MFAin’t gonna skip it after all

In which Katie makes peace with an acceptance letter

As you may remember, gentle readers, a little over a year ago when this blog began, I had just received a slew of rejection letters from full time MFA programs, and I was processing my disappointment. These days, though, I’m in a bit of a different position.

Along about January of this year, I found myself once again pining for a community of writers and some structured feedback on my stories. I had kept my eye on low-residency programs for a couple of years, so on a whim I did a quick double-check of my options, chose the one I liked, and submitted my application in a flurry of deadline-defying activity. Lo and behold I was accepted at Spalding University.

So far preparing for the first semester, which begins this week, has been busy but satisfying. I’ve already polished up a short story that lay languishing in my home storage vault and sent it in for workshop #1. I’ve read the orientation materials and have begun thinking about my semester study plan. I’ve applied for and received a small scholarship. By all measures, things are going quite well.

And yet, even from the other side of the acceptance boundary, I still feel some ambivalence about writing programs in general. Will I be forced into a mold that makes me just like other writers? Will I be convinced that the way to success is to write fiction that is competent but bland?

Odysseus into the 21st century

This post, gentle readers, will wrap up my theoretical anti-theory discussion about how books continue each other. In this previous post, I looked at how in the 1st century BC Roman poet Virgil continued the stories that Homer told in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Here, I looked at how Dante in the 14th century AD continued Virgil.

Interest in Homer’s torch, as I call it, was slim in the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods, but the 19th and 20th centuries found new ways to tap into the stories of Odysseus and Achilles.

Tennyson’s “Ulysses”

Odysseus (Latin name Ulysses) appears in an 1833 poem by that most Victorian of poets, Alfred, Lord Tennyson. For the first time in several hundred years, a poet took up Homer’s torch and re-interpreted one of his characters. In Tennyson’s poem, titled simply “Ulysses,” the poet focuses on the king of Ithaca, but he offers a more internalized perspective than that provided by the Odyssey. Whereas Homer described Odysseus’ actions with only occasional reference to his emotions, Tennyson goes deeply into Odysseus’ thoughts, extending the plot of Homer’s epic and imagining how Odysseus might have felt after being home safe on Ithaca for several years.

In a flash

For you. You know who you are.

he reads me,                                                                                                                                     but not like a book.

books levy their                                                                                                                              slow tax on time:                                                                                                                            exacting                                                                                                                                                a split second per word,                                                                                                                     a half minute for half a page,                                                                                                             a quarter hour to sketch city spires or heathered moor,                                                          ten hours, ten days, ten weeks, all withholding the revelation of why

but he sees me                                                                                                                                     all at once,                                                                                                                                         like a surgeon reading an x-ray –                                                                                             bright nerves sprawled across a dark field,                                                                         swollen, wounded parts                                                                                                                   my translucent hands                                                                                                                        try to hide,                                                                                                                                       the cracks, wispy as cobwebs,                                                                                               filigreed through my bones

or like a man in a watchtower                                                                                                      who knows precisely                                                                                                                        the location of the fleeing prisoner                                                                                               and snaps on the circle of searchlight                                                                                           the moment the lock is about to give way                                                                                  and escape seems inevitable

in times when I am patient or prisoner,                                                                                   when I am weeping or hungry or exhausted,                                                                        unable to control the masks                                                                                                         that present me to the world,                                                                                                         he sees what is broken                                                                                                                  and will not look away.

there is some small pain in being seen,                                                                                          in being looked so thoroughly through –                                                                                      the faintest echo of formulated Prufrock,                                                                          wriggling and pinned to the wall

yet some slow, persistent grace                                                                                           preserves me from despair;                                                                                                 whispers the lesson                                                                                                                            so hard to learn                                                                                                                                but necessary as breath                                                                                                                   in a body of two:

that seeing is also shaping,                                                                                                      lighting is also loving, and –                                                                                                            surely he knows –                                                                                                                         love may indeed bare all things,                                                                                                     as we suffer ourselves                                                                                                                      to be seen

Dante takes Homer’s torch to the Inferno

Don’t think me unaware, dear readers. I know that literary history is not quite as interesting as a tale of being a foreigner or of dropping the f-bomb on my mother. But I just can’t seem to help myself.

I’ve been working out these ideas for four years or so in my world lit classes, and this is the first time I’ve gotten to string them together in a more or less coherent fashion. If you’ll indulge me, I promise that later I’ll tell you a funnier story. Perhaps one involving a Bad Ass Missionary.

If you haven’t tuned in for a while, you might want to see this post to find out what the Homer’s torch idea is all about. If it’s really been a while, see this one, where I talk about my anti-theory about how books continue each other.

When last we left the discussion, we were talking about how the torch of Homer’s ideas in the Odyssey and the Iliad was taken up by the Roman poet Virgil for his epic, the Aeneid. I suggested that a later writer from Florence, Italy, one Dante Alighieri, then took up the same torch from Virgil.

