Keepin' the Juices Going

Never fear, Melville has not been lost at sea, but rather is mired in the belly of a far more fearful fish – swarms of essays…and they are particularly biting this year.  (Oh, I crack myself up!)

While Wollstonecraft draws her abundant energy for research and doctoral applications from her beloved Milton, I, too, have been spending the last few weeks being reinvigorated by an outpouring of creativity. 

As a teacher, sometimes it is difficult to take personal inspiration from my class discussions.  After all, while I am trained to “plumb the depths” in my studies – of literature and, often by extension, my own life – I am constantly reminded that my students are still learning the basics of analysis and cannot fully journey with me yet.  They are perfectly complacent skimming the surface of the content because that is all they have ever really done and all that has ever been expected of them.  So: how do I reverse that classic Stones song and get my satisfaction?  How do I find those moments that keep me jazzed?

I’ve talked before on “Thrice Booked” about the need to focus on the little moments in teaching and my careful scrutiny has really been rewarding this semester.  I’ve been delighted by some flashes of insights from students that I tuck away for those low moments.  My favorite so far:  a student who professed to hate reading and got off to a bit of a slow start but then discovered her passion for drama.  Who knew? 

But besides those moments, I keep hearing over and over that the best teachers are those who keep learning and stretching themselves, so I’ve been making a concerted effort this year to not shut down my own growth as I teach.

Here’s what’s kept me going (outside of the books!) this semester and kept me thinking:

-- Mondo Guerra from Season 8 of “Project Runway” – I am the first to admit that I cried when he revealed that he is living HIV+ after years of keeping his diagnosis a secret.  What astonished me was that in the midst of all his own emotional angst he kept going and created yet another beautifully quirky outfit each week.  I was continually struck by his ability to reach deep within his creative well and create something entirely different from the rest of the designers with color, pattern, and, frankly, a lot of joy.  Most importantly to me was his ability to take inspiration from the simplest, most everyday ideas but see them in an entirely fresh and playful way.  To riff off an old cliché, Mondo makes some damn fierce limoncello from a life of lemons. 

-- “Giselle” the ballet – I hadn’t been to the ballet in years and I was reminded once again of the inherent beauty of art.  I spent years studying art history but to see art in motion is another experience entirely.  When I was little, I was fascinated by ballet but I also balked at the ruthlessness of dance as it slowly breaks down one’s body (and one’s feet!)  However, this effort is even more valuable for the cost of time, energy, and effort that these dancers exert to show the fascinating possibilities of our bodies to help express ourselves.      

-- The SF Giants: Now, granted, I am a Northern California girl who has spent her share of summer afternoons sitting in the Stick eating chocolate malts and now at AT&T park gulping down some of those mouth-watering garlic fries.  In a weird way, I connect baseball with Walt Whitman’s “everyman” poetry – the joy of the time outdoors, the songs for the local teams, the thrill of a home run getting lost in the stadium lights.  The world of baseball is bigger than any ballpark because the games and the players’ stories have become the poetry of the people.  In fact, my favorite episode of my favorite show of all time involves Chris Stevens of “Northern Exposure” reciting his version of “Casey at the Bat” out in the Alaskan snow.  For Chris, appreciating literature is like that moment in the snowstorm as you play out “Casey” and you feel the drama reaching off the page.

So, like every Giants’ fan, I spent October and the start of November dying from torture but also bursting with pride as I sounded more than a few Whitman-esque yawps over the rooftops.  The Giants especially have all the makings of a legend that will only grow after this year – after all, they were a team of underdogs, rookies, and veterans who had their fair share of personal disappointments (not to mention a long Series draught for the team).  But the Gigantes’ appeal also lies in their ability not to take themselves too seriously and to just be themselves.  From the rally thong to the long hair to that ridiculously fabulous beard, they were out there to have fun and see how far they could advance as a team.  These members were not following some corporate agenda but rather they reminded us of those bygone hometown, homegrown teams -- best exalted by the simple joy for the game from their broadcasters Kruk and Kuip.  I could go on but I think nothing says it better than their unofficial theme song – “Don’t stop believing.”  Well, that, and the inevitable: Fear the Beard. 

