I have been on tenter hooks waiting for news from the national publication Slipstream. Every day when I walked down the hill to check the mail I wondered if that would be the day I'd get a rejection slip or a notice that they'd accepted something. This is the first time I had ever submitted anything to a national publication. I have been accepted by Headwaters, a UNCA literary magazine, and also accepted by The Blue Elephant and The Dirty Fox (twice) when I was attending A-B Tech. I have also been rejected by another UNCA literary magazine Metabolism.
My writing teacher K from A-B Tech showed us how to submit our work to national publications around 3 years ago in Creative Writing II. There was a project where I had to prepare submissions. After some research I chose Slipstream as the place I'd submit to. I thought my work would fit there. However, the poetry was such that it sat in my file cabinet for three years. One of them is a deeply personal piece I will probably never publish, the other two lacked sophistication.
I felt I'd written some worthwhile stuff over this past semester so I dug out the old information, checked the website to make sure it was still accurate, rewrote my letter, submitted five poems, and got a poem accepted! The feeling I got when I saw that they were accepting my poem was surreal. They have been around for 30 years and they are out of Niagara Falls, New York, not far from where I was born in Buffalo. I have to wait an entire year to see my work in print, but it will be so gratifying, especially because I am graduating around that same time. I can't wait to see the issue and read the other poetry and art they select.
I am thrilled, and if it weren't for the end-of-semester mayhem I would be choosing the next place to submit to right now! I am so thankful to my awesome husband John for his unflagging support of my work, and of my education. I am also thankful to my wonderful poetry writing teacher R at UNCA for all of his help and encouragement over the course of the semester. His passion for poetry, honesty, and expertise have helped me blossom as a writer.
I am also excited to be doing a reading at Accent on Books in Asheville today. I am looking forward to hearing some other poets and sharing some of my new work. I haven't done a reading in a year, so it is going to be fun. If you can make it the reading starts at 3 and here is their info:
Accent on Books
854 Merrimon Avenue
Asheville, North Carolina 28804-2405
Phone: (828) 252-6255
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
End Of The Semester & Summer 2010: A To Do List In Three Parts
There are piles of dusty library books everywhere, stacks of poems that are marked in 10 different people's handwriting, dog-earred books, empty pizza boxes, and coffee cups...Yes it is the end of the semester, and my life has become a little messy. Among other things, I am hovering on the edge of more research and trying to compose my final manuscript for Advanced Poetry Writing. A total of 30 poems.
I workshopped a long piece done in syllabics and it was ripped apart pretty thoroughly. I spent 8 hours yesterday trying to salvage it in its original format.I had to put it down and try to gain some perspective, I'll pick it up again in a couple of days. I think I need seven more poems/revisions to complete my portfolio. I have 2 weeks. I wish I could spend all of my time completing this one project, but I have other classes!
There are many things I have to do over the summer...work and make some $, read what is on my senior reading list and do an annotated bibliography, study for the GRE, begin the process of writing essays and letters for graduate school applications, and prepare for my my senior competency exams. I am hoping to hear one way or another about an editorial internship I applied for as well.
There are sooo many more things that I need to do: Sleep, exercise, be outdoors, hang out with my friends, drink coffee, read what I want for a change, actually clean my house, watch movies, do art, write what I want for a change, which reminds me...crap...I am also supposed to spend 6 weeks of the summer writing. Three weeks of poetry and three of fiction. I want to work on the novel I started last semester, but I am not sure that would be something I could workshop in Advanced Fiction Writing in the Fall? So. Much. Work.
I want to go to grad school why?
I also need to: play in the dirt, sit around a fire, visit my family, go on a road trip to the beach, visit UNCW and other schools I want to apply to, listen to music from when I was 15 and dance around feeling young again, cause I am not so young anymore...apparently I need to save to go to a salon to get my hair fixed because I messed it up with a home dye job, I need to cook elaborate gourmet meals, spend quality time with my husband, get my parrotlet to eat more vegetables and fruit, eat more vegetables and fruit myself, go to farmer's markets, antique shops, and festivals, and sleep...did I mention sleep?
