Building Better English Majors: A Tangental Blog

So, if you've been following the blogs then you know that I've been hitting up the rhetoric books lately (most of which pertain to pedagogy). I also find it good practice to skim through the blogs of my fellow editors. So this week I found a bit of an overlap between an article I read and Jack's last post, so if you haven't read it then get on it. Jack exposed the major holes in the Cal Poly English dept and raged on about how it's producing sub par English Majors. The sad part was that his argument made a lot of sense. I like to think that people who have decided to be English majors have a good chance at gaining competence by picking up a book on their own time. But what about the fledglings?

I'd like to begin the real meat of this post with an anecdote from my ever exciting life. While talking with a friend who I hadn't seen in awhile the subject of school came up. "What classes are you taking next quarter?" I was asked, "Mostly English classes" I responded. Her next comment may just offend you. "Ugh! That sucks! Why!?" she snapped sympathetically. "Because I'm an English major..." So yeah, this isn't the first time I've gotten comments like that. The fact is that most college students hate making it through freshman comp. Why? Because it's a chore.

Today, freshman comp grading standards are based more on the form of the essay than the strength and relevance of the argument (and no, strong form does not equate to a strong argument). Students are asked to jump through hoops instead of actually forming a cogent thought. The problem here is the subjectivity that arises when grading something as open ended as writing, so teachers came up with a style of standardized writing which opened itself up to scrutiny. But how much has the five paragraph essay really taught us about writing?

This is a question that Donald Stewart takes very seriously in his essay "The Continuing Relevance of Plato's Phaedrus." He writes: "The perception students have been given is of parts of a discourse hooked to each other like railroad cars with some appropriate transitions between them. Few are introduced to the idea of a concept generating and creating its own structure, something aesthetically far more pleasing and sound than the wooden, lock-step, mechanical forms they have been taught." In short, students are being taught faulty rhetoric. This type of formulaic writing is not moving in the least and, quite frankly, isn't even applicable to the commonplace task of writing an email. In the end students only need to learn to write a five paragraph essay in order to pass freshman comp, after that... well, who cares?

So what really peeves me about the situation is that students can do everything right and still come out just as inept at writing as when they were introduced into freshman comp. Furthermore, good writers can have their skills degraded because they can't fit into the rigid form of the "academic essay." The common thought among many students is "Writing essays is pointless skill." The sad thing is that I, along with many professors share this sentiment.

Since I moved beyond freshman comp and into the real guts of the English program I have found that many professors have a "forget everything you know about writing essays" attitude. I've often been instructed "A five paragraph essay won't be accepted here" or, even worse, "Don't write a five paragraph essay on the GWT, it's not what we want to see and we will mark you off for it." So, why do we continue to teach students skills that won't even prepare them to convincingly pass an elementary writing test? I'd like to think that it's some conspiracy to keep students in school longer, but the reality is that I just have no idea. I would think that standardized writing would at least be accepted by the establishment that perpetuates it.

A major dynamic shift needs to happen in the classroom. The focus of composition needs to be based more on synthesis rather than form. The writing process needs to be seen as "the growing seed which contains the potentialities of the adult plant. The separate parts of an oak tree, developed from an acorn, are easily distinguished, but never separated from the concept of the entire living tree" (Stewart again with my italics). The key words here are living and growing. The oak tree cannot be quantified until it is fully grown, it may just take up more or less space than five paragraphs can provide. The point is that students to to learn to create because that will allow them to excel in diverse styles of writing.

Well, this concludes my rant. A problem with freshman comp is a problem with the stepping stone into the English program. If things don't change then Jack just might not have any English majors to worry about. But for now we'll just wait for his next post.

Here's for waiting,

-Rainamoinen

LETTER TO THE LEAVES: A TIP FOR PREPARING YOUR NEXT RESEARCH PAPER

From the desk of Bermuda Blues:

My Fellow Contributors,

I am in the process of researching a paper on Jonathan Edwards's Personal Narrative. I have already gathered the necessary resources. Most of the books I have checked out are secondary criticisms about Edwards and the literature he wrote. However, in order to get a better understanding of who Edwards was as a man and by extension who he was as an author, I have found it is important to learn more than just what another scholar has thought about him. What is important is to understand the environment in which Edwards wrote and the personal factors which motivated him to write.

In order to accomplish this, I have been reading the biography, Johnathan Edwards: A Life, written by George Marsden. This book has been instrumental in helping me get a feel for who Edwards was as a young man as well as the environment he was raised in, which developed his creative genius.

This technique, of uncovering the foundation of an author's motivations and inspirations, is extremely useful when you are critically analyzing personal narratives or literature in the fields of Realism, and Romanticism because in each of these, there are aspects of the author in both the structure and the content. William Wordsworth's Prelude is an example of a poet using language and structure to express the poet's mind. William Dean Howells, the author of Hazard of New Fortunes, put pieces of himself into the characters he created. Basil March and Angus Beaton, the main protagonists, embody many of the same characteristics that Howells saw in himself. By commanding a firm grasp on the stimuli that developed each of these creative minds you would be better able to anticipate and better understand the imagery in each particular author's work.

This understanding will lend its hand in better interpreting what critics are discussing and will help you to see the limits of their criticisms. Finding these limits will help you find a place to plant and grow your paper to ensure you are going out to new frontiers of literary discovery.

I end with this: start early and read often. Don't sell yourself out from the possibility of taking literature in a new direction and leaving your mark on the world, if only for your own fulfillment.

