Interview

Also, if you go to the main page of the Atlantic Monthly you will see my latest interview! At least, it should be there for the next few minutes before being superseded by some cutting-edge discussion of a cutting-edge development in the world of important things. After that, my little discussion of the news that stays news will still be here.

First Day of School

Last night while I was busy being nervous for the first day of school it snowed. It was beautiful, and then the power went out so I reread my syllabus by candlelight.

The library is no longer in the blissful state of pre-term emptiness, and the carrel I wanted turned out to be taken, but even with everyone around me eating an early lunch it still has a certain broad and scholastic peacefulness. The thing about teaching is that, even when you have done a lot of planning and photocopying in advance, there's still a lot to do on the spot. My goal of having to do nothing but show up isn't going to work. Still, my class seems nice and it was good to see my returning students again.

Update: Okay, this is just weird. In the assigned-carrel section of the library, there are all these undergrad guys in suits, all eating lunch. It's must be some kind of fraternity thing. They're also working--the one closest to me is reading photocopied poems--but still, like ants or mice, what in the singular would be harmless or even cute is horrifying when encountered as a swarm.

Update: I feel like I'm in some kind of performance art piece. Every time I look there are more of them. And now they have reached the critical mass at which the imperative to be quiet in the library stops seeming important. Most are working but at any given moment two or three of them are walking around, crunching potato chips, whispering. What I don't understand is why, if they must make of the library their private lunchroom, it has to be here in the assigned-carrel section where people obviously only go if they really want to study.

And your hair looks great today!

I'm procrastinating from looking at someone else's edits of my writing. Looking at them is making me nervous. I'm very much aware that I'm out of practice from writing. This is weird since of course I write all the time, but it's been a while since I have tried to construct large numbers of artful sentences. (Interestingly, to me, my poems, which have been described as elliptical, tend to have very simple, stripped-down sentences that don't really work translated into prose.) That writing is not like walking or breathing but is a skill that needs to be kept up is one of the true things that they say in MFA-land.

Anyway, I'm writing this from a coffee shop with "complimentary wifi," and I'm taking solace from the way I can't help but misread the sign. I'm expecting a little window to pop up any minute saying "Great job!" "That was a terrific sentence, that one there!" "Just write a few more like that one and you're golden!"

UPDATE: Well, it's okay. Also, yesterday I hatched this great plan to freely and essayistically write out my thoughts and impressions at the end of every study session, so as to get into better fighting form for writing, and also to keep a better record of what I read, and to try to develop ideas that might be useful later. There might be some blogging connection to this; I'll keep you posted.

Also, (a propos of my coffee shop neighbor, who wasn't able to get a word in around her friend's earplug-penetrating conversation) isn't "edgewise" a great word?

Forty-nine pounds . . .

. . . is how many books I checked out of the library today. I know because I lugged them to the gym and, as soon as I arrived, weighed them on the scale in the locker room. A friend I ran into on the bus pointed out that if I had tried to take them on an airplane, they would have just barely squeezed under the oversized-baggage cut-off. (Actually, the book-filled suitcase I struggled back from New York with also weighed forty-nine pounds, so maybe the number has some kind of karmic significance.)

New Years' is well-known to those who know me as my least-favorite holiday but I feel pretty okay about it this year. It's hard to be too freaked out when one's cat is so unruffled.

Exciting

You should all check out this news story. It's upsetting and alarming, but also exciting because all this information is only out there thanks to MY SISTER! This report was years in the making and it is really great to see it in the news like this.

Speaking of depressing . . .

... this is a real quote from a student portfolio: "I was always taught that English that is well written and well spoken can get u very far in this world."

Or is it a joke?

Down down down

Between fights, work, and the weather, I've been feeling down all day. I just went to the meeting of the poetry board of a journal, and that was depressing--the poems were bad, the criticisms were bad in the most depressing way--dismissive but superficial--and I couldn't see any point in trying to improve the conversation, since the poems were bad anyway. It reminded me of Lit Review in college. Now I'm skipping my office party--which is not, as it sounds, a miserable reindeer-sweater affair but actually a really fun event with my friends in our TA office--in order to grade papers I didn't grade earlier, but obviously I am not grading papers yet. They are hanging over me, though, so once I'm done I think I'll feel better. Then I'm going to go run. And tomorrow I'm going to read. This week is proving less productive than I'd hoped. And I have approximately thousands of books left to read.

