"Batter my Heart": The Bet!

Like any sensible poetry teacher, I love to teach John Donne. Donne makes me look smart; all I have to do is paraphrase the poem well and accurately, and the students are impressed--by the poet, but also by me. Just by knowing pretty basic stuff--say, what "dross" is, or an "alloy"--or by navigating through a complex, multiply-figured, multiply-subordinated sentence, I get to come across like some sort of trained professional. What's not to like?

Every now and then, however, teaching Donne gets really fun, because it lets me joust with my colleagues. Last night, for example, I got into a lively debate with P-- over this little number from the Holy Sonnets:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Says I to my colleague, those last two verbs are brilliant ("Brilliant!"--as in the Guinness ad) because of the way they take Donne from the violent verbs he starts with into an aesthetic realm, a realm of transport, of delight. To be enthralled doesn't just literally mean to be imprisoned, says I; you can be enthralled by a plot, by an argument, but a poem. To be ravished doesn't mean to be raped (although my students have been taught so); it's a broader, less brutal, more delightful thing. In fact, says I, what Donne wants by the end of the poem is for God to out-Donne him, to do unto the poet what the poet does to us. "Batter my heart" doesn't batter or break us, but it does enthrall and ravish us. Says I.

Says P--, a Renaissance scholar, "I bet those words didn't have those meanings in Donne's time." "You're on," says I, and off we trot to the OED, one dollar hanging in the balance. (Don't scoff: that's four shots of in-house espresso from the Modern Languages department.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the envelope, please:

Enthrall:

1. trans. To reduce to the condition of a thrall; to hold in thrall; to enslave, bring into bondage. Now rare in lit. sense.

1656 COWLEY Pindar. Odes, Brutus iii, Ingrateful Cæsar who could Rome enthrall. 1659 PEARSON Creed (1839) 512 A ransom is..that which is detained, or given for the releasing of that which is enthralled. 1777 WATSON Philip II (1839) 321 The danger..of being again enthralled by the Spaniards. 1871 B. TAYLOR Faust (1875) I. xxv, I am free! No one shall enthrall me.

1614 RALEIGH Hist. World I. 39 Those people, which he [the Turk] hath subjected and inthralled. 1636 E. DACRES tr. Machiavel's Disc. Livy II. 495 It is as hard and dangerous..to inthrall a people, that would live free.

2. fig. To ‘enslave’ mentally or morally. Now chiefly, to captivate, hold spellbound, by pleasing qualities.

1576 NEWTON tr. Lemnie's Complex. (1633) 170 A man should not give over or enthrall his credit and honour to Harlots. 1590SHAKES. Mids. N. III. i. 142 So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape. 1695 LD. PRESTON Boeth. IV. 177 Vice doth enthral Men's strongest Powers. 1797 MRS. RADCLIFFE Italian xvii, He was inclined to believe that a stratagem had enthralled him. a1839 PRAED Poems (1864) II. 123 And M, in that simple dress, Enthralls us more by studying less. 1878 E. JENKINS Haverholme 136 He was enthralled by the wizard spell of the orator.

1603 DANIEL Def. Rhime (1717) 12 Seeking to please our Ear, we inthral our Judgment. 1636 HEALEY Theophrast., Impert. Diligence 53 This fellow perswades him not so much to inthrall himselfe to his Physicians directions. c1720 PRIOR Poems (1866) 12 She soothes, but never can inthral my mind. a1803 BEATTIE Hermit (R.), Spring shall return, and a lover bestow And sorrow no longer thy bosom enthrall. 1859KINGSLEY Raleigh Misc. I. 30 The sense of beauty inthralls him at every step. 1876 BANCROFT Hist. U.S. I. xviii. 516 To inthrall his mind by the influences of religion.

Hence enthralled ppl. a. enthraller, one who enthralls. enthrallingvbl. n. and ppl. a.

1591 SHAKES. Two Gent. II. iv. 134 Loue hath chas'd sleepe from my enthralled eyes. 1600 HOLLAND Livy II. xxiv. 59 The enthralled debtors..were immediatlie by name enrolled. 1644MILTON Areop. (Arb.) 75 Through our..backwardnes to recover any enthrall'd peece of truth out of the gripe of custom. 1640-4 in Rushw. Hist. Coll. 111 (1692) I. 93 The subjecting and inthralling all Ministers under them. 1669COKAINE Poems 149 Her sweetest mouth..[is] All hearts enthraller. 1797 BURKE Regic. Peace iii. Wks. VIII. 311 With an enthralled world to labour for them. 1820 SCOTT Monast. xiii, Those of the Sucken, or enthralled ground, were liable in penalties. 1871MACDUFF Mem. Patmos xiv. 195 To break loose from the enthralling chains of earth.

Ravish (note meaning 3 a, b, and c)

[a. F. raviss-, lengthened stem of ravir to seize, take away:pop. L. *rapre, class. L. rapre. Cf. RAVIN¹.]

1. a. trans. To seize and carry off (a person); to take by violence, to tear or drag away from (a place or person). Now somewhat rare. Also, to sweep or carry away; to drag off (to or into a place). Obs.

a1300 Cursor M. 7680 His reners [saul] eder send For to rauis dauid he wend. a1340 HAMPOLE Psalter lxii. 8, I am thi bridde & if ou hill me not e glede will ravishe me. 1422 tr. Secreta Secret., Priv. Priv. 174 The course of the ryuer so stronge and so styfe rane, that the knyght and his hors rauyshith, doune hym bare, and dreynte. 1585 T. WASHINGTON tr. Nicholay's Voy. III. i. 69 [They] by outragious force rauish these most deare infants..from..their fathers and mothers. 1603 B. JONSON Sejanus V. x, Now inhumanely ravish him to Prison! 1624 QUARLES Sion's Elegies iv. 20 Heaven's Anoynted, Their hands have crusht, and ravisht from his Throne. 1655FULLER Ch. Hist. I. v. §20 The British are not so over-fond of St. Patrick, as to ravish him into their Country against his will, and the consent of Time. 1854 SUMNER Speech in Wks. 1895 III. 291 For the mother there is no assurance that her infant child will not be ravished from her breast.

fig. 1513 DOUGLAS Æneis VIII. i. 49 In mynd..Nou heyr, nou there, revist in syndry partis. 1560 J. DAUS tr. Sleidane's Comm. 464b, Many men rauished & toste hither and thither with euery wynde of doctrine.

b. In pass.: To be carried away from a belief, state, etc. Obs.

1362 LANGL. P. Pl. A. XI. 297 Arn none rathere yrauisshid fro the rit beleue Thanne arn thise grete clerkis. a1400-50 Alexander 4424 us fra e rote of ritwisnes rauyst ere e clene. c1425 Found. St. Bartholomew's (E.E.T.S.) 45 In his slepe he was raueshid from his resonable wyttys. 1758 H. WALPOLE Catal. Roy. Authors (1759) I. 157 Ravished from all improvement and reflection at the age of seventeen.

c. To draw forcibly to (or into) some condition, action, etc. Obs.

