11/11/11

The challenge this week was to write an 11/11/11 poem; I hope a number of you will post your poems and comments here.  As you know, the armistice signed this day, ending the Great War, was greeted by joy as the War to End All Wars:

11/11/11

Eleven/eleven/eleven

Papa’s dead and gone to heaven

Tom and Dick took strange leaven

Eleven/eleven/eleven

Eleven/eleven/eleven

Tarot card, ouija board, master plot

Mayan sage, and all seers misbegot

Eleven/eleven/eleven

Eleven/eleven/eleven

Shrapnel and shell: we won

Lookie, lookie, what we done

Eleven/eleven/eleven

. . . and the Supreme Court says . . .

Kelliann H has left a new comment on your post "":

Mr. McDonald has the right to keep his handgun in his home. It is included in his basic rights to keep a gun, especially in his circumstances. The gang members have obtained guns, or weapons of some kind, so Mr.McDonald must be able to defend himself. The Second Amendment gives McDonald the right to bear arms and defend his life. Nearly everyday people suffer from misinterpretation, whether your parent misinterprets something you tell them, or a friend misinterprets a text. I am affected almost everyday by misinterpretation when I text and talk to friends and family.

The Supreme Court does not make decisions based on “feelings.”  It has a text – the Constitution – and it has the task of interpreting that text on the basis of textual evidence.  As we note in class, even a single word and its function in a sentence can shape crucial interpretation.  The justices regularly wrestle with the word “militia” in the second amendment. 

For instance, Justice Stevens noted that the “Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self defense. . . . by its terms, the Second Amendment does not apply to the States; read properly, it does not even apply to individuals outside of the militia context.” This, as much as anything, illustrates the importance of what we know as “close reading” beyond the classroom, in actual life.  Stevens labors over a single word.  If we apply Justice Stevens to Kelliann’s comment, Mr. McDonald does not have the right to bear a gun, even for self-protection.

Given what we are reading this semester, I would like to hear from those of you who have seen scrutiny of a single word change your point of view with regard to a text.

A Tuesday meeting of the justices of the Supreme Court resembles a class discussion as the justices attempt to thread the vagaries of meaning and interpretation.  That Tuesday meeting illustrates how debates of meaning and interpretation are not simply irksome classroom exercise, but those debates affect actual lives in actual ways.  Becoming a savvy interpreter affects events in actual life.

Here is an example from the Supreme Court:

Gun case on way to Supreme Court creates strange bedfellows

Published: Feb. 28, 2010 at 8:59 AM

By HARRIET ROBBINS OST

CHICAGO, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- Otis McDonald, 76, lives in Morgan Park, a tough Chicago neighborhood where the same youngsters who used to shoot hoops in his back yard are now threatening his life.

A law-abiding citizen, McDonald wants to keep a handgun in his home to protect himself against gangs but that's against Chicago's gun-control laws.

"The people who want to control me, my family, my property -- these are the people who I want to protect myself from," McDonald told the Chicago Tribune.

McDonald's attempt to keep and use his weapon lawfully has been rejected by the trial court and the 7th U.S. Court of Appeals, both of which ruled in favor of the city. The U.S. Supreme Court takes up the issue Tuesday in McDonald vs. Chicago.

But allowing McDonald to have a gun for self-protection could mean huge upheavals in constitutional law, involving the Second and 14th amendments.

Here is the second amendment to the Constitution:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

On the basis of the 2^nd Amendment language, the Supreme Court must decide whether Otis McDonald has the right to defend his life and property.

I would be interested in two things:  1.  What do you think about this case.  2.  How has interpretation affected your life; have you ever suffered because of misinterpretation?

March Hare: …Then you should say what you mean.

Jaclyn Lund has left a new comment on your post ":Hidden Meanings" anyone?":

“I think that as the reader we have to make inferences based on the text. Maybe what we deduce is far from the writer's original intentions, but we have no way of knowing exactly what they meant at the time that the piece was written. The ‘hidden meanings’ that are found by the reader certainly differ based on the time in which a text is read, but the different conclusions that are drawn can only add another layer of meaning to the possible intentions of that author.”

