Epic Poetry Recitations

Wow! I did not realize the talent and wit of my fellow Oral Traditions classmates. Everyone did a FABULOUS job! I think that my favorite was Jerimiah's because, well, it was amazing! He mixed the epic descriptions with country music and made a great song. Get that one into the recording studio!!!!

Valerie's poem about Wes was my favorite of the traditional poems. Her memorization was awesome and her language was perfectly matched to the assignment. Great job, Valerie and thanks for recording everyone. :O) I'll get you a videotape soon.

"Peace Corpus Krisiti" did an awesome job with Wayne's life, too. I will always remember " I siiiing of Wayne. Wayne the Brain."

As far as admiration poetry, Ed's poem about Cindy was certainly like an Ode to a Goddess. You know how to flatter a lady, Ed. :O)

I have to say, I was disappointed by my inability to remember the poem I wrote. I swear I had it memorized. I got up there and just wanted to get through it. If I had sat there long enough, I could have remembered it all. That's boring though. I could have started earlier though...that might have helped me.

I loved this assignment because of the insight that it gave all of us into each other. We never get to know people this closely in class and I'm glad that I've gotten a chance to hear about people's lives and accomplishments. This is a talented group that will go far. Thanks for your great poetry everyone. And remember, if you don't mind it being posted on the English Club board next to the English Office, please post your poem on your site. I check everyone's page out frequently so I'll see it. Thanks!

Epic poems?

Soooo....is anyone else stressing about the poems we are supposed to write and recite about our soulmates? I have no idea how I'm supposed to memorize this thing? Is the Memory theater supposed to work with this? I'm going to have to get creative. I know we've had a few weeks to do this but, really, we've all been quite busy with other things, right? If there are any suggestions for this composition and memorization, please let us all know the secret. I'm a horrible poet. This is a warning to all who will hear my poem.

FINALLY a New Entry

So, Spring Break really threw me off for my entries. I had no Internet access for 11 days and that's killer for a journal that's supposed to be continually updated. I hope I'm not the only one who slacked off a little this last week. :O) I also hope that Spring Break was relaxing for you all. I need at least another week off to recover from the week I was gone, but, no matter. Only about 7 weeks left in the semester!

On Thursday we discussed sections of Ong chapters 4-7 that struck us. On page 103 Ong writes "With writing, words once 'uttered', outered, put down on the surface, can be eliminated, erased, changed. There is no equivalent for this in oral performance, no way to erase a spoken word...Corrections in oral performance tend to be counterproductive, to render the speaker unconvincing. " This made me think about some of the reasons that the oral word is so strong. The power of the spoken promise in oral culture has already been discussed. The signature is irrelevant to them while the promise is the most binding of contracts. I don't know how many of you watch TV courtroom dramas or movies, but sometimes a lawyer will ask that a witness's answer be "stricken from the record" and the judge often grants the request meaning that the divulged information cannot be taken into account when making a final decision on the case. That's just stupid. As Ong says, we cannot take back what we've said as much as we might like to. Similarly, we cannot forget what we've heard once we've heard it. Those jurors aren't going to 'forget' what that witness said even if they are supposed to. The spoken word is too powerful to be erased or forgotten without some kind of memory erasure system.

I also thought that Ong's discussion of Finnegan's Wake as a text written for the print medium despite its obvious roots in the oral culture. It could not be copied in huge numbers without print because there's no way that the weir spellings and sentence structures could be easily reproduced. Also, Wake is a prime example of a text that cannot be understood without thhe knowledge of all past printed texts. It's a really interesting aspect of intertextuality at work here. :O)

Top 100 Recitations Day #2

Everyone did a fabulous job on memorizing the Top 100! I especially enjoyed Tracy's musical and theatrical interpretation of the "text"! Awesome work! I hope that the epic poem performances go equally as well.

In the discussion following our recitations we talked about what made things memorable for us...I think that humor was really key for a lot of us. Like the assocation between condoms and The Birth of Tragedy or Brian's Catcher in the Rye. I didn't think about things that I wanted to use for my assocations and then map my palace out around those. I chose my path first and then made necessary assocations as I went. For example, Pale Fire in the fireplace makes sense but the bear next to it doesn't really equate to Divine Comedy I just had to make that connection and remember it. I think that having a set path really helped me to not get lost in the order of the books. I can't believe that some people did it just by rote memory. Yikes. I could NOT do that. I wonder if people that aren't that visual had more trouble with the Palace technique.

Thanks!