Of course, these examples may not seem like much, but when you are looking for that indescribable flash, for joy, for the possibilities of poetry in the everyday, you can find inspiration just about anywhere you look deeply enough.  I’ve needed those moments of recharging energy to keep me and that classroom buzzing.  And these sparks of creativity and human possibility have led to some great progress in my own reading, writing, and crafting.  But more on that later…I’ve got some grading to do. 

Milton! I hath great need of thee this day...

LONDON, 1802.

Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In chearful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay.

--Wordswoth

Whenever I am downtrodden or disappointed or stressed, this poem echoes in my mind--especially in times like these as I painfully trudge through my writing sample and meet writer’s block at every sentence (Whilst studying for our comprehensive exams, Milton! became a sort of battle cry).  Even though it is a poem by Wordsworth, I have found it inspiring because it reminds me of Milton, his profound affect on western literature and just his general greatness. I have a severe case of author worship when it comes to Milton--for which I have already been laughed at and berated by plenty. (Just yesterday, in fact, someone responded to my love of him by saying Milton would be horrified that I wanted to get a PhD and laughed at my rather lame defense of him--But, really I don’t get why people are always getting on about Milton being a sexist. It’s not as if Shakespeare was a feminist crusader!).  

The reason for my worship and awe extends beyond his ability of pen to the strength of his convictions and his work ethic. Nothing derailed him. Even after the cause which he fought for his whole life failed, leaving him hated and blind, he wrote the greatest English epic. A champion of democracy and free speech, he resonates with the American spirit of “can”. One only has to read Areopagitica (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/areopagitica/index.shtml) to see his beauty of the language mixed with the power of his ideas:

“For books are not absolutely dead things, but... do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unless warriors be used, as good almost kill a Man a good Book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills Reason itself, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” (John Milton, Areopagitica)

Not many look at him as a source of inspiration, but whenever I feel that moment of defeat, I think about the defeat Milton must have felt when the monarchy was reinstated and the country was calling his blindness a punishment from God. I don’t just think about the intelligence and talent it took to write Paradise Lost, I think about why he wrote it and what he felt while he created his masterpiece. I am probably over-sentimentalizing the poem’s creation, but the first time I read Paradise Lost as a college Sophomore, I couldn’t help but feel more than analyze (that came with my second and third readings). My professor at the time said it was the perfect poem for the college student at a crossroads; the turmoil of change and personal confusion manifests in the poem.  Bubbling under the poem’s surface, spiritual confusion and defeat constantly threaten the poem’s thesis of justifying the ways of God to man. Although Milton is most definitely not of the devil’s party as Blake would like us to believe, I still can’t help but feel sorry for Satan when he returns to hell “victorious” but monstrously transformed listening to hisses rather than applause. Feeling like all you’ve worked so hard for has been for nothing is just so human and so real. And, that is why I have always loved Milton’s work in general--most of it is teeming with uncertainty and passion though one expects it to be a stable statement of his faith.  His work is at once inspiring but also is reminiscent of our own uncertainty; hopeful but also suspicious of hope. 

Although I have seen and discussed many readings of the sonnet he wrote on his blindness, I have always read it as the epitome of his uncertainty. He ends the poem apparently hopeful that he can still serve God, but the bitter disappointment he feels threatens his contentment. I have always read it that he is more questioning his condition than most.... 

On His Blindness

  

WHEN I consider how my light is spent

  E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,

  And that one Talent which is death to hide,

  Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

         5

  My true account, least he returning chide,

  Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,

  I fondly ask; But patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need

  Either man's work or his own gifts, who best

  10

  Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

  And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:

  They also serve who only stand and waite

Basically, just talking about Milton invigorates me, and I hope people can find him more approachable. It seems like many non-early modernists envision him as a grumpy old prudish white man. But I think that his writing is far from stale; it is full of anxiety and inspiration--his work illustrates and explores the complexity and hardships of the human condition still relevant to a modern audience, though it is deeply religious. I find his prose especially fitting for the current political climate. And, his life and work often remind me to not let feelings of defeat overtake me, to ignore the naysayers, and to continue working.  