Slowly, those of you posting to the blog have begun to differentiate between feeling and meaning.  Feelings remain inarticulate and nebulous until they get made concrete by word and action.  “Meaning” arises when our hunches about a text become concrete in word and action.

You might dismiss Bobby Stonecipher’s contention that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride the heart of “A Goodman is Hard to Find,” but you cannot blithely dismiss his articulation and its evidence.  Nor can you ignore Marc Bernstein’s suggestion that the genealogy beginning Beowulf portends disaster rather than the promise of renewal as generation passes to generation.

Jaclyn Lund settles the issue of “hidden meanings.”  The Misfit in O’Connor and Wiglaf in Beowulf have the last words.  Their words demonstrate the powerful fact that words have results in the actual world.  The words and actions of the Grandmother lead to her death; the words and actions of Beowulf lead to the devastation of his land and country.  Now, I would like to see us begin to explore the ways in which words have results and implications in the actual world.

:Hidden Meanings" anyone?

Jason Malik has left a new comment on your post "I just don't get it . . .":

“I am skeptical of some of the connections that we make in class. Some times I feel that the writer had no intention of making a connection but we force one out.”

As we have said in class:  “You cannot know an author’s intention.  You cannot crawl into an author’s head – especially dead ones – except through the words of the text in front of you.”  Did Flannery O’Connor intend for the three shots fired by the Misfit to have religious significance.  Who knows?  We cannot get into her head; entropy and the grave have reduced that head to deliquescent mush.  We CAN look at the text and ask whether a religious reading works.  The Grandmother introduces talk of Jesus; that justifies the search for religious images – does it not?

Beowulf, on the other hand, illustrates why we must carefully follow the integrity of a text as we seek connections.  Because the original bardic poet was not Christian, we must carefully distinguish between the original bardic voice and the later scribal emendations. 

All of you have worked with the Odyssey, for instance, could you justifiably make Christian connections to that poem?  The integrity of the text must be your guide.

. . . so now that you're thinking . . .

"Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest.

 Flannery O’Connor

Literary critic Josh Romain has said this gives us a model for thinking of fine writing; fine writing should make the reader spring back as if snakebit.  Any gauge of fine writing must assume a field of energy between the writing and its reader.  That field of energy might not provoke anything as violent as the effects of snakebite, but it ought to engage a reader actively, not passively.

Anyone who puts words on paper must consider the desired field of energy and how that field might affect a reader.  If you write a grocery list, you want your reader to get the groceries.  If you write a music review (Lady Gaga), you want your reader to share some of your enthusiasm for her work.  If you write contentions regarding your latest reading assignment, you want a fighting response from the teacher.

How do you envision and describe the field of energy between the text and the reader?

. . . thinking about thinking . . .

Katherine Merritt writes:

Thinking is the process in which a person searches through past memories and stored information to draw conclusions about the topic at hand.  It’s amazing how the mind stores so much.

Mark DiMeglio writes:

Thinking takes no form, unless one is aware of the format of an idea. . . . Thinking is the act of cognitively re-visiting an idea, or re-forming an idea.

Like Anglo-Saxons and their “word-hords,”  our task involves looking at thought as it surfaces in words which can be known, repeated, and understood.  I want us to take some time to think about thinking.

Many of you think of thinking as synonymous with consciousness.  However, does simple consciousness constitute thinking.  For example, I am aware of the excruciatingly hard back of the chair I sit in.  Does awareness equal thought? 

As you work through the works we read, how do you understand the relationship of words and thought.  Can thought take place without words?  Can you share your thoughts without words?  Can we define “thought” without discussing words and language?

the Charlie Burrus memorial post

Hunter Cesinger said...

