Woah! Lance Mannion linked to my post. That’s definitely a nice thing to see. Unfortunately, I’ve been pretty quiet this week. I’ve been trying to wrap things up before Spring Break. I am glad I was able to make time for his talk, though. It was well worth it.
In other news, I got to witness a brief battle in the age old war of prose vs. poetry today as I listened to a short lecture on the use of rhythm in prose. It wasn’t that the lecturer (a prose partisan, to be sure) was actually wrong. He wasn’t. I just didn’t feel he was complete enough. Essentially, he discussed how prose uses rhythm and word placement to emphasize specific words or phrases and how that can alter the feel or meaning of a paragraph. In this case we were examining the effect of different translations of the same work. While all of this was rather evident, what caught my attention was his description of the musical nature of prose that allowed it to count rests as beats in the rhythm. He conspicuously left that ability out of poetry and even went as far as to show how poetry does not include rests in its definition of meter.
On the latter point, I believe he is correct. In technical terms, a pause is not counted. We do have hypermetrical lines and headless iambs but those are still roughly categorized according to a generalized metrical structure. I don’t see an issue with this, though. The meter is a guide not a declaration of sound or even a distinct rhythm. All music in 4/4 does not sound the same. The rests and pauses exist as readily in poetry as they do in prose. End-stops, caesuras, white space, along with word choice and word placement all provide the poet with a full arsenal of tools capable of defining and playing with pauses and spaces in his or her work.
As is usual with these discussions, I always end up feeling like a little kid watching mommy and daddy fight. They really don’t need to. One of the interesting developments in some of the more recent works that I have been reading, both online and off, has been their melding of poetry and prose. This melding isn’t even all that new anymore and I don’t think it’s a trend that will be stopping anytime soon. If anything, our increasingly networked minds seem to crave these moments of text that press on the definition of prose and poetry and expand them outward into new and exciting forms.
I had the opportunity to attend an informal discussion/presentation by Lance Mannion with occasional comments from Stephen Kuusisto titled Literary Writing in the Second Digital Age. In it they discussed whether blogs deserve their still often-maligned status as the creation of narcissists screaming into the echo chamber or whether they were something more? Mannion and Kuusisto argue that for many writers the blog has become the next evolution of the much vaunted author’s journal. As such, they contain snippets of ideas that can evolve and build into future poems and stories. They become a place for an author to share opinions, moments of reaction, and whatever else seems to fill their lives. The blog, then, for these authors becomes a medium for sharing and, almost more importantly, for storing and recalling important moments and thoughts. While it is not a replacement for other forms of writing, it is a valuable tool for the authors who are so inclined to use it.
Listening to Mannion talk, what quickly became apparent was that his blog primarily acts a way to stay connected with the world beyond his computer. According to him, the best part of running his blog comes when he is able to leave the screen behind and, instead, meet and talk with intelligent, powerful, and connected people the world over. The blog became a way to connect, share, and meet these people. It was, in a sense, his contribution to the commons and the discussions that were going on. I love this idea because, at least in my mind, this is the real reason the Internet should exist. It opens the doors of communication even wider. Even as I type this, my twitter client is streaming, collecting a #litchat discussion stream which I will read later and I have added both Mannion’s and Kuusisto’s blogs to my RSS feed. While we may not always like to admit it, writers like community. We want people to read us and, in turn, we want to read other people. That is almost a required function of the job.
While both Mannion and Kuusisto made clear that blogs were not a replacement for print publications, Kuusisto did note how publishing his work in a digital format made it more accessible and allowed for a much faster translation and dissemination of his works than did traditional print. This idea that there is a balance between print and digital publishing is one that I wish more people would take into account. Print isn’t going away, it will be a tragedy if it ever does. Instead, there is this great balance where digital access is opening new doors for distribution and even creating new ways of making print accessible. This is, in almost every way, a symbiotic relationship not a parasitic one.
Beyond that, what really caught my attention was a brief discussion on how literary fiction and poetry is, in some sense, a (and I am trying to remember the exact phrasing here) “socially informed and culturally aware form of vanity publishing.” Somewhere, I hear a clamor of authors gathering their pitchforks but I think there is some truth to that statement. There appears to be a false notion for many undergrads (and even some grad students) that there is money in writing. I’m not sure where that comes from as we have been told from day one that there is no money in writing but I am sure the first year out of college will disabuse them of such a notion. If we’re not doing this for money, then, if we write, we do so because we think we have something to say and that is, in a very real sense, vanity.
It’s why this blog is called Text and Hubris. But that is the point, after all. I want to share and I want to tell my stories. I hope that there are enough people who want to listen/read and in return I do my damnedest to be great listener/reader as well. It is the least I can do.
As I close, I will continue to complain about notification for these events. If I had known about it earlier, I would have have noted it here and in the CW4 forum as well. I am sure this would have been very valuable to the Intermedia and New Media students but it didn’t look like it made it to any of them. As with so many things, my only notification came from a hastily propped up sign on the door to EPB. Obviously, this was a talk that fell directly into my interest and study area, so I did cancel a meeting in order to sit in. I’m glad I did. I just wish more people had that opportunity.
