Television Killed Imagination

Just the other day I was thinking about all of the crazy games of pretend my little sister and I and all of our friends used to play together. They were all extreme melodramas; castaways stranded together on some tropical island jungle, orphans trying to escape the asylum (we loved that word and never seemed to put it together with insane asylum, even sister detectives up against the greatest crime ring ever gathered. All the stories we made up involved sets of sisters, since our friends were also sisters. We were either all related, or we'd trade sisters and become two sets of siblings again only this time there would be one blond and one brunette apiece. (It's funny but Erin and I used to be mistaken for twins and so would our two friends, which I why I think we liked to switch sisters, it made each of us unique in our little unit.) We'd run around the yard in all sorts of crazy get ups, since both families had trunks of dress up clothes and old hats. A deck would become a cabin or a boat, the railing could be a horse or a tree, we made up our worlds as we went along and to this day I swear I could almost see each and every setting we created clearly in my mind. That was how powerful our imaginations felt.

This thought came up because I was writing a paper about how the internet might have shortened attention spans, leading to writers possibly changing how they structure longer pieces of prose. I observed in one of my literature classes this semester that a lot of modern authors have stopped following one character throughout an entire novel and have started to write about a large cast of characters, hopping among them like a frog from a cat. Novels have become, as my old friend put it, "choppy". At first I only equated this to the shortening attention span,but then my friend said something else that might have redirected my blame a little. She called modern novels, "scene-cutting fiction". And she is exactly right, modern novels do seem to pattern themselves more after movies than literature. The leaping from character to character is very much like a movie jumping from scene to scene. Even the long flashbacks feel more like movie scripts.

So, does that mean that movies are having a drastic effect on literature? And, if that is the case, what is it doing to the generations growing up with scenes and characters handed to them instead of having to envision for themselves what they hear or read? At first I placed movies in a sort of modern remake of the oral storytelling tradition, but then I realized that even back then the listener had to see with their imagination everything that was being told to them. Even watching a play takes a little imagination for the viewer to step outside of him or herself to really watch the play as if it were happening in some kind of real world setting. Movies and television take that need completely out of the equation. What is that doing to imagination?!

Could reading be declining simply because children don't have to use their imagination anymore? Think about it! A child is placed in front of the television at an very early age. They hear and see everything they need to in order to keep up with the story being told to them, so there is no room for personal interpretation. Unless you actually turn off the TV for large amounts of time and make sure to read to your child, preferably from a book without pictures, where does this child ever learn to actually USE their imagination? If they have video games they don't even have to use their imagination during playtime! They can see their characters and the environment they want their character in right there on the screen, no filler needed. As a child I used to spend a LOT of timing playing with my toys and pretending they were all over the world, but that was because I had to. I didn't have elaborate play-sets with backgrounds and accessories. I had a fist full of "Pretty Ponies" and the couch! Sometimes in play those ponies weren't even ponies! We weren't allowed any sort of violent toy, so sometimes a pretty pony had to substitute for a slingshot. (They worked really well too, if you twirled them by their little tails and let them fly. Mums never really found out why so many ponies seemed to lose their tales. "I don't know how this happens, Mummles! Oh, Erin's eye? I think she bumped it.")

So what does all of this mean? This means that I fear for my nephew's play time. Will he be able to experience all of the crazy pretend adventures that I did and still do cherish from my childhood? The whole reason I'm a writer is because of the free range I had with my imagination growing up. I LOVED pretend and as I grew older and pretend for teenagers becomes less accepted I started writing down all of the stories I used to act out as a child. Those were the years my stories were really cultivated. I think my writing is still running on old games of pretend, the stories are just a little less melodramatic and peopled with more realistic characters. (The characters I used to pretend to be were all insanely emotional. Granted, I was insanely emotional at the time, one of the few blessings of growing older is the development of better self control.)

What are we missing out on by destroying imagination at such earlier stages of child development?! Maybe the novel isn't dying out but murdered by encroaching technology that preys on our more lazy tendencies? Yes, reading a book takes more work than watching a television show, but it is so much more rewarding.