1398 TREVISA Barth. De. P.R. II. iv. (1495) bijb/2 Aungels ben..rauysshed to the Innest contemplacion of the loue of god. 1450-1530 Myrr. our Ladye 329 That whyle we know god vysybly, by hym we mote be rauyshed in to the loue of inuysyble thynges. 1574 tr. Marlorat's Apocalips 23 Christes works..might rauish all men to haue them in wonderfull admiration. 1600HOLLAND Livy X. xli. 382 The Romanes were ravished and carried on end to the battaile, with anger, hope, and heate of conflict.

2. a. To carry away (a woman) by force. (Sometimes implying subsequent violation.) Also said fig. of death. ? Obs.

a1300 Cursor M. 7048 Alexandre, in at siquar, at paris hight, raiuist helayn. 1303 R. BRUNNE Handl. Synne 7422 ay rauys a mayden aens here wyl, And mennys wyuys ey lede awey ertyl. 1387TREVISA Higden (Rolls) I. 171 Iupiter..rauisched Europa, Agenores douter. c1477 CAXTON Jason 8 They rauisshed the fayr Ypodame out from alle the other ladyes. 1585 T. WASHINGTON tr. Nicholay's Voy. II. iii. 33 It was there..Paris after he had rauished Helene, tooke of her the first frutes of his loue. c1665 MRS. HUTCHINSON Mem. Col. Hutchinson (1846) 49 Death quenched the flame and ravished the young lady from him.

b. To commit rape upon (a woman), to violate. Also absol.

1436 Rolls of Parlt. IV. 498/1 [He] flesshly knewe and ravysshed ye said Isabell. 1560 J. DAUS tr. Sleidane's Comm. 220b, The women and maides that were fled thither for feare, they ravissh every one [L. constuprant]. 1642FULLER Holy & Prof. St. V. xi. 397 Defiling virgins, or ravishing them rather, for consent onely defiles. 1756-7 tr. Keysler's Trav. (1760) II. 159 The Locis Turpitudinis, as it is called, where St. Agnes was in danger of being ravished by two soldiers. 1834 Cycl. Pract. Med. III. 583/1 Ravishing by force any woman-child..or any other woman. 1939 G. B. SHAW Geneva III. 70 Am I to allow him to kill me and ravish my wife and daughters? 1981 Sunday Times (Colour Suppl.) 8 Mar. 104 He ravished and pillaged...left sons to hate him, women to fight over his wealth.

fig. 1664 DRYDEN Rival Ladies II. i, Against her Will fair Julia to possess, Is not t'enjoy but ravish Happiness. 1782 COWPER Table T. 332 May no foes ravish thee [Liberty], and no false friend Betray thee, while professing to defend.

c. To spoil, corrupt. Obs. rare¹.

1593 SHAKES. Lucr. 778 O hateful, vaporous, and foggy Night..With rotten damps ravish the morning air.

3. a. To carry away or remove from earth (esp. to heaven) or from sight. Now rare.

a1300 Cursor M. 18483 We sal be rauist forth a-wai, Sal na man se us fra at dai. 1340 HAMPOLE Pr. Consc. 5050 We..Sal an with am in cloudes be ravyste Up in-to e ayre. c1375 Sc. Leg. Saints x. (Matthew) 210 It hapnyt e kingis son be ded..ai tald e kynge at goddis had rawist hyme. c1450 LYDG. & BURGH Secrees 97 He was Ravysshed Contemplatyff of desir Vp to the hevene lyk a dowe of ffyr. 1513DOUGLAS Æneis I. i. 50 Ganimedes reveist aboue the sky. 1697 DRYDEN Virg. Georg. IV. 719 For ever I am ravish'd from thy sight. 1754 FIELDING Jonathan Wild IV. vii, A very thick mist ravished her from our eyes. 1885-94 R. BRIDGESEros & Psyche Oct. xii, Ravisht to hell by fierce Agesilas, Thou soughtest her on earth and couldst not find.

b. To carry away (esp. to heaven) in mystical sense; to transport in spirit without bodily removal.

c1330 Arth. & Merl. 8915 (Kölbing) This Naciens..Whom seen e holi godes gras Rauist in to e ridde heuen, Where he herd angels steuen. c1400MANDEVILLE (Roxb.) xxvi. 124 anne ei seyn at he is ravissht in to anoer world. 1482 Monk of Evesham (Arb.) 36 Y was rauyshte in spirite as y laye in the chaptur hows. 1552LYNDESAY Monarche 6076 Quhen Paull wes reuyst, in the spreit, Tyll the thrid Heuin. 1615 G. SANDYS Trav. 56 They haue..naturall idiots, in high veneration; as men rauished in spirit, and taken from themselues, as it were, to the fellowship of Angels. 1644 EVELYNMem. (1857) I. 117 It has some rare statues, as Paul ravished into the third heaven.

c. To transport with the strength of some feeling, to carry away with rapture; to fill with ecstasy or delight; to entrance. Also const. from.

13.. E.E. Allit. P. A. 1087 So was I rauyste wyth glymme pure. 1377LANGL. P. Pl. B. II. 17 Hire arraye me rauysshed, sucche ricchesse saw I neuere. 1484 CAXTON Fables of Alfonce i, The medecyns..sayd that..he was rauysshed by loue. a1533 LD. BERNERS Huon cxliv. 538 She had suche ioye that of a great spase she coude speke no word, she was so rauysshyd. 1586 A. DAY Eng. Secretary (1625) 23 Doth not the learned Cosmographie..rauish vs oftentimes and bring in contempt the pleasures of our owne soyle. 1695BLACKMORE Pr. Arth. II. 316 Ambrosial Juices, sweet Nectarean Wine, Ravish'd their Tast. 1753 HOGARTH Anal. Beauty v. 28 Ravish the eye with the pleasure of the pursuit. 1826 E. IRVING Babylon II. VIII. 282, I have been wrapt in wonder, and ravished with delight, in the study of it. 1873BROWNING Red Cotton Night-Cap Country IV. 135 You ravish men away From puny aches and petty pains.

