Whitman, Illuminated

In "Song of Myself," Walt Whitman invites readers to follow along enrapt as he tramps his perpetual journey; in Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself, Allen Crawford boldly reimagines the journey through color, image, and design in a book that fills the hand solidly but won't sit still.

You can't just sit and turn the page. Crawford's illustrations--or illuminations, as he calls them--are surrounded by Whitman's words, which snake sinuously about or march in sharp formation or float and bob like dandelion fluff through the air. A page might contain a half-dozen hand-lettered words or a hundred, and you may have to flip the book three or four different ways to follow the thread. 

It's an infuriating book for anyone in a hurry, but Whitman Illuminated invites readers to lean and loaf at their ease, observing: a hand made of leaves, a head wrapped in barbed wire, a baby floating in space. Two snails mirror each other in a dance of passion; two hands play cat's cradle with fishing line dangling lures. Frogs, birds, bugs, hats, and faces of the many people whose lives Whitman subsumes--all appear in rich hues of midnight, grass, or brick. 

Crawford's Foreword explains that he "tried to make the vigor of 'Song of Myself' tangible," to "liberate the words from their blocks of verse, and allow the lines to flow freely about the page, like a stream or a bustling city crowd." Crawford's expansive and detailed illustrations surge with life, pulsing with the procreant urge of the world and weaving word and image into a song of many selves. Reinterpreting such a sacred text requires a touch of hubris, but Crawford's work leads readers always back to Whitman's words by new, unexpected paths.

"At the close of 'Song of Myself,'" explains Crawford, "Whitman invites us to look for him under our boot-soles. Now that my work is done, it's my hope that you may also find a little of him under my pen." 

(Find him here from Tin House Press--but be patient. I had to wait three months for my copy to arrive.) 

Spring is breaking out all over

A sure sign of a change in the weather: water flowing every which way on the interstate as the piles of plowed snow melt in the sun. On Friday morning I drove carefully on treacherous roads still covered with snow, but today snowmen all over Ohio are bowing to their fate.

Even the swastika snowman is melting. What kind of person erects an immense snowman right next to the highway, sticks a snow-coated traffic cone on top to mimic a Klan robe, and then forms a dark swastika right on its belly? The swastika didn't last more than a few hours before it got scraped off one morning last week, but now the entire creature is succumbing to the elements.

Meanwhile, my driveway seeks to transform itself into a mudpit before the snow is even half melted. Last week we were snowed in, but this week we could be mudded in. Time to call the gravel guy!

Spring is coming just in time for spring break. I've just turned in midterm grades so I can devote the next three days to writing the anthology essay, after which I'll start prepping next week's classes and do some work on my art history project. But what I really look forward to is putting away the long-johns, stashing my snow-boots in the closet, and getting out into the sun for some real walks. (Provided that I don't get stuck in the mud.)

If you don't hear from me by Friday, send in the Saint Bernards.

From my window

I stepped outside this morning just to get the camera out of the car, where I've been keeping it in hopes of eagles. However, yesterday's rain followed by falling temperatures followed by snow resulted in a car thoroughly frozen shut. Good thing I'm not going anywhere this morning!

 

All set for a snow day

Something apocalyptic this way comes, weather-wise: Rain! Floods! Ice! Snow! Warning warning warning! As if to confirm the dire predictions, on my drive home I saw flooded fields, a muddy landslip closing one lane of the highway, a mass of ice chunks piling up at the end of our creek, the creek covering our neighbor's bridge, and water edging ever closer to our road. Falling temperatures are supposed to turn all that water to ice and snow tonight, possibly closing roads and schools.

But I'm prepared. I've just finished putting a pot of potato soup to simmer on the stove and we have a fully stocked refrigerator when the soup runs out. Better yet, I brought home my college laptop computer, so I'm fully equipped to administer two midterm essay exams electronically even if I can't get to campus tomorrow. I have everything I need to get through the next couple of days, provided that the power doesn't go out.

(Couldn't happen again, right? So soon? I refuse to think about it.)  

Lost among the zombies

One of the great benefits of attending an academic conference is the opportunity to make small talk with interesting people. You're standing in the coffee line, waiting for an elevator, or loafing between sessions and you just start chatting with someone in the same boat, and before you know it you're laughing or learning something or, at the very least, thanking your lucky stars that you're not in that person's predicament.

I fear, however, that these serendipities are coming to an end. I base this on my experience at a recent academic meeting where no one was interested in small talk, preferring to spend down time staring at tiny screens.

Now I'm the first to admit that I'll never win the Most Outgoing prize, but over the years I've developed some pretty reliable techniques for engaging in meaningless chatter with strangers. These skills, however, failed utterly at the meeting I attended over the weekend. In a daylong event, I managed to engage exactly one person in chit-chat; every other opportunity was rebuffed by devotees of tiny screens.

I realize that it's a waste of time to try to chat with people engrossed in their phones or tablets in public, but finding anyone not so occupied is a challenge. It's as if they're so fearful of venturing into public alone that they have to stay tethered to the nanny lest someone approach with poisoned lollipops. 

I know I'm not the first to notice the impending death of small talk with strangers in public places, but this was the first time I felt utterly cut off from everyone around me simply because I was busy watching people instead of screens. People-watching was once a pretty interesting practice, but people attached to screens are boring. It's like being surrounded by zombies, except the brains being consumed are their own.

The cure is simple, of course: join the crowd devoted to avoiding engagement with the crowd. But I'm not quite ready to zombify myself. I hold out hope that somewhere out there in smartphoneland there exist a few other holdouts who still hold dear the art of conversation. If only I could figure out where they're hiding.

(Maybe there's an app for that?)

 

Name games

It's my own fault, of course: If I'd told the visiting poet how to spell my name, then I wouldn't have ended up with two wonderful books inscribed to "Beth." 

Not that there's anything wrong with Beth. Some of my best friends are Beth! But until I officially change my name to Betherly, I am not Beth (or Bess or Betty or Barb or Maeve or any of the other names I've been called).