Undoubtedly Yours,

Bermuda

♪♪ Twilight, Snooki, 3D movies, These are a few of my favorite things ♪♪

Let me just start off by saying that there aren't three other things in the world that i detest as much as the listed above. Well . . . that may be a lie, I hate a lot of things, and if you are rocking back and fourth in your computer chair while hugging your knees in anticipation of a list of such things, I'm sorry, that isn't what follows, but just pay attention and I'm sure they will slowly leak out in my blogs. And, I know there is someone out there who is reading this title and my following comments and is currently constructing an effigy of me to sacrificially burn to a totem of Stephanie Meyer, but that person is probably 12 years old and still thinks The Beatles are the greatest rock band of all time, so I really couldn't care less.

My intention for this blog is to leave things as open ended as possible as to facilitate a dialogue between AFLM staff, readers, and contributers alike before my next blog, wherein I intend to discuss the issue more finitely. Here goes nothin'.

By what criteria are we judging artistic merit?


I was urged to write this open ended blog when, earlier today, I went to a local Barnes & Noble (what can I say, not even my - at times - suffocating pompousness can refuse holiday coupons) and saw a copy of James Joyce's ULYSSES purposefully placed next to a copy of the bestselling A SHORE THING by snooki on a table that determined them "Recommended Reading". I was appalled to say the least and stormed out the bookstore in a fitful literary tirade.

If Snooki's book is popular around the world, and Joyce, and other such under-appreciated authors, is popular only with the pinnacle of academic aesthetes, does that make us academics just better than everyone else? I say HELL YES!

Okay, now I feel like I'm rambling so I will leave everyone with the question,

By what criteria should art be judged or attributed value?

Think about it. Comment, argue, re-comment, I want to hear everyone's thoughts.

P.s. I would love to read how professors feel also. Yes, that means you Dr. Corley, I know you surf around these parts every so often, so, instruct us.


Queasily,

Eric W. Strege

La Vie en Rose or La Vie en Merde?

A couple of days ago, as part of a class discussion about altered states of perception (as this topic relates to the book, The Botany of Desire, that we are currently reading) I presented my students with the following common scenario: you have a sugar/caffeine high that makes you see everything as basically happy and good for at least five minutes, and then you "crash" and feel tired and cranky and believe everything around you to be shit. Which, I inquired, of the two experiences is "real," the experience of the world as wonderful or the one of it as shit? They answered unequivocally that it was the latter.

Their response has somewhat haunted me (even more than my recent viewing of Paranormal Activity 3). At the time, I simply informed them that they are all clearly pessimists. Even though we as a class moved on shortly after, I have continued to dwell on their belief that, as a few of them explained, the perception of goodness is a false one, while the perception of bleakness is an understanding of reality or the "way things really are."

How many people out there feel this way? And what does it say about them if they do? Contemplating this makes me think more deeply about my students. Just how unhappy are they really? I teach low levels of developmental composition at a community college. Many of my students do not, as of yet, possess the skills they need to succeed at college-level writing; they are of varying age and have incredibly diverse backgrounds. All of them are attending college with at least a vague notion of improving themselves, or at least their economic potential, in one way or another. Many of them are disabled, from severe vision problems to learning disorders. And even those who do not have any kind of disability or children at home (isn’t that the same thing?) have a lot on their plates and in all honesty, most are juggling their various challenges quite well.

But, what about their inner-lives? If they believe the world is "really" a shitty place and that to see it as otherwise is a false perception, what can change that? Will the acquirement of a college education and maybe better work prospects change that?

Just to be clear, I am not saying that the world really is a beautiful happy place like we sometimes perceive it after just the right amount of rum-and-cokes or a puff of weed, but rather that it's all a matter of perception. The world is nothing without us ascribing meaning to it.

So, if the world is nothing aside from what we make of it and aside from what we believe it can be, then the people who have decided that, no matter what, the world is a terrible place, will live terrible lives. They will conduct themselves under the false belief that the only way to experience happiness and see the world as possessing wonder and beauty is to be under the influence. Under the influence of a sugar high, or to be drunk, or to be entranced and immobile in front of their television, or to be living their lives via their Iphones, or to be in the middle of scarfing a Big Mac, or to be stoned. To be under the influence of any consciousness altering drug or to be distracted by fabricated worlds. They will be addicts who operate under the assumption that they need whatever it is they're dependent on to function because if they come out from under whatever their drug of choice, the world will be a scary dark place with nothing to offer them. They will be living as drones, always too scared to come out of their distractions and create a different perception of what is "really" around them. To answer my own question about their inner-lives, they won't have any.

I do not know as of yet if this is really the fate for my students, and I certainly hope it's not. In the meantime, I find myself with a renewed sense of purpose in my job as their English instructor. I commit to do what little I can to help them see the power of their perceptions, the power of their belief in themselves, the power of reading to help them form different perceptions, and the power of their writing to give shape to their perceptions and therefore the world around them.

I leave you with a quotation from Marcel Proust, who can of course say all of this much better than I because he's French: "The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

Building Better English Majors Part I

The English Undergraduate program at Cal Poly Pomona is wonderful - that is, if you take out the useless English majors, the awful admissions bureaucracy, and add in a few more million dollars to the budget. I've had a great time as an undergraduate student at Cal Poly, and this magazine would not be where it is today if it weren't for the occasional combat boot to the back of the head; however, it is becoming clear that our department, as great as it is, needs some major improvements. We need to re-examine what it is to be English majors at Cal Poly just as much as the department needs to re-examine what they must do in order to facilitate our growth as academics.
One of the largest flaws I see in the undergraduate program at CPP is the set of classes the department has deemed the "core classes." All English Literature majors are required to take Shakespeare After 1600, Literary Theory, Advanced Expository Writing, and Grammar of Modern English - the rest of the units are up to the student.

