Stephen McClurg's Blog, page 60

Happy Days of the Dead

I think I’ve said in an earlier post how much I love the artwork of this holiday. Every year I swear I am going to decorate and every year I fail and instead offer up a morbid epitaph. The “cavaleras literarias” are becoming a tradition for me. And, yes, tonight is grocery night. And, yes, sadly, I have run from grocery stores.

Here Lies McClurg (2012)

He hated the grocery store–

A nightmare more than a chore.

So sad he bid adieu

while looking for glue,

Now he’s the clean-up–aisle two.

Here Lies McClurg (2011)

Slowly her hand was raised.

The others all thought she was brave.

But she wasn’t prepared–

for when the question was aired

her teacher just stopped and he stared.

And here’s a moldy oldy:

Here Lies McClurg (2010)

He had but only one wish,

To play in his native English,

But his eyes, they teared,

As he sniffed and he feared,

“They’ll only remember the beard!”

Poe’s Hoaxes, Pt. 2

Here’s my example for the writing assignment in the last post:

Man named “Lucky” missing, possibly eaten by tiger

By Frank N. Berry

A former children’s TV and commercial star, known as “Lucky”, may have been abducted from his home in General Mills last Tuesday. At the crime scene in front of his home, police say that they found what may be part of a foot and a red bandana. They declined to speculate on the nature or owners of these items. Rumors are spreading that he was the latest victim of a tiger said to be roaming this sleepy suburb.

When asked whether he thought this was an abduction or wildlife attack, a neighbor  named Wendell said, “A lot of people have said they have seen a tiger in the neighborhood, but I think that’s hooey.” When asked what he meant, he only offered this, “Mind control.”

Wendell seemed to be corroborating some of the rumors connecting Lucky to an underground pagan cult. It is believed that this group is involved with various forms of “magic” and has one goal of controlling the production of wheat and grain, which are said to be used in their rituals. Lucky was last seen involved in an argument turned brawl with three other men. Only one man was identified, Mark “Pop” Ballou, also rumored to be a pagan magician.

Wendell wouldn’t explain what he meant by his statement but others who did not wish to be named mentioned everything from the tiger being purely part of a mind-controlling spell cast by the cult members in order to hide their real plans to the tiger being a trained pet. Police say they have no evidence yet of a tiger being involved in Lucky’s disappearance, but are not ruling anything out at this point.

Many of his neighbors describe Lucky as friendly, but a bit of an eccentric. His house is multi-colored like a rainbow with purple horseshoes hanging over the front door. Each room had its own color and item. We’ve had access to a yellow room full of hourglasses and stars and a red room, furnished completely in red balloon furniture. One neighbor said, “The house creeped me out. It’s like an Edgar Allan Poe story or something on the bad side in Harry Potter. It kinda looks like a clown threw-up in there. I don’t know. It ain’t right. But honestly, there’s a lot of weirdos around here like that guy who dresses up like Dracula and sells chocolate. It’s quiet, but, man, it’s a freakshow sometimes.”

Could General Mills become the next “Twin Peaks”? Check our website for updates on Lucky.

Updates:

“Lucky” possibly spotted in Crichton, Alabama.

 

Poe’s Hoaxes: “The Facts In the Case of M. Valdemar” Assignment

Poe invented or re-envisioned several genres including horror, detective, and science fiction (Poe possibly supplied Jules Verne the idea for all those hot air balloon fictions!). While not discussed as much, he was also a purveyor of the hoax. Our story for this assignment, “The Facts In the Case of M. Valdemar,” is one of Poe’s famous hoaxes that grew out of the country’s interest in the interstices between life and death that were said to be traveled in séances and in mesmerism.

Let’s look at some of the ways he “facts” his fiction:

The title tells us that this is a “case,” not a story and that we will be reading “facts.” Contrast this to a story called “The Tell-Tale Heart,” for example.

The first paragraph tells us that this story had to be released because the public has been bombarded with “a garbled or exaggerated account.” So we now know why it is “necessary” that the narrator “give the facts.” He doesn’t want us disturbed by the false versions of this “extraordinary case.” He wishes to simply set the record straight.

Later, we find out that Valdemar is an editor and author who uses pen names. We get several titles of books that are a mixture of real and imagined ones. And, of course, something like the “Bibliotheca Forensica” sounds important, right? (We are entering the realm of some of Poe’s humor, as well, with some of the book titles and description of Valdemar. He has black hair and white whiskers—he’s between “light” and “dark”—“life” and “death.”)

