poetics is going to eat my lunch

Now Playing: "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 1, "The Prophecy".

About yesterday, September 27, 2006. (I got back so late last night that I didn't have time to write up the journal entry, which is why I'm doing it now.)

This morning Rachel and I went running. It's the first time I've run in a week, but I found it pleasant, actually. We ran around the track inside the fitness center. There were only a few people using the workout machines, and no one else on the track. Amanda and Rachael came in toward the end of our twenty-minute stay, and we waved to them.

I had to race to shower, do my devotions, eat breakfast (a few crackers), and practice my flute in time to be ready for Music Theory at nine o'clock. Today in Music Theory: more chords.

In Honors today we watched Act 1 of an old movie production of "Macbeth", with Ian McKellen (a very young Ian McKellen, with black hair) as Macbeth and Judy Dench (again, a very young Judy Dench) as Lady Macbeth. It was a very minimalist production, without any sets or backdrop, and only costume, lighting, and sound effects to give a sense of scene. It was rather weird to see Ian McKellen so young. The production as a whole was unnerving--fittingly so, of course, since "Macbeth" is an unnerving, eerie play.

After Honors, I had my flute lesson.

For half-an-hour after flute, I worked on Music Theory homework. Then I walked over to the cafeteria to pick up lunch in a box. Tara and I eventually found each other, and we decided to drive to the park and eat lunch there.

Noon lay warm and brilliant on the lawn as we stepped out of the car. We sat down on a rough bench under an oak tree. Spread before us lay the rose garden, and as the wind skimmed the hundreds of bright bushes, a faint, sweet smell, like a half-remembered dream, blew toward us--citrus and tea, pine and wet earth. We ate our sandwiches out of white styrofoam boxes and talked about this and that. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing serious, simple-minded and happy. A fat squirrel nibbled a dried cherry that Tara tossed to him, and rooted with his nose in the grass. A mockingbird watched us from a low-hanging branch of the oak tree. Couples strolled through the garden, sometimes with a small baby or toddler in tow. Sometimes single men or women in business suits, obviously taking a break from the office. After we finished eating our sandwiches, I opened one of the packages of fancy cookies that my mother sent me a couple of weeks ago. Milano cookies, crumbly pastry sandwiching creamy chocolate. We munched them contentedly.

When we finished lunch, we threw away our boxes and strolled down into the garden. Late noon sunshine lay hot on the gravel paths, on the sparkling fountains that shot up jets as perfect as dancer's arms under the hard sunshine. We admired the roses, laughed at their names, stopped to smell or feel the texture of the petals. Deep red Mr. Lincoln roses shot three feet above our heads on long, thick stems; brown-red Oklahoma roses hid a strangely sweet smell in their furled petals; Roman Holidays rioted scarlet; Summer Sunshines flickered like the bright bits of sunshine on dark foliage. We laughed at Impatient roses, and exclaimed over the Wild Blue Yonders, which really were blue. We found peach-pale Regatta roses, and I took a picture of them for Jenny S. (who used to be on the rowing team). There was one sort of rose that I was particularly attracted to. I don't remember the name, but it was Latino-sounding--Rio Grande, maybe. They were many-colored roses--gold, pink, magenta, orange blending together on ruffled petals.

We walked down long, cool avenues beside hedges of rose bushes, and out again beside one of the fountains. The lion-headed fountain trickled water into a lush bed of water plants, the last lilies of summer blooming on the dark pool. Little minnows fluttered just under the surface. High overhead, monarch butterflies whirled down the wind on their way south. Juniper trees, pruned straight up, stood like pillars around the largest fountain. We climbed up onto a terrace so that we could look down onto the rose garden, its perfect symmetry as elegantly lovely as a Platonic dialogue.

We explored up the terrace and found the teaching garden, a new area I hadn't seen before. It consisted mostly of simple plants (pansies, marigolds, herbs) and a variety of stonework. The stones used for the trellises and the walkway were named so that if you wanted, you could order them and build your own. At the end of the teaching garden stood a bronze statue of Linnaeus. He looked like a very cheerful chap, with a big smile on his plump face, holding a book in one hand and flowers in the other. Tara fell in love with his exuberance and took a very silly picture of me standing next to him.