I, by no means, am one for imposing an entire curriculum on a student; however, I think there are a couple of fundamental things an English major needs to have under their belt before they complete their Bachelor's Degree. The four core classes, while useful in their own regard, are not enough to build a foundation for even a decent English major - of course, this is just my opinion. The core we currently adhere to needs to be revised, and the department needs to consider re-establishing a core that actually means something.

The first section of the core should be a two-part class based in Literary Theory. Literary Theory should be taught early on in the undergraduate career, as it is the first real tool a fledgling English major needs in order to be successful. Lit Theory, as it currently is set up at CPP, briefly looks at four to six theories over the span of ten weeks, creating merely a synopsis for students to work off of. The first section of Literary theory should, therefore, be a broader, deeper examination of the theories rather than a quick glossing over of Derrida or Aristotle - especially because entire classes could be focused around either of said theorists. The second portion of Lit Theory should be dedicated solely to the application of the theories learned over the course of the previous installment of ten weeks. Theory class, as it currently stands, can only touch upon meaning, and - in my experience - the application of theory seems to follow auto-didactically after the class is over. If a secondary "application" class were to be followed directly after the "theory" based class, students would more likely to understand and use theory correctly and efficiently.

-side note - I'm a huge theory guy, so I apologize if the previous paragraph came off as a rant

The other classes all sort of go hand-in-hand. The other parts of the core should be Bible as Literature, Myth as Literature, and Dante's Divine Comedy. If this seems like a weird triad for what the core of literature should be, then you might want to quit reading this post now and go apply to be a business major or something of that banal nature.

Bible as Literature needs to be taught. It's in everything. Seriously. I'm not even going to waste my time creating a catalog of everything that's been influenced by the Bible. If an English major isn't at least familiar with the Bible, everything else is kind of a muddled mess.

The same goes for myth. I seriously can't believe Ovid isn't a mandatory text for all English majors. In fact, more Ovid references come immediately to my mind than Bible references. I admit, I started reading Ovid late in my academic career, but I really wish The Metamorphoses had been introduced to me earlier; it would have made things a lot easier.

Finally, we need to read The Divine Comedy. I still have only read parts - and even then I've only read translations. We need to read TDC for so many reasons; many of which are the same reasons why we need to read Chaucer. Translation of text is something all English majors - who, I assume, are language lovers - need to do for a multitude of reasons. Furthermore, Inferno alone is referenced throughout literature as much as the Bible or Ovid are. These three texts are the basis by which many texts were crafted, and a fundamental understanding of each of them is crucial to the success of any would-be scholar.

For the sake of space on the blog, I'll stop here. I'll be sure to continue this article next week.

Notes for Writers - Kill your dead metaphors

Please consider this description of a glittery vampire:

“Edward in the sunlight was shocking. I couldn’t get used to it, though I’d been staring at him all afternoon. His skin, white despite the faint flush from yesterday’s hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface.” (Meyers, 260)

Now please consider these descriptions of inanimate objects:

“You have to walk a mile to find a telephone booth, but when you find it, it is built as if the senseless dynamiting of pay phones had been a serious problem at some time in the past. And a British mailbox can presumably stop a German tank.”(Stephenson, 148)

Both of these excerpts describe nouns, both are about the same length in words (neither is more than 50 words), both are narration not dialogue, but one is apt and amusing while the other is somewhat insipid at best.

I know that it’s easy to make fun of the Twilight books, but more people are interested in laughing at the fans than in really examining why the books themselves are so laughable, mainly because the latter concern is easily answered: the Devil’s in the details.

Meyers’ description of her main male character is entirely based on cliché. Sounds weird, doesn’t it, that glittery bloodsuckers are trite?

Well, they are when written like this. Shining, sparkling, shimmering or glowing like diamonds (even thousands of tiny ones) has been done. Done to death. It’s a dead metaphor and nobody who takes their writing seriously uses language like that for anymore. Don’t believe me? Look at the list below.

The ocean looks like a thousand diamonds, strewn across a blue blanket. – Incubus

Her lips like the red rose in dew, her eyes they did sparkle like diamonds – The Maid with the Bonny Brown Hair (Irish folk song author unknown)

Shine on you crazy diamond – Pink Floyd

I want a girl with a mind like a diamond, I want a girl who knows what’s best – Cake

No one on that list is serious. All of those lyrics (and please note, they’re lyrics, not prose) are making a point about the cliché of shining like diamonds or are trying to kill the cliché by expanding the metaphor, for instance, the Cake lyric is about how diamonds are cutting and sharp – not how they’re sparkly.

Now think back to the description of a phone booth and a mailbox. Neither the phone booth nor the mailbox are described by their overt visible properties – you hear nothing about their shapes, colors or sizes; instead Stephenson uses a humorous suggestion of their physical properties to allow an image to form in the mind of the reader. I’ll admit that the ability of an object to stop a tank is somewhat overused in descriptions of various intimidating things (occasionally women) but the thought of a mailbox as an intimidating object never occurred to me until I was actually typing this sentence. What Stephenson has done here is the opposite of what Meyers does in her books; Stephenson uses wry phrasings to animate the inanimate while Meyers uses dead metaphors that (unintentionally, I’m sure) suck the life out of her characters.