Writers Speak Up, I Can't Hear Your Voice

So, the topic of voice was brought to my attention today. Questions like what are we talking about when we say an author has a good voice, what is voice in writing, can it be taught, how does someone improve their authorial voice; these were all discussed in length, though it was never concluded as to just what voice really is in a text. I tried to define it several different ways because I know voice exists I just wasn't really sure how to point it out. It can be painfully obvious when compared that different authors have different ways of saying things. Stephen King comes to mind instantly because he has a very distinctive voice; I can always guess an quote from King. There are other obvious examples, like Faulkner or Hemingway, authors who we use to now describe the voice of new authors, but what is voice really?

Voice could be almost anything, it could be the author's choice of words, where they put certain phrases, how they say certain phrases. Voice could be how the author constructs thoughts, describes a tree, strings words together; voice could be the feeling of the author coming through the text. Passion, coming through the words.

Maybe that is why voice is so hard to find in modern stories. Maybe, due to the readily available numbers of MFA programs - due to the thought that creative writing can be taught like history, mathematics or science - due to the very business-like world of publishing and the ability to screen artists for the proper academic degrees the feeling, the emotion, has been sucked out of the art. And isn't that the heart and soul of the whole endeavor; passion?

A friend once told me that it is a curse to be an artist because we are entrusted with feeling and expressing emotions for our whole society. He said we feel emotions twice as strong because we need the surplus to poor into our art. I loved this idea because it gave me an excuse for my "moods"; for crying at every episode of Bones I watch and for getting as passionate as I do over all the little things in life. (I will literally sing over a particularly fluffy blanket or dance for a bizarre new fruit at Shnucks) The more I think about what he said the more I see he is right. Emotion is what brings the story off the page, it's what fills each word and makes the pages fly by unseen but felt. The good books make me feel the same emotions as the characters.

The great books can make me sob.

Voice in a story is the emotion of the author; for the topic, story, even the individual characters. (I've cried over killing some of my darlings, but for the sake of the story it must be done.) A strong voice can transfer those emotions from the page to the reader.

So, what has sucked this passion from our modern writers; and, more importantly, what can we do to get it back?

Chilled Summer Nights

I was never really one for the hot summer days. I don't like to sweat, and I don't like the sun in my eyes or the glare reflecting off everything. Summer just always seemed to harsh for me with its extremes.

However, I do love summer rain.

A rainy summer day makes for some of the best weather. The air chills, and smells earthy and clean at the same time. Those fancy room candles can never get it right. It's the smell of wet and green like the sprinkler days from childhood when you sail through the grass on your slip and slide speeding like a bullet until you run out of plastic and skip across the yard coloring knees and elbows green. If you're lucky the cloud cover will last all day, a canopy keeping out the sun and letting in an ambient light as if someone turned down the dimmer switch for the world to set the mood. Even before the lightening there is a charge in the air makes the hairs on your arms stand at attention. The colors seem to grow brighter without the sun's competition and everything that grows green stands a little taller, feeding off the storm's energy. If the clouds and wet continue into the night a haze might gather in the dips and lows of the land, meeting in the pooling light of streets lamps like lovers in black and white films. Everything feels damp, including you, and the breeze gives you goosebumps. Walking in summer nights, breathing in the thick atmosphere, feeling your clammy skin, can bring back those childhood memories of staying up past your bed time to play one last game of capture the flag or cops and robbers; the excitement of seeing the neighborhood through the filter of night that distorts the world like water distorts the sun across the ocean floor. The friendly day time street becomes a little sinister with deep shadows that hide all sorts of creatures from any child's imagination. The world at night, both frightening and exhilarating and that tingle up the spine cold be the wind or the creeps.

Even as an adult, walking around my neighborhood on rainy summer nights, my heart beats a little faster with excitement and nostalgia; the air seems thick not just with humidity but with possibility, and I remember how important it is to live life with that kind of wonder. To have to question whether my goosebumps were caused by a chill in the wind or by my own excitement and giddy anticipation for what the night holds. Nights like this one help to wash away some of my cynicism that seems to build up with living in the day to day world of adulthood. It makes my spider senses tingle and my arm hairs stand on end and puts a smile on my face. It revives my imagination and reminds me why I chase the stories in my head and continue in the pain process of trying to write and share them with the world. Rainy days seem to be my muse, and I revel in them as much as everyone else seems to revel in the sunny summer.

Summer kills my brain

Seriously, my brain feels like mush. It's something about the summer air, or too much sun; something has cooked my brain. I say this because I seem to have a horrible case of writer's block lately. Although, truth be told, my thoughts just feel very slow lately.

It's probably the allergy medication.