Only under
extreme duress
would I respond
to "Hello, Bess!"

To be called "Bet" 
is not a thing
that makes my heart
begin to sing.

Both Betty Boop
and Betty White
can keep their names
Get my name right!

The Beths I've known
have been just fine.
But "Beth" (the name)
just isn't mine. 


Your best bet, friend,
I do confess,
is not to call me
Beth or Bess

or Bet or Barb
or even Maeve. 
I'll stick with Bev
right to the grave.

 

Choose your adventure!

Hike in the Grand Canyon or look at Grand Canyon wallpaper.
Gaze at a Monet waterlily painting right up close or look at a reproduction on a postage stamp.
Hear your favorite song performed by your favorite artist or by a twelve-year-old doing karaoke.

Most of us would choose the adventure that brings us face-to-face with the real thing, which makes me wonder why so many students read online summaries of literature instead of encountering the actual text. Why read a prosaic, tepid, watered-down version instead of the work itself in all its glory?

I've ranted on this before both in and out of class, but I've never found an effective way to persuade students that they're cheating themselves out of amazing adventures. When asked why they prefer online summaries, they mention textbook costs or time management problems or other priorities, but what it comes down to is that online summaries are easier. 

Right, but here's the thing: Looking at wallpaper is certainly easier than hiking in the Grand Canyon, but only a fool would claim that the experiences are equally valuable. Likewise great art: it's easier to get hold of a postage stamp, but how much is lost in the reproduction? The pale reflection of the thing simply cannot recreate the experience of the thing itself.

My students don't seem to feel any sense of loss when they avoid reading literature. After all, they're getting a quick and easy rundown of the important characters, plot elements, and themes in the book. What could they possibly be missing?


They're missing everything that distinguishes the real thing from its shadow: intensity of color, integrity of line, clarity of voice; the sweat that results from an uphill slog, the quickening that occurs when a sight touches the soul, the stirring that inspires creativity.

Why would anyone forego that kind of adventure in favor of a postage-stamp-sized experience? And what can I do to persuade them to stop?

Doing what works--works

Some unseen force in the textbook-writing industry decrees that every writing text must include some variation on this statement: You have to find the method that works for you. I immediately want to dial up Captain Obvious to report a cop-out, but then I recall that I gave that same advice to one of my own students just last week. It's true--you do have to find the method that works for you--but the problem arises in how we understand that word works.

Context matters. The method that enables E.L. James to write Fifty Shades of Gray will not necessarily serve the student attempting to write a research paper for a first-year composition class, and telling certain lazy students do what works for you sounds like permission to do nothing--or to plagiarize. (Which, lest we forget, helps students develop the time management skills that they need to succeed in the world of work.)

First-year writers in composition class need to find the method that works to demonstrate mastery of certain conventions of academic writing. A student comfortable with sub-par performance might smile and say "It works for me!" But it may not work to produce the desired grade. 

Upper-level classes are different. With first-year writers, I tend to issue directives: you must put the parentheses here; you must properly integrate and punctuate quotations from sources; your thesis statement should follow one of these helpful models. Advanced writers get gentle nudges: try this clause at the beginning of the sentence and see how it changes the emphasis; consider more vivid verbs here and see how they impact meaning and rhythm; have you thought about switching these two points around? Give it a try and see what works. It's like the difference between giving a preschooler a coloring book (Color inside the lines!) and giving an older child a blank canvas and a bunch of paint.

Do what works for you works best for writers who know enough about writing to know what works best. In that way, it's like much writing advice: most useful for those who don't need it.

Frosty morning

Who can complain about the cold when it makes this much beauty?

(I can--but just for the moment, I won't.)

Powerless to avoid cabin fever

Cabin fever? Don't get me started!

With schools closed and churches closed and every possible fun weekend activity postponed because of ice all over the roads, with the hubby stuck inside because there's no work in this weather, with appliances suddenly failing and pipes freezing and power outages and cold cold cold, there's just no escape. 

I thought that going to work today would be a welcome break from the cabin fever--and it was, until the power went out all over campus and then came back on in certain places, not including the bathrooms in our building. No heat, no light, no bathrooms, no internet.

So I came home, where here I sit contemplating the birds at the feeders and the work on my laptop. On the way home I saw a pair of eagles, one diving and lifting a fish from one of the few spots where the river is not frozen solid. Do they have antifreeze in their feet or what? If I were an eagle I'll bet I wouldn't get cabin fever at all.

(But what about the fish-breath problem?)
 

Lights-out links

Last night as I tossed and turned and tried to stay warm and stop worrying about whether the pipes would freeze, I kept asking myself, "What could be worse than suffering a power outage on the coldest night of the year?"

Lots of things could be worse. Like, for instance, suffering a power outage on the coldest night of the year without the benefit of a house and a bed and lots of warm blankets. At least we're not homeless! And the power came back on after five cold, dark hours! And the pipes didn't freeze! And even if I feel a little less than rested today, I know I'm better off than some people I could mention. Time to count my blessings:

I'm not currently "camping out in line with half the population of the United States in the dead of winter to register [my] outrage," so I don't have to worry about whether the Federal Department of Outrage will reject my attempts to document my ire. (Click here to read it in McSweeney's.)

I've never had to eat any of the cakes pictured here, which is a good thing because they make my head explode.

When one of my favorite academic blogs asks readers "How do raises work where you work?" I laugh bitterly and say, "Raises? What raises?" But: at least I don't work at Wal-Mart. Or the Federal Department of Outrage. Or the Harlan City (Kentucky) police department, which addressed the winter weather outrage by putting out an APB for Queen Elsa of Arendelle. Or our power company, which fielded calls from a large number of the 4000 local people who were without power and sent workers out in the dead of night when temperatures were in the single digits to try to persuade the hamsters to start running on those big wheels again.

Wait, now I know what could be worse than suffering a power outage on the coldest night of the year--being responsible for fixing it. Three cheers for those guys, whoever they are. I hope they're sitting someplace warm and enjoying a nice hot cup of something wonderful, which is exactly what I intend to do as soon as the temperature in my kitchen rises above 50. Until then, I'm staying under the covers.
 

