Author Archives: EKaufman
Posts: 21 (archived below)
Comments: 3
Happy Summer!
Hi all, Thanks for a great semester and for all the hard work you all did. To those of you who were not in class today, I’ve left your papers in my mailbox, which is in the English Department, 7th Floor, VC Building.
EJK
INDIVIDUAL CONFERENCES ON MONDAY
MONDAY, MAY 9
INDIVIDUAL CONFERENCES
7-290K
remember—there is no regularly scheduled class period!!
AND, IF YOU DO NOT SHOW UP FOR YOUR MEETING, IT WILL COUNT AS AN ABSENCE!
If you do not have a meeting time, it is your responsibility to email me to make one!
8:40AM Mina
8:50AM Suzan
9:00AM Danny
9:10AM Vivian
9:20AM Elizabeth
9:30AM Manuela
9:40AM Ikey
9:50AM Brian
10:00AM Tommy
10:10AM Danielle
10:20AM JAR
BREAK
10:45AM Joe
10:55AM Philip
11:05AM Anna
11:15AM Eva
11:25AM Haibin
11:35AM Kristie
11:45AM Diana (Achibar)
11:55AM Eliza
12:05PM Andrey
12:15PM Sol
12:25PM Gavin
12:35PM Zannatul
12:45PM Laura
12:55PM Geraldine
1:05PM Diana T.
1:15PM Ling
1:25PM Victor Huang
1:35PM Eugene
1:45PM Aleks P.
1:55PM Mikhail
2:05PM Steven (Miaolong)
2:15PM Greg
2:25PM Aferdita
2:35PM Maurice
2:45PM Lauren
2:55PM Carmen
3:05PM
3:15PM
3:30PM Deon
3:40PM
3:50PM Emily
4:00PM Malisa
4:10PM Jenny
4:20PM Jacqueline
4:30PM Allen
4:40PM Emil
A few more Poems & Poets…
I know I mentioned many poets and poems in class yesterday, so wanted to share some more specific links!
Anne Waldman, Fast Speaking Woman–on googlebooks and video of her reading
Martin Espada, “Coca-Cola and Coco Frio”
Looking for Whitman and poems by Walt Whitman
Joshua Beckman (book excerpts and more poems)
POETRY RESOURCES
This site has a huge amount of information–full texts of poems, articles and essays, and a searchable database (search by poet, title, subject, keywords, etc).
Another site that has a ton of different kinds of poets and poems (both contemporary and more traditional). The search features are a little less flexible than the Poetry Foundation’s.
This site is devoted to much more contemporary and experimental writers.
This site has full texts of many out of print contemporary poetry books.
A site devoted to recordings of readings and talks by writers old and new.
Greetings & Creativity
Hi all,
Greetings from Atlanta, where it is 85 degrees and humid, and I have spent the past two days thinking and talking about education, creativity, writing, and, of course, happiness.
A few links to new things I’ve learned/discovered/heard about:
“Education and the Changing World of Work”
So, my questions to you are…how often do you feel that you are able to be creative? How does that manifest itself? What does it look like?
And, how comfortable do you feel “living with ambiguity”? Do you feel okay not understanding something from time to time? Is it exciting to be confused? Why?
These questions are coming from a talk I just heard a former teacher of mine give–he said that one of the problems with the way education works in America (specifically when thinking about testing and assessment) is that one of the biggest parts of being human and being a “grown up” is that our “lived experience is ambiguous”–but the way that schools work doesn’t seem to reflect that…so, curious to hear your thoughts!
IMPORTANT UPDATES
Hi everyone,
As you all know, there have been some changes to the syllabus.
PAPER 2 is now due on Monday, April 11.
Rewrites of Paper 1 are due on Wednesday, April 13.
AND, please read Rebecca Brown’s “Forgiveness” for Monday, April 11.
EJK
Schedule of Appointments
Hi all, Please remember that Monday there is no “regular” class scheduled. Instead you will each meet with me individually. Please bring your most recent draft of Paper 1. If you do not have an appointment with me, please email to set one up ASAP. My office is VC 7-290K.
