Pre-Final Final Post

1. Know basic literary terms and methods for analyzing and writing about fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction: Throughout the year I have been using literary terms to analyze these four major groups of literature.  My post Fast Times At Brigham Young University went through the various points of action in the play Moby Dude, OR: The Three-Minute Whale. Drama With Sasquatch and Coming around to drama also made use of terms by evaluating different types of stages and acting that I have experienced.  
Mother Knows Best, Nephi's Psalm, and Paper or Plastic both assess various genres of non-fiction work.  The numerous subgenres of non-fiction writing function as the literary terms when analyzing this type of writing.  My final literary paper required use of many of the terms used in fictional as well as poetical evaluation.  

2. Know basic literary genres and representative texts in fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction:  In my final paper I compare Ulysses to Homer's epic poem: The Odyssey.  In fact, my final essay is all about genre categorization and what classifies something as a poem rather than a novel.  My posts:Wasting Time and Parallel Lines Touching (Pt. deux) compare Modernist fiction to Modernist poetry.
Have You Ever Noticed?, in addition to the three non-fiction posts I mentioned above, discusses representative texts in the nonfiction department.  For drama I wrote about Miller's tragic Death of a Salesman in the post The Wrong Dreams.

3. Write literary arguments: Of course the big literary argument of the term has been my final paper, but since the midterm I have written a few more.  Paper or Plastic contends that the internet is eliminating the need for libraries, magazines, etc.  Drama With Sasquatch compares the theatrical elements at a concert with other dramatic settings.  Wasting time argues the benefits of reading challenging works of literature as opposed to those that bring people together and are commonly understood.  Lions, Owls, and Acronyms Oh My! points out the positive attributes of using credible online sources.

4. Engage literature creatively and socially: My post Mother Knows Best demonstrates how I have gone out of my way to talk with others about literature.  I was able to get some great insights from my mom about the personal essay Take, Eat.  Social Media vs. Socializing discusses how I received feedback for my essay ideas outside of the classroom.  In addition to these posts I have continued to have good comments from everyone in my poetry group for the majority of my posts.

5. Use emerging communication tools and pedagogical methods: Lions, Owls, and Acronyms Oh My! discusses the benefits of doing literary research on the internet and getting help writing persuasive arguments. Paper or Plastic points out many of the benefits of using the web for reading non-fiction publications.  

In addition to acheiving these outcomes I had a goal to memorize two poems How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways and Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.  Commiting these poems to memory has helped me spark conversations about literature with friends and helped me to discuss poetry in social settings.  A full report on this is outlined in the post Mesmerizing Memorizing.  

This Post Is Broken: All About My Essay

I originally did not want to write an essay that had anything to do with James Joyce or his most famous work, Ulysses.  At first I wrote a brainstorm post with a bunch of random ideas that never fully developed.  I posted a question on Facebook about the internet taking the place of libraries, magazines, and books.  After seeing all the comments I decided it was not all that interesting of a topic to write about so I turned to the literary work on which I had already written numerous posts, Ulysses.  As I had read the novel I noted its flowery poetic language and remembered something professor Burton had said about Isaiah being written in a poetic format to make it more understandable.  So, I thought, if it can be done for Isaiah, why not Joyce?
So I drew up a few different ideas for thesis statements (some to do with poetry and others not so much) and posted them to get an idea of what people found most interesting.  I really already knew which one I wanted to do.

Have You Ever Noticed?

Before I write anything else I will admit the majority of my weekend has been consumed by reading and writing about Ulysses.  I really want to finish it by the end of the term, but my doubts grow stronger as the days go swiftly by.  Still,  I have made time to devote myself to reading other materials.  These have consisted mostly of non-fiction, more specifically music journalism and religious texts.  I was really impressed with the write up done by Pitchfork for the metal group Deafheaven's new album, Sunbather.  Black metal, as a genre, has rarely complimented my musical pallet in the past, but when the author compared this album to the likes of Sigur Ros and My Bloody Valentine I knew I had to check it out.  The way the author argued so vehemently in defense of this band caused me to begin to develop arguments in my own mind as I listened to the record.  It is definitely not the best LP I have heard this year (shout out to Disclosure's Settle), but because the journalist did such a good write up I wanted to focus on the positive aspects of this record.  In general, this should be the object of all good journalism, to provoke thought in the reader.

