On Berryman: "Just because we’re buffoons, it doesn’t mean our lives aren’t tragic."

Stephen Akey has a really interesting essay on John Berryman and his "Dream Songs." It's too long and lush to summarize, so I'll just do some excepts here. But if you were 1) interested in, 2) disturbed by, ) bored with, or 4) confused by "Dream Songs," I highly recommend you give it a read.

Akey on quality versus quantity in the "Dream Songs":

Perhaps the first thing to be said about The Dream Songs is that there are too many of them. By my reckoning (every reader’s will differ), fewer than half are truly first-rate or even intelligible, yet the good ones wouldn’t be so good if not set off by the messiness and prolixity of the others — and even the good ones are pretty messy too. It took Berryman years to break through to the mess that allowed life in

On the problems of blackface dialect and vulgarity:

I feel a little better knowing that Berryman’s friend Ralph Ellison had no problem with the blackface dialect and especially admired Song 68, which deals in part with the death of Bessie Smith. I guess I’ll always have some qualms, but would anyone really prefer The Dream Songs to be shorn of their outrages to decorum and taste? Don’t we read them partly because they’re so unlike what “great” poetry is supposed to be? The half-lunatic syntax serves many purposes — chiefly, the subversion of psychological defenses preventing access to primal guilts, fears, needs, and shames, or as Kafka might have said, the taking of an ax to the frozen sea within. The Songs are, after all, inspired by dreams, where we take our clothes off and don’t speak or think the King’s English, but Henry’s language is also extremely funny, an all-American music of boisterous vulgarity.

On the self-loathing of Henry (and Berryman -- "there ought to be a law ..."):

The self-disgust is palpable and — who can doubt it? — thoroughly earned. Why then is this poem so exceedingly funny? Perhaps because like the best of the Songs it manages to be so many things at once. There ought to be a law against Henry, but his raging sexuality doesn’t stop him from idealizing both the object of his desire and his desire itself. The funniest thing about the Song is that it exists — a gross parody of poetic adoration that is touched with the lyricism of jeweled eyes and an apostrophized “Brilliance.” Helen Vendler writes in The Given and the Made, “We become marginally convinced, by such a poem, that the troubadours were Henrys too, and that Berryman is merely uncovering the unsalubrious, but oddly solacing, layer of psychic squalor beneath high artistic convention.” Nicely put, but somehow it sounds funnier when Henry says it.

Weston's Take on "Invisible Man"

First Edition of "Invisible Man," published in 1952

I just wanted to quickly highlight Weston's post on Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man." It's a really good post, and I think he gets at one of the central concerns of the piece:

The paragraph ends with the idea that the whole time he was just trying to figure out who he really was, and what he found was that you can't ask others to define you, “I am nobody but myself,” he writes, “an invisible man!” The first paragraph seems to tell the whole story.

Ellison seems to be playing with this idea of invisibility. It's a concept that assumes a viewer, some other person, a two-way relationship. Sure, you could still be invisible if you were the only person in the world, but so what? Invisibility is tied to a relationship in which sight, the gaze, and eyes themselves play a large role. It also is a relationship defined by power.

Take a look at the cover of the first edition. While the face is obscured, the eye is the most prominent image. This is no accident.

Since we didn't get to Ellison last week, we'll begin with him this Friday. It might be a good idea to go back over "Invisible Man."

Also, don't forget that the Lady Gaga post is up for extra credit.

Where to find Pynchon on the Internet

                                
You will need to get your hands on Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 very soon. Here are two places to do so if you haven't already:

1. Powells.com
2. Amazon.com 

Please let me know if you have any trouble getting a copy of the book. I'm happy to help however I can.

As you begin to make your way through Pynchon's postmodern novel, you might need some guidance. We'll certainly do some of this during class, but here are a couple other resources available to you.

The Pynchon Wiki -- This is kind of an insanely helpful guide to the novel. It provides spoiler-free, page-by-page annotations for those of you who don't get all of Pynchon's references (which, by the way, is all of us).

"Embattled Underground" -- This is the original 1966 review of the book, as it appeared in The New York Times.