ALSO…a change to the syllabus–your “final draft” is now due on Monday, March 14!
Monday, March 7
8:40 Tommy
8:50 Mikhail
9:00 Mina
9:10 Danielle
9:20 Danny
9:30 Olivia
9:40 Isaac
9:50 Aleks
10:00 Maria
10:10 Vivian
10:20 Aferdita
10:30 Diana
10:45 Gavin
10:55 Jacqueline
11:05 Diana Achibar
11:15 Phillip
11:25 Joseph
11:45 Allen
11:55 Andrey
12:05 Mark
12:15 Maurice
12:25 Eliza
12:45 Laura
12:55 Eugene
1:05 Brian
1:15 Ling
1:25 Emily
1:35 Anna
1:45 Malisa
1:55 Eva
2:05 Alex
2:15 Emil
2:25 Kristie
2:35 Carmen
2:45 Lauren
2:55 Deon
3:05 Greg
3:15 Betzalel
3:25
Wednesday, March 9
1:00 Suzan
1:10 Geraldine
1:20 Victor
1:30 Marianna
1:40 Steven
1:50 Haibin
2:00 JAR
2:10 Jenny
2:20 Elizabeth
2:30
2:40 Manuela
2:50
3:00
Manifesto drafting process from yesterday’s class
How to Live in Draft Form
We’ve all experienced the sinking feeling that happens when one gazes upon the pearly white of a syllabus and sees the looming word “rough draft” and a due date. We’ve all felt the butterflies that come with midnight composing, the rush to just finish, and the paranoia that our draft is not good, will never be good, can’t be good. So, now, allow me to ask you to consider the following: why not just accept the draft and move in? I am asking you all to join me, to live within the draft or the drafting process, to bask in the glory of imperfection, and allow yourself to know that writing is never really done.
As Frank O’Hara reminds us in “Meditations on an Emergency,” “it is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.” What he really means is that appearances can be misleading—imperfections abound, so why not embrace said imperfection and find beauty in it? Why not simply take a run on sentence and run with it until you figure out a way to morph it into a beautifully comma-ed clause?
Free Writing/Brainstorming:
Drafting is the process of just getting things down on paper. Drafting is a way to make one’s ideas legible. Drafting is drafting, has different connotations than if you get drafted into the army per se. but still, I think a lot of people see “draft” and cringe. Drafting never ends. There is no such thing as a finished piece of writing. All we have are drafts. We must learn to love our drafts, the drafting process, the want to draft.
On Novelty
Oh, Freud.
In the beginning of “Chapter 5,” you write, “Novelty is always the necessary condition of enjoyment” (43). But, I keep finding myself getting tripped up by what you are implying here–maybe it is this notion of “novelty”, maybe “necessary” is the word I take issue with. I am reading Beyond the Pleasure Principle for easily the tenth time, and yet I am enjoying it just as much as the first time, perhaps even as much as the eighth time. So, how could novelty really be “the necessary condition of enjoyment?” It seems like you draw a connection between “instinct” and the way the “compulsion to repeat” causes humans to continue to follow their instinctual drive to repeat something repressed or somehow connected to past trauma–does this then mean that every time an act is repeated it becomes novel and new?
How can an instinct be “conservative?”
It seems like Freud has 4 main points or links or symptoms he thinks the “compulsion to repeat” comes out of: nightmares, children’s play (fort da), therapy/delving into a past repressed, and anxieties about the future. But that still leaves out a lot of human experiences that are repeated yet still novel.
Am I being too literal minded? And, seriously Freud, what about music–isn’t the whole point of a chorus to repeat? Don’t we like songs because their lyrics are repeated and stick with us?
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/8e1B2YMQNlU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
How many times does Kanye use the word “Power” here? How many times do we see his face? How many times do we hear the song on tv–either on awards shows, SNL, or now commercials. But, I still love the song–it makes me feel “happy” for the 5 or so minutes I can listen.