4. a. To seize and take away as plunder or spoil; to seize upon (a thing) by force or violence; to make a prey of. Also with away.

c1374 CHAUCER Boeth. IV. pr. v. 102 (Camb. MS.) Shrewes rauysshen medes of vertu and ben in honours and in gret estatis. 1382WYCLIF Nahum ii. 9 Rauyshe e syluer, rauyshe e gold. 1483 CAXTON Cato Biij, To be wyllyng for to dyspoyle and rauysshe hys neyghbours goodes. 1535 COVERDALE Gen.a1661 FULLERWorthies (1840) II. 104 Some antiquaries are so jealous of their works, as if every hand which toucheth would ravish them. 1731 MEDLEY Kolben's Cape G. Hope l. 66 The Free-booters had used to ravish away their lives and their cattle. 1794 BURKE Sp. agst. W. Hastings Wks. 1826 XV. 430 To steal an iniquitous judgment, which you dare not boldly ravish. xxxvii. 33 A rauyshinge beast hath rauyshed Ioseph.

absol. 1712-14 POPE Rape Lock II. 32 He meditates the way, By force to ravish, or by fraud betray.

fig. c1374 CHAUCER Boeth. III. pr. i. 50 (Camb. MS.) Whan at thow ententyf and stylle rauysshedest my wordes.

b. To carry, take, pull, or drag away or along in a violent manner without appropriation; to remove by force. Also with away, down. Obs.

c1374 [see RAVISHING ppl. a. 1]. 1398TREVISA Barth. De P.R. VIII. xxii. (Bodl. MS.) lf. 86/1 Aboute e whiche axis alle e swiftenes of e firmament is rauessched and ymeued. 1460-4 Paston Lett. No. 434 II. 81 The gret fray..ravyched my witts and mad me ful hevyly dysposyd. 1535 COVERDALE Prov. i. 12 These are the ways of all soch as be couetous, that one wolde rauysh anothers life. 1620 MELTON Astrolog. 65 His minde was rauished downe the swift torrent of an insolent vanity. 1698 CROWNE Caligula III, Rivers he ravishes, and turns their courses!

c. Const. from, out of, into, to.

1398 TREVISA Barth. De P.R. XVI. vii. (Bodl. MS.), if ow doste er on [on quicksilver] a scrupil of golde it rauessche into it silfe e litnes erof. c1400 Rom. Rose 5198, I mene not that [love] which makith thee wood,..And ravysshith fro thee all thi witte. 1563 WINIT Wks. (1890) II. 16 We also.. suld reuiss fra it, that mot proffet to the lyfe eternall. 1634 W. TIRWHYT tr. Balzac's Lett.1722DE FOE Col. Jack (1840) 175, I..am not..obliged to ravish my bread out of the mouths of others. 1748 RICHARDSON Clarissa1838 PRESCOTT Ferd. & Is. (1846) I. ii. 135 The crown was ravished from her posterity. 1871 R. ELLIS Catullus lxiv. 5 Fain from Colchian earth her fleece of glory to ravish. (vol. I.) aij, The onely thing hee supposed to possess..was ravished from him. (1811) II. xxxiii. 239 He even snatched..my struggling hand; and ravished it to his odious mouth.

d. With double object. Obs.

c1400 Destr. Troy 462 The sight of at semely..rauysshed hir radly e rest of hir sawle. a1500 Sir Beues 3917 (Pynson) Thou haste rauysshed my men theire liffe.

5. a. To ravage, despoil, plunder. Obs.

1297 R. GLOUC. (Rolls) 4001 ou..rauissest france & oer londes. a1340 HAMPOLE Psalter ix. 32 He waites at he rauysch e pore. 1388 WYCLIF Isa. xlii. 22 Thilke puple was rauyschid and wasted. c1619 BACON Sp. concerning War w. Spain Rem. (1734) 226 We ravished a principal City of wealth and strength.

b. To despoil, rob, or deprive (one) of something. Obs.

1362 LANGL. P. Pl. A. IV. 34 And hou he rauischede Rose, Reynaldes lemmon, And Mergrete of hire maydenhod. 1560 J. DAUS tr. Sleidane's Comm. 29b, I am not led rashely on like one that were ravished of his wittes. 1606 G. W[OODCOCKE] Hist. Ivstine VIII. 38 Assailing the brothers..[he] rauisht them both of their kingdomes. 1686 F. SPENCE tr. Varilla's Ho. Medicis 240 As he was..more methodick than Blondus, he ravish'd him of his reputation. a1803 Hughie GrameBallads IV. 13 They may ravish me o' my life, But they canna banish me fro Heaven hie. xiv. in Child

Eccovi! Judge ye! Who gets the coffee next week?

Pleasure Questions

For today's class, my students will have read "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?," "Those Winter Sundays," "may i feel, said he," by Cummings, Auden's "As I Walked Out One Evening," Thom Gunn's "The Man with the Night Sweats," and Louise Gluck's "The Balcony."

Here are the questions they'll get:

Pleasures Group Work

NOTE: Many poems and passages from poems give multiple pleasures at once. Feel free to refer several times to the same material in your answers; be sure, though, to be ready to discuss a different pleasure each time!

1. According to Vendler (and to you), what are some of the pleasures that rhythm can provide? Find two examples from the poems you read for today, and be ready to explain what lines or passages in them give you rhythmic pleasure.

2. According to Vendler (and to you), what are some of the pleasures that rhyme can provide? What about the pleasures of stanza shape? Find at least two examples from the poems you read for today, and be ready to explain what lines or passages in them give you rhyme and stanza pleasure.

3. According to Vendler (and to you), what are some of the pleasures that structure can provide? Pick one of the poems you read for today and be ready to explain how it gives you structural pleasure.

4. According to Vendler (and not to you, this time, because her version is quite idiosyncratic), what are the pleasures that images can give? Find at least two examples from the poems you read for today and be ready to explain what lines or passages in them give you Vendler’s version of image pleasure.

5. According to Vendler (and to you), what are the pleasures that argument can give? Find at least one example from the poems you read for today, and be ready to explain how it gives you argument pleasure.

6. According to Vendler (and to you), what are the pleasures of poignancy? Find at least two examples from the poems you read for today, and be ready to explain how they give you the pleasures of poignancy.

Maybe I'll divvy the class up into six groups, and give each group a question. Too hard to have everyone do all of them--or, rather, not too hard, but too slow. Maybe start each group with one question, have them present their answers, and then see if there's time to spin each to a new question, and so forth.

I'll let you know how it goes!

Choices

This, which I could snap up as we speak:

[ARGH! TOO LATE! IT'S DISAPPEARED, EVEN AS I WENT TO POST THIS. NEXT TIME I'LL SAVE THE PHOTO, I PROMISE. A TWO-POINTER, IN CHERRY NO LESS.]

A lefty model, so some investment in the switch would be needed. But a sweet little piece, from a small builder in Nevada, now for sale on the Mandolin Cafe classifieds section.

Or this, the line below it--a little brother (mando, not mandola) of the one I bought last month:


Again, right in my price range, sans a stretch.

Or do I turn away, for now, from instruments, to learn some actual new music for them? This looks promising:


And this sounds lovely--by which I mean, I haven't seen it yet, but you can hear the tunes on-line:

Rationally speaking, I know that I'll get the most pleasure out of learning to play new music--more from that than from acquiring a new instrument, especially one in a register I already have covered. I could buy both sets of music for, what, 10% of one of those instruments, and spend years enjoying the pieces.