Music that mends the cracks

When composer Jake Runestad addressed an audience of mostly students last night, the first thing he pointed out was that he is not dead. The word composer, he said, might evoke in their minds an image of some long-dead European dude with wild hair and an unpronounceable name, but no: if Runestad is any indication, today's composers wear hip suits and use mousse and emphasize the joy of playing with music.

Runestad's talk, punctuated by glorious performances of some of his works by our college's concert choir, provided abundant evidence that the liberal arts continue to feed spirits even in our hectic information age. His creative process requires mastery of the technological tools that put notes on the page, but those notes spring from long stretches of time devoted to studying and internalizing texts. Most of the works performed last night were settings of poetic works by poets as different as Paul Laurence Dunbar and Wendell Berry--a setting of "The Peace of Wild Things" that made me want to lie down and die right now so the choir can sing it at my funeral.

Runestad draws on works of both established and lesser-known authors; "Dreams of the Fallen," his new work for orchestra, piano, and choir, sets to music poetry by Iraq war veteran Brian Turner. By far my favorite, though, is "We Can Mend the Sky," a choral work based on poetry written by young Somali immigrants to the U.S. (Click here to listen.) The piece opens on a dramatic note, with drums and shifting rhythms creating tension, but it then moves toward a solo expressing deep yearning for peace before developing into a rousing chorus proclaiming "If we come together, we can mend a crack in the sky" performed so joyfully that it made me believe.  

The students, of course, had the most fun singing Runestad's popular "Nyon Nyon," a work composed entirely of gibberish and allowing accomplished singers to break out their amusing mouth-noises. Runestad explained that he wrote that piece as a college student because he just wanted to play around with words and sounds and music. His playfulness, of course, is grounded in a deep understanding of how music works, a willingness to delve into texts until they become a part of his psyche, and an ability to employ technological tools to disseminate the results.

I hope my students heard that message, and I hope they will pursue that highly informed and creative play. But more than that, I hope they will listen to the music and know that the arts are not any more dead than is Jake Runestad.   

This weather is for the birds

Thick mist rising from the river frosts limbs of trees and makes them sparkle in the morning light. On days like these my morning commute would be a lovely winter drive if it weren't so doggone treacherous.

I delayed leaving the house as long as I could this morning, hoping in vain to see a snowplow on my road. When I finally left I had to follow a single set of tire marks breaking through the snow, paying no attention to proper lanes but simply following what appeared to be the road. The state highway was more visible but still slippery, but the river--I wish I could tell you how beautiful my river looks on a cold morning when golden sunshine touches the icy silver water.

I swung around by the dam to see if any eagles were out but didn't see any and didn't get out to take photos because of the cold. I realize that others have it worse--at least traffic is still moving here! But getting out of the car when the temperature reads six below zero is not my idea of a good time.

Yesterday a flock of cardinals frequented our bird feeders, with as many as a dozen at a time crowding the feeding station and more waiting on the limbs of the nearby maple tree. I suppose the snow has made their usual sources of food less available, and while I'm happy to see brightening up our winter landscape, I'm not going outside to join them. Why brave the cold when I can watch them comfortably from inside my nice warm house?

Now if only I could get my students to agree to have class at my house....

The allure of allusion

There's nothing like teaching a text for a umpteen-millionth time only to discover that you've been overlooking an important allusion--so important, in fact, that it's mentioned on online cheat sites. First I'm congratulating myself for noticing this interesting allusion and then I'm kicking myself for being the last person on the planet to have noticed it, or maybe I've noticed it before and forgotten it utterly. Such are the trials of the aging professor.

Not that my students would notice. Today in two classes I found myself urging students to spot interesting allusions and failing utterly, primarily because the students haven't read the works alluded to or they don't see how they're relevant. 

"Who's read Moby Dick?" I ask, and how many hands shoot into the air? 

None. 

"Who's read Frankenstein?" 

One student! Great! 

"Who's read Cormac McCarthy? Walt Whitman? John chapter 12?"

We're clearly not getting anywhere with this discussion.

One of the things I love about teaching literature is the ability to make connections across broad stretches of time and space, to suddenly discover the Garden of Eden and the problem of pain springing up in the middle of a nineteenth-century short story, to unearth monsters or heroes in contemporary poetry and find their close relatives in The Odyssey. This is the experience I wish for all my students: to overhear longstanding conversations conducted across the centuries between authors as distant and different as Stephen Crane and Herman Melville, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman, Andrew Grace and Homer.

And if they listen long and hard enough, maybe one day they'll be able to talk back.     

An ice walk

She loves to play in water--even when it's frozen.

I ought to be tackling that big pile of papers this afternoon and also prepping Monday's classes, doing some committee work, and outlining the next phase of my big writing project, but instead I'm taking Hopeful for a walk in the snow. 

Not a long walk--it's too stinking cold and my walking shoes leak. But the forecast for this weekend calls for single-digit temperatures plus high winds and snow, which is perfect weather for staying inside with a big pile of papers to grade. Today, though, I decided to get out and stomp round in the snow while the sun is still shining. 

Chickadees and juncos and a lone hairy woodpecker flock around the birdfeeders but the woods down by the creek remain silent and still. Ice forms unevenly on the creek, creating constellations of protruding rocks and channels edged by feathery fronds and swooping curves. Occasionally I hear a crack and a splash as another chunk of ice drops off into the water. I love to watch little air bubbles skittering beneath the thin ice, but I suspect that by Sunday the creek will be frozen solid again.

Islands in the stream.

Chickadee-dee-dee!

My ears are cold and my feet are numb and I can't hang out in the ice-world forever, so in I go to get warm and dry and stare some more at that pile of papers.   