We also get a note from Valdemar later. I’ve always found it an interesting technique when an author includes notes, letters, quotes, etc. from other works—existing or non-existing. It can help an author achieve a kind of realism or verisimilitude because it hints at an intertextual world, a world rich with perspectives; it hints at an “archive.”

Notice the details that lend the story believability: “five minutes of eight”; “his breathing was stertorous and at intervals of half a minute”; and the use of vocabulary such as “aorta” and “ichor.”

OUR ASSIGNMENT:

Introduce and/or discuss your own hoax. Make something incredible completely credible in a minimum of 500 words. You can be serious (Giant squids are the real cause of the “Bermuda Triangle”—they need boats and planes for Undersea Trench Tetris, of course) or silly (Rainbows are made of multicolored unicorns and squishy pandas). I will be posting mine soon.

You can also read more about Poe’s hoaxes here: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/poe.html

Maybe It’s the Spring in Me

My goal was to write an abecedarian (more on this form later). An exercise turned into a poem for my wife.

And It Was Leap Year

Amethyst, we’ve

broken the eggs in the

carton and stitched a few shells together.

 

Daily, you know too well, doubt, dread, and

Eraserhead are my norms (as is

frozen pizza, which I’m not

 

going to say I’m proud of) but despite me—

Here we are. Devoted

(I think) to each other and

 

justifiably to this

kick-spew-

laugh-tickle baby.

 

May we

never carve insults into each

other’s bodies,

 

past midnight (or before). May we never

quiet our secret codes or ever answer our

riddles. May we never

 

stare too long into

the wrecks of bookshelves and bank accounts.

Uncertainty is certain, but at least we can

 

vandalize these walls together

while trying to trace the

xerography of the heart.

 

Yes, I said yes we will build a

ziggurat of mercy, a zodiac of desire.

 

France was a long way off.

In a reading group I’m in, which may have two or four members, we are beginning Hemingway’s novels. His first, Torrents of Spring, is a parody of Sherwood Anderson’s Dark Laughter and, what I would call, High Modernists like James Joyce.

Not having read Anderson’s novel, I’m not qualified to comment on the parody itself. Parodies are usually funny, but I think humor is difficult to sustain over time, by this I mean that what is funny in one year may be irrelevant and not humorous the next. And I’m unaware of any other Papa tomes devoted to comedy or parody (I don’t think he was good at it or poetry), but I’ve read some extremely funny letters that Hemingway wrote to friends and foes alike.

Torrents of Spring can be funny and oddly foretells of certain stylistic elements that are later proudly displayed in Beckett’s prose and in the ironical and intruding author notes of the last 15 years or so. Anyway, here’s my favorite passage (pgs.13-14). The narrator is at a train station and a carload of frozen deer has stopped near him :

“He looked over at the deer lying there in a pile, stiff and cold. Perhaps they, too, had been lovers. Some were bucks and some were does. The bucks had horns. That was how you could tell. With cats it is more difficult. In France they geld the cats and do not geld the horses. France was a long way off.” 

Hemingway was obviously a fan of the stream of consciousness technique.

Next is The Sun Also Rises.

Symbolism Is Simple…Sort of: “The Black Cat” Assignment

Along with Poe’s “Black Cat,” I hope you are reading the How to Read Literature book. Foster does a great job breaking down a lot of the basics of the type of reading that will be expected in the class. The more you understand how to read literature in this way, the better you’ll do on these assignments, the AP test, and also the more fun you can have with the material.

You could read the “Is That a Symbol?” chapter of the Foster book as a companion to this assignment.

So, considering that we have all read “The Black Cat,” we know that this one is pretty crazy and sick even for Poe. Well…maybe.

I guess on the surface it is violent. But if we begin thinking about the story a little deeper than what’s presented on the surface, then we may find some interesting ideas beyond the superficial horror of the story.

Let’s look at the title. Beyond the functions of plot, maybe the titular character serves some other purposes. Psychoanalytic readers love Poe. For example, I’ve read at least one essay in which the black cat is symbolic for a mother figure. The patch of white on the cat’s breast symbolizes a “mother’s milk.” Hmmm…I don’t think I’ve ever been satisfied with that reading and maybe I should be generous and go find that essay again. Even if that makes total sense to you, let’s take that idea and use it.

If we can take the black cat as symbolic, and I think we can, well, what does the symbol mean? (This is where literature holds all matter of fun for me.) In one sense, maybe the black cat as “mother” here represents our narrator’s traits that he believes or imagines are inherited. Maybe he’s trying to cut himself from his family by killing the symbol of it. Here, I think, the black cat could be symbolic of our narrator’s alcoholism, madness, or wrath or any mixture of these. Remember though, the white spot on the black cat becomes a noose, possibly the noose that eventually hangs the narrator. Maybe the black cat is his inherited degeneracy that leads to his downfall. The narrator is then “tied” to his family and to this inheritance. In the end, he can’t kill the black cat or “sever” himself from his genetics or addiction.