Best Conference Ever

In my reading, I learn that in 1911, Ezra Pound went to Germany to ask Ford Maddox Ford for an opinion on his new book of poetry:

"He recalls the incident in his obituary for Ford. Ford, writes Pound, 'felt the errors of the contemporary style to the point of rolling (physically, and if you look at it as mere superficial snob, ridiculously) on the floor . . . ' The roll 'saved me at least two years, perhaps more. It sent me back to my own proper effort, namely, toward using the living tongue . . .'"

A week later, another take on the same event:

"Ford saw that it would not do. The Incense, the Angles, elicited an ultimate kinesthetic demonstration. By way of emphasizing their hopelessness he threw headlong his considerable frame and rolled on the floor. 'That roll,' Pound would one day assert, 'saved me three years.'" (Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era)

Perfect Day

I have often said that the perfect day is one where you wake up and work hard and productively at your intellectual work all day, and then exercise in the late afternoon, and then get together with friends in the evening for food and conviviality. I think I would like it if my life were a series of these days, broken up occasionally by all-day hikes, travel, and the occasional orchestra rehearsal. In reality, though, I don't know why, but it hardly ever happens. But today I've been at a coffee shop since this morning working the whole time not on teaching or other short-term projects but on actual reading and writing for my exams. In a few minutes, I'm going to go to the gym, and then to dinner at the Ogre's house.

And lo, the miraculous has happened: I have finally had a thought about what I've been reading. More than one thought, even. I am very relieved. And interested! I wish I could stop reading for coverage and start writing about the poems I happen to have read today.

Happy Gimme

I'm off for Portland.

Trust Falls Off the Broken Obelisk

I just received an email with that phrase as its entire content. Pretty deep stuff.

Seattle

It seems like every other week the New York Times has a travel article about Seattle. This is nice, though infelicitous at this time of year, when Seattle is wet, gloomy, perpetually dark, and conducive not to fun and travel but only to hibernation.

But I like it as a way to measure my increasing connection with the city. This time, there are lots of places I've been featured in the article, and there's even a place I work, the Center for Wooden Boats! Which is one of the best places in Seattle. (Though, like everything, even better in other seasons.)

It's 4:24. It's dark. Have I mentioned how I feel about daylight savings and, for that matter, winter? I'm supposed to be covering Derrida today but all I have done is to make a peer review activity for my deadbeat students. Maybe it's time to break out the sad light.

Also

I forgot to add yesterday that one of the highlights of my day was a discussion with my mom about the possibility that she might write an opera based on the Berenstain Bears. I think this is a brilliant idea--just imagine the dramatic trio as Brother, Sister, and Papa squabble over their junk food, and Mama's aria as she worries about their bad behavior. I am also into the idea of a Bearathon, where people would get sponsored to read as many of the books as they can at one sitting.

In the library

Someone in the belltower is way overenthused, so that I am trying to read this: "If there exists a "discourse" which is not a mere depository of thin linguistic layers, an archive of structures, or the testimony of a withdrawn body, and is, instead, the essential element of a practice involving the sum of unconscious, subjective, and social relations in gestures of confrontation and appropriation, destruction and construction--productive violence, in short--it is "literature" or, more specifically, the text"*

and hearing this:

Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells
Of the bells, bells, bells
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells
Of the bells, bells, bells:
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells
Bells, bells, bells
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.**

It's been going on for at least half an hour. "Bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells" indeed. If it continues I'm going to have no problem achieving the "schizophrenic flow" of which I have been reading.

*Julia Kristeva
**Edgar Allen Poe

Just a typical day in the ivory tower

Just a minute ago, as I was sitting here in the UW student center looking at a Michelle Obama fashion slide show, a guy came up to me with that look of someone who wants something, and said, "Have I read you a quote yet?" He told me that "in honor of Gandhi" he was reading people Gandhi quotes, and then took out a folded, crumpled piece of paper and read, "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."

(Explanation)

In the waiting room at my vet's office, there's a bird and a guinea pig, and on their cages are signs that say, in a child's handwriting:

The bird's name is Tweety. Say: Hi Tweety! I love you Tweety! Yeahhh, Tweety!
The guinea pig's name is Mr. Pickles. Say: Hi Mr. Pickles! I love you Mr. Pickles! Yeahhh, Mr. Pickles!

Ever since I first saw the signs I have loved the idea that this is the form proper greetings should take, and have often applied it in various life situations. And I kept thinking it last night.

The president's name is Barack Obama. Say:

Hi, Barack Obama.
I love you, Barack Obama.
Yeaaaah, Barack Obama!