The little darlings identify another valuable life skill

I'm reading Cheating in College: Why Students Do It and What Educators Can Do about It (McCabe, Butterfield, and Trevino  2012) but I'm making slow progress because I keep getting hung up on this point that keeps coming up:

Many students today simply do not consider cut-and-paste plagiarism from the Internet or written sources to be cheating, so when asked in a survey on 'cheating' whether they have engaged in this behavior, many simply say no--even if they have. As noted earlier in the chapter, in their open-ended comments, many explain that they answered this way because, when they engaged in one of these behaviors, it simply wasn't cheating. (58-59)

And what reasons do students offer to explain why their cheating doesn't really qualify as cheating? They rationalize: "they didn't have enough time to do the assignment and had no choice; the assignment had little learning value or was unfair; or using the Internet in this was is effective time management--a skill that will serve them well in the real world when they graduate" (59-60).

So what we have here is a bunch of students who see cheating as a valuable life skill. If that's true, then maybe we ought to start teaching more effective plagiarism skills. Cheating 101--the class that prepares students for a life of rationalization.

How will I ever finish the book when I can't stop banging my head against the wall?

Clap along!

At a time when academe is awash with doom and gloom, it feels wrong to be so happy. And yet I am. Why?

My classes are going well, with a dearth of deadwood and lots of fun discussion of literature, and I'm even excited about reading the papers my students are producing (although I have to wonder what madness inspired me to require all of my classes to submit papers in the same week).

My committee work is challenging, but we're all working together well to achieve some very specific and important tasks that will have an impact on the campus for a long time to come.

My research projects are progressing nicely and sparking ideas for new avenues of research that will lead into some really exciting places. 

And best of all, I'm getting lots of happy grandma time with a sweet little girl who loves to play with words.

So while I'm aware that the future looks gloomy for higher education as a whole as well as for my particular discipline, I can't help feeling happy and hopeful. (But I'd better not say it too loud lest anvils start falling from the sky.)
 

F gets an A+

"Some fish for words from shore while others...like to go wading in up to their chins through a torrent of bone-chilling diamond, knife raised," writes Franz Wright in a prose poem called, simply, "Spell," although I don't know whether the title is intended as a command or an incantation. The poem appears in Wright's 2013 collection F, which the poet suggests refers both to his name and his "grade in life." However you spell it, F is a remarkable achievement.

Never one to fish for words from shore, Wright plunges deep into the river of life, raises his knife, and pulls from the torrent creatures both mundane and fantastic. The long poem "Entries of the Cell" assembles dreamlike fragments:

There are spots in the sea, depths where light ceases to penetrate, a painless, dreamless and shatterproof sleep holy to horrible workers: the ones who'll appear in our place after we've fallen storming the walls of the Kingdom.

From these blue depths the poet draws monsters and demons, evokes fears of mortality and shame and meaninglessness, but embraces beauty within alienation:

This blue world.

Unattainable--stranger than dying,

by what, what unmerited blessing, were we allowed to come here and to see it, as in a dream, or with eyes of flesh, what difference?

Death row born and bred, and yet


This blue world,

my stranger...

Into this strangeness Wright introduces his familiars: family, nature, words. The tender "Learning to Read" borrows a line from the poem "The Blessing" by Franz Wright's father James Wright, but F bends J's line to emphasize that breaking a fragile body does not always lead to blossoming. Anyone interested in the anxiety of influence might find further fodder in "Peach Tree" when F evokes the title of J's breakout poetry collection, The Branch Will Not Break, but F more directly addresses his family relationships in "Postcard 2," which includes a cryptic message from his famous father: "The blizzard I visit your city disguised as will never arrive and never be over."

For a collection redolent of the scent of the graveyard, F remains warm with light and life. In "Crumpled-Up Note Blowing Away," the poet proclaims, 

But I've said all that
I had to say.
In writing.
I've signed my name.
It's death's move.

And yet the poem doesn't accept this end but moves on through two more stanzas, ending with the poet sitting at the train station awaiting death's move while the sun shines brightly on his back. Another poem, "The Composer," introduces a character who marries mortality with art: "Awareness of existing in a universe where death is real came to him in the form of music." The soul, says Wright, is "a stranger in this world," but it does not lack tools for making beauty.

This tender sympathy for the human condition comes through most clearly in "Leave Me Hidden," which starts on a sardonic note of disgust for popular culture but soon moves into lyrical wonder over unexpected grace. Wandering into the woods and pressing his hands against a tree's "hugely magnified / fingerprint," the poet feels 

a heartbeat, vast, silently
booming there deep in
my hidden leaves, blessed
motherworld, personal
underworld, thank you

thank you.

For Franz Wright, motherworld and underworld remain eternally tangled, but reading his poems allows readers to plunge into the bone-chilling river of human existence and emerge with a new understanding of suffering linked with a mouth full of thank you.

News from the rock face

I paid a visit this morning to the cliff across from our house. From a distance the rock appears static and stable, but up close it tells a different story: tiny fissures deepen into fractures and chasms where water freezes and thaws and propels large chunks of rock down the slope.

Recent rockfalls expose fresh surfaces glowing with subtle swirls of color, while older rock weathers gray and brown and eventually becomes colonized by lichens and liverwort and tiny climbing vines. In the spring I've seen phoebes making nests in the thick vegetation, and high above the cliff face stand tall trees offering habitat for squirrels, chipmunks, and many kinds of birds. At the highest point is a hawk's nest, currently vacant. Will the hawks return this spring? Will the hillside once again host a den of foxes?


Down below we watch the changing profile of our own Old Man of the Mountain, whose nose has become more chiseled over the years and his eyes more sunken. A new fissure makes him looks as if he's about to open his mouth and speak, but what would he say? Every time I see him, he reminds me that time, which turns the hardest rock to dust, creates beauty even through decay.    

No apologies for popularity

At a meeting the word popular insinuates itself into the discussion with a sneer, carrying baggage traceable to junior high school: we unpopular types may have denigrated the pretensions of the popular kids, but only because we secretly coveted their social successes.

When it comes to getting butts into classroom seats, the word popular is fraught with competing concerns. We hear rumors of classes that attract students by giving them what they want--good grades for little work--and we roll our eyes and reject the model. We don't want the kind of popularity that arises from a sacrifice of rigor.