If we abstract this a bit from the story itself and talk about it in terms of a more thematic generalization, we could come to a statement like this: the black cat is the thing we hate in ourselves, but that we cannot “kill” or get rid of it without destroying ourselves.

And this is just the beginning of a thought process on the black cat. I’m sure I’m missing several interesting ways to read the symbolism of the cat.

But on to the assignment.

Do one of the following:

1. Analytic

For this assignment, give a reading of an object or animal from a text much like the one that I’ve given above. (By “text” I mean a movie, comic strip, novel, or poem, etc.) THIS MUST BE YOUR OWN WORK. Be creative and thoughtful (that’s easy to say, I know, I know) and not obvious. Yes, Garfield could represent sloth, but that’s obvious—go beyond that. Explore some new ideas.

You could start with these types of questions: What does this character or object mean? Represent? Say about the world? Say about being human? Can I use this specific detail or characteristic to say something more general about living in the world?

2. Creative

You don’t have to parody Poe for this one (sometimes that is irresistible, I know) but write a sequence using an animal or object as a symbol. Like the analytical assignment, this should not be obvious, but try to be thoughtful, explore some ideas, and have fun.

You could approach this from the mysterious, like Poe’s black cat, or state up front something like “Life is like a bunch of chocolates” and then creatively explore this symbolism.

Edgar was an odd little boy–”Berenice” Assignment

This post is part of a summer reading assignment for my AP Literature and Composition classes. In this assignment, we will focus on antithesis, a rhetorical device Poe uses in “Berenice.”

By now, you should have read “Berenice” and any number of other Poe tales. Feel free to work ahead of the assignments and to reread. Poe demands rereading! Also, be sure you are working on the How to Read Literature book. You do not want to wait until the last minute to make the chart. This book, in many ways, will introduce you to how we read in AP Lit and should help you with Poe, too.

Remember that there will be tests on these works when we get back to school!

Like Poe’s narrator, I’ve always had a fascination with Berenice’s teeth. What a striking image Poe gives us in the story! With this summer’s rereading of the tale, I decided to focus on Poe’s style. (Style is often considered an author’s diction and syntax—word choice and word order. Like I said in the reading assignment, because of Poe’s variegated and, at times, antediluvian diction, you will want to use a dictionary!) What I noticed in an early paragraph was the use of antithesis, which is a combining of opposite ideas. Here’s Poe:

“Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch,–as distinct, too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as a rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?—from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.” (from “Berenice”)

Here, misery and wretchedness are compared with a rainbow! Then we get “beauty” and “unloveliness”; “peace” and “sorrow”; “evil” and “good”; “joy” and “sorrow”; and so on. Some of these are more complex than others. Reread that last sentence of the excerpt and think about it. (Don’t you love how he says a bit earlier that “from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow”? That’s the poet in Poe and it is also what some readers dislike about his prose. Often, I love it.)

Now, one more thing before your assignment. Think about how this rhetorical device—antithesis—can also be used to get at larger ideas of theme and image in “Berenice.” Think about how Egaeus and Berenice are opposites. How Berenice is beautiful, but becomes, well…something else. Also, how all these dichotomies create an odd balance in the story that is toppled by Egaeus’s monomania, his fixation on a single idea or image.

And I know there’s even more in the story that I haven’t thought about and I’ve read this story something like ten times! That’s the “horrible beauty” of this stuff, folks!

But I digress…

Here’s a famous example from literature that also uses antithesis:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” (from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens)

 

Your Assignment:

Write a 7-10 sentence paragraph that uses antithesis. It can be related to Poe’s story “Berenice,” but it doesn’t have to be. This paragraph has to mean something. In other words, it can’t be simply a shameless juxtaposition of opposites—“He was hot. He was cold. He lived. He died.”

Feel free to post your paragraph on the AP Lit Facebook page or in the comments section of my blog. It will be too long for Twitter!

Since I never give an assignment I wouldn’t do myself. Here’s my attempt:

Edgar was an odd little boy. Only eight, he seemed eighty. Other boys his age played in the forest, but he chose the graveyard. The living trees that rose from the ground and the activity their presence produced, the constant chirp of birds, the squirrel run-and-chatter, bored him. He enjoyed the concrete and marble rising from the ground, a forest already cold and dead as it grew. He found the woods too humid and oppressive, but he was able to cool his forehead and his thoughts on the smooth tombstones. In the woods, life was noisy and raw, beetles eating trees, birds eating beetles, bobcats eating birds, while the graveyard was quiet and orderly. You didn’t hear or see the worms eating below. Little Edgar took comfort in the abstraction of names and numbers around him and began to write stories using the beginnings and endings he was provided on each grave.

