Hello, everyone! The work I’d like to present today is my cento poem, “to grieve.” A cento is a poem made up of lines from other works of poetry written by other poets. My process for this poem was finding one line that I liked and centering the theme around that line, and the way I did that was by looking through my poetry book and finding lines that stuck out to me. I did not use more than two lines from any poems. The poets that I used for today’s poem are Charif Shanahan, Susan Wheeler, Marie
Howe, Jericho Brown, Matt Rasmussen, Ada Limón, Lia Purpura, Nicole Sealy, Donika Kelly, Laura Kasischke, and Solmaz Sharif. This poem is about grief, and I created it on the day of my cousin’s funeral. I used a winding-down tunneled structure, to mimic how grief can send you into a downward spiral. I also used no capitalization because the wake of losing someone can make you feel very small and alone.
Student Feature
Student Feature: Jovaughn Williams Presents “Scrawled”
Hello, everyone! today I’d like to present a cento that I’ve created. A cento is a piece written by using lines from other poets to create something new. When forming the process of this cento, I wanted to give the meaning to a specific dark apparent theme while also having it with a bit more of a musical tone. The theme I wanted to portray reflects the dark side of peer pressure and what potentially looking up to someone in your life can do to one psyche. To capture that feeling, I needed to find lines that either were or when potentially stitched together can bring that element of darkness and eerie nature I desired. Now that’s just easy. First thinking of potential lines that would fit the criteria, my mind immediately came across Patricia Smith’s “Skinhead.” A poem for those who may not know, it is a piece that goes into the persona of a ‘skinhead’ and their views on the state of America.
Continue readingStudent Feature: Lauren Lotarski Presents “Digitalis”
Hello, everyone! Today I’d like to present a piece in the poetic form called a golden shovel, whose construction begins by choosing a quoted line from another poem and making each word from that quotation the last word in each of your own lines, thus the number of words in the quote you use for inspiration becomes the number of lines in your poem. This form allows for a framework that constrains the piece to the will of the words chosen but simultaneously allows many liberties in the expression and integration of said words. This piece’s largest constraint became its inclusion of a figure from Greek Mythology, Orpheus, as context for his inclusion would need to be weaved into the greater piece surrounding it. As a result, the poem took form into a type of dream sequence, in which I created a lush garden-like world with a touch of mystique and utilized the twist of a more concrete, familiar figure such as Orpheus for a crux of the work, allowing his presence to hold a lot of the representative meaning.
Continue readingA Community Collaboration: Golden Shovels
For our Spring 2021 issue of Jet Fuel Review (cover art by Deedee Cheriel), we devoted a special section to golden shovels. If you are unfamiliar with the form, it is an interesting take on acrostic poetry where a poet chooses a line and puts each word from that line at the end of each of their new lines. Terrance Hayes created the form and based his poem “The Golden Shovel” on Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool.” (In Hayes’s poem, he explores his childhood and memories of his father).
We felt that it was necessary to take this golden shovel form beyond the confines of our journal. Like previous issues that had special sections, we would often have a call-out throughout Lewis University in order to foster community engagement and celebration. This time, unlike our 19th issue that focused on collaborative poetry, we chose the golden shovel form. To celebrate the successful launch of our 21st issue, and to witness a mosaic of creativity at the end of the Spring 2021 Semester, we asked students, faculty, and alumni to join together to create golden shovels. These shovels could be from a line of poetry or music that inspired the community member to write.
Presented below is an excerpt from the Special Section’s introduction written by JFR Assistant Managing Editor, Jo Spangler, that discusses the form in more detail. Located underneath the excerpt from our journal, there is a collection of fantastic golden shovels written by some of our own editors of Jet Fuel Review as well as some faculty and alumni of Lewis University. In summation, each of these golden shovels represents communication between the original author of the line and the poet using it. This community project is one that connects to the theme of our special section and gives a glimpse into the creativity and talent of our community. I hope you love Jet Fuel Review‘s 21st issue and also enjoy reading some golden shovels from the Lewis community.
Thank you, and I hope the blog has served you well during this difficult semester!
— Christian Mietus, Blog Editor
Continue readingFilm Feature: Analysis of There Will Be Blood by Lorenzo Ferro–”The Voice of Gods”
“There Will Be Blood: The Voice of Gods” a film analysis by Lorenzo Ferro.
The emotional feeling of being in control is one that is defined by the power, influence, and direction over people’s behavior or a series of events (“Control”). The struggle for control, or even better described as the struggle for power, is an immediate ignition for tension. The idea of a fight for control is one that can be expertly used to form tension in cinema. Pulling from real life, as is so common in art, directors use tension and power to create in-depth characterization; but, depicting dominance in a film can be a difficult task to perform subtly. In the movie, There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson uses parallelism between the two characters, Daniel and Eli, to form an intricate battle between two similar minds. Anderson does not use any single tool to form a fight for power, but he does use one tool in particular which is key to There Will Be Blood: aural composition. Being the catalyst for the entire movie’s plot, overlying vocal control—which is the strive for “power, influence, and direction over people or a series of events” by means of using the voice—between the two characters is a constantly changing scale that alters the way each scene plays out. In There Will Be Blood, the aural compositions, specifically the use of a god-like voice-over mixed with diegetic vocal performances, especially of characters Daniel and Eli, allows the audience to audibly—as well as visually—understand the mental power dynamic between characters on and off screen.