But make no mistake: we definitely want butts in seats, because in the current academic climate, classes with low enrollments are in danger of cancellation. We want to be popular without being pushovers. What can make a rigorous class attractive to picky students?

Versatility. Students look at our many course offerings and wonder, "What can this course do for me?" A course required for a major may be essential to students within that major, but what if it can also fulfill a General Education requirement without loss of rigor? Or what if it can fulfill two General Education requirements plus serve as an elective in a minor? Teaching GE courses requires a little extra work to align the course with the campus assessment program, but if it gets butts in seats, it's worth it.

Variety. A few years ago a gifted English major told me she was switching to another program for several reasons, but partly because it seemed as if she was doing the same kinds of things over and over in her literature classes. Ouch. We all have our particular strengths as teachers, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to stretch beyond those strengths by relying on a variety of pedagogical methods, challenging students with different types of assignments, and taking risks in the classroom even if they threaten our carefully imposed order.

Vigor. I know it seems counterintuitive, but comments on student evaluations suggest that students want to engage actively with interesting ideas and activities. They don't want to passively absorb material that seems moribund; instead, they want to get up and get their hands dirty, toss ideas around the room and see what they can make of it. Creating a lively and vigorous class is messy work that may require professors to get comfortable with chaos, but it helps learning happen.

No learning happens in a class that gets cancelled, so I'm not ashamed to say that I'm devoted to making my classes popular--without sacrificing rigor or becoming a pushover. It's a lot of work--but also a lot more fun than having classes cancelled. 

Drop and give me 50!

My writing students might sometimes think I'm a drill sergeant when I force them to write and write and keep on writing, but I rarely get a chance to apply these skills to my colleagues. In May, though, I'll crank up my drill-sergeant credentials and put some colleagues through their paces when our Faculty Publishing Group offers its first-ever Academic Writing Boot Camp.

The idea is simple: for three days, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., faculty members will gather to give their summer writing projects a kick-start. Each day's activities will include writing sprints intended to get the juices flowing, extended writing time to get massive amounts of words on the page, and feedback on portions of the writing project.

This is my first time leading an effort like this but I hope not the last. I've already planned some helpful activities but I need more. Here's where you can help: if you've ever been involved in a faculty writing workshop like this one, what was most helpful? What was least helpful? If you've never been involved in this kind of activity, what would attract you to the workshop? What kind of activities would most effectively support your writing efforts?

I welcome suggestions in the comments. That's right: I want you to drop and give me 50! (Words.)  

Beyond making sense

This morning I was briefly tempted to give my American Lit Survey class a reading quiz consisting of one question: "Briefly summarize the plot of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons." It's an absurd question, of course, but it would very efficiently distinguish between those who had done the reading ("Plot? What plot?") and those who had not (a whole page of b.s.).

Instead I asked for the students' impressions of Stein's work, and their universal complaint was "It doesn't make sense." 

"Okay," I said. "But what else besides sense can a literary work make?"

And that was the start of an interesting discussion.

I've never taught Stein before and I'm still not sure that teaching Stein in a 50-minute class lies within the realm of possibility, but I led my students through the part of Tender Buttons excerpted in the anthology and helped them to fumble toward understanding of the tenets of modernism. A few times they asked me to explicate specific lines and I had to admit that I didn't have a clue, something that would have frightened me earlier in my teaching career.

Back then I thought that the teacher was the person who had all the answers; these days, on the other hand, I'm content to be the person who has all the questions and helps guides students toward some of the answers. Sometimes we make sense. Other times, like today, we create a mind-blowing experience.    

Bloop, bloop goes the blog

Anyone who asks about my wonderful family weekend is likely to hear about snow angels and sushi and silly songs, but I probably won't mention the primary topic of conversation in my granddaughter's household right now: poop.

It's an important topic, especially when the little one is still mastering the intricacies of using the potty. I don't want to go into a lot of detail here lest anyone happens to be reading this over lunch, but let's just say this: poop happens, but not always in the right time and place. Fortunately, young parents trying to gently guide their toddlers have many resources on hand to help, and if there's a grandma handy, then she'll gladly do her part as well. 

Which is why I spent a lot of time this weekend reading my granddaughter books about poop.

I won't attempt a full-scale review of these books because, frankly, I'm trying really hard to delete them from my memory. There's the board book in which a gender-neutral baby says "Bye-bye, diaper!" and hears a "Tinkle, tinkle, toot" before reaching my granddaughter's favorite page: "Undies!" 

Then there's a book full of animal parents asking their offspring whether they've pooped, while young readers get the thrill of lifting little flaps to find things that are definitely not poop until, finally, they lift the right flap and say, "There's the poop!"

And I'm not going to even describe the action in a book euphoniously titled "Bloop, bloop goes the poop." Really, it's all there in the title.

I am delighted to be a part of my granddaughter's life and share this important developmental milestone with her, but nevertheless I'm looking forward to the day when we can put the poop books behind us and move on to more exciting topics. How will we get to know Pooh if we're stuck on poop?

From drafty to droopy to drowning, and more!

I'm holding in my hot little hands the first pile of student drafts of the semester! Before I even look at them, I know what I'll find:

The drafty draft: A paper so full of holes that the argument seems to have leaked out.

The droopy draft: Starts off strong but can't hold up the argument past the first page.


The drowning draft: The argument gasps for breath beneath a sea of not entirely relevant contextual information stretching all the way back to the dawn of time.

The non-draft draft: A thesis statement and a list of points, or just a page full of quotes that could be useful in an analytical essay.


The master of misdirection draft: Tosses pretty colored balls in the air to distract from the fact that it doesn't actually do what the assignment requires.

The changing horses in midstream draft: Lays out a clear road map but then--wait, what was I talking about?

The "Say It with Flowers" draft: Grabs obscure, flowery terms from the thesaurus without regard for whether the selected words are appropriate for the task.