The Difficult(y) of Thomas Pynchon

Well boy howdy . . . here's Thomas Pynchon! He's kind of a difficult read, no? So anyway, here's an entire "internet page" of advice for how to make your way through Pynchon for the first (and second and third) time. Some excepts:

Steven Maas
I tell Pynchon newbies:

• It's the most fun you can have without risking arrest in many states.
• Leave your preconceptions at the door and enjoy your new and exotic surroundings.
• If something baffles you, read on for the next moment of searingly bright light and don't worry about it. With time and re-readings everything (well, many things) will be made clear.

Difficult, schmifficult!

Lindsay Gillies:
Four short principles for newbies:

• Read each word, one after the other. Gravity's Rainbow is a deeply interconnected stream of jazz — you can't skim it.
• Let the stream affect you without trying to figure it out. Give up to it.
• Commit to getting through the first 50 pages. It's something very different than most other stuff you've read; not harder, just harder to hear.
• If, after 1, 2 & 3, you still don't connect, don't write it off, just put it away for a while.

And as my office mate and fiction writer Dave Nicholas says about writers: "If you've been on The Simpsons, you've achieved something."

Lady Gaga & Postmodernism

As we discussed in class, here's the Lady Gaga video of the song "Telephone." Also as we discussed inc lass, there's sexual, graphic content, etc. (Nothing over the top, in my opinion; it aired on MTV and the like.)

After our discussion on Postmodernism, take a look at this video. If you'd like to do an extra credit post, write a 300-word post on your own blog discuss the video in the context of Postmodernism.

Possible novels for the end of semester

Last class we briefly discussed the possibility of switching out some of the scheduled readings for a longer piece. I really like the idea, but I want to know what you think.

I've posted five possible novels after the break. If you would, please take a quick look and vote on your preference (you can do this in the comments of the post, or you can email me instead). Since everyone will have to buy the book, I've made sure that each novel costs less than $10. In most cases, you can get used copies for about $5.

I'll post a pic of the cover, the number of pages, a two-sentence summary, and the link to Amazon for each book. Please cast your vote no later than Thursday. (By the way, you can always vote to stick with the reading schedule and not read a novel.) We'll come to a decision as a class on Friday.

Continuing blog posts

Post 1
Due: Thursday, 11pm

Initial posts for the rest of the semester will all be open (with the exception of the final blog post). Some requirements—they must be at least 300 words, and they must relate to the reading that we will discuss for the upcoming class.

There are numerous ways to approach these posts. Below are some methods you might use. You can’t go wrong with one of these.

• Analyze and/or interpret the week’s reading using one of the themes we’ve used in the course: gender, narrative structure, irony, imagery, the language of the text itself, or its historical context.
• Compare and contrast the reading with texts we’ve previously covered.
• Write about something from the reading that you found surprising or something that you didn’t understand.
• Try to formulate one or two good discussion questions for the class, and then use your post to attempt to answer that/those question/s.

Post 2
Due: Tuesday, 11pm

Your second post should be a response to a blog from your small group. You should link to the blog that you’re responding to. Your response should in some way build upon, re-think, or disagree with (respectfully!) with the original post. These posts should be at least 150 words.

Your essay and reading schedule

Just some reminders regarding our schedule and the essay:

1. The midterm essay is now due March 9 -- we've moved it back a week to give you time to make it extra special.

2. We've dropped Moore and Millay from the this week's reading. You're still responsible for Stevens, H.D., and Hughes.

3. There are not any blog posts due this week. Please use that time to work on you essays.

4. Just because there aren't any blog posts due doesn't mean you can skip the reading. There will be a quiz -- fair warning.

Questions? Just let me know.

Week 6 Blog assignment

Post 1: Close Reading
Due: Thursday, February 23, 11pm

1. Please pick one of the following poems, and read it as you’d normally would. Write a short description of your understanding of the poem.

Poems:

Frost: “The Road Not Taken” or “After Apple Picking”

Williams: “Spring and All” or “The Red Wheelbarrow”

Johnson: “Black Woman”

McKay: “The Lynching” or “America”

2. Using the handout How to Close Read a Poem, do a close reading. You’ll need to answer all 10 questions on your blog.

3. Once you’ve answered those questions, write a paragraph about how your understanding of the poem changed/expanded/etc.