Either way, I don't like it. I feel like only half of myself. I made a choice when I was young, a conscious choice mind, that I could either develop my physical self and get into sports or develop my intelligence. Even as a kid I sided with the mind. So for most of my life I have tried my best to focus on my studies and to learn as much as possible. I'm a very klutzy adult, but I'm told I can be pretty bright when I want to.

So, now I just feel... blah.

If I could I would just not take the allergy medication and be back to my usual self; however, down here in Southern Illinois, pollen and mold allergies are fierce. I have never experienced headaches up north like I have every summer here. So now I have to make a choice, live with the pain or live with this feeling of air-headed emptiness.

And I do feel like an air-head. Literally hollowed out, or even better filled with helium like a balloon. I float about the house with no real intent because my mind is filled with nothing but helium like thoughts. I can tell I'm weighted down, probably with reality, but the real concern doesn't reach the front of my thoughts. The only noise that creeps in is annoyance at being unable to form the correct sentences as I try to write through this writer's bubble that traps me.

Oh, Hindsight, your 20/20 clearity blinds me.

There are times when I wonder if I picked the right major for my college career. I love literature, don't get me wrong, but there are times I wonder if my training as an English major is taking away from the pure joy of the story itself, the reason I ever fell in love with reading in the first place. There is also the question of just what do I WANT to do after I actually leave academia for the "real world." For me this whole college adventure is expensive and while I hear "you can always go back and study something else" that just may not be the case for me. It's taken me this long just to get where I am now, working, borrowing, living on next to nothing just so I can get a degree. I don't think I can do this again with a different focus, I just can't get into any more debt.

The thought crossed my mind as I was reading the introductions of the new teaching assistants on the listserve. We all had to introduce ourselves and talk about our various degrees and what we were trying to earn while here at SIUC. Most of them already have multiple degrees in various subjects from history to sociology, and now are trying for MA's or PhD's. And then there's me.

I was trying to an MFA program, which would leave me with even less of a choice for my future outside of college, but at least it would have been a program I would have enjoyed. Now I'm in this MA program, and I'm not sure if I even LIKE writing the papers and doing the analysis. I know I can, and that it's rare I receive anything less than an A in an English class, but really my heart is more in the story than picking it apart. I like to lose myself in the world, suspend disbelief, and get lost in the characters and what's going on. You can't do that when you write a paper, you have to keep yourself apart so you can find all of the aspects of whatever interpretation you are arguing for or against in the work. I would love to TEACH literature, but I almost don't want to go through all this training. I can SEE enough in the works, and I hate being tied to these wheel ruts of theory and analysis.

Compounding this doubt is the fact that I really loved studying Chinese. I mean really loved it! Learning Chinese was like learning a secret code as a kid. Every translation I did felt amazing! I'd crack the code and understand the message (which was usually something about two made up friends in my textbook and what they ate for lunch or what movie they saw last weekend). It was fun, and almost addictive in a way. I also loved learning about the culture through the language. Now, knowing this, I sometimes ask myself if I should have majored in Chinese studies or TESOL studies and then worked as a translator for some business somewhere or something. China is becoming a huge market and those skills are actually in high demand, I might actually have been able to find a good paying job with that major.

I even liked living in China for those few months. It was an amazing experience and I learn a lot about myself and what I could handle. I also learned how much I LOVE to travel. I love it! Traveling is amazing, especially when you can really get involved in the culture around you.

I don't know. I wonder if I made the right choice here. Not because I don't want to teach, I still do, but because, well, will I be able to teach once I'm out? And will I also have this "what if" feeling when I do?

A Tale of Two Kitties.

So I've been meaning to write something here, to keep up my blog and just to write. Practice makes perfect, so I hear. The thing is, I've been so distracted with life that I haven't really had the chance to think of anything to write about. So I'm going to write about my woes.

Back in February my boyfriend bought me a kitten for Valentines Day. I was thrilled! Seriously, ever since I moved down to Carbondale I wanted a pet. I grew up with pets and even when I moved in with my big sister I adopted her pets as my own, so going three years in an animal empty house was just strange. So, enter Nautilus.

Nautilus IS a great cat. He was four months when we got him from the Humane Society, and he was a pretty sick little kitten. It took us months and multiple visits to the vet to heal the little guy up, but he did heal and he is part of our family. He is a wonderful little companion, and while he is still a cat which means he does not like having love lavished upon him whenever we please, Nautilus does let you know when he wants attention and then he can be very loving. Aside from his affectionate times he would pretty much follow me everywhere. I would even see his little paws under the bathroom door!