But wait! There's one more option: leave them all on the table, and just keep saving. Who knows what might show up next?

A Week of Pleasures

This week, in my Reading Poetry class, we turn to chapter 3 in Vendler's textbook, "Poems as Pleasure." A few years back I put together a little checklist based on this chapter, which I may have posted before, but not recently. You could use it to send students on a Pleasure Hunt: that is, send them to an anthology of poems (they could easily use the one on the Poetry Foundation website, which is free and easily searchable) and have them come back with one example of each pleasure, to be shared or briefly written about.

If they want to hunt up elegant rhymes, by the way, they can hardly do better than to consult the lyrics to "You're the Top," which you'll find in a charming but truncated version above. For the full lyrics, splendidly annotated, look here. "Mahatma Gandhi / Napoleon Brandy" is brilliant, but the best must surely be "You're a rose; you're Inferno's Dante. / You're the nose on the great Durante." Rose to nose, Inferno's to nose, Rose to Dante (as in the Paradiso), and of course the culminating rhyme between two great Italian comedians, one divine and one secular: if that doesn't make you happy for a week, you need a sabbatical, bub.

The goal this week, pedagogically speaking, is to get my students thinking about two things.

First, I want them to learn how the pleasures they already take in poems can be named and discussed in precise terms, rather than in vague generalities ("I just liked it, I guess"), which means that they can be shared. Putting things into words generally adds to the pleasure, as a rule, in poetry as in everything else.

And, second, it gets them finding new pleasures--pleasures they hadn't thought to look for (what's "rhythm?") and pleasures that they might not actually feel themselves, but that they can notice as possibilities. ("If anyone actually likes this poem, it's probably for the rhymes." That sort of thing.)

So here's the list. Use at will, everyone.

Poems as Pleasure: A Checklist from Vendler

Rhythm

• pleasure of recurrence and simple metrical pattern
• pleasures of complex metrical pattern, or of variations in an established pattern, as when a set meter plays against the actual spoken rhythm
• pleasures of match between sound and sense, rhythm and emotion or idea

Rhyme

• the simple pleasure of sounds that match, w/ various numbers of syllables
• more complex pleasure of sameness in difference
• i.e., rhyming monosyllables with polysyllables
• i.e., rhyming different parts of speech
• i.e., rhyming words w/ some meaning-relation (same or opposite)
• i.e., rhyming words that are spelled very differently, but w/ same sound

Alliteration, Consonance, Assonance

• --same pleasures as in rhyme, but elsewhere in the words
• --the pleasures of finding links between key words in the poem, or of watching a set of sound-associations emerge (as when certain sounds seem associated, in this poem, with particular characters or ideas or events)
  

Stanza shape

• --pleasure of recognizing some tradition (ballad stanza, ABBA quatrain, sonnet, couplet)
• --pleasure of a tour-de-force: i.e., use of a really difficult stanza
• --pleasure of watching some existing form adapted or given a new twist
• --pleasure of “fit” between stanza form and inner structure of the poem

Structure

• --pleasure of match between structure and content (form enacting content)
• --i.e., of well-used line breaks
• --i.e., of torque on syntax or word order

Wordplay

• --pleasure of self-referential puns (i.e., references to feet, to lines, to rooms / stanzas)
• --pleasure of other sorts of puns
• --pleasure of changes in diction or discourse, or echoes from diction to diction

Allusions

• pleasure of watching a poem “open out” onto broader vistas of myth, theology, cultural reference
• pleasure of “getting it”: being part of the poem’s audience (and thus possessing cultural capital?)
• pleasure of watching a seemingly incoherent poem reveal an underlying coherence

Images

• pleasure of seeing ideas or argument compressed into memorable form
• pleasure of shifting kinds of imagery (visual, auditory, tactile, etc.; or from descriptive to metaphoric) in some order or pattern
• pleasure of having your own perceptions sharpened

Argument

• pleasure of the game of thrust & parry, or of watching the structure take shape
• pleasure of poems answering other poems
• pleasure of watching old arguments presented from new angles of approach (new characters, scenes, speakers, moves, etc.)

Poignancy

• pleasure of the fit or contrast between situation and type of utterance (style, genre, tone)
• pleasure of the poet’s subtlety in handling some painful or difficult emotional material (what we might call the pleasure of decorum)
• pleasure of unsubtlety, as a poet shifts from figurative or roundabout language to simplicity

Wisdom

• the pleasures of “what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed”
• pleasures of “credible representation” of some powerful feeling, followed by the pleasures of assent: “yes, that’s how it feels; that’s how life is”
• pleasures of finding a vicarious voice: i.e., a poet who speaks for or to you

A New Language

• the pleasure of a poet not sounding like anyone else: the pleasure of distinctiveness

These are not the only pleasures out there--I think of character pleasures as a distinctive category, for example--but they'll do for a start.

Speaking of Lutes

Were we? I guess we were. Here's fine pair, then; you can listen to one while reading the other.

Semper Dowland, Semper Dolens:



Les Luths

Ah nuts! It’s boring reading French newspapers

in New York as if I were a Colonial waiting for my gin

somewhere beyond this roof a jet is making a sketch of the sky

where is Gary Snyder I wonder if he’s reading under a dwarf pine

stretched out so his book and his head fit under the lowest branch

while the sun of the Orient rolls calmly not getting through to him

not caring particularly because the light in Japan respects poets

while in Paris Monsieur Martory and his brother Jean the poet

are reading a piece by Matthieu Galey and preparing to send a pneu

everybody here is running around after dull pleasantries and

wondering if The Hotel Wentley Poems is as great as I say it is

and I am feeling particularly testy at being separated from

the one I love by the most dreary of practical exigencies money

when I want only to lean on my elbow and stare into space feeling

the one warm beautiful thing in the world breathing upon my right rib

what are lutes they make ugly twangs and rest on knees in cafés

I want to hear only your light voice running on about Florida

as we pass the changing traffic light and buy grapes for wherever

we will end up praising the mattressless sleigh-bed and the

Mexican egg and the clock that will not make me know

how to leave you

--Frank O'Hara

And I let the fish go...

or, in this case, the cittern.

Next tests: that Mid-Missouri Octave and another man's zouk.

(Isn't there something in scripture about coveting another man's zouk? If not, there should be.)

When I was a boy, I wanted a lute. Not in a while, though. Still, there seem to be more good lute poems out there than mandolin songs. Here's one of them, by Thomas Wyatt.

THE LOVER'S LUTE CANNOT BE BLAMED

THOUGH IT SING OF HIS LADY'S UNKINDNESS.