So what does that have to do with you, reader?

I’ve read about a lot of shining eyes, soothing waters, kind hands, warm hearts, quiet rain, frozen time, awkward silences, and loving caresses recently.

Stop it.

I want to read about shining fists, soothing arguments, kind ignitions, warm katydids, quiet tsunamis, frozen cats, awkward sex, and loving LCD screens.

Shake up your writing, mess things up, be original and be daring. When I was in a creative writing class once, and made the mistake of writing “time froze” in one of my short stories. My professor’s response was a kind “DEAD METAPHOR” scribbled in inch high letters with a red pen. My response was to reconsider and turn in a second draft with “time took a breath” in its place. It might not have been the best fix, though I was fairly happy with it, but at least it wasn’t one of a million stories, poems, novels, essays, or articles with “time froze” somewhere in there.

As an experiment, consider:

Annie’s heart slowed only after Kevin lowered his shining fists and stalked back to his rattling old Dodge. Yesterday, once all the soothing arguments, heralds of a better time coming, were done her ignition had been kind and allowed her to get her beater of a Beetle the hell out after only wrenching the key twice.

Today, in the wake of Kevin’s latest attempt at reconciliation, the warm katydid hum on the air was a balm – a soothing tsunami that washed away the tension burned into her after the day; her muscles, which had been as rigid as a cat frozen by a sudden sound, relaxed. Kevin was awkward sex at its worst, all elbows and knees, all the time, with eyes as loving as an LCD screen when all your searches return zero results.

Sure, it’s not much – yet – but it’s the beginning of something interesting, and that’s all that matters. So kill your dead metaphors, dump out your shining diamonds, and welcome a world of dynamited phone booths and soothing tsunamis. Play with your language, play with your perceptions, and let’s get out there and make a better world of it in and for books.

- Cheers,

Alli

Works Cited:

Meyers, Stephanie. Twilight. Qtd. online. 2005.

Stephenson, Neal. Cryptonomicon. Avon Books. New York: New York 2005.

Defining Texts

Originally posted Sunday, October 23, by Rainamoinen at www.afewlinesmagazine.com

To anyone who’s interested,

While scanning through some essays on rhetoric (for class, of course) I stumbled upon a bit of an interesting question. The essay was “The Evolution of the Analytic Topoi” by Frank D’Angelo, which sounds like (and is) a pretty thick read. I’ll spare you the finer points and just say what really caught my attention was his insight into the ancient Greek mindset. He claims that the Greeks, a pre-written culture, contained their entire cultural schema within the context of oral traditions such as the Iliad. D’Angelo goes on to conclude this branch of his argument (through a much more skillful and thought out process than I) that the Greek’s ability to think critically was impaired by such a system because of the way which such stories are passed through a culture. Such epics are propagated by massive repetition and mnemonics, not critical analysis. People were defined by the story by default, without questioning it. I’ll end the lecture here as I’m sure the relevance of this essay is being questioned in regards to a literary magazine’s blog.

So, back to the question which I alluded to at the beginning of the lesson. Do we, as individuals, have certain texts or stories that we reach for to define ourselves? Of course, religious doctrines still play a major part in defining a morality in populations across to world but for the sake of my audience I’d like to keep this conversation within the realm of literature. I found that the type of literature I enjoy had a larger impact on my persona than I thought.

Now, as everyone on the editorial staff knows, I’m a big Kerouac fan and it’s really the literature of the beat movement that spring boarded me into literary studies. Since I first read “On the Road” I have been very passionate about travelling (cliche, I know, but cliches are cliches for a reason). Now, I wasn’t passionate about travel before reading the book but I wouldn’t say it inspired that idea, but rather touched on something latent in my personality. Though my interests are still disconnected from Kerouac’s work, I can’t help but think that it defines me in some way and I will always reach for it when asked about my affinity towards travel.

So what makes us different than the Greeks? Well, for one thing we have many stories and personal epics to draw upon in our ever diverse world. But can we really choose which texts define us or *gasp* do they find us? Do we like certain types of literature because it contains our interests or does it awaken such interests for us?

But all said and done, what I feel I’m really concerned with is my readiness to use someone else’s voice to define my thoughts as if I wasn’t perfectly capable of making my own. Think of every time you’ve asked a question in class and got the answer “Well, Plato wouldn’t agree” or “Derrida would say no” or “x thinks y.” Or even worse, think about all the times you’ve given an answer like that.

So, has literature defined you in some way? Do you like it? Does it make you sick? Am I full of it? Leave a comment and chime in.

‘Till next time,

Rainamoinen

Letter to the Leaves

Originally posted on Saturday, October 22, by Bermuda at www.afewlinesmagazine.com

My Fellow Contributors,

On my drive home the other day, I was listening to John and Ken on AM 640. They were in downtown Fullerton that day helping the Friends for Fullerton gather signatures to recall three members of Fullerton's city council. These government officials are to said to have tried to sweep the police killing of Kelly Thomas under the carpet. On July 5th of this year, Thomas was beaten to death by Fullerton police after there was a report that someone was breaking into cars near a bus depot. Thomas was homeless, and was staying in the area when he was approached by two officers and questioned. What eventually took place can be seen here in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ljYNgLnpxM

One officer has been charged with second-degree murder and another officer has been charged with involuntary manslaughter for their parts in the death of Thomas (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/09/da-announces-kelly-thomas-murder-charges.html).

I was intrigued by this story because in the fours months since this incident had taken place I hadn't really heard a lot about it. So I took some time to look through Youtube and found several videos related to the Thomas story. I found one of the actual beating with subtitles, which I have listed above and I found another that was a television news report.