Well, because our schedules are about to fill up in the Fall we thought it might be a good idea to find Nautilus another kitten to keep him company. Everything I read said that two cats are better than one because they will keep each other company and keep each other from growing bored or listless. So, when my boyfriend and I stumbled upon free kittens at the Farmers Market we decided to take one home. Nautilus isn't even a year old yet, he used to live with other cats, so this should go smoothly right?

Wrong.

While the new kitten, Neptune, is a sweet cat, Nautilus doesn't really want anything to do with him. Sure, Nautilus will pat Neptune around from time to time, or chase him, but aside from that he totally ignores the new kitten. Even worse, Nautilus totally ignores me! He now sits and glares at anyone who tries to show him attention. He no longer follows me around or wants to sit in my lap. He used to cuddle up to my neck at night and lick my nose. Granted this was painful, but it showed that he felt like family. All that has stopped completely. Neptune is very affectionate, but I feel SO guilty giving him all of the attention he wants when my number one kitten, my Valentines kitten, sits in the corner and glares.

According to all of the research I've done it can take up to a year for a cat to become accustom to a new house mate. I am trying my best to be patient, to give attention to both, even if Nautilus just turns up his nose at my attempts. I've been bribing him with tuna just to get a few purrs out of him. I feel SO bad over this, but it's not like I can just return Neptune. He was a give away kitten at a Farmers Market! I don't even know the woman's name who gave him to me. So Neptune is here, and Nautilus is gray, and I feel so guilty for upsetting the peace in my little home.

Credit Where It's Due

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about literature. Partly because I'm an English major, but partly because I am a reader of contemporary pop fiction. I've stumbled upon a dilemma, well, not a dilemma so much as a question I suppose. Why can't I study the literature that I read for fun? What is the difference between literature and Literature, and why are we as scholars not looking at the popular stuff for hints at our own society?

The came to me during a discussion with my very wonderful and intelligent boyfriend. Jason was making breakfast and I was, well, watching him do so. The topic wandered onto the Noble Prize for Literature. I had just finished a class where I read several noble prize winners and I found that I wasn't too impressed with their works. Really, only one was enjoyable for me (Orhan Pamuk), and everyone else just seemed convoluted or purposefully obtuse. For example, I loved Jose Saramago's Blindness, and I thought the fact that he never separated dialog and his sentences went on forever was because everyone in the world was blind so they wouldn't know who was talking either. This was not the case, however, and as it turns out Saramago never ever separates his dialog, which makes his work very very hard to read. Also, I noticed that his narrator totally removes the reader from all possible action in the story. You rarely feel involved in what he is telling you because not only do you have a third person narrator, but that narrator is something of an ambiguous character himself, but not one with enough personally fleshed out so you can never attach to him. This is not good story telling, not if the reader finds themselves uninvolved. Aren't we suppose to attach to the characters? And yet he won a noble prize.

I found myself, in this conversation with Jason, sticking up for authors I love to read. My example at the time, because I was reading one of his books, was Stephen King. King has written a ton of different stories, and he has a pretty loyal following. King's stories, for me at least, feel like you are hearing them while sitting on the back porch, sipping lemonades, listening to some old vet telling you tales from his bizarre and frightening life. I am involved in these stories. Also, King's work isn't as superficial as most academics want us to believe. His stories are more than just monster stories, they are stories about human nature. King knows how a story is suppose to work. A good story is never about the monster or aliens or fantasy creatures, a story is about the human reaction to the world around them and to each other. King's human element examines human nature, both the good and dark sides of the human being, and that is what makes or breaks a story.

Basically all storytellers are sociologists in a way. We examine society, we examine individuals, and we try our best to capture what we see and translate that for the readers. The setting, the struggle, that is all a back drop for the human characters. King knows this. He gets us invested in the characters and then he puts them through Hell, and has us watch to see what parts of their nature gets revealed in the flames. Usually there is a character that someone can totally relate to, whose actions and feelings we can all read about and say, "Wow, would I react like that?" or "Man, that is totally me."