LAME not my Lute ! for he must sound
Of this or that as liketh me ;
For lack of wit the Lute is bound
To give such tunes as pleaseth me ;
Though my songs be somewhat strange,
And speak such words as touch thy change,
Blame not my Lute !

My Lute ! alas ! doth not offend,
Though that perforce he must agree
To sound such tunes as I intend,
To sing to them that heareth me ;
Then though my songs be somewhat plain,
And toucheth some that use to feign,
Blame not my Lute !

My Lute and strings may not deny
But as I strike they must obey ;
Break not them then so wrongfully,
But wreak thyself some other way ;
And though the songs which I indite
Do quit thy change with rightful spite,
Blame not my Lute !

Spite asketh spite, and changing change,
And falsèd faith must needs be known ;
The fault so great, the case so strange ;
Of right it must abroad be blown :
Then since that by thine own desart
My songs do tell how true thou art,
Blame not my Lute !

Blame but thyself that hast misdone,
And well deservèd to have blame ;
Change thou thy way, so evil begone,
And then my Lute shall sound that same ;
But if 'till then my fingers play,
By thy desert their wonted way,
Blame not my Lute !

Farewell ! unknown ; for though thou break
My strings in spite with great disdain,
Yet have I found out for thy sake,
Strings for to string my Lute again :
And if, perchance, this sely rhyme
Do make thee blush, at any time,
Blame not my Lute !

Mando-Lust

I spent the summer battling MAS: Mandolin Acquisition Syndrome. It's no joke--these things are addictive! They're also expensive enough that you can't buy every one you want, because for each one you purchase, you have to plan on going without--playing, yes, but not buying--for a span of months, at least.

I headed into the summer with three: my trusty Mid-Missouri M-4, "Whiskey Girl" (seen here after a quickly hushed-up PUI incident)


My Highland bowlback, rescued from the shop window of a music store in Wisconsin (no picture available, probably because she's an inexpensive import, but my daughter calls her "Baby Oud"); and my Fullerton Gloucester "Two-Shafts," whom you saw in a video a while back.

Over the summer, I lusted after a Hodson Djangolin, seen here in the hands of a lucky youngster on someone's blog--not one of mine:


I came mighty close to buying that one, but backed out at the last minute, in favor of waiting for something in a lower register: an octave mandolin, a cittern, a bouzouki, or a mandola. I've wanted one of those for longer, but just between us, I regret the decision. Much as I love what I got (more on that in a moment), these are rare, and less likely to come round again. Next time, I'll bite.

By the end of the summer I'd saved some funds, finished some projects, and wanted to give myself a treat. And, as it happens, a seller out in Arizona decided right at the same time to split up a pair of mandolas he'd been trying to sell as a pair for several months. I saw, I bought, and now I own the one in the foreground, to the left, in this picture from his ad:

A Gypsy mandola, spruce over walnut, whose luthier actually emailed me--this when I'd bought it used, mind you, for at most 2/3rds of the new price--to ask if the instrument had arrived safely, if I had any questions, if there was anything he could do.

I don't have a nickname yet for my 'dola, so if you have any suggestions, let me know. I'm tuning him (her?) CGDG at the moment, in manner of the mandola player in the Irish band Dervish--getting a bit of a 'zouki groove out of the instrument, playing around with some different chord shapes, etc. Spent about 2 hours last night playing in the new tuning: scales, runs, capoing up to DAEA to see how that sounds. Gorgeous sustain, ringing harmonics, still small enough to feel cuddly, like a mandolin, rather than a stretch to the arm or wrist. Even my wife likes it, sight and sound, and that's worth a lot in this biz.

So why, friends, why can't I stop looking at the Mid-Mo octave mandolin on Ebay now--or, just as bad, this grand Freshwater cittern, from Scotland?


I could do it, that's the maddening thing. I could afford either one. But if I buy one, I can't buy the other, and if I buy either one, I'll be too poor to snag a Djangolin, if one were to show up to be bought. Besides, if I wait, I might never get the chance to pick up an affordable cittern or Mid-Mo OM. But then again, I hear rumors that J. Bovier will come out with a mid-priced line of OMs and 'zouks in the next few months, and their mandolins have gotten rave reviews....

The expense of spirit, friends, in a waste of shame, is mando-lust, in action or otherwise.

(On a literary note, this from Peter Ackroyd's biography: evidently Eliot spent his time on Margate sands "practicing scales on the mandolin which Vivien had bought him." Oh, city city...)

So...

It's been so long since I've blogged regularly, I can't remember what it's like.

(A statement that cues up, in my head, Dylan's "Idiot Wind": "I haven't known peace and quiet for so long I can't remember what it's like." I bought Blood on the Tracks when I was 14 or 15, at a record store in Berkeley, CA, out for Jewish summer camp and to visit my Nana. That and Darkness on the Edge of Town, if memory serves, which would place it in the summer of 1978, nearly thirty years ago. Who knows where the time goes, eh?)

In a few minutes I'll be off to teach my standard-issue, Vendler based Reading Poetry class. 25 undergraduates, down from the usual 35-40, I hope because I'm teaching it on a MWF schedule rather than the usual T/Th. Some have started cutting class, which bothers me--I'd like to think that I'm entertaining enough to keep them there without calling the roll, which bores me silly--but on the other hand, I've learned almost all of their names already, which is very, very rare for me. How'd I do it? A trick I picked up from one of my high school teacher comrades in arms: take a 3 X 5 card and a sharpie to class, fold the card in half lengthwise, and write a name plate for every student. Hand them out at the start of class every day; after a week, it seems, you learn the names. I had three unlearned last Wednesday: Jessica, Sandy, and Danielle. Today I know who those are, but have forgotten a couple more--the gals who sit next to Matt in the second row.

Pedagogy at its finest! Ah, well: 'tis new to me.

So: today we talk about Shax's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day," "They Flee from Me," by Wyatt, and Dickinson's "Wild Nights." As usual, I'm just trying to get the students to notice what Vendler calls "patterns and shapes": my notes, as I head into class, look like this:

Wyatt:
time shape: past/present vs. past vs. past then present, w/ forward look
emotional shape: bluster to dreamy reminiscence to spite
character / pronoun shape: I / them to it / she / me to it / I / she
agency shape: I to me to what?

Dickinson:
Sound shape: keening “ees”—how to talk about such things (speaker-wise)
key word shape: luxury (look up with them)—when does some version recur? Compare moor, maybe.
Time shape: conditional (were I with thee); unfixed (futile the winds: is it “are” or “would be”); participial / gerund, then back to subjunctive: “might I”

• so what else is odd, unfixed, in stanza two?

Preposition drama: with, / in, with, with, / in, in
Place drama: nowhere to “in port”; “in Eden”; “in thee”

Little jottings, that is, to get them to see step by step what I mostly notice instantly, reading. That's what this textbook is good for, even if it's sometimes hard for the students to realize how many tools they're getting, day by day, class by class.

