Aesthetics: February 2006 Archive Page

--Ex 1-4c: A Clever Blank-Verse Entry on Your Blog (Intro to Literary Study (EL150))

I know they're only doing it because
I've made them; still, it thrills me every time
My students write in blank verse on their blogs.

Found Poetry Exercise: So Rich with Lines I Could Post (Seton Hill University -- Home Page)

I can't remember when I first noticed it, but that's a "Blog!" link on the SHU home page. I'm delighted to see the value of SHU blogging reflected in such a visible way.

While the context suggests that the link will point to a place where prospective students can blog, the link points to the always useful SHU Admissions weblog. Of course, there is a wealth of other blogging going on at SHU, and which might also be of interest to prospective students.

I'm not feeling well enough to do this subject justice, but I can still copy and paste. So, in honor of all the great blogging at Seton Hill University, I present this "found poetry" exercise. Blog on, my friends!

So Rich with Lines I Could Post

First let me say that I am more than excited to finally be reading this story again.
The Bush Administration walks a fine line when it comes to finding out
the wolverine is the big pimp daddy of the animal kingdom.
he seems to be waiting for Ceasar to act and then he will counter-act

"separated" was the box I checked off
In the final pane, Snoopy asks, "Sick doesn't count?"
I have enough boxes for the first fifteen craftsters
our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share

She would rathter be ignorant of the affair
the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool
Upon arriving to campus Tuesday evening, you will meet other sleepover guests
This process continues until all the pieces in the room have been judged five times.

I love the way Cleopatra is described. She is the one who really rules
she is somehow better than he is, as a member of the "secret society"
Last semester, it was OK to uses APA Citation. Now we have to use MLA
do you think that love can work in something like politics?

When Students Count with Fingers in My Class (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

The infection that's been toying with me for the last week has finally pounced. I've been idly surfing, looking for a lost CD, rearranging my bedcovers, and just sort of waiting to get tired so that I'll fall alseep asleep.

But what's going through my head is the delightful sight of my students counting off iambic pentameter syllables on their fingers during a brief blank-verse writing exercise in this morning's "Intro to Literary Study" class. A colleague presented on kinesthetic learning in a "Teaching and Learning Forum" today, and seeing students moving their mouths to pronounce words, bobbing their heads to the rhythm of the language they are thinking to themselves, and keeping track of how many syllables they've stressed was such an unusal unusual and delightful sight I won't soon forget it. I do invite my lit survey students to use their bodies when they recite poetry aloud, but I've never seen just how physical the act of creating poetry can be. If I weren't so sick right now, I might try to write a sonnet about the experience.

I'm having my students analyze and spoof a sonnet, so that they can become familiar enough with the form to write their own sonnet for an upcoming "Sonnet Slam." In class, I suggested that we work on a few quatrains on the subject of cold weather, but when one student mentioned blogs, the others thought that was better. I saved the six or seven lines we managed to get through during the 15-minute workshop, but I don't have them with me. They took the occasion to poke fun at me, my love of blogs, and the fanny pack I always wear.

At any rate, students reported that writing the spoof sonnet was harder than they expeted expected. Most seem to have forgotten that sonnets follow a rhyme scheme, perhaps beause because I didn't do a good enough job distinguishing the sonnet from blank verse. (Another reason we're working on iambic pentameter is because we're about to start reading Antony and Cleopatra.)

Since this isn't a course in sonnet-writing, I'll be generous when I eavaluate evaluate their spoofs, but I do plan to ask them to peer-review and revise the sonnets they create on their own, so they'll have two more chances to get that complex rhyme sceme scheme right.

Update, 21 Feb: Yipes, that was a lot of typos. I knew I wasn’t feeling my best when I wrote that, but I had no idea. In class today I came up with a metaphor about the nested stories of Nick and Gatsby as being the same theme in different keys, and I had to interrupt myself to ask the class if that was a good metaphor, because I really had no idea. Whatever part of my brain that I use for evaluating is not functioning very well right now. I usually correct my blog typos quietly, but this time I've just marked them like this in order to remind myself to be very careful the next time I try to blog while sick.

[E]ach time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life. -- Nick Carroway, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great GatsbyWithin and Without (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

That's from chapter 2. Re-reading this book in preparation to teach it tomorrow morning, I noticed for some reason Nick's function as an editor. Not only does he select and organize the events of the story for us, sometimes telling them out of chronological order, but he actively edits his surroundings, such as when he wipes the shaving lather from the unconscious Mr. McKee's face (even though that lather would have certainly dried after so many hours).

"Absolutely real," muses the drunken guest marveling at the books in Gatsby's library. "[H]ave pages and everything. I thought they'd be a nice durable cardboard" (52).

