English Department News

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Professor John McDonald: Free Your Mind And The Rest Will Follow

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On Feb. 11, Professor John McDonald delivered his keynote speech via Zoom, to honor the 13 new members of UP’s Sigma Tau Delta Honor Society. What follows is an exploration of the self, and how we as individuals make connections and judgements—timely in this period of Zoomed everything where we have ample time to be alone with our thoughts. Please enjoy!

Websters defines the word excellence as… Just kidding.

How about the unprecedented? This word that was everywhere this past year. It seemed like everything was being described this way and actually, here we are again—in an unprecedented situation—you are being inducted in Sigma Tau Delta. Congratulations on this excellent achievement! In addition to this honor I think you should all get 2 degrees when you graduate—one from UP and one from Zoom University—or at least a certificate. You know what? Let’s make it trophies. The English department will cover that.

For several years, since the creation of STD I have sat in a chair and listened to colleague after colleague in the English department give really interesting talks at this event, and I always thought please, please don’t ever ask me, I could never come up with something this good or interesting. I have imagined the scenario of being approached and thought of how I could politely decline: no time, cat’s sick, sorry, I already know I will be sick that day, family emergency, car won’t start—you all know that grab bag of avoidances. I have been relieved each year when it wasn’t me. This year I was asked by organizers Jo and Sophie to give the keynote and honestly, I thought of why I couldn’t, and then I thought about why I had to, and eventually why I wanted to. Because students I really, really like and have relationships with asked me in a well-written paragraph full of compliments. I am not one to decline a well written paragraph.

When I was asked to give this talk, I thought, important people give keynotes, people with valuable things to say. Then I wrote that last sentence and realized, that’s not true at all. I’ve witnessed keynote or commencement speakers who were misogynist, out of touch”ist”, and a few other “ists”. I try my best not to be “ist” at all, though I am a middle-aged white guy with a lot of opinions and a definition of clever that is about 40 years old. Regardless, my goal in writing this was to say some valuable words to you, to have fun, and to hopefully interest you. I also thought, what a time, this past year, in which to give a keynote, so much possibility with the shelter in place orders, with Covid’s ever-growing infection and death rate, with our lives on hold so to speak, with our racial, political, and social tumult, socially distanced, physically distanced. So many distances. So much from which to recover, and so much to discover, potentially, about ourselves. Where to begin?

How about this poem?

The Long Up 
By Kay Ryan

You can see the 
land flattening out 
near the top. The 
long up you’ve faced 
is going to stop. 
Your eyes feast 
on space instead 
of pitch as though 
you’d been released. 
The measured pace 
you’ve kept corrupts 
with fifty yards 
to do—fifty 
times as hard 
against the blue.

I first encountered this poem in April, 2011. I think some of us here may have read it together. My dad was to die later the same month; my mother and sisters and I had been struggling with his suffering from cancer for two relentless years. Everything about this poem felt connected to my life experience then. I needed the “long up” to stop. Or the long down, it maybe was. I was emotionally and physically exhausted and needed to get to the “blue.” It is by a poet with the exact same name as my mother. I swear that poem smashed me in the face. I now think, what was going on that I opened the New Yorker and Kay Ryan’s words, words that I needed, were there in my hands? I had never, ever, heard of her.

I connected so effortlessly and I was so excited that this connection presented itself to me. I made a copy of the poem for my mom. I thought she would see it like I did, some sort of revelation or acknowledgement from the universe of what we were going through, that our measured pace of suffering would end. There was blue up ahead. And it had her name on it. It had her name on it. She read it and was quite non-plussed, if one can be quite non-plussed. If you’ve been in any of my classes you are aware maybe, that I like to give my opinion. So I will go ahead and say that one can be quite non-plussed.

My mom did with it what she did so many times in the past, over the decades literally…that mom move: she attached it to the refrigerator with a magnet and probably never thought about it again. There it stayed, growing shabbier and shabbier, until, last time I was home, I threw it out. She didn’t have the same connection with these words, she didn’t connect her or even our experience with these words. And even here I am saying it—our connection, our experiences, not mine.

I found it. I made the connection. It wasn’t ours.

We make connections if we are fortunate. They require some investment, and do not make themselves. Nor can we necessarily make them for others.

In order for connections to have value and meaning, we have to have differences. This is something we English majors like to note as binaries, especially if it is not in an English class and we can really show off. Binaries tend to be dismissed as bad, oppressive—many people struggle due to all the binaries of various kinds. Much deserved focus is on these differences. And yet, how do we know who we want to be if we don’t know who we don’t want to be? As Joan Didion says in her essay, “Why I Write” “All I knew then was what I wasn’t, and it took me some years to discover what I was.”

I believe that we need differences to grow emotionally, to grow our curiosity (if that is a goal) and be more understanding. How many of us have read something, listened to a song, or heard someone voice an idea, etc, and thought, “This is real crap.” Emphasizing the “real”. This is different from just crap or fake crap, which can actually be good, like something being really bad in a good way. Here is an example: I was watching SNL and what do you know, Machine Gun Kelly is on and I think, well here is a musical artist that I have heard of, but have not heard. Let’s see what it’s about. And I listened and then I rendered the crap verdict mentioned above out loud to myself, (because talking more to myself out loud is something I’m doing more of during the pandemic).

Yet I do this all the time; base the value or quality of something on my standards, on my values. Or even just my interests. I’d like to think I’m a good gauge. And I am a good gauge for myself. But not for many others. It occurs to me that we are talking here about something else we English majors do. We consider ideas and experience things through lenses. Our own. We judge and we criticize.

