Benjamin Garcia Extra Credit

During the reading with Benjamin Garcia, he mentioned his personal experiences living as a homosexual person of color and how it influences his writing. Given that he began his college career as a biology major, he draws a lot of inspiration from the natural world. He mentions animals a lot and many plants. I like how he was able to take characteristics from certain species and relate them to his personal life and experiences. The reference to the corpse flower was especially interesting to men and I enjoyed the analogy of living one’s truth and not living simply to please people. As someone who enjoys writing, I took a lot of inspiration from his methods and techniques. My mindset changed when he was saying that failures are learning experiences and still teach valuable lessons for later work. The part as well about him not staying within the rigid confines of the genre was insightful as well. His last poem about the tacos was incredibly unique and he made many clever analogies. The implementation of humor makes the poem enjoyable to hear but there are many underlying themes that are relevant to society and topics in his personal life. He added many details in the poems he read about his family and poverty which reminded me of A Raisin in the Sun. His experiences as a person of color are not something I can personally relate to, but his detailed accounts of growing up with the culture were inspiring to hear. I also really liked how he talked about natural disasters and hurricanes as well as unpleasant flowers to show the complex, displeasing ways that nature can be. Before the reading, I went to the workshop and he gave very good advice and writing exercises that I will be using in the future. The general theme of the generative workshop was memory and he had us focus on one random object. From there we described it and came up with two others following the same process. He had us write about the connections between them and he used one of his poems as an example. I thought it was fascinating how he could create such a compelling, cohesive piece of work from the image of coffee on sponges, hummingbirds, and lungs. He had us take three keywords inspired by the random objects and stem words off of them, then create sentences and stimulate creative work. This exercise, though seemingly simple, created very complex and thought-provoking ideas and I will for sure use this tactic in the future when I am in a writing slump. He mentioned how he can bend the reality of past events and it helps him process what happened. This creates different emotions and helps live the events out in different ways. I liked how he mentioned characters and books within his own pieces and the allusions enhanced their relatability of them. Almost everyone knows the story of Harry Potter and I like how he connected it to his own story in a way that many people can understand. The workshop and reading were impactful and I learned about writing tactics, his personal struggles, and ways to approach writing to have positive outcomes.