You can find a copy of the How to Close Read a Poem after the jump.

Week 5 blog prompt

Post 1: Weighing the Arguments
Due: Thursday, February 16, 11pm

Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois offer competing arguments as to how African-Americans—many of whom were former slaves—should go about obtaining first-class citizenship in the United States. After reading both arguments, which one is more conservative, and which is more militant? Which argument do you find yourself agreeing with more?

And finally, consider these facts: Washington himself is a former slave; Du Bois was born free in New England. How might these two men’s radically different pasts have influenced their arguments?

Week 4 Blog assignment

Post 1: The use of Irony
Due: Thursday, February 9, 11pm

There are many types of irony, but we’ll focus on two here: “Situational Irony” and “Verbal Irony.” Situational irony is when a the outcome of a narrative (or situation) is the opposite of the expected result. Verbal irony occurs when the actual meaning of speech contradicts the expressed meaning (“Nice shirt,” you might say to someone wearing a particularly hideous shirt).

Both types of irony are deployed throughout Chestnutt’s “The Passing of Grandison.” Write a post that points out at least two specific instances of verbal irony and situational irony, quoting the appropriate texts, and then explain why you think each fits the definition of irony.

Week 4 Check In

This Friday marks our fourth meeting for English 278, which means we'll be a quarter of the way through the semester. Even though it's still fairly early, I'm interested to know what you think of the course so far, how it's set up, what we do with classtime, how grades work, blogs, etc.

So ... I'm going to ask you to think about these questions for a minute. I'll open up some time at the beginning of class on Friday for any thoughts, but feel free to leave them in the comments here (anonymously, if you'd like). They can be:

• What you've liked so far
• What you'd like to see more of
• What you'd like to see less of
• Complaints
• Suggestions
• Etc.

I really do want to make sure that this course is as good as I (and you) can make it. So if there's something you'd like to discuss, let's do it!

"... and the Wilmington tragedy began."

Via the UNC library

There's a curious line on page 248 of Hopkins' "As the Lord Lives ...". As Stone/Jim is explaining himself to the Reverend Stevens, he says:

I came out West from Wilmington, North Carolina, Jones and I were together. We were both college men and chums from childhood. All our savings were in the business we had at home when the leading mean of the town conceived the idea of driving the Negroes out, and the Wilmington tragedy began.

This small mention probably doesn't mean a lot to us as modern-day readers. But Hopkins' contemporaries, especially black readers, would have gotten the import of this passage immediately.

The "tragedy" that Stone/Jim speaks of is actually known as an "insurrection" among historians. I'll try to provide a brief outline of what this Wilmington tragedy was and meant below, but I encourage you to follow some of the links and learn a little more for yourselves.

"Honest White Man" v. "Negro Rule"
News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 30 August 1898.
See more cartoons at UNC library.

In the election of 1894, Southern Democrats, the party of Jim Crow and white supremacy, last their control of the state to what was known as a "Fusion" Republican party, one composed of white and black Republicans. Campaigning on a platform of white supremacy and anti-miscegenation, Democrats planned on wresting power back from the Fusionists in the election of 1898.

They did this through violence. No one knows for certain how many black citizens died in the race riot that followed, but the Wilmington tragedy still stands today as the only time a coup d'état was successful in the United States.


According to the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources:

In elections on Nov. 8, Democrats won easily by stuffing ballot boxes and intimidating black
voters. A Committee of Twenty-Five was formed, and on Nov. 9 prepared resolutions called the White Declaration of Independence. They presented the demands that day to leading black political and business leaders, known as the Committee of Colored Citizens (CCC).

A pivotal demand to the CCC was that the community oust newspaper editor Alex Manly, who had published an article in the Record, the city's only African American newspaper, that challenged claims by whites regarding interracial sexual relationships. The CCC was to respond by 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 10. No response was received from the CCC at that time, and by 9 a.m. a group of men marched to the Record printing office and destroyed the newspaper building.

