Berlinski is a rare breed

Class agenda April 28, 2010 by K. Titchenell - Tuesday, 27 April 2010, 08:33 AM

Dear Scholars, We decided last week that no assignment was necessary as you all had strong ideas about what you wanted to write. It seems that everyone was inspired to write poetry. Let's discuss poetry a bit further, with emphasis upon adjusting the rhythm and meter. Let's study these and perhaps their authors would like to recite: Derek's APWBAP Marc's Cemetery and Butterfly Butterfly Auditory learning: Has everyone listened to The Death of Criticism? I also found Eagleton's lecture on Faith and Reason at Yale University quite fascinating and added it to my page of exemplary lectures. I know that these talks are quite long, but they are definitely worth listening to if you have time. Here is a very short talk I recently found. Berlinski is a rare breed -- he is an American who handles language beautifully: David Berlinski -- flaws in Darwinian evolution.

There are many telescopes down which science is churlishly disinclined to peer

Class notes April 21, 2010 by K. Titchenell - Tuesday, 20 April 2010, 09:23 AM

Dear Scholars, A number of works were handed in this week: Angela's Insanity, Derek's English Class, and poem about Through the Looking Glass and What Alice found There, and his revision of The Narwhal and the Bartender. I mentioned last week the journal editing work I was doing and Derek asked to see it. I don't have permission from that client to share her work, so I posted an article I did some time ago which the author did give me permission to share: It is posted in our site: Lurking Behavior. We could look at it a bit though I expect that boredom would preclude a longer study. Has everyone listened to The Death of Criticism? Do you have any thoughts on it? Would you like to have more lectures of this sort? I encountered two rather interesting quotes this week. Perhaps they would serve as good essay prompts. Do they inspire you? "There are many telescopes down which science is churlishly disinclined to peer." -- Eagleton. "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." -- Chomsky. Let's think about writing on these (or something else).

An algorithmic approach to verb phrase construction

Welcome back from Easter break. Class April 14 by K. Titchenell - Tuesday, 13 April 2010, 08:44 AM

Dear Scholars, I hope you all had a wonderful and productive Easter break. Over the break I posted a new page on our site: An algorithmic approach to verb phrase construction. We may play with this a little in class tomorrow if there is interest. It presents a step-by-step formula for creating perfect, progressive and passive constructs in any combination. I have been working on a new online education site and am posting lectures there for the purpose of language study. Here is one superb example I just found yesterday: The Death of Criticism. Note: This lecture is posted purely for its language, not for any ideological message contained in it. Please listen to as much of it as you have patience for. Description: Prolific author and literary critic Terry Eagleton speaks at UC Berkely on "the death of criticm." Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster, and Visiting Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway, Dr. Eagleton is probably best known for his "Literary Theory: An Introduction". During this hour, Professor Eagleton demonstrates how unscripted speech may rival in its sophistication practically any highly polished and edited prose. Listening to lectures such as this will do more for your proficiency with English language than any quantity of grammar or vocabulary study. Difficulty level: 8/10 Dialect: British (RP) English Points to look for: one use of "criterion" which should be "criteria". See you all tomorrow.

Adjective and adverb practice

Adjective and adverb practice by K. Titchenell - Tuesday, 30 March 2010, 09:25 AM

Dear Scholars, Some of these are very easy, some much harder. See what you can do with them. Identify the adjectives and adverbs and what words they modify. Example: Ginger spoke glowingly of Kyoko's lovely hat. "Glowingly" is an adverb modifying "spoke". "Lovely" is an adjective modifying "hat". 1-10 are fairly easy. The rest are more difficult. Do only the ones you would like to do. Be sure to look up words you don't know. Aunt Agatha looked cold as she slowly opened her presents. The CEO feels unusually tense every Tuesday. The penguin spoke briefly of Kyoko's lovely acting skills. The children's teacher announced that the class was the most highly rated in the lake district. Greg's sprightly mule accepted every task willingly. In the winter, New York is much colder than Florida. Hank waved his green socks enthusiastically at Steve. Speak softly into the badly hidden microphone or we will suffer greatly. When Thomas pounded firmly on the sliding door, he woke the sleeping troll. "Grammar is so difficult and quite boring," the orderly student complained bitterly. Aunt Agatha looked coldly at Uncle Cuthbert as she opened her parcel containing the infamous holiday assortment of industrial adhesives, one of which had quite handily, in an as yet unexplained case of misidentification, taken second place in the Pixley Festival of Disagreeable Cheeses. Boadicea took refuge behind an enormous decomposing turnip, prominently displayed in the booth representing the Unrepentant Recovering Reductionists. The soft singing seraphim found the stringy otter cheese revolting. The softly singing seraphim found the stringy otter cheese quickly. The bold brazen basilisk spoke with wit and candor of the disadvantages of eating squeaky sweets in the courtroom. The boldly brazen basilisk spoke with wit and candor of the disadvantages of eating sweets squeakily in the courtroom. This daffodil smells sweet and sings sweetly, though it seems only marginally sweeter than Saturday's marginal entries -- seemingly. Unable to distinguish Braille E's from I's, the flabbergasted curmudgeon felt bad about feeling so badly. The queen looked beautiful as she looked imperiously at the impudent haddock. The misanthrope looked furtively about, trying avidly not to look furtive. Aunt Agatha had only just recovered from the awful, confusing, but highly memorable funeral. Uncle Cuthbert had been pleasantly surprised and diverted by the awfully confusing funeral. Boadicea agreed that it was hard to picture the intensely unassuming Uncle Cuthbert stalking a reindeer, even after his apparent success with the irascible organ-grinder.

