Dickinson: "Exultation is the Going"

Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea --
Past the houses, past the headlands,
Into deep Eternity!

Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?

--Emily Dickinson

collected in
Poems of the Sea,
selected and edited by J. D. McClatchy
Everyman's Library

Hurly-Burly: Poetry in Motion

This was a last-day hurly-burly of What-Poetry-Can-Be-And-Do and How-You-Can-Enjoy-The-Ride. Some of the following works were treated fully, but the others received glancing treatment, mere introductions or excerpts or highlighted singular effects: sacrifices on the altars of poetic efficacy and exuberant aesthetic trail-guiding.  Voice and story, voice and story.  What and how, what and how.

Hughes' "Suicide's Note"
        (body of the poem first, then the title revealed);
Auden's "The Shield of Achilles"
        (for we've read The Iliad this term);
Grimm's "Hansel and Gretel" paraphrased to set up
Gluck's "Gretel in Darkness"
       (trauma and serious poetic conversations);
two quotations matched and set
       from Auden's "September 1, 1939"
       and Shelley's "Julian and Maddalo"
             (mere bits in parallel and contradiction);
a foray into Jackie Leven's lyrics
       from "Classic Northern Diversions"
(to read mood even if you don't know what the song is about, to find signs);
close-reading exercises
       with Frost's "Stopping By The Woods on a Snowy Evening"
       and Wyatt's "They Flee from Me That Sometime Did Me Seek"
       and Keats' "When I have fears that I may cease to be";
then, Frost's apocalyptic "Fire and Ice";
Spenser's logical/romantic playing with "My Love is Like to Ice, and I to Fire";
Donne's twisty-fun "Woman's Inconstancy";
a quick look at Dante Gabriel Rossetti's artwork to set up
       Christina Rossetti's beautiful and incisive "In An Artist's Studio";
and finally Herrick's playful "Cherry-ripe" -----------

(I had some Elvis Costello one-liners for flavor and effect in my back pocket, but I ended up not having time to use them appropriately and so held back.)

a very full 75-minute class.

Oh, I also quoted with context that venerable bumper sticker "Question Authority" and that mug I saw at Pegasus On Solano with "Birds have wings / Humans have books".

Burton Raffel's How To Read A Poem -- along with a slew of handouts -- was the textbook at hand.

Reading By The Crate: Fall 2011

Or, what my students will be reading this term:

A closer view, if that helps:

Oh, the titles of the books you can't quite see in the crate: The American Heritage Dictionary (marked with "Duck #3", a crucial tool), Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales, and the eighth edition of Silverman, Hughes, & Roberts Wienbroer's Rules of Thumb: A Guide For Writers.

The last is optional; that is, the students may substitute another standard composition handbook, if they already have one. I aim at affordability as well as at appropriateness, interest, and ambitiousness.

P.S. A nod to FL for the idea of exhibiting the term's reading via "the box."

Also, I don't know about you or about your teachers, but I'll be rereading all of those books this semester, even the ones I've taught before. I have an excellent memory for what I've read, but that doesn't mean I can coast on a past reading; notes alone won't do it either. I need to re-experience each book, especially as I prefer to emphasize that reading experience chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, and even sentence by sentence. If I don't reread, I lose the freshness and can't quite recall all the details and the sweep or the strategies that I'd prefer to.

I don't know how to do it any other way.

P.P.S. I've also left the Course Reader for Eng 46B out of the photo. I'd misplaced it for a while. Imagine another slim, but very full book . . . .

Annotations: W. Hodding Carter

Carter, W. Hodding. Off the Deep End: The Probably Insane Idea That I Could Swim My Way Through a Midlife Crisis--And Qualify for the Olympics. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 2008.

The title really does tell you what you'll get, but Carter isn't quite as insane as his goal may seem. On the one hand, a classic midlife crisis in action, and on the other, a great how-to for training to swim at an Olympic level, this book takes you for a ride. Carter has an engaging (or annoying, for some) lack of embarrassment as he documents some truly stupid behavior. Mostly, he offers a model of crisis, self-assessment, positive response, frailty and partial failure, and finally, actual progress in self-awareness, commitment and performance. (As a 47-year-old male, I like watching someone else go through the rough stuff and emerge at least somewhat victorious, even if chastened.)

P.S. What's the name of the 40-something swimmer who did reach the Olympic Games this past year? Well, not Hodding Carter, but still . . . .

---. A Viking Voyage: In Which an Unlikely Crew of Adventurers Attempts an Epic Voyage to the New World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

The first book by Carter I'd read. Here, he presents a potentially silly obsession that he manages to take from an idle thought (and he has a boatload of those) to serious completion, struggling and straggling all the way. One part how-to-build-a-viking-boat and another part friendships-are-built-on-shared-adversity, the book is a model of having a goal and getting to the goal-line. Very humorous too.