I could go on to argue that a lot of King's work actually references mythology and contains Biblical references as well (and the man KNOWS the Bible. Trust me, my parents are fundamentalist Christians, I attended a Christian high school [via home schooling] and went through Bible boot camp until I was 18. I can stop a Biblical reference when it crosses my path, and King's references aren't subtle.). And King's work has grown over the years. Anyone read Hearts in Atlantis? That wasn't a horror novel, that was definitely more artsy. What I'm saying is this, we as scholars can't ignore a literary figure like King. His made up words have made it into the dictionary! Pryokinesis, yeah, that was Stephen King folks. That word didn't exist before Fire Starter. He also appeals to everyone. I can read his stories and see the deeper Biblical and literary references, and Joe Snuffy can read them and see the humor and the horror and enjoy a good story. Shouldn't King be getting some credit? Shouldn't we want to study this if only to study the society that we live in now? These works are popular, don't we want to know why? Isn't King capturing some common fear here, some common thread or insight that keeps all of his fans interested? When should we study this?

Upon Finding My Old Xanga!

(This is what I left in my Xanga blog once I was reminded it was even there! [it's been four years since I even looked at it!])

Huh, so I always forget about the various blogs I have hiding around the interwebs and am shocked when I rediscover them. It's kind of funny reading old blogs and seeing how I thought back then. Our thinking does change with time, as impossible as that sounds, and I would be the first to deny it if not for these mysterious public pieces of me that keep popping up to remind me that I was indeed different once upon a time.

Nothing particularly comes to mind at the moment, just a general feeling of being in a different place now than I was when I last wrote. Of course I am literally IN a different place, living in Southern instead of Northern Illinois. It's amazing how different it can be if you drive six hours away. Visiting up North always opens my eyes to just the small nuances in a society, and how different a rural town like Carbondale is compared to a suburban town of South Holland. I'm in the SOUTH here! Life move just a little slower, we use sacks instead of bags and drink soda instead of pop. There is also the basic ill will towards Chicago. No one down here really likes, "those city folk."

Not that Carbondale is a backwater town! Far from it... well, at least next door to it. We have a very odd mix of humans down here. There is a very artistic community, mixed with local hippies, academics from the university, and then your basic hick, not to mention a very rich (in terms of characters) and varied homeless population that is always good for a short story or two. (And every knows just which homeless type you are talking about with very little description given. You just have to say, "Yeah, the guy with the towel who preaches Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at Shnucks?" and they pretty much know who you're talking about.)

I'm also looking at the final days of my life as an undergrad. I'm finally, let me say again FINALLY, graduating and I am now wondering what I'll do next. I've applied to MFA programs, but from what I've been hearing from professors the competition is pretty tough. Several of my professors have said that people who really should be getting into MFA programs are getting rejected. (I've also been told by several professors that I am someone who deserves to get in, which is nice, but doesn't mean I will.) So now I have to decide what I will do if I don't get accepted. Oddly enough I really wanted to join the Peace Corps; however, that is not really an option since my boyfriend (and not the same one I was talking about earlier in this blog! How things do change!) and I just bought a car together and the Peace Corps doesn't really want you in any sort of debt, excluding college loans which they will help you pay off.

I really really loved my experience in China, and I really DO want to go overseas again, only longer this time. Two months in China wasn't enough for me, especially since now I can actually speak and read Chinese! I want full emersion! I want to come back with the confidence that I can hold conversations in Chinese without blinking an eye. (Right now I'm not great. I can have little, simple conversations, though I should be more fluent than I am. Practice is key in these kinds of things, and I just didn't practice enough!) I have several friends teaching overseas right now I and would SO love to join them, but I don't want to do it alone. I want to drag Jason with me, and he is not really thrilled with the idea.

Speaking of Jason, he wants to get to our relaxing TV time, which I don't blame him since I want to veg myself. Anyway, these were just some random thoughts that I figured I would post since I was recently reminded about Xanga. Hi to anyone I know who still reads these! And comment, let me know I'm not alone in wanting some sort of travel adventure here!

Excuse Me, Is This 1984?

I signed up for a modern grammars class, hoping to maybe learn a little more about linguistic theory and maybe brush up on my grammar knowledge since I'm a writer and I need to know these thing. Before I started reading for this class I was slightly disturbed by the growing popularity of netlingo; however now that I'm reading essays by linguists and English teachers I am practically terrified for the English language. Not because the articles are panicked, but because they seem to find the changes in the English language to be natural and good and they don't want to stop the natural "evolution" of the English language. People, if we all start saying "lol" in face to face conversation it won't be long before we become H.G. Well's "Eloi" or the totally controlled society in George Orwell's 1984! Only it won't be "new speak" by chat room jargon that will kill the subtly and nuance of the English language and narrow our perceptions to nothing more than sitcom references and fart jokes.

