L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

A rectangular concoction of synthetic fibers, molded plastic and rubber. Divided in half but no longer in the horizontal sense, and as certain in its destination as its contents’ desires to get somewhere. Carpeted with highfructosecornsyrup and now this niggahs Taco Bell that didn’t graduate past his lips. I’m on my way from somewhere to nowhere-trying-to-Be. Odd when you think about the concept of your body in movement without conscious thought. Being propelled through space with nothing less than casual courage. This one has a freckle above the muscle of her right thumb – a favourite part of the human body; literally what separates us from many. “animals”, she says. “I dunno, but something to do with animals”. In Long Island. Or Rhode Island. Not Ithaca, that’s what matters, ain’t it? Regression. That’s the side effect of this travel, a loss of Being; apart, alert, alive. My first optical scene this morning was of Matthew: wide-gray-eyed; as baffled by silence as by sound. Yes, sound – always, now. Ten percent natural, if you’re lucky. That thumb sure made us ambitious. We all nod slightly, up or down, acknowledge the human in you, in us, letting our eyes judge before our brains. I love you and still despise the humanity of us all – creators and creatures of waste and want. But dreams, if only they were edible might cure us of reckless companionship. Everyone has one. One has everyone. I wonder if the boy in the hat that’s more brim-than-skin despises the neurotic photography of his valley-girl princess-in-woolen-woven-blanket. Perhaps the taffy is enough. Perhaps we should reconsider sex. This? No, just the sex, the rest will be cross-examined later. Aren’t they intrinsically alike? The neurons show no signs of slowing down despite the illegal inhibitors. Nonsense is delightfully unfamiliar and the rest is merely heavy obligation. A scene with the title “Why Not To Trust Menkind” plays itself out before our eyes. More sound than sight. And I think, “There’re enough rings on delicious black fingers for us to take on our sisters’ foe,” and defend ourselves against terror. Mayhaps my facial scars are a blessing in disguise for wounds suggest trust and sacrifice. We raise the golden arches alongside state banners and the apathetic stripes with stars hangs limply – overshadowed. We want to know what words she says to make him kiss her on impulse and whether the little red phone mediates strife. Before we knew our parents also had privates (a word that betrays its secret with its last consonant) we laid our features to rest upon their laps and woke up feeling protected. She was, is, the same, only heavier and wiser. The elation of being seen beside her by strangers hasn’t died. For a leader, I have a weakness for strong-will women. They demand obedience, reliability, caution. Loving them whole with the skin they’re in. How did my delight travel from the nape to the collarbone to the thumb? Perhaps as my mild stream became a tamed, redirected, unmotivated resource stuffed with synthetic fibers, molded plastics and rubber.

Thank Goodness for an Introduction: Lyn Hejinian

Normally I avoid introductions, thinking that I don't need a strangers opinion on this literary persons creation; that the work should speak its essence to me without any meddling mediator. However, in regards to Lyn Hejinian, I'm so glad that I was presented with a set of loose guidelines with which to navigate her writing. It allowed me to be prepared to pay attention. And I paid attention, I drew lines between words that seemed similar to me, which helped me find the odd one out. I wondered at her animation of inanimte object and denial of the motion of other things. She might not make a whole lot of sense in her writing, but the writing itself is interesting, the use of certain phrases, the challenging of assumptions, the creation of images that are innovative but perhaps not all together unfamiliar, made me grow to have a great deal of respect for her. I wondered at the meaning or purpose of the little italicized side notes which accompanied 'from My Life', perhaps they're moral guidelines, or a bit of a voice from the author to help us feel that we're not all together alone with this matter, or simply words of wisdom similar to a daily quote to be pondered on. This elusiveness is intriguing but not off-putting to me. Why should everything be easy?

T.B.W (To Be Written)

I had the time this morning to write on White Noise but didn't feel I could structure my discussion of it in anything other than personal experience and I feel as though I do that far too often so I am going to do this one after class so that I have a better literary structure within which to frame my blog.

What is most interesting about reading this work would be the fact that I'm not a terribly modern person and I've been called an 'old soul' at least three times. I didn't grow up watching television, in fact it informs my life in a very limited way. How is someone like that supposed to understand this book? Does it even affect my reading? Or is it a work more about the American consciousness as a whole? How we work towards convenience of living life and our ultimate death? With shopping malls to pass the time and remind us of how money is as futile as the rest of it, with cars to easily transport our spoiled and pampered skins....