One video that I found stood out from the rest because it delivered much more than a news report. It commented upon the importance of personal video cameras and social media in getting news stories out to the public and keeping our government officials and police in check. The video, which was posted by ReasonTv, is entitled Cops vs. Cameras: The Killing of Kelly Thomas and The Power of New Media.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7YFKm9gnKo

The video begins by paralleling the beating of Rodney King to the beating of Thomas and how important video has been in both. The video also chronicles the development of the Kelly Thomas news story and how it eventually made its way to the national news circuit. It also shows the grassroots movement that has started as a result of this and interviews several people who are seen protesting outside of the Fullerton police station.

The video ends with an emotionally charged statement from Thomas's father, Ron Thomas, to the members of the city council. In just a few lines he delivers a powerful statement in which he calls upon those members who tried to cover up this tragedy, to remember his son's dying words for the rest of their lives, "Dad! Dad!".

Because I was so captivated by this documentary I went to ReasonTv's Youtube page where I found several other videos that piqued my interest. One that I found especially insightful was the video Gov. Gary Johnson Among the Occupy Wall Street Protesters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7YFKm9gnKo

And with that I leave you with the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that"

Undoubtedly Yours,

Bermuda

Between Eliot and Enlightenment, What Makes a Good Poet?

Originally posted Friday, October 21, by Slick Pine at www.afewlinesmagazine.com

A few weeks ago I picked up a copy of Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth after a friend begged me to read it. Since then, I’ve been on a pretty intense consciousness-trip, and I love it. Tolle argues that the egoic mind, the part of you that desperately attempts to give you an identity, is the cause of all of life’s suffering; he hints that we often spend our lives dwelling on emotions that we mistakenly identify ourselves with. In order to move past this barrier, Tolle suggests that we should live in the now and stop thinking about ourselves.

Check out Eckhart Tolle here: http://www.youtube.com/user/EckhartTeachings

I could be projecting, but as I was reading through T.S. Eliot's thoughts on what makes a good poet, I thought it was interesting that he seemed to have reached nearly the same enlightenment as Tolle -- only in a literary sense.

In Tradition and The Individual Talent, Eliot explores the idea of 'traditional' poetry, and comes to the conclusion that poets should stop thinking of themselves and learn more about their traditions -- as he puts it, "...a writer [should be] most acutely conscious of his place in time, [and] of his own contemporaneity" (maybe Eliot is telling poets to do in a literary sense exactly what Tolle is telling the world to do -- live in the now). Eliot seems to think that the tradition is everything; there is no poet in a poem, only the tradition of the poet and of the poets before him. He explains that the tradition is not something that you can learn and copy; it is something that you must add to, and in doing so, change altogether. He says, "what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it". He continues to say, "... the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past". It's all pretty metaphysical if you ask me; the 'tradition' exists in timelessness and is never really growing, but is always shifting and changing. In order for a poet to be any good, s/he must be aware of this abstract 'tradition', and as Eliot says, "the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities".

The similarities really hit me when Eliot started criticizing the Romantics for their raw emotion; it seems that Eliot(just like Tolle) wants poets to stop thinking of themselves and their emotions and start thinking about what is in the emotions themselves. He describes William Wordsworth's famous definition of poetry, "emotion recollected in tranquility," as an "inexact formula." he explains that when a poet sits down to write in a quite place, there is no "emotion," or "recollection," or even "tranquility" present -- there are only thoughts jumbling up in a person's head as s/he concentrates to create a new thing from old experiences. Eliot's idea of a good poet is someone who is able to "divert interest from the poet to the poem," and who strives to express "significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet".

Ultimately, it seems that both in writing and in life, you must get rid of your personality to truly find yourself.
My advice: Write away from yourself.

-S.Pine

Suicidal Scriptors?

Originally posted Thursday, October 20, by Eric W. Strege at www.afewlinesmagazine.com

To our devout followers,

Recently I, while re-categorizing my library, became reacquainted with a book which I’m sure – at one time or another in my possession – was used as a doorstop. The book is Roland Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text, a work of portentous literary criticism which serves as a Structuralist “manifesto” of sorts. In it, Barthes questions the notion of textual significance as driven by the vehicle of authorial notoriety or intent, which got me to thinking about the little bio “quips” usually attached to the submissions we at AFLM receive. I decided that this theory is something worthy of the readership’s attention and took it upon myself to compose a modest essay in regards to a section of Barthes’ text, aptly titled, “The Death of the Author.”

Roland Barthes, a luminary of the Structuralist movement, vehemently called for the literary public to distance themselves from the classical concept of authorial lordship through his evocatively titled essay, The Death of the Author, wherein he urges readers to separate literary works from their authors in order to liberate the writing from antiquated interpretive strictures. Barthes continues on to say that, “To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on the text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing”, and in so doing, devalues the text by implying that the work is singular in its objective and unmeritorious of multifaceted interpretation. Furthermore, in contrast to classical and romantic beliefs, Barthes regards authorial antecedence to a work as a fallacy, further postulating that, “the modern Scriptor is born simultaneously with the text”, the Scriptor existing only to produce, but not to explain the work. Barthes reinforces the theory of the “Intentional Fallacy”, in its rejection of the Author’s intended meaning as constituting the work’s primary import, through the development of his theory in which he established the Scriptor and text as co-creators of themselves, consequently making Authorial intent indefinite and variable.
Through the rejection of the Author or Scriptor, as regards textual interpretation, Barthes advocates individual literary explication, insisting that literary meaning is established by the impressions of the reader, and not by authorial authority. In so doing, Barthes’s devaluing of the author aims to properly acclaim the text, and celebrate its audience acceptance, rather than further aggrandizing the Author and his unequivocal analysis.