The "Oops, I sent the wrong draft!" draft: Submitted by a student who thinks a professor will believe that he went to the effort to write two versions of the paper, only one of which is plagiarized.

The invisible draft: "I'm sure I submitted it. There must be something wrong with Moodle."

The "Carry on!" draft: Original work, well organized, nicely written, with just a few areas needing improvement.

I wish I had more of the final type, but alas, the odds are against it.

Why keep playing the academic publishing game?

Several times during my mega-massive writing weekend I asked myself: Why am I doing this? What could possibly make such an onerous task worthwhile? Why keep playing the academic publishing game when the rewards are so meager?

There are rewards, of course--a good teaching job, tenure, promotion to full professor--but after all those rewards are won, what then? Why keep presenting conference papers and writing articles with no tangible rewards dangling on the horizon? I'm a tenured full professor with nothing to prove; I'm not on the job market and my institution doesn't offer any sort of merit pay. The most I can hope for is a pat on the back from my department chair in my annual review. So why keep playing the game?

The main reason, I suppose, is that it's fun. I enjoy reading new things, researching new approaches, and contributing to the scholarly conversation. The time may come when I want to slow down my pace, but as long as playing the game gives me pleasure, I won't hang up my cleats.

Nevertheless, I do understand the frustrations of those who don't see the point in continuing to work so hard with few tangible rewards, and for that reason I would favor the implementation of some kind of merit pay that recognizes scholarly accomplishments. An institution that expects faculty at all ranks to teach a 4/4 load should not be surprised when research and publication take a back seat to teaching, but we can surely do more to encourage and reward scholarship beyond the promise of tenure and promotion.

But I'm not grumbling. I love to research and write about literature and I'll keep doing it regardless of the meager rewards. However, the next time I read some angry screed about all those stale, unproductive, outdated senior faculty members who haven't learned anything new since the Johnson administration, I may have to find someone to kick.

A burst of writing: grueling but satisfying

In a massive burst of creative energy, this weekend I have revised a journal article, drafted the introduction to an article for an anthology, and written a brief formal analysis of a work of art for the art history class I'm taking. These grueling tasks provided three distinct types of pleasure.

First, the revision: as much as I hated to murder my darlings, I complied with the requests of the journal editors. I always worry about how much historical and critical context I should provide; I don't want the essay to get bogged down in a swamp of explanation, and I fear underestimating the intelligence of my readers. However, the editors wanted more so I gave them what they wanted. It was a painful experience but I'm satisfied with the result and relieved to be done with it. (I hope.)

Second, the introduction: the anthology essay is due in June but I read a book this week that provided the perfect setup for my analysis, so naturally I had to write it down before it fades into the quagmire of my swirling mind. Writing these two brief paragraphs gave me hope for the future of the project and made me happier than anything I've written all year. (Of course, the year is still young.)

Finally, the art history analysis: I really didn't need to do it since I'm auditing the class, and in fact the professor expressed some surprise when I mentioned that I was planning to write the paper. But writing the papers is the primary reason I'm taking the class! Of course I enjoy the lectures, readings, and class discussions on art and violence, and I really enjoy hearing what the students have to say about specific works of art; however, writing this paper forced me to look closely at a work of art and then look again and again, finding more detail and significance with each new viewing. This practice of looking delighted my senses and sent me to the page bubbling with ideas and insights. I don't know whether my analysis is any good, but the process of writing it was good for me and made me want to do more.

If I could write with this much discipline every weekend, I'd vastly improve my scholarly output; however, this level of production was possible only because I had no drafts to read, papers to grade, classes to prep, or committee meetings to organize. How many more weekends like this can I expect to experience? Not many. Certainly not enough.  

Open wide, cupcake

Today I watched a man make tuna cupcakes while getting teeth drilled at the dentist's office.

Wait, scratch that. Let's start again:

Today, while getting my teeth drilled at the dentist's office, I watched a man make tuna cupcakes. On television, of course, and whoever invented the dentist-chair television ought to be sainted because what else are you going to do while getting teeth drilled or waiting for a new crown to be constructed or trying not to bite down on all the expensive equipment filling your mouth?

Since my dental work wiped out my lunch hour and left me with a mouth too numb to allow chewing, I decided to keep the television on the Food Network and enjoy a vicarious lunch while getting my teeth drilled. Now I don't have the Food Network (or any network) at home and thus had no conception that there could exist an entire series devoted to competitive cupcake-baking, but there it was, in living (sometimes garish) color: pineapple cupcakes, coconut cupcakes, German chocolate cupcakes with macadamia nut icing (!!), cupcakes topped with white chocolate seashells or fondant surfboards or caramelized chunks of Spam (!!!), and of course the infamous Ahi tuna cupcakes.

If anyone had told me that one day I would sit in the dentist's chair getting my teeth drilled while watching a man make tuna cupcakes, I would have scoffed. Today, though, the scoffing is over.

Now let the scarfing begin! Where can I find some cupcakes?

Playing the academic publishing game

So I've been shopping around various versions of this particular analytical essay to academic journals, but it's long and it veers markedly from the usual treatment of the topic so it kept getting rejected--until today. I found the perfect journal for this piece, sent it off, waited a mere two months, and got a glowing response from the journal's editor: They love it. They need it. They want it--as long as I'm willing to make a few small changes recommended by the referees. (Yay!)

Except those changes require me to mangle my favorite parts of the essay. (Boo!)

But on the other hand, no one else is going to publish this thing as is so I'd better just swallow my pride, cripple my creativity, and conform to their expectations so I can see this work (finally!) in print. (Yay!)

Except they're on a short deadline so they need the revisions by the end of next week. (Boo!)

Fortunately, I don't have a whole lot going on this weekend so I can devote a chunk of time to revising (Yay!) as long as I don't need to relax or goof off or have, say, a social life (Boo!).

So that's how I'll be spending my weekend: sacrificing the best parts of my essay (Boo!) just so I can finally get it out there into the scholarly conversation (Yay!). But you'd better believe I'll be keeping a copy of the original version--just in case I can someday interest a publisher in a book on the topic. (Yay!)