This video relates to our writing in many ways. Just as there are four basic forces in the universe (Strong nuclear, Weak nuclear, Electromagnetic, and gravity), there are four basic forces in writing " (Phrases, Words, Vowels, and Consonants)." For our universe to exist as it does and perfectly support life, these forces must be perfectly balanced. Similarly to achieve perfection in our writing we must learn to balance these four forces.

September 5, 2011 1:50 PM

We talk this year about connections:  the apple tree in “Game of Catch” connects to Genesis 2-4, which connects to the tree in Separate Peace.  As Hunter suggests, I want to explore the interrelatedness of all human endeavor by discerning connections between particle physics and our exploration of language.  All things in the universe are somehow connected; the word “universe” advertises that unity.

So what?  You will read and write the rest of your lives.  Many of you will make your livings reading and writing.  All of you will have to thread your way through written and spoken statements, some of which may contain misinformation or distortion.  For instance, when a political candidate makes claims about science, how do we seek and find the truth of the matter?  As Hunter understands it, discovering elemental particles, whether physical or linguistic, is the way to get at understanding and build articulation.

Many of you have puzzled over the claim that nothing “human can be alien”; all things human are connected.  This does not mean I must experience something directly to comprehend it.  I do not have to murder and pillage in order to comprehend murder and pillaging.  I read the Iliad or Beowulf to comprehend terror and its outcome.  The first hundred lines of Beowulf remind us that human beings throughout time have built towers and halls of clever fashioning.  A tower or hall tempts wreckers to pull it down.

http://us.paceacademy.org/~dondupree/English10/beowulf1.html

(This post is dedicated to Charlie Burrus)

. . . the Higgs Boson and our search for prepositions

Mainly, I think of sophomores as noble, though incomplete, creatures who stride with giants and preen with gazelles.  My one quarrel with the species is its polite acceptance of authority.  The other day when I showed a little clip on the search for the Higgs Boson, everyone received it quietly, but no one raised a peep about its appropriateness in sophomore English.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_HrQVhgbeo

 Standard model theory of the universe speaks of four forces and posits the Higgs Boson as a binding particle which prevents any gaps in the system.

As we move forward this week and next, we pay attention to four elemental forces in language:  vowels, consonants, words, and phrases.  Our language builds on these forces and the way they combine to form articulation.  As we pursue writing and articulation these next weeks, I hope you will raise more questions and accept things a little less readily; do not hide your skepticism under a sophomore’s innate politeness.

I just don't get it . . .

A student asked me why we try to link Separate Peace to the Iliad to 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel.  Fair question.  The human drive to make connections represents a drive toward greater understanding of and familiarity with the world.  If you move more easily through the world next May than you do now, tenth grade English will have done its job.

On a practical level, any practice, whether writing or speaking, which makes you more articulate will lead to more assured success in college.  When you walk into that first semester humanities seminar at Harvard, if you can argue your point of view forcefully and articulately, you will reap rewards.  Teachers hate to put this crass spin on things, but there it is.  I would like to say articulate living is happier living, but you would chuckle behind my back.

Thinking through the opening quotations . . .

What is [the] end game? It is captured in the words of Terence, or in his Latin name, Publius Terentius Afer. He was a black man, born in Carthage of African descent, about 200 years B.C., brought to Rome as a slave by a master who, struck by his intelligence, gave him access to a first-rate education and later freed him. Terence went on to become the most popular playwright of Rome in his day. At one point, he wrote: "I am human. Nothing human can be alien to me."

This is the universal truth. We may never know what a tiger feels slipping through the jungle or a dolphin as it swims the ocean, but whatever another human has felt, we can feel it too. Ultimately, it matters little that I am an aging Chinese-Uruguayan in West Newton: Shakespeare's lines written in Elizabethan England, Thucydides' chronicles of Greek wars two thousand years ago, Li Po's poems from the T'ang Dynasty, Isabel Allende mourning the loss of her daughter, Ralph Ellison's invisibility in mid-twentieth century United States, all speak to me as surely as Maya Angelou's words at the begin-ning of the twenty-first. This is because we are all members of the same species. We are humans.

                                                                                 --Michael Chu