Continue readingFilm Feature: Analysis of The Exorcist by Chris J.Patiño–Lighting the Darkness
“The Exorcist: Lighting the Darkness” a film analysis by Chris J.Patiño
There are many ways to paint a picture of fear. For some filmmakers, it’s all in the monster, in 
showcasing the boogeyman at the center of the story. Others rely on suggestion and mind games to get inside peoples’ heads. Whichever way you cut, it’s all theatricality, and presentation goes a long way into how an audience will react. The Exorcist stands as one of the greatest horror films because of the filmmakers’ mastery over the language of film. Perhaps the film’s strongest element is its depiction of demonic possession. Director William Friedkin’s grounded documentary approach lends the film a sense of realism that is uncommon within the genre. He pays careful attention to making sure the world and the people in it feel authentic and believable. But that does not mean the film lacks artistry. As it happens, it’s the combination of the real with the imaginary that sells the film’s realistic vibe and accentuates the horror of it all. Of the filmmakers’ many technical wizardries, the cinematography, specifically the lighting, captures the character’s internal landscapes of fear as they contend with great evil. It lends to the film’s overall themes of faith and uncertainty. In The Exorcist, expressionistic lighting is tied directly to the human psyche, portraying the inner turmoil of doubt in the face of evil.
Film Feature: Megan O’Brien reviews Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation
The Invitation
**Warning: spoilers ahead**
Welcome to yet another dinner party from hell, which could very well be the tagline for Karyn Kusama’s 2015 film The Invitation. This film is the definition of a slow burn because whenever you think something violent is about to happen, it pivots in a new direction. However, this doesn’t mean it’s void of tension as it’s always there simmering beneath the surface. Every sound from the clattering of wine glasses to the constant beeping of a car engine is articulated to the point where audiences are left waiting for a release that will never come (until the last 30 minutes of the film that is).
Film Feature: Katelynn Gleason reviews Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation
An Invitation to Remember
**Warning: spoilers ahead**
Karyn Kusama’s 2015 film The Invitation is worth watching but not for the reasons you might think. It is best to approach the film without grand expectations and with the realization that it is not your typical horror movie. It is better described as a psychological mystery/drama.
The general narrative structure is straight-forward at best and highly predictable. The mystery of the invitation is revealed early on, despite the attempt of hiding it with the uncomfortable atmosphere of the dinner party. Still, there are some redeeming qualities that make this film worth watching at least once.
Film Feature: Chris J. Patiño reviews Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation
I’m never going to a dinner party in the Hollywood Hills, no matter how good looking the people are.
Subdued, meticulous and distinctive in tone, The Invitation is a film whose horrors lie in human behavior rather than supernatural forces. Director Karyn Kusama taps into the primal nature of paranoia and suspicion to craft an engrossing psychological thriller that will do everything it can to spike your anxiety up into the stratosphere. The film also serves as a poignant study of grief and the lengths a person will go to free themselves of its pain.
The strength of The Invitation comes from its unpredictability: it keeps the audience second-guessing every visual cue and character action. The sense of unease stems from dissonance among the characters. Their situation continually gets weirder as the film goes along, but the nature of social etiquette keeps everyone quiet. The filmmakers keenly exploit people’s innate impulse to side-step public displays of strangeness to conjure up an excellent sense of sustained tension. The film is a series of tensions and diffusions. Carefully placed diversions keep us and protagonist Will (a tour-de-force Logan Marshall-Green) on edge, constantly rethinking and reanalyzing the situation.
Student Feature: Roundtable Reviews of “Halloween (2018)”
Found below are three different perspectives of David Gordon Green’s 2018 horror film, Halloween. Reviews are written by Lewis University students Chanon Penvari, Lucas Mickelson, and Braden Bentley.
*Spoilers ahead*
Chanon Penvari: Halloween (2018)
This film is not a remake film of Halloween (1978); instead, this is the story that takes place 40 years after. Since Michael Myers was first introduced in Halloween (1978), Myers has become one of the most iconic serial killers of all time. And, because Halloween’s (2018) timeline is 40 years after the first Halloween (1978), this means Michael Myers has killed five people, and it has been established that Laurie Strode and Michael Myers are not siblings. Michael Myers in Halloween (2018) is hungry for blood after being locked up in the hospital for 40 years.
Halloween (2018) utilizes many close-up shots to help make the viewer uncomfortable, and it also contains a long-take scene that is both thrilling and beautiful. In Halloween (1978), Myers’s signature act was standing still in the background, waiting patiently for the right time to kill. For this particular scene, the director, David Gordon Green, uses rack focus to increase the excitement for the viewer when they see Michael Myers blur in the background, then disappear.
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