Memo to Self...

Sunday, September 02, 2001

Eeep! I've been...bad. I forgot to add the rest of my notes on Rday or Fday, and I have an entirely wonderful selfish reason for both. I SLEPT. I've been sick, and I SLEPT. SO THERE. :)

On another note, I got linked by Kismet-chan, so I link her back with a bunch of wonderful vibes. (((((((((FUSHIGI KISMET))))))))) I'll eventually link to the man who started it all off, Starrynight el Increible, but that'll be when I work up more of an urge to play with the template. I'm a HTML chicken still, no da.

Oh and Shiina Ringo ROCKS! At least, her early stuff, which is the only thing I've listened to. Me gusta.

Pulling myself away from this rambling...Classes!:

American Literature
: We continued talking about Robert Frost poetry, and also discussed the Imagists. These were a band of people, led by Ezra Pound (who had his sticky little fingers in all parts of Literary Modernism), that made the main idea of the poem an image. These were sort of Westernized haikus, as they removed the symbolism and themes present in Eastern haiku, and as a movement it didn't last that long. However, there are three pretty famous poems that can be called "imagist": William Carlos Williams' "Red Wheelbarrow"; Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"; and Pound's "At a Station of the Metro" (err, I think that's the title). Pound's is the most succinct of the three at two lines, and is simply an image; Williams' is, IMHO, rather depressing and begins to bring meaning back to the images it presents; Stevens' is the longest, presenting thirteen images, and comes closest to what someone would actually think of as a poem. There's also a great parody of it called "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Thunderbird." Mwee-hee.

Writing Fiction: Discussed the first chapters of John Gardner's book. You know, I'm definetly liking this class much more than the last one. Instead of lecturing and picking out points, he asked us our opinions of the book...and then we got to go through the first two chapters and find three quotes that we felt were cool. Then we went around the circle and read them. Basically, the "rules" (though Gardener isn't keen on actual rules) are:


  • Details.
  • A good educational foundation.
  • Oodles of details.
  • Write within your "genre"--realist, tale teller, yarn spinner. (Me, I tell tales. Woo!)
  • Vivid details.
  • Make up your own rules as you go along.
  • Did I mention details?

We reviewed the Oncourse responses and how to do them, then broke up into groups and looked at the stories we were supposed to bring to class. I brought a copy of the "Kingdoms" Prologue, which has been collecting dust. We're supposed to do five stories or one long story throughout the semester; I'm gonna work on that one. Why? 'Cause it's a lovely little tale, and I don't have anything else on the burner 'cept the Unnamed Fantasy, which is a little too personal for writing class.

hmmm...that's it for now. OOh! It seems I managed to convert a big chunk of the English department to Terry Prachett. As it should be, methinks.

Jya ne!