On the other end of the literary spectrum, my Book of Mormon reading has been coming along nicely.  Since I have been writing this essay on poetry within Ulysses I am beginning to notice poetic elements in scripture, and not just Nephi's Psalm!  The scriptures employ a loftier style of language easily equatable with poetry.  I was reading Enos this morning and was struck by the way he conveys his emotions during his wrestle with God.  Phrases like "sunk deep into my heart", "my soul hungered", and many more have a distinctly poetic ring to them.  The more I study literature and poetry, the more elements of both prose and verse intertwine.  If everything is holy, then maybe everything is poetry as well if you believe Ginsberg

Lions and Owls and Acronyms oh my!

Over the weekend I looked around various online resources trying to find ways to make my paper better.  In all, I would say I spent about 8 hours this weekend doing research and writing.  Two of the most valuable websites I found were Purdue's Online Writing Lab and Literature Online.  Purdue's OWL gives many relevant suggestions for writing a well developed argument.  I had not thought about writing out concerns people may have had with my argument, but after looking over the suggestions on OWL I decided to address some flaws a reader may perceive in my thesis statement and minister to those uncertainties.  Through LION I was able to find more information on the historical context surrounding Ulysses.  I read a brief biography on James Joyce.  I found many of his influences to be Modernists like Ezra Pound so I included more information on Modernism in my paper than I had originally intended.  The biography also delved into Joyce's development of the character of Stephan Dedalus.  Stephan is the most poetic character in Ulysses and is key to my argument that the book is a work of poetry.  I am excited to continue to explore these online resources as I craft my final draft.

Playing Rough

Here are some thoughts organized more fully than they were written last time.

Of his literary masterpiece Ulysses, James Joyce said, “I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries”.  Indeed, for nearly a century this novel has kept both professors and students hard at work digging through every nuance of language Joyce has buried within its pages.  Joyce’s work is easily categorized as modernist in style.  This work leaves no doubt that his intentions were to write something completely unique.  Beyond that initial categorization, a precise definition of this type of writing is difficult to pin down.  Every version of this book that I am aware of has been published in the form of a novel.  Most place this work squarely in the category of fictional prose.  However, because this work contains a vast array of poetic elements, I submit that an edition of Ulysses should be published in a poetic format.  In fact, reading the work as poetry is key in deciphering many of the treasures within the text.

Identify Omisions

What does a "normal" novel have that Ulysses doesn't have?  Well, I am glad you asked.  This post will deal with all the way Ulysses goes off the beaten path in terms of standard writing procedure.

1. Punctuation:  A pretty fundamental part of most writing, by the end of Joyce's novel he opts to disregard any and all forms of punctuation.  And I mean all!  He just stops out of nowhere.  Why?  It seems to be part of his fascination with the stream of consciousness and him try to articulate thought and emotion.  He also does not use quotation marks at all.  This seems like a mere formality to me, but maybe there is something more to it.

Parallel Lines Touching (Pt. deux)

Without the ability to compare Ulysses to works of poetry I really would have no claim at all.  I mentioned Ulysses sounding a lot like The Waste Land few times previously so I thought this would good opportunity to delve into that thought a little deeper.  Here are two excerpts, one is from Ulysses and the other is from the Waste Land.  Try an guess which is poetry and which is prose.

Social Media vs. Socializing or Why Does It Always Have to be a Competition?

Right now this is the thesis statement I feel is working best for my paper: Although James Joyce's Ulysses is generally regarded as a novel, it must be regarded as poetry in order to be fully appreciated because he implements such dense of imagery and ignores many grammatical rules; staples of free verse poems.