Regardless of all I must, should, could, and want to do I am relieved that the semester will be over in a couple of weeks. I am hoping one day it will all be worth it. I wanted to compile a list of things to do over the summer so I wouldn't just sleep the entire time, it has been known to happen. It will serve as a reminder of what I want to accomplish. Which is obviously to drive myself insane, not a far drive at all!
I workshopped a long piece done in syllabics and it was ripped apart pretty thoroughly. I spent 8 hours yesterday trying to salvage it in its original format.I had to put it down and try to gain some perspective, I'll pick it up again in a couple of days. I think I need seven more poems/revisions to complete my portfolio. I have 2 weeks. I wish I could spend all of my time completing this one project, but I have other classes!
There are many things I have to do over the summer...work and make some $, read what is on my senior reading list and do an annotated bibliography, study for the GRE, begin the process of writing essays and letters for graduate school applications, and prepare for my my senior competency exams. I am hoping to hear one way or another about an editorial internship I applied for as well.
There are sooo many more things that I need to do: Sleep, exercise, be outdoors, hang out with my friends, drink coffee, read what I want for a change, actually clean my house, watch movies, do art, write what I want for a change, which reminds me...crap...I am also supposed to spend 6 weeks of the summer writing. Three weeks of poetry and three of fiction. I want to work on the novel I started last semester, but I am not sure that would be something I could workshop in Advanced Fiction Writing in the Fall? So. Much. Work.
I want to go to grad school why?
I also need to: play in the dirt, sit around a fire, visit my family, go on a road trip to the beach, visit UNCW and other schools I want to apply to, listen to music from when I was 15 and dance around feeling young again, cause I am not so young anymore...apparently I need to save to go to a salon to get my hair fixed because I messed it up with a home dye job, I need to cook elaborate gourmet meals, spend quality time with my husband, get my parrotlet to eat more vegetables and fruit, eat more vegetables and fruit myself, go to farmer's markets, antique shops, and festivals, and sleep...did I mention sleep?
Regardless of all I must, should, could, and want to do I am relieved that the semester will be over in a couple of weeks. I am hoping one day it will all be worth it. I wanted to compile a list of things to do over the summer so I wouldn't just sleep the entire time, it has been known to happen. It will serve as a reminder of what I want to accomplish. Which is obviously to drive myself insane, not a far drive at all!
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Idea Theft: A Rant on Classroom Etiquette
Today I was verbally plagiarized. My professors want to know why I don't always talk in class...it is because of poor group dynamics and idea theft. There are always those who attempt (and sometimes succeed) in dominating the group dynamic. There is also the matter of a professor who has such a large group that they miss body language cues and ignore the reticent to speak class members' attempt at communication.
One poor guy had his hand raised for 10 minutes and then the instructor had the nerve to check their watch as he was speaking...we had 10 or 15 minutes left at the time too. During this time that he had his hand raised the professor called on at least 4 other people. I was waiting to talk about my idea when some guy wearing yellow, who worked with the small group I'd been in, decided he would repeat my idea, almost verbatim. This yellow-wearer hadn't even brought the text to class! I also had discussed the topic of my research paper with the members of the group quite candidly. I am certain those thoughts will come in handy for the guy in yellow for future discourse.
There are several reasons why I am so quiet in class. Number one, I am an auditory learner, thus I prefer to listen rather than speak, and I rarely think about what I am going to say while someone else is speaking. Yes, I know this contradicts my above comment about waiting to speak, but I was going against my nature for the sake of class participation credit. Number two idea theft. While speaking in small groups, before the broader class discussion, it is not cool to use someone else's ideas as your own. The proper thing to do would be to say "so and so from our group said this." The third reason I don't talk in class is poor group dynamics...the dominators who interrupt, think that everything they say is of the utmost importance, and who ignore their class mate's raised hands and frantic eye contact.
All of these things are frustrating and annoying. Why should I have to go against my learning style in order to garner my professor's favor or the necessary participation credit? Especially if I am going to be verbally plagiarized or bulldozed? Perhaps I need to kick it up a notch and be more assertive. Or perhaps the people in that class need to recognize classroom etiquette. Maybe there should be a standard Emily Posts's guide to Behavior in a Classroom Setting?