On Form in Poetry, Music and Art

On Form in Poetry, Music and Art by K. Titchenell - Saturday, 20 March 2010, 11:42 AM

The following excerpts from The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry characterise, far better than I every could, the role of form in poetry and the bleak, undifferentiated maunderings into which free verse can degenerate. Please read it and present your thoughts. By form, just so that we are clear, we mean the defining structure of a genre of type. When we say formal, the word should not be thought of as bearing any connotations of stiffness, starchiness, coldness or distance -- formal for our purposes simply means 'of form', morphological if you like. In music, some examples of form would be sonata, concerto, symphony, fugue and overture. In television, common forms include sit-com, soap, documentary, mini-series, chat show and single drama. Over the years docu-dramas, drama-docs, mockumentaries and a host of other variation and subcategories have emerged. ... If [Ezra Pound] was right in determining that his generation needed to get away from the heavy manner and glutinous clichés of Victorian verse, its archaic words and reflex tricks of poetical language, and all out-dated modes of expression and thought in order to free itself for a new century, is it not equally true that we need to escape from the dreary, self-indulgent, randomly lineated drivel that today passes for poetry for precisely the same reasons? After a hundred years of free verse and Open Field poetry the condition of English-language poetics is every bit as tattered and tired as that which Pound and his coevals inherited. 'People find ideas a bore', Pound wrote, 'because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed one on a shelf.' Unfortunately the tide has turned and now it is some of Pound's once new ideas that have been stuffed and shelved and become a bore. He wrote in 1910: 'The art of letters will come to an end before AD 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.' It might be tempting to agree that 'the art of letters' has indeed come to and end, and to wonder whether a doctrinaire abandonment of healthy, living forms for the sake of a dogma of stillborn originality might not have to shoulder some of the responsibility for such a state of affairs. ... it is a wonder that any considerable poetry at all has been written over the last fifty years. It is as if we have been encouraged to believe that form is a kind of fascism and that to acquire knowledge is to drive a jackboot into the face of those poor souls who are too incurious, dull-witted or idle to find out what poetry can be. Surely better to use another word for such fee-form meanderings... Let us reserve the word 'poetry' for something worth fighting for, an ideal we can strive to live up to. ... Looking back over the last few paragraphs I am aware that you might think me a dreadful, hidebound old dinosaur. I assure you I am not. I am uncertain why I should feel the need to prove this, but I do want you to understand that I am far from contemptuous of Modernism, and free ferse, the experimental and the avant-garde or of the poetry of the streets. Whitman, Cummings, O'Hara, Wyndham Lewis, Eliot, Jandl, Olsen, Ginsberg, Pound and Zephaniah are poets that have given me, and continue to give me immense pleasure. I do not despise free verse. Read this: Post c***um omne animal triste i see you ! you come closer improvident with your coming then -- stretched to scratch -- is it a trick of the light? -- i see you worlded with pain but of necessity not weeping cigaretted and drinked loaded against yourself you seem to yes bold irreducible but nuded and afterloved you are not so strong are you ? after all There's the problem. The above is precisely the kind of worthless *** dribble I am forced to read whenever I agree to judge a poetry competition. It took me under a minute and a half to write and while I dare say you can see what utter *** it is, there are many who would accept it as poetry. All the clichés are there, pointless lineation, meaningless punctuation and presentation, fatuous creations of new verbs ... -- every pathology is presented. Like so much of what passes for poetry today it is also listless, utterly drained of energy and drive -- a common problem with much contemporary art but an especial problem with poetry that chooses to close itself off from all metrical pattern and form. It is like music without beat or shape or harmony: not music at all in fact. 'Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.' Robert Frost wrote. Not much of a game at all, really.