**********************************************************************************

Although the work seems clearly to present images of childhood, such as toys and curiosity in everything and steadfast opinions and descriptions of milestones in the year such as Halloween, I don't think that it was ever presented in such a way that I was brought to a particular event but perhaps just a feeling from a certain experience which is much more reasonable to ask of my limited memory. In terms of stimulation I find it interesting how the author doesn't ever identify the providers of such stimulation either by referring to the speaker or narrator of the news or by talking about cable companies and "they". I think that the post-Cold War atmosphere is very dominant in Jack's actions and thoughts, the number of questions, the attempt to find meaning without disrupting routine, and at the same time to some degree being ready for sudden disruptive events because he grew up with that panic and paranoia. I don't think that my lack of experience in regards to directly relating with television for lengthy period of times affects my reading of this work because there is such a plethora of experience and world views I don't feel alienated. I would only feel alienated if there were references to particular actors and actresses from a certain show or what have you.

Sula

I've read Toni Morrison's Beloved before, but Sula has a different quality to it. It has less terror and haunting and abuse or perhaps just has all of these qualities in a more subtle way. I found her introduction to her novel very insightful and assisted my interest in what was to come. I do think that the context of the inception of the work is as important as its contents. And the inception of this work is very conscious of its potential ignorant audience, the whites, who will not be approaching this work with the appropriate guards up if they have any at all. The "buffer zone" of the foreword manages to create this guard for them, to establish very clearly the misunderstanding of her communities activities, joy and general livelihood. The story itself is again conveniently encapsulated for those sensitive to or ignorant of the content shes is about to present by the presentation of this town as a historical fact and not something which any longer 'taints' the present. It could be suggested that this is a fact of her youth as an author at this point in her career, and consequently her anxiety about getting favorable reviews. The description of war by Shadluck is very similar to presentation of war in A Red Badge of Courage. The fact that we learn of his racial identity at the same time he rediscovers it in the toilet bowl, a place of filth and unwanted contents, is an interesting linguistic turn.

Gloria, Hallelujah!

Gloria Anzaldua is another fabulous insightful moving pained and productive writer that we've read this semester. I'll certainly be holding onto this one. Although the preface was very dense in sociological, socio-political and other academic concepts, I found it was very important information which helped me to approach the material she was presenting me with which was very far from my own bubble. As a third generation American, living comfortably off the successful mobility of those before me, with a past dominated by experiences in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts - I at first can't relate. But how about the fact that I've lived a life of crossing borders, of tireless and seemingly endless travel to over twenty countries? Isn't my desire to be somewhat settled, or at least to have roots, while not being nailed down, similar to her distress over not having a home or not being able to return to it or claim it? And although shes a lesbian and I'm a bisexual, we share the process of rejection and acceptance which comes as a result of that identity. What we don't share with in that regard, however, is perhaps a sense of community. Very early on I found others like me, I was affirmed and reaffirmed, whereas she had to affirm herself in the face of direct confrontation and perhaps or probably only recently in her academic world found "the community".
I feel very thankful that I studied Spanish for three years and even though failed horribly at it as a class because of being intimidated out of my ability to speak it I still enjoy listening to it, reading it out loud and speaking the little I do know in casual conversation. Tenses I know not at all, and my vocabulary is limited, so my translation is always rather poor, but there is something about the pronunciation of the language that lends itself to feeling being expressed. That is why I read her work aloud and reacted particularly strongly to words such as "authentic" which were expressed in regards to it.

Frank O'Hara

After reading the introduction to the Collected Poesm of Frank O'Hara, I was ready to thoroughly enjoy his work because of his "anti-literary and anti-artistic" as well as "unrevised" style which "ignored the rules" -- similar to the way I plunged into poetry in eighth grade. Although I know that we're perhaps supposed to be approaching our school work in a more objective frame of mind, I would be doing myself a disservice to approach another poets work without the question, "What can I learn from here?". However, I discovered it was very...distanced somehow, and I read it but wasn't 'moved'. I can't quite find what it was about his work that wasn't touching to me. Perhaps its because I've become too accustomed to my generations angsty angry frustrated underdeveloped poetry and my aesthetic taste for poetry hasn't been established. However, the poem 'Poem', dedicated to Gertrude Stein, had a flow that I found attractive. That flow, the way that it lends itself to you reading it silently the same way that you would read it aloud. Perhaps because its the most bodily poem we read of his. Perhaps because he used the word 'you'.

Giovanni's Room

I think this book is by far one of the best ones I have read since...perhaps ever. I may have been as excited about another book, say, Doris Lessing's Marriage of Zones Three, Four and Five or Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things, but I haven't had the same experience that I've had with Giovanni's Room. Not only was the prose sharp and quick and observant, but it was also invasive.
Invasive.
Yeah, invasive. It got under my skin, and at some points that felt really nice, but there were certainly times when I had to put it down and walk as far away as I could. I am nothing like that character, and yet I still identified with him. During the second part, the sickness spread to my mind. I found myself reading eagerly, or perhaps hesitantly waiting to see just how hard things are going to fall, and at the same time thinking about things totally outside this book, questioning my life in the same way, at the same time. That means my brain was processing two different scenarios parallel to one another. It was a bewildering experience.
Perhaps it also helped that for no particular reason whatsoever, I happened to have skimmed my Strunk & White's Elements of Style: illustrated this morning and had a sense of E.B.White's fanaticism for unwasted words. I remember thinking that it's a lot easier to not waste words when you are free to write as much or as little as you want, but college students don't have that leisure. Baldwin adheres to this rule, intentionally or not, and does so brilliantly.