Some guidelines:
*Give credit if you are using someone else's ideas. Even verbally.
*Pay attention to other student's body language. Is their hand raised? Are they staring intently at the instructor? Let them speak. If no one else notices a raised hand perhaps even point out: "I think Jenny has something to add." This kind of goes above and beyond the call of simple etiquette into the realm of "Lending a Helping Hand to Those in Need."
*If you are a natural talker use the method prescribed by a brilliant professor I once had: Step up, and then step back. You may have some off the charts great thoughts, but dominating the conversation is incredibly impolite. Write them down. Hang out in the hall after class to talk with other students or follow your professor to bombard them with your brilliance.
*When someone else is speaking, especially someone who is normally quiet, listen with attention and respect. Don't just spend the whole time they are speaking formulating your own response.
One poor guy had his hand raised for 10 minutes and then the instructor had the nerve to check their watch as he was speaking...we had 10 or 15 minutes left at the time too. During this time that he had his hand raised the professor called on at least 4 other people. I was waiting to talk about my idea when some guy wearing yellow, who worked with the small group I'd been in, decided he would repeat my idea, almost verbatim. This yellow-wearer hadn't even brought the text to class! I also had discussed the topic of my research paper with the members of the group quite candidly. I am certain those thoughts will come in handy for the guy in yellow for future discourse.
There are several reasons why I am so quiet in class. Number one, I am an auditory learner, thus I prefer to listen rather than speak, and I rarely think about what I am going to say while someone else is speaking. Yes, I know this contradicts my above comment about waiting to speak, but I was going against my nature for the sake of class participation credit. Number two idea theft. While speaking in small groups, before the broader class discussion, it is not cool to use someone else's ideas as your own. The proper thing to do would be to say "so and so from our group said this." The third reason I don't talk in class is poor group dynamics...the dominators who interrupt, think that everything they say is of the utmost importance, and who ignore their class mate's raised hands and frantic eye contact.
All of these things are frustrating and annoying. Why should I have to go against my learning style in order to garner my professor's favor or the necessary participation credit? Especially if I am going to be verbally plagiarized or bulldozed? Perhaps I need to kick it up a notch and be more assertive. Or perhaps the people in that class need to recognize classroom etiquette. Maybe there should be a standard Emily Posts's guide to Behavior in a Classroom Setting?
Some guidelines:
*Give credit if you are using someone else's ideas. Even verbally.
*Pay attention to other student's body language. Is their hand raised? Are they staring intently at the instructor? Let them speak. If no one else notices a raised hand perhaps even point out: "I think Jenny has something to add." This kind of goes above and beyond the call of simple etiquette into the realm of "Lending a Helping Hand to Those in Need."
*If you are a natural talker use the method prescribed by a brilliant professor I once had: Step up, and then step back. You may have some off the charts great thoughts, but dominating the conversation is incredibly impolite. Write them down. Hang out in the hall after class to talk with other students or follow your professor to bombard them with your brilliance.
*When someone else is speaking, especially someone who is normally quiet, listen with attention and respect. Don't just spend the whole time they are speaking formulating your own response.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Claiming What is Broken
Aren't we all broken in some way? Even the smallest things we do on a day to day basis that don't fit with who we think we are. No one thinks that they are perfect...right? We've all drifted off into our own headspace when we were supposed to be listening to our spouse, or left dirty dishes in the sink for too long, or muttered something under our breath while waiting in line or when a driver cuts us off on the interstate. We are flawed as human beings, but does this mean we are broken?
Another universal human experience, aside from our lack of perfection, is our capacity to feel emotional pain. Most of us manage to feel it to a point, and then our bodies and brains kick into survival mode. We turn away from what is broken in ourselves: our hearts, little bits of our souls we thought we knew, our minds and our bodies. The pain is too much for us to bear, so we deny its existence in our lives and choose to anaesthetize ourselves. We choose TV, food, arguments we made up to distract ourselves, alcohol, shopping, and anything we can find to comfort ourselves. All of this is done to fill a void; there is an emptiness within where our emotions could dwell if we claimed them.