OK, if you've born with me this long, let me leave you with two treats before I go teach. First, here's the Keats poem we spent the last class on, with two great study / discussion questions. I'd never read or taught it before, and had a ball:

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.

Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passed joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.

The central question I gave them was this: if this is a comparison poem (here's something in nature, and here's the human equivalent, or lack thereof), why is there a second stanza? Why not just go from stanza 1 to stanza 3? What are all of the things that stanza 2 does to set up the last one, or to shift us away from the first towards the third? As an ancillary question, I had them look at the last half of each stanza, to look for repetitions and variations, comparisons and contrasts, from 1 to 2 to 3. It was a great discussion, & they did more with the Apollo line than I would ever have expected. (Oh, happy, happy class!)

And, as your final treat, this--a treat if you're a Dylanist, that is:



More next on mandolust: my summer fling and my current obsessions. See you then.

Off to DC

Off to DC with the kids today. We'll be there until the 11th; then it's back into action, folks, with the first three meetings of

(drum-roll, please)

How to Teach a Poem (and Learn from One, Too)

--my next NEH project, a year-long series of free workshops for middle school teachers.

If you teach grades 6-8, and live near Chicago, drop me a line. Spaces are still available, but they're going fast!

Summer reading, for the plane & after: From the Cables of Genocide, by Lorna Dee Cervantes; The Republic of Poetry, by Martin Espada; and The Mandolin Fretboard Roadmap, by someone or other who plays a lot better than I do. Two Shafts & I -- Two Shafts is the Fullerton Gloucester f-style, nickname courtesy of Meg, after an outlaw train robber in Beverly Jenkins' Something Like Love-- Two Shafts & I have some serious 'sheddin to do.

Back Again

Did I mention I was going to take a month off?

Well, I'm back: back from leading Say Something Wonderful, my NEH seminar for K-12 teachers; back from a month (a harrowing month, in the Penal Colony sense of that of fine word) of watching my wife watch her father go through heart surgery and a slow, painful recovery; back from a month of dragging my middle-aged butt out of bed far too early to beat the traffic down to Lincoln Park, at an hour when all normal people are already up and about, but I didn't go into academia to get up at 6:30 (he whines)! Not yet back from an assortment of anxieties: essays still to finish, book reviews to write, middle-school teachers to recruit for my next big NEH gig...

But back, nonetheless.

This morning I'm going through my bookmarks, clearing out some trash and bringing a few over here, to the links list. One thing that grew clear as the SSW seminar progressed: teachers don't have time to play gumshoe on the net (how's that for a metaphor!), tracking down useful websites, etc. I won't pretend to make this a full-scale clearinghouse; that's the job of a site like the Poetry Foundation, probably. But I'm going to rebuild my links list, inch by inch, row by row, so that this will be a bit more useful to teachers as a stop.

I'm also going to start posting (again) some more personal, less interesting material, just to keep the juices flowing. You know: day to day living stuff, for friends and family to follow. If you're here for professional reasons, just skip all that. My life isn't all that interesting, thank God: just busy (too busy) and happy, with just enough tsuris to keep me kvetching. (Oops: wrong blog. That sort of stuff should go on the Jewish one, probably.)

***

First new link to highlight: The Page, which is a sort of Drudgereport for book reviews, poems, literary news, even top-quality blog entries (not like this one) on properly literary subjects (not like popular romance). If I read it more often, I'd feel less cut off from the literary world--a thought which cuts both ways, come to think of it! Anyway, if you don't know about it, take a look here.

And now it goes up on the links, and OFF my own list of bookmarks. I'll track it down through here, just like you, whoever you are--

Note to Self

My kids (who are just finishing 2nd and 5th grade, next week) have spent the past few years in a curriculum based around six reading strategies:

• Predicting
• Summarizing
• Inferring
• Imaging
• Asking Questions
• Connecting

Surely all of these (except maybe "summarizing"?) could be deployed in reading poems as well. In fact, since poems are short, they're ideal for such work--better than some of the non-fiction texts that my kids had to use.

What poems--for kids or for adults--could we plug into this sort of curriculum? If I could write that up, I could hand it to the teachers, and we'd be ready to roll!

Constantine Cavafy

We have a week and a half left of classes here at DePaul. Today, in my Love Poetry class, it's Baudelaire and Cavafy. In preparation for which, I turned up another lovely site: a Cavafy page, put together by the poet's estate, evidently, with translations and a fine selection of essays. I particularly liked Daniel Mendelsohn's "Cavafy and the Erotics of the Lost":

...What makes Cavafy so remarkable was not, as it is too often tempting to think, that he managed to be a poet of desire and a poet of the past, but that he was a poet of desire through the past. It is sometimes hard to remember, given the total authority of even his earliest poetic utterances, that Cavafy did indeed experiment and develop as a thinker and writer over the course of nearly fifty years of creative output; one thing that emerges when we look at the career as a whole is how well and idiosyncratically the poet learned to use the historical as a tool for exploring the personal. He began, indeed, with a poetic and personal crisis, a block: how to speak about homosexual desire. This crisis, he came to understand, could only be solved by means of his intellectual attachment to the Greek cultural inheritance.

A clue as to why this was so is to be found in the fact that it was specifically the culture of the Hellenistic and Late Antique eras that became the vehicles for the poet’s explorations of the nature of desire in time. These were, after all, ages that were themselves haunted by the past—torn (as the narrator of Cavafy’s erotic lyrics so often is) between the then and the now. That tension, in turn, was reflected by another, a geographical one: between the here and the there. Few of the poems that many think of as being about ancient Greece are, in fact, set in Greece itself. Instead, nearly all of the poems of the past are set in cultural outposts of Hellenistic Greece—Seleucia in Asia Minor, Alexandria in Egypt—places that were hybrids of local and Greek cultures. That were often divided, in other words, between where they were and what they wanted to be.

It was a Hellenistic knack for conflation, for mediating between seemingly distinct categories, that allowed Cavafy to achieve a new kind of poetry, a great modern poetry in which two key elements that were present from the very beginning— fervent desire, on the one hand, and painful absence, on the other; the erotic and what I call “the lost” (a category that includes whole civilizations as well as beautiful boys)—gradually came together over the course of some crucial years in his artistic growth in a way that created a third element, much as the simultaneous sounding of two notes will create a third, an overtone. In Cavafy’s case, the overtone was a profound self-consciousness of the power of his own art, and profound insight into the nature of poetry itself. In the end, what he united was was not merely the ancient and the modern, or the Hellenic and Hellenistic, the European and the North African, the European and western Asian; but indeed the speakable and the unspeakable, shame and pride, the latent and patent, the real and the imagined—and, in the greatest work, the subject and the object, desirer and desired, the writer and his inspiration, the act of love and the act of poetry.

