must.not.abandon.blog

Now that I'm home and relaxing, I've been really neglecting this blog (though to my defense, I guess it could be said that I've been neglecting all things academic). While I have definitely not been reading articles every day like I initially planned, I have been going through a good amount of poetry and reading bits and pieces of prose, particularly from Winesburg, Ohio, which is definitely one of my favorite books of all time.

I've also officially signed up for classes for this upcoming semester. My first courses in grad school will be:
-A required seminar for my cohort (which, incidentally, is all women!) which will examine the impact that debates in critical and cultural theory have made on the discipline of English literature

-A course on globalization and the early modern period in England, particularly focusing on the first moments of global contact and the ways in which modern global relations have influenced our understanding of the early modern world and vice versa

-A class on Modernism and Orientalism, with a particular emphasis on the work of American poets and the structure of American Orientalism

-(what I'm probably most excited for) A course on the construction and performance of blackness, with a particular section on queerness. Hurrah!

And because I'm probably the only person excited about these classes, I'll close this entry with my favorite poem right now (definitely something that everyone can enjoy):

Edward's Anecdote
-Donald Hall

Late one night she told me.
We'd come home from a party
where she drank more wine
than usual, from nervousness

I suppose. I was astonished,
which is typical,
and her lover of course
was my friend. My naivete

served their purposes: what
you don't know beats your head in.
After weeping for an hour or so
I tried screaming.

Then I quieted down;
then I broke her grandmother's
teapot against the pantry brickwork,
which helped a bit.

She kept apologizing
as she walked back and forth,
chainsmoking. I hated her,
and thought how beautiful

she looked as she paced,
which started me weeping again.
Old puzzlements began to solve
themselves: the errand

that took all afternoon;
the much-explained excursion
to stay with a college roommate
at a hunting lodge

without a telephone;
and of course the wrong numbers.
then my masochistic mind
printed kodacolors

of my friend and my wife
arranged in bed together.
When I looked out the window,
I saw the sky going

pale with dawn; soon the children
would wake: thinking of them
started me weeping again.
I felt exhausted, and

I wanted to sleep neither
with her nor without her,
which made me remember:
when i was a child we knew

a neighbor named Mr. Jaspers-
an ordinary
gray and agreeable
middle-aged businessman who

joked with the neighborhood
children when he met us on
the street, giving us pennies,
except for once a year

when he got insanely drunk
and the police took him.
One time he beat his year-old
daughter with a broomstick,

breaking a rib bone, and as
she screamed she kept crawling
back to her father: where else
should she look for comfort?