Extra Credit- Jon Thompson

Jon Thompson was a very relaxed and sublte reader his poems. His repetition of "ums" were very distracting the entire time he was speaking but other than that his reading were interesting and calming. He started from his first collection of books inspired by photographs his father took during the invasion of Japan. His father died before he could talk to him about the pictures so the Japan he describes is completely from his mind. The first stories were sad and somber about the death of the people and land in Japan. All the poems about being conquered would be sad but all of the poems are about death. The next set of poems he read was about the intricate, historical body tattoos that many of the inhabitants. He marvels over the bodies of the foreign people. The next sets of poems were about a bride and groom getting married in Japan and about the life and death cycle and how they held high faith in the Hyngongi temple. His next selection of readings "From the Ship Coast line with the words all meaning farewell. Lastly his poems were themed of landscape. He was writing on the film about Chinatown and everything that went on in the urban landscape. Overall  his poems abstract and very subtle but interesting.