To Strive, To Seek, To Find

Along with our stunningly early spring, this month celebrates our burgeoning experiment in blogging.  We’re just three comments away from having 200 comments — not bad for the blog’s second semester in a small English Major community.

The comments are thrown open to your voices! Please, share your stories about how this blog has changed your life, given you the will to live, and helped you train your dog.

Trained professionals are standing by to listen to your testimonials, their tissue boxes close at hand.  Really, don’t hold back. We’d love to hear how, because of this blog, your life will never be the same again.

The lucky 200th commenter will receive an amazing grand prize with magical, mind-bending properties and which can also serve as a portal into a whole new realm!

Okay, it’s a book. Of course it’s a book! It’s the English Major blog…?

Great Moments in Literature: Cuneiform.  Alphabets. Scrolls and vellum manuscripts. The Rossetta Stone. Gutenberg’s printing press….

…the iPad…..

No joke! The touch screens and multimedia experiences packed into an iPad “book” (and other soon-to-be-unveiled gadgets)  just begin to hint about the future of reading. An English professor’s job investigating and studying modes of literacy and publishing has never been so exciting!

Sample iPad Books

Thanks, New Zealand Book Council!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_jyXJTlrH0

Didgeridoo, by Aboriginal artist R. King

 The sad news: last night was the last class in my Brit Lit I class. I’ll miss this class a lot: the students are exceptionally smart, hard-working, and true lovers of literature.

The good news: they surprised me with a concert!!

When’s the last time YOU sang ballads to the accompaniment of a harmonica (or two), a guitar, and a six-foot-long didgeridoo??

 Thanks for a great class, you Brit Litters!

For some strange reason, my beloved and I were watching the cult classic The Exorcist last night…

…when, suddenly, our front door blew wide open!

Pretty weird, huh?

Now I’m afraid of my daughter.

(This post comes courtesy of our very own Cat, today’s student writer.)

Okay, so let’s say that your grandma makes the best strawberry freezer jam in the world. Her strawberry freezer jam is so good that all of the relatives argue over who gets to take a couple of jars with them after the holidays, and they bring it home and serve it to their New Years guests and pretend that they made it themselves. You cannot imagine living without this strawberry freezer jam. It is literally the height of culinary excellence in your freezer. read more »

As some of you know, I was madly in love in the astronomer Carl Sagan when I was fifteen and then I went on to be a physics tutor in college: my first teaching gig. read more »

Leonardo Coccorante. An Architectural Capriccio with Figures under a Stormy Sky. (Wikimedia Commons)

It’s my favorite time of year! Crunchy leaves underfoot, darkness falling early, creepy and inexplicable bumps in the night…and truly horrifying prose.

Yes, the annual winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced once again. The contest is named after Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton (or Lord Lytton, since he was a Baron), infamous for the purple prose opening his novel Paul Clifford:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

In the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, entrants vie to write the most horrible, convoluted, florid, and just plain wrong opening sentence of a pretend novel. Read them here!

I liked this entry under science fiction, penned by Leigh A. Smith:

George scratched his head in abject puzzlement as he tried to figure out where he’d parked the rocket this time in the 100-acre parking lot of Nallmart 75B, but then he remembered that a ship-boy had taken his DNA key-but which one, the kelly toned humanoid or the atmosphere-of-Rylak-hued android; scanning the horizon, he at last turned to Babs and asked “how green was my valet?”

Anyone want to write an entry below?

William Adolphe Bougeureau. The Young Shepherdess. (Wikimedia Commons)

For Love Alone Shall She Relent

I’ll go with you and love you, dear.
For pleasures’ fill we need not fear.
Like oceans ride the tides of day,
We’ll swirl as gentle waves at play.

Our heads shall rest on wheaten piles
That, freshly threshed, witness our smiles.
Those bonnie birds mimic our oaths
That fall from hence our trembling throats.

But for thine roses, spare such trouble.
I care not for their scented bubble.
I’d rather bask in my lover’s musk,
Than catch the scent of flowery dusk.

And as your love, I’ll wear not much,
So take advantage of love’s touch.
Thus woolen garments, grant me not.
And should my feet winter besot,

Be sure that I your heat employ
To warm me inside out. Enjoy
My narrow girth, make me your bun.
I plan to grant to thee a son.

But speak no more of worldly gain,
Lest our true-blooded hearts we stain.
Take more delight in winning love,
Than having bought it like a glove.

(This poem was written by Cat and posted here with her permission.)

Jean Honore Fragonard. Shepherdess (1752). Wikimedia Commons

Students in my Brit Lit I class continue to totally smack down Marlowe’s love sick shepherd, while I stand by nervously splitting infinitives. This witty response was penned by Chris and reprinted here with his permission.

But Blame Not Me for Greed

I’ll live with you, and be thy love,
but first, here’s what I need, my doove,
from mole-hill (your hill), yard and hearth,
to take up root in your spare earth.

The scene you set for us is nice.
The rhyme is pure (a cute device).
I love the birds, the setting sparse,
but keep the rocks for your hard arse.

A rosy bed, you will indeed
make, but blame not me for greed.
Lovely flowers, yeah, that’s sweet dear…
how about a poem from Shakespeare!

Gowns are nice but I want posy,
and happy, I, that you chose me,
but really man, a lamb? slaughter?
Steal some verse! (you really oughter).

Yours is just a bit pastoral,
tight, but loose about the moral.
even Raleigh, and all his ilk
question your tongue. (It’s curdled milk!)

Now truly, doove, you’re a hotty.
Else why would I share my body?
But, empty words are this: nothin’.
What they’ll get you? Ask my husband.