After posting a few potential thesis statements on Facebook I was surprised to see how many comments I received since I have not posted anything since before my mission.  I started out with some pretty basic statements/questions that I knew people would probably have opinions about.  The initial responses were pretty short and divisive, but when I tried to discuss things further people's interest seemed to fizzle out.    I know others had success with this particular social network, it just did not work for me.  So I just decided to talk directly with people I know have an interest in literature.  

My aunt teaches at English at UVU so I figured she would have something to say about how to categorize the style of writing in Ulysses.  I go over to my aunt and uncle's house every Sunday for dinner I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to have a discussion with her.  She liked the topic.  She talked about the difference between grammar used in novels as opposed to poetry and how Ulysses is kind of an anomally because it uses stream-of-consciousness so it fits somewhere in the middle.  I also talked with my roommates, my friend David, and my cousin.  They all are into literature and none of them are English majors.  Each of them thought it was a cool topic on which to write, but none said anything that made me tweek the thesis statement anymore than I had already.  In short, my weekend was pretty much taken over by English and being sick. I did not really keep track of how much time I spent talking, reading, and writing, but I am sure it was over 10 hours.

Wasting Time

I am alternating between frustration and fascination with these cryptic modernist writers.  I found reading T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land very pleasurable until I tried to summarize what I had read.  Here's the conversation I had with myself "Wow this poem is really good, he's been talking about war and death and... (epiphany) there are a bunch of names I don't know, different languages, and random stream of consciousness.  This is more confusing than Ulysses!"  Like Andrew said in his post, Modernists like Eliot wanted to do something that had never been done before.  Eliot does not want the reader to have a clear understanding of the poem on the first read, so he includes ambiguity in his descriptions of place and characters.  The setting changes rapidly.  The language fluctuates between the most refined speech to vernacular.   There is terribly beautiful imagery, probably the main reason I still enjoyed reading it despite not knowing completely what was going on.  Ultimately, I cannot fault T.S. Eliot for being complex, I just have to decide how much work I want to put forth as I read this type of poetry.  Understanding Eliot's life, the various languages he uses, and enlarging my vocabulary will result in an enriched appreciation for his poetry.   So if you like thinking abstractly and doing lots of research, read modernist literature.  If not, read Shel Silverstein or something.

Or listen to Ron Swanson do some slam poetry.  This makes so much sense.

Mesmerizing Memorizing

Poetry is love or death, anything in between is a lesser form of one of these two extremes.  At the risk of sounding grotesquely pretentious I am letting that first sentence be, for now.  For me, the best poetry is self-aware, but it is not shy or closed off.  It wears its individual emotions on its sleeves.  Maybe they are golden bracelets shinning in the afternoon sun. Perhaps they are the sleeves of a tattered woolen sweater, soggy from the storms of life.  Whatever its condition, it is true to itself.  There is no need to be melodramatic, because it understands true drama.  There is no need for the poem to contain uninspiring diction, because it is communicating an uncontrollable feeling which flows from the fountain of the human heart.

Enough preaching to the choir.

I have successfully memorized the modernist villanelle Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas and the Victorian era Petrarchan Sonnet How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  I had talked about learning these two poems in a previous post.  There has been a lot of talk about slam poetry going around these days.  I cannot say that I find this particular style of poetry reading very entertaining, but as I recited aloud these two poems to myself again and again I found that their power grew.  My understanding was enriched.  My mind was enlightened.  Not only did I appreciate these two magnificent poems more, but I learned to appreciate,a little bit more, the rewards one can find in audible poetry.

Tale of two (or more) topics

Right now I am oscillating between few ideas for my paper so I wrote a some thesis statements for each.  I decided to go with something completely different than I wrote in my last post about ideas for my paper.  If you have any more suggestions feel free.  There is a good chance my topic will continue to change.

Seeds

As I examined my previous posts I noticed I enjoyed writing about the influence of new media on literature and the world.  What are it's benefits?  How does it negatively us?  How has it changed the way we live?  Technology continues to exert a profound pressure on the modern man and that pressure is only increasing.  Some of my posts dealing with these issues are: Paper or Plastic, Emerging Tools, and, most recently, The Good, The Bad and The Television.



