mimsy and outgrabe

"Much contemporary verse is colloquial, prosaic, apparently 'free,' going about its business without rhyme or meter or stanzaic pattern of any kind. But such poems, to survive, need two essential components: first, their makers need to have truly mastered line-break, which is simply to say that he or she can keenly feel the pressure of silence; second, the poem must act upon you in a way that resembles a human encounter. For alone, in your memory, you, you , what's the difference -- to the cells, to the synapses -- between a poem you remember and a person you recall? You want lamps to go on."  --from the essay/chapter "Black" in On Poetry by Glyn Maxwell On Poetry is one of the best books on prosody. It's more entertaining and far less technical than Robert B. Shaw's "Blank Verse," but both books together provide a fairly robust (and readable) education in poetry. This quote is another pulled from my last journal, part of my ...

This week classes began for the spring semester at Stuffolk. It wasn't a bad week. I'm cautiously optimistic about the semester. My students seem engaged and respectful, which would be marked change from at least two of my classes last semester. I have a ton of prep still to do, mostly in making sure the Blackboard course spaces are aligned with the new semester and that my handouts and rubrics and all that junk have been updated. Our HUM 121 students making a very unofficial Sol LeWitt. Today I have the privilege of being the "Mystery Reader" at my youngest's preschool in the morning (those kids are the cutest, so it really will be the highlight of my week), followed with a day of writing letters of recommendation for three students. I am behind on lots of different tasks, but there's absolutely nothing I could have done differently. I've been working my ass off for the past few weeks; like, hyper-focused on work. My hope, my aim, is to sacrific...