If you have made it this far, and haven’t been lured down the charlatanistic primrose path by more immediately gratifying distractions, you are to be both commended and congratulated, for a point is on the eminent horizon. As much as we respect all of our contributors for their efforts in sustaining the magazine with a constant stream of submissions, we are not able to accept all of them for one reason or the next. One reason, which has become more prevalent, is a seeming preponderance of effort put into the bio “quips”, as noted above. Most contributors use the given bio space to give a name and a way to contact them with the ruling on their piece. Some submitters, on the other hand, find this space appropriate to use in lauding themselves with what seems to be an endless enumeration of accolades and accomplishments. Others, still, commit an even more egregious transgression, that is, they use the space to tell the editors how the piece should be interpreted! Please be aware that I am by no means out to offend any readers, only to comment on some apparent bones of contention. It is our pleasure and purpose here at AFLM to consider so many great pieces of work from all across the genres and mediums for publication, and consider ourselves privileged to have such a loyal following of individuals who appreciate the contemporary literary heritage as much as we do. With that in mind, remember to let the quality your work speak for itself. Don’t try to dazzle us with claims of celebrity, and please do not stifle your piece by providing us a pre-packaged analysis. If the piece is a truly great work – like some of the pieces we receive are – its significance and urgency will be communicated through the given text, photograph, etc. In short, let’s all aspire to take a page out of Barthes’ book and further commit ourselves to the crafts of artistry, never forgetting that it is the work we leave behind that becomes our legacy.

With all due respect,
Eric W. Strege

How does an afternoon with Hemingway sound to you?

Originally posted Wednesday, October 19th, by Leena Fitzgerald at www.afewlinesmagazine.com

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times recently wrote an interesting article, "A Farewell to Macho," on our shifting viewpoints of Ernest Hemingway. I was instantly drawn in by her article as she quickly identifies herself as "a Fitzgerald girl." I, as my pen name should reveal, am also a Fitzgerald girl. So, I felt a bit of kinship to Dowd, especially as she went on to rhetorically muse, "What could be more gorgeous than 'The Great Gatsby'?" Right?! Her main thesis is that female readers have long viewed Hemingway, in contrast to Fitzgerald, as the man's man of the literary world and therefore possessing little to offer them. She states, however, that Hemingway has experienced something of a revival in popular culture, a revival that could prove successful at sparking his feminist reevaluation. To materialize this supposed revolution, Dowd offers many examples of Hemingway's current presence, my favorite of which being his appearance as "the funniest character in Woody Allen's 'Midnight in Paris.'" Dowd mentions this portrayal in mere passing; however, I think there is much more to be said about Allen's take on old Ernest.

If Hemingway has in fact been viewed for decades as the ultimate- let's just say it- asshole, utterly unsuited to the tastes of female readers, then what has Midnight in Paris done to this impression? Allen has taken the asshole and made him into such a charming cad. He's slightly misanthropic and brooding, yet jovial and friendly, he drinks too much but never seems to lose control, only harmlessly hinting at the violence that could erupt at any moment. He pursues the beautiful female lead (played by Marion Coutillard, so who can blame him? He'd be an asshole if he didn't) and we see nothing of his wife who, in real life, was at home raising their offspring. All we see is the Hemingway that we'd all want to be friends with and it doesn't hurt that the actor is not only charming and interesting, but pretty sexy. In a word, Allen has made his Hemingway harmless. Harmless and likable. For fans of the iconic director, it is pretty easy to see how Allen has "Woody Allen-ized" Hemingway. He is, essentially, making fun of an individual who most of us have come to see as a serious man; Allen has certainly identified the humor in Hemingway's ruse of off-putting manliness (Dowd has much more to say on this concept) and certainly is familiar with his syntax as his character Hemingway emulates it at every turn. And by making fun of Hemingway, Allen makes him significantly easier to swallow especially for the less-than-completely initiated.

I have been a fan of a few of Hemingway's short stories for a least a couple of years, but before that, I utterly hated him. Many years ago, I ended an arduous on-again off-again relationship with Ernest after reading A Movable Feast. How could I, a lover of all-things Parisian, hate this book? Well, in it, he speaks ill of one of my other aforementioned loves, F. Scott. For those of you who aren’t familiar, in a section titled "A Matter of Measurements," Hemingway details an encounter in which Fitzgerald confides in him that his wife had "said that the way [he] was built [he] could never make any woman happy…" (188). Fitzgerald then tells Hemingway to take a look and let him know "truly." When I first read this novel, and didn't know that it had been published posthumously, I thought, "what kind of a bastard prints something like this?" Hence, my personal affront to the bravado of Ernest Hemingway.

This all had to be reevaluated, however, when I finally read "A Clean Well-Lighted Place." I found that I was more than pleasantly able to stomach Hemingway when he was not present in his novels. [And that's putting my reaction quite lightly- I adore this story and all that it has revealed to me about the genius of Hemingway's style.] I guess I felt about him the way that some feel about Woody Allen- they like his movies, but they just can't stand when he's in them.