When we choose to ignore our feelings, like an uninvited guest who's stayed too long in our house, we are constantly reaching out to find something to dam up the flow of our true emotions. What if we let ourselves feel them all? Would we die? Would we be carted away in a straitjacket? Would we end up wandering the streets and sleeping in dark alleyways? Could we choose to simply acknowledge what is broken, maybe even to let ourselves howl and scream if we need to, and survive?
There is a certain level of distrust in ourselves if we can't allow ourselves to view and experience the tidal shifts in emotion in our lives. Does this diminish the capacity for things such as joy, love, or peace? Sometimes the pain is so great we mentally pack our baggage into a neat mental U-Haul and decide to put it into storage and move away. Far away. Yet every month we are paying on that storage unit. It may be a thousand miles away, but somewhere in the musty depths, there are things we care about that we'd hate to lose. So we pay and we pay. It may not seem like much, but there is some level of energy extended to that discarded baggage, and it takes its toll in nickels and dimes. It adds up.
So the next time I am feeling angry, or there is a hurt which makes my chest and throat feel like they are going to explode, I am going to claim it in all of its broken stinking humanity. I am going to let the wave crash over me and feel the earth disintegrating under my feet. Because there is more space hollowed out after this marriage of what is broken with "real life." With the mundane. There is room for a force greater than me to move in and expand. The reward of this is a low tide, a period of calm where I can wade out farther than I ever imagined, until I can just barely see the shore.
Another universal human experience, aside from our lack of perfection, is our capacity to feel emotional pain. Most of us manage to feel it to a point, and then our bodies and brains kick into survival mode. We turn away from what is broken in ourselves: our hearts, little bits of our souls we thought we knew, our minds and our bodies. The pain is too much for us to bear, so we deny its existence in our lives and choose to anaesthetize ourselves. We choose TV, food, arguments we made up to distract ourselves, alcohol, shopping, and anything we can find to comfort ourselves. All of this is done to fill a void; there is an emptiness within where our emotions could dwell if we claimed them.
When we choose to ignore our feelings, like an uninvited guest who's stayed too long in our house, we are constantly reaching out to find something to dam up the flow of our true emotions. What if we let ourselves feel them all? Would we die? Would we be carted away in a straitjacket? Would we end up wandering the streets and sleeping in dark alleyways? Could we choose to simply acknowledge what is broken, maybe even to let ourselves howl and scream if we need to, and survive?
There is a certain level of distrust in ourselves if we can't allow ourselves to view and experience the tidal shifts in emotion in our lives. Does this diminish the capacity for things such as joy, love, or peace? Sometimes the pain is so great we mentally pack our baggage into a neat mental U-Haul and decide to put it into storage and move away. Far away. Yet every month we are paying on that storage unit. It may be a thousand miles away, but somewhere in the musty depths, there are things we care about that we'd hate to lose. So we pay and we pay. It may not seem like much, but there is some level of energy extended to that discarded baggage, and it takes its toll in nickels and dimes. It adds up.
So the next time I am feeling angry, or there is a hurt which makes my chest and throat feel like they are going to explode, I am going to claim it in all of its broken stinking humanity. I am going to let the wave crash over me and feel the earth disintegrating under my feet. Because there is more space hollowed out after this marriage of what is broken with "real life." With the mundane. There is room for a force greater than me to move in and expand. The reward of this is a low tide, a period of calm where I can wade out farther than I ever imagined, until I can just barely see the shore.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Living In the Moment
Ironically enough, I had the idea for this blog in my head last night, and didn't remember it when I first woke up. That was a prime example of not living in the moment. I was too busy making a to do list and it was only through the great coffee meditation that I remembered the topic.
The other day I pulled out my dusty gratitude journal, a lovely little book with "Flaming June" on the cover given to me by an old friend. I hadn't written anything in it since June of last year. The journal has gotten me through some extraordinarily tough times: my husband's serious, undiagnosed (for two and a half years), chronic illness, my battles with depression, two moves (each one a "downgrade"), and so many other events in our lives. I used to spend 5 or ten minutes writing in it every morning as my coffee was brewing.
