Bird Signs

I've never learned much about the ancient technique of prophesy via bird-watching, but I've always liked the idea of it. So I was pretty excited when, during a morning run around Greenlake I saw two eagles. I'm not sure I've ever seen even one before. They were pretty awesome, huge and fierce and surrounded by crows. One flew, perched briefly, and then headed out across the lake with his retinue. The other was absolutely still at the top of a tall pine tree, where he'd apparently been for a long time because someone walking the other way told me to look out for him. Anyway, I think this must be good luck.

Exams

As you can see, there are 44 books on my kitchen table right now. This is only a field station; at the base camp for the books in my office there are probably four times as many in the "exam lists" pile.



And now is the time, or almost the time, to mobilize all these massed forces: my written exams will start Friday morning and end 72 hours and 30 pages later. I don't feel prepared, but I do feel ready and excited.

I'll be in kind of a weird state and don't know if I'll be too busy to take breaks or so busy I need breaks. But I do know that any messages, funny stories, cute pictures, brilliant ideas, and general good karma would be lovingly received.

The most awful thing I've read recently

This, in a New York Times book review by Janet Maslin, is one of the most terrifying passages I have ever read: "Ms. Gershow has been a teacher at the University of Oregon, where some students’ online ratings of her sound like a continuation of Lydia’s high school nightmare. Being regarded as neither popular nor hot seems to be territory that Ms. Gershow knows well, maybe in the classroom and certainly on the pages of her unusually credible and precise novel."

This is so awful. Obviously, Maslin must have googled Gershow (ratemyprofessors is the fifth hit right now) and just plucked out what she found without thinking much about it. Equally obviously, Maslin can't have ever been on the receiving end of student evaluations, or she would have more sensitivity to their unreliability and, more importantly, to their essentially private nature, which is what makes online ratings so uncomfortable and makes decent people stay away from or at least not discuss other people's.

I just keep imagining what should be a wonderful moment in the life of a young novelist--her first book, favorably reviewed in the New York Times!--marred by a gratuitous and humiliating invasion of privacy, the decision to trumpet to the world that the author's students didn't like her AND (this is where Maslin is really in poor taste) didn't think she was hot. (The students, judging from the author photo, are totally mistaken--but the fact that I immediately scrolled up the page to look at the author photo illustrates exactly what is the problem here.)

Students should be more sensitive when they are tempted to post mean things online and, of course, that words have consequences is part of what we try to teach them. But there's no excuse for professional book reviewers.

Remember this

A few summers ago I wrote a sonnet every day for a week or so, trying to get poetically limberer. I was looking at old drafts today, and found them. They're awful. In the same word document, there's another one from a year or so later about the experience of reading the earlier ones. It's even worse, barely even comprehensible, except for the final couplet, which kind of struck me. Or really just the last line, but it needs its penultimate friend for set up. It's one of a genre of pleasurably stark statements of bitterness that I find in my drafts and notebooks but usually edit out of anything I hold onto, and I'm sharing it . . . well, I'm not sure why, but here it is:

So records kept bring joy but also pain.
Remember this before you write again.

But in my case I am right

Are there many little boys who think they are a
Monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the
Dog they were sitting on the bluffs The dog regarded him
Joyfully

from Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red, a book many of you have received as a gift from me at one time or another. I always think of this quote when I feel like an academic fraud. I know everyone feels that way, so it's probably not as dire as I think, but still. I really don't want to fail my exams. Also, it turns out that I need to come into the orals with a dissertation topic which, though it's not like I don't have ideas, was a bird I was planning to kill with a different stone. Which leads me to this:

Magnanimous as Bird
By Boy descried —
Singing unto the Stone
Of which it died —

Emily Dickinson is such a master of what Jakobson calls congruity leading to equivalence; she conspicuously doesn't say the boy killed the bird, but just by putting him there, she creates the unavoidable impression that he did. Which leads to all kinds of interesting possible readings. The poem is about shame. I would be really ashamed to fail my exams.

"Magnanimous As Bird" would make a pretty good title for something.

Things I have recently discovered that I like: earplugs (while studying in public places), sweet potatoes (baked in the oven), NPR podcasts (especially All Things Considered while making dinner).

How About Never?

I thought I should clarify that I have not been rejected by any journals or dates recently; I just thought the NYT headline was funny and needed exaggeration. Still, I have been remembering how, after the worst break-up of my life, I cried all night but knew that if I could just get myself to my classroom to teach, I would be all right. And it was true. Afterwards Zanni and I had Chinese food. Oddly, what was a really horrible experience has turned into a nice memory.

