The Night Aunt Dottie Caught Elvis’s Scarf When He Tossed It From The Stage Of The Rushmore Plaza Civic Center

This exercise is simple: write a poem about a family member meeting a famous person. All of us have such incidents embedded in family history or folklore: the day Dad shook hands with Ike in France; the time Mom spilled coffee on Elizabeth Taylor in a pizza parlour in San Mateo; the night Aunt Dottie caught Elvis’s scarf when he tossed it from the stage of The Rushmore Plaza Civic Center. In most cases, our loved ones’ encounters with the famous or powerful tend to be fleeting and bittersweet, however memorable they may later seem — and it’s this aspect of the encounter that helps us to envision our family members in contexts that avoid easy sentimental gestures. These are situations that, in a small way, the forces of public history and private history collide, and these meetings help us to see our loved ones as individuals, not as types.

Guidleines for the exercise:

  1. The encounter can be real or imaginary, but at least should be plausible — no meeting between Cousin Ed and Genghis Khan
  2. The family member, not the famous person, should of course be the protagonist of the poem and it is his or her consciousness that the poem should try to enter or understand.
  3. The writer of the poem should be an effaced presence, understanding the inner workings of the family member’s mind but seeing the family member as a character referred to in the third person (“my father” and not “Dad,” in other words).
  4. The famous person can be anyone in politcs, entertainment, or the arts; JFK to Mel Gibson, Emily Brontë to Madonna
  5. Since the exercise tends to demand a fairly complex profile or portrait of the family member in question, it is best suited to longer poems — at least 30 lines.
  6. Submit completed poems via trackback

To Make a Dadaist Poem

  1. Take a news article (from your RSS aggregator, for example)
  2. Take some scissors
  3. Print the article
  4. Get a small bag (pencil case, ziplock, lunch bag)
  5. Cut the article into bits, one word per bit.
  6. Put the bits into the bag
  7. Shake gently(the bag, duh!)
  8. Take out each bit one by one and copy conscientiously in the order each bit left the bag
  9. The poem will resemble you

And there you are – an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

BTW: Dada, Dadaism, Dadaist

My Mother’s Kitchen

  1. Use pencil crayons to draw a picture of your mother’s kitchen.
  2. Put the oven in it, and also something green, and something dead.
  3. Write a poem about your mother’s kitchen.
  4. You are not in this poem, but some female relation – aunt, sister, close friend – must walk into the kitchen during the course of the poem.
  5. Completed poems, with a suitable image(72 dpi, png, lightbox), should appear in your blog and trackback here.

A lesson on single point perspective. Hint: Tiles need an extra diagonal, too.

After Act 5 (English 30)

Respond to one of the following:

  1. Do you think Rosencrantz and Guildenstern deserved to be put to death? What alternatives might Hamlet have taken? Examine Hamlet’s reasoning and consider whether you think Hamlet was seeking justice or revenge?
  2. Why does Horatio tell Hamlet he will lose the contest? Why is Horatio correct?
  3. Throughout most of the play Hamlet has seemed unwilling to do what he knows he must do. Is it only in the final scene that Hamlet seems fully willing to accept his destiny? What do you think has caused this change in Hamlet?
  4. Death is personified twice in the final scene: a police officer(by Hamlet) and a hunter(by Fortinbras). Why has Shakespeare chosen these two particular occupations. What other jobs could death, as a person, perform?

So I was listening to Music from the Junos . . .(RS25)

The lyrics from K-OS’s, “Heaven Only Knows,” struck a chord with something we had been discussing in class about “mysticism.”

Discuss the following K-OS lyrics based on what we’ve learned when comparing Western and Eastern Mysticism.

Have a careful listen to a variety of current or classic tunes by a variety of recording artists.

Which artists demonstrate our understanding of Western Mysticism, which are clearly Eastern, are any a little of each?

Continue reading So I was listening to Music from the Junos . . .(RS25)

I wish to dwell on Ophelia (Eng. 30)

Many scholars discuss the significance of Ophelia only as far as she impacts the development of the character of Hamlet. I hate that. Ophelia is far more important than the 5 scenes in which she appears. The tragedy of Ophelia deserves more considered attention. Write about the life and death of Ophelia. Write about the effect others have had on Ophelia. What makes her unique, distinctive? What ideals does she hold? What are her doubts and fears? What brings her joy, inspiration, fulfillment?

Hazlitt says, “Ophelia is a character almost too exquisitely touching to be dwelt upon.”

Dwell on her I say, dwell now.

Trackback here.

Microcontents Flourish at STJ Blogs (LA 9)

Thanks to a few bloggers for helping me work out the bugs in the microcontent code. Movie, music, and video game reviews appear to be the most popular. I still haven’t, yet, found a sure fire method of aggregating all the reviews – POGE. The FREEoutputthis.org looks promising.

Anyway, for the time being, trackback your microcontent posts here.

Blogging About the News (LA 9)

Students can collect news headlines from a variety of RSS sources using their blog as a news aggregator. Writing about the news is one of the more common uses of a blog throughout the blogosphere. Bloggers blend fact and opinion, rant and satire, sarcasm and criticism, objectivity and subjectivity, style and substance. By reading and commenting about the news we learn two things: something about the news, and something about the blogger.

Trackback/pingback your posts about the news here.