Hey! I wanted to give a HUGE thank you to Stephanie Urban and Mick for their postings of pictures (that's the back of my head on Mick's site) and notes from Rushdie's class and lecture. Please, those of you who took notes (I know Nikole and Cindy did, too) post them!!!! I took notes during the Master's Class and I will post them ASAP but I want to have the lecture notes as well if you guys can manage to get them up. Thanks so much! :O)

Salman Rushdie

SALMAN RUSHDIE WAS HERE!

Mr. Rushdie was in Bozeman yesterday. The experience of meeting him and getting to hear him speak on a variety of political and literary issues was one of the highlights of my life thus far. (I hope there are many more good things to come, but, for now, Rushdie is at the top.) I really haven't had an opportunity to fully ruminate on the things that Rushdie said and the things that I learned from him, but I am trying to do so and I hope that I will be able to write an articulate post regarding him speech and our small seminar class with him. For now I'll say that Salman Rushdie is a brilliant but approachable, funny, and deeply human man. I am so glad and thankful that this opportunity came to Bozeman, Montana!

Read Allison's "Recitation" Entry

Hey! Read Allison's entry titled "Recitation" and do what she asks regarding the associations that memory palace users have made with #1, #50, #100. I'd love to see what you all have done in your brains. :O)

Rushdie Insights

Since one of the greatest writers of all time is going to be HERE on MONDAY I am really trying to immerse myself in his texts before he gets here. I am about halfway through The Satanic Verses right now and I have read about 50 pages in Midnight's Children. I am also trying to get through his essays and to read some supplemental material to enhance my understanding. As I was reading on http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/satanic_verses/svnotes.pdf, I found a section called "The Crucial Book of: Salman Rushdie". Within this section Rushdie discusses the influence that Joyce's Ulysses (#12) has had on him and on his writing. Here are some of the quotations that I found most interesting:

"Joyce built a whole universe out of a grain of sand."

"Joyce is always in my mind, I carry him everywhere with me."

"Everyone said that it was such a sealed book, hard to penetrate, but I did not think so at all. You never hear people say that there is so much humor in the book, that the characters are so lively or that the theme - Stephen Daedalus in search of his lost father and Bloom looking for his lost child - is so moving. People talk about the cleverness of Ulysses and about the literary innovation. To me it was moving, in the first place."

"Nevertheless, they would not have become friends, he believes. "Joyce was not very good at friendship. There is a story about his put-down of Samuel Beckett, who adored him and often came along his place. He plainly told him that he only loved two people in the world: the first being his wife, the second his daughter. His only encounter with Proust was also very comical. Joyce and Proust met each other when leaving a party. Proust had his coach standing at the door and was wrapped up fom head to foot, afraid as he was to catch a cold. Joyce jumps into the coach uninvitedly, lights a cigar and opens the window widely. Proust says nothing, neither does Joyce. It is like a silent movie. Two masters of the word, who say nothing to each other and yet disclose themselves. Fantastic!" --> I thought this one was hilarious!

Within the interview he also recites a portion of Molly Bloom's monologue. The importance of memory is evident in Rushdie's life and his work.

It's obvious that Rushdie has been profoundly influenced by Joyce but I think that it's really interesting to realize that Rushdie's admiration comes from more than just the creative and technical aspects of Joyce's writing. He also has a definite sense of Joyce's thematic goals. Whereas most readers cannot get past the technicality and the challenge of reading Finnegans Wake and Ulysses, Rushdie points out the tenderness and sensitivity of subjects that Joyce discusses. I feel much more obliged to read these texts all the way through now that I've read Rushdie's testimony to them.

I have more to say re: Rushdie and his texts, but, it's late. I'll do more later!

Memory Palace Day #1

What a day! I am so excited that everyone did so well today on their Memory presentations! I think that almost everyone used the Memory Palace method but at least one person, Josh, used a song. I thought that the song was an awesome idea because I know that I remember almost every song that I have ever been taught. I was just talking with a friend about a song that listed all the states in alphabetical order. I can't forget that song. "Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut...." Good stuff.

I also thought that it was really interesting to listen to Zac recite the "out-dated" Top 100. As he would mention a book that was out of place from our list, I would immediately go to the loci which I had associated that book. Example...100 Years of Solitude is #27 on the new list while it is #12 on the old one. When Zac said "100 Years of Solitude" my mind jumped ahead to the lamp in the living room even though I was only in the kitchen for the previous book. I started my memorization on Sunday and I never thought that I would be able to form such strong associations in my mind so quickly. I am soo impressed by this method. Thanks to Sexson and Yates for letting me in on a too well-kept secret.