11 large Andy Warhol paintings were just stolen from a Los Angeles home. Via AJ. Seems like the kind of thing the ghost of the man himself would have orchestrated – or perhaps even some pranksters in his spirit.
Author Archives: weinberg
self-reflexively,
The great thing about grading poems is that it involves reading poems. It’s not like having to grade seventeen essays on the presence of a theme in a work, or something like that. It is substantially more pleasant.
semicolons separate complete sentences
Blogging from this program is harder than from any production I have known before. It’s not the workload, it’s how engrossing it is. I find it hard to remove myself from the experience of it, to comment.
Suffice it to say that last week we had the first department party, and I think we are all still recovering from it.
who’s your syntax?
Read IFP drafts. Work. Go to class – first meeting, seminar, lots of Dickinson. We’re going to be writing imitations of poets who work with form for that class, which is very exciting. Meet IFP students. Come home. Cook proper dinner for a change. Come upstairs and come to the realization that there is still more work to be done. Come off it.
I feel like I have a lot to do, but it’s really nothing compared to the workload of the PhD students we meet. One of them I know is taking three graduate seminars, teaching a class, and auditing two undergraduate classes and a language class.
a relationship to syntax
… the line exists not because it has a certain pattern of stresses, a certain number of syllables, or an irregular number of stresses and syllables: the line exists because it has a relationship to syntax. You might say that a one-line poem doesn’t really have anything we can discuss as a line, except inasmuch as we feel its relationship to lines in other poems. We need at least two lines to begin to hear how the line is functioning.
– J. Longenbach, “Line and Syntax,” The Art Of The Poetic Line, 28
J.L. is starting to occupy a position in my head of symbolic awesomeness. I find myself wondering, in times of trial, “Does J. Longenbach have to do stuff like this?” or “If J. Longenbach were here, I bet he’d tell (X) where they could (Y)..”
albatross? albatross.
Book Thing hoard #2, from the Sunday expedition:
1) The Elements of Style
2)Literary Criticism, Plato to Dryden, ed. Allan H. Gilbert
3) The Vicar of Wakefield and Other Writings, Oliver Goldsmith (a hotbed* of prurient and/or offensive chapter subheadings. Looks really trashy.)
4) Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, by Frederick Nims
5) A back issue of Parabola: The Magazine Of Myth and Tradition
This weekend, I revised the same poem twice. This isn’t a lot of revision, by anyone’s standards, but each version was so different that it felt really exhausting. We (Les Poets) then held a pre-workshop workshop. Only a few folks came, so we had a lot of time for each poem. I got excellent comments. I am going to have to revise the entire thing again.
In other news, I am trying to gauge the enthusiasm of the cohort to have some kind of reading-the-RIME-OF-THE-ANCIENT-MARINER-aloud party, and people have been a little lukewarm. I guess it’s not the greatest poem ever written, but I really want to read it aloud. I believe that the last time I did this was senior year of high school, with the poetry/philosophy group I had with T, M, M, A, D, W, and others.
* in TA orientation, someone referred to Garland Hall, a central admin building, as a “hotbed of activity,” and it sounded so potentially lascivious.
a pair of snogging naked men
She may never have envisaged a starring role in a play alongside a pair of snogging naked men, but I can’t help thinking that she would have had a good chuckle about it all: the good humour, wit and wisdom of her books suggest that she wouldn’t have taken any of this too seriously.
– Alison Flood in the Guardian on “Jane Austen’s Guide to Pornography.” Via AJ.
the internet is for TMI
The Computer informs me that someone has recently searched for and found this blog by searching for “The Adventures of Sander Lamori And His Wonder Dog, Bentham,” the very briefly-lived serial story I wrote for the Stanford Daily. Uh..who was this? I am very curious, but happy to know someone besides me still thinks about the thing. It’ll come back one day. I swear. Just not right now. I have to figure out how to write imagery.
the poetic contraption
…the best poets who fought for the legitimacy of free verse in the early years of the twentieth century were not trying to make us choose between apparently different kinds of poetry; they were attempting to open our ears to a wider range of poetic possibilities. Following them, a poet like Justice learned as much from Williams and Pound as he did from Shakespeare and Keats, and one of the most important lessons was that the language of a particular poem may or may not demand the whole tool kit. If rhyme is jettisoned from a poem, what tactic must flex its muscles in order to keep the poetic contraption in the air? Meter. And if meter is foresworn? Line. And if line is abandoned? Syntax. And if syntax is abandoned? Diction. Sometimes it will be necessary for a poet to remember every tool in the kit; at other times it will be equally crucial to forget them, though nothing can be forgotten if it has not first been remembered.
– James Longenbach, “Line and Syntax,” The Art Of The Poetic Line, 24
it must be some sort of diabolical mind control
On Wednesday and Thursday of last week, I had individual meetings with about two-thirds of the students in my class. I’ll meet the rest next week. We talked about their artistic tastes and their writing experiences. It took a lot of time to meet with all of them, but I hope it will be worth it in terms of establishing a good workshop relationship.
On Friday, we discussed Elizabeth Bishop’s “In The Waiting Room” and Seamus Heaney’s “Digging,” and got into a spirited discussion about enjambment.
And thus far I have obeyed the Department of Health and Safety mandate of taking at least 24 consecutive hours entirely off from all kinds of work each week: from Friday at 2 pm till Saturday at 2 pm, all I did was watch movies and hang out with friends. It was wonderful. We went to the Evergreen House, a very creepy museum and house belonging to a Baltimore railroad baron’s family, and saw screenings of the animated TELL-TALE HEART and the live-shmaction THE RAVEN projected outside, as part of a Poe exhibit. We also saw an old edition of Poe with illustrations, and one of his signed letters. The man’s handwriting had more flourishes than a fencing match.
And then I also watched TANPOPO, which I would watch again this very second. You couldn’t pay me enough to sit through THE RAVEN again, except for the magician’s duel section – which I would like to get an isolated clip of. Clearly, Dr. Scarabus’s powers extend far beyond the walls of the castle.
We were hoping someone would read Poe’s The Raven aloud, but no one did – so that situation was rectified later in the evening through recitation. I have never read so much poetry aloud as I have here, with these people. It’s great. The Raven, as a poem, is perhaps just slightly too long – but, my God, there are great lines in it.
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!
I also read Annabel Lee last night, and, as usual, it blew what remained of my mind. Did you know it was one of the last complete poems composed by Poe? I did not.
I am now sort of back on the clock, now. I have a new first draft going. It has to use imagery – we have assignments for workshop – and, as you all know, imagery is my weakness. So this was good for me to try. In writing the draft, I found some stuff I would not normally have found.
Dara Weinberg 