I’m going to keep going with this judgment and criticism angle. Maybe you are like me, quick to make a judgment, or under someone else’s influence. I never read much Robert Frost because we never established a connection, he and I. Admittedly I let my connection with one of my influencers, William Carlos Williams, effect my tone against Frost; Williams’s negativity towards Frost influenced my judgment of Frost’s person and work even though I had at the time maybe read about five or so of Frost’s poems. But I ultimately read more, wanting to confirm my judgment. I did. I still think Robert Frost is dull and I hate the pseudo-corny-folksiness of his work. The only poem I ever liked is the one he stole from Shakespeare where the kid gets his hand cut by the buzzsaw and dies. Maybe Machine Gun Kelly should be reading Robert Frost.

Now, please understand, I’m not disallowing real crap. I’m just talking shit about it. My rejection will not make it go away. Or if it did, something else would take its place.

I hated Def Leppard in the 80’s when I was younger, and that was that. They came out of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, if you are interested at all. Maybe you’ve heard your grandmother listening to them on the radio in her car. They have many recognizable hits like the song “Photograph.” Now, when Def Leppard comes on my car radio I don’t turn the station, instead I listen and I think: How is this put together? I never noticed that cowbell before. What’s behind this thing that I’m experiencing. This is not as entirely bad as I thought it was. Really, it’s not bad at all—that judgment doesn’t fit here anymore for me. I didn’t like it initially. Not that I fully embrace Def Leppard now, or even like it, but I can’t say that it’s bad anymore—I recognize the skill, the labor, the vision, and the dedication that was behind creating an album that sold 25 million copies worldwide. This doesn’t make me like the song. I will never own a Def Leppard LP-record-vinyl-album. But I will not say it isn’t worth liking.

If you haven’t been keeping score, that’s Def Leppard 1, with Frost and Machine Gun Kelly tied with nothing apiece.

Here are some final thoughts I want to end this with. We are constantly criticizing and judging, and we should be. Judgments help us make connections. Judgments help us understand one another and help deepen our relationships with others. Differences are essential. Differences are healthy. Differences are OK. Engage difference. Know where you stand. And if possible, be clear about why.

The English Major: Embracing Wonder and “Why?”

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As our resident medievalist,  Dr. Cara Hersh  helps animate older texts for newer audiences, persuading contemporary students to take a closer look at the simultaneously age-old and currently relevant insights distilled in some of her favorite works. She enables thought expansion and rhetorical rabbit holes through her job, and opts for an English department mindset while outside of the classroom. 

Hersh’s keynote speech from the Sigma Tau Delta induction ceremony this past Monday, March 25th, urges English students and faculty to use our reading brains to the best of our abilities, believing our skills help us see the world in an empathetic state of wonder. No, this isn’t a plug for the hit OPB radio show, but a call to arms for the disenchanted. Her brand of teaching and seeing the world rests in a commitment to details and consideration; it functions as a tool for learning across space and time. She shows her students how to pause and ask more profound questions, even if they begin with a simple “Why?.” Dr. Hersh dignifies the power of language in a contagious way. I genuinely enjoyed charting sentences in her “Otherness” class, and cannot recall another time when I was shown how to appreciate the sum of a work’s parts in conjunction with its wholeness. In effort to wholly approach the world, Hersh asks us to remember how literature captivates us and sharpens our abilities to look at things from left-field. Read her keynote speech below for a dose of inspiration and that contagious magic she brings to her courses. 

The Wonder of Wonder 

Dr. Cara Hersh 

Most of you, at some point in your college career, have probably had to answer to the now cliched question—why did you want to become an English major?  And—what are you going to do with an English major?   As the sole humanist in a scientifically minded family and as a Jewish humanist who spends her time studying medieval Catholic texts I have gotten my fair share of questions over the years. It’s taken me awhile to answer these questions with substance, and I don’t have just one satisfying answer to them.  Today, though, I’d like to try to respond to these questions and share with you all one answer that has felt particularly compelling to me in recent years.  To those who wonder about my ostensibly esoteric career path commit I reply:  I immerse myself in this pursuit, and take immense pleasure in doing so, because of wonder itself.   

In the last five years or so I have come to really appreciate how wonder, for me, is one answer to the  question “what’s so great about literature?”  We might assume that wonder is a trans-historical affect—haven’t all humans wondered about something in their world?  Wondering about wonder from the perspectives of both a parent and a medievalist have led me, however, to realize that wonder is historical.  It seems to me that wonder is not some timeless emotion like love, jealousy, or anger, that supposedly transcends all time periods.  Instead, wonder diminishes over time and it must, I suggest, be reinvigorated through deliberate strategies that involve fiction—in our own lives, in our reading, and when we learn from one another in our literature classrooms. 

I became hyper-aware of wonder when my son turned four and I was answering a lot of “why?” questions. I loved these moments of wonder and wrote down a lot of them:  why can’t dogs go to restaurants?  Why don’t flashlights flash?  Why are there boys and girls?  Why doesn’t food go down your airtube (and I’ll add that approximately 99 percent of the questions I answered at that point involved the gastrointestinal track)?  Constantly answering questions such as these (often times thanks to the assistance of Google) made me extremely aware of the strength of wonder in the young—I once wrote down all the “why” questions my son asked me over one fifteen-minute breakfast and had about two pages worth of questions. 

It also made me cognizant of how little we all wonder as we get older.  I am guilty of this decrease in curiosity, as are we all.  I want to ask as many “why”questions as my son does, but I don’t.  In class, I want my students to bombard with me with “why” questions, but that doesn’t always happen.  William Wordsworth speaks to this diminishment in the poem, “My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold A Rainbow in the Sky” as he points out the universal decline in geeking out about phenomena such as rainbows in our adult years. 

