We really do want meaning.

One of the questions asked in class today was, "Do we interpret to find the original meaning in its context, or to find meaning for ourselves?"

I said that the core reason we do it is to find meaning for ourselves, but that this necessarily involves finding meaning in the context.

When I came to this conclusion, it brought me way back to earlier in the semester. When Powers asked,

"Do we read to understand ourselves more?"
"Do we read to understand what it is to be human?"
"Is reading itself what it is to be human?"
"Do we read to find meaning for our lives?"

These questions were attractive to me, and probably to all of us as English majors. But I hesitated. I didn't want to answer too quickly because that put reading on a pedestal. Gave reading the dibs on meaning for humans. What else do we do to understand ourselves? I asked. We also talk. Debate. Play music. Study science. Invent. Analyze. Perform in plays. Does this not also help us understand ourselves, carry what it means to be human, and give us meaning for our lives?

But while I didn't want to be exclusive with the what-it-means-to-be-human factor, I also couldn't throw it out. Because as I thought about reading and meaning and the factor, I realized that when we get to the end of a novel, we think. We let it sit (those of us who read for more than an assignment). And we don't stop until we find a meaning. 9 out of 10 people who read poetry (the following statistic is completely invented but the rhetorical point is true) need to ask, "but what does this poem mean?" much to the annoyance of some poets and some schools of criticism.

The point is, we're not satisfied until we find meaning. If we read a novel and we come to the end and can't put a finger on who we should empathize with, and why, and what we should feel and for what reason, we feel as if we have wasted our time. I'll take a Biblical example first. I hated reading Kings and Chronicles for anything but humor value. Because someone would come to a king, ask for something that seemed reasonable, and randomly get their head cut off because of some huge offense. I'd throw my hands up and say, "What the $#@&* God? This is supposed to have meaning to me?" In my first reading of Brave New World I was frustrated because I didn't know if I was supposed to be paying more attention to Bernard or John. And let's just say I had fun with Mrs. Dalloway. Fun meaning, since it was not an option for me to read something without pulling meaning from it...I just pulled stuff out of the air, it seemed.

For that reason, that profound discomfort and anxiety with a meaningless text (or a text we can't find the meaning in), I necessarily attach our reasons for reading with finding meaning. I won't limit finding meaning to reading, but I know it is necessarily involved.

So you see, sure we need to know a text in the original context. But we don't interpret to say, "I wonder what it meant for them," and stop there. You never stop there. You don't find a string of an idea and then not attach it to yourself. You learn by associations, meaning making connections...meaning applying. Educational psychology teaches us that.

Christian Core Literature

We were asked to take Ngugi's essay today and apply it to our identity as Christians. And he asked how we would react to a suggestion of making our core curriculum focussed on Christian literature with a few secular branches.

All our reactions were vehement "NO"s. First I'll give the reasons that are applicable to the essay...

In Kenya's case, they wanted to embrace what their culture actually was. Danielle brought up geography. They were one country reading the literature of another country. In the US, however, we are composed of a lot of different ideas and religions. So in terms of being able to work together in the real world and being able to relate to the people walking next to us on a sidewalk, we need to have a balance of secular literature, because they are in our environment.

Our professor countered my point that all but a small portion of Christian literature is cheesy. Apparently, aside from theology, apologetics, Lewis, L'Engle, and Tolkien, there is Christian literature out there that is not absolute crap. And I don't mean books about living like a Christian, I mean art. Characters, plot, and conflict. I trust him, I really do.

Another argument we made was that we need to be able to function in literary society (where most of our futures lie). Our colleges will probably have not heard of good Christian authors, but they will know Fulkner, Vonnegut, Orwell, McCarthy, ect. We don't want to look like we're above the agreed-upon world of good literature (not that we don't have minds of our own...it actually is really good literature).

Finally, I wanted to talk about historical context. Let those who are actually oppressed complain about not being recognized. Why should we scream for other people to recognize us as valid human beings when we've spent the last couple centuries murdering people in the name of Christ? I don't mean to say that all Christians are murderers; I mean to say that we need to recognize our situation, and speak about identity with delicate caution. We've been at the top of the food chain for as long as we can remember. And this has less to do with a curriculum and more to do with seeking a place of recognition through literature.

Maybe my biggest issue with a Christian curriculum is that I simply don't want to read that kind of literature. I want to read secular literature. I want literature to bring me to new places, not places I have already been. I know the intention of a Christian-centered literature list would not be repetition, and that it would also want to open its readers up to new worlds. Maybe I just don't have faith that it will do that.

