Entries categorized as ‘English matters’
He’s our friend, not because he knows us but because he loves good writing, especially short fiction. Today in serendipitous fashion, seeking a spot to submit my short shory I came across this site. Simple, artsy, and professional-looking, it would do just fine.
The two editors (there are just the two of them) suggested giving the magazine a read either online or buying a copy. I went through the table of contents for one issue and clicked on the Spring 2008 issue and began reading a story. Wow. He’s good. I’m in over my head. Another one! I can’t stop.
Proceding down the page for another read, I read an introduction to Love. Amazing. From there I perused the authors’ names, bylined by their story’s links. No way. Here are Ethan Coen (O, Brother Where Art Thou?), Wes Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Tim Roth, and Woody Allen!
And the publisher? Francis Ford Coppola. No less.
This is big. I read Coppola’s mission statement. Inspiring. Various essays and reprints from well-known writers (Vonnegut, Dick) are there, too, along with impressive cover design. But it’s not another anthology of college text collections. Plenty of unknowns are published here, too.
Writers can enter the contest, submit a story, or join the virtual studio where “thousands” of writers critique each other. Or just read. The publication is Zoetrope: All Story.
I love stories, having been introduced to fairy tales and myth as a child. In the fourth grade I read A Midsummer Night’s Dream from an old yellowed copy, some relative’s school Signet Edition. In third grade my teacher read us Bible stories, and I fell in love with Moses and David. (I never liked ghost stories, however; still don’t.)
After getting a master’s in English, I knew I was forever tied to the story, whatever its form. Talk to me, Do it well. Tell me a story. Use your imagination and we’ll be friends forever. You, me, Francis.
Categories: English matters · Literature (not poetry)
Tagged: Ethan Coen, Francis Coppola, literary magazine, literature, publishing, reading, short stories, Wes Anderson, writing
When the young gnat was born, also the day of his death since gnats have a life span of one day, he asked his father and mother what he should do. They were about to die and so had little time for instructing him, but they did manage to say, just before the end, “See how we hover and spin just above this burberry bush?”
The young gnat, who was already much older, had indeed seen how all the gnats he knew of were whirling and whirling in a furious swarm just above the purple bush behind the small, yellow house.
“Ah, he said. “So that is it then.”
The young gnat got into the bottom ring of the whirling swarm of gnats and began to spin. Faster and faster, more and more frantically he flew and as he did, he rose higher and higher.
This he did until the sun slid below the top of the cherry tree across the street, and then he fell, pulled to the ground, and landed in the red clay pot that in the summer held white petunias.
Categories: English matters · Literature (not poetry)
Tagged: English, existentialism, jwriting, literature, modern short story, modernism, parables, philosophy, teaching lesson
It was my title for the little homage to men yesterday:”the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” is part of William Wordsworth’s definition of poetry from the Lyrical Ballads, the Preface, wherein the poet writes what became the Romantic manifesto for poetry.
Recall that Romantics glorified feelings and objected to unemotional, dry, intellectual writing. Spirit trumphed mind and skill. Of course, other characteristics applied, but most can be contrasted with the features of Neoclassical poetry of the preceding 18th century.
Here are a few examples:
]Neoclassical Romantic
urbanity rural life, nature
intellect feelings
logic mysticism
adult child
control spontaneity
now past
familiarity foreign, exotic
The Preface is must reading for lovers of literature and should be interesting for just about anyone. This link is from Bartleby’s ed. of the Harvard Classics.
Categories: English matters · Literature (not poetry) · Poetry essays/criticism
Tagged: literature, Lyrical Ballads preface, poetry, quotation, Romanticism, Wordsworth
Or else what? Objectionable use of the word “must” it seems. Of course the editor, Peter Boxall, wants to raise our literary antennae because he knows we haven’t read these books, not most of them, and so with the implied inferiority of cretins like us, the challenge to our education, we read his list. We are weighed and found wanting. Score one.
A vampire book, Mr. Boxall?
According to William Grimes in the Books section of the NYT, (RSS to right) Boxall wants to critique “canonicity.” Academics subscribe to a long-standing list of must reads of their own: what an educated person should have read to be considered well-read, having encountered significant ideas well expressed that are life and possibly world changing. The classics. They are under scrutiny if not attack. Interview With a Vampire is on par with Nineteen Eighty Four these days.
And the point can be made: So if I haven’t read Macbeth, I don’t understand overweaning pride and ambition? Minus Huck Finn I won’t ever comprehend racial injustice or the painful initiation into adulthood and self reliance?
No one “must read” anything. And I suspect that good common sense, humanity, pathos and social conscience may be bred without any reading, especially fiction, which comprises most of the 1001.
Having said that, I’m a Canon-ite. I believe in the value of certain agreed -upon fictions in providing illumination, clarity, appreciation, and joy regarding the human condition, all areas.
What I object to is the cocktail party game of one-up everybody with what we’ve read. Using classic literature for snobbery and denigration is ironically unfortunate. Somebody missed the lesson in all those pages.
Categories: English matters · Literature (not poetry)
Tagged: books, literature, reading, canon, writing, English, lists, 1001 Books
I “met” Andy Borowitz years ago because I read The New Yorker, but just recently (earlier today) I learned that he is “really big.” Andy got the first ever National Press Club’s award for humor. The WSJ gave him a page-one piece, and it helped get him half a million subscribers to his site “The Borowitz Report.”
He worked on “All in the Family” for crying out loud not to mention movies, plays, and books. He’s an actor. He went to Harvard. AND graduated! (Link to helpful Borowitz piece for Harvard wanna-be’s at graduation time!)