Revisiting Gertrude Stein

Upon reviewing the expanse of work that our class has covered in the last seven weeks for the midterm, I decided to give Gertrude Stein another chance. This time I kept in mind what one classmate mentioned about reading her aloud and did so. I found myself closing my eyes and paying close attention to the movements of my teeth and tongue and lips, as if my eyes had sunk down into my uvula and I were watching a very surreal movie. After studying Hindi for a few months abroad, I have a new found awareness for the capacities of my mouth with language and I have to thank Gertrude Stein for giving me back the feeling that language is a beautiful thing and not something ever to be taken for granted. The movements of your mouth during her poems seem far more important than the subject. During my reading I often found that sometimes she cares so much about repeating a oral movement that she scrambles the meaning of a sentence to do so:

"Bidding a wedding, widening received treading, little leading mention nothing."

"Cough out cough out in the leather and really feather it is not for."

So, thanks Ms. Stein, for your seemingly nonsensical poetry!

William Faulkner, "A Rose For Emily"

For no apparent reason except perhaps that I enjoy reading aloud, I read this story aloud. I rarely do this except when I have an audience to listen, as I listened so attentively to my father as a child when he read Briar Rabbit aloud and animatedly. My walls were attentive listeners. Hearing the words as well as reading them brought out more rhythm and imagery to this short story, I could see and hear the ladies gossiping about Miss Emily because as an animated reader I had to make a quick decision how those words ought to be said. I wouldn't say that the language is particularly difficult to read, although those words that attend the most to imagery may be cause for pause such as "coquettish" and jalousies (which I learned is a peculiar word for a blind or shutter with adjustable horizontal slats) or cabal (a small group of secret plotters; a clique). This last word, once its definition had been obtained, was cause for pause with me, because I hadn't exactly imagined the townspeople as aligned against Miss Emily during the story, but rather a group of various positions and knowledge of her. I supposed before that they would just as easily gossip about the pastor that they asked for help or the general store owner as her. Upon re-reading, I realize that it is narrated mainly from "we" and that supports the introduction of an image of mostly malicious individuals. However, what to do about the context within which the word is introduced: "By that time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily's allies to help circumvent the cousins" (127)? A cabal of people outside who have picked this time to be her ally for their benefit? We're not given any further information exactly about their intentions here. Or necessarily anywhere else, they are mostly speculative and voice a negative opinion only when it infringes upon their comforts - such as smells and bodies not put properly to rest. Can we conclude that Miss Emily was crazy as a consequence of her resting beside her love who we presume she poisoned with the arsenic? No, because we are given no indication that those things are the certain correlation of events due to the reader being aligned (against their will?) with the 'outsiders'.

William Carlos Williams

What a delight it was to be introduced to this poet! As a writer myself, I'm always a close reader of others poetry in terms of word use, spacing, analogy and metaphor. I suppose I could easily drive myself quite nuts suffering from low self-esteem in terms of my writing and always striving to be immediately as effective as some of the Greats. Needless to say, I have a fair amount to learn and reading selections of W.C Williams works was a wonderful contribution to that process.

The poem which struck me the most during my first read through was The Farmer but there were also paragraphs of pieces which came to my attention with another hour of attention. I suppose I really liked the image of a farmer being compared with an artist. Its first stanza evoked in my mind the rhythm of a piece written by Stan Rice, husband to Anne Rice, who was in his own rights a strong painter and gothic poet:

Duet on Iberville Street
The man in black leather
buying a rat to feed his python
does not dwell on particulars.
Any rat will do.
While walking back from the pet store
I see a man in a hotel garage
carving a swan in a black of ice
with a chain saw.

-January 30 1994

In contrast to that ironic depiction of urban livelihood, Williams presents us with a natural setting, and an exceptionally average man. One who must think ahead of nature in order for his and societies successes. His grasp of nature and his ability to use adjectives to describe not only the inanimate objects texture and temperature but its action is quite striking. I am thinking here of "the world rolls coldly away:/black orchards/darkened by the March clouds--leaving room fro though." and "bristling by/the rainsluiced wagonroad".

The other selections of his writing which caught my attention also had to do with his very exquisite, non-cliche, ability to describe nature. This is see in The Botticellian Trees: "principles of/straight branches/are being modified/by pinched-out/ifs of color, devout/conditions" and The Yachts: "the whole sea become an entanglement of watery bodies/lost to the world bearing what they cannot hold."