The first linguist with whom I have a complaint would be Harvey A. Daniels. In his essay "Nine Ideas About Language," Daniels tries to say that those of us who are worried about the state of the English language in America are merely overreacting. He claims that the changes are slow and natural and that they aren't that drastic because, "we tend to forget that we can still read Shakespeare." Oh yes, now I am at ease, but wait, Daniels uses a quote from Shakespeare earlier. Daniels points out, "We may only be a generation of two from the day when we will again say, with Shakespeare, 'I will not budge for no man's pleasure.'" Oh, look, Shakespeare used a double negative, so we Americans don't have to be afraid of the sudden use of the grammatical mistake, because that was how Shakespeare spoke.

Has anyone studied Shakespeare? If you did then you would know that Shakespeare's plays are filled with all sorts of elaborate linguistic jokes and puns placed there purposefully to get a laugh from the audience. This line that Daniels quotes but doesn't cite happens to be from Act 3 of Romeo and Juliet. The line is said by Mercutio, who has already been established as a jokester at the beginning of the plays and whose jokes have had some homosexual overtones. Heck, even in the (and forgive me for bringing this up) recent film adaptation Romeo + Juliet, (yes the one with DiCaprio in it) the character of Mercutio is shown dressing up in drag as a joke while making these homosexual inferences. So, when he uses a double-negative such was, "not budge for no man's pleasure" couldn't Shakespeare be giving a small wink to the audience, as if to say, "So, he'll budge for a certain man's pleasure, huh?" It would seem that contrary to what Daniels says later, due to the slacking of certain grammatical rules not even Daniels can fully understand Shakespeare.

I am truly afraid that because academia has suddenly decided that all forms of English are good and proper and because the apparent devolution of our language is normal and natural that some day we'll find ourselves in a similar position many scholar's in China find themselves today. Because China has switched from traditional Chinese characters to simplified, there are many scholars in China who are afraid they are just a few generations away from being completely unable to read their own ancient texts. If we allow the rules of English grammar to slacken too much will we suddenly find ourselves completely unable to read the great literature of our past?

I was again disturbed while reading Dennis Baron's essay "Weather Report". This time it was not over what the author had to say about grammar, rather it was concerning an anecdote he shared about an experience he had in high school concerning grammar: "I dared to challenge a pronunciation by the severest of my teachers. The word in question was written gaol, the British spelling of our American jail. It is pronounced to rhyme with rail on both sides of the Atlantic." Apparently little teenage Baron corrected his teacher in front of the class, and her reaction was to make him march up from his desk to hers and look the word up in the dictionary and read it to the whole class. This, for any teenager, was punishment. He was proven correct, but still, to the day he grew up and wrote this essay, little Dennis Baron felt punished and humiliated. He says, "I was just a fool who corrected Mrs. N. on some amazingly trivial point."

Now tell me, is this how a teacher should have handled the situation? Especially when the student ended up being right! Does this mean that we teach children to sit quietly by while the teacher is teaching the class how to mispronounce a word? Granted, mispronunciation isn't the worse form of misinformation a teacher could be practicing, but I think that the concept is still the same. If a student sees a teacher make an error and corrects her shouldn't the child be congratulated? That teacher will probably never forget how to pronounce gaol, same with the students present. Grammar was corrected that day and in a manner that was unforgettable, so should the student really be punished? He wasn't talking back, he wasn't insulting the teacher, he was making an informed, educational point. No wonder no one likes grammar classes! Is this how we are to handle students? Even if the child was wrong, shouldn't the teacher have looked it up for the class, graciously, and then informed them of the proper way to pronounce that word? Even if little Dennis Baron was wrong the teacher could have used that interruption to TEACH something instead of to embarrass some teenage kid.

What I am saying is this, the academics of this country have to become more concerned with the slippage happening with our language. Instead of rolling over and excepting the "natural evolution" of our language, which is really becoming an oversimplification, they should stand firm and teach grammar and give everyone a chance to be able to read, understand, and appreciate Shakespeare. Also, instead of humiliating children who challenge grammar or who make grammatical mistakes, teachers should use those opportunities to show why grammar is so important or to teach the correct use of grammar. For crying out loud people, this is important! We have to become more concerned about this!