I also found the symbols in Death of a Salesman very intriguing in my post The Wrong Dreams.  Why are the characters endowed with their specific names?  How do each reflect an aspect of the American Dream?  Are there other interpretations other those which are generally accepted?



I have written a lot about music in many of my posts (Drama With Sasquatch and At the neutral milk hotel?).    How do music and poetry (and the other literary categories we have discussed) relate to one another?  Are the lyrics of contemporary music the best poetry around or just the most generally accessible?

These are the most likely contenders for my big literary analysis paper.  Any further thoughts on how to develop these ideas?

The Good, The Bad, and The Television

The morning sun timidly peaks over the horizon, greeting the hills and mountains of the Wenatchee valley.  It is summer.  The fresh dew on the grass anticipates an imminent disturbance from children newly freed from their educational pursuits.   A smiling Columbia River invites all to come and refresh.  Bask in the glory of nature.  All the while, my brother, Cole, plays Call of Duty on his Xbox 360.  I plant myself firmly on the couch, glued to my computer, looking for new music. My sister is downstairs aimlessly Instagramming.  None of us have said more than four words to each other this morning, but this is routine for a Saturday. We will go on like this until our parents decide to wake up and fight the good fight.  My mother comes up stairs, comments on the beautiful day and starts listing all the activities she has planned.  Cole and I cast a look at our screens so forlorn one might think it was our mother's milk from which we were being separated. We are one in thought. "Why would she do this to us?  What did we do to deserve this?  We are not hurting anyone, why can't we just do this all day?"  She is firm in her resolve, "Come on kids, we have to go weed the garden, then we can all go on a hike up Castle Rock."  We consent with an "Uuuuggggg."

Nephi's Psalm

Huh, the Book of Mormon is historical non-fiction isn't it?  I never really thought about it that way before.  Maybe my mind places religious texts into their own sub-genre automatically.  When I read 2 Nephi 4:15-35 the profound sincerity of the passage enriches my spirit.  When I add to that the thought of Nephi: the son whose father just died, the brother of some real jerks, the man who has faithfully endured such extreme trials, his words are utterly, beyond description, amazing.  He wants to make sure his posterity has an accurate understanding of his character.  He is a perfectionist, but he admits he is not perfect.  He loves that which is pure, but confesses his impurities.  He loves his Savior and he trusts his Father in Heaven, but he wants to be transparent.  He balances his eloquence with relatable flaws.  I have noticed the precedent he set using this type of rhetoric reflected in the talks of modern-day prophets.  President Monson practices this technique with expert talent.  Reading this passage reminded me of a story told our current prophet’s recent talk in which he recanted a tale from his early boyhood in which he started a forest fire.  Prophets immediately deserve respect, but it is stories like this that gain the love of the people.

Nephi also uses powerful imagery to describe his struggles and redemption.  In verse 21 Nephi says “He has filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh.”  He wants all the forthcoming generations to know that it is possible to overcome earthly short comings.  Nephi implements this classic Biblical metaphor in verse 35, “I will cry unto thee, my God, the rock of my righteousness.”  This can be traced back to Deuteronomy 32:4 among other references.

Paper or Plastic?

The internet has arrived and it is not going anywhere.  Newspapers and magazines are becoming a thing of the past.  Journalists everywhere have followed suit by catering to younger readers over the computer screen.  I myself have a habit of staying up on what is going on in the world of music.  Magazines like the Rolling Stone are basically antiques with only septuagenarian readership.  Seriously, how many times can Bob Dylan make the cover of that thing?  True, other magazines like Spin or XXL pursue a younger crowd, but they are seemingly unaware of the fact that nobody in that demographic pays for any of their music!  Much less a ten dollar magazine.