When Homer meets Henry

This morning I tried to persuade a class to laugh at Homer's Odyssey and tomorrow I'll try to persuade another class to laugh at Henry James, but it ain't easy. One unfortunate effect  of their prior education is a tendency to see classic texts as forbidding fortresses of High Seriousness embracing obscure meanings and locking out any light, joy, or laughter. 

But seriously, folks: a big hairy one-eyed man-eating giant gets his eye poked out with a sharp stick and then flails about screaming "Nobody is killing me!"--and then Our Illustrious Hero describes how he escaped from the Cyclops by grabbing the belly of a ram and hugging it tight as it ambled out the door--and I'm not supposed to laugh?

And little Randolph Miller goes tearing about in an orderly European garden poking his long walking-stick into the trains of elegant ladies' dresses and then declares that his father is in a "better place" (meaning not heaven but Schenectady)--and I'm supposed to be so awed by the stately Jamesian prose that I'm expected to stifle my chuckles?

Come on, people--lighten up! Sure, Homer and Henry suffused their tales with serious questions about identity, fate, and the sources of suffering, but their writing gains strength by touching on the whole range of human experience and emotion. If we stand so in awe of these authors that we can't comprehend their lighter side, we're missing half of the meaning--and more than half of the fun.

Which makes me wonder: If Homer and Henry ever bump elbows in the authorial afterlife, how can either one get a word in edgewise?    

Wait, is it a circus or a train track?

I asked my colleague across the hall for a word--"Quick, what word am I thinking of?"--and he answered immediately: "Fart."

It wasn't the right answer but on the other hand maybe it was. I needed a laugh. I've been sitting at my desk trying to figure out how I can possibly be so swamped so early in such a great semester, with a (short) stack of papers to grade (already!) and a mass of meetings on and off all week, including some dental work but not, fortunately, jury duty. (I managed to sweet-talk my way out of jury duty calling the bailiff and moaning, politely, about my teeth.)

And so the circus begins: doing a little bit each day on a swirling mess of different projects and hoping it all adds up to something whole before the deadlines hit. My life is like that online train game: move the switches so the pink train gets to the pink station and then move them into an entirely different configuration to get the yellow train to the yellow station--but look out for the green train barreling down the tracks!

So far I'm doing it, one click at a time: prep class, teach class, write paper abstract, teach other class, order plane tickets for conference, prep other class, go to meeting, sweet-talk the bailiff, grade papers, prep another class--all the time keeping an eye out for whatever else comes barreling down the tracks. 

And if it's a fart, what can I do but laugh?

On beautiful violence

When people ask me why I'm sitting in on an upper-level art history class called "Art and Violence" this semester, I generally don't say "Because I'm still trying to resolve an argument that's been bugging me since grad school." It's much easier to say something vague like "The topic interests me"; anything close to the truth requires a quick trip back to a time when a grad-school professor put a book on the syllabus without having first read it himself.

I'm not entirely sure why he did that. He was a brand-new professor teaching his first graduate-level course and a senior faculty member in his department strongly urged him to put this book on the syllabus so he may have thought he had no choice, but for whatever reason, there the book sat like a bomb timed to go off in the fourth or fifth week of the semester.

The week before the book was due, the professor made a sheepish announcement: he hadn't read the book before; he'd assigned it under duress; he apologized in advance if anyone found it offensive and he wouldn't penalize students for failing to finish the book since he (the professor!) hadn't made it past page 57.




Of the 12 or 15 students in the class, how many admitted to having read the whole book? Two. The rest pronounced it offensive and appalling and horrific and proudly proclaimed that they couldn't possibly read past page 57.

The book was Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Page 57 is where you'll find the dead-baby bush--an admittedly gruesome scene in a book full of gruesome scenes.

The class had an impassioned discussion of the ethics of making violence beautiful, and I found myself in the awkward position of defending a book that the professor had declared unreadable. I admitted that the violence was gruesome but argued that it served a larger purpose in McCarthy's exploration of the human condition, but it's really hard to make an argument about a book when only one other person in the room has read it all the way through. 

I've re-read the book several times since then and I still find it compelling (and beautiful!) despite the ugly behavior it describes, but I've never assigned it to an undergraduate classroom. I've assigned other books containing equally disturbing scenes, like Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and Jose Saramago's Blindness, and I would have no qualms about assigning McCarthy's novel The Road.

But not the movie. The movie gave me nightmares. In fact, I resist watching films portraying violence because they disturb my sleep and distress my soul--even when equally disturbing written portrayals of violence don't make me bat an eye.

I realize that there's something wrong with that attitude. If I have no ethical qualms about literature that makes beauty from violence, why do I shy away from visual portrayals of violence? If violence in literature can serve a larger purpose, why won't I allow violence in visual art to do the same thing? If I'm not horrified by the written description of the dead-baby bush, why would I refuse to watch it on film?

These are the topics I'd like to explore this semester, and I welcome the opportunity to do it in the company of people who know a whole lot more about art than I do. I want to learn things and think deeply about an interesting topic, and I hope it will enrich my teaching on those occasions when I introduce students to violent texts.

Like this morning, when my honors students begin discussing The Odyssey. Skewer those suitors, Odysseus! (Just don't ask me to watch the carnage on screen.)

Semester half full?

It was the best of semesters--full stop. I'm trying not to think of the second half of the sentence, but unfortunately, every wonderful thing about this semester is inexorably linked to a dark shadow.

I have a course release for research so I'm teaching only three classes--but that means I have to diligently work on that research project, which has a real and unbreakable deadline.

I'm teaching only three classes, but somehow I ended up with three horrible classrooms: two interior rooms with ugly pink plastic desks, mud-colored walls, and no windows, and one large sunny room housing the crankiest computer setup in the building.

My largest class has only 17 students, 11 of them women--but they all appear to be the same woman. Why can't a few of them dye their hair pink or something? I'll never learn to tell them apart!