As Allen's personality can be somewhat off-putting, Hemingway's can certainly be abrasive and rather Russell "Fightin' Round the World" Crow exasperating, at least, as Dowd contends, for female readers. But, back to my other point about Woody Allen- he has managed to make that macho, misogynistic revealer of other men's shortcomings into someone we actually would want to hang out with. He's taken all of the positive potency he possessed and put it into an appealing and attractive, not abrasive and off-putting, package.

Thanks to Woody, I have returned to Hemingway, not with the image of the man alone with that shotgun and some bitingly revealing words to say about his closest confidants, but rather with one of a man I might find charming were I to happen upon him- or he upon me- in a bar. The Hemingway I thought I knew is not one I cared to chat with. But, the Hemingway I met in Midnight in Paris, coupled with the narrative voice I recalled from "A Clean Well-Lighted Place," was one I wanted to spend more time with, one I wanted to tell me more stories. And it is one I have found as I've continued to read his writing. I am once again tackling A Farewell to Arms. And I'm noticing the effects of Allen's re-imagining. I don't take offense or get overly annoyed when his narrator, Henry, makes rather misogynistic remarks about the relationships between men and women, rather I hear them as utterings of a young callous man, someone very human. They are not comments to be taken, as some women have, as philosophy.

I have been enjoying my time with Ernest, and if you've been shunning him to the dusty corner of your bookshelf for his seeming rudeness and sour demeanor, I encourage you to spend some time with him and see what you find.

Thanks for reading and be sure to check out the inspiration for this tangent at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/opinion/sunday/dowd-a-farewell-to-macho.html?_r=1&ref=ernesthemingway

Until next time,

Leena Fitzgerald

Work Cited

Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. New York: Bantam, 1964. Print.

Surface vs. Substance: An Examination of Editorial Responsibility in the Literary Community

Originally posted on Tuesday, October 18, by Jack Foster at www.afewlinesmagazine.com

Hey guys,

I've been thinking a lot about the publishing world and what it means to be part of a literary magazine. I believe there is a certain degree of responsibility which all editors need to uphold; however, when I look at other magazines, I sometimes feel cheated by the product I look at - namely because I've seen some pretty awful pieces published in some magazines I respect. I, like every other writer, have a rather large stack of rejection letters, and sometimes I'm baffled by them. I'm by no means an established poet, but some publications surprise me with their decisions.

So why is it that some pieces, regardless of how good or bad they are, get rejected by certain publications? Obviously that's a hard question to tackle and there isn't one good answer, but I've been looking through a ridiculous number of magazines lately and a common thread I've seen spread through said magazines is the issue of taste.

Taste, I think, should not play into determining whether or not a piece holds literary value. It really kills me when I see certain types of poetry published in magazines. I'm not going to name names, but there have been a couple of pieces in a fantastic magazine that have made me cringe. One poem even had an explanation of itself posted underneath it. There have also been poems published in certain magazines that seem to be purely aesthetic in nature - structurally so, not aestheticism based in imagery or subject matter - and seem to lack any nuggets of actual meaning. Unorthodox structure does not hold literary value in and of itself, nor does it really mean anything if it's not being used as a means of conveyance. If I had a nickel for every time I saw a poem centered around structure rather than content, I'd have a shitload of nickels. And it's silly that I have to address this issue in the publishing world, but it seems some publishers are hooked in by pretty looking poems. Surface vs. substance comes into play here, and, sadly, it seems that many magazines reject substance over surface.

I don't want to go on a rant, though, and it certainly isn't my place to tell a poet how to write. I do think, however, publishers ought to look past aesthetics and focus in on what is actually being presented in whatever work they're reviewing. The issue of taste is multi-dimensional, and structure is just one example of how taste serves as a detriment to the publishing realm.

There, I would think, are many ways to keep taste to a minimum, though. I believe our publication is less inclined to let taste play a role in our review process because we have eight editors, all of whom read through every submission. By having such a large reading staff, we are able to keep each other in check, and thereby review submissions based on their literary merit rather than their "flavor." I realize "literary merit" is a very loose term; however, we are all strongly grounded in literary theory and American literature, which, I think, qualifies us as responsible reviewers of literature.

I really do believe literary magazines need to have large mastheads, and I think they serve many purposes in terms of maintaining literary integrity in the publishing world. I realize this article might come off a bit hostile, but I really do believe that some magazines need to take a step back and reflect on how they go about reviewing the work they receive. Editors have an enormous responsibility to not only the audience we present work to, but to the countless up-and-coming writers who flood our inboxes on a daily basis. The act of giving away a piece of creative writing is a dangerous one, and the editors/publishers hold the power to uplift or destroy the spirits of the people who submit to them. So with that being said, please, publishers, be careful with how you review literature, and make sure you're remaining diligent in selecting works of literary merit. The world of literature is ever-changing, and it is our responsibility to make sure the tradition we foster is one we can someday look back on and be proud of.

Cheers,

Jack

Notes for Writers - In honor of our latest deadline

Originally posted Monday, October 17, by Alli at www.afewlinesmagazine.com

We, the editorial staff of AFLM, have just passed another round of reading to see what will and won't make the cut for our next issue. With that in mind I see some problems in the world of writing for publication and thought I might offer some advice for those people who are looking to improve their chances when submitting to this, or any other, literary magazine.

