9-4-08 (After Class) Week One Orientation

In class we discussed one of the poets I read, and a few that I liked that I had not read. I liked Juliana Sphar's poem (pg358 in Legitimate Dangers), which prof. Row told us was influenced by the Language Poets like Gertrude Stein. Poetry is such an interesting medium of art because it is both cerebral and lyrical, almost music and almost philosophy. I think Spahr’s poem embodies this type of light almost playfulness in language with her “and we…/and we…/and we…” line beginnings, it reminds me of a five year old telling a story. But the content of the poem is dense and a little to abstract for my liking. There is nothing concrete in the poem, which I assume is the point of something titled “localism or t/here”, but I like poetry where the grand concepts are entered through concrete detail.

9-4-08 Week One Orientation

Today we have class and I have been thinking about authors. I have read a few of the poets from Legitimate Dangers, but I want to go to class to see how we discuss their work before I write on them. The two popular fiction authors that I am most interested in are Marya Hornbacher and Stephenie Myer. Stephenie Myer would be impractical and impossible for the visiting writer’s series. She writes teen lit about vampires and, while insanely delicious and addicting, her work would not be termed “literary”. Also I’m sure TCNJ could not afford her rate for a reading, if she even does readings, I don’t know.
I think Marya Hornbacher is a bit more practical, but not much. I discovered her around a year ago when I read her memoir Wasted. Like usual, I was browsing through the Addiction/Recovery section of B&N when I saw the book, which from the first page captured my interest. Wasted tells her story with anorexia and bulimia. The story is captivation but the way she tells it is what makes this book truly beautiful. Her prose is graceful, energized, and completely smooth; it tells her autobiography from childhood to recovery with the delicate ease. Her ideas are solidly profound but never pretentious. She wrote the book at twenty two but it was published after she was much older.
I know recovery stories have a reputation as being formulaic, popular, or voyeuristic, but hers book is truly a remarkable piece of art. She wrote one book of fiction The Center of Winter which I have not read but is on my list. An example of her prose from Wasted:
“You cannot trick your body. You body, strange as it seems to we who are saturated with a doctrine of dualism, is actually attached to your brain. There is a very simple, inevitable think that happens to a person so is dieting: When you are not eating enough, your thinking process changes. You begin to be obsessed with food.” Pg 105
As much as I would love to suggest Hornbacher for the visiting writer’s series, I remain hesitant. First, her work that has received the most acclaim is not technically fiction. Second, like Meyer she is too popular (aka to expensive). But I would recommend her as my most favorite current author.

9-3-08 Week One Orientation

This is my first journal entry. I hope it's what it should be.
In our last class we read our erasure poems and discussed whether they qualify as “art” or a “game”. I had performed an erasure on Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and the poem I created was a story of rape. It was interesting to me that the other students who did erasures on Incidents also had poems about sexuality, although in the other poems the speaker had an active role.
The discussion in class centered on whether the poems could be counted as art and it, of course, expanded to the question “what qualities make any poetry/prose art? Originality or skill within in a set of rules?”. The question is difficult and classic and the dialogue in class was a nice philosophical exploration.