When I said, au revoir, I *meant* it
What have I been up to this week? Interesting things actually. In addition to the usual boring things I always talk about :-p
My day of silence went okay. I was not terribly silent; we were allowed to talk in class (for relevant comments) and I was in class all day, so. :-p Plus I had to/got to journal about everything, and writing is a good outlet for me. So it wasn't like I was stuck in my head all day. Going without technology was weeeird though, not something I've done in a long while. Made me feel all discombobulated to get up and go about my day without checking my email. That's like my daily briefing, and I felt really disconnected. Everything else was cool though. When I got back online, I didn't quite know what to do, after cleaning out my flooded inbox. Because now everything just looked so frivolous and non-essential :-p
That was also the day of the Undergrad Lit Conference. I got to go to one panel, plus our visiting author. The panel was called Rhetoric of Self-Fashioning. How academic :-p Anyway, it was about self-identity and stuff. Interesting structure, we actually began with a poet and her work - and she apologized for straying from the theme, but her poetry was all...I don't know if it has a name. But it starts off as prose poetry, and then she erases words or lines to make a new poem. (I guess that's, um, exactly like our blackout poetry that Lit Club made bookmarks out of. Less censor-y, but yeah) So really, the poems were about craft and editing and erasing as much as they were about their subject matter. And we craft our own identity, and edit and erase, and I thought it just set a very nice mindset for the rest. Another panelist talked about the power of language in Richard III. I love love love that play, still, and she did a good job.
Plus our visiting writer was pretty good. He does creative nonfiction, which I think is just a strange and awkward genre, because I always tend toward either fiction or "serious," journalism-sort non-fiction. So it was interesting to see that side of things that I never consider
Then last night, Lit Club had our book discussion with Dr Bowers. Dr Robertson came too, plus there were, mm, a half-dozen students? It was a really good group, we had tons to talk about. Even though most of us were already talking about Possession in either of Dr Bowers's classes, but that's testament to what a great, complex novel it is. We started at 8:30 and had solid conversation until 10 (poor professors, we kept them up really late :-p) and I still could've gone longer. I was lukewarm about Possession when I first read it last semester, but after unpacking as much as we have, and really uncovering how deftly Byatt has created this entire world, with multiple generations and a huge plot and all this intertextual material, it is amazing. Plus our professors are freaking brilliant and I'm really glad they were both willing and able to come. Good times
I'm reading Kissing The Witch right now; it's fairy tale retellings with lesbians. Pretty good (even if I don't recognize all of the fairy tales, and even if some of the relationships are a little bit unhealthy :-p). I continue to work on e.e. cummings, whom I still adore. And we're starting First Light for contemporary British novel - about a Stonehenge-ish place that's discovered and there's all this mystery around its purpose. So, keeping busy :-p
My day of silence went okay. I was not terribly silent; we were allowed to talk in class (for relevant comments) and I was in class all day, so. :-p Plus I had to/got to journal about everything, and writing is a good outlet for me. So it wasn't like I was stuck in my head all day. Going without technology was weeeird though, not something I've done in a long while. Made me feel all discombobulated to get up and go about my day without checking my email. That's like my daily briefing, and I felt really disconnected. Everything else was cool though. When I got back online, I didn't quite know what to do, after cleaning out my flooded inbox. Because now everything just looked so frivolous and non-essential :-p
That was also the day of the Undergrad Lit Conference. I got to go to one panel, plus our visiting author. The panel was called Rhetoric of Self-Fashioning. How academic :-p Anyway, it was about self-identity and stuff. Interesting structure, we actually began with a poet and her work - and she apologized for straying from the theme, but her poetry was all...I don't know if it has a name. But it starts off as prose poetry, and then she erases words or lines to make a new poem. (I guess that's, um, exactly like our blackout poetry that Lit Club made bookmarks out of. Less censor-y, but yeah) So really, the poems were about craft and editing and erasing as much as they were about their subject matter. And we craft our own identity, and edit and erase, and I thought it just set a very nice mindset for the rest. Another panelist talked about the power of language in Richard III. I love love love that play, still, and she did a good job.
Plus our visiting writer was pretty good. He does creative nonfiction, which I think is just a strange and awkward genre, because I always tend toward either fiction or "serious," journalism-sort non-fiction. So it was interesting to see that side of things that I never consider
Then last night, Lit Club had our book discussion with Dr Bowers. Dr Robertson came too, plus there were, mm, a half-dozen students? It was a really good group, we had tons to talk about. Even though most of us were already talking about Possession in either of Dr Bowers's classes, but that's testament to what a great, complex novel it is. We started at 8:30 and had solid conversation until 10 (poor professors, we kept them up really late :-p) and I still could've gone longer. I was lukewarm about Possession when I first read it last semester, but after unpacking as much as we have, and really uncovering how deftly Byatt has created this entire world, with multiple generations and a huge plot and all this intertextual material, it is amazing. Plus our professors are freaking brilliant and I'm really glad they were both willing and able to come. Good times
I'm reading Kissing The Witch right now; it's fairy tale retellings with lesbians. Pretty good (even if I don't recognize all of the fairy tales, and even if some of the relationships are a little bit unhealthy :-p). I continue to work on e.e. cummings, whom I still adore. And we're starting First Light for contemporary British novel - about a Stonehenge-ish place that's discovered and there's all this mystery around its purpose. So, keeping busy :-p