Before the day ended, a mob of up to 2,000 whites roamed the streets, armed with rifles and
fueled by weeks of propaganda in newspapers and rhetoric-filled meetings. Rifles and rapid fire machine guns were fired, and black men were killed or wounded throughout the day. Estimates of deaths range from six to 100, but records from the coroner's office, hospitals or churches are incomplete, so the total remains unknown. There were no white fatalities. By4p.m., the Republican mayor, board of aldermen, and chief of police were forced to resign and were replaced by men selected by the Committee of Twenty-Five. All black municipal employees subsequently were fired.

This NRP story provides a good overview of the insurrection:

Their leader, Col. Alfred Moore Waddell, had publicly threatened in a pre-election speech to "choke the current of the Cape Fear River" with black bodies, according to a 2006 report chronicling the events by the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission. After the coup, Waddell was elected mayor of Wilmington.

Follow-up post due Tuesday

Just a reminder: your follow-up post in which you comment on the blogs in your small group is due Tuesday by 11pm. We went over how to link text of another website, and I'd like to see everyone give that a shot in this post.

There's a certain art to using other people's writing as springboards to our own ideas, especially on the Internet. It's very similar to the way that you were taught to use quote in ENGL 102. Here's the three parts of a good post responding to another person's writing.

1. Signal phrase
2. Quote or Block Quote -- the original source text
3. Commentary -- your ideas regarding the source text

One of my favorite bloggers, Ta-Nehisi Coates, does a nice job in this post. Here's a visual of these three elements. Take a minute or two to see how he sets up his quote, block quotes it, then offers his take. Notice how he links the name of the writer to the source text--no wasted words or space. (Click on the picture below to see it in full size.)

 

Questions? Just post 'em in the comments.

Friday highlights

Chopin's "The Storm" drew a lot of attention, the ending in particular. Like a lot of writers who use techniques associated with Realism, Chopin seemed to raise more questions than she answered at the end of the story.

Kassie asks:

The story does not go on to say that she live the rest of her life with guilt. Maybe she did and maybe she didn’t. Who knows?

 GW weighs in one how much stock we should put in the sincerity of the last line:

I think it’s a great ending because it really leaves the door wide open for the reader. Was everyone really happy? Were Calixta and Alcee just happy that no one found out about the affair? Is this a sarcastic ending in which by “happy,” they actually mean horribly miserable?

Bree argues that Chopin's story actually celebrates the affair. Do you agree?

Chopin celebrates their affair and doesn’t condemn it because Calixta doesn’t get caught up in Alcee and have emotional attachments, she doesn’t want to up and leave with him, and it’s rather the opposite because she accepts Bobinot and Bibi when they come trudging in through the back door with a renewed sense of commitment. 

Weston isn't so sure:

No one in this story seems to be truly satisfied. They are content, in a way, to be fake, to put forward a version of themselves that appeases their spouse. No one is faithful, except maybe Bobinôt, but who knows what he would have done if not trapped inside of the store with his son. The author doesn't show us remorse from any of the characters.

Week 3 Blog post

Battle of Chickamauga

Don't forget, the first Week 3 post is due by 11pm tonight. Here's the prompt:


Post 1: Good guys & bad guys
Due: Thursday, February 2, 11pm

On first glance, the way in which war is depicted in Bierce’s “Chickamauga” and Twain’s “A Private History” seem to be very different. But a closer reading of both might reveal some important if subtle places of overlap. What are some ways in which the depiction of war is similar in these two stories?

-or-

The last line of “The Storm”—“So the storm passed an every one was happy.”—is a surprising one, especially given all that happens in the (very) short story. How do you think a reader should think about this ending (what does it “mean?”), and what does the ending have to say about the story’s portrayal of marriage, love, and infidelity?

Mistakes of your fathers

via http://instagr.am/p/lmBFf/

This photo, which backgrounds a statue of Thomas Jefferson with the names of the slaves he owned, reminded me of Douglass's address to Congress:

The destiny of unborn and unnumbered generations is in your hands. Will you repeat the mistake of your fathers, who sinned ignorantly? or will you profit by the blood-bought wisdom all round you, and forever expel every vestige of the old abomination from our national borders?

Most striking to me is the gap between what Douglass was fighting for in his address and Jefferson's own, most famous words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Friday's Questions

I feel like if I met Walt Whitman at a party I would think, "that guy is annoying and pretentious." When I expressed these thoughts to my boyfriend he was confused explaining that Whitman is one of his favorites. Am I ignorant? Incapable of understanding great writing? Or is it okay that Walk Whitman is just not up my alley?

