Sorry It's Been So Long...and Exam Progress

Sorry it's been so long since I posted last, but the beginning of the semester has overwhelmed my blogging impulse a bit. I'm teaching 2 sections, taking my last officially required grad class, and using the first month of classes to take my 20 written hours of the Big Nasty Tests (to be followed by an oral defense).

Plus I've been blessed this week with the usual 2nd-week-of-school seasonal allergies. Thanks, Indiana--I'll find a way to repay you for this someday. Maybe drop an anvil on one of your fallow fields while no one is there. (That would be not harmful for anyone, but incredibly cathartic, don't you think?)

Actually, despite the busyness and the stupid allergies, as I settle in to teaching this course I haven't taught before and write my exams in 2-hour chunks, I find myself enjoying myself quite a bit. I'm very much enjoying my students, the class I'm taking will definitely be helpful, and I'm getting intensely good at writing 2000 words (give or take 200 words) in 2 hours in response to each of my preliminary exam questions.

In fact, I'm appreciating the learning experience of these exams much more than I thought I would. Reviewing the materials I've been learning over the last couple of years is really helping me synthesize everything I've learned. And writing the answers to questions in the areas I've studied that I'm looking to dissertate on is also helping me to transition to that area in my head as well.

So, despite the Big Nastiness of these tests, I'm--dare I say--enjoying them. Weird, I know. But true. I think--hope--I'll even enjoy the oral defense of these written portions next month. (I actually did enjoy my MA thesis defense, so there's precedent.)

Anyway, I have a take-home to work on this weekend (Labor Day DOES mean labor, doesn't it?), a few final revisions to that creative writing project I got hired for this summer, and, more immediately, two classes to teach this afternoon, so I'll sign off for now. More later.

Poetry, Epochal Moments, and the New Writer-in-Chief

The last time I remember it happening was a much much much much much less pleasant epochal event--9/11. The inhabitants of the US were so stunned by what they were experiencing, so in need of verbalization by those who had experience with articulation, that they interviewed...one of the poet laureates, if I remember correctly.

So last week, as I read the poem printed on election day in the New York Times, watched the interview with poet Maya Angelou, and watched opinion columnists, pundits, and political bloggers waxing increasingly poetic in their prose, I was quite pleased that it was a happier event this time that called for out for articulation in poetic language and in words from poets.

The thing is, this event, though it also comes in difficult times for the country, comes out of a significantly different situation. Despite difficult economic times, this need for poetics comes out of an abundance of hopeful symbols and emotions to interpret, rather than a raging loss. Sure, many people who I respect voted for the other guy, and I myself don't agree with our new president-elect on several issues, but, politics aside, the choice is one rich in symbolism calling to be interpreted.

And the symbolism gets richer when you realize that the new president-elect himself is a gifted writer of poetic language who himself has been able to articulate poetic, memorable language that has inspired both America and the world in difficult times.

In a week when a glance at international news reminds us that poets and writers are often jailed in other countries for articulating their thoughts and that our election transitions move smoothly compared with those in other parts of the world, I feel particularly blessed to live in a country where we have this time chosen to elect a word-crafter, especially one who is able to perform the incredibly difficult task of articulating a politics of hope that may pull us away from the cynicism of the last decades.

Whether we'll all agree with all the content he articulates, I doubt. But I, for one, am hoping that at least the strategy of hope and of reconciliation will be strong enough to overcome the cynicism about rhetoric that's dogged our country since at least WWII. As WWII reminded us so terribly, of course well-chosen words can be used to persuade people to do terrible things. And, as Eliot reminded us, human words aren't perfect.

But that's no reason for us to denigrate the fact that a message of hope, well put and couched in a full awareness of the darkness that surrounds, is a beautiful thing, and I'm choosing to pause for a moment and be thankful we've chosen someone who, like other excellent poets and writers, can articulate when we the people needed an injection, certainly not of fear, but not only of articulacy--also of hope and a call to selflessness. Not to mention a reminder that poetry, and the type that we choose for ourselves to listen to, matters.

That said, I'm already tired of journalists' and pundits' overuse of the words "history in the making" and "an historic day" and "an historic presidency"--sheesh, we get it, already. Go interview some more poets and writers, would you?

The Need for Non-Verbal Expression

I was tempted to make this post blank, but then I figured that was just a smart-aleck trick, since that wouldn't quite get across everything I was trying to say.

My thought, stemming from the musical solution to my recent reader's block, is that it's good to have a set of writing practices that don't involve verbalizing why you're blocked. Yes, I think it's good to journal stuff out, too, but things like music, exercise, and arts and crafts are good ways to not only get your brain moving, but to siphon off emotions without having to verbalize everything.

I think us word people--I know I do it--focus too much sometimes on the power of words to make things right. They can, it's true, and it's good to keep writing, for many many reasons, but it's also good sometimes to express things non-verbally, not necessarily to keep a 50-50 balance, but to make sure some of that is happening.

No one, after all, knows more than us that words have their limits.

Articulation and Authenticity

I've been thinking a lot lately, as the deadline for my first grad paper of the semester approaches (on Friday--short one, but still the first paper of the semester) about the pressure of articulation. It seems, sometimes, as though with all this communication swirling around us, there's less patience than ever towards inarticulacy, unformed-ness and messiness of things.

Ironically, this is at the same time when the world has begun to accept and praise messy and less-organized written forms. The pressure, I think, is to be articulate even in our first drafts, because the pace is fast, the forms are informal, and there's much other writing that we could turn our attention to at any time. More so in grad school, where the pace is fast, but the forms are formal.

How, I wonder, to continue to be consistently articulate in this climate, while being at least somewhat authentic at the same time? It feels like a high-wire act at times...

Sigh. I'm sure I'll find something to say in my paper. It's only 3-5 pages, after all. It's not so much this one, but the weight of all the ones that will follow it this semester and next that I feel, swirling in their now-chaotic, un-thought-out state, the not-quite-right words flying around me in their yet unordered state.... Like Eliot says so eloquently in Four Quartets:

Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. ("Burnt Norton" ll. 149-153)

I've always hated the beginning part of the process. It's the middle and end for me. (Of course, talk to me again in a month or two and I'll tell you it's only the end, at least when it comes to the writing associated with the semester.)