Kilgore Was Here

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” (Introduction to Mother Night)

“All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.” (Timequake)

For years, I’ve taken to reading an author’s works in chronological order. The better I get as a reader, the more this practice provides benefits. Reading an author’s first novel allows one to see how the artist develops style and that elusive idea we call “voice.” First novels often clunk, but they clunk in an invaluable way for a reader, especially if that reader is also a writer.

Over the past year and some change, a friend and I have been reading Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s novels in chronological order. I had only read Slaughterhouse-Five, Timequake, and “Harrison Bergeron.” For some reason we focused on the novels. At some point, I need to go back and read his short fiction. I have a feeling there are some keen stories tucked away in there.

“How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?—from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow?”  That’s Poe in “Berenice.” And while he wasn’t talking about lists, for me, he could have been. I love lists. I hate them. They are practical. They are useless. And by lists here I mean “best of” not “grocery.” So, here are some Vonnegut lists (with brief comments—no spoilers!) in all their horrible beauty.

My Favorites

Slaughterhouse-Five

Mother Night

Timequake

Player Piano

Bluebeard

Sirens of Titan

 

Slaughterhouse-Five is the book and it deserves all the praise it gets. Vonnegut pulls off what he shouldn’t be able to pull off in this book. I would love to “read against the grain” and nominate another work, but I’ll go even further and say this is his best written novel, too. If you’re going to read just one of his books, this is it.

 

It’s been a while, but it seems to me that Mother Night is like Vonnegut’s “literary” novel. Reading chronologically, it comes after two (for the most part) sci-fi novels, and seems like an odd duck. I want to say that Slaughterhouse-Five’s style is almost a blending of the postmodern sci-fi of Sirens of Titan and the “quiet,” literary style of Mother Night.  This book is also the most successful of the “jailed narrator” books, which include Jailbird and Hocus Pocus.

 

I don’t even know if Timequake is a novel, but I love it. Vonnegut seems to have used this novel, remains of a “failed” novel, as a piece to meditate on his life. Alternately beautiful in places and curmudgeonly in others, this book also seems to serve as a love letter to his family and friends.

 

The last three here will probably be listed in different orders   on different days. Player Piano is important as his first novel and has some of the aforementioned clunk, but, in my opinion, in some ways, including plotting, more solid than his follow-up novel Sirens of Titan. Player Piano is surprisingly straight (for Vonnegut, that is), but still witty. His second book, Sirens of Titan, is interesting because it begins in the style of “Vonnegut.”  His mature style and voice are already present by his second novel, but Sirens is still in many ways a novel of transition.  Some of the problems are easily overlooked because this book is incredibly fun to read.

 

Bluebeard is by no means Vonnegut’s best novel, but I have to say I loved it. If we excluded Timequake—(if I could figure out exactly what genre it belongs to—sci-fi/ memoir? magical realism/autobiography?) I would have to say that it is my favorite novel after Slaughterhouse-Five. As a student of art history, I may have enjoyed this fake autobiography of an abstract painter more than most.

“Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.” - Kurt Vonnegut

My Not-So Favorites

 

Jailbird

Breakfast of Champions

 

Jailbird is Vonnegut’s only truly bad novel. It’s an internment narrative and my friend suggested that Hocus Pocus was a kind of rewrite that is more successful. It is more successful, but I don’t think it’s much better. (He also suggested that Galapagos is a kind of rewrite of Cat’s Cradle. I think he has something there—I liked both of those last two novels. In fact, on certain days, Cat’s Cradle probably makes the list above.)

 

Most of my friends have told me that Breakfast of Champions is their favorite Vonnegut novel. I found it extremely disappointing, especially after Slaughterhouse-Five. I felt it was a lot of Vonnegut performing “Vonnegut.” Certain devices, such as the drawings, seem forced. Admittedly, it’s a fun read in places, but by no means one of my favorites.

 

But, I’m the only person that I know who has that opinion, so I encourage others to read it for themselves because I may be missing something with this book.

 

We’ve decided to wrestle with Papa next. I’ve read all the short stories, but only a few novels.

A Haiku and an Interview

In the midst of new baby, new house, new life, and new writing projects, I decided to enter a haiku contest for the Centennial National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. Some people may smirk at the form, but I’ve been seriously reading and writing in the form for a lot of the year and have found a newfound love for it. The more I learn about it, the more I realize how little I knew to begin with.