Our time was almost out, but we strolled down the hill to the creek (where Syneva and I have walked). I stared up at the gigantic oak trees. Their hugeness never fails to fascinate me: graceful columns that leap up in one strong movement until they explode outward in a tapestry of rayed branches. We skipped from stone to stone along the narrow streambed, watching the water trickle over little waterfalls into a shallow pool down at the foot of the hill.

As we drove back to campus, Tara told me about the other students in her Greek class. It sounds as though the class should be called "geek" class because of all the rather strange, funny people. She laughed that she thinks she'll take it next semester just for the sake of the humorous characters in the class--including the professor, who's rather flamboyant in her teaching style.

Back on campus, I walked Tara to her apartment. She invited me to come over for supper, but I had to decline because I have to eat early suppers on Wednesdays (thanks to P&P!). In my room, I read the first two books of Augustine's On Christian Teaching for class next Monday. Having nothing better to do, I then took myself to the sycamore tree on the lawn outside Lottie to sit and read and daydream for awhile. Actually, I did the best thing I could have done, and read my Bible and Schaff's History, and worked on revising a poem for P&P (one of my favorite poems, so far, written in response to Beethoven's 7th symphony, second movement). Rachel strolled up after her class ended, and she sat beside me and read. Afternoon sunshine lay long and sleepy on the short grass. Sycamore leaves whirled down over our heads to lie caught in the lawn. A strong wind blew through the trees and rustled the pages of my books.

After supper, I walked over to Oliphant for P&P. Class tonight was much more animated than it has been for quite some time. Fireworks:

We were talking about one of the statements of poetics. One of the girls asked whether these poets would write if they didn't have an audience. Crystal (I think) answered that she thought that these poets put out their poetry so that readers can help them figure out what their own poetry means. They need an audience. The professors jumped on this. In this particular statement of poetics (by Charles Bernstein), the author writes that readers become poets when they read because they make meaning from the poem. Dr. J explained that this is "Because these poems are all written for other poets. It's a tight-knit community of poets who feed off one another, are friends with each other, and discuss each other's work. They write for one another, for their specific readership of poet-friends." Then Dr. G pulled up Dana Gioia's essay "Can Poetry Matter?". "This is exactly the thing Gioia is worried about. He doesn't like this tight-knit community of poetry. He wants poetry to be open to everyone--but he also wants there to be a highbrow class of critics to tell us what good poetry is." The class sniggered. "Gioia is living a dream. There never was a time when everyone read poetry. That's a myth. For the past five hundred years, poetry has always had a small readership."

I must admit that this angered me a good deal. It's the common blind spot of professors, it seems to me. They overlook anything that's before those "five hundred years". "What about 'Beowulf'?" I wanted to ask. "What about the 'Iliad'? What about the 'Odyssey'? Most importantly, what about the Bible? That has poetry in it, and its poetry (the Psalms, for crying out loud!) is the part that everyone turns to as their favorite!"

Then things got really "interesting". "Ok, I can't resist getting up on my soapbox," Dr. J said. He stood up and started to pace, gesticulating fiercely with his hands. "Does anyone in this class like Gioia?" he asked. No one said anything. I leaned forward and narrowed my eyes, attempting to keep myself from saying anything foolish. Dr. J launched into a long diatribe. "He's playing into this system of logic. Humans are limited to logic by the Enlightenment. Language and poetic meaning are part of being human. Art, il-logic, is part of being human. Without art, we can't survive. Art isn't a luxury. If it were, it wouldn't exist. It's necessary to our humanity. It's the fault of capitalism that rich, fat Americans don't make art. In all other societies, they make art, but capitalism has made Americans lazy. For you guys, your training is your impediment to reading this stuff. You've been made too referential. You have to learn new habits, new ways of reading and making meaning to understand this art."

[N.B.: All of that except for the first sentence was taken directly from my notes, scribbled down at the time of the "lecture".]

By the time this ended, you can imagine my state of mind.

