Looking for something to 'read'? Check out this article about dissent. 

Quotable Composers

Because poetry is best heard, here's Gwendolyn! Here's 'Coleridge'! Here's Frost Mending Wall 2.mp3 !

Jack Kerouac gives himself a pep talk in Atop An Underwood:

“Remember above all things, Kid, that to write is not difficult, not painful, that it comes out of you with ease, that you can whip up a little tale in no time, that when you are sincere about it, that when you want to impress a truth, it is not difficult, not painful, but easy, graceful, full of smooth power, as if you were a writing machine with a store of literature that is boundless, enormous, endless, and rich. For it is true; this is so. Do not forget it in your gloomier moments. Make your stuff warm, drive it home American-wise, don’t mind critics, don’t mind the stuffy academic theses of scholars, they don’t know what they’re talking about, they’re way off the track, they’re cold; you’re warm, you’re redhot, you can write all day, you know what you know…”

Someone mentioned Camus, and so, in keeping with our swimming theme:

"Now he must sink into the warm sea, lose himself in order to find himself again, swim in that warm moonlight in order to silence what remained of the past, to bring to birth the deep song of his happiness. He undressed, clambered down a few rocks, and entered the sea. It was as warm as a body, another body that ran down his arms and clung to his legs with an ineffable yet omnipresent embrace. Mersault swam steadily now, feeling the muscles of his back shift with each stroke. Whenever he raised an arm, he cast sheaves of silver drops upon the sea, sowing under this mute and vivid sky the splendid harvest of happiness; then his arm thrust back into the water, and like a vigorous plowshare tilled the waves, dividing them in order to gain a new support, a firmer hope. Behind him, his feet churned the water into seething foam, producing a strangely distinct hissing noise in the night's silence and solitude. Conscious of this cadence, this vigor, an exultation seized Mersault; he swam faster and soon realized he was far from land, alone in the heart of the night, of the world. Suddenly he thought of the depths which lay beneath him and stopped moving. Everything that was below attracted him like an unknown world, the extension of this darkness which restored him to himself, the salty center of a life still unexplored..."

-excerpted from A Happy Death by Albert Camus, translation by Richard Howard

A Brief Explanation

     In this wiki cluster, I’ve included a page devoted to the major focus of my studies: literature and its relationship with cultural production. I know that sounds awfully vague and pretentious, but you try summing up literature and its values in a few, well-chosen words. For the sake of this paragraph, let’s think of literature as a collection of narratives which examine perennial issues (life and death, how to live, how to die, etc) that resonate with humankind, across the divides of nationality, gender, race, socioeconomic realities, religion, politics, etc. For me personally, I’m fascinated by the adaptation of the written word to other mediums. I consider the adaptation process to be a good example of collaboration, with the author acting as one of many players. Part of this cluster includes composing something called a “Statement of Academic Purpose”. I offer this statement to my ENC classmates as a stream of rhetoric, which I hope will sink between the ripples into the deep well of our collective voice. Keep reading, if you’re interested.    

     This wiki also includes a scholarly-based look at one of the fundamental issues in literary studies, namely the system of organization we currently call “the canon”. Since the heart of my literary studies centers on understanding literature as a weapon/tool/method of both (cultural) domination and (cultural) resistance, my readings have led me to examine the construct of the canon, which formerly went by the term 'the classics'. For that matter, literature itself is just a construct, a way to distinguish or discriminate among texts and writers. Anybody can write a text, but can your text transcend here and now for what was then and what is yet to come? That transcendence, that quality or ability defines literature as a label. If the term literature itself is a label, the function of a literary canon must serve a different purpose from merely distinguishing between works that transcend their origins and works which do not. What's the role of a literary canon? Check out the Canon Project by clicking here.

Links

Statement of Academic Purpose

Canon Project Pages

Responding to ENC 6319 Readings

Responding to Non-Academic Readings

ENC 6319 Portfolio of Emergence

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