• Category Archives Poetry

  • Whitman

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                                             Seed Catalog Moon

    Started another MOOC today.  I won’t be taking a certificate in this one, just as I didn’t take one in the Modern/Post Modern class.  This class focuses on Walt Whitman, ModPo piqued my interest in him and his work.

    EdX is another of the MOOC providers, this one tends toward the more high brow: M.I.T., Harvard.  The Whitman class is taught by a Harvard professor and I can’t tell you how many times she mentioned Harvard, Harvard’s resources and the number of poets who attended Harvard.  That put me off.  On the other hand she seems to have an interesting pedagogy in play, one congruent with Whitman which involves taking poetry to the streets and to other cities.

    I plan to read the poetry, listen to the lectures and let the rest of it wash over me.  In the climate change MOOC I’m going for the certificate which means all the quizes, two exams, required activities.  I haven’t taken a mid-term or a final exam in over twenty years.  Should be fun.

    There seem to be more critiques than praises right now popping up about MOOC’s. Expensive to set up and difficult to maintain.  Not as good as professor-student interaction.  Confusing to students and employers about who is certifying a student’s capabilities.  This is the anti-thesis of the revolutionary heavy breathing that began when they came out.

    There is a synthesis down the line that will find MOOC’s do a great job of teaching disciplined students, especially such students geographically dispersed.  There will be proctored exams and course series that function like college majors.  A degree may no longer have only one institution behind it, but a coterie, an alliance, an association.

    Will MOOC’s replace current colleges and universities?  Probably not.  Almost certainly not.  Will some of them get replaced?  Almost certainly.  Bricks and mortar is not the only way to learn and the more options students have the better for them.  This may not be best for the current geocentric system, but for whom was it built in the first place?  The student.  The issue is the education, its quality, availability and affordability.  If a few campuses have to become housing complexes, that’s no great loss.

     


    MOOCS Poetry

  • A New Beard Model (I caught Darwin.)

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                            Winter Moon

    “…the Penn survey found that in the United States and developing countries alike, most Coursera students were well educated, employed, young and male.”  NYT

    (Whitman.  My new beard model.)

    I have it half right.  If you’re retired, a self-guided learner and expect challenge and high quality, then MOOC’s are perfect.  In addition the cost is favorable.  They’re free and can be taken with no driving on your own schedule.  Yes, there may be some expense for books, but if you’re a self-guided learner already, what’s another book or two or three?

    As the quote above shows, the learning communities, usually in the tens of thousands have a predominantly young makeup.  This is invigorating to me.  Let’s me see what the next generation’s up to.  O.K.  Maybe it’s the generation after the next generation.

    Of course, you have to enjoy structured education.  I don’t always, but when I’m taking only courses that address my interests, as opposed to those of a curricula, I find the upside of considered readings and condensed material in lectures suits me.

    If my dream were to manifest in this realm, there would be enough variety of courses to allow a college major’s depth and breadth in a particular discipline.  Right now they’re very hit and miss.  Greek Mythology, ModPo, Modern-Post Modern and History for a New China, the MOOC’s I’ve taken, are humanities courses, but there is no way to follow any of them with narrowers courses, say in Homeric Epic, or Whitman, or the Industrial Revolution or Early Dynasties of China.  In this sense the MOOC experience is less than satisfying.

    That only amounts, however, to wishing that a very good thing was better rather than a true critique.  Keep’em coming, Coursera and EdX.  My computer’s on.

     


    Humanities MOOCS Poetry

  • Everything You Need

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                                                                         Thanksgiving Moon

    “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
    Cicero

    I’m set.  The library surrounds me as I write this and the garden is two weeks into its winter slumber.  Cicero and I agree about life’s necessities, books and a place to grow food and flowers.  Between them they service the body and the mind.

    It’s a dull, grey November day. Rain dribbles out of the sky, unwilling to commit.  The temperature remains in a warmer trend, 45 today, a trend our weather forecaster says will remain until early December.  I hope so since we’re headed out across the plains a week from tomorrow, exposing ourselves to the wind driven weather coming down, with no topographical resistance, from the Arctic.

    Finishing up ModPo and getting off the Latin plateau I had inhabited for many weeks has left me in a satisfied Holiseason state of mind.  Before them Modern and Post Modern ended and the garden got put to bed, the Samhain bonfire held.  So this is a time of endings, as Samhain celebrates, and festival season beginnings.  The unusual confluence of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving means the whole last week of November will be celebratory. In December then we can focus on Yule, the Winter Solstice and the pagan side of Christmas.

    In the coming weeks I look forward to finishing Missing’s 5th revision and getting it off to the copy editor, learning Dramatic Pro and using it as I develop Loki’s Children while I continue to work in the new “in” the Latin style that Greg pushed me towards.  This will also be a time when I consolidate my understanding of the Modern and the Post Modern and do some more writing around that, especially as it changes and informs my Reimagining My Faith project.