Gatsby shares with a Nick a desire to observe people, as wee see when Nick describes Gatsby watching approvingly as his party guests react to an announcement about a Jazz performance. Nick describes himself as an unusually good listener, but it's the description of Gatsby's smile that makes me think of Gatsby not just as a striking subject for Nick's narrative, but the perfect audience for that small part of Nick that insists on telling this story: "It faced -- or seemed to face -- the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor" (53). What author wouldn't want a reader to respond with that kind of acceptance and attention? Gatsby is, among other things, an incarnation of the model reader.

THOUSANDS FEAR FOR THEIR HEARING, FLEE FOR THEIR LIVES!

The infamous Ballet mécanique is coming to Washington, DC, but not in any way it's been heard before. And it's not going to be for just one performance...it's going to be played over 30 times.

George Antheil's 1925 masterwork, which was never heard in its original version (for 10 percussionists, two pianists, three airplane propellers, electric bells, siren, and 16 player pianos) until 75 years after its composition, will be presented on the mezzanine of the National Gallery of Art's East Wing every day for over two weeks, starting on March 12. Performing it will be 16 computer-controlled player grand pianos and an orchestra played entirely by robots. This means it will be the fastest, most maniacal, and--thanks to the cavernous acoustics of the giant building--the loudest Ballet mécanique ever performed.

In conjunction with a huge exhibit on Dadaist art, which runs from now through May, the Music department of the National Gallery has commissioned a Ballet mécanique installation, which will be on display and performing from March 12 through March 29. The all-mechanical orchestra will be located on the mezzanine, next to the entrance to the Dada exhibit hall. At 1:00 pm (every day) and 4:00 pm (weekdays only), the orchestra will roar into action and play a 10-minute version of the piece.

The player piano parts will be handled by 16 Gulbransen grand pianos equipped with Pianomation controls. The xylophone, bass drum, tam-tam, siren, propeller, and bell parts will be performed on real instruments by custom robots created by the League of Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) especially for this installation. The entire orchestra is under the control of a Macintosh G5 computer using Mark of the Unicorn's Digital Performer software.

A gala premiere event will be held at 1:00 pm on Sunday, March 12 (if you got an email from me earlier, please note this is a new date). I and Eric Singer, the director of LEMUR, will be present, no doubt frantically taking care of last-minute technical problems.

In addition, the film Ballet mécanique by Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy will be shown (without sound) continuously as part of the Dada exhibit.

Please come and experience the latest 21st-century incarnation of this long-forgotten 20-century masterpiece. For more information on the Ballet mécanique, visit http://antheil.org. To see the work of LEMUR, visit http://lemurbots.org. And for the National Gallery, visit http://www.nga.gov.

In related news, my documentary film on George Antheil and the Ballet mécanique, Bad Boy Made Good, is now "on the schedule" at two northeastern PBS stations for the month of April. Details when they are available!

Hope to see you there,
Paul LehrmanBallet Mechanique to Land in Washington, D.C. (The Ballet Mechanique Page)

Via e-mail. I didn't see it archived on the website.

The few pages on Ballet Mechanique in my dissertation were among the most enjoyable that I remember writing.

I'm not sure a 10-minute excerpt from the piece is worth the trip to D.C., but I'm thinking about it.

If you're in the D.C. area and you get the chance to attend, I'd love to hear from you.

The International Society of Cubists officially launched its Web site today, a brilliant rejection of natural form and perspective that metaphysically establishes the implication of movement, analytically redefines spatial relationships, and is an absolute bitch to navigate.

"What the hell is this? I can't tell how to get anywhere," one of the site's first visitors told the Cubist Society's Webmaster-Curator, Paulo Cassat. "Is this art, or is this a Web site?"

"Thank you," Cassat responded.
--Cubists Launch Unnavigable Web Site (SatireWire)

Superman will help teach British children about Jesus in state-mandated religious education classes, The Telegraph reports. --Superman to the rescue of Jesus (JoanneJacobs.com)

I'm blogging this one not just because it's odd enough to be interesting, but because of Joanne Jacobs' final suggestion, just before "Posted by joannej".

--Ten Things About Ten Things About Writing (Paperback Writer)

A top ten list of top-ten lists about writing. (A former student of mine, Kathy Kennedy, wrote "Short Stories: 10 Tips for Novice Creative Writers" as part of a technical writing class.)

With upswept roofs and, often, curvaceous, geometric shapes, and bold use of glass, steel and neon, it decorated many a motel, coffee house and bowling alley in the 1950s and 1960s. It epitomises the spirit a generation demanded, looking excitedly towards a bright, technological and futuristic age. As it became clear that the future would not look like The Jetsons, the style came to be timeless rather than futuristic. As with the art deco style of the 1930s it has remained undervalued until many of its finest examples have been destroyed.
--Googie space age (Jahsonic.com)

I've always loved the look. Never knew it had a name.