I would write some outrageous things that hadn't even happened yet, particularly "I am so grateful now that my husband is healed." That was a mantra repeated over and over throughout the book. I also took the time to thank the universe for the things many people take for granted and I wasn't sure we would have: "Thank you for the power bill being paid, for food, for rent." So many of these things manifested through unexpected means. When my husband was at his sickest his family sent us a flood of cards and checks for a period of around three weeks. We were so grateful and didn't know how we would have survived without the help. A gratitude journal is amazing because it can keep you in the moment. Even if the moment hasn't occurred yet you can act as if it has and sometimes manifest great things.
Living in the moment is hard. My good friend V and I discussed this last week. We are both hard driving type A personalities, always looking to the next step in a chain of steps leading to the "ultimate goal." This is not very conducive to living in the moment. We pondered whether or not we even have the capacity to live in the moment. How many of us really do this? Do you find yourself reflecting on the "coulda, shoulda, wouldas" or the "wills" instead of the "I ams?" I am writing in my blog. I am enjoying a cup of delicious Costa Rican coffee. I am realizing that I sound far too much like a wannabe life guru or something.
There are so many clichés which express this, but the reason they are tried and true clichés is because they are true...It is the journey, not the destination. I have spent far too much of my life waiting for my life to begin. I have spent years focusing on my goals only to let valuable friendships dissolve, my health problems run rampant, and lately, I've begun losing focus on what I am trying to accomplish right now. This chaos, and living in an uninspired not-nearly-as-rich-as-it-could-potentially-be, existence is a sort of half life. Waiting for the next thing to happen to you is not living. With the risk of sounding more like a bumper sticker: living is that thing that happens to you while you are waiting for your life to begin. I am going to try to live in the moment for small moments, incrementally, one step at a time. Hopefully this will change my life, we shall see.
The other day I pulled out my dusty gratitude journal, a lovely little book with "Flaming June" on the cover given to me by an old friend. I hadn't written anything in it since June of last year. The journal has gotten me through some extraordinarily tough times: my husband's serious, undiagnosed (for two and a half years), chronic illness, my battles with depression, two moves (each one a "downgrade"), and so many other events in our lives. I used to spend 5 or ten minutes writing in it every morning as my coffee was brewing.
I would write some outrageous things that hadn't even happened yet, particularly "I am so grateful now that my husband is healed." That was a mantra repeated over and over throughout the book. I also took the time to thank the universe for the things many people take for granted and I wasn't sure we would have: "Thank you for the power bill being paid, for food, for rent." So many of these things manifested through unexpected means. When my husband was at his sickest his family sent us a flood of cards and checks for a period of around three weeks. We were so grateful and didn't know how we would have survived without the help. A gratitude journal is amazing because it can keep you in the moment. Even if the moment hasn't occurred yet you can act as if it has and sometimes manifest great things.
Living in the moment is hard. My good friend V and I discussed this last week. We are both hard driving type A personalities, always looking to the next step in a chain of steps leading to the "ultimate goal." This is not very conducive to living in the moment. We pondered whether or not we even have the capacity to live in the moment. How many of us really do this? Do you find yourself reflecting on the "coulda, shoulda, wouldas" or the "wills" instead of the "I ams?" I am writing in my blog. I am enjoying a cup of delicious Costa Rican coffee. I am realizing that I sound far too much like a wannabe life guru or something.