I've been in this coffee shop for about five hours. In that time, I made an insane schedule of reading that I will have to complete to be ready for my PhD exams in late winter (Week 5: Barthes, Wittgenstein, Bakhtin, Lowell, Bishop, Berryman, Jarrell). I also reserved about 100 books from the library. I'm going to have to bring a wheelbarrow to school every day this week.

Look at how dark it is! Despite the extra hour of sleep (or five, in my case), daylight savings might be my least favorite holiday of the whole year.

Liveblogging the Debate

Why not?

The candidates seem to be sitting at a table, perhaps, like newscasters, not wearing pants.

Nope, pants are there.

McCain plants a naysayer. "Now I know the criticism of this."

Bob Schieffer (henceforth, BS) asked for new information not talking points. So far, no go.

Joe Six Pack seems to have become Joe the Plumber.

Obama really does stick with his talking points.

Oh my god, I hope Joe the Plumber gets a book deal out of this. Someone certainly needs to be interviewing him right now.

I love that Obama is talking about education.

McCain smirks and interrupts. He just seems creepy.

(This is kind of hard.)

I love that Obama brings up education so often.

McCain takes a strong stand on pronouncing it nu-clee-ar.

The overhead projector is back!

This is just like the last debate only they are closer together. Someone should do a performance art piece where the candidates repeat the same talking points but in increasing physical proximity until they crash into each other. It would be interesting, no?

Is there any activity in which one would simultaneously use both a hatchet and a scalpel?

**Guest joke from LRR via text: "Forget this sharp shit! We should take a plunger to the budget."**

Obama really is preternaturally calm, yet energetic. It's weird.

Obama "commends" McCain. Very condescending.

BS baits McCain to talk about Ayers.

McCain: The campaign wouldn't have become negative "if only Obama had agreed to my urgent request to sit down."

Segregation is the worst chapter in our history??!? Uh, slavery?

Education reference #3!

I think Obama needs to answer that accusation that he lied about campaign finance.

Hi Joe the Plumber! We didn't forget you.

Obama isn't even referring to Palin by name, just "your running mate."

McCain=Interrupting cow. ("Knock knock." "Who's there?" "Interrupting cow." "Interrupting c--" "MOOOOOOOO!")

McCain is just drowning.

Obama hearts Joe Biden. Joe "the Plumber" Biden. Weird--this morphed into a stump speech. He doesn't mention Palin at all--good job.

Education #4!

Why would your running mate be a good president? Impossible question for McCain! He starts lisping: Sarah Palin is a breath of freth air who will thweep away the old boy network. Special needs kids. Huh?

BS to Obama: Is she qualified? Obviously he won't take the bait. He turns the special needs things back on McCain as an example of a program that shouldn't be cut in a blanket spending freeze. He is good!

McCain: Why do we have to spend more? Why can't we just pick money off the money trees?

In the other debates I haven't felt this as much, but here it just seems like it's not an even match, like Obama is just a much better debater. I wonder if the talking heads and polls are seeing it the same way.

McCain advocates more poetry classes: "You have to pay more attention to words!"

Trade, oddly, is the one subject on which McCain sounds like he has real expertise. I've noticed this in all three debates.

Obama: "We have to stand for human rights." I wonder what Jane and Katie (my human rights gurus) think of that. Is it a big deal that he said that?

McCain: health clubs for all! Yes!

Hi again, Joe the Plumber!

The stuff about health care is just too confusing. I don't think either candidate is explaining things clearly.

Gold-plated Cadillac health plans for cosmetic surgery and . . . transplants? How are those the same??!!

McCain calls Obama "Senator Government." Nice.

I wonder when the spell-checker will start recognizing "Obama."

Obama is better at looking at the camera. McCain is looking off to the side. Also, he is only smiling fake smiles. Obama's mouth doesn't smile as much, but his smiles seem more genuine.

I hope Sharpie is paying McCain for this moment of visibly twirling his . . . marker? Who takes debate notes with a permanent marker? What does this say?

Obama seems to be using a humble ballpoint. Well, actually I have no idea. It just looks like a regular pen. A Joe the Plumber type pen.

Obama makes the instrumental case for education (economy, national security). Stanley Fish would disagree.

An army of new teachers! Wow. Terrifying.

McCain: Education is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. Huh. Oh I get it, he means school choice. He's referring to that NYT magazine article about New Orleans school. "We find bad teachers another line of work." He's talking about raising standards by removing teacher certification and testing rules? Huh?

Autism is getting a lot of play in the debate. Weird.

McCain ends the debate with incomprehensible sarcasm and sinister chuckles.

Now he "My friends" us. First time of the night!

Well. I'm smitten. (With Bob Schieffer's mother.)