RE: Contemporary Peotry
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Gina Dominique
Aug 21, 2010, 10:18:45 AM8/21/10
to jazmine 19th c novel, ala yazid, ehsa...@yahoo.com, Fatima, literature and culture group
Jazmine--
Hi, everyone--
The poets of the surrealist movement developed methods , strategies for helping people write, enhancing their creativity by circumventing, "getting around", or avoiding our mind's tendency to think in our same, old familiar ways--by habit (or from fear of having our basic assumptions about "truth," "reality" challenged--people get nervous when they have to confront certain "truths" that have comforted them in the past--they resist the new, are afraid of change). We call such methods "heuristics," techniques for problem-solving. Some people also refer to "thinking outside of the box" or thinking "laterally." Google "lateral thinking."
Now, if you don't understand "habits of mind," or if you don't understand what the fuss is all about, try googling the inkblot method or free association used by psychologists who want their patients to recognize how their current emotional problems may be caused by fears or memories of trauma or certain kinds of potentially dangerous or disruptive passions or desires that exist just beneath the threshold of consciousness—beneath the level at which we are fully conscious of them. (In the case of people suffering from neuroses, such fears or memories of physical or emotional trauma remain sub-conscious because if they had to confront them all the time, they would not be able to function effectively in society. I can tell you that this is the case with me personally.[1]
Those methods are easy to understand. They are similar to what many writing teachers call "brainstorming," for instance.
Chance operators cause us to bypass our "regular" kinds of ideas, as do particular metrical and rhyme patterns in, say, sonnets or heroic couplets. For example, say I'm writing a sonnet valorizing or romanticizing martyrdom. Say I get to the end of line three and my plan calls for an extended metaphor reflecting the irony—or the paradoxical truth-- that it is precisely death, as Nietzsche pointed out, and only death that can give our lives a kind of tragic dignity and significance. Now, say I was planning all along to use the phrase "self-transcendence" to suggest this meaning. But now, my poetic form calls for 10 syllables in this line and an aa bb rhyme scheme. So that phrase that I was determined to use at this point in the poem just doesn't work because I'd have either too many or too few syllables. I have to go back to thinking or use a thesaurus to find another noun or noun phrase to use in its place. Now in the process, I come across something that reminds me of the Greek word, pharmakon. The English rendering of this word is interesting because it can mean "poisoning" and a cure for a poisoning all at the same time. (It's a union of opposites) And chances are, the only English speakers that would know this etymology are those who have studied Plato in the original Greek, as I did. Furthermore, when we hear this word it takes us back to the larger context in Plato's the Phadrus in which that key word is intended to have both one meaning and its opposite! And I know that if I use that word it will function as an "allusion" to Platonic or new-Platonic philosophy.
At this point, I get up and do a little "happy dance" because I've stumbled across a very simple and elegant way to suggest, in the poem, my understanding of the idea and Plato's understanding of it all at the same time. And my original idea, at this point, assumes a greater intellectual depth or meaning: it is transformed into something I never would have thought of if I had not been "limited" by the constraints of the sonnet form.
That's what I mean when I say that it is the act of writing itself, the actual process, in which new ideas are brought to my attention. Writers hardly ever just sit down and think of something and then translate or empty that meaning into words and sentences.
The take home part of your final, then, builds on the first part of Exam Two, in which you were to have described the techniques, identified their theoretical basis, and contextualized them—show how they emerged in a particular place and time, how the surrealists were a product of their historical moment and, how they themselves helped shape that socio-historical worldview.
For the final, you'll continue this line of thought. Look back on some of the major ideas expressed in the poetry. Then choose one idea or motif or theme (identity, for example, or alienation, correspondences in the material and spiritual worlds, etc.) Or, put together a cluster of potentially related themes. This will be the basis of an article or essay on the idea and also in the relevance of these techniques and the theories that helped shaped them in the reality we inhabit today.
Now take out paper and pencil. Write your target theme at the top and then apply one or more than one technique for generating ideas. When you think you have enough to begin writing the essay (about 450 or 500 words) don't throw the papers away. Submit them ( or copies of them) on the day of the final together with your finished essay
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:48:08 -0700
From: jazmin...@yahoo.com
Subject: RE: Contemporary Peotry
To: gdom...@hotmail.com
Hi, everyone--
The poets of the surrealist movement developed methods , strategies for helping people write, enhancing their creativity by circumventing, "getting around", or avoiding our mind's tendency to think in our same, old familiar ways--by habit (or from fear of having our basic assumptions about "truth," "reality" challenged--people get nervous when they have to confront certain "truths" that have comforted them in the past--they resist the new, are afraid of change). We call such methods "heuristics," techniques for problem-solving. Some people also refer to "thinking outside of the box" or thinking "laterally." Google "lateral thinking."
Now, if you don't understand "habits of mind," or if you don't understand what the fuss is all about, try googling the inkblot method or free association used by psychologists who want their patients to recognize how their current emotional problems may be caused by fears or memories of trauma or certain kinds of potentially dangerous or disruptive passions or desires that exist just beneath the threshold of consciousness—beneath the level at which we are fully conscious of them. (In the case of people suffering from neuroses, such fears or memories of physical or emotional trauma remain sub-conscious because if they had to confront them all the time, they would not be able to function effectively in society. I can tell you that this is the case with me personally.[1]
Those methods are easy to understand. They are similar to what many writing teachers call "brainstorming," for instance.