    Reading poetry more regularly will also be part of the next few weeks, too.  I want to continue my immersion in poetry.  One of the ModPo teaching assistants, Amaris Cuchanski, said poetry is the leading edge of consciousness and I believe she’s right.

     


    Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel Holidays Humanities Latin Poetry Translating Metamorphoses Weather +Climate Writing

  • The Unreliable Narrator–You

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                           Thanksgiving Moon

    Beginning to play with the post-modern idea of the unreliable narrator, a staple of certain literary fictions and now understandable to me.  The most unreliable narrator of all may be our Self, or, rather, the work done by our mind to create a self.  As we attempt to weave a coherent notion of our story–how this, what, let’s use Heidegger’s idea of dasein–this dasein came to be here now, we impose on our memories a logic, a sequence, a string of cause and effects that explain, as best the dasein can, how it came to be in this moment.

    There are many problems here, but the one I want to focus on is the fungibility of our memory and what Kant called the a prioris of thinking:  space and time.  Our memory changes as we access it, as we put it into new contexts, as our understanding grows and that changes happens to a quanta that was shaped by the context in which we first had the experience, the understandings we had then and by the fog created by our senses, which, by design and necessity, edit our lived experience so we can utilize it.

    On top of this string of memory altering inevitables are the a priori categories of space and time, mental constructs which our reason uses to make what William James called “the blooming, buzzing confusion” worthwhile to us.  We see objects in four dimensions, in a space time matrix that changes as we perceive an object, event, feeling, moment, idea.

    (Henry and William James)

    What this means to us is that our Self has the demanding and ultimately futile task of seeing the plot in our life, its why and its meaning.  Why futile?  Because we change as we touch it, not Heisenberg, no, more than that we change more than the spin or the location of memory when we touch it, we change its content and thereby change our narrative, which, as a result changes our Self.  This is always happening, every moment of every day of our lives.   Modernist literature like Ulysses and Remembrance of Times Past was an attempt to give to us in written form this mutability at the heart of the internal project that is us.

    As I said a few posts back, this is descriptive, not proscriptive and certainly not prescriptive, and it does contain one kernel of great importance. Since we actively construct our own narrative from the experiences we can recall, we can enter into that stream and actively construct our future.  In fact, unless we enter that stream with purpose, Heraclitus’s famous river, it will carry us along without our intention.

    So, buckle up, strap on that orange life-preserver and take your seat in the raft that is your Self navigating the flood of your life.  It’s a thrilling ride no matter where it takes you.

     

     


    Dreams Faith and Spirituality Feelings Memories MOOCS Myth and Story Poetry Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Third Phase

  • Thank God It’s Frida

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                        Thanksgiving Moon

    Latin with Greg this morning.  I felt like I’d made good progress with my work, but in doing the translating with him, I hit a snag.  There was a long sentence, six verses in length, with a complicated structure, hinging on a definition of a verb that was, Greg said, esoteric.  Getting that one out of whack made the entire six verses difficult, entangled. Just when I began to feel incompetent (not a feeling I enjoy), Greg pushed us further into the translation.

    Once we got out of that briar patch my work improved.  “Perfect.  You’ve got it!”  “It was just that complex sentence and ferunt (the verb in question) that messed you up.  You kept at it.  That’s the key.”

    “Oh, tenacity I have.  I’ve got too much time in this to give up now.”

    Kate’s away at a continuing medical education event on pain.  After Greg and I finished I fed the dogs, made lunch and took a nap.  Gertie, who rehurt her leg, came in and snuggled up next to me.  This afternoon she’s moving much better.  Good to see since she’s been down for a few days.

    Finished up ModPo with assessments of four other student’s essays and watched a beginning video on Dramatica Pro, the new writing software I purchased.  I plan to use it to build Loki’s Children, but before that I have to learn how to use it.

    With Latin on a steady course and ModPo finished, I’ve just got Missing and Ovid to occupy my days.  And they’re plenty.  With, of course, learning how to use Dramatica.

     

     


    Dogs Latin MOOCS Poetry Translating Metamorphoses Writing

  • Education for Everyone

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                              Thanksgiving Moon

    Back from sheepshead.  The goddess let up and gave me some good cards tonight, one very good hand in particular.  A roll of the dice for Fortuna.

    Finished the last ModPo poet today, the last video of Al Filreis and the gang doing close readings.  I still have my assignments to write, but I’ll finish those tomorrow.  I chose not to get a certificate in the Modern/Post Modern class, but I’ve earned one in ModPo.  There are 35,000 people in the class.  35,000.  That would be a crowded lecture hall.