RoundBlog: The Complicated World of YA Fiction and Incarceron

Wollstonecraft:

If you have read my post on The Hunger Games series or YA fiction, you already know in more detail my thoughts on the young adult genre and why we chose a YA book for our RoundBlog. In short, what I have found so fascinating about these series is the fact that they explore large and relevant themes, have complex characters, and treat young adults as intelligent human beings, AND that they still have creative stories that are so entertaining. Although, much of YA fiction is disappointing or just bad (just like there are many disappointing “adult” fiction books), there are many series that do not rehash different versions of the hero’s journey and many that do not feed into teen romance. In fact, with some searching, I have found many books that are incredibly imaginative and interesting, creating new and interesting worlds that can help us see our own from a different perspective. 

In The Immortals series (which admittedly does have some teen romance), one of the adult characters criticizes the moral absolutism of the young; and the books themselves think about (and make their readers think about) what it means when we divide our world into absolutes and how often this division fails to fully explain our gray reality. The main “bad guy” believes with his whole self that he is doing God’s work, and the series explores how different people can interpret events in completely different and often devastating ways.  There is also a gay teen struggling with his identity and a not so subtle theme examining people’s inclination to hate anything different and to create hierarchies of power wherever they can. Also, it deals with many themes from Paradise Lost, and the author even uses many quotes from the poem in chapter epigraphs. And, I *hope* that it is books like these that can lead teens to the harder stuff of Paradise Lost.  

And, as I read Incareron, that quote denouncing the moral absolutism of the young resonated with me. The novel occurs through two different narrative perspectives: Claudia, the girl on the outside used by her father as a pawn for power, and Finn, the boy inside Incarceron, the prison, trying to break free. Society created Incarceron as a sociological project; they thought they could create a kind of Utopia wherein they would put all the unwanted criminals, political and otherwise, and the poor or underprivileged. The prison has unknown dimensions (but is described as vast) and is ruled by a computer program and a single warden—mostly it is left to “run” on its own. The story follows both the outside world, which runs on a corrupt political system, and the prison, which has been corrupted by an all too objective and merciless computer system—as you might expect, the prison turns out to not be such a great idea (unbeknownst to the outside world). 

 What I found most fascinating was the fact that there was no clear Villain, which gives the reader freedom to judge and question the various (and often unclear) motives of the many characters involved. The boy “hero” kills (or causes an innocent to be killed) within the first chapter, and the girl hero is a cold and calculating soon-to-be royal. Neither is completely innocent and both are struggling to make sense of a world wherein they are pawns for everyone else’s games of power. Everyone is using everyone else for some end, and they struggle to find warmth and compassion in a world where compassion can get you killed. They struggle to make themselves happy while also considering the lives of others, leading to questions like, to what extent do we sacrifice our lives for another’s happiness? When does caring about our own life become selfish? Can we sacrifice the ones we love for the greater good? Why should we be responsible for others? And though many readers are not fighting for survival in a deadly prison, we daily fight (often against ourselves and our morals) for our own happiness, and these questions are ones we seek answers to everyday. Can we or should we think about our own life before the lives of others? Should we give up something important just to avoid hurting someone close to us? 

When I was teaching, many of my kids struggled with deciding to please themselves or please their parents. One student wanted to become a math teacher, but his parents were expecting him to become a doctor. At 14, is it really selfish for him to disappoint his parents? He thought it made him selfish (though I basically told him he should do what he wants). And, these choices and decisions only get harder as we get older, and our choices do not just affect our over-bearing parents, but affect our spouses and friends. Basically, I think that these books can even give adults something to think about. And seeing these moral quandaries through the eyes of teenagers, I think can bring a different perspective to our own problems.

 In the “outside world” of this novel, after a devastating war, the king has decreed that society needs to retreat into the past, “back to a simpler time” in order to avoid another disaster. The king declares he “will make a world free from the anxiety of change” and it will be “Paradise.” His decree: “We forbid growth and therefore decay. Ambition, and therefore despair. Because each is only the warped reflection of the other. Above all, Time is forbidden. From now on nothing will change.” Like in our world (which seems really relevant during election week), the king and the adults of this book look to blame the all abstract “change” and “time” instead of looking at the real causes of society’s unrest. Obviously, there is a backlash to the decree as the world becomes stagnant and frustrated in an unchanging world. It is not about change for change’s sake, but about finding names for those goals and seeing that progress is necessary for survival—that creating something new and changing our perspectives is just human nature. And, this is what our “heroes” struggle to do: find real solutions and name those nameless problems. And, in a court where politics is an illusion and they all act their parts, it is hard to find sincere answers and helpful solutions. Especially when the blame is placed on ideas and labels instead of where it should be:

“…or is it that man contains within himself the seeds of evil? That even if he is placed in paradise perfectly formed for him he will poison it, slowly, with his own jealousies and desires? I fear it may be that we blame the Prison for our own corruption…”

Essentially, the book also questions the abstract ideas of Utopia and Paradise, as they mean so many different things to different people. And, as the world does change, the notions of Paradise change with it.

Although I didn’t think that this book was amazing and there were parts I thought were lacking, overall, I thought the storyline interesting and unique. There were definitely “holes” in the story and there were moments where I had to ignore the logical fallacies. In a fantasy, you know you have to suspend disbelief, but on occasion, the logic of the world was hard to grasp. Because it is the first in a trilogy, I am sure that certain holes will be filled, but the prison’s abstract dimensions were just left to be believed.  The author seemed to take for granted that her young readers wouldn’t think too hard about whether something made sense...

Melville:

First of all, I have to say that I was thrilled we selected a YA book.  In the last few months, it seems the only thing I have time to read besides the books I teach are YA novels (aside from the blogs I follow religiously).  I love YA novels because with them, you have the freedom to really explore the real (and fantastic!) possibilities of life -- to imagine scenarios where worlds are inside wardrobes, boys can be wizards, and young Canadian women grow up to be famous writers.  As a younger reader, there is that sense that so long as you are willing to trust the writer, you can experience ANYTHING and that is an incredibly joyous feeling. 

With this idea in mind, I was immediately delighted with Incarceron's ability to draw me into a world completely unlike my own.  As Wollstonecraft covered so thoughtfully, I enjoyed the lack of moral absolutism and the questioning of traditional expectations of Paradise/Utopia and our understanding of how these visions shape our understanding of our own lives.  It was a clever book and one that I think that readers will appreciate even more in this increasingly complex world of ours.   The plot itself was a rollicking adventure and let me tell you, I would never want to be trapped in that prison world after going through those scenes with the Jabba-the-hut like character who sucked the life out of others to fit his whims.  

However, while I appreciated all the new reflections on how we can view the world, I was, truth be told, disappointed by the world itself.  Having grown up with a brother who is literally a rocket scientist and always demanded that my explanations be logical, factual, and involve way fewer fluffy unicorns named Marvin, I have learned to appreciate a certain amount of credibility in a story (this from someone who wrote her undergraduate thesis on Isabel Allende).  I was disturbed that my general understanding of the prison world was that the author cobbled together her explanation from the final scene of one of the most well-paid actors of my generation -- Will Smith in Men In Black.  While I like Men In Black as well as any teen of the 90s, I think there are many more inventive ways to explain the ability to jump from one world to the next and how they fit in with each other.  And when that realization set in, I started to look back at other scenes and the plot holes started to yawn open and languish on the pages of an otherwise great novel.  

I understand now that these plot contrivances (like the better-than-gold servant girl) must have significance and further depth in later books but I see that as problematic.  Too many books (and far too many films) settle nowadays for the cliff-hanger, the threads of unresolved storylines, and remain well past their prime, ingratiating themselves to an audience who has to go home and have their parents explain the jokes.  Some writers are clever enough to re-imagine some of their characters in new scenes, but I think that the focus should be on getting the first book right before cranking out more novels to help close these narrative loopholes.  Now, don't get me wrong, these assessments are not aimed solely at Incarceron, for it was a page-turner and a great first effort (I would even be curious to read the sequels), but I think these issues were probably suggested (or not corrected) by a publishing house that was thinking about short-term profits rather than long-term literary perfection.  

Be that as it may, it was a great pick for October -- for there were plenty of ghoulish characters both internally and externally.  Well-done Wollstonecraft!

Our next pick will be The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell.

http://www.thousandautumns.com/

Because it is a relatively longer novel and November continues to get busier, we will actually be discussing this book in our December RoundBlog. The November RoundBlog will feature a poem. And, if you have any suggestions, please write them below...