So, here’s where my medievalist perspective comes in.  Just as we are more apt to wonder as children, so too, I argue, were medieval subjects more prone to wonder than we are.  Just as adults wonder less, so, too does the modern world.  The Middle Ages more emphatically embraced phenomena that compel wonder—think about the medieval belief in miracles, marvels, and monsters, for example.  We tend today to look negatively on these magical moments of wonder and, according to the modern narrative of disenchantment, the Middle Ages was a time of superstition and ignorance (of “enchantment” in pejorative sense). These crazy beliefs, we tell ourselves today, were replaced during the Enlightenment with rationality, secularism, and individualism, which disenchanted the world (in a positive sense).  As Max Weber states of the disenchanted period in which we now live “one can, in principle master all things by calculation”—we tell ourselves that we can understand the world around us better because of disenchantment. 

Of course, the Enlightenment brought about many amazing things and rationality is an incredibly productive impulse in our modern world.  Science, engineering, and mathematics have benefited and will continue to benefit so many of our lives.  But so can wonder.  We need to cultivate wonder in our collective and individual histories.  

So what can we, and do we, wonder about it?  How is wonder still available to us?  One thing that has stayed consistent since the medieval period is the types of events and phenomena that provoke us to wonder.  We wonder, I suggest, at things that we can’t quite incorporate or encompass in our preset mental categories of how the world is ordered.  We wonder at mystery, at paradox, at hybridity.  In the Catholic medieval tradition this would have included the hybridity of god and man, of mother and virgin, etc. What do you wonder about?  When I have asked students like you to share what causes them to stop and wonder they point to similar moments of hybridity or paradox.  They wonder at recent research that shows that trees can communicate with each other, that machines can do all the amazing things they can do (think Artificial Intelligence), or about the complexity and mysteries of our own human minds.   

Literature, is of course, the perfect instrument of wonder.  Think about poetry—poets, freed from the constraints of plot, can constantly surprise, delight, and invoke wonder by mashing incongruous ideas, words, and sounds together.  We can wonder at the miracle that the Beowulf poet—who wrote from a position of not being able to imagine in any way a 21st-century readership, can still communicate with us and provoke us. We can wonder at the magic of written language—essentially black squiggles on a page, communicating across time and space.  We can wonder at the magic of watching a play or a scary movie and being genuinely scared about something that we also know is not real. 

Ok, so what can wonder offer us—why wonder?  I propose that wonder offers us an ethical system—one that is incredibly compelling to me. First, wonder is non-appropriative.  When one wonders about something, one does not try to master it like one does when being rational, but rather is bowled over by its awesomeness, indecipherability, or paradoxical nature.  Some of my favorite descriptions of what wonder is includes Iris Murdoch’s claim that wonder promotes a “unselfing,” Simone Weil refers to the wonder response as a “radical decentering” and Elaine Scarry claims that wonder can make us a feel an “opiated adjacency”—in other words we are sidelined when we feel wonder but it is a pleasurable sidelining.  As the medieval writer Bernard of Clairveaux analogized, wonder is like a golden goblet filled with liquid—we can consume what is in the goblet and understand part of it, but we eventually give back the goblet itself—we can’t master all of it.  This ethos of ceding control, I argue, can be incredibly ethical as we may shift our relationship to nature, animals, and other humans. Instead of solely trying to control the world around us we should also passively wonder at its awesomeness.  

Second, and this is my favorite ethical argument about wonder— wonder is a system based on joy and this joy stimulates generosity.  For a long time, when people asked me why I spend my life studying literature I answered “ empathy.” I believed (and still believe, of course) that literature allows us to enter into the minds of others and invites us to avoid harm to others because we imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes. However, in some ways, this answer centers on a concept of suffering rather than joy.  Conversely, ethical arguments for wonder rest on the feeling of happiness.  Provocatively, the Latin words consistently used for wonder in the Renaissance period, admiratio, mirabilia, and miracula all “seem to have their roots in an Indo-European word for smile.”  Wondering at things excites us, invigorates us, makes us smile.  And as one scholar on this subject writes, “One must be enamored with existence and occasionally even enchanted in the face of it in order to be capable of donating some of one’s scarce mortal resources to the service of others.” Wonder makes us take joy in the world around us and then compels us to take better care of it.   

For all these reasons, I hope to reverse the timeline of our personal and world histories and advocate for emotional wonder alongside rationality and calculation both in my classrooms and my own life.  I invite you, too, to ask those childlike “why” questions and to embrace the mysterious, magical, enchanted and wonder-full qualities of books.  

 

Pursuing Social Work with an English Degree

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By Laura Eager ’12

“Social Work? What’s that?”

Like many people, I did not know what social work was as an undergraduate. This lack of knowledge lasted until I had my first long-term substitute teaching position in 2013 at a Title I public school in Washington, DC and I interacted with the school social worker. After many years of experience in both medicine and teaching, I have recently been accepted to a graduate program in social work: Wurzweiler School of Social Work in New York City. Social work seems like a natural fit for me: I have always enjoyed helping others, especially children, and I want to make a positive impact on people’s lives while working in a variety of settings.

Why will my degree in English help me as a social worker? My peers have told me that a Master of Social Work (MSW) program requires a lot of reading and writing. In fact, one friend told me that the heavy load of reading and writing was a challenge for her when she first started her program, as she did not previously enjoy school. As an English major, I wrote multiple papers and read hundreds of pages weekly. Not only will I have to write for my professors, but I will also have to write reports and notes for clients. Reading also requires time and effort. Not only will I be reading to accomplish an assignment, but I must also comprehend what I read and be prepared to discuss my ideas in class.

Moreover, let me mention that every client has a story. I read many stories in my English classes and no two stories were alike. Every story had different characters, themes, conflicts, and so on. Likewise, no two of my future clients will be alike – they will represent a wide variety of races, religions, languages, socioeconomic statuses, genders, sexual orientations, abilities, and most importantly, stories as to why they are seeking help. The ability to critically analyze a story is an essential skill for success in English classes. As a future social work student, my job will not be to “fix” people, but rather try to understand why they have the challenges they have, ask questions that help them get to the bottom of what’s going on, and refer them to resources that will assist them.