    The revolutionary impulse of the MOOCs is just beginning to be felt.  The university will have to have a rethink in not too many years with this technology working on the disaggregation of education in the same way the net has disaggregated so many things before it.  This will work to the benefit of many constituencies:  the poor, the geographically isolated, the third phasers, adult learners of all ages, even the traditional college student for whom the cost of four years has become a leaden albatross hung around their neck at graduation, a weight rather than a celebration.

    Missing’s fifth revision has begun to open up very exciting possibilities, ones I didn’t see before.  I’ve reentered the story with the same enthusiasm I had when I first wrote it.

    Four more verses of Ovid done.  Greg and I talk tomorrow, the first session where I’ll be using the new technique of staying “in” the Latin.  I’m looking forward to gaining more facility with it.


    Friends Latin MOOCS Poetry Translating Metamorphoses Writing

  • Still Plugging Along

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                      Thanksgiving Moon

    Working through the revisions in Missing, having fun, surprising myself.  About a third of the way into the manuscript, though the later chapters have more work than what I’ve done so far.  Ways of knitting themes and character development with the narrative come more easily at this stage.

    Got a new piece of software today, Dramatica Pro.  I’m hoping it will help me deepen my work while making it more exciting.  I’ll let you know how it goes.  It’s supposed to take a long time to learn.

    Five more verses of Ovid.  These verses had a textual problem that had me digging around in the Oxford Classical Text’s version.  It’s supposed to be the best manuscript available now.  The Metamorphoses presents certain problems since it’s oldest manuscript dates from the 9th century, seven to eight hundred years after it was written.  The Aeneid, for example, has some fourth century manuscripts, still within the time of the Roman Empire.

    And finished up the next to last poet of ModPo. I’ll finish tomorrow and start on my assessments on Friday.  Yeah.


    GeekWorld Latin MOOCS Poetry Translating Metamorphoses Writing

  • Missing, In the Dark Wood, Lycaon

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                               Thanksgiving Moon

    Involved with what is, I believe, technically the fifth revision of Missing.  20,000 words went out today, a whole story line about a goddess and her giantess assistance.  It included, too, a favorite part of the book for me, the Wyrm and the Weregild, a group of expert giant dragon hunters.  But this storyline does not intersect directly with the primary story in Missing and it’s now in the pile for Loki’s Children, which now has over 50,000 plus words available from the drafts and revisions up to now of Missing.

    Some key names got changed, transitions made more clear.  I got about half way through a quick review.  Probably will finish with that tomorrow.  Then I’ll go back in and start adding some more description, some character development and I may, probably will, change the ending to give it more punch.  Thanks to Stefan for the idea.

    Translated another four verses in the story of Lycaon today, too.  These were hard, either the Latin was thick or I was.  Maybe both.  Still.  Done.  That’s my goal per day.

    Also worked on ModPo’s final week.  Two very interesting poets today.  Erica Baum is a conceptual poet who combines photography and found language to create intriguing works.  Here are two images we reviewed in class:

     

    The first is from a work called Card Catalogues where Baum photographed certain portions of the New York University Library’s old card catalog.  Each photograph is a poem of juxtaposition created by the strange constraint of alphabetically organizing knowledge.  The second is one of several pieces from a work, Dog Ear.  These are all large photographs, Card Catalog is too, and she hangs them in galleries together, though each photograph stands alone.  This is part of the conceptualist idea that ambient language contains all we need as far as poetry.  We only have to work to find it.  But that work can be difficult.

    The next poet is Caroline Bergvall, a French-Norwegian who works in English.  Her work is a ten-minute recitation of 47 different translations of the famous opening lines of Dante’s Inferno:

    When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,
    I found myself within a shadowed forest,
    for I had lost the path that does not stray.  from the Mandelbaum translation

    This is a strangely evocative, haunting experience.  You can hear her read it here.

    (Frame from a 1911 Italian film version of the Divine Comedy. The director’s name was Giuseppe De Liguoro. from this website.)


    Art and Culture Cinema and Television Humanities Latin Literature Myth and Story Photography Poetry Translating Metamorphoses Writing

  • Conceptual Poetry

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                                         Thanksgiving Moon

    if every word spoken in new york city daily
    were somehow to materialize as a snowflake,
    each day there would be a blizzard.

    Kenneth Goldsmith, Soliloquy.  Postscript

     

    The last week of ModPo.  The conceptual poets.  The book from which the quote above comes, Soliloquy, is every word the poet, Kenneth Goldsmith, spoke in a whole week.  He wore a microphone, recorded his speech, then sat down and transcribed it.  A lot of work.  Not as much work, however, as another work of his, Day, in which he transcribed every word in one day’s New York Times.  A 1,000 page book.

