Mr. Shakes (Brooks)

Remember riding past the metro stop 83rd Street twice before we were on the right train? Remember the homeless sage yelling at us, “Are you ready to survive?” as he ate sushi rolls out of the trash? Remember all the white skirts—without slips? And how Marlowe was first and second best if he was actually Shakespeare? Remembering napping in line under the Central Park trees? Remember breakfast on the loud street and the white picket fence? Remember Virginia Wolfe’s REAL inspiration—a rum of one’s own? Remember the engagement, the stage of lavender and gold, Rosalind's wonderful impertinance?

About a week left ...

And still three papers to go.

I'm have been getting anxious about my papers. Brooks, you remember how I am. All that stuff I teach my students about not procastinating. But then again, it's not really procastination. It's been blocked up till a week before 40 pages of critical writing is due. Tis not all gloom though: I've started two papers. And have all the research done for the third.

Here's what I'm writing on:
Avant Garde paper - on how to read avant garde stuff. This become a politics of the avant garde because I am arguing that the ability to read avant garde literature does something like "enlarging" one's world, or demonstrates the exist of something like freedom.

Gogol and Psychoanalytical Theory paper - on Nabokov's Gogol biography. A Lacanian reading of it in which I address the question of Influence. I use Bloom's Anxiety of Influence as a foil, then do a Lacanian reading of the biography, which reveals that Nabokov's text is strong case for clinical perversion. And that Gogol is a maternal, rather than "poetic father," for Nabokov. (I have to sound serious when I talk about this!)

Victorian Literature paper - on Lord Goring's dandy character in An Ideal Husband. I'm using what Foucault and Baudelaire say about dandyism to describe Wilde's dandy. Yet critics point out that the critique of Victorian society purported by the dandy is curtailed. Gasp! What does one do? Things like the Wildean epigram, or the institution of marriage get in the way. I'm still stuck on this one. We'll see what way out of the impasse I can find.

So all this is getting done by next Thursday so that Katie and I can drive down to one of the local beaches before the semester-end festivities (parties, get togethers, etc.) and the N.C. backpack trip. Let the games begin!

Why the Holy Men Come Out

The Holy Men walk sidewalks
swishing their black or white robes side-side
all have facial hair, unkempt,
Hake-like in frazzle,
Menonite or Ukranian

dust interwoven network wonder.

Battles of speech go on inside
their heads
but the younger ones say hello
in highly friendly
tones. Fixtures

that come to life, walk all over walls—
that’s what
these men are.

And you know
they are heading to a harbor

a place to huddle
with scant tools,
sipping, spouting, what-soever
they do they do
it
with conviction.

Things are forbidden, but always new therefore.
And cancer cannot give its clots away.

News from Academia

So, there were two interesting speakers I was able to hear this week. The first was renowned avant-garde novelist, Joseph McElroy, whose novel Plus we have been reading in class. I find it very difficult to read this book, but McElroy (at a spry 75 yrs. old) was fun to watch. I asked him a question about what determines what he says in his novels, since he seemed to imply that such a process was at work, and got a purposefully elusive answer in reply - something art being autonomous. McElroy pursed his lips alot, and in true aged-P style, mis-heard many questions and remarks. Endearing to say the least.

(As I was typing this the toilet was overflowing. This turned into quite an ordeal, cumulating in the bathroom getting thoroughly cleaned, the dishes done, and the all the floors in the house getting swept. I'm back.)

On Friday night, Katie, myself, and co. saw renowned athiest and public intellectual Daniel Dennett give a talk about his new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. Dennett is an incredible rhetorician - articule, witty, relevant, quick on his feet, machine-like efficiency during the Q & A, etc. His basic thesis goes something like - according to what scientists call "reverse engineering methodology - religions function in a evolutionary manner, that is, they are adaptive and competitive (think survival of the fittest). Their origin can be explained by "memes," replicable ideas which take on life-like evolutionary attributes in order to survive. So, why does Dennett care about any of this?

It shocks him that religions have never studied such a "scientific" manner before. Dennett recognizes that religions are incredibly powerful belief systems, deserving our careful attention. He closed his lecture with a policy suggestion - that every child should recieve mandatory facts-based education.

Okay. I need to get back to work - I'm working on Victorian Lit. and Avant Garde papers this weekend. The theses arrived, time to put typed-out words to them.