On the other hand, internet-based music publications like pitchfork.com or stereogum.com, once dismissed as a lesser means of musical press, are becoming increasingly relevant.  I am a music nerd so I visit each of these sites at least five times a week.  The articles are fun to read with just the right amount of wit and the writers are just as well versed in musical history as their paper-using counterparts.  Once in a blue moon I might walk through Walgreens, only intending to purchase some toothpaste, and see Led Zeppelin in all their glory grace the front page of Rolling Stone.  I might ask myself “what hasn't already been written about Houses of the Holy?” and I fumble through the pages for a few minutes.  Sadly, my attention span cannot last longer than that.  There are no songs a click of a mouse away.  There is no live footage just begging to be streamed.  So I lose interest, put it back on the shelf, and buy my hygienic necessities. There is simply no need for this situation ever to play out any differently.  Printed news is dead.

Also, I worked on this stuff for 8 hours this weekend while I was at a cabin in Washington with my whole family and a bunch of friends so give me credit!

Mother Knows Best

After reading the personal essay Take, Eat by Teresa Meyer Santiago I decided I should talk to my mom about her experience raising children.  She is one of the strongest, smartest women I know.  She minored in English at BYU and wrote for the local newspaper for ten years before she had me.  I guess I must have been quite a handful because she retired soon after her pregnancy.  She has been a stay at home mom ever since.  That has not stopped her from putting her literary skills to good use.  It would be quite embarrassing to number the times I have argued with my mom over my English homework which I thought was perfect, but had been unmercilously torn apart by her critical eye.  Her picture may very well be next to “Grammar Nazi” in the dictionary… I love her to death. 

I was unsure how she would react to this Take.  I knew she would be sympathetic to Santiago’s experience with a miscarriage since she had had one of her own.  She noted the indescribable sense of loss she felt after the whole ordeal.  She had not thought about it in a long time.  I could tell it was difficult for her to recall those sordid emotions.  They had been dealt with and buried.  She discussed them clearly and coherently, but it was obvious she had very little desire to dig them back up again.  It impressed upon me the tumultuous experience of motherhood.  Never had it registered so deeply the emotional rollercoaster a mother goes through as she bears a child.  A personal essay seems to have a more powerful effect at conveying thoughts and feelings than a work of fiction.  Combining that with my mom’s account made the literature extremely rewarding.

Drama With Sasquatch

This weekend I will be attending a music festival in George, Washington called Sasquatch.  Yes that's correct, George Washington.  Last week we discussed poetry and this week we are discussing drama so why not talk about a medium that combines the best elements of both?  Maybe reading Death of a Salesman has corrupted my mind with nostalgia, but I cannot help but recall how the Flaming Lips utilized both lyrical and theatrical talent to create the best concert experience I have ever had.  I should mention this was part of the UFO show tour so props played a big part in the theatrics.  There were Teletubbies, giant robots, dragons, confetti shooters, glitter, a man in a bubble walking on top of the crowd (interaction), an large screen behind the band projecting an art-housesque image compilation  and oh so much more.  The venue itself creates a sense of awe for life and the world.  Sasquatch takes place in a gorge overlooking a scenic mountain landscape.  The sunset just as the band began to play. The lyrics are weird, even juvenille, but if you can get over yourself, they become so relatable. They convey all the fallacies and insecurities of the human experience.  Life is fantastic and should be enjoyed.  When people shed their prejudices and self-consciousness life is just more fun.  Obviously, I do not subscribe to the entire Flaming Lips theology, but I can honestly say that every venue, every show, every band that has stirred some emotion in my unreasonably cynical twenty two year-old heart has caused me to say "this is good, but not as good as the Flaming Lips at Sasquatch".

The Wrong Dreams

Seconds make everything better.  I first read the Arthur Miller tragedy, Death of a Salesman, on a whim during my freshman year of college.  I sat in the top floor of the Harold B. Lee library and read from 8 pm to midnight.  Sometimes you do crazy things when you are not taking an English class.  I cannot say I got much out of my initial reading of Miller's masterpiece.  I just wanted to consume something beautiful.  I wanted a break from scientific monotony.  This time, like a supplementary trip to the buffett for another heaping portion of chow mein and general tso's, I intended take it a little slower and to savor my experience.