The Canadians Know More American History Than I Do!

So, who here has heard of the war of 1812? No, no, not when Napoleon invaded Russia, but the war that was going on in America at that time. Anyone? The second war of independence? Does this ring a bell with anyone? It was the time we invaded Canada.

Yes, the U.S. invaded Canada.

I had no clue. Serious, to all Canadians, I bet more than half of the American people have no clue that we ever invaded Canadian soil, ever. Seriously, when I heard "the war of 1812" I thought Napoleon. I had to find this information out from a documentary called "Who Killed Canada". It was mentioned as a matter of course, and here I had no clue.

Apparently my brother-in-law knew about it because he learned it in the State of Wisconsin class he had to take in high school. I didn't have to take a State of Illinois class! What IS this? What else haven't I been taught in school? War with Canada? And why do the Wisconsin people know and we here in Illinois are left in the dark when Chicago's own Fort Dearborn was attacked and burned to the ground in what is now known as the Fort Dearborn massacre? A massacre in Chicago's history and we don't hear about it or are told why it ever happened. Frankly, I am pissed that I have been allowed to go about my life totally ignorant of the history of my home state.

What else don't I know about American history?

Not All Poems Are Good, People.

So I'm feeling like a horrible student of literature. It's not that I don't enjoy literature, I do. Really, I love to read and I usually enjoy reading new books for class and discussing them. I don't feel like a horrible student because of the books I have to read this semester, I feel like a horrible student because of the poems I'm being forced to read.

I'm a creative writing student, and for some reason the university feels that for me to get a complete and well rounded education for creative writing I must be forced to take a years worth of poetry classes where they force me to write my own poetry. I am not a poet. I've never pretended I was poet. I don't write poetry, I write fiction. When I go for my MFA I have to choose either poetry or fiction and never shall the two meet. At least, not in one program. So, my learning how to write poetry has nothing to do with my future in an MFA program, it's just SIUC's form of torture before they allow me to graduate.

That being said, I do not like the poetry I am being forced to read and emulate in my class. It's not that I hate poetry as an art form, I happen to like several poets. Ogden Nash, Rumi , W.H. Auden, Edgar Allen Poe, John Donne, Lord Byron, Shakespeare, all sorts of poets. I like poetry; however, I do not like THIS poetry. If the capital letters don't stress this enough let me make it clear, I do not like this, what IS the present literary era? Post-postmodernism? Are we still in the postmodernism era? Anyway, I don't like this incredibly long and boring poetical crap that we are producing in the modern era.

I just had to read five "expanded object" poems by five different authors and frankly most, if not all, of them were long and boring. Let's face, maybe Frost was write about unrhymed poetry. (Frost, by the way, said that writing an unrhymed poem was like playing tennis without a net.) I don't know, there are several poets I like who don't rhyme, but they seem to show more talent than these poets.

Robert Pinsky's poem "Shirt" just seemed long and depressing. I could see the point he was trying to make about sweat shops, but then he goes beyond that and somehow we end up in Scotland and "Braveheart" talk and I just don't really see the connection. I know there are things called poetical "leaps" but this one leaped right past me and I believe it missed its mark.

Worse, however, was Eamon Grennan's "Cows". This was pretty much as thrilling as watching a bunch of cows chew their cud. No, sorry, not my idea of a great read.

Can any of these authors write a sestina? Do they have any poetical talent whatsoever, or can they just string words on a page? I'll admit, I CAN'T write a sestina, but then again I'm not pretending to be a poet. Shouldn't a poem take a little more talent than writing vague or overly descriptive sentences and arranging them in some artistic way? Shouldn't writing a poem be challenging? Right now it seems like any teenager with angst can write a poem. What IS poetry any more?

And for that matter, I really must ask one last time, what literary era are we? Have we even started one or are we still trying to copy the greats from postmodernism? Is that all we will ever do, copy? Where is the poetry for this age? Maybe we should, if we are going to mimic, mimic a later age. Maybe we should try to recapture the greatness of an era BEFORE modernism, instead of continually following in the footsteps of the postmodernists.

Anyway, that is my rant for today. Mostly because I was bitter for having to waste a part of my Saturday reading poems I would never have finished if I didn't have to.