Also, from I (p.305) "Jostled as are the waters approaching/the brink,his thoughts/interlace, repel and cut under,/rise rock-thwarted and turn aside/but forever strain forward-or strike/an eddy and whirl,marked by a /leaf or curdy spume, seeming to forget ." The word use, and imagery and impenetrable spaces before the period left me quite impressed, to say the least.

Literary Time Twists

Recently we've read selections from The Souls Of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois and also started The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James. Both of these are books with seperate and special places in my life.

In regards to the first, I read "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" for my old Sociology teacher, Dia DaCosta (now Dia Mohan) who left HWS after Spring '07 for Queens University in Canada. She was an amazing teacher, very dear to all of her students hearts, for the way that she demanded the best from us, regardless of our previous experience with the subject at hand and left us striving for comprehension hours after class. I took Intro to Soc and Sociology of Art and Culture with her, two classes on opposite ends of the spectrum of academic rigorousness. I read Du Bois in Art and Culture and am incredibly pleased to be able to revisit his writings. I find them remarkable. He was so coherent in his conscious study of the present, the past and the future. He speaks in such a voice that it's hard not to at once feel transported. It's a History lesson that doesn't grow boring, because as tough as the material it wrestles with is, it is full of Truths: reflecting both humanities actions and mentality. In that manner it is a literary time portal that is, although in essence very defined, in a bizarre way timeless and unidentifiable. By speaking against exemption, it gloriously embraces.

The second text, which I had sent to me from home, has pages which hold a bright joyous yellow tint to their edges. This copy was printed in 1993. It's small and portable, complete and unabridged, with a cover which is printed with such an image as you can't help but want to know more. A young girl, with her hair standing on edge, and her mouth in a startled 'O' is dressed in a remarkable purple dress and fleeing from an apparition chasing after her up the stairs. The ghost's face has such intention to its brow, yet its hair also reflects hers. This work has sat on my shelves since my Dad deemed it a piece I was ready to consume, yet I have never managed to do its pages justice. I'm glad, at last, for the excuse. What has struck me already with this work, is its twisting narrative, not in terms of plot, but in terms of time. We have an undefined present the author speaks from, where another narrator speaks of a past, which is not his own past, but yet another's. And even when the narration of this third narrator begins, it is still in language of hindsight. Its a very remarkable journey to put a reader through within nine pages! And within such a short time, the audience has been promised a great mystery story. I do admit that by having the female narrator speaking from such a voice that we are always feeling as if we are expecting something is a wonderful style for a mystery story. A perfect example is, "But these fancies were not marked enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in the light, or the gloom, I should rather say, of other and subsequent matters that they now come back to me" (p.12)

Adieu.

...A Very Good Place To Start!

Hiyah! This is Norah here, better known by my close friends as Nor Nor. I live in Weston, Connecticut; tucked back in the woods near a stream. I'm not a fan of the area. Its impossible to get anywhere without a car, and nearly all the 'lifer' residents have too much money and seemingly not enough to spend it on. There's even a Tiffany's in the next town; Westport! However, it is the place I know best.

I'm a junior whose majoring in English with a concentration in Theater, with plans to be a noteworthy Stage Manager. Although it's a career that won't bring me money or appreciation, it's the thing I understand best. I have a natural talent, I suppose, for coordinating and problem-solving all the various facets of this art. The end result, the nights with the audience, are probably the most boring ones. Until then, there're rehearsals to be scheduled, props to collect and maintain, lines to be memorized, and set to be constructed. Then I have to train myself and any backstage hands on how and where to move the set in less than ten minutes in a quiet organized manner. Things always go wrong with something or someone. Money is chronically short, but that is the universal challenge that keeps all artists creative, right?

Other than theater, I like to follow international conflicts and relations. I also write poetry like its a sickness; my mind forcing my hand to record strange, tripping, pairs and cliques of words. I adore conversations and people who are interested in learning something about everything. I think that everyone should strive to achieve the highest possible level of knowledge about the world.

I had the good fortune to go to high school in London, so I studied mostly British war poets and authors such as Doris Lessing. After fifteen years in school, I don't have the slightest respectable handle on American literature. This is also a class that will help my global understanding of literatures' influence on culture and subsequently dramatic literature. I've read articles of DuBois' in Sociology and am very excited to read more of his writing. I'd also like to learn new styles and approaches to poetry so that I can keep experimenting and maturing my own work.

I think that good writing not only catches the readers attention by communicating a recognizable emotion and episode of life but also does so in unique language that shows and doesn't tell. Writing is a craft that has evolved with the development of society, and will continue to do so. Just as 'good' is difficult to define, sincere writing can be difficult to apply a value to due to its infinitely subjective nature.

"What will be remembered is not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

Until next time,
Norah