The first places that I ever had my writing published are the kinds of places that the literary world sneers at. I was taught to write, not for journals or clubs or collections of literature, for the pages of my high school newspaper and yearbook. From there I moved on to my junior college newspaper and magazine, stopping along the way to design, write and print several professional conference programs; all of this was before I got to a Cal State and had the shrewd eyes of professors gauging and weighing every sentence I turned over to them. By the time I got here, to the publishing desk of AFLM, I had already had a rather unique experience in presenting my words to any kind of audience. For those of you who haven't shared in these experiences, let me tell you that having a professor mark you down or getting a story rejected by a literary magazine is nothing in comparison to the shame of your yearbook accidentally publishing a story about defeating Communist Hawaii High at water polo, misprinting a college president's name as "WHO IS THIS PERSON" for 20,000 students to see, having every attendee at a conference come up and needle you over a typo, or (worst of all) realizing that there are a couple thousand people in your hometown with your idiotic 16-year-old opinions committed to print forever.

These kind of shocks are normally reserved for journalists because more people pick up the local free paper or buy their high school yearbook than will ever see most of the poems, short stories, essays or artworks ever submitted to a small journal for consideration. As such, I have some well-gotten advice to share. I hope it helps.

1. Read your copy to a tree.
This sounds stupid, I know, but it works. But before you choose to submit something, before you share it with friends, before you let your mom read what you've written, read your copy to a tree. I do this for almost everything I write and it works because you need to have a safe audience who can criticize your work - in other words, you need to hear what you've written before you really realize what you've written. A tree (or a cat, or a dog, or an infant niece or nephew) is a living thing that will listen to your work without commenting which allows you to hear what you've said. You hear all your mistakes, all the sentences that don't make sense, all the numbers, all the research you've forgotten to add until the last minute; in other words, you hear all the things that you glance past because YOU know what you meant to say that others will jump to criticize or that will make you look foolish if printed.

2. Get away from a computer.
I write all of my poetry, much of my fiction, and at least half of my articles or essays longhand. This is nice because it means that I don't have to lug a computer around with me all the time and can instead just scribble some notes or an outline in a notebook or on a napkin. But even better than the convenience is the inconvenience. We live in a digital age, most people can type faster than they can think through a sentence or read for a mistake and so the mistake might as well not exist if the author is so busy typing up more sentences and probably more mistakes. So write longhand, transcribe on a computer (adding more and trimming as needed) and literally get in touch with your work.

3. Put it in a drawer.
One of the most frustrating things on a yearbook or a magazine staff is the day when you actually get your product. You've been away from it for at least a couple weeks and as soon as the boxes with your book are unpacked you grab one, sit down, and scan for everything you did wrong. And every single time you did something wrong. When you're working on a daunting project - a poem that needs a lot of adjustment, a longish short story, anything that you're planning on presenting for other people to read - at some point the work becomes invisible to you. You're so worried about it that you can no longer see the words on the page, no matter how many times you look at them which is why writers need to take a vacation from their writing. Stuff it in a drawer before you submit it, don't look at it for at least a week (a month is more ideal) then go through it slowly; if you still like it, it's as ready as it ever will be for publication - if you don't like it, see the next bit of advice.

4. Rewrite.
Nobody spits out a perfect first draft, it just doesn't happen. Most bad writing is fixable, almost all writing is capable of being good, and even good writing can always be better. Look for worn-out phrases and replace them with something fresh, see if your structure needs to be tweaked, allow for new ideas to form and materialize in re-writing so that your work is better as a whole. If you think that you are touched by the muses and your first draft was perfect and all other drafts you write will be a waste, I can tell you right now that your work is more shallow that it should be. Inspiration is a great starting point but meaning is created in depth and depth is created by adding on anything that you might have missed in a good, but not great, first draft.

So, thanks for taking the time to read and good luck writing. It's a challenging world and we all need what help we can get.

- Cheers until next time,
Alli

A Few Lines From Me to You

Originally posted Sunday, October 16, by Nick Hart on www.afewlinesmagazine.com

While scouring through the bookshelves of Barnes & Noble for a much needed Kineseology textbook, I suddenly found myself standing in front of a cart of books labeled 50% off. After spending several minutes digging through the leaves of several of these books, I stumbled upon a jewel. The book was called The Book of Celtic Verse edited by John Matthews, which held within its bounds over four centuries worth of Celtic poetry, incantations, dreams, and visions. The first page boldly stated: To All Who Hold Words Sacred, and, as I read this, a tingle wiggled its way down my spine. I felt those lines beckoning me onward, so I continued to read. As I entered the world this book had preserved I became fascinated as I found poetry retelling old stories of Merlin, of King Arthur, and of the tragic love of Tristan and Isolde. These are just a few of the great pieces this book held within its covers. One poem written back in 19^th century by Arthur O'Shaughnessy stood out to me, in particular. I would like to share this piece with all of you today:

“We are the music-makes,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams;

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams;

Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world for ever, it seems.”

Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1844-1881)

The 'we' of this poem are wanderers, they are lone travelers, they are 'word-losers' and 'world-forsakers,' yet, though they are separated from the world around them, they are the ones who shake the world. The 'we' in this poem are the writers of the world who are rejected because they have a difference in opinion, the poets who are called dreamers because they choose to capture the world they see in the stanzas of their poetry, and the artists whose work sparks flame in their viewers because of the messages that they convey through sight. We are the 'we' of this poem. We, both the published and non-published, are the ones who are called to a life of artistry. We are the writers, poets, and artists of today. As revealed in this poem, this life can be hard and troublesome, but is a lifestyle that, when answered, yields great opportunity. So I beckon all of you writers and poets to write on, you artists to paint at the whim of your brush. You dreamers to dream your dreams, and you music-makers to play your music loud. And together, just as the movers who came before us did, we'll shake our world for the better.

Your Hart,

Nick