I haven't completely given up on the issue. But for now my leaning is still strongly negative.

Declining readers

From "Reading Ethnic Literature Now"

Touche.

I can't take a lot of pride in the ethnic literature I've read when I read it for a class. I guess I can take a little pride in the fact that I read it instead of just listening to the discussions and bsing my essays based on notes. (At least, I didn't do that most of the time.)

Touche in many ways. I don't even read myself, regularly, and I want to be an English professor; my kind of student is going to put my kind of person out of a job.

Doesn't it just wreak with pungent hypocrisy when my primary concern is my future job and my secondary concern is the fact that readership is declining? I roll my eyes with a philosophically submissive "how can we change this? What can we do and what must I do?" Or even...is there a way to change it?

I can't say I know. Honestly I think readership is going to continue to decline, and a small community of "save the books" fans can read all they want and buy all the books their finances will allow them and we will still degenerate because of the fast indulgence that films and motion picture allow. They satisfy our artistic desire; they allow us to escape our lives, bring us into a story, and can be decently engaging/moving/thought-provoking.

One thing they do not have that books do...that mysterious quiet, where reader determines the tone, and creates all the visuals in his/her head. The miraculous transportation from squiggles on a page to other lives in a physical place created by our imagination.

Movies don't have as magical a transportation method, in my opinion. But they're easier. Which is why they're taking over.

I hope literature stays alive, and I WILL say that people will stop buying books long before people stop writing them, if for no other reason, because the easy-factor comes into play for the writing. It's easier to write prose than a film script. And, like Dr. Powers said about writers who don't read, everybody wants to be heard. People won't shut up anywhere, especially when expressing oneself turns into an art. So I don't think books and literature will ever go away, but the market and taste for them is on its deathbed.

Sorry for such a depressing post.

Liyong's and Anyumba's essay

I don't know much about Kenya, but apparently the essay was written after Kenya gained independence in 1964.

The essay makes sense. Why the heck would I vouch for a Kenyan community to be fluent in and prioritize any culture but their own? Sure, let them dance and have drama as a part of their education! We read and write and discuss to learn about ourselves. And they want other cultures' literature to be intertwined on the side, but not be the focus of the study. Makes perfect sense.

It makes me wonder though...if education is so dependent upon identity, and who you belong to...it makes me really feel for African Americans in modern American culture in a way that I've never felt before. It makes me realize. When those kids in the racial minorities open their textbooks and learn about British colonists and the War of 1812 and the Trail of Tears...what the $#@& do they care? Or, they might care but minorly; not nearly as much as they care about their own ancestry, which is not what they're going to get graded on because it's apparently not important.

And when we learn by sitting and reading instead of singing; and when we learn by memorizing facts because facts are important to us; and when we learn about how democracy is better than any other form of government, ect.

This now leads me to wonder where globalization will take us; if our education will begin to homogenize...

Do we want this? What's your gut-reaction?

Things fall into darkness

Like a marxist, but concerned with culture rather than class (although domination has a lot to do with it), Achebe believes that art reflects the values of the society.

I would agree but not fully. Yes, art reflects society's values. But it reflects these values because the individual who lives in society is effected by these values, and when he or she makes art, these values are reflected. Social psychology teaches us just how influenced we are by the people around us. Even if a man is curled up on a public sidewalk asking for help, most people pass him by, assuming him to be a beggar and not worthy of help. As much as Americans would hate to admit it, we are a community and we are not free to do whatever we wish because we are inhibited by the social structures that we have all built around ourselves. A passerby may want to help a person in need, but no one else is helping that person, so there must be a reason to keep walking.

I used that tangential rant to show that in all areas, not just art, we are affected by each other. Hence, in terms of Achebe's argument, art is not the only thing that reflects society's values, and also, art does other things besides reflect these values.

If I were to do justice to what art does in a person, you would have to come back to this blog in about five years.

But one thing that is important about Achebe's argument is that it draws our attention to the social facts, the facts about dominance in cultures. I remember reading Things Fall Apart, and Foe, and Paradise, and I remember thinking, "Wow. I really was pretty ignorant." You don't know how ignorant you are until you read other people's writing. Which is one of the very good reasons why you should read other people's writing.

where did his voice go...