Full text here; the website as a whole is now in my "links for teachers" column, to your left.

Jots & Tittles (Oblivious Division)

My dear friend Mark, the man who inspired me to start this blog in the first place, kindly stopped by to watch that Allen Ginsberg video. It's gotten him thinking about Ginsberg--the stories we tell about him, both biographically (everyone seems to have one) and academically, about his growth and decline, on dit, as a poet. I'll be teaching Howl in a couple of weeks, to end the quarter in my Modern American Poetry grad class; Mark reminds me how pat, how packaged, our accounts of so many poets become. What will be the story, I wonder, about Charles Bernstein? Ron Silliman? Will we all have Harryette Mullen and Jorie Graham anecdotes to swap, someday? (Make one up, Jones: that's an order.) At a poetry reading last week, a former student introduced me to her former boss, who gave me quite a look--evidently there was some kind of story told there! Turns out that she read this blog, or used to, years ago, and liked it. How the time goes by.

***

On that "time goes by" front, many thoughts tonight. I've let two sweet buys slip past this weekend, over on Ebay: a Mid-Missouri octave mandolin that would have matched my Mid-Mo M-4 perfectly, for about $800; and an American-made cittern for about $500. Tough to pass on either one, and tougher on both, but I've spent so many months now learning to watch and release, watch and release, that it's not as painful as it once was. Am I just getting old? Or is this somehow a side effect of lessons on the mando, which have taught me (if nothing else) how poorly I play it? (Play them: I have three: the Mid-Mo, a Fullerton Gloucester f-style (now sold out, alas! I should have bought two of them, at less than two C-notes apiece), and a chubby, trebly bowlback I picked up last year on summer vacation.) I also just re-tuned my oud, down to an Arabic tuning (CFadgc, low-to-high) since I'm more interested in playing Arabic than Turkish / Ottoman music on it at the moment. There are also some handy on-line video lessons for beginners, which assume that tuning. When I get the time, I'll pursue them. One of these days, though, I'm heading into CBOM country: Cittern, Bouzouki, Octave Mandolin, that is. As someone over at the Mandolin Cafe likes to say, "Just because I can't play them, doesn't mean I can't own them!"

***

Other than working on "Red-Haired Boy"--by ear, says my teacher, so I have to ignore sites like this--the big investment of time this weekend was putting up a website for my new poetry-teaching venture: How to Teach a Poem (and Learn from One, Too), a year-long series of monthly workshops sponsored by the NEH. (I bought the Fullerton--see above--to celebrate getting that grant.) If you live in Chicago, and teach middle school (6-8), you're eligible to apply!

That and the pool, with my kids. It was a weekend, after all.

***

Mark seems to be re-reading Michael Moorcock, a Zion's Friction author I missed in my boyhood. Inspired by his reflections, though, I hunted up a book of Spider Robinson stories at the library to read at the pool.

I remember Robinson as a reviewer more than a novelist; he's the one, I think, who introduced me to Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Desperate Song in a review from Analog or Galaxy, maybe, back in the 70s. The stories I read this afternoon weren't any great shakes as literature, but they were fun: early stuff, Callahan's Bar stories, with lots of bad puns and quick, hamfisted asides about morality and ethics, like Heinlein somtimes threw.

What stunned me, though, were the other asides, the steady patter about worthy brands of Irish whiskey (Tullamore Dew gets the nod) and bourbon (I. W. Harper), among other tipples. Was it from Robinson that I learned to love Irish Coffee? Or was that from Larry Niven? This from years before I ever took a drink, I swear! One or two of them, anyway.

Instruction and delight.

***

An aside from Mark about books that are "as embarassing as the songs one danced to in 1984" brought this to mind--



Whatever's up with the (racist) hoo-doo nonsense, I miss the makeup. And the Ovation. How I once wanted that guitar!

Allen Ginsberg, "Father Death Blues"

Such a sweet, sweet poem. Worth knowing, if you don't already.



Just noticed that the Ginsberg Collected is out, in hardback at least. Maybe I should teach my 10 week course on Howl again.

Bit by bit, jot by jot, I'll keep this blog alive.

This, I Love

(Motto and poster of the Cool Mandolin Co.)

Spiffing Things Up

I've just switched to the updated layout software here at Blogger, and it seems to make posting links, etc., far easier. I lost a dozen good links for teachers when I switched to the current template; as I repair the damage, I'll also add links to other, more personal habits and haunts.

A nice write-up of one of my current classes in the school paper last week: the "Gumshoe Poetics" seminar I turned loose on Beam 10 of Ronald Johnson's ARK. For posterity, here 'tis:

Senior capstone seminar leaves impression on students enrolled
by Philip Lenczycki
Staff Writer

English professor Eric M. Selinger’s senior capstone seminar, Gumshoe Poetics, is attracting attention.

"We’re rediscovering poetry," said Greg Ritter, a senior English student.

Gumshoe Poetics is a cross between show n’ tell and "X-Files," because it is an investigative and discussion-oriented class.

Students who are studying author Ronald Johnson’s largely unknown nine-word poem, "Beam 10" from the longer work titled ARK, find themselves individually investigating leads in communal class research.

The poem reads: Daimon diamond monad I, Adam Kadmon in the sky.

"It’s no ordinary poem, the nine words that comprise this amazing work are simply mind-boggling when studied," said Erica Fernandez, a senior English student.

"[Senior capstone seminar] has been around for eight or nine years and has been taught by different professors in different forms each time," Selinger said. "My first capstone, for example, spent 10 weeks studying Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. The current version is entirely new, I’ve never used Ronald Johnson before."

Students keep Agent’s Logs, to document discoveries in an ongoing and in-depth analysis. This involves teasing out euphonies and etymological searches, while finding worlds within words.

"Ronald Johnson's genius is conveyed throughout ARK, yet the deconstruction of the work is only made dynamic through the eyes of Professor Selinger," Fernandez said.

"Teaching Johnson’s ‘Beam 10’ is a little like solving a riddle," Selinger said. "It has a certain improvisational quality. It requires me to do little traditional teaching, which I like, and allows the students to go at it as they might. My job is to facilitate the discussion. ‘Beam 10’ is great because you can study it from a variety of angles: arts and literature, natural science, religious dimensions, really all of the liberal studies domains."

On any given day, the poem requires nothing less than the knowledge of a resident theosophist, a physicist, and a carpenter. Google and Wikipedia are usually the understudies in their absence, during those very few times Selinger does not have all the answers.

Topics of discussion range from "The Wizard of Oz" to alchemy, Carl Jung to chemical-composition and calculus, proving poetry to be plenty powerful and chalk-full of possibility and applicability.