A common phrase that I heard in my days as a student writer was “so what?” Just as I needed to be able to answer the “so what?” question when writing papers, I also need to be able to answer this question as a future social worker– whether I’m discussing social issues in my classes or working with clients in my field placements and beyond. However, the “so what?” with my clients pertains to why they need help and why their needs matter. Not only will this question influence the direct work I will do with clients, but also help prioritize policy issues.

I hope to return with an update on life in graduate school, with an answer  to the key question (to quote the Avenue Q song) of “What Do You Do With a B.A. in English?”

About the Author: Laura Eager is an alumnus, class of 2012, graduating with a BA in English and a minor in psychology. She currently works as a freelancer in the following roles: administrative assistant, nanny, and workshop facilitator for Kids Turn, a program that assists children in coping with divorce. As student, she was actively involved in the English department as a Writing Assistant and president of the English Society. Laura resides in Fremont, CA but will be spending the next three summers in New York City as she works towards her Masters degree in social work.

Books for Black History Month

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By Laura Misch

February is much more than a month-long rumination on your current relationship status. It’s a time to recognize and appreciate Black History Month through the acknowledgment of African-American achievements. Although we should always celebrate the past and present achievements of African-Americans, Black History Month designates a special time during which we can actively commemorate the contributions these individuals have made to our shared history. And I personally can’t think of a better way to celebrate than with books, so I decided to ask a few of our lovely English professors what they think is a must-read book by an African-American author.

Now, before I dive into the recommendations, you may be asking yourself, “why read a book for Black History Month?” Well, if you were to ask Dr. Hiro, she would tell you, “It’s through the study of African-American literature that I have learned about African-American history and, really, about American history.” In other words, bring on the books.

The Marrow of Tradition (1901) by Charles W. Chesnutt

Suggested by: Dr. Hiro

Let’s start with the oldest book on the list! For those of you who took ENG 225 with Prof. McDonald, you may recognize Charles Chesnutt as the author of The House Behind the Cedars. The Marrow of Tradition is a historical novel of his based on a race riot that occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898. Dr. Hiro describes this work as “a beautiful fictionalization of all the forces” surrounding this historic event in which white supremacists were able to successfully have “the town [of Wilmington] emptied out of black folks.” Chesnutt himself hoped this novel would become “the legitimate successor” of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. While the novel never received great literary prestige, it still effectively shines a light on the reality of post-Reconstruction America.

 Quicksand (1928) or Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen

Suggested by: Dr. Brassard

    

For a long period of time, Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen flew under the radar, but her work has made a resurgence in recent decades. Dr. Brassard recommends Larsen’s only published novels, which follow the life of a mixed-race woman as she navigates the murky waters of racial identity. Dr. Brassard praises the clear intersectionality found within these works, pointing out that “both books deal with gender and class as well as race issues.” Another huge plus it that both books are incredibly short. Each is under 150 pages! (Also, shout-out to Dr. Larson, who also recommended Passing!) 

The Fire Next Time (1963) by James Baldwin

Suggested by: Dr. Larson

 

Dr. Larson recognizes that we students are often “short on time,” so he suggests reading Baldwin’s book The Fire Next Time. The book consists of two essays. The first one is a letter to his fourteen-year-old nephew, which discusses the role of race in U.S. History. Dr. Larson says this essay presents “a powerful and blazingly honest assessment of America in the ‘60s.” He also notes that “this is the book on which Ta-Nehisi Coates based his own epistolary excoriation of his era: Between the World and Me.”

Soul On Ice (1968) by Eldridge Cleaver

Suggested by: Prof. McDonald

Don’t recognize the name Eldridge Cleaver? He was an early leader of the Black Panther Party, and Prof. McDonald characterizes his memoir Soul On Ice as “a portrait of a Black revolutionary in the making.” The book is “an account of his time in prison, his political views, critical responses to African-American literature and other revolutionary literature he read in prison.” Prof. McDonald sees this work as “one of the many stepping stones in understanding racial currents in America today.”

Meridian (1976) by Alice Walker  

Suggested by: Dr. Hersh

Most people have at least heard of Alice Walker’s famous novel The Color Purple, but Dr. Hersh believes her novel Meridian is also worthy of recognition. She says the novel is “one of the books that converted me to the English major as an undergraduate.” She appreciates that the book “not only is sweeping in its theme—it explores the Civil Rights Movement—but is also intricately put together and so much fun to write about.” For her, reading Meridian was an “eye-opening” experience due to its deep exploration into “the intersection between the Civil Rights Movement and feminism.”

The Intuitionist (1999) or John Henry Days (2001) by Colson Whitehead

Suggested by: Dr. Hiro

As of late, Colson Whitehead has been lauded for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Underground Railroad. However, Dr. Hiro suggests that you take a look at some of his earlier works as well. The Intuitionist tells the story of two rival factions of elevator inspectors—the Empiricists vs. the Intuitionists. John Henry Days tells the story of—wait for it—John Henry, a Black steel driver who dies trying to beat the very machine that’s set to replace him. Dr. Hiro describes both works as “really quirky, fun, funny novels.” In a world where we tend to “think of African-American literature as [exclusively] serious,” these novels provide a nice contrast.

Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) by Claudia Rankine

Suggested by: Dr. Hiro

For those who love poetry, Citizen may be the book for you. Dr. Hiro depicts Claudia Rankine’s book as “a hybrid poetry and visual art collection” that “really takes the pulse of race relations right now.” While she knows that it requires patience to sit down and read a book of poetry, Dr. Hiro maintains that Citizen is a real “page-turner” that is worth the effort, as Rankine creates “these incredible impressionistic portrayals of micro-aggressions.”