As we read this feminist theory and women trying to gain a voice (some trying to mimic men, others wanting the social power they have, ect), and how much society oppresses women according to the writers, it really makes me shake my head.

The stereotypes that MALES have to put up with in society are way more strict than those of females. Maybe men have more power but women have more freedom. A woman can cry, not cry, kiss either sex, be aggressive, be nurturing, be aggressively nurturing (the mom that forces herself into your life)...it goes on. Men? They can cry, but only over very few things, such as a close friend or lover dying. They absolutely cannot show affection to the same sex. They can't long, they can't complain about not having a voice. Feminists may think they can do whatever they want, but they can't.

I'll read Bartram or Thoreau, where a man saturates himself in nature and describes the beauty and his passion for it in unrestrained exuberance. Back then it wasn't "pansy." Or maybe it was but they got published anyway; I didn't live back then. Either way, there is something I terribly miss (as if I lived at the time) about romantic writers, and it's not their writing style or technique or content.

It's their freedom. Their freedom to be men and be excited about beauty.

"We've been turned away from our bodies, shamefully taught to ignore them, to strike them with that stupid sexual modesty." (Cixou, 2049) Except we've all been turned away.

I am awaiting, predicting, hoping, for a male uprising against society. Not against women or against other men, but against these ideas that dehumanize us.

Leanne and I were laughing as we were walking to poetry workshop, having just discussed Marxist criticism. Particularly the essays saying that literature and education are formed to keep us locked inside the class structure that we already have. Education and high-level reading/analysis is made by the rich, for the rich, to create more rich.

At this point we look at each other and go "WE'RE NOT GOING TO BE RICH." Because we're English majors. "I wonder what Marxists would say to THAT."

Marxists would say, perhaps, "why do you think they are trying to remove the study of English and the humanities and the arts from high school and general education?"

...bam.

I'm handing to Marxists: they have it down when they talk about class. They are not concerned with literature and writing outside that realm. They look at how class functions in the study of literature, not what literature should do or what readers should do, but how class is perpetuated through it.

Though I would like them to read some postcolonial literature, some "Foe" and "House of Spirits" and "Paradise," and see if their concern/belief widens or changes or if they would not write about it at all.

-------

I have found that asking questions is SO much more helpful when coming up with a topic than making statements! This is the kind of thing I'm disappointed I haven't figured out already, but I am humbly excited about how much more helpful it is.

Questions I want to explore.

1. Do people who read for leisure have a responsibility to (I haven't thought this second part through) analyze

what the literature does to them
what the literature communicates
the experience of the literature


Responses that popped into my mind, especially thinking about the first part...

Leisure has no responsibilities.
People who think have responsibilities.
Reading is done on the honors system (it is preferable but not required to analyze; it is respectful to the author)


2. Do people who write need to read, and if so, what things do they need to read (how closely must the reading correlate with what they hope to write about)?


3. Something involving people writing with the intention of manipulating into believing false things; or more blatantly, writing something they know is false. (this needs to be more specific, I know)

"Why do I make you read things you don't initially like?"

Because if we only read what we liked at the time, we would be stuck in one time, and only ever like one thing. When we are pushed into strange and unfamiliar territory, our brains assimilate or accommodate; look for connections and clicks. This restructures our brain, which then restructures our tastes. Reading what we don't like is not just for educational purposes; it's ultimately in the best interests of pleasure.

This does not mean that we will at some point love everything we initially do not like. But it does mean that the latter has the potential to change what we like and bring us into new territory.

Does this mean that we must love or should love everything that we have the potential to love (through experience of different works)? I do not know. I will be thinking about this.

benjamin interrupted

K. So, I'm only on the fifth page of Benjamin's "The Story Teller," but I've reached one of his points--perhaps his thesis, but I'll only find out when I'm done--and I had to start posting because I had a thought. Benjamin says in section VIII that a story "precludes psychological analysis" and that it uses "psychological shading" (not bolded in original essay, I added that) to engrain itself into the memory of the listener.

When I read this I immediately thought of Todorov's essay on how reading and properly analyzing (because everyone has an opinion of what is improper analysis) literature helps us to understand its "abstract structure" (p. 2100).

And then, I thought about how I write.

You can learn about craft, which is especially helpful in the editing process, and helpful in the process of recording what you need to tell. And you will fail without this discipline, hands down. But to tell what you need to tell, there is a step that comes before the discipline of recording. And please...excuse my romanticism. As much as I heckle romantic criticism for what it lacks, I do have some very romantic ideas that I would not be complete without.