"Ronald Johnson is a wonderful poet, and ‘Beam 10’ is particularly fun to study because it’s only nine words long, so the primary reading is just about nil. That maximizes the contemplation and research aspects of the class," Selinger said.

Working in harmonious conjunction, Johnson’s "Beam 10" and Selinger’s teaching style are encouraging.

Poet, Peter O’Leary, a professor at the Art Institute and a friend of Johnson and the person in charge of Johnson’s estate, has several plans for Johnson’s unrecognized work.

"[I want to] make him more visible, available, increase publication, add scholarship. Republish ARK in 2010 through Flood Editions," O’Leary said. "Next year we’ll publish Outworks…I’m not trying to rush anything, I think all of us involved in this task realize how good a poet Johnson is and we know that eventually with the right effort he’ll surface as he should."

Many students think Gumshoe Poetics is an indisputable success. They hope that one day ARK will be granted its poetic justice recognized as one of America’s great poems. Until then, however, Selinger and O’Leary will work towards realizing that goal supported by those students who have taken Gumshoe Poetics, and by those who have read and love Johnson and his bewitching poem.

"Professor Selinger’s Gumshoe Poetics senior capstone seminar is a stellar ride of Homeric proportions; and its success hinges on a delicate balance between format, content and instruction," said Jody Schardt, a senior English student.

I say, buy that man a round!

Free Emily Dickinson!

No, not a protest march, although she could probably use it.

I've just discovered that WikiSource has the collected Dickinson on line, gratis. They say that she's out of copyright, being a century dead & all. The folks at Harvard UP might disagree, since the edition that Wiki has on line seems to be the Johnson text, but who am I to argue?

The link is up now, to your right.

Overwhelmed

According to my current list, I have 22 projects underway.

Just so you know why I'm not blogging much here, or anywhere.

Like butter spread over too much bread, as Bilbo says somewhere.

Poetry Tonight!

This just in from my friends at Ibis Editions:

Dear Friends of Ibis Editions,

We are very pleased to announce that two of our authors--Samih al-Qasim and Taha Muhammad Ali--will be featured on a special segment about Palestinian poetry on PBS's "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" tonight, Thursday, March 22. Check your local listings for the exact time.

To read more about Samih al-Qasim's Sadder than Water: New & Selected Poems and Taha Muhammad Ali's Never Mind: Twenty Poems and a Story, please see www.ibiseditions.com.

With all best wishes,

The Editors

Check it out, everyone!

On an Almost Unrelated Front...

OK, folks. I know you're out there.

You love poetry, but you also love novels.

Love novels. Novels about love. Novels about romance.

Romance novels.

You love what they do with poetry. You love what they do with genre conventions. You love them because they are smart, fun, and (like the poetry you love) absurdly neglected by smart, fun critics.

That's why you want to think about this new Call for Papers:

The Mind of Love: New Approaches to Popular Romance

As is well-known by now, mass market romance novels constitute at least half of the domestic paperback market and an increasing percentage of the hardcover market. British, Canadian, and American romances are read all over the world, with many best-selling authors making most of their money from international sales; meanwhile, distinct national traditions of romance writing have developed, or continue to flourish, in Australia, India, China, and elsewhere. In all markets, the romance genre is undergoing substantial external and internal expansion: not only are traditional romance authors branching out into mainstream fiction, but the romance genre is also exploding with new sub-genres, each adding a romantic twist to previous niche markets. Online romance reader communities are power-houses of information and networking, and online erotica publishing houses are pushing sexual boundaries and thriving financially.

Sadly, academic criticism and theory of the romance—whether literary criticism, sociological analysis, editorial theory, or feminist scrutiny—has not kept up with the changes in the genre. Janice Radway's sociological evaluation of romance readers and literary analysis of the romance genre is more than twenty years out-of-date, written before any of the changes that define the modern romance had evolved. "Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women," edited by best-selling romance author Jayne Ann Krentz, is an invaluable tool for the romance critic, but is now more than ten years old and never claimed to be academic. It is well past time for a volume of sophisticated, rigorous, and romance-positive academic analyses of romance.

We therefore call for essays for an academic volume of romance-positive criticism and analysis of the romance genre. We welcome essays on romance novels, authors, or the romance genre from any disciplinary or theoretical perspective, to include:

* History of the romance novel
* Heroes and heroines of the romance (construction, history, changes)
* Images of the body, representations of sexuality, and romantic ideals of men and women, masculinity and femininity
* Narrative structures and conventions (i.e., shifts from heroine-centered narrative to narratives shared between hero and heroine to the return of first person)
* Plot structures and conventions (their construction, history, changes, implications)
* Analyses of individual authors or even individual novels
* Non-traditional authors classed as romance (Diana Gabaldon, Laurell K. Hamilton, etc.)
* Romance series (category series like Harlequin Presents, or on-going single or multiple author series)
* Romances in the international market
* Category vs. Mainstream romance
* Sub-genres (history, narrative structure, expectations, formulae, changes): Western, Regency, Medieval, Generic historical, Christian or inspirational, Military, Paranormal (vampire, were, empath, etc.), Futuristic/time travel, Multi-cultural, Erotica, Gay/lesbian, Contemporary, humor, etc.
* Comparison with Chick Lit / Rise of Chick Lit
* A re-evaluation of a canonical text from a romance perspective
* Readings of romance texts as they allude to, incorporate, or ask to be read in light of canonical texts
* Romance using and/or rewriting literary archetypes, mythology, the Bible, fairy tales
* Encounters between romance fiction and philosophy or literary / cultural theory: i.e., queer, new historical, or cultural-studies readings of romance novels or the romance-novel industry; romance fiction and the philosophical study of eros, marriage, and love
* Psychology and romance fiction: are Freudian and post-Freudian models (Chodorow, Lacan, Kristeva) the best for understanding popular romance fiction? What can more recent research into the psychology of optimism, resilience, and happiness (e.g., the work of Martin Seligman) reveal about the genre? What psychological models and theories are visibly deployed by particular novels or novelists, and what do the works do with them?

We also welcome essays on the romance novel industry and the communities of readers that flourish around it, including:
* Professional organizations (Romance Writers of America, Romantic Novelists Association) and Industry conferences (RWA Annual National Conference, Romantic Times Convention)
* Romance reader response, individual reader blogs
* On-line romance communities (AAR, RRA, individual authors' Message Board communities, etc.)
* Romance review sites/blogs (Smart Bitches, Dear Author), romance review communities
* Transformations in romance publishing since the 1980s
* Rise of on-line publishing houses, especially on-line erotica/Romantica

Detailed abstract or draft essay and a short CV are due by June 1, 2007. Final essays will be due December 1, 2007. We are happy to answer any inquiries.

Dr. Sarah S. G. Frantz sfrantz AT uncfsu . edu (*trying to beat the spambots)
Dr. Eric Selinger eselinge AT depaul . edu