The March trilogy (completed in 2016) written by John Lewis & Andrew Aydin, illustrated & lettered by Nate Powell

Suggested by: Dr. Larson

If you want a break from novels and poetry, why not read a graphic novel? Dr. Larson really enjoyed reading the black-and-white comics trilogy March by Georgia Congressman and Civil Rights icon John Lewis. Congressman Lewis found inspiration in the comic Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, which was published in 1957 and laid out the principles of nonviolence. The March series is essentially a biography of John Lewis’ life and details his experience of being involved in Civil Rights Movement.  

Homegoing (2016) by Yaa Gyasi

Suggested by: Dr. Larson

Another recommendation by Dr. Larson is Yaa Gyasi’s debut novel Homegoing. Gyasi is a Ghanaian-American who moved to the U.S. when she was just two years old. Her novel starts with the story of two half-sisters who are born in different villages. One sister marries a British slaver, while the other is sold into slavery and taken to America by way of the Middle Passage. From there, the story recounts their divergent paths.

This list really has something for everyone, so happy reading and Happy Black History Month!

The Wounds of Care and the Pleasures of Ordinary Devotion: One Editor’s Encounter(s) with Maggie Nelson

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magz

This summer, my car was broken into the one night I left my backpack in the passenger seat. I wasn’t upset about my laptop, the intimate mementos of a senior recital, a poem remembered, a notebook of observations–at least not immediately. Instead, I was in despair over the loss of a signed copy of a book wherein I had marked my growth for two years: The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. A copy of a book that, coincidentally, came out a week after I came out to my parents. A copy of a book I carried with me nearly everywhere I went to for the comfort of its ideas and the knowledge that both Nelson’s and my handwriting shared a space there.

I write the above to show how deeply vulnerable I feel in any kind of exchange with this writer’s mind and heart. And so, reader, please forgive me for being reluctant to share the result of a few brief email exchanges with MN. Her answers to a few questions typed to me in blue and saved under the name “Coito.queries” have left me undone in the best way, and I’ve wanted to cherish them on my own for as long as possible. However, given the painful residue of the election and the myriad personal tragedies that we may be holding in its wake, I find that her responses are important for us to think about together. 

Maggie Nelson is certainly an accomplished scribe. Her oeuvre includes The Red Parts: A Memoir, Bluets, The Art of Cruelty, and, as aforementioned, The Argonauts, all of which are difficult to categorize as singly non-fiction. Of course, this is a part of their charm to an undergraduate student, like myself, who often finds that the critical writings we labor over need to accommodate the occasional poetic-personal interlude. Additionally, she received the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Non-Fiction and, most recently, was one of the recipients of a 2016 MacArthur Fellowship.

Onward, then, to the interview. She is brief–as is her style–and, yet, her brevity holds an urgency and calls for a slow processing that I hope will reward you and move you to read her works.

C: On July 17, 2015, you gave a lecture at Reed College about the body in time. In it, you cited David Wojnarowicz’s Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration and your experience reading it for the first time. I remember you describing the change in your reading experience after you found out, halfway through the book, that Wojnarowicz had just died of AIDS. Given your transformation of experience with Close to the Knives and the proliferation of body-in-time-moments in your own work, how would you say thinking about the body in time shapes your daily thought process and the moments from your life that you choose to highlight in works like Bluets and The Red Parts? 

MN: I think I use the body in time more as a structuring principle in editing than I do in daily writing. It’s there in daily writing whether you like it or not—that’s clear to any writer who opens up the file from yesterday in a new day, over and over again.

C: In Wounds of Passion bell hooks writes, “To feel deeply we cannot avoid pain.” I feel as though your work is smeared with the truth of this statement, especially when you are writing about moments of care. The Argonauts, for example, contains a phrase I think of when I consider hooks’ statement alongside your writing: “ablaze with our care.” In your opinion, what are the ways in which care wounds us? What does it mean, for you, to be “ablaze” with care, with devotion?

MN: Care is absolutely pharmakon, i.e. healing and wounding. It wounds us to care because caring reveals how much we have invested in one another, and how painful it is that we are impermanent beings, destined to leave each other and this earth. It’s painful that we can’t alleviate more of each other’s suffering while we’re here. It’s painful when you realize you aren’t even close to offering good enough care, just as it’s painful to provide your best. It’s also an extremely worthy way to spend our time here; pain isn’t always an indication that anything’s gone wrong.

C: Something really beautiful I enjoy learning and relearning from Bluets and The Argonauts are your conversations with your collected teachers, theorists, artists, and activists—the “many-gendered mothers of your heart.” Is there a particular many-gendered mother who has been on your mind as of late or a story of how you came to discover a many-gendered mother that you’d be willing to share?

MN: Many-gendered mothers of the heart are everywhere, and they are especially raining down in my inbox since the election of Trump. One I’d point to, which Harry sent me the other day, is the video footage of Sylvia Rivera speaking in 1973 at a Gay Rights’ March. Google it tonight; I dare you to stay dry-eyed and uninspired.

C: Both Jane: A Murder and The Red Parts use the objects left behind by your aunt to help lend insight into her life and her death. Additionally, in Bluets you write that you cannot remember where you found many of your blue objects, but you “love them nonetheless.” What role do you think objects play in holding or eroding at memory? What is the purpose of collecting anything, in your view?

MN: Objects are also pharmakon—they hold and erode memory. But you know, so do words, so do pictures. So does writing, and perhaps so does memory itself. It takes a lot to remember something new and not just encrust up one’s own memories. Writing can be good for remembering a new thing, or remembering something differently, but then you have to watch out for how the writing will subsequently encrust it. It’s an endless process. I don’t collect as much as I used to, but I encourage my son to collect; I think there’s profound magic in accretion, especially in childhood. Right now he’s collecting chunks of moss.