What would I have done if I was African American and in the situation that the majority of African Americans were after the war? 

What if Lincoln lived?

The Emily Dickinson poems seem very dark. Is it talking about murder? Death? Or both?

When do you think writers understand the cause behind a shift in style? Specifically from romanticism to realism.

When Walt Whitman refers to God is his poem, “Songof Myself” does he believe in a God similar to the Christian God? Was he a Christian? 


What was life like for Emily Dickinson?


Is it really possible to separate Whitman’s ideology from his poetry even though this was an important reason behind his poetry?



When I finished the article, I wondered why, throughout this time in history, slave owners were so intent on catching runaway slaves.

I know during traumatic times (even in the personal life), people cling to what is most important to them. Is that some of the essence of romantic writing?

The best summation of Whitman I've read today ...

... is by Chelsea:

"He's on the side of humanity."

Dickinson and her dashes

Mss. version of "Wild Nights"

Kamilla Denman on Dickinson's dashes:

Dickinson's transition from a dominant use of the exclamation mark to a preference for the dash accompanied her shift from ejaculatory poems, which seem outcries aimed with considerable dramatic effect at God or others, to poems where the energies exist more in the relationships between words and between the poet and her words. In this intensely prolific period, Dickinson's excessive use of dashes has been interpreted variously as the result of great stress and intense emotion, as the indication of a mental breakdown, and as a mere idiosyncratic, female habit. Though these speculations are all subject to debate, it is clear that in the early 1860s Dickinson conducted her most intense exploration of language and used punctuation to disrupt conventional linguistic relations, whether in an attempt to express inexpressible psychological states or purely to vivify language.

Blog assignment for Thursday

Post 1: Getting started
Due: Thursday, January 26, 11pm

Please create your blog and email me (scottweaver@cwidaho.cc) the URL no later than Thursday, 11pm. Please post at least two questions that arose from the Post-Bellum packet, the previous class’s discussion, etc.

"Do not descend among professors and capitalists"

Here's a clip from a pretty amazing PBS documentary about Whitman. It provides a good gloss of the poem "Song of Myself," how it came to be and what it means in American poetry.



The documentary is available in its entirety, here, if you don't mind Spanish subtitles.

What good blogs look like

Below are a number of previous blogs kept by students that turned out to be particularly great. What makes them so great? You'll have to take a look for yourself, but in my opinion, these blogs stand out for three  reasons:

1. Good Writing -- If you read through some of the posts, you'll see the authors took a lot of time and thought to develop and express their ideas.

2. Good Use of Media -- Most of these blogs use pictures and video to their advantages. This is the point of having a blog. It's a visual, dynamic medium. The blogs below each realized this and used media to draw readers in and make their points.

3. Unique Voices -- Reading through these blogs, you not only see that each writer's done a lot of work, but you also begin to get a sense for them as people. Their personalities and voices come out, whether they are sarcastic, skeptical, etc. Remember, these blogs aren't for a single reader; they're out there for the world to see. Make them interesting, and make them yours.

Examples of good blogging

1. Hip to B Square
2. Jake's Blog 
3. The Blog 
4. English Lit
5. The History of Hip

Bad Web Writing

       Now that you're all officially bloggers, it's a good idea to think about how your writing is working to communicate to your reader. There are some small yet important differences between the ways we read on the page and the ways we read on the web.
       Therefore, it's important that we as writers acknowledge these differences and develop a style of writing that's unique for the web. Here are four best practices:Keep paragraphs short: While our eyes are accustomed to large blocks of texts on the page (especially if you're a college student in the humanities), our eyes have a much harder time reading large chunks of texts on the screen. So it's a good idea to write in short paragraphs. A good rule of thumb is to keep paragraphs to a maximum of four sentences. White space is your friend. 
        Write for scannability: One of the ways we read differently on the screen is that we tend to scan words on the screen faster (and less in-depth) than words on the page. Ever wonder why that 1000-word, one-paragraph email never got read? This is why. Check out Best Practices for Web Writing.