There are so many clichés which express this, but the reason they are tried and true clichés is because they are true...It is the journey, not the destination. I have spent far too much of my life waiting for my life to begin. I have spent years focusing on my goals only to let valuable friendships dissolve, my health problems run rampant, and lately, I've begun losing focus on what I am trying to accomplish right now. This chaos, and living in an uninspired not-nearly-as-rich-as-it-could-potentially-be, existence is a sort of half life. Waiting for the next thing to happen to you is not living. With the risk of sounding more like a bumper sticker: living is that thing that happens to you while you are waiting for your life to begin. I am going to try to live in the moment for small moments, incrementally, one step at a time. Hopefully this will change my life, we shall see.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
You May Say I'm a Dreamer
I am a dreamer. This can be an amazing thing because many times I've had a dream and then it came true. Sometimes serendipidity had something to do with it, mostly it was sheer force of will. It didn't always last "forever," but part of being a grown up is realizing that nothing is permanent. I have had some pretty low points in my life, but I have never stopped dreaming. I've always gotten back up, survived, and sworn I would thrive. I owe a lot of this perseverance to my husband. He's taught me so much about optimism and is such a rock of strength for me. He's helped me get back off of the ground so many times. I've watched him resurrect himself from some pretty dark spaces too.
But being a dreamer is also at the core of who I am. It is in the connective tissue of my being.
Here are some things that I've dreamt of that have manifested: Meeting my husband (whose qualities I listed in a journal weeks before we met), travelling the US with him (we've traveled the US twice 62,000 miles and 10 solid months altogether), moving to Asheville, owning a business, buying and decorating a home (which we did sell, but it was still a dream lived out), being the first one in my family to get a college degree, reading my poetry at poetry readings and having it published (albeit in small school publications, but it is still gratifying to see your words in print), being well again after so much sickness, seeing my husband well after so many years of a mysterious illness, and many more small moments which have felt like dreams.
I still have so many things that I dream of doing. Here are some of them: getting the scholarship I applied for, finishing my BA with distinction, blowing the GRE out of the water, getting accepted to one of the many MFA programs on my list, getting my MFA in creative writing, publishing a collection of poems, publishing a novel, publishing creative non-fiction, getting a job as an editor, living near the ocean again, living in New York City, moving back to the mountains, buying and decorating another home, having land and a German Shepherd, getting healthy and in shape again, and growing old with my husband.
Yesterday one of my dreams came true. I got accepted into NYU's summer writer's program. I was so excited and in a state of disbelief. For some reason I think, well I hope, that $10,000 and a place to stay will fall into my lap. Even if I cannot actually go, getting accepted is one dream that I accomplished, and it motivates me to apply for the MFA at NYU later on. A place where poets like Sharon Olds and Yusef Komunyakaa teach. I can still see myself wandering Greenwich village with my ten pound laptop, searching for a bench where I can sit and write poetry for that evening's class, I can imagine myself at the historic Lillian Vernon townhouse listening to a brilliant student from some unremarkable place like Omaha (no offense Omahaians) read from their work, I can see myself at a slam poetry reading in Manhattan surrounded by new friends I met at NYU. So maybe it WILL happen, but even if it doesn't I can still mark one off of my list. I did get in, and I am still a dreamer so there's always tomorrow.
But being a dreamer is also at the core of who I am. It is in the connective tissue of my being.
Here are some things that I've dreamt of that have manifested: Meeting my husband (whose qualities I listed in a journal weeks before we met), travelling the US with him (we've traveled the US twice 62,000 miles and 10 solid months altogether), moving to Asheville, owning a business, buying and decorating a home (which we did sell, but it was still a dream lived out), being the first one in my family to get a college degree, reading my poetry at poetry readings and having it published (albeit in small school publications, but it is still gratifying to see your words in print), being well again after so much sickness, seeing my husband well after so many years of a mysterious illness, and many more small moments which have felt like dreams.
I still have so many things that I dream of doing. Here are some of them: getting the scholarship I applied for, finishing my BA with distinction, blowing the GRE out of the water, getting accepted to one of the many MFA programs on my list, getting my MFA in creative writing, publishing a collection of poems, publishing a novel, publishing creative non-fiction, getting a job as an editor, living near the ocean again, living in New York City, moving back to the mountains, buying and decorating another home, having land and a German Shepherd, getting healthy and in shape again, and growing old with my husband.