Ready? Here we go:

Homer’s torch

A litero-historical tale of books continuing each other

As you may remember, gentle readers, I’ve been working my way through some thoughts on how books continue each other. I use the word “books” in the loosest possible sense, because my little anti-theory has broad application. The term “books” can apply to poems of the epic, lyrical and narrative varieties; to songs both ancient and contemporary; to novels historical, serious, and farcical; to films, though generally only the good ones; to television of the edifying sort; and quite possibly to some genres I have not yet considered directly.

In the first post on the subject, I also tried to clarify what I mean by “continue.” Literary history, I suggest, can be seen as a kind of footrace, of the type that passes the Olympic torch. Each writer possesses a torch with a certain color and intensity of flame and, once that writer has reached the end of his particular race, someone else may come along and carry the same torch a bit further, adapting the qualities of the flame to suit the needs of his own time and personality. The quality of the flame – the cadence and language of the work – may change, but the light is essentially the same.

Here, I offered a buffet of brief examples of continuance, but now I invite you to sit down for a full meal. I propose to look at the ways one story and ensemble of characters, one “book,” if you will, has been continued in various forms, languages, and countries for over 3,000 years.

What teachers make

A poem by slam poet Taylor Mali, with a little help from YouTube. I wonder how I had never heard of this guy before a week ago.

 

 

 

I, Too, Sing America

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a poem by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed–

I, too, am America.

Last minute letter to Santa

Dear Santa,

I have not believed in you for many years, so please forgive the hurried and inexpert tone of this letter. I am, let’s say, over 29 years old and I have been relatively good this year, if you’ll agree that the occasional swear word in traffic is not that big of a deal. I’m hoping to get back in the Christmas spirit this year and maybe even start believing in you again, especially if you can help me get this really big present that I can’t get for myself.

Yes, I know I missed the December 24 deadline, and I’m very sorry about that. But I have just a little bit of education, and I know that, because of the Orthodox Church calendar, Russia and Ukraine and a chunk of Eastern Europe don’t celebrate Christmas until January 7, so I figure you’ll be making another trip anyway. I really hope you’ll read and respond to my letter because I, a humble American Protestant, am experiencing a time of need.

You see, Santa, I have this job. It’s a college teaching job, and I’m truly grateful to have it.  But, at work, I have this office that, I’m sad to say, is probably no bigger than the cockpit of your sleigh. The paint is dingy and the furniture is old and the air tends to stale a little, but I’m not complaining about any of those things. The worst part, Santa, is that I have no window.

 

The office, sans window. Even with four lamps, three mirrors, and a variety of artwork, there's insufficient light.

I know that for a lot of people, this wouldn’t be a big deal. People like miners and gamers and postal clerks – not to mention dwarves, gnomes, and cave trolls – do just fine without daylight. But I’m like a plant, Santa. A leafy green plant with Seasonal Affective Disorder, and I need light. I need light in order to metabolize all those student essays and emails, all that Western literature. You might call my process “photo productiveness.” Without the photo, I am not productive.

Sadly, my school is a little strapped for cash at the moment, and they won’t be making facilities improvements any time soon. And it’s true that all the offices in my building are pretty much the same and I’m not any worse off than my peers. That’s why I’m asking you, Santa. Because if you make this happen for me, no one’s budget will be unbalanced, and no one will have room to complain that they didn’t get one, too. I mean, who beyond the age of 4 has the nerve to whine about what someone else got from Santa Claus? I think you’ll agree with me that this is the best way.

So, since I know this request is last minute, and I don’t know what you’ll have room for in your sleigh, I thought I’d give you some options.

Books continue each other, part 2

Continuation distinguished from thematic contents and adaptation

To begin, I must confess that I likely overstated my case in the previous post, when I claimed the idea that books continue each other is somehow an “anti-theory.” Though I think the idea is valid and intriguing, it’s not exactly ground-breaking or revelatory. It’s certainly not radical enough to take down the house(s) that literary theory has built.

It’s probably more accurate to say that this comment, which Virginia Woolf made seemingly in passing in A Room of One’s Own, simply struck me as fascinating – so, in my own reading, I’ve kept one mental eye open, looking for ways that books and ideas continue each other. And, lo, I discovered that many books are in conversation with other books, and many writers continue others’ ideas.

I suppose that whole first post was simply an attempt to get this idea a place at the table with other theories. Or, to avoid mixing my metaphors, I should say I was attempting to get the idea its own house in the theory neighborhood. To say that “books continue each other” is, after all, simply providing another lens through which to view literature as a whole.

(And in the interest of full disclosure, I remind you, dear reader, that I teach survey of Western Literature courses at a community college, where a practical, what-can-this-mean-for-me approach is by far the most effective. I may not reside in the Ivory Tower of academe, but I can boast I reside in a more or less comfy RV at its base.)

A handful of short examples

If ever you see a post here with the tag “books continue each other,” then, you’ll know that I’m exploring how one creative mind has borrowed from and adapted the ideas of another. To start us off, here are some short examples: 

The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on.

— Emily Dickinson, quoted in The Sun