[nbcite author="justinjfj" title="Le Louvre - Do Not Touch Works of Art" year="2009" city="Paris" publisher="Flickr" month="04" day="29" type="blog" ]
Before entering the gallery, we were stripped of our coats and packs, our notebooks, pens and pencils. Nearby, a man with a golden badge and balding head watched us wearily as we left pieces of ourselves outside the door while a woman who looked like she should have worn large colored glasses spoke in clipped tones that dripped condescension.
“Stay at least two feet away from the art at all times.”
“Do not touch.”
“Do not look too closely.”
“Observe from afar.”
“I will tell you what it all means.”
I knew then that this was no place I wanted to be.
When I was 16, I was nearly kicked out of a museum in London because I could not keep my hands off the scultpures. It only made sense. These were creations of the hand. They all but begged me to reach out and trace their lines, those smoothed edges, the hidden nooks and crannies all carefully crafted by artists now gone but always here, always alive in the form and feel of these creations. How could I not touch them?
We walked through the gallery where the images were set in antiseptic gray and listened to the story of an artist defined through another’s eyes. We could not, dared not, judge the work for ourselves. That was sacrilege.
I’ve been out of commission for well over two weeks now. At first, it was the usual chaos of school and work compounded by a nasty cold. While this combination made my days rough, at least I was still moving. Apparently, though, even moving was too much. On my way back from a meeting, I tripped like the graceful ox I am and landed on my ankle. I felt something pop in the ankle as I crumbled and I must say that I have rarely felt so exquisite a pain as that. The only bright spot was that it wasn’t broken but the doctor did pull me from classes and basically told me that if I wanted to walk normally again, I had better stay off it and keep it elevated.
So, that’s been my November.
Now, on to more important things. If you’re like me and you follow the literary community and MFA programs then you have seen the Slate reprint of an N+1 article by Chad Harbach titled “MFA vs. NYC
America now has two distinct literary cultures. Which one will last?”1 He seems to posit, at least in his conclusion, that the MFA is the only way to really survive as a writer. He states that MFA culture exists primarily to provide writers with an economic foundation and he’s certainly right in that regard. Of course, he also notes with some regret that this means a movement away from writing as entertainment and performance. In some ways, it means moving away from writing in general. It also tends to feed the insular nature of literary fiction being written for writers. This has long been a problem and Harbach seems to conclude that it will only get worse. If fact, he ties much of his discussion on writing to that of the poet and how poetry and academia have merged in many ways.
He’s right. If you want to write literary fiction, get your MFA and start to teach. It’s pretty much the only way to go. The same is true for poetry. Academia is the safest way to ensure cash and funding while writing. Paradoxically, it will reduce how much you write. I have had the opportunity to read a lot of my instructors and I have been impressed with their work. I would like to see more of it. Far too often, there just isn’t that much content available even from the highest-ranked teachers. Don’t get me wrong, they are fantastic teachers but the best teacher I have had in my time at college is probably the one with the most outside creative work experience and whose overall classroom ethic is quite different from any other instructor I have met.
All of these realizations are coalescing at a very important time for me. I am nearly to the end of my English degree and I was pretty much set on going into an MFA program. As the time gets closer, though. I find myself resisting and I know I need to listen to that resistance. I switched from literary criticism to creative writing because I wanted to create the art not just study it. I still want to do that. I am here to write. I want to create. I don’t mind teaching, in fact I rather like it. I am not interested in being a full-time professor, though. I know this. In fact, I have been on this part-time job and full-time school thing for about three months and I am going out of my mind. I like the capitalist money game. I want to create stories and content that people will buy and I believe that my ideas are salable. I look forward to proving that. I do love the academic world and it is filled with a lot of creative people but it doesn’t fit my needs as a creative individual.
Of course, if I am not going to pursue an MFA, I am left with that nagging question of what should I do? Courtney wants me to get my education certificate for secondary schools. While this is still teaching, it is in a slightly different dynamic and she thinks I would excel there and, to be honest, she’s probably right. That said, I say a lot of things, and I tend to be a rather passionate fellow. I’m not sure how well my beliefs and politics gel with our educational system as it is.
What I really want to do requires funding and direction. I want to play in the indie space. I don’t want to be part of the academic or the NYC culture (It helps that I am not so interested in literary fiction). I tend to think that we have more than enough culture to feed a whole variety of tastes many of which are not being fed in the current climate. So, that is my focus. My only rule is that I won’t go back into tech. Does this mean that grad school is out? Absolutely not! It does mean that what I am looking for has shifted though and I need to find programs that reflect that. I may even still get an MFA but it will come on my terms not in an attempt to shoehorn myself into someone else’s definition of writing and creative work. That, if you ask me, is the surest way to die as an artist.
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Chad Harbach, “MFA vs. NYC: America now has two distinct literary cultures. Which one will last?” Slate, November 26, 2010, http://www.slate.com/id/2275733.
[nbcite author="justinjfj" title="
