Week 10

What is to give light must endure burning. – Victor Frankl

September 10!  Fall is around the corner, as each day, we may notice, becomes a little bit shorter, until on December 21, the winter solstice, the cycle reverses itself. And all year long we are busy getting things done and putting the events of our life in greater perspective as creation continues to unfold, and we along with it.  That "stone in the middle of the road" is our Self, being shaped continuously by experience and the ways we choose to look at life. It is my hope that literature enriches your experience, now and always, for it is a resource as near and dear as you want to keep it and an endless source of insight and refreshment.

Today we will wrap up by looking at Howl, poetry selections in the last handout, and one or more short stories.  It will be a day of discussions and review of course themes:  art and nature, the religious and spiritual threads that wind their way throughout literature, and the universal story of humanity journeying or "traveling through the dark," and seeking, always seeking the light!  We may find, I hope, in William Wordsworth's beautiful lines ("Tintern Abbey") an echo of our experience, both of nature and of the art that extolls its truths:

Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind	30
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life;
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight	40
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

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Howl is a film based on a now very famous poem–"Howl"–by Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997).    At the time of its writing, Ginsberg was a young man coming to terms with his own identity as a homosexual and felt himself at odds with much of American culture, in particular its militarism and capitalistic excesses and its opposition to homosexuality.  The poem is personal, autobiographical, raw, and graphic in its depictions of a generation ("the best minds of my generation") living on edge, and finding meaning (or whatever "sensations") in those edges.  The poem became famous, at least in part, when government authorities claimed it obscene, and a trial ensued to have its publication banned.  Ginsberg wrote the poem in free verse in a style imitative of Walt Whitman's work, in long lines uttered with force, in sometimes broken syntax and with odd juxtapositions of words that reflect the urgency, intensity and spontaneity of Ginsberg's poetic vision.  In the trial, authorities objected to the poem's profane language and sexual content, and contended it had no literary merit. 

Next week your recitations and final projects are due.  There will also be a short in-class essay final to write.  Rest and eat well.
And here, again (I posted it last week), at Harper's you may read an excellent little piece by an accomplished American poet named Tony Hoagland on why poetry matters and the 20 he offers as instructive.  You may find one to write on if you have yet to settle on subject matter for one or another writing:  http://harpers.org/blog/2013/04/twenty-little-poems-that-could-save-america/3/


 A selection of quotes from across the ages:

There is only one thing for which God sent me into this world and that is to perfect my nature in all sorts of virtue or strength, and there is no thing that I cannot use for that purpose. - Epictetus (55-135, Phrygia, Asia Minor)

Love's conqueror is he whom love conquers. - Hakim sanai (1080-1131, Persia)

"Die and become," that is, "Die to this existence and be reborn on a higher level." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832, Germany)

That which is real cannot be destroyed, but only that which is unreal. When a man finds that within him which is real, which is constant, abiding, changeless, and eternal, he enters into that Reality, and becomes meek. All the powers of darkness will come against him, but they will do him no hurt, and will at last depart from him. - James Allen (1864-1912, England)

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content. - Helen Keller (1880-1968, United States)