Time to Get Serious

I've heard of all sorts of weird challenges in the past five years (and witnessed a few of them firsthand): the milk gallon challenge, the cinnamon on a spoon challenge, the Slurpee chug. All fairly stupid but relatively harmless, with the worst side effect being regurgitation.

There's a new one now that I heard about while watching the news this afternoon: the salt and ice challenge. Kids are pouring salt into their hands, pressing ice against it, and enduring the chemical burn as long as possible. Some of them are getting second and third degree burns.

Seriously?!?!?!?!

While I tend to be of the mind that adults can't expect kids not to do stupid things (especially when half the adults I see are paying tobacco companies to kill them slowly in the form of cigarettes), I feel like we have to draw the line somewhere.

Can these kids really think of nothing better to do? What happened to playing outside, reading a book, playing video games? Hobbies?

This more than anything makes me almost desperate to come up with ways to make reading exciting to kids and give them something-- anything-- to do besides causing physical harm to themselves and passing it off as fun. A trip to the hospital for skin grafts masquerading as a good time is fooling no one.

Here's a link to the article:
Salt and Ice Challenge article

Music is Poetry Too!

This song has me smitten! It makes me smile every time I hear it, so I thought I'd share :)

Poetry: Sighing and Quoting with Learned Looks

This is how I thought poets looked. Bongos, anyone?

I have a sort of on again, off again relationship with poetry. I love it. I used to write poems in my journal all the time as a child and an angsty adolescent. Poetry was something I never felt I could really get into because my cartoonish mind focused on how a poet should look (thanks "Doug") and I didn't fit the bill.

In reality though, poetry is one of those beautiful art forms that-- to risk sounding cliche-- speaks to me. All the mushy love poems make me sigh, all the nature poems are something I relate to or long to experience myself. The way that poetry can sound so pretty and still say so much, even with form limitations, is wholly impressive. I loved it on my own even though I wilted at the thought of poetry in high school English classes.

I took a poetry workshop class in college as an elective. People have very different opinions on what poetry is, I've learned. Some of my classmates were the snap-your-fingers, sit-in-a-hookah-bar-and-write types, but others just took their experiences and made them real to the rest of us. I encountered Doty, Howe, and Alexie. I was falling in love again, and it strengthened as I read Shakespeare, and was fortified in my Brit Lit class.

I found a poem in the anthology for class when I was flipping through trying to find an assigned poem. It was "Adam's Curse" by William Butler Yeats, and it was moving and emotional, profound and beautiful all at once. Something about it stood out to me, and I find myself returning to it and musing about the old, high way of love and how to attain it.

Adam’s Curse

"We saw the last embers of daylight die..."

By William Butler Yeats
 

We sat together at one summer’s end,

That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,   

And you and I, and talked of poetry.

I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,   

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.   

Better go down upon your marrow-bones   

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones   

Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;   

For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these, and yet   

Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen   

The martyrs call the world.’

                                          And thereupon

That beautiful mild woman for whose sake   

There’s many a one shall find out all heartache   

On finding that her voice is sweet and low   

Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—

Although they do not talk of it at school—

That we must labour to be beautiful.’

I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing   

Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.

There have been lovers who thought love should be   

So much compounded of high courtesy   

That they would sigh and quote with learned looks   

Precedents out of beautiful old books;   

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;   

We saw the last embers of daylight die,   

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky   

A moon, worn as if it had been a shell   

Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell   

About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:   

That you were beautiful, and that I strove   

To love you in the old high way of love;

That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown   

As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

Good Things Come in Small Pa(cka)ges

For some reason, I didn't discover short stories until college. Whenever I heard the term "short story" my mind translated that to "kid stories." Obviously that's not the case.

I took a class my sophomore year called Gods & Monsters and we read short stories about Little Red Riding Hood and the like (Angela Carter's "The Company of Wolves" was great). In my Coming of Age class we read a few short stories, including Robert Cormier's "The Moustache" and James Joyce's "Araby," as well as others. Brit Lit last semester offered some good ones too, like "The Horse-Dealer's Daughter."

What short story collection shall I get?

My subscription to The New Yorker promises me at least one work of short fiction on a weekly basis. Some weeks when I'm really busy, that and the Shouts & Murmurs section are the only things I will consistently make time for :)

Ever since I decided how much I adore short stories, I've been searching for a really good collection of my favorites plus new ones to explore. Any suggestions?

Since I've been reading short stories, I've found that there's not much to dislike. For one thing, they aren't long (...imagine that...) so I can read one or two and not feel like I'm embarking on a tremendous undertaking. When I sit down to read a book, usually I end up forsaking literally everything else-- food, homework, sleep-- until I finish it in one long sitting. With a short story, I can escape for a little while and when it's done in under 10 pages I can join the world again.

Well, this one's not too vivid.

I'm also a fan of how vivid and thoughtful writers can be in such a small amount of pages. I feel that there is so much imagery, symbolism, and background crammed into a few pages, only it doesn't seem that way. To me, that's almost more impressive than having 500 pages to spread it out over.

I've been working on a young adult book for a while now. Maybe I'll give a short story a try.

A Great (Book) Undertaking

Get this version!

Hello obligated readers (Sean, this includes you).

I'm currently reading Anna Karenina, which is pleasantly surprising me. I'm using the newest translation so it's easy to understand. Apparently other translations say things like "an extra pouch of fabric in his pants to hold his money" instead of "a pocket."

Admittedly, the story started off a little slow for me and I would only read about a chapter a day (oh, and the chapters are approximately four pages long) but it picked up around chapter 8 or 9 and now I'm interested.

The only thing that's weird to me is that for a book that could double as a highly functional doorstop all about this woman named Anna Karenina, I just met her 60 pages in. I guess Tolstoy figured he had plenty of time in the 817 pages to spin his yarn.

Also, there are a lot of sentences that end in "he said in English" or that are completely written in French. These people are Russian and everyone knows at least Russian, English, and French?! Every time I come across one of those I feel significantly uneducated. Three years of high school French and 4 semesters of Spanish didn't get me very far it seems.

This is one of my favorite movies.

If anyone hasn't read it yet, so far I recommend it. It's like the movie Bridges of Madison County meets pretty much any soap opera...or at least that's where it looks to be heading.

Teaching YA Novels

There is some dissension over whether or not young adult literature should be brought into the classroom or not. While I understand that there is a need to preserve the classics and that there are a lot of opinions flying around about a dumbed down high school curriculum, I also feel that it is important to instill a love of reading in students and then move on to the heavy stuff.

Many students don't read what's assigned, particularly when it's something that they can't relate to. I can't think of a student in my high school class who could relate to Hester Prynne, Elizabeth Bennett, Heathcliff, or Romeo. None of us spent our lives accused of adultery or going to balls to be matched with a wealthy suitor, nor being found as a vagabond and growing into spiteful older men or committing suicide because a girl we met a few days previously may be dead.

Introducing students to characters that are going through the same things that they are-- growing up, the pressures of juggling school with a job, extracurricular activities, dating, and trying to find their place in the world-- gives them the opportunity to develop a relationship with literature. They can learn to love reading because the experiences are relatable and they want to know how a peer would solve a problem similar to one they could face every day.

Young adult literature can be used to bridge the gap, getting them to think analytically and enjoy reading. From there, classic literature can be introduced gradually, combining YA books and the "literature" books effortlessly into one seamless unit.