As a writer you need to get in the moment. You need to close your eyes and feel the spirits around you. When the characters talk, it's not you talking; you need to listen to the voices inside yourself; you need to reach a place in your head. I only know this because I have to ask myself, "what would this character say?" Or when I'm writing a poem and I'm stuck, I need to close my eyes again, and revisit, and see what else is in the scene, or if there is nothing else and I need to end it.

"Herodotus offers no explanations" (part VII). Benjamin is talking about how the story teller, having to tap into this world of a layered story that s/he knows little why and more what and how, brings the listener also into this world. Story telling, like literature (though Benjamin contrasts it with literature but I tend to disagree with the differences he mentions), is not about explaining why, but explaining what and making YOU (you the reader, not you the writer) think about the why. But only if you want to.

Onward to the rest of his essay.

Beginning thoughts on structuralism

Today we talked about the formalists vs the structuralists, especially in terms of how they view literature, the author, and the reader. They both saw the poem as a separate entity, and the author as significant in and of herself, but not as a part of the poetic criticism. However, there is an interesting distinction between the two views, in that structuralists believe in an absolute artistic science, and that the poem helps us understand more about this system. The formalists, however, have not developed this scientific view, and for this reason, they have nothing but the poem to discuss. And it's because of a certain point they make clear that I have a wonder about them...they are quite clear on the fact that we DO NOT TALK about the author or about intent because that information is unavailable, is not public. Well. It made me wonder if some formalists long for that information. It's just that personally, when I am adamant about what I claim because of what information is available, I am adamant because I long for what is not there, because a certain desire is going unfulfilled.

However, I agree with the structuralists in that I do not talk about the author, not because the information is unavailable (with the research and technological access we have to certain records, we at least have enough information to make an educated guess that can be taken with a grain, or a spoonful, depending on your epistemological tastebuds, of skeptic salt), but because that information is irrelevant when you believe in the "artistic system." *takes a breath* The Inklings would have been proud of me for that sentence. No one else is. XD

Anyhoo, I at least mostly agree with the said system. I want to be careful, because there needs to be wiggle room for a mysterious subjectivity when it comes to art. But by and large, there is good and bad art, happy and sad poems, consistent and inconsistent themes, confusing and clear artistic statements. Yes. Art is its own biology. I think so anyway.

Hughes and Beardsley in the ring

So, Langston Hughes writes about the "Negro poet" in "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (p. 1313). He contrasts the jazzlike, unrestrained, musical voice of the Negro poet to the calm, collected voice of the white poet. To me, skin color is only what started the different cultures, because several African Americans hopped on the Anglo-Saxon culture-train to get more societal acceptance. But for the purposes of brevity I will refer to them as Negro and white cultures, since that is how Hughes (and many others) refer to them as. I would like to stretch my creative juices and imagine what an argument between him and Beardsley would be like:

H: How else can you account for the differences in poems written by the white man and the Negro man besides the fact that it is the poet that we connect to when we read the poetry, that the poet and his life and experiences are intimately woven in with the poem?
B: I did not say the two were not intimately connected, I just said that they are not one and the same. And that when we read a poem, we are not reading an author. We are reading what comes from the author, but we are not reading the author himself.
H: When one author moves with the jazz and is the jazz and his poetry is jazz, and another author buttons up his coat and takes a quiet walk and his poetry is proper, how do you say that we are not reading these men?
B: What comes from the author is like the author. What comes from the author can only come from that author. But, as I said before, what comes from the author IS NOT THE AUTHOR. It is a poem. Are you, Mr. Hughes, a daybreak in Alabama? Or the silver rivers of jazz instruments? Or a river of tears?
H: I am all those things. And I am everything I write about.
B: But are you not also more? And does it not reduce you to a line of verses, and reduce the poem to a single man, a single set of experiences, if you make the two equal? Would you not say that there is more to you as a person than these poems?
H: The poems are the deepest part of me, they encompass me.
B: But "Daybreak in Alabama" does not talk of romance, and you in fact experience romance.
H: It's still a part of me you're reading.
B: But does the poem not also gain power when it is put down onto paper? I am talking to you right now. And you are enjoyable. But when I read what you write, I am moved beyond words; it is an entirely different experience. It comes from you but it gains a power and becomes a...a thing.
H: It's still me. Just because you don't see that "me" when you talk to me. The "thing" that moves you so much when you read my writing is still encased in this body.
B: I will have to trust you on that, because I cannot see inside you, and I do not know you. That information is not accessible to me. The only thing accessible to me is the poem. And what is true of your connection with your writing is not true of all writers.
H: I think it has to be, or else they wouldn't write it.
B: Well, again, I wouldn't know. I can't see into every writer and confirm that.
H: You just have to trust it.
B: You can claim ownership of the poem if you want. You can think that "poem" means "piece of me." I don't really care to be honest. But I am still calling it "poem," no matter where it comes from, because that is all I can prove.
H: Whatever floats your boat.
B: Care for a beer?
H: Budlight, please and thank you.

