River of Play

A Day Without A Costume

I'd like to wish all my pagan friends Happy New Year!

But that's not really enough for a post, so I add this link to a piece by Jonathan Gottschall. He's one of the new breed of lit crit people who work the science side of things. It's a kind of criticism that I'm interested in, one which I see connected to ecocritical work, though I don't think that he would necessarily go there with me. And, as alert reader Kat has pointed out in other comments, please note that the piece is fairly one-sided. Indeed, with the number of straw men he sets up, it looks like an audition for the Scarecrow in a remake of The Wizard of Oz. And he seems awfully pleased with his conclusion, pleased in ways that scientists would not necessarily be when they reach conclusions. Worth a look, though, between noshings on individually wrapped candy bars.

Be sure to floss tonight. That's all I'm saying.  

Online Community

As I get sucked further and further into the vortex called "Facebook," I wonder about the nature of online communities. It's a large topic, sure, but I'm a bit fascinated by the difference between a site based on interests--like Ravelry or BoardGameGeek--and one that pretty much has no excuse for being except that a lot of people showed up there. And one very curious aspect of the Fb experience for me is the list of past friends, colleagues, and acquaintances who have shown up as my circle of friendings expands. That is, I've made some friends on the Geek, or through the Geek, but that list is small. I recognize some personalities, but I go there for information. At Fb, I don't explore very much, but I recognize pretty much everyone in my little circle. I find out more about what they've done since I last saw them, and I've corresponded with some. But I find more--and more interesting--discussions taking place on other sites. Not really much to say, but some open-ended chewing over the difference between the experiences and wondering if either one qualifies as a community, the difference between seeing someone and seeing their avatar.  

Confluences of the River Wyrd

So I got this in my email inbox just t'other day:

Dear Readers, 

You've come to expect exciting, compelling new work fromNew Ohio Review. We're pleased to tell you that for a limited time you can enjoy exciting, compelling subscription rates as well. Until November 1 we're offering a two-year subscription for the price of one. That's four issues for only $16. To order, please visit our website atwww.ohiou.edu/nor. 

While visiting our website, be sure to take a look at some of the excellent selections from issue 4. Billy Collins, Stephen Dunn, Barbara Hurd, and Jack Myers are featured, as is new work by Frederick Barthelme. 

Thank you for your continued support of talented writers and artists. 

Fascinating, right?  Except here's the thing: I once picked up Billy Collins at the Morgantown, WV airport, drove him to Stephen Dunn's house in Frostburg, MD and then got into a car with those two guys while Stephen's wife, Barbara Hurd, drove us all over to Collins's hotel. I remember thinking at the time, 'Wow, I don't belong in this car.' And then they all huddled up in my email. 

Mostly I think it goes to show that if you stay in this business long enough, it gets really, really small.

This Is Your Brain on Fairness

Interesting little article from Slate on fairness, offense, empathy,...and evolution. Once you get past the politics, note the role of emotions in decision-making. And when you get to the third page, you'll find that the author--and sources--pretty much remove any god as a cause/source of morality, though they do a save for god (against armor class zero) by suggesting that religions, if not god itself, have codified those fairness principles.

So the next time someone says to you that you can't be moral without god, slap them on the head with this. Then watch the hilarity ensue.

The New Blog on the Block

But first, the pedagogy paper continues. I'm heartened by the (sometimes shocked) reports from writers about their own writing output during their semesters. Yeah, committee work and the other requirements of being a good member of an academic community can be draining, but if you accept that you don't--and never will--get an isolated garret to pursue your ego's whims, then you'll be fine. I'm told that it's like having kids. They seem like a distraction, but they also marvelously focus the mind and your time. My own distraction right now is having discovered Can It Really Be Taught?, a short book of essays on CW pedagogy (Ritter and Vanderslice, eds). The question is, how much of this do I need to fold into my own essay? I'm considering the sleight of hand that goes, "And this book of essays addresses the problem from a variety of useful perspectives, but covers too much ground to be considered in any detail here."

But that new blog... It's our newest baby at the magazine, and it's barely taking its first breaths: prairieschooner.typepad.com. And if you have design and/or post suggestions, send 'em my way.  

Those Who Teach, Teach

Which I guess you could read as "those who 'teach, teach'" if you wanted to be perverse. 

Today, I'm hoping for less interesting news. No economic roller coaster. No political death chants. Calm. 

Failing that, I'll be braving a lovely soaking rain to get to school. It will be a damp walk. But first, and by first I mean just about now, I'll be working a whole batch of new research into my paper on ecocomposition, place, and creative writing pedagogy. I've been rediscovering how much creative writing pedagogy depends on Romantic notions of inspiration and the singular genius. And it's amazing to me how much "inspiration" and "genius" correspond to race and class privilege. 