The professors released class a little bit early since we had taken no break. They applauded the good discussion. ("Except I want to hear less of us, and more of you," Dr. G said--which I agreed with in more ways than one!)

Crystal and I walked over to John Mabee in deep discussion about how dreadful the class period had been, explaining to each other why the professors are wrong, etc. She went into John Mabee, and I followed, somewhat reluctantly.

We found a cluster of RUF guys sitting in the hall outside Kevin's room (which is the second one down the hall to the left, quite close to the entry area). David, Asher, James, Spencer, and Kevin were all sitting or standing, lounging about, talking. They greeted us boisterously as we entered. Kevin was sitting on the floor, looking rather pale, his eyes bloodshot and shadowed without his glasses. While Crystal told Kevin and David all about how awful poetry class had been, Asher tried to persuade me to play basketball in the gym with them. I declined.

A couple of other guys joined us, Andrew P. and one of his buddies. Andrew P. is in Poetry but skipped tonight. His friend, an engineer, caught onto one fallacy in this new vein of poetry (a fallacy which Logan pointed out in his comments on my poetics): "If engineers were to be like these poets and decide to design buildings and electronics so that only they could use them, so that you were never sure what 'meaning' to get out of them, then no one would be able to live in buildings or use toasters anymore!"

Eventually, Kevin invited Crystal, Andrew, and me into his room to "hang out" for awhile. Crystal fixed herself a plate of spaghetti and slurped it down while Kevin munched some cold pizza. He brewed tea for us. Kevin likes to mix things, so he steeped chai, green, and chamomile tea together in the hot water. Crystal sniffed hers and announced, "It's flower juice!" And that's what it reminded me of, too. He put sugar in ours, so what we had was sweet and spicy and strange--like cinnamon, lemon, sugar, and something bitter blended together, the way I would imagine pollen would taste.

We basically just sat around and talked--talked about poetry, some. Kevin wondered aloud whether, in the scene towards the end of Paradise Lost where one of the angels shows Adam the consequences of the fall, this post-postmodern poetry was one of the consequences that Adam saw and agonized over. That made all of us laugh, somewhat bitterly (at least in my case).

Mostly they talked about other random odds and ends of college life, the weird hobbies that form the undertone of most students' existence. Kevin played Bjork (Norse pop music) on his ipod hooked up to his stereo system. I examined the books on his shelf: Milton, Dante, Plato, Yeats, Frost, "Go" handbooks (a board game similar to chess), and a textbook for "teaching yourself Icelandic". Crystal inspected the cafeteria menu for tomorrow. "Haha, they have despair for lunch!" she laughed and pointed to chicken florentine--apparently Kevin once said that it tasted like despair (fried chicken with spinach and cheese on top *ick*).

I mostly sat against one of the dressers and watched and listened and laughed. Behind me, Kevin's cello leaned comfortably against the corner. Kevin pulled up funny websites on his laptop: a site of comic strip, a site called "Kitten Wars" where people vote on which kitten picture they think is cutest. It was hilarious to listen to Kevin, Andrew, and Crystal ooh and ahh over the wide-eyed kitten pictures. I stood on the fringe, sipping my tea.

I finished my tea slowly, and said, "Well, it's Cinderella's bedtime. Ten-thirty. Thanks, Kevin." He and Crystal decided to walk back with me. Andrew had left a short time before, after he'd finished reading over my notes from class, and groaning over them.

We set out across the lawn. The night was dark, with a few clouds racing over the stars on a cold north wind. As we stepped down over the sloping grass, I spun myself in dizzy circles, my arms flying out, my knapsack pulling my body in two different directions, my keys jingling in my hand. "Yay! E-- is happy!" Crystal giggled. "I wanted to do that the whole time while we were sitting in class," I confessed. A searchlight wandered over the sky above us as we walked up the slope to Lottie. I said good-bye to Crystal and Kevin and walked up to the room.

I found a note on the door from Rachel, saying that she was in the basement doing laundry and reading. Deciding not to disturb her, I changed clothes and went to bed. She came in awhile later, and then the room was quiet.