Here’s to the many-gendered mothers of our hearts who so generously allow us to engage in conversation with them, whether on pages we can revisit or in conversations that, fleeting as they may be, are often imprinted on our memories in a way that feels nothing short of permanent. May we continue to learn and re-learn how to care for each other in this changing world with their help.

The pleasure of abiding. The pleasure of insistence, of persistence. The pleasure of obligation, the pleasure of dependency. The pleasures of ordinary devotion. The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one’s work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again—not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life.–Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

Wordstock 2016 Three Ways

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Wordstock 2017

Ah, Wordstock—the Portland-based, literature-themed Comic-Con. Held in our city’s architectural gems and with over one hundred writers to see and hear, Wordstock provides the perfect weekend plan for the genre-curious English student, professors of all disciplines, and the bookworm looking for their next read.

Needless to say, the prospect of going to Wordstock for the first time can be overwhelming. What kinds of ideas should you mentally prepare yourself for? What if two events you want to attend overlap? Fear not! Three Contributing Editors—Coito, Stephen Kellar, and Kate Garcia—took copious notes for you so that you can get ready for next year.

Please enjoy a found poem, a series of compelling questions, and a list of exquisitely disjointed wisdoms gathered from the events we attended. We hope they show you that, no matter how you plan your Wordstock day, you are sure to walk away with your mind challenged, your heart engaged, and your love of literature reignited.

“I thought I was going to write about The Odyssey and then I ended up writing about Bladerunner.”

These ideas came from War and the Aftermath: In Words and Images, Breaking Poetry Pattern: Experimenting with Form in Poetry, and From__With Love: City as Character. The driving list, “To agitate, to question, to name, to give language, to be caretakers of language,” is a quote from Solmaz Sharif which was part of her response to the question “What is the role of writers in a world that’s in a permanent state of war?”.

Words by: Solmaz Sharif, Tyehimba Jess, Anna Moschovakis, Sun Yung Shin, & Shawn Levy

Collected and constructed by: Coito

To agitate
To question
To name
To give language
To be caretakers of language

To agitate
How can we, with literature, embody
the exile we see?
the error of blood relation?
doing and undoing at the same time?

To question
I don’t know if I am woman here at last.

To name
Moments when popular culture
has coalesced in a space—
it’s like when library shelves collide.

To give language
The tradition of the experimental
involves terminal and fractured lands
and though “experimental” has come to mean
“inaccessible,” “undomesticizable,”
we continue to make ourselves
newly foreign and native
to the terminal and the fractured
again and again.

To be caretakers of language
Bodies in the wrong places:
what form do we deserve?
That which joins the passions into a
com
passion.

11-5-16 [w/ Annotations]

Quotes and ideas from: Solmaz Sharif, Sarah Glidden, Tyehimba Jess, Anna Moschavakis, Sun Yung Shin

Reiterations by: Stephen Kellar

Expatriate or Exile? [notes on the panel War and the Aftermath: In Words and Images]

Solmaz: “every text should be read as a political text.” [I was subsequently lent a copy of Sharif’s book of poetry Look by a professor who was also in attendance]

Sarah: “what are my defaults?” [resources / limits / assumptions]

Breaking form —> Making form? [notes on the panel Breaking Poetry Pattern: Experimenting with Form in Poetry]

Every poem should have an experiment in it [even rookie poets should dignify their writing w/ innovation]

|—> Experimental ≠ inaccessible [not (un)intentional obfuscation, but purposeful enactment]

What can we imagine of the future? [if we imagine transcendence / can we transcend?]

|—> Racial Imaginary (i.e. the minstrel show) [look to Rankine: “an unlyrical term, but then its lack of music is fitting”]

“The Radical Politics of Hospitality” [Sun Yung Shin, but perhaps Tyehimba Jess? truer today than it was that day?]

A time of endless war —> more of us guests and migrants —> can we redefine foreign [yes, but given trends towards nationalism..?]

“Excavating the biography” [Tyehimba Jess’ beautiful phrase for his work on leadbelly]

What are the limits of human? [these notes written perpendicular to the previous page]

What is wild and domesticatable about us? [does my own neurosis agitate or engage civility?]

Is there a way to feminize “masculine epics”? [dea ex machina; also: uxorious: having excessive fondness of one’s wife (the domestic Odysseus?)]

Antigone: “bodies in the wrong places” [possibly Anna Moschavakis, on the resonance of tragedy today]

The human reiteration of crisis (social, environmental, etc.) [nothing to add]

“On the stories and characters that exist in the space between reality and non-reality, where characters live in strange worlds, some of which might not exist outside their own heads.”

Ten completely random and unorganized musings from the intensely weird minds of: Jonathan Lethem (JL), Helen Phillips (HP), and Dana Spiotta (DS)
From the panel, Stranger Things: Unreal Worlds, this discussion focused on the worlds created through writing that aren’t quite what we would think of as “reality.” The authors spoke of dreams, alternate universes, death, and secret aliases as just some of the ways through which their characters escape this world and enter the next. At the end of this panel, I felt completely inundated with new thoughts and ideas about the way in which we move through the world.

List by: Kate Garcia
This list makes sense to me and I hope it does to you too.