Now that I've taught for longer, being in front of a class doesn't necessarily give me that life-affirming adrenaline boost anymore, but it does still get me out of my head. Today after class I had a nice meeting with a student who always writes to me as "Professor Sarah" and signs his emails "Doctor [Name]." Which is kind of charming, although, as the one who is supposed to improve his rhetorical savvy, I feel a little guilty about just enjoying it without comment.

Also, my oral exams got slightly rescheduled; in response, one professor wrote, "The later the better. Ok for me." That made me think of this:

Wait, why is this news?

In today's New York Times: "Journal Rejects Essay About Nixon Tapes". Next week: "Magazine Rejects Poems," "Another Magazine Rejects Poems," and "Man Had Fun But Does Not Want to Go On Second Date."

In other non-news news, it's hailing and thundering out, so I guess I'm not going running. Right now I am putting off writing the questions I want to get asked in my exams. I went for a long productive walk to think about it, because I like to think while ambulatory, and looked in a lot of windows. I saw lots of cats in windows, and lots of Barack Obamas on people's TVs. It was nice.

Hmmm

This is strange, but seems true: Roman Jakobson says "When we ask whether /i/ or /u/ is darker, some of the subjects may respond that this question makes no sense to them, but hardly one will state that /i/ is the darker of the two." Well, of course not! That would be wrong.

And while we're on the topic of nonsensical visual correspondences, let me take this opportunity to remind you that

1=white
2=yellow
3=blue
4=green
5=peachish brown
6=red
7=purple
8=brown
9=orange

For some reason I often feel the need to assert this. I experience it so strongly!

Considering this further, I wonder if one of the reasons I've been sort of on low for the past few months is because I'm 30--blue being a sort of cool, oceanic, unpassionate color (and the 0 is clear, transparent). I wonder because when I think back to other times in my life, I get a visual picture based on my age at the time; and, now that I think of it, also the year. 2009 (yellow and orange) is prettier than 2008 (yellow and brown), and I think, actually, that I feel a little bit relieved about that.

I realize that this sounds insane but I'm telling you, I experience it strongly!

Unusual forms of patriotism

Like Laura Palmer, my apartment is totally wrapped in plastic. We're fixing the Zen dishwashing situation, which is ultimately all to the good. Pictures of the current un-Zen like situation to come.

Meanwhile, via a blog I barely remember and certainly won't admit why I read, this super cute and totally random thing: various children's books characters wearing Aretha Franklin's inauguration day hat.

Most Awkward Conference Ever

Three students, and we're peer reviewing their papers. The last one we do, I haven't read before because the student handed it in late and I'm trying to stick to my draconian no-feedback-for-late-papers policy.

It's a major paper about men's magazines. Even with a distracted glance at the first paragraph, it's instantly obvious that it's at least partially plagiarized. Still, I give the student the benefit of the doubt and, chipper, ask him to paraphrase his own claim. Nothing. One of the peer reviewers, who has understood his paper better than he has, explains it.

The paper isn't taken wholesale from a single source, clearly, so I have no idea of the extent of the problem . . . maybe he just called in the cavalry for a couple of sentences in the intro and the rest is okay. So I continue the conference. The peer reviewers keep commenting on how difficult and academic the language is. The plagiarizer has frozen up like he knows judgment is upon him. By now, I think it's obvious to everyone what's going on.

So awkward! I didn't want to confront the cheater with the other students there, but also didn't want to ignore the obvious. I think it went okay, though. I cut the conference short on a different pretext, asked the cheater to stay while the other students were there so they knew I was going to deal with it, and then gently prodded until the student confessed. I knew what to do, having had a different plagiarizer to confront last week, which didn't go so well. WTF, students???

It's a sunny day . . .

. . . . and I've been in this coffee shop doing teaching stuff for four hours now. Only 2 1/2 papers left to grade! Here are some greatest hits from my thoughtful, professorial responses to the intellectual questings of my students:

"I think you might be on to a promising source of more complexity when you talk about hidden messages in 'The Baby Beebee Bird.'"

"Huh? Is Jay-Z saying it's ok to be racist?"

"That Perez Hilton quote is a great find, but you need to discuss it, and show that you understand what he means by 'moral arbiter'."

It is time

I love that in an essay on W.S. Merwin, Marjorie Perloff suddenly declares: "It is time to look at a concrete example."

As if the author looks at her watch and says, "My, how time flies! We've just been sitting here chatting, and it's getting on toward evening. Do you hear that bell? That means it is time to look at a concrete example."