a farmer speaks:

thought you might be interested in this nyt op-ed from a midwestern farmer re: local food:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/opinion/01hedin.html?ex=1205125200&en=9e667ebba91a7259&ei=5070&emc=eta1

our words, eaten:

What a delight to step out of the classroom with you & into your portfolios, each a unique surprise, each crafted with time, thoughtfulness, attention to detail. The product of your portfolios is significant because it is a tribute to your hard work, your growth, the gratification of this month as you’ve cultivated your writing in various ways; it is a gift as much to yourselves as to me. However, beyond the portfolio as an object-endpoint, the real tribute is the process undergone during this month, and the ways in which the portfolio speaks to that process: the dailinesses, the fumblings, the betweens, the modes by which you pushed through to new discoveries. Your portfolio, as I see it, is really just a beginning, an opening.

Thank you for the commitment each of you made to showing up – not just to class, but to the page, to expectations of yourselves, of mine, to the dialogue we shared – you & I, you & you, you & language. This was a fun month for me (and I presume for you) because of the space-time offered just to write, and because of the community we formed as readers, writers, thinkers, bloggers – drawing from each other’s work, responding to each other’s work with critical honesty, opening your work to each other. Our muses are many, and sometimes we are lucky to find ourselves within a setting in which we have partners-in-crime, in-magic, in-discipline, even if we fall differently along the spectrum. Your writing, I should add, has stirred my own, (as have your appetites). After all, this was about food, too, whether we shared a love for, or escape from food, a hunger, or a lack, along the way we negotiated the collisions of words, food objects, recipes, images, & tastes.

I wish (as always) that we could have done so much more than a brief month allows: visited a local farm, as we’d planned, seen more food-related films, talked at more length about form poems, cooked more feasts together, produced a stein-inspired dance and performed it in Hepburn Zoo. (that’s a joke). But what time there was, we filled well. It’s a rare treat to have a class full of such devoted, dynamic, engaged lovers of language (& food…well, except for Seth, who only loves hot drinks), and I feel lucky that this month was my encounter with you. I hope that we’ll continue to reconnect, if only on the blog, and that you’ll check in every so often – it’s yours for the extension of our dialogue, as you wish. I also hope that you will post your portfolios (like right now!) at my request & the request of your peers. Thanks again for a great month. Keep writing, & eat well.

words & the magical?

let’s extend the discussion in class that was prompted by aviva’s reference to a romanticized (and questionable) magicality surrounding (inherent in) the writing process. seth pulled us back to the realist issue of discipline. which camp do you fall into: the one of muses that comprises an element of magic, or the one of rigor in the dailiness required by the business of words? or perhaps you fall somewhere in the middle?

Gertrude Stein… and Heminway… Regarding each other’s writing

Katie, your comment about what is published and what we view as publish-worthy or not publish-worthy sparked this comment:
I was thinking about Gertrude Stein because of the recent blog activity on her and I remembered something that she once said about Hemingway, someone who she mentored about life (though perhaps not so much about writing). I also remembered something that Hemingway once wrote in his memoir/book ‘A Moveable Feast’ about Stein, and I thought I would post both of them to demonstrate how two very well-famed authors, who were very close friends, could view each other’s work as not worthy of publishing (or at least view it as bad or unintelligible or not worthy of the name: literature).

Gertrude Stein once said: “Hemingway, remarks are not literature”. (specifically referring to his stories)

and Hemingway wrote: “…she disliked the drudgery of revision and the obligation to make her writing intelligible… The book [The Making of Americans] began magnificently, went on very well for a long way with great stretches of brilliance and then went on endlessly in repetitions that a more conscientious and less lazy writer would have put in the waste basket. I came to know it very well as I got– forced, perhaps, would be the word– Ford Madox Ford to publish it in the Transatlantic Review serially, knowing that it would outrun the life of the review.

Some Gertrude Stein, and thoughts on publishing

This came up again in our workshop today, so I thought I’d share this with all of you. Emily M hunted down a great link of Gertrude Stein reading If I Told Him. It’s a lot of fun to listen to her reading — check it out! Also, there’s a really bizarre dance by a company in the Netherlands choreographed to part of the poem — if you’re not into modern dance, it might not be your thing, but I love it because of the very physical connection between the words and the body.

I liked our conversation today about accepting published work as meaningful because it’s just that — published. For me, that innate acceptance is less about the fact that a work is published, and more about the fact that my professors (who I trust) have culled it from a much larger body of published work. It made me wonder, though — what have you read that you don’t think should have been published?

Gertrude Stein Reading “If I Told Him”

Thought I’d post a link to this audio clip on the main blog.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=495159738652439223&q=gertrude+stein&total=94&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

(i’m adding to this: on the same page of the above link, once you’ve listened to stein, check out the video of samuel beckett’s NOT I – a play i taught at pratt last year – a single mouth for the entirety. hunger, anyone?)

post-conference thoughts:

it was great to sit down with each of you & discuss your writing questions, processes, reflections.

there seems to be an overwhelming inclination towards forms: pantoums, sestinas, other rule-based styles. having taught 2 jterms in which we worked against genre & form rules, in which the sole expectation was play, experimentation, innovation of form, i’m surprised this month to find that you’re all craving rules. the in-class pantoum exercise, though challenging, seemed to allow some liberation with language for many of you, a play with words & repetitions & soundscapes that opened up more than might have been expected from such restrictions. when i first wrote out the pattern on the chalkboard, you all looked stunned. (perhaps that was my confusion of arrows.) but i think you realized that ultimately, the enforcing of rules can lead to the most freeing moments of language-play, can lead to the reinvention of such forms that get a bad rap among the contemporary avant-garde freeversers. really, some of the invaluable secrets of freeverse rest in the practice of the craft of forms. i’m glad to hear that some of you have been trying these forms at home. they take time, and patience. you’re stepping out of your comfort zones, testing your craft, learning the ways in which a single word (in a sestina) or line (in a pantoum) can (and must) be remade, kept fresh, sustained, unearthed in new ways each time – a lesson that lends itself back to free-verse poems, and to stories & essays & flash prose. which brings me to the next issue that many of you are discovering, especially as you test out your pieces in the revision exercises – the lesson that less can be more. if you cut your piece in half, what is excess vs. what is lost; does every line/word hold its weight & why; how can you pare away the extraneous & overlywritten moments to the essentials? by interrogating your work in this way, you can begin to illuminate what Poe calls the “single effect,” the urgency, the shift, the pivot and/or central driving force of the piece. the question of form also seems to be an issue in regards to the ways in which particular content & subjects demand particular forms – remember the story about the people who did not want to inhabit my sonnet, so i had to release them. (i think they ended up in a prose poem). question the shape of your piece, and test it with other versions that may feel more authentic to the material – turn prose into line-breaks, line-breaks into prose, let words exist on the page in a visual mirroring of content, continue to take risks in this way. some of you have expressed that you have no idea if the story you’re telling should be in verse, in prose, in image, as a realistic linear portrait or an abstract collage of snapshots, as a musical score or hole in the page – the only way to find out is to clothe it in all of these forms & then listen to which shape the piece seems to be arguing for. don’t be afraid to let go of your intentions, expectations, and comforts, which means you should also let go of the idea of preciousness in your writing. let go. we have a week remaining, so let’s open a discussion of relevant writing issues & discoveries, as well as food-related topics you’re finding compelling off the page, in the larger world, beyond proctor.

more li-young lee:

please read this poem, “the cleaving” for next week:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15876

big night:

Wednesday, 1/23 – 9:30pm – MBH 216

from zoe in california:

Zoe | zoe.feldman@gmail.