Chance operators cause us to bypass our "regular" kinds of ideas, as do particular metrical and rhyme patterns in, say, sonnets or heroic couplets. For example, say I'm writing a sonnet valorizing or romanticizing martyrdom. Say I get to the end of line three and my plan calls for an extended metaphor reflecting the irony—or the paradoxical truth-- that it is precisely death, as Nietzsche pointed out, and only death that can give our lives a kind of tragic dignity and significance. Now, say I was planning all along to use the phrase "self-transcendence" to suggest this meaning. But now, my poetic form calls for 10 syllables in this line and an aa bb rhyme scheme. So that phrase that I was determined to use at this point in the poem just doesn't work because I'd have either too many or too few syllables. I have to go back to thinking or use a thesaurus to find another noun or noun phrase to use in its place. Now in the process, I come across something that reminds me of the Greek word, pharmakon. The English rendering of this word is interesting because it can mean "poisoning" and a cure for a poisoning all at the same time. (It's a union of opposites) And chances are, the only English speakers that would know this etymology are those who have studied Plato in the original Greek, as I did. Furthermore, when we hear this word it takes us back to the larger context in Plato's the Phadrus in which that key word is intended to have both one meaning and its opposite! And I know that if I use that word it will function as an "allusion" to Platonic or new-Platonic philosophy.
At this point, I get up and do a little "happy dance" because I've stumbled across a very simple and elegant way to suggest, in the poem, my understanding of the idea and Plato's understanding of it all at the same time. And my original idea, at this point, assumes a greater intellectual depth or meaning: it is transformed into something I never would have thought of if I had not been "limited" by the constraints of the sonnet form.
That's what I mean when I say that it is the act of writing itself, the actual process, in which new ideas are brought to my attention. Writers hardly ever just sit down and think of something and then translate or empty that meaning into words and sentences.
The take home part of your final, then, builds on the first part of Exam Two, in which you were to have described the techniques, identified their theoretical basis, and contextualized them—show how they emerged in a particular place and time, how the surrealists were a product of their historical moment and, how they themselves helped shape that socio-historical worldview.
For the final, you'll continue this line of thought. Look back on some of the major ideas expressed in the poetry. Then choose one idea or motif or theme (identity, for example, or alienation, correspondences in the material and spiritual worlds, etc.) Or, put together a cluster of potentially related themes. This will be the basis of an article or essay on the idea and also in the relevance of these techniques and the theories that helped shaped them in the reality we inhabit today.
Now take out paper and pencil. Write your target theme at the top and then apply one or more than one technique for generating ideas. When you think you have enough to begin writing the essay (about 450 or 500 words) don't throw the papers away. Submit them ( or copies of them) on the day of the final together with your finished essay
[1] Students might have noticed that I avoid talking on the telephone. Making calls is more difficult for me than than answering them. The telephone signal triggers an anxiety response in me so powerful that I stammer and stutter and find it difficult to breathe. I can lecture to hundreds of people in a big auditorium; I can perform well on stage; I can hold my own in debates with deans and university presidents; but I can't call the Palestinian-American (meaning that he speaks English) kid across the street to order a pizza!!! I can trace the problem back to the horror and violence of my childhood in America when I was too afraid, or ashamed or embarrassed as a ten year old girl (and an orphan without blood relatives) to call for help. Unfortunately, knowing the source of the problem did not (as Freud would have predicted) do much in the way of resolving the problem or alleviating the anxiety. I don't talk about such things in class because I don't have anything better to do. Some people think that I go off on a tangent that leads us further and further away from the course context. That's not true. I use my stories to illustrate ideas that may seem difficult or foreign. All students need is the patience to allow ideas to articulate and disarticulate and re-articulate in continuously evolving ideas. (Next semester I will teach you more about this—what we call dialectical reasoning). It's creative and critical thinking at the same time. It is learning how to read and how to write at the same time because it is all one process! It might very well make some people uncomfortable, those who were raised in rigidly authoritarian and patriarchal societies as I was myself in "little Italy" , because education to them entails, for the most part, receiving a corpus of knowledge without questioning traditional styles of thinking (cognitive styles, as I define them in my glossaries) or scrutinizing or re-examining apriory assumptions . I want my students to learn various ways of thinking, ways of knowing so that they can work independently of professors. If we—all of us, students and professors together—fail in this regard we leave ourselves open and vulnerable to ideological inscriptions (see glossary under ideology) that are disguised as objective truth and matters of fact. This is in part the "self-colonized" identity you've heard so much about with Dr. Basem.
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:48:08 -0700
From: jazmin...@yahoo.com
Subject: RE: Contemporary Peotry
To: gdom...@hotmail.com
| Thank you Dr. Gena. And for the Assignment the girls told me , But i don't exactly get what to write. And I'm not the only one that doesn't understand it. --- On Fri, 8/20/10, Gina Dominique <gdom...@hotmail.com> wrote:
|
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