It took me a good 3 hours to get through Death of a Salesman and all my additional reading, but my real insights came in just the first few pages.  I noticed significance of the names of each character.  I first caught on with Biff's name.  When I think of a biff I think of one who has fallen or messed up in some way.  Then I noticed how ironic it was that his brother Happy is not really happy at all.  Even though he is living what people at that time considered the "American Dream" he is not content.  Will, their father, is willful and stubborn, but his last name (Loman) indicates that he is unable to escape the lower-levels of society.  Understanding the symbolism of these names helped me identify the themes of the play more easily.  Miller wrote Salesman in the 1950's at a time when the American Dream was in full swing.  The Depression and World War II were over and people could devote themselves to their work.  What followed?  Yeah, the 60's.  The American Dream blew up in the face of the masses more powerfully than economic down turn or international conflict ever could.  Why?  Miller prophetically suggests American citizens are operating under two incorrect notions: the past was better than the present and material wealth is more important than true character.  These ideals are contradictory to the nature of the human spirit.  There are numerous points in the play that bring out these themes, but since I do not want to go on and on I will simply recommend reading it. Maybe later I will do a longer literary argument later.

Fast Times at Brigham Young University

I decided to consume a little appetizer play before the main course of A Midsummer Night's Dream and actually found myself enjoying it more than Shakespeare.  It was a little one act comedy called Moby Dude, OR: The Three-Minute Whale by David Ives.  This weekend I spent a solid 8 hours reading and writing papers, so I was nice to have a little comic relief.  Since the play is only one act the action plays out pretty fast.  In the exposition the only character with lines, a seventeen year-old with Jeff Spicoli diction, must give a verbal book report to his teacher, Mrs. Podgorski, on Moby-Dick.  Conflict is immediately established as the he defends himself against Mrs. Podgorski's accusations that he did not read the novel.  The action rises as he alternates between surfer dude lingo and high brow literary commentary using phases like peerless alegorical saga and metaphysical ambiguity to describe the book.  Is there more depth to this narrator than meets the eye?  Do we judge others too quickly based on their appearance or delivery or words?  This protagonist, slang and homophobic inferences aside, sums up the plot and symbolism of Moby-Dick quite well.  His teacher appears to think so too.  His summary climaxes in triumphant fanfare and our Spicoli awaits Mrs. Podgorski's response. The play's denouement is brought about with him agreeing to go out to coffee with his teacher!  So is he just a Moby Dude?  Is this just some high school fantasy or is he really a whale?  Is he a verbose Hercules of literature who merely chooses to express himself as he pleases?  If anyone has ever seen Fast Times they will recognize the scene from which the photo above was taken and know what I think.  It's nice to dream, but the conclusion just seems too far-fetched to be real.

Coming around to drama

Maybe my pun is a cheap knock off of Dr. Burton's, but so what?  It will all makes sense.  Theater and I have an on again, of again relationship that has never quite reconciled.  It all started when I was 9 and I got rejected in an audition for Peter Pan... too melodramatic?  Nevertheless, I was excited to see Urinetown, everyone I had talked to about it said it was great.  I had also never been to a theater in a round.  In this sort of arrangement the crowd encircles the stage as opposed to the proscenium stage that I am used to.  I first want to discuss the cons of this form of seating.  There were a few times when characters would make a dramatic gesture or humorous face that I could not see because the actor was not facing my direction.  This also made it difficult to hear the actors at some points as their voices projected away from me.  On the other hand, this setting allowed the audience to be more involved in the play.  Those in the very front row got up-close and personal with the actors.  The play itself was witty, self-aware (the narrators frequently point out flaws and holes in the story), and not lacking moral substance.  The music was great and the story was entertainingly original.  There were a few refences to Les Mis too!  Urinetown combines elements from many genres: satire, comedic music with tragic scenes, and elements of high and low comedy.  Although there were numerous points when the actors fumbled with their lines, I came away very pleased with what I saw.