Finally a President who can read poetry.
A New Blog – Poetry Thesis Musings
I know not everyone cares about hearing someone else talk about their thesis – that was so twenty years ago. So, I forked off a new blog, Poetry Thesis Musings, in which I’ll talk about everything thesis related as it occurs to me. I did want to note the first reflective entry on Pattiann Rogers’ essay “Twentieth-Century Cosmology and the Soul’s Habitation,” which has an interesting segment related to the Wallace Stevens Encounters project. It has to do with Stevens’ conception of pressure as a measure of history. More on that to come.
An Important Announcement
I added this in the sidebar pages, but I want to be sure that it’s seen. A link will also go at the top of each new post, just for my own comfort.
I hate to have to do this. Really, I do. However:
Recently, I have noticed that I am receiving searches based on some of the titles I have reflected on. One in particular caught my attention:
is represented by the nostalgia with which she writes about the various food obsessions she had as a child. as many american writers, nguyen writes about her obsession and her family, creating a space in the literary tradition for her multivalent
This quote comes from the reflection on Bich Minh Nguyen’s Stealing Buddha’s Dinner. What this shows me is that there is someone out there (probably for a class of some sort) who copied a significant portion of the text of that reflection (and, in fact, the thesis of that reflection), and his or her professor is checking up on the work turned in.
Some things to keep in mind:
- The work on Poetic Idealism is original and mine.
- Many of these have been turned in as assignments for various graduate English courses.
- The entries are not necessarily of the standard to be used as sources for academic papers (though I’m honored if you think so).
- If you take a chunk of text and do not cite it, that is plagiarism.
- YOU WILL GET CAUGHT. It’s a simple Google search, don’t be dumb.
Just keep these in mind if you are looking for sources for some high school or college paper.
Existentialism
So, I have stuffed a (very)well-paying job down the tubes to follow my talent.
Am I doing the right thing?
I’m posting here because I don’t remember the p/w to my other existentialist crisis blog. So.
I’m also getting married in two (2) weeks. We bought the dress for my fiance today, and to be honest, she looks beautiful in it; even though I’m upset the custom dress didn’t work out (and I mean the seams were all f’d up, the zipper was crooked, and it was not at all flattering), this one is pretty damned good off the rack.
Have I written anything lately?
No. I am recovering. I just finished my BA in English after 140 years, and frankly, I’m tired. I have a paper to write still, but the wedding is taking priority; I also don’t have a summer job yet. But I know something will come up. If nothing else, I’ll deliver pizza or Chinese food, fml. But, starting this fall, I have an assistanship for graduate school. Full tuition and a stipend, nothing to laugh at. So I have to figure out something for this summer so we can afford the apartment and damned bills for the wedding.
I’m broke and not loving it.
I feel like I should take the time and write some poetry. I’m getting to that point. Course, I’m a poet, so that’s my natural inclination, but it also is work for me since I take it too seriously. So I don’t want to do it.
I think I’ll work on my paper this week in between applying for jobs, and post it to my VIRB blog, since that’s where all of it has gone in the last coupla years.
Since I am a poet, and this is a blog, how about a poem to finish off here?
Roses are red, Violence is blue,
We’ve bought a dress, and my honey looks good.
I am broke, so’s my card,
here’s to the times, never looked hard.
But here I am, can’t work and can’t play,
money is tight, and though I can say
I’m in love, it doesn’t get far
with the down payment for a new car.
suppitwist
Reading Pynchon in 2010, pt.1
What echoes of our times: his future. Gravity’s Rainbow minces the layers of power like an onion, until you can no longer tell which piece comes from which layer. The same way many of us feel today.
The money, for example: where has all the money gone? Where does it come from? What does $ 100,000,000,000.00 even mean? Is it literal? Or more like the made-up currency, the player’s currency they used behind the scenes in Germany in the run-up to WWII?
Another example: the dichotomies of politics, partisanning more and more into opposing forces. Somebody’s playing it like a video game, but who?
