University-Level Reading: Vision and Design

My English Department will need to re-design our Reading & Composition sequence to meet the new California laws requiring only One Year of courses to meet Transfer/AA requirements.  As we compose the new course outlines, I have one key question: Does our new sequence create, foster, and support university-level readers?  Writing follows reading; writing skills are dependent upon reading skills.  Will we train our students for competence and excellence at reading in sprints, in middle distance, and in long distance?  Will we be properly preparing City students for the demands of university work?  Can we not design with ambition and integrity and utility—all in the best sense—for our students?

Annotation From The Back Page

Rereading the last section of David Corbett's The Mercy of the Night helped me to realize -- to remember -- the integrity of the reader and of independent / literary thought -- and how THAT was salvation, was refuge, whatever, in the chaos of my home life while growing up.

You have to --you get to -- you must -- figure it all out for yourself, like everyone else, and those absolutes set you free.

Reading properly sets you free. You have to earn it, but who expects freedom to come cheaply?

--Thoughts on finishing The Mercy of the Night -- 1/5/16

Robert Graves: Gift, Glance, Green, Glint

Four poems by Robert Graves:

GIFT OF SIGHT
I had long known the diverse tastes of the wood,
Each leaf, each bark, rank earth from every hollow;
Knew the smells of bird's breath and of bat's wing;
Yet sight I lacked; until you stole upon me,
Touching my eyelids with light finger-tips.
The trees blazed out, their colours whirled together,
Nor ever before had I been aware of sky.


AT FIRST SIGHT
'Love at first sight,' some say, misnaming
Discovery of twinned helplessness
Against the huge tug of procreation.

But friendship at first sight?  This also
Catches fiercely at the surprised heart
So that the cheek blanches and then blushes.


VARIABLES OF GREEN
Grass-green and aspen-green,
Laurel-green and sea-green,
Fine-emerald green,
And many another hue:
As green commands the variables of green
So love my loves of you.


CHANGE
'This year she has changed greatly'--meaning you--
My sanguine friends agree,
And hope thereby to reassure me.

No, child, you never change; neither do I.
Indeed all our lives long
We are still fated to do wrong,

Too fast caught by care of humankind,
Easily vexed and grieved,
Foolishly flattered and deceived;

And yet each knows that the changeless other
Must love and pardon still,
Be the new error what it will:

Assured by that same glint of deathlessness
Which neither can surprise
In any other pair of eyes.

Robert Graves, New Collected Poems, Doubleday & Company, Inc: Garden City, New York: 1977.