Yesterday one of my dreams came true. I got accepted into NYU's summer writer's program. I was so excited and in a state of disbelief. For some reason I think, well I hope, that $10,000 and a place to stay will fall into my lap. Even if I cannot actually go, getting accepted is one dream that I accomplished, and it motivates me to apply for the MFA at NYU later on. A place where poets like Sharon Olds and Yusef Komunyakaa teach. I can still see myself wandering Greenwich village with my ten pound laptop, searching for a bench where I can sit and write poetry for that evening's class, I can imagine myself at the historic Lillian Vernon townhouse listening to a brilliant student from some unremarkable place like Omaha (no offense Omahaians) read from their work, I can see myself at a slam poetry reading in Manhattan surrounded by new friends I met at NYU. So maybe it WILL happen, but even if it doesn't I can still mark one off of my list. I did get in, and I am still a dreamer so there's always tomorrow.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Admitting the Truth About Reading Comprehension
Yesterday I took a research day after eking out a few poetry critiques. When I had exhausted my research with the materials I had, I contemplated going to the UNCA library to get the books on hold for me. But it was raining. Hard. I made a cup of hot tea and some Asian noodle soup, and watched "Revolutionary Road." For me watching a movie on a Sunday evening is unheard of. I am reaching burnout these days so I needed to recharge.
I then proceeded to read, for the first time ever, Paradise Lost. Well, that just about ended me. I was almost in tears, if not for the beauty of the language, then for its incomprehensibility. As a literature student I can admit I am not as well read as many of my peers. I am a non-traditional student. Meaning I dropped out of high school 15 years ago at the age of 15 before I was forced to read many of what my 20 something peers were forced to read.
However, I get really good grades, and I care about literature. Yet for the life of me...the long sentences and the technical skill of Paradise Lost detracted from the action. What the hell is going on? Once I actually looked up a synopsis online (I admit this only with great shame), I was still losing myself in the language. As a poet I just felt that sick jealousy one feels from time to time when reading something finely wrought. I only read the first book, and I am hoping something inside of my brain will crack open as I continue, like with algebra, and suddenly I'll be able to comprehend the text. Then I'll be able to shed tears of joy that I am not a complete moron. Perhaps the point is to draw the reader into Pandemonium literally? Word Pandemonium.
At any rate, here is my cold hard truth: literature can be really challenging. I am coming out of the closet and admitting this fact. Maybe I am just a hack, but I'd like to think I am someone who is confident enough in their own intelligence to admit that some reading is just hard on some of us. I spent hours reading 20 pages. I think I will try to speak up in my Renaissance lit class today and admit before 20 some odd other students that I had no clue what was going on until I looked it up. Perhaps they will be brave enough to admit it too. Maybe they will judge me; maybe you are judging me now. Either way this confession feels like a relief.
I then proceeded to read, for the first time ever, Paradise Lost. Well, that just about ended me. I was almost in tears, if not for the beauty of the language, then for its incomprehensibility. As a literature student I can admit I am not as well read as many of my peers. I am a non-traditional student. Meaning I dropped out of high school 15 years ago at the age of 15 before I was forced to read many of what my 20 something peers were forced to read.
However, I get really good grades, and I care about literature. Yet for the life of me...the long sentences and the technical skill of Paradise Lost detracted from the action. What the hell is going on? Once I actually looked up a synopsis online (I admit this only with great shame), I was still losing myself in the language. As a poet I just felt that sick jealousy one feels from time to time when reading something finely wrought. I only read the first book, and I am hoping something inside of my brain will crack open as I continue, like with algebra, and suddenly I'll be able to comprehend the text. Then I'll be able to shed tears of joy that I am not a complete moron. Perhaps the point is to draw the reader into Pandemonium literally? Word Pandemonium.
At any rate, here is my cold hard truth: literature can be really challenging. I am coming out of the closet and admitting this fact. Maybe I am just a hack, but I'd like to think I am someone who is confident enough in their own intelligence to admit that some reading is just hard on some of us. I spent hours reading 20 pages. I think I will try to speak up in my Renaissance lit class today and admit before 20 some odd other students that I had no clue what was going on until I looked it up. Perhaps they will be brave enough to admit it too. Maybe they will judge me; maybe you are judging me now. Either way this confession feels like a relief.
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