So, I like when things end happy. Who knows, they might have ended up in a fist fight. Not in my dreams though....(yes..I dream about these things..)

Voice--always there

We were talking in class today about how poems don't describe emotions or have emotion-words in them; but their job is to evoke emotions. Make a person feel a certain way. And thus, Wimsatt and Beardsley use the phrase "emotive import" to describe the transfer from words to emotions. I just...really like the phrase "emotive import."


on voice:
Someone expressed dissent that the voice of the poet, the poet's feelings, should be discounted while reading the poem. This is how I think poems are written, and why I think the background of the author of "We Wear the Mask" shouldn't affect us as readers.

Emotions that are to be evoked, are universal. An author feels something, and then wants an audience to feel the same way. To create that feeling in an audience is difficult because we all have different experiences. There needs to be a universality about the art as well as a specificness about it. And yes, some people might be more closely affected than others because of this, if their backgrounds are more similar to the author's. But by and large, that balance of universality and specificness is crucial to poetry.

To do this is like focusing a microscope on the environment surrounding the feeling. The reader's attention is precious. There is no room for anything beyond the emotive import. Dunbar, as much as his personal background may have made him feel the need to wear a mask (which is complete and utter speculation...he could have just been observing exlovers or family members who hate each other of the same race), did not have time to write about anything except why masks are warn. Here is the poetic microscope; here is the field of vision: masks.

The reader sees this image, subconsciously connects it with his/her own experience, and reacts to the poem. Given that humans have similar motivations and desires, all readers should have similar reactions if the poem successfully accomplishes the author's intent (which of course, the readers have no way of knowing). If the poem is successful, and readers feel the way the author hoped they would, then the audience actually is connecting to a part of the author's experience through similar emotional reactions. In a way, the poet's voice does come through. But it is much more subtle than curious readers want to know. For example, Dunbar could have described masks as ultimately protective and people as invasive. But he doesn't. And neither does the reader thinks so (if the readers reacts the way I do).

Thusly, I do not worry about the poet's voice being lost when we as critics disconnect the poem from the author's life. A poem may stand on its own, but an author has to make it. And a poem will stand according to how it is made.

Criticism...just because we want to.

Though William Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe Beardsley have a very full, rich essay about formalism and internal and external evidence for meaning, and three realms in which to find meaning...I would just like to discuss one statement, because a lightbulb went off when I read it.

"The poem is not the critic's own and not the author's (it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it). The poem belongs to the public" (1376).

In terms of criticism, I think you can discuss a poem in whatever realm you desire (realm meaning solely the poem, or from the perspective of the poet, or what the poet intended, ect.) and still have it be contructive/analytical. To me, criticism should not be bound by absolute laws, but should focus on the relationships within the world of the poem. Wimsatt and Beardsley say that the poem belongs to the public, but is it not also important how the poem was formed and how the poem lies in and of itself? Yes, an author wrote the poem and that is not deniable. Yes, that author had a life. Maybe, perhaps, such and such an experience had an impact on such and such a poem, but that does not mean that it ultimately did.

For example, when we read the poem about the masks in class, some people were not influenced by the knowledge that the author was an African American, and others were influenced by that knowledge. If a reader wants to know about the author, research is available for that purpose, but if a reader believes that background knowledge will negatively influence that poem's effect on the reader, it is the reader's choice whether to engage in this knowledge or not. No one tells a reader "you must know how the author's life influenced her choice of writing." We research for one reason: we are curious. If we are not curious we need not research.