Culture, too, is moving outward, sliding open as if two immense bronze doors until they are parallel, and a gulf has opened between them. Absolutists on either side who cannot listen to each other; and yet, these doors are webbed across by small filaments: tax minimalists who also believe in the right of choice; homosexual people who cannot marry voting for ultra-cons because they support anti-immigrant controls; progressive liberals who mostly manage to conceal their racism until finding that secret polling screen.
Despite these cross-links, our society is becoming more and more striated. Left and Right fighting for control, and all of us who don’t play in the game the ones to lose. Can anything be done? Can some one stand in the middle and shout to either side? Reach out with Mr. Fantastic arms and bring us back together into one mass?
In physics, it takes much more energy to fuse two elements together than to split them apart (this is why nuclear fusion power is still on the drawing table), and it looks like the same is true in politics.
It also looks more and more like Pynchon’s novel was (and is) a frightening prophecy. Metaphorically speaking.
New digs
I want to point the way to my current locations. I’ve not kept up with Blogger in so long, and I’m not sure anyone looks at it anyways, plus there are few community features. So, on to the new worlds:
So, that’s it for now. The internet is wide, and maybe we’ll learn something about ourselves and the real world through it.
One Down
Well, just yesterday I got one acceptance letter! 4 more to go, we’ll see where I end up…
Eric
Life runs deep….
Long time, no posts
I know nobody looks at this particular corner of the web2.0…. but I have news, catch ups, and etc., so please bear with me.
Last spring (May, 2007), I graduated from Northern Virginia Community College with an Associates Degree in Liberal Arts. I have a 3.25 gpa.
In January of 2004, I got my honorable discharge from the USMC… I did not immediately go back to school, but eventually I did. Despite my 3 years at George Mason University, it took me a long time to get back into the swing of things, as they say.
Lately, I have been working on my applications for transfer to a four-year university, and I have been having the difficult time of getting everything together as needed. But I make progress and submit as can be expected.
I do have good news, however… During my (2006) semester at NVCC, I served as an intern on the art/literary magazine, Calliope, I edited the photos of the art and had a say in the makeup of the magazine, although I recused myself from voting on the literary side of things, seeing as how I submitted several poems. Lo-and-behold, I ended up with a 2nd place prize in poetry (nothing on this page, you’ll have to wait for my actual publication), though I could not make the ceremony because of a test in another class.
Anyways, I also received a commission for 2 poems: to be performed at NM Productions production of Too Many Sopranos, which had to be cut down to one act. There was no pay involved besides the performance of something I wrote, and the publication of two of my poems in the program (I’ll upload a scan later)
Since then, I have been treading water, trying to keep my nose out so I can breathe, but still getting washed over by waves.
I turn thirty this year, sometime. I don’t want to be thirty. I feel eighteen, still. I don’t understand the world yet. My only rock is the woman who loves me, and who I love, and the fact that I don’t make time to write like I would like to…
I want to submit something to publish…. I want to have written well enough to warrant reading… but I have yet to take action on that goal. I fear, above anything else, rejection.
For me, it is like walking into, instead of jumping over, a bonfire.
The flames don’t even matter, it’s the hot coals that eat your flesh….
The Cathedral Glen, Introduction
Below, you will find parts one and two of a four-part short story. These are each on their second revision, and parts three and four are currently in SFD (Sh**ty First Draft) status. This is a story I have wanted to write for a while, although I never knew how to start it. Finally, about two weeks ago, I began writing a story, and though it was not intended to be this one, it did turn into it.
Finding the boundaries within our world is a task with which children are familiar; the thin places that separate our world and time from others, where the imagination, or magic, or science rule instead of the politics of our world. These worlds are ideal, they are places children escape to, or believe in, or know exist. They are places we lose as we age, and come to terms with our own reality, with the car payments and crookedness and harshness.
Our real world drives our imagination into the ground, and insists that those things are unreal, and so unimportant. Personally, I like to go to those places where we can travel the stars, and meet creatures of our fantasy.
I hope this story will bring out the child in its readers, the wonder and imagination and love…
Let me know what you think.