Beyond those categories, which, I recognize, are huge, most pedagogy boils down to craft and drill with little hope that any of the students will succeed as writers. Of course, that last is true, though it may be self-fulfilling. But mostly, students will go on to pursue what they were going to pursue anyway. So, what's the role of the creative writing instructor? Let's just go ahead and kick "inspiration" and "genius" out as hopelessly vague. Where do we go? What are we doing? What are we trying to do? 

Of course, this runs against the writers who see every moment that takes them from "their work" as a kind of poison--or torture?--that must be avoided at all costs. All great writers, you will be assured, didn't teach. Except that they mostly did something else. And it turns out that a lot of them taught. This attitude gets particularly obnoxious when repeated to colleagues who are doing research and academic writing at a Research 1 school. Further, it ignores the possibility that you could do the work of your own class, and/or that you could learn something interesting from your students. But then, the attitude that you have "real work" to do elsewhere suggests that there's some kind of inflated ego that might preclude listening to others. 

Anyway, I'm interested in trying to get students to engage with place, understand their own situatedness, and see how the poems they write fit in place, and in the cultural places that poetry itself is situated. We'll see if it makes the cut.   

Crises

The--are we officially calling it a "meltdown" and not a "market crash"?--has begun to effect people we know and love. Our friends in Sydney have hit a rather sizable road bump, and I've begun to worry about my brother, though he bought a house after the bubble had burst.

Is it too soon to start talking about jobs programs? Because I think it'd be nice to, oh, I don't know, update our infrastructure? Maybe join the twentieth century before the twenty-first is done? And we could do a couple of quick little updates while we're about it (cough, passenger rail, cough).

No, wait, we've been fighting two wars for too many years now. I suppose we'll need to accomplish that mission first. I don't know about you, but I can't start thinking about these things for too long before my brain starts to overload the rest of me with information about all the other things that have to be placed under the SNAFU heading, and then I just start to feel like a grumpy middle-aged guy, and I'd rather not.

So, instead I'm trying to figure out how to talk about ecopoetics in a way that insists on process and practice and not topic. Can you have a feminist poem without women? It's a very similar question. In my own head, the practice is huge, expansive, inclusive, but I fear that other people hear "eco" and just shut down. As if the world, the universe, and everything in it is not enough.

Birth Class

But first, I'm feeling a little cranky this morning because I got sniped in an online auction. Bastards!

Saturday was birth class, and about the worst thing about that was the tedium. An OB nurse, and mother of three!, led us through the various stages of childbirth. We got to see a few videos, one of which featured an actual birth, including the delivery of the placenta. We learned that pain is frequently considered a woman's right of passage, and that the 90% epidural rate in Lincoln is just not up to farm girl standards. 

We also learned that this class is not aimed at us. We were told by our sleep-deprived session leader that we needed to trade in the Miata for a more sensible car, quit partying on weekends, quit smoking, and choose more sensible foods. We were then asked to share, as a group, changes we'd made. D and I demurred, noting that we were older parents to begin with. As we went into our first--and only--break of the morning session (and I mean, really? a room of pregnant women, and you're only doing one break in four hours?), the nurse pointed out that there were snacks...Cokes and a variety of cookies. This, after the "eat healthy, and notice that you don't need to add an extra thousand calories a day, and, oh, look how many in this can of Sprite" talk. 

While we didn't get a lot of scary talk that suggested all the new gadgets we should be buying, we did get to watch a lot of unintended hilarity with a knitted uterus and vagina, a molded plastic pelvis, and a Cabbage Patch doll. Very multi-genre craftiness. 

We're thinking about skipping next week's session.  

Plan and Revise

The multiple rounds of planning for Wendelynne's arrival begin this week. Or, rather, continue. But they're getting ratcheted up by engagements with the institutional frameworks around the event. That is, we start taking baby classes. Birth. Lactation. Newborn care. And I need to add that we're keen to see who else has decided on taking classes and what their attitudes to classes will be. Plus, I'm interested to see how much paranoid consumerism will be thrown our way. I'll try to keep you posted.

One side effect of having a child is that the baby--and D's pregnancy--become the default conversation. D complains that her professional life has been excised. Nobody wants to talk to her about literacy theory, or even how her expertise might be informing her interest in a child. She has become a mommy. And she's more than a little suspicious of that.

In other professional news, the essay I did for PCA/ACA last year got taken into an anthology project, which was all well and good until that project has now found a publisher. So, I get to drop the rest of the comps to focus on an older essay... But the revisions will be good to do, and the project will help me think about other facets of my focus list portfolio. D reminds me that this will be an article in an anthology and that there's no way that that kind of publication suxxorz. Not that she talks like that, but this is an internet posting. So, back to "Writing the Place You Know."