene  and the trends that we’ve loved so much are forgotten and regretted.

Photo Credit: ohmydior.org

I suppose that’s a part of fashion, but I fear that there will never be such an iconic time again where a trend makes a mark on the world for a decade or more, and we all embrace expression through style.

We do have the hipster” trend that has kept its standing for a good year (oversize shirts, leggings/skinny jeans, loafers, glasses that you don’t need, etc.), but I’m not sure if it’s strong enough to make a statement for those who will look on this time in the future and think of style and its evolution.

Photo Credit: sexysocialmedia.com

You’ve Just Been Validated

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Have you ever felt unwanted or like the action of smiling would take every ounce of energy out of you? I think everyone has.

One thing many people don’t know about me is my growing obsession with short films. I’ve fallen in love after watching two Italian strangers fall in love at a restaurant in the span of 3 minutes, and I’ve felt empowered after watching a teenage girl fight off the forces of her disgusting boss. Yet one of my favorite short films would have to be Kurt Kuenne’s Validation.

Validation uses comedy to capture the plot line of a society of people that need the validation that they are good enough, that they are smart enough, and that they are worthy enough to smile. Hugh Newman, played by Bones’ TJ Thyne, is the scruffy validator to give these people what they need (and free parking). Within the span of 16 minutes, Validation takes on the battle of falling in love and finding reason enough to smile.

The artistic structure of Validation is also unlike any short film of its time. When other films are focused on the HD picture, beautiful actors and actresses, or the most luxurious backdrops, Validation uses a black and white color scheme and incorporates normal people with normal problems in order to project the message of wanting to feel more, well wanted. The film uses humor with great social issues of the time while simultaneously showing the importance of  feeling good about yourself through the act of giving kind words.

Personally I feel like as a society we don’t spread kindness enough, to strangers or to the people we know. It’s one of the easiest and most free forms of giving known to man, but it just isn’t utilized enough. Why is that, do you think? I’m not saying that I’m the next Hugh Newman when I’m around people, but as a result I do view how people interact or don’t interact with others differently.

I could go on and on about the amazing-ness of this short film, as I said it is one of my favorites, but it’s just something you have to experience for yourself.

Validation