And I just thought he was a funny guy who managed to get submissions “like magic” into The New Yorker! But seriously, Andy’s writing makes me laugh out loud. His “Report” offers a daily 250-word satire piece, usually based on politics or the news. Just read through the headlines and slugs and you’ll see what I mean!
My favorites are the more social writings like “Hot or Not,” which my students always loved and a faculty member threw into my waste basket. Or the historic work on trailblazers like Pavlov’s brother.
The “Report” is archived fully, but older New Yorker essays, mostly from “Shouts and Murmurs” are published as abstracts and are available for a price. Below I’ve linked a few more COMPLETE ones to get you started so I can create more fans for somebody else!
Remember all that stuff you were going to quit doing after January 1? Well it’s May 20, and I bet you are saying, “Resolutions? What resolutions?”
Tired of political “pundits?” Well, the “Father of our Country” was also the Father of Punditry!
What profession is the smartest? Well, it’s not “rocket scientists!”
Like “up-close” interviews? Here’s “Ask the Jihadist.”
Categories: English matters · Literature (not poetry) · Social commentary
Tagged: reading, writing, humor, blogging, satire, Andy Borowitz, New Yorker, journalism, web sites, political humor
. . . when you’re dead. Of course we will. Rest assured.
A. E. Housman’s poem “Is my team ploughing?” presents a dialogue between two friends, young males, one living, one dead. The recently deceased has questions about how it’s going now that he’s gone. His friend answers every question but one. Stanzas are structured as Q & A. The poem reprinted from the Project Gutenberg edition of the collection, A Shropshire Lad, which has never been out of print, is included below.
A. E. Housman is one of our most loved English poets probably because of his accessibility (he isn’t obscure,) his conventionality (his verse is traditional.) and his subject treatment (life.) These characteristics distinguish him from other soon-to-come modernist poets like Pound and Eliot. Something by Housman always makes the anthologies.
His best qualities are his tone, which is often wry, and his sophisticated insight masked in a common-man humility. At times he is melancholy, but it doesn’t turn to despair. Most often he’ll sigh. Charming.
From A Shropshire Lad, 1896
XXVII
“Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?”
Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.
“Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?”
Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.
“Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?”
Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.
“Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?”
Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.
Categories: English matters · Poetry essays/criticism
Tagged: A. E. Housman, British literature, English, humor, lesson plans, literature, poem, poetry
Dear Paisley and Plaid (are you one or two?),
I majored in English, and by your erudite commentary and precise, exquisite style (and lots of time to blog) I suspect that you, too, may be an English major. I recently resigned my position teaching eighth-grade speech and rhetoric because of, well, it was the principal of the thing!
What do I do now?
Well, English Major,
Here are some jobs with real possiblilites for people like us — lovers of literature and all things written or verbal. Starting pay may not be up to scale with what you are used to as a teacher and therefore the greatest influence on the nation’s future, but as they told us in Intro. to Education I,, II, and III, ”Money isn’t everything!”
Many of these TOP TEN jobs can be done concurrently. Good Luck!
Bohemian artiste — with a perpetual scarf — make commentary on the bourgeois masses
Novelist writing from personal experience — make that a novella-ist – you only taught eighth grade
Ghost writer for people with experiences
Elopement planner — It’s much more than just load up and go!
Student at Online Law School — Go OLS!
Guru — field TBD
Consultant — all trades (How hard can it be? You’ve read Dostoevsky.)
Amish clothing designer
Torch singer - You enter, late of course, 9:20, sing, sleep till noon
Academic advisor –pass out free t-shirt s– ”For Heaven’s Sake Major in Computer Science”
Mansion sitter — 15,000 sq. ft. and up
Out of the question list. You should stay away from this field:
Anything medical including dental work — the sounds, the smells, the sick people, mouth insides, nurses
And be sure to check out this link to 25 very odd jobs that you might pursue as well –
http://blog.sixwise.com/blogs/vaszily-brian/archive/2007/03/08/the-world-s-25-oddest-jobs.aspx
Categories: English matters · Uncategorized
Tagged: English, humor, jobs, odd jobs, teaching, teaching English, unusual jobs, work, writing
“Passion” for Poetry in New York
August 26, 2008 · 9 Comments
And this latest effort at promotion proves it. At various city venues the Poetry Brothel convenes for readings of high quality, literary works, poetry, by names and no-names alike. People like you and me.
Apparently the accoutrements feature heavy velvets, feathers, gambling tables, a bar, along with The Madame and her male partner, Tennessee Pink.
But the REAL reason patrons are there is the poetry.
The website posts the offer, “Want to be a poetry whore?” If you do, you’ll get to read your own original work to the sincerely interested literary set. For a price. (We’re not a non-profit, Pal.) For a higher fee, visitors can get a private reading.
Poets have to make a living, too, Maybe they became addicted to poetry early on. Maybe they have no training for other lines of work, so writing and reading “high quality” poetry is all they can do. Society has forced them to choose this dubious occupation. At least some New Yorkers care enough to give them a chance.
I wonder how many Robert Frosts and Walt Whitmans out there will have their talents recognized and thus be discovered through this new kind of outlet? What a service is being provided! What irony! Capitalism applied to poetry. Principles of marketing 101. Advertisers have always known this: Poetry sells!
American ingenuity is what it is. We know that given the right environment almost every normal person will appreciate poetry. We’ve been using faulty, inferior means — a classroom and a textbook — not to mention those sadsack English teachers. Now wonder they hate it.
On the other hand, I fear that if the concept proliferates, other industries will follow suit. Next thing we know there’ll be “performances” of various types at baseball games, recreational parks, and concerts.
But then again, maybe people who love a good concert, don’t need extras to get them to go.
Categories: English matters · Poetry essays/criticism · Social commentary
Tagged: Add new tag, entertainment, humor, New York, poetry, Poetry Brothel, reading, Social commentary