I've given up requiring online reading responses because I got sick of spending so much time tracking down cheating, but I've replaced them with unannounced in-class reading responses--pop quizzes, in other words. I'm dropping the lowest two quiz grades so I don't have to allow make-ups, but I'll still be fielding plenty of excuses, requests for make-up quizzes, and complaints.


But let's not think about all that. Let's just focus on the best of semesters: only three classes! Two of them fairly small! All focusing on literature I love! What could possibly go wrong?  

Best syllabus ever!!!!!!!!!

If I redesigned my Survey of U.S. Literature class based entirely on complaints from previous classes, here's what it would look like:

Survey of Whatever U Like
Meets whenever U find it convenient. 

Required texts: Whatever U Like! Tweets, raps, viral memes--whatever U want to read/view/listen to!

Class participation: Register attendance by clicking the "like" button on Moodle--Whenever U Like! Discussion of students' feelings (no thoughts allowed!) will take place via Twitter using emoji, copy-and-paste, or Whatever U Like!

Evaluation: U are adults and therefore fully capable of evaluating Ur own performance in the class based on this simple grading scale:

• Scanned all the texts and expressed feelings eloquently: A+
• Scanned most of the texts and expressed feelings adequately: A
• Scanned some of the texts and expressed feelings occasionally: A
• Texts? What texts? Wait, was I in that class?: A-

Class capacity: Infinite--therefore capable of being a big money-maker for the college, since the class will not require classroom space, photocopying, or an instructor.

Looks like I've just written myself out of a job. Does this mean I get to retire early? 
 

Teaching the Listicle Generation

I was startled recently to find my students in The New Yorker--not by name, of course, but the article opens wide a window into my students' values and thought processes.

In "The Virologist," Andrew Marantz explores the peculiar world of Emerson Spartz, the "King of Clickbait," a 27-year-old creator of online viral content.  "The ability to make things go viral felt like the closest thing we could get to having a human superpower," he says, but is he using that superpower for good? Let's take a look at the principles that seems to rule his sites:

• Interesting is more important than true.
• Popularity is more important than accuracy.
• Short is better than long. 
• Originality? Bah, humbug. Once it's out there, it belongs to everyone.
• Feeling is more important than thinking.
• Superficiality rules. If you can't say it in a bullet point and a photo, it's not worth saying.
• Beauty is even more irrelevant than truth.
• Virality = quality.

Although he calls himself "one of the most avid readers I know," Spartz doesn't read straight news, he says, because "It's conveyed in a very boring way" (or, as my students like to say, it's too dry.) Spartz's idea of quality? Clickbait headlines linked to illustrated lists stuffed with advertising. "The way we view the world," he says, "the ultimate barometer of quality is: if it gets shared, it's quality. If someone wants to toil in obscurity, if that makes them happy, that's fine. Not everyone has to change the world." (Glad to know he approves of my life choices.)

The saddest line in the article, though, is this: "Asked to name the most beautiful prose he had read, he said, 'A beautiful book? I don't even know what that means.'"

And that's when I realized that he was speaking for my students. The way they look at me when I rave on and on about truth and beauty and originality and transcendence--they're a bunch of little Spartzes sitting in the desks, wondering when I'll shut up so they can go back to clicking on listicles full of plagiarized factoids masquerading as news.

And I'm trying to make them read Henry James? What was I thinking?!

If you don't like cute grandbaby stories, go read something else

Let's throw rocks in the creek!

When my granddaughter first learned to climb out of her crib, my daughter found her stacking diapers and clothes by the front door. Why? "Pack pack grandma grampa," she explained. She wanted to come and visit us!

Excuse me while I dance around the room and holler "Yes!"

My primary goal as a grandparent is quite simple: I want to have a relationship with my grandchildren. For reasons both complex and unbloggable, I never spent much time with my grandparents and my children never spent much time with theirs. From the moment my family started to grow and scatter, though, I was determined to break the family tradition of distance and discomfort.

And it seems to have worked. My granddaughter has been to our house often enough to know where to find things--toys and books and grampa's yellow flashlight--and she's even starting to distinguish amongst the various birds that come to the feeders. 

Now that she's climbing, though, I look at our house with different eyes, seeking out ways to encourage exploration while thwarting solitary wandering. It's what I always wanted for my own children: a long enough leash to let them wander freely plus a secure enough connection to draw them safely home.

Waving goodbye to the beach

I've been visiting with people who object to the beach: it's windy and wet and dirty and you get sand in your car, and besides, it's dangerous. There are sharks! Or you could cut your foot on a sharp shell or step on a manta ray. 

It's been a few years since I last stepped on a manta ray, but I've done it and lived to tell the story. I have also cut my foot on a sharp shell and bled all over my shoes--but again, still kicking. And what's a little sand in my car compared to the vast expanse of sand and waves at the beach?

In answer to the person who asked me why anyone would want to go to the beach in the middle of winter, here are my top ten reasons:

10. Cool weather = fewer people, mostly sturdy northerners who view anything above freezing as balmy.

9.  You can plop your towels down and leave your shoes and a bag full of stuff sitting on the sand while you dip your feet in the water and it's all still there when you get back.

8. Squadrons of pelicans skimming the waves at sunrise.

7. Sitting on the sand with a bird book and studying the differences between gulls and terns so they are no longer an amorphous blob of birdhood but start to distinguish themselves as individuals.

6. Watching tiny sandpipers, the Keystone Kops of shore birds, scampering away from an advancing wave.

5. The waves the waves the waves. Watching waves does something miraculous to my soul, and the sound soothes all tension.

4. Any book is twice as good when read on the beach.

3. The delight on my husband's face when he finally found a fully intact sand dollar.
 
2. Walking barefoot in the sand with my sweetie.

1. Waves + wind + sand + shells + birds + books + sweetie = sweetness and joy and warmth enough to get me through the long cold winter, or at least a good part of it.

We paid our final visit to the beach at sunrise this morning and then hit the road for the long drive home. We expect to see snow in the mountains tomorrow, but we'll still have sand underfoot to serve as a sort of reservoir of warmth as we journey north.