    Christian Bok, a Canadian poet, took seven years to complete his project, Euonia.  In Euonia he writes 5 chapters, each of which had to have a banquet, an orgy, a feast, a voyage, refer to the act of writing and, most improbably, use only words containing only one vowel, the same vowel, 98% of those words available.  There is a bit more to Euonia, which means beautiful thinking and is the shortest word in the English language that uses all the vowels.

    These are highwire acts of virtuosity and the real creative act is in the concept, especially in Goldsmith.  The concept–what would every word in one edition of the New York Times look like transcribed into a linear text and bound in a book look like?–was the creative moment.  The act of fulfillment, the days and weeks of transcription, is either non creative or uncreative.

    Interesting stuff.  I’m more with this than I was with the Chance poets of last week.


    MOOCS Poetry

  • The Weight of the Inert

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                                      Thanksgiving Moon

    I finished the fourth and last writing assignment for ModPo.  I’m attaching it because it was fun, a riff on the Chance poetics of John Cage, Jackson Mac Low, and Bernadette Mayer (pic).

    Next week we finish up and my 3 months excursion into the modern and the post modern through Coursera will be at an end.  The gardening season has come to an end.  And Holiseason is just beginning.

    Over the next weeks and months I plan to consolidate my learning both in poetry and the post modern.  As I’ve said before, I want to include these concepts in reimagining my faith.

    BTW:  Some of you have expressed interest in the MOOCs.  Here are the two I’ve worked with and can recommend:  Coursera and EdX.

     

    The Weight of the Inert

    Version I

    “5 Before the sea and the sky that hangs over all the lands and

    was one of the faces of the whole of nature in the world,

    I have spoken of the chaos, the amount of raw indigestaque

    and nothing but an inert and heaped up in the weight of the same

    not well joined the seeds of discord of things.

    10, supplying light to the world, no one has as yet the Titan,

    not renew the waxing moon horns,

    or hanging in surrounding air

    balanced by its own weight, or long arms

    edge of the lands stretching out her arms;

    15 and that the air, land, sea, and there, and sky.”

     

    Version 2

    5 and and which covers

    One look in the whole world,

    the said, the amount of raw

    and only if the weight of the inert

    things do not go well.

    10 Nothing in the world,

    neither growing Phoebe

    or in the surrounding region

    their own weights, and not long

    15 and that the air, land, sea, and there, and sky.

     

    Since I’m currently engaged in translating Ovid’s Metamorphoses, I performed the following operation. First, I copied a Latin section of Book I: 5-15 from Perseus, a classics aides website. I took that section and put it into google translate. I then went through the Latin and eliminated all words with the letter a and ran it again through google translator. The result is version 2.

    I retained the first version here so you could see that the translation was far from smooth and contained some chance operations on its own. In that sense version 2 is more than 1 step away from the Latin version of number 1 since it introduces the still clunky results of the google translation algorithm into the altered text.

    Version 2 surprised me. It makes almost as much sense, if not a bit more, than Version 1, not in the Latin, of course, but in the English machine translation.

    I hear a surprised boy saying, “And, and which covers one look in the whole world.” Another voice, perhaps a chorus replies, “The said, the amount of raw and only if the weight of the inert.” Another, deeper voice, an adult male weary with experience says, “Things do not go well.”

    The boy again, chastened now, “Nothing in the world, neither growing Phoebe or in the surrounding region…”

    And finally a resonant female voice, mature and wise, “Their own weights, and not long and that the air, land, sea, and there, and sky.”

    All this on a stage bare except for the actors, a broken Greek column and a small tripod holding a basin in which a bright fire burns.

    A fluxus moment, perhaps performed on an off-Broadway sidewalk, the stage improvised with concrete blocks and plywood.   The air is cold, midnight of the Winter Solstice, and a flier announcing the performance reads, “Saturnalian Words. The voice of Sol Invictus.”

    This has a Harry Haller, magic theater resonance for me. The whole thing could be a performance in one of the side stages, feeding the Steppenwolf in all of us.

    OK, I know I’ve gone pretty far afield with this, taking it from chance to dialogue and from dialogue to theater and then positioning the theater in Hesse’s imagined dramatic space. But that very journey speaks of seed text and deterministic method, that somehow flensing an ancient text, then using a very contemporary technology to alter it, can create haunting, yes, I’ll say it, meaning. Meaning created in that most artistic of ways, with the caesura as important as the content.

    What did that one look over the whole world see? And why does a rejoinder to it reference the raw and the inert? The next line seems very apt in a Kafkaesque, Hesseian way: “Things do not go well.” How could they?

    Finally the last two spoken lines speak of loss and seem to refer back to that one look over the whole world which saw what? “The air, land, sea, and there, and sky.”


    Latin MOOCS Poetry Translating Metamorphoses