  1. First of all, strange fiction involves fudging lines through the “collective hallucination of reality.” We’re all in this reality-bend together, buckle up. (JL)
  2. Someone, at some point, referred to someone else’s work as “uncanny and prosaic” which left me totally enthralled with not only the authors themselves but by their relationships with one another and the relationships between all creative minds, everywhere.
  3. “The limits of the body are hard to argue with.” (DS)
  4. In this way, aging itself becomes part of the realm of the strange – because it’s strange how our bodies fail us so slowly, so deliberately, so unavoidably.
  5. We tell ourselves that caring about aging is superficial … but is it? Isn’t a fear of increasingly imminent death the most essential fear a person can have? (DS)
  6. Our bodies are nothing more than “betraying machines,” teasing us with the bountiful rewards of youth, before taking a sharp left turn at age 40. (JP)
  7. In her book of short stories, Some Possible Solutions, Helen creates a world of ‘de-skinned’ people. Everyone can see each other’s organs (which, when you think about it, are somehow simultaneously the most intimate and most universal parts of ourselves). She described having the inclination to write this story because of the utter “strangeness of having a body.”
  8. “I write from images that are really viscerally disturbing.” (HP)
  9. Magical Realism belongs to Latin American authors. Stop trying to take it from them. (JL)
  10. ‘Real’ and ‘true’ are not the same thing and deeper truth can almost always be reached through exploring that which isn’t real. (JL)

Note to self: Read Kafka’s “The Burrow” because there was a resounding consensus that this remains one of the most challenging and interesting ‘realities’ ever created and HP described it as Kafka forcing us to “listen to a sound that’s hard to listen to” and to top it all off, the story was published posthumously which seems so darkly appropriate.

Wordstock: Portland’s Book Festival is presented annually by Literary Arts at the Portland Art Museum.
Next year’s festival is on Saturday, November 11th, 2017.

An English Major’s Guide to Non-English Classes

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UP in Spring

Literature and writing are my passions—that’s why I chose to major in English. When it was time to take required basics or choose electives in the College of Arts and Sciences, I was at a little bit of a loss. I just wanted to TAKE ALL THE ENGLISH! I was happy to find that many subjects intersect with my major, and some classes were more helpful than others. This is my last semester at UP, so I’ll share what I learned from taking non-English classes.

Theology
As a student in CAS, you already have to take three theology classes. I found these so helpful that I actually took an extra THE class as one of my upper level non-English requirements. These classes will help you tremendously in your major, especially if you didn’t come from a religious background. How else will you know how to tell if someone in a book is a Christ figure or intelligently talk about religious symbolism and themes? When you take American Literature Beginnings with Dr. Orr, or Intro to Literary Studies with Professor McDonald, you’ll be blessing your THE 205 class. For upper-division theology, I recommend Dr. Dempsey’s classes for a fresh and feminist lens on biblical stories.

French
My French classes with Madame Booth were immensely helpful in European Literature in Translation with Dr. Brassard. “But the literature is translated! It even says so in the title!” you might say. Why, yes, but although Madame Bovary is translated, French exclamations and epithets are left in for flavor. When these were translated in a footnote, I found that the saying wasn’t quite as flavorful as when I read it in French. The language of love will also help you deal with Villette’s Monsieur Paul (for Studies in Women Writers), who is prone to rants in French, and figure out The Canterbury Tales’ Middle English in Dr. Hersh’s Chaucer class (hint: “verray” doesn’t mean “very;” it comes from the French vrai meaning “true.”). D’accord?

History
This is a total no-brainer. All the literature you examine will take into account what was going on politically and culturally at that time—both when the book was written and when it is set. How can you get the most out of Dr. Hiro’s African-American Literature without understanding the history of slavery? How much fun will Brassard’s Modern British Literature class be if you don’t understand the British role in WWI and WWII? The same goes for Dr. Larson’s American Literature class. For upper-division history with a feminist lens, I recommend Dr. Hancock’s Modern American Women’s History. It will intersect with any literature class that involves women—so all of them! Plus, we are reading Kate Chopin and Audre Lorde so you won’t have literature withdrawals.

There’s so much more: Philosophy classes (Ethics and Metaphysics, hello? Mad helpful!) and Psychology classes (Freud, Jung, and Lacan—reference them in your research papers!). There’s Environmental Science (Environmental Ethics and Policy pairs well with Dr. Weiger’s Environmental Literature), and even Math (logic played a key role in Dr. Hersh and Dr. Salomone’s Reckoning Words, Reckoning Numbers class). But you get the idea.

Most of these pesky non-English classes actually weave together into a beautiful tapestry of humanities that help you with your English major—something to remember as you begin course registration for the Spring semester.

What non-major classes have you taken that have helped with your English major?
Share in the comments below!

Need a Grad Gift for an English Major?

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by Morgan Mann

Happy Finals Week, majors! Summer and graduation are almost here!

Do you have an English major friend that’s graduating? Have you been too busy preparing for finals to think of what to get them as a graduation gift? Well, here are eight great (and affordable) gifts ideas for them… or yourself, because you deserve it.

For the friend who has too many books for one backpack…

Tote Bag

Literary Tote Bag from Out of Print

For the friend who shuts himself away with his favorite book…

Bookish Candle

Bookish Soy Candles from From the Page 

For the friend who has clothes that make a statement…

Novel T-Shirt

Novel T-Shirt from Litographs 

For the friend who is a creative genius…

Bright Ideas Pencils

Bright Ideas Pencils from Paper Source 

For the friend who is always lending you good reads…

Library Kit

Library Kit from Modcloth 

For the friend who never decorated their dorm room…

Poster

Literary Poster from Pop Chart Lab 

For the friend who is a poet and knows it…

Magnetic Poetry

Original Magnetic Poetry Kit from Powell’s 

For the friend who will travel the world…

Postcards from Penguin

Postcards from Penguin from Amazon 

Post-Grad Life: Hannah Robinson

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By Morgan Mann

HannahPhoto

After a tenth grade career goal change-of-heart, followed by years of whole-heartedly pursuing her dream of becoming an editor, Hannah Robinson is now living that dream. At UP, Hannah always showed a sense of pleasant professionalism and a potential for greatness. Hannah graduated in 2014, and has been living in New York working hard, learning lots, celebrating small victories, and using her UP education every day.

