Friday, February 27, 2004

some suggestions on what to read in joan retallack's, the poethical wager...

my first suggestion is to read all of it. it is very good.

but if you're running out of time, and part of being in graduate school is figuring out what to read within the limited # of years one is in graduate school, these seem the crucial essays...

introduction
the poethical wager
wager as essay
:re:thinking:literary:feminism: (this one is a classic!)

another interesting essay is "SECNÀHC GNIKÀT : TAKING CHANCES" at the epc.

i also wanted to check in some on the workshop. if i can talk you into posting something about the procedure process here, please...

mainly b/c i felt when reading dan's work and then having to do the procedure on it that i got somewhere that i couldn't/wouldn't have gotten to without having to do something, anything. it was very profound moment for me. i think if i had just had to read his work and maybe write a few notes in the margins and then come to workshop, i would have done a much more superficial reading of it. i wouldn't have thought about the limits and/or possibilities of how poems make meaning. his work also made me think about metaphor/metonymy a lot and i wouldn't have thought about that if i was just "reading" it. in other words, doing the procedure...all parts of it--from trying to think about what to do and then to doing it...slowed me down and made me read very differently. and it made me read with way more respect.

responding to meg's went a little differently. i enjoyed the procedure that i did. i actually liked, if that is the word, what i wrote and thought that some of the stuff that i did in the procedure i might carry back into my own work at some point. so that was helpful for me in the selfish sense. i did feel again that having to do something to her work made me think more about what her work did. it was only when i started thinking about what sort of procedure to do that i began to think about what was in and what was not in the poem in terms of content. i'm not sure i would have gotten there w/o having to do something to the poem. but it wasn't as intense as it was with dan's. i'm sure this has something to say about conventions of readability. and that meg is not writing a fugue report.

when i think back to previous weeks also, i realize that i had thoughts i wouldn't have had if i had just had to read the poems (i'm sure i would be "winging" it more also if i just had to "read" them conventionally; saying to myself well i'm not sure what is going on here so i'll go and see what they say at workshop; now i feel like i have to try and figure out something that is happening because i have to base my response on it). when i had to respond to kristen's and jessea's work i started thinking about that issue of tightness of box and how that works or not in various ways which i'm still thinking about. with william's i started thinking a lot about commands and what sort of work they do. etc.

could other people weigh in? also would like to hear from someone who has reworked their poem after workshop, or maybe if you just have a new plan to rework it.