Digital Cairns

Apr 11

More justification for my appreciation of hip-hop

“Moreover, Homer’s choice of one particular epithet or formula rather than another seemed at times to be governed less by the exact meaning of the phrase than by the metrical exigencies of the line; the bard apparently called upon one specific formula after another in order to fit the driving meter of the chant, in a trance of rhythmic improvisation. This is not at all to minimize Homer’s genius, but simply to indicate that his poetic brilliance was performative as much as creative— less the genius of an author writing a great novel than that of an inspired and eloquent rap artist.”

-David Abram in his book The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

Now, when will Kanye, Jay-Z, and Atmosphere be revered for their own metrical and exigent genius?

Apr 6

How books are made.

I originally found this video thanks to Flavorwire.

Apr 5

writingprompts:

464

Mar 27

“A faith which held that the Son of God was born in a manger, associated himself with persons of humble station in an unimportant Province, and died a slave’s death, yet did this to redeem all men, rich and poor, free men and slaves, citizens and barbarians, required a completely new way of looking at human beings; if all are children of God and equally capable of salvation, then all, irrespective of status or talent, vice or virtue, merit the serious attention of the poet, the novelist, and the historian.” W. H. Auden, qtd. here (via wesleyhill)

Mar 26

“Luther gave a new turn to the debate [over the matter and form of baptism] when in his opposition to medieval legalism he made the rhetorical suggestion that beer would meet the case just as well as water: no doubt it would be equally available in his country. The real point which Luther wished to make was that so long as the symbolism remained, a drowning and a resurrection, the details of administration were not of decisive importance. A failure to grasp this point betrayed the traditionalists into solemn discussion of the legitimacy of beer, and a definitive judgment had to be given by Gregory IX in a letter to the Archbishop of Trondhjem.” Geoffrey Bromiley, Baptism and the Anglican Reformers (1953)

Mar 25

Forking Your Syllabus - ProfHacker

austinkleon:

Brian Croxall on stealing likean artist a teacher:

First-time teachers should learn to embrace theft: recognizing that good teaching often comes from adapting or stealing outright someone’s great assignment, classroom activity, syllabus, or even lecture notes. This advice of course pertains to more than just first-time teachers. When you’re beginning to plan something new, you can always benefit from seeing what others before you have done.

See also Croxall’s advice to new teachers: So now you’re a teacher…

Good pedagogy often involves theft. While we’re on the subject of plagiarism, I should add that effective teaching frequently involves adapting or stealing outright someone else’s great assignment, classroom activity, or even–on occasion–lecture notes. Just be willing, then, to allow others to benefit from what you’ve learned while teaching.

Thx, @GenerationMeh

Mar 3

“

… nothing can maim a poet’s practice like joy. As Henri de Montherlant says, “Happiness writes white.” What poet—in this century or any other—has founded her work on happiness? We can all drum up a few happy poems here and there, but from Symbolism and the High Moderns forward, poetry has often spread the virus of morbidity. It’s been shared comfort for the dispossessed. Yes, we have Whitman opening his arms to “the blab of the pave.” We have James Wright breaking into blossom, but he has to step out of his body to do so. We have the revelatory moments of Tranströmer and the guilty pleasure and religious striving of Milosz. W.H. Auden captured the ethos when he wrote, “The purpose of poetry is disenchantment.” Poetry in the recent past hasn’t allowed us much joy.

My own efforts to lighten my otherwise dour opus seem watered down. I thought of calling my latest collection of poems Coathanger Bent Into Halo (too clunky, I decided, but I was thinking how the wire hanger used for an illegal abortion could also be twisted into an angel’s crown for a child’s pageant). Still, the poems about Christ salted through the book spend way more time on crucifixion than resurrection. I’ve written elegies galore, love poems bitter as those of Catullus. I’ve written from scorched-earth terror and longing out the wazoo. My new aesthetic struggle is to accommodate joy as part of my literary enterprise, but I still tend to be a gloomy and serotonin-challenged bitch.

But doesn’t dark poetry gather us together in a way that would meet the Holy Spirit’s approval?

” Mary Karr (via wesleyhill)

Feb 7

“I propose that English poetry and biology should be taught as usual, but that at irregular intervals, poetry students should find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissection boards.”

-Walker Percy in his essay “The Loss of the Creature”

Nov 19

howtotalktogirlsatparties:

Jay Gatsby.

Nov 18

“To be a teenager is to be hyperbolic and hysterical. Hormones. That my dad was willing to subject himself to my fits of rage and despair over a stupid piece of teenage writing seems to me now to be equal parts mystery and masochism.

I now think back on it and recognize it as one of the most admirable and self-sacrificing acts anyone has ever done for me. Not only that, it’s given me a career. To write, my dad taught me, is to edit.”

- Singer-songwriter and now novelist, Josh Ritter here

Digital Cairns

... trail-markings of the commonplace

More justification for my appreciation of hip-hop

464

Forking Your Syllabus - ProfHacker