 

Anyway, the contest. Well, I won it. And then I wrote for the Washington Post’s blog every day for a week. And then a Japanese newspaper interviewed me. They kindly sent me a copy, but it’s all in Japanese! So below is what may have appeared in the Kumamoto Daily News.

Thanks to Amy Hitt at the Washington Post, Reiko Robertson of the Kumamoto Daily News, and to the poet-judges Venus Thrash and Jose Padua!

Also, thanks to those little blossoms on those trees.

Interview (with Reiko Robertson):

Have you been to Japan?

No, but I would love to go. I am a big fan of Japanese film like Kurosawa and Imamura. I am currently reading the stories of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and I love the book Woman in the Dunes by Abe Kobo. I’ve listened to traditional Japanese court music and I also like more experimental groups like the Boredoms, the Ruins, and Melt Banana. I enjoy learning about the culture, but I’ve never had the money to travel.

 

Have you actually seen the Washington cherry blossoms?

 I have been to the area, but I saw it in summer and not in the spring.

 

Do you read or speak Japanese?

 No. I would love to have the time to study the language and to study zazen in Japan.

 

I suppose that you are teaching English at a senior high-school. How long you have been teaching?

 I currently teach English at Hewitt-Trussville High School. I have been teaching professionally for 6 years.

 

When did you start writing Haiku poems and what was the motivation?

I’ve been writing since high school. Around that time, most Americans are introduced to haiku. I’m sure I wrote senryu like most Americans. We call all of these short poem forms haiku. Within the last few years, I’ve really taken an interest in haiku and I intend to read more of the classics of Basho, Buson, and Issa. Many American writers have written interesting versions of haiku. For example, the Beats often wrote haiku in the form of a sentence, rather than a three or four line structure.

Since February, I have attempted writing a poem a day. Many times these come out as haiku or senryu. I have a new baby so I have to really work to find writing time. My motivation for turning to haiku is in one sense practical; it’s short. Even though they are short, haiku are not easy to write, by any means. Writing a good haiku is difficult. The haiku, like zazen, forces us to slow down and I think that is very important for us today. Our society does not appear to like us to slow down, to concentrate, or to be in or experience the world around us.

 

Are there fundamental differences in writing Haiku and Sonnet, and if there are, what are they?

This is a difficult question! I could write an essay or book on this subject. Or someone more capable could! 

It is not easy to write a good haiku, just as it is not easy to write a good sonnet. Because of the brevity of the haiku form, it allows easier drafting. The haiku preserves a revelatory sensory image. The image or moment is all. It’s a photograph. The sonnet calls for metaphorical development leading to a thematic insight. Something more like a short film. This visual art metaphor has probably been used before.

This is an interesting question and I feel my answer may be inadequate!

 

Is there any group of haiku poets in your area where you can meet regularly and study each others’ works?  This is a must in Japan, and haiku poets get support and encouragement from the group meeting.

I am not aware of any haiku groups in my area. Writing groups exist, many with a focus on poetry or fiction, but I am not aware of any with a focus on haiku. I know there are some haiku societies in America, but I’m not sure what their goals are or if they even meet in person. I’ve always loved the idea of a group of writers working together, but I’ve rarely seen it work myself.

 

Are your high school students making haiku? What is their interest?

I have my students write in various poetic forms, including haiku. Students gain the ability to analyze the forms by writing in them. Hopefully, they also enjoy the creative problem-solving that each form embodies.  Most students write senryu that are humorous. A few students see the potential of traditional haiku and write very beautiful and powerful poems.

 

You’re Like a Slice of Pizza

I like having students write sonnets when we study Shakespeare and I hope they are as happy with the results as I usually am. My AP classes read Macbeth and part of completing the unit is writing a sonnet that is somehow influenced by the play. As with the Poe summer assignments, I am also attempting the sonnet. I chose the theme of opposites/reversals that figures heavily in the play, not to mention a little inspiration from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”), and almost wrote a love sonnet. Hope you enjoy…

You’re Like a Slice of Pizza

You’re like a slice of pizza with a hair

on it—not quite what I asked for, but good

enough for now. You’re soft and warm and prayer’s

not likely to fix you or my tainted food.

But you’re more permanent than any prayer

that’s ever passed my lips. I still don’t have

my wishes—pimped-out rides and cribs, or the flair

of Johnny Depp. No one asks for my autograph

and I didn’t ask for you—yet here you are.

It’s like the time I went to get some ink

and wanted something tribal, something for war.

They put Tweety Bird on my butt. Yes, I think

you remind me of getting the wrong tattoo–

You’re not the one I wanted, but you’ll do.