Following a successful internship at HarperCollins the summer before her senior year, Hannah returned after graduation for a second internship. She then stayed on as a temp, and six weeks later began her current job as an editorial assistant at Harper Wave. This has brought an abundance of new exciting experiences to her post-grad life. “I’ve been in my current position a little over a year and couldn’t be happier with it,” Hannah reflects. “I get to work closely with amazing talented writers, journalists, doctors, chefs, thinkers—it’s exhilarating.”

Amid this whirlwind of hard work are a year of exciting firsts in her career and her life. She says that in her work, “an exciting/important moment was acquiring my first books. Getting to witness firsthand what it means to advocate for my authors and shape a reader’s experience is the most amazing gift this early on in my career.” In her life outside work, she says there’s been “so many firsts: first lease (nobody tells you how crazy all that paperwork is…), first real winter, finding a new friend group, learning a new city… this whole year has given new meaning to ‘learning curve’ and ‘trial by fire’ haha.” But she’s also worked hard to have work-life balance, especially in a workaholic city like NYC, and knows that “it’s all about the little victories.”

And how did she get to this amazing point in her life—equally full of work and excitement? By chasing her dream, and by getting her English degree here at UP. “I lucked out that I’m in the business of reading and writing,” Hannah says, “so I get to put my degree to more obvious use than some (you’re welcome, Mom!).” She connects being an editor fulfilling an author’s vision to being an English major analytically finding what’s missing in a text. More specifically, “There is one thing, though, that I learned from Dr. Asarnow freshman year that really stuck with me,” she recalls. “Herman talked about the importance of ‘pattern, pattern, variation.’ You have to pay attention to both and worrying how they interact is where the magic happens.” She continued, “I use my degree every day of my life, but I think that English majors are especially primed to notice, appreciate, and analyze pattern/variation dynamics.”

After such great post-grad success, Hannah has some equally great advice. For those who dream of going into publishing like she has, she stresses the importance of getting an internship, since “publishing is one of the few truly apprentice-based industries left and the only way to start is at the very bottom.” And for any dream, it’s important to…

“Be patient (people traditionally get their jobs about the time they’re sobbing on the phone to their mom every night, eyeing a dwindling savings account and three seconds from throwing in the towel). Cruel, but unfortunately not unusual. Also, be open to what comes your way. I almost didn’t accept my position because it wasn’t fiction-based, but it turns out that I love publishing non-fiction! You rarely know until you try it, and there’s no shame in experience.”

A lot has changed for Hannah since her time at UP, and yet some things have stayed the same. She has the same friendly professionalism, and although her lifestyle and reading habits (now primarily nonfiction and contemporary women’s fiction) have changed, she has maintained her good humor and Portland stance on umbrellas, saying, “Why millions of New Yorkers think that umbrellas are a practical rain-avoidance strategy when you can hardly walk down the sidewalk as it is I will never understand.”

The English Department is proud of Hannah Robinson for achieving her dreams, and for being an example of how much a University of Portland alum can achieve.

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by Morgan Mann

Readers and writers rejoice—Wordstock is back and better than before.  This year, the festival will be on Saturday, November 7th, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Portland Art Museum.  You won’t want to miss this great gathering of lit-minded locals.

Relaunched by Literary Arts, this will be the 30th anniversary year for Wordstock, Portland’s Book Festival.  Wordstock is a celebration of the connections formed across the literary community.  It is a gathering of readers, writers, publishers, and funders who see literature as a valuable element of Portland culture.

Wordstock

At this year’s Wordstock festival, there will be more than 90 authors, 40 events, 17 workshops, a book fair, pop-up performances, and food carts and a beer garden. Authors include those familiar to University of Portland like Brian Doyle, Sara Jaffe, and Michael McGregor, as well as bigger names like Ursula K. Le Guin, Jesse Eisenberg, and Mary Jo Bang.  The book fair lets you buy books from local and national writers, publishers, and bookstores (like Powell’s), and provides plenty of free lit swag.  The food carts are new this year, and will include Koi Fusion, Bunk Sandwiches, Ruby Jewel, and (for those 21+) Widmer Brothers Brewing and A to Z Wineworks.  From what I’ve seen, this relaunch of Wordstock is going to bring the festival to a whole new level of attractions and encourage more interaction among attendants.

I went to the last Wordstock almost two years ago, and can say it’s a great experience.  It’s a bit overwhelming at first, trying to navigate an entire hall of writers and publishers.  I found that a lot of the vendors were geared toward writers, which I—a mere reader—found frustrating, but there’s still plenty for everyone.  I bought a couple little books, and picked up plenty of free swag; my Wordstock “wanna faulkner” button still graces my bulletin board.  The one thing I would recommend is getting your hands on a program and planning ahead, since I felt a little lost last time.  I think many of the changes made by Literary Arts to the venue and infrastructure will remedy that feeling, but it’s best to be prepared.  It was definitely worth going two years ago, and will be better this year with new and improved events, vendors, and activities.

Head over to www.literary-arts.org/what-we-do/wordstock for (confusing but comprehensive) information about Wordstock and to buy your ticket.  Also,  a complete program is available here: http://www.literary-arts.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2015-Wordstock-On-Stage-Event-Schedule.pdf
Your Wordstock ticket is only $15, and gets you into all the festival’s events and has a $5 voucher for a book at the book fair.  Too expensive for your college budget?  I feel you.  If you volunteer at the festival, your entrance is free—this is a great way to get involved and get in.

However you get there, Wordstock is definitely a literary festival you’ll want to “pull up a chair” for, assuming you can find a moment’s rest among all the attractions.

https://sites.up.edu/english/1426-2/