BOXING POETICS: A SWEET SCIENCE

Our Own Voice recently did a special themed issue on food.  As a rare Pinay who doesn't cook, I insisted on participating.  So I sent them a Manny Pacquiao poem.  That poem, as both a food poem or a boxing poem is pretty lame.  But it was the best I could do (so far) precisely because I had not invested the body (that is, moi bod) into either cooking or boxing.  (I couldn't have written NOTA BENE EISWEIN, for example, without having once tortured a flamenco teacher by taking her classes.) Well, cooking continues to be a long shot for me.  But for that "Sweet Science!," CHECK OUT MOI NEW TOY!

Love it!  I am taking to it quite naturally!  And it's all for poetry -- not just for Manny Pacquiao Poems but I can see how its elements can enervate my ongoing manuscript, 147 MILLION ORPHANS.  For example, (I'm blogging it to file it here) these two boxing-related elements (from http://boxingkent00.tripod.com/id4.html) are sure to apply:

Fight or flight sydrome
This is the most common feeling the boxer will experience leading up to a fight, it is the brain telling you to run away to survive or stay and fight. It would rather you don't face the fear because survival is it's main aim and there is more chance of this if you don't hang around. Adrenalin is released into the blood stream getting you ready for action (this makes you stronger), you will sometimes feel sick and need to go to the toilet, you will get the shivers and sometimes stutter. Another name for this is FEAR.

Eustress
This is a type of stress that has a positive effect, the boxer will actually seek the stressful situations and thrive on the feelings associated with them, they will get fight or flight but they use it to their advantage.

Form matches content--I find myself boxing with this manuscript; the problem is that, as a poet, I shouldn't do that basic boxing stance of having my strong arm covering my face...in the making of the poem, you see, there should be--ideally--no walls between the author and the text.  No wonder I'm beginning to look like Mike Tyson; he was fearless in going in close to his opponents ... partly because, like Moi, he is short (oh yeah the significance of the body) which resulted in shorter reach:
 
 

 
Off to take some hits ... so that the poems themselves will contain the possibility of, Dear Readers, knocking you all out later!  KA-POW!
 
Those poker-playing poetry angels are always making mischief over Moi.  Who'da thunk that, as a boxer, I would be Mike Tyson.  C'mon, Fallen Angels -- I gotta get y'all for this one!