Annoucements:

Dana and Em ... I got a copy of Name of the Rose yesterday. Summer reading!
Brooks ... we'll be talking papers again, soon. Hope you broke through with the Whitman.
Darcy ... is Andrew graduating in a few weeks at Hillsdale?
Em ... country music star? Implies too much tragedy ...

Love to all.

Me as a country star...

Too bad I can't sing.

Two Graduations

Since I am walking in the commencement ceremony this May, I have been receiving all the emails about speakers, songs, tents and appreciation. We are going to be honoring the profs with benches. The emaculately clipped, kept, naked, etc. lawns of the Fledgling College will have benches on them by next year. Students can sit on them and get sun burnt in the treeless place. Visitors can read them and wonder who and what they did until the student guide tells them about the gift. This class wants to use last year's verse again and they want to sing Be Thou My Vision. No class speakers as of yet but we managed to avoid having the valedictorian/salutatorian speak again. Everyone wanted to vote on the speaker. I was one of the nominees for the girls. It is interesting to fantasize about Graduation and imagine yourself the speaker. The turbulence of this last semester and knowing about it and then standing up there with that secret and never saying anything about it (not directly) in the clear, bright air of Commencement Day. I am fairly certain this dilemma will not fall to me, but it was startling to imagine. What words could suffice for everything?

Yes, Travis, Andrew is graduating (top ten or something like that). Very proud of him (oops? is that allowed--or is it too submissive, unmodern, and archaic?) Anyway, he has worked hard and I plan to go up for graduation and hollar a few accolades in his honor.

Graduation is one of those really intimate/public affairs that is always so confusing. In a way it is the sum of everything and yet is all so formulaic and created for an audience. I already feel awkward thinking about it. I might trip out of self-consciousness as I walk across the stage. The worst part is that the audience is kind of watching us walk into life and they are there after it is over waiting for us to accomplish something else like getting a legitimate job.

Ratios for Meditation

(think of them as Samurai Sudoku puzzles)


fuse : merge :: M.F.A. : M.A.

Kevin : Brooks :: calmari : sushi

Arbor Mist : Tarara Blackberry :: reggae : Indie rock

Shelly's "Ozymandias" : friendship :: Ginsberg's "Howl" : quashing

The Blue Room : red hair dye :: Plato : Aristotle

Dr. Stacey : Steve :: Dr. Walker : Farris

sheer will power : marriage :: foot message : Pulp Fiction

Coping (in an inelegant way)

Here is to friendship, hope, and the lovely advantages of being young...













George Washington's MFA in theatre design has spring admissions.


(Travis, thanks for pictures. Other news of this weekend is that I didn't get in to SPU.)

Fun from Freshmen Papers

Yes, I am in the middle of grading another set of freshie papers. I'm in an urgent mood. It has to be done by tomorrow afternoon. Then I have my own reading and writing to get to. (The brutal shoving of graduate school.) Here's what I've been sampling from my freshmen ...

Two eye-catching paper titles:

"Bass Kick Ass"

"A Friend with Weed is a Friend Indeed"

An excerpt from the latter:

"My friend rolls up 2 fat blunts and we throw on some Def Poetry Jam. ... So there are three of us, high off our asses sitting in the living room just focused and watching poetry. There I am smoking weed. The thing that for as long as we can remember we have been told by our parents, our teachers, and pretty much any other authority figure that marijuana is bad for us. Then I start to think about what my friends and I are doing. We were all just chilling and watching poetry. I'm not the kid in the anti-drup commercial that loses touch with reality, brings out a shotgun and blasts himself in the face with it. I am rather an open minded entity glued to a couch broadening my horizons by watching some Def Poetry. What is so bad about smoking this naturally occuring substance that helps relieve by boys' stress after a long day? What is so bad about just getting high and relaxing?"

Yes. This is his opening salvo is what's suppose to be a feature article/expose pieces. Priceless. I laughed.

Alright, I need to finish grading the papers, since I'm going to a concert later tonight. Oh, I'll have to post about the circus that Katie and I went to last night. Very old school, very talented - like the basketball team that can nail all their layups and smack around the street-ballers.

Love and Joy.

Royal St. Flower Bed, April 1, 2006

Dead cigarettes,
peanut shells, earthworms, roots
And
The living body
of a purple tiger-face pansy
all
in my hands
As I open the earth
Like a surgeon
With his tools
Fingers gloved and god-like
Cradling (I love breathing like this).
Lowering (and holding it like this).
the beating heart
into the earth.