Monday, 15 March 2010, 04:34 PM

Assignments this week
by K. Titchenell - Monday, 15 March 2010, 04:34 PM

Dear Scholars,

No, actually there isn't an assignment this week. In class last week, I asked whether an assignment was needed and Derek in particular suggested that he didn't feel a specific assignment was necessary. As far as I am concerned, if creativity can flourish in the absence of assignments, as Derek has been successfully demonstrating, they are indeed superfluous. Please post and contribute whatever the muses inspire you with.

I did post some things for you to look at. The recent production of Hamlet performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company has been posted on youtube, and I have enjoyed watching it several times. It may not be available for very long, so please watch it soon:
In our classroom: http://www.aos.abacus-es.com/mod/resource/view.php?id=167
Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8B56A889217C5A98

I know most of you have already seen or read Hamlet, but it is certainly worth a second look. Let's discuss it in class and consider reading parts. Any thoughts?



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Re: Assignments this week
by K. Titchenell - Monday, 15 March 2010, 04:49 PM


Angela has posted a delightful little poem, Erasers, and Derek has posted a number of contribution s in our Poetry Forum and revised and extended his science fiction saga. Please read, comment, and post your own.




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Re: Assignments this week
by K. Titchenell - Tuesday, 16 March 2010, 06:32 PM

Derek's latest instalment.

Nathan has submitted poems: Good Times and Rhymes, Basketball and Life.

An example of stream of consciousness poetry: Windmills

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Re: Assignments this week -- Hamlet excerpt
by K. Titchenell - Tuesday, 16 March 2010, 10:17 PM

549 Now I am alone.
550 O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
551 Is it not monstrous that this player here,
552 But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
553 Could force his soul so to his own conceit
554 That from her working all his visage wann'd,
555 Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
556 A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
557 With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
558 For Hecuba!
559 What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
560 That he should weep for her? What would he do,
561 Had he the motive and the cue for passion
562 That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
563 And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
564 Make mad the guilty and appall the free,
565 Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
566 The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
567 A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
568 Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
569 And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
570 Upon whose property and most dear life
571 A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
572 Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
573 Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
574 Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
575 As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
576 Ha! 'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
577 But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
578 To make oppression bitter, or ere this
579 I should have fatted all the region kites
580 With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!
581 Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
582 O, vengeance!
583 Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
584 That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
585 Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
586 Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
587 And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
588 A stallion! Fie upon't! foh!
589 About, my brain! Hum — I have heard
590 That guilty creatures sitting at a play
591 Have by the very cunning of the scene
592 Been struck so to the soul that presently
593 They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
594 For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
595 With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
596 Play something like the murder of my father
597 Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks;
598 I'll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,
599 I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
600 May be the devil, and the devil hath power
601 To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
602 Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
603 As he is very potent with such spirits,
604 Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds
605 More relative than this: the play's the thing
606 Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

Redundant Prepositions Playsheet

From College Prep English Class Wednesday, 14 October 2009, 11:07 PM

Dear Scholars, We've had some very nice written contributions this week. Please make sure to read them, and the comments on them. Please add your own thoughts as well. The following playsheet is posted In response to a redundant preposition error that appeared in one paper. See if you can find and fix the errors. Redundant Prepositions Please identify and correct the mistakes in the following. Some involve a redundant preposition, but there are other errors too. Be sure to look up any words you do not know. The lucubrating landlord was unsure about whom, when the skunk strutted into the darkened cellar the previous night, had set the aging eggplant centerpiece ablaze. Demetrius strove to evade the amorous lady of whom he was not in love with nor could never become enamored by. Boadicea, having hidden the VCR into which the pancakes had been stuffed in, asked whom, when all factors are taken into account, should be held responsible for having abandoned the puppy of who everyone was so fond with. Abandoned by Demetrius, upon who she doted over so cloyingly, Helena fell victim of a mistakenly applied potion, about which she knew nothing of. The centaur balanced the ciderpress, from which he expected great rancor to be generated over, upon his semi-equine shoulder before addressing the rebarbative assemblage of peacocks with a wink while waving about the infamous wooden spoon around. Aloysius balked at the thought of taking credit for the highly successful encounter with the penguins, of who we still know very little about, and declined the honor of wearing the chain of office and the puce tights -- a color of which he felt an intense aversion to.