Eliot, his own devil's advocate.

article: T.S. Eliot on the limits of criticism: the anomalous 'Experiment' of 1929 (Experiment in Criticism, lecture)

author: Ashley Marshall

Marshall discusses one of Eliot's essays, entitled "Experiments in Criticism." She notes how all throughout Eliot's career, he is conflicted with what exactly criticism should entail: how much criticism on the purely literary, and how much on the "extraliterary," which he defines as moral, social, and political content. In "The Frontiers of Criticism," Eliot says the following:

"It is reasonable, I feel, to be on guard against views which claim too much for poetry, as well as to protest against those which claim too little; to recognize a number of uses for poetry, without admitting that poetry must always and everywhere be subservient to any one of them" (11).

" 'there are limits, exceeding which in one direction literary criticism ceases to be literary, and exceeding which in another it ceases to be criticism' ". (6)

However, in "Experiments in Criticism" (1929), Marshall makes the case that Eliot apparently abandons his typical conflicted blend of criticism in which he struggles to separate the two kinds (literary and extraliterary), but realizes in the end that the two kinds are inseparable. One point that Eliot makes in the essay is that the literary relies upon the extraliterary, and that literary without extraliterary is imperfect and insufficient to understand. So that’s an important move on Eliot’s part.

Marshall is therefore very surprised that this essay has been ignored by critics because she sees it as being a defining moment in Eliot’s literary career. As I am not an Eliot scholar, I cannot say whether this is true or not, but Marshall includes another quote of Eliot’s which warns critics against deriving extraliterary questions from literary questions, that “the appreciation of genius and accomplishment should come first” (pp. 210-11) in the analysis. And to me, this is not a deviation from what Marshall had previously described as Eliot’s style of arguing with himself.

Whether or not “Experiments in Criticism” was a turning point for Eliot, I don’t blame him for being conflicted and trying to find a reliance, a connection, between the two types of criticisms. Even in his essay entitled “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Eliot finds two valid points that could be stretched to battle against each other: the necessary impact of the past on the poet’s work (1093), and also the desensitization (“perverts” is the word he uses) that learning does to a poet’s abilities (1094). If romantics like Emerson and Shelley argued about what in fact poetry IS, Eliot can certainly argue with himself about what we must take from poetry/literature/art.

The American Scholar

Emerson feels sketchy about reading. But only because reading is abused. Or, more accurately, because thought has been abandoned by so many readers. He says that "books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst" (printed, p. 4 of 12). Though I think that there are worse things in life than misread books (it is the failure to think, not the general misreading of books, that I believe Emerson means), I agree with Emerson in that knowledge means almost nothing without the ability to analyze. Unless you know the right questions to ask, the answers will have little meaning.

This reminds me of one of my favorite books, Waterland, by Graham Swift. Unfortunately I don't have the book with me, so I will have to wing this quote, since Google served me poorly. ~"Children, be curious. Nothing is worse, that I know, than when curiosity stops. Curiosity weds us to the world."~ In the story, the narrator's wife, Mary, grows up an ever curious girl until infertility causes her curiosity to die (she also goes crazy). The narrator implores his audience--both the readers and the classroom he is teaching--to never stop asking questions, and that it is in the questions, the mystery, and the unquenchable thirst for such, that life has meaning.

Emerson might strike many as overly romantic, but I don't think he ever implies that reading itself is a bad thing (if he says that he is usually referring to reading without thinking). And our system of education is so developed now, probably much different from what his was--all my classes ask for responses from the individual, from personal engagement, and not for a formula-essay. So. Generally, I'm cool with Emerson.

Poetry's different effects

Shelley, slightly more analytical than Emerson, makes the argument that poetry helps society because poetry enlarges the imagination, and an enlarged imagination helps society. I partially agree with this...

Shelley says, "Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food."

Now it is true that you NEED to have a somewhat sophisticated imagination in order to "be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively...put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own."

(both quotes from page 700)

Because to help society, you NEED empathy. To have empathy, you NEED the cognitive requirements of thinking outside yourself, and imagination CAN help this, and poetry CAN help the imagination.

So yes, poetry can help society.

Let's get back to a deliciously ironic quote: "Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food."

What are your first thoughts when you think of poetry? Mine are an adolescent locking herself in her room, painting her nails black, listening to As I Lay Dying (maybe even reading As I Lay Daying), and writing freeverse about emptiness and being stripped bare and disappearing. The last thing she will do is think, "hey, maybe the guy who broke my heart isn't so bad after all," or "I wonder how I could make myself a better person." At least while she's writing the poem.

Even before the emo subculture, poets like Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson did anything but inspire philanthropic thoughts. One could argue against Shelley, in fact, and state that poetry has only caused society to degenerate into self-absorption, pain-obsession, and emotional masochism. Poems like "Lady Lazarus," and any pining, sobby, Petrarchian sonnet only encourage me to saturate myself in the pain of the speaker, and afterwords, in my own writing, and after that, in my real life.

What is unarguable, is that poetry, like art, is powerful. Poetry has influence over people. And it certainly, certainly can help society. But even though there are kinds of poetry that do not improve the soul, this does not mean that poetry must be done away with. Use its power, wield it, and let it take you where it will. Just because something doesn't help society, does that mean we still should not explore and use it?

Emerson: "I love him, even when I disagree with him." --Dr. Powers

Emerson was a Platonist...or so go his musical prose. He was a Platonist because he wrote, "poetry was all written before time was," (p. 726), and "poems are a corrupt version of some text in nature with which they ought to be made to tally" (p. 732). He writes that poets "miswrite" them, suggesting the Platonic idea that there is somehow a perfect version of that poem, an ideal poem that lies out there that must be pursued (poets, therefore, are pursuers of that perfection).

So, of course I'm no Platonist. But I will sympathize with Emerson if he makes this claim simply for the difficulty of the poet to create the perfect piece. Because I'm sure all of us can attest to the anger and actual, physical pain that happens in the brain when we just can't find the right words. Richard Brown puts it perfectly in the film The Hours (directed by Stephan Daldry):

"I wanted to be a writer, that's all. I wanted to write about it all. Everything that happens in a moment. The way the flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel, how it smells, how it feels, this thread. All our feelings, yours and mine. The history of it, who we once were. Everything in the world. Everything all mixed up, like it's all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed. No matter what you start with it ends up being so much less. Sheer f***ing pride and stupidity."

As much as I disagree with Emerson's definitions and statements (I don't, for example, believe that a poet necessarily has to say what has not yet been foretold, p. 726), I completely agree with the principle that poets never get it right, that they are always missing something. (I can say this...because I'm a poet.) I can see Emerson working out in his head right now, starting from that fundamental point of poetic flaw: "we never get it right...but there has to be a right because there is something that we are pursuing...we are therefore pursuing the unknown...poets are prophets trying to happen."

Yes, Emerson. Poets are nothing if not pursuers (but are not all craftsmen pursuing the perfection of their craft?).

genre...

Currently reading--Kinsella: On genre: a reader's guide to the writing and reading of ...

(I'm pretty sure the link won't work, so I apologize, but you may search for the author and title in the Literature Resource Center.)

'So-called "literature" still wrestles with the laws and conventions of genre. I have implied that the more a work challenges these laws or rules, the more it becomes consciously literary, the more it places itself "above" the gratification of certainty.'


Kinsella discusses how true literature is not confined to most people's conceptions of genre. People might say that there is the novel, the poem, the biography, the article, and with fiction: the crime novel, the science fiction, the heterosexual romance. Genre is convention, genre is what has been done in both subject and form. But true literature, argues Kinsella, is confined to no such expectations. True literature surprises us.

I don't think true literature has to necessarily be surprising or unconventional in themes and messages, but it often is. Our culture is so obsessed with rebellion and challenge and daring to be the voice of truth that there is little left to challenge. Which is not a bad thing as long as one's ultimate goal is discovery and progression.

In terms of genre, however--whether that be fictional genres such as fantasy, romance, or crime, or merely what type of writing, such as poetry, prose, song, blog post, ect--literature needs to be as free as it can in order to most effectively communicate with the reader. And in most cases, that necessitates surprise simply because there are so many genre-overlaps that have not been done yet, or have been done very few times. Plotless stories, sarcastic biographies, artistic philosophy, ect. One cannot overwhelm or confuse the reader, of course; craft is only so helpful as it strengthens the message. The human mind WORKS by making associations and logical connections, which would include artistic connections and therefore, artistic categories.

But let us also not have the arrogance to say that we fully understand ourselves. And let us at least accept the challenges to our categories to see if connections lie between them.

Critical Lenses

Vince Brewton's article "Literary Theory" summarizes what literary theorists do as well as many of the movements and perspectives within literary criticism in general.

Most of the critical lenses are from whoever is marginalized: the poor (Marxism), the women (feminism), non-caucasians (ethnic and postcolonialism), non-heterosexuals (queer theory), and so forth.

What I used to gripe about while reading critics' takes on literature and plays was that I felt that they were not doing justice to the rest of the piece. All they could see was "this work is a triumph of the working woman" or "The closeness between the Chief and McMurphy symbolizes their repressed sexual desires for each other..." And I would angrily protest. "It has NOTHING TO DO with sexuality!"

We cannot fully escape the lenses we bring to the table of criticism. But I hope we can escape them enough to embrace the actual theme of the story. True, authors (of published stories...but you should have gotten that from the context ;) ) will write with lenses that may be antifeminist or white supremacist, and this we can analyze and discuss, and this can range from thick lenses to thin ones. And there is nothing wrong with analyzing what the author believes in, based on the text. But my hope is that while we strive to search for the lenses of the author, we do not let this search distract us from how the story touches us.

Oftentimes we criticize (in the academic sense) literature based on how it touches us. So if a story feels tinted with suppression or marginalization, this needs to be explored by the reader. But sometimes a story will simply touch us as tragic, situationally hopeless, or prophetic (to name a few arbitrary reactions).

I do not wish to dictate how others should approach literature, or suggest that there is a correct or incorrect way to approach it--and I apologize here and now if I have done this. Personally, I find it interesting to explore the cultural and political context of the author of a story, but I am first concerned with the story that the author has captured and brought to others--especially since it is up to the reader how the story will be taken in. Again, that is merely my preference.

What is an author?

Whatever comes under the category of "author" depends on how you define the word. And how you define the word may depend on a number of things, such as how you think the majority of people define or use the word, or possibly how you see it to be the most useful to yourself.

This brings us to a deeper philosophical question: where do definitions come from? Do definitions emerge from usage of others (practicality), from the individual's preferences, or from the context of the statement?

The reason the question of definitions is relevant to the question of authorship is because different people have different opinions of the word "author." Hence, which definition does one pick?

Some say that an author has to be someone who has published a written work. Others say that an author can be someone who is published with something written, but does not have to have to have chosen to be published, such as Emily Dickinson. (Marianne Noble, http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=RELEVANCE&
inPS=true&prodId=LitRC&userGroupName=messiah&tabID=T001&searchId=R2&resultListType=
RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&currentPosition=1&contentSet=
GALE%7CA70976325&&docId=GALE|A70976325&docType=GALE)
Still others say that an author can be anyone who has written anything (I, who post this right now, and you, who email your friends, are equally authors), and finally, there are those who believe that authors are those who create things (your sibling who made a lego spaceship is an author of that spaceship).

Our professor, Dr. Powers, told us in class today that the word "author" was never even applied to people who wrote until the printing press was created. "Author," therefore, carries with it a certain dignity. The first people referred to as authors were those who became published with documents that were important enough, and intelligent enough, to print. Thus, even when the term "author" is used metaphorically, it carries the flavor of dignity and sought-after writing.

No matter what words people use, they cannot deny that 1) people publish intentionally, 2) people become published unintentionally and that piece of writing still impacts its readers, whether the writer desires that or not, and 3) people create things. Thus, if a person limits "author" to the first instance, that does not nullify the existence of the other two instances. But it does disallow the previously described "dignity" from pertaining to those instances.

Personally, I like metaphors. And when people use a certain word metaphorically, I like to do that too. Hence, if someone uses "author" in a broader, metaphorical sense, I also widen my usage of the word to give it metaphoric value.

The film Waking Life (one of my favorites!) contains the following statement: "We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance where even our inabilities are having a roast." As one of my artistic and intellectual influences, this film describes everyone as a "co-author" of life. Though this is a much broader action than specifically "one who publishes writings," its usage of the metaphor is specific. It does not allow one to say "Hundai is the author of an amazing vehicle" or "I am the author of this sandwich." It requires a romance, an intimacy between the creator and the created, as there is an intimacy between the writer and the written. In the statement by Waking Life, the term is used to say that we are collectively creating the life we experience.

When the word "author" is used metaphorically, there needs to be a metaphoric transfer, a connection between the original meaning of author and the new connection. It can even be used in a joking manner--"I authored that fashion statement"--but the metaphor must still have a meaning (in the example, the connection between the metaphor and the original meaning is the pride and professionalism inherent in both printed writing and this alleged fashion).

No matter what the definition means to you, no doubt that others have and will continue to use the word metaphorically, and no doubt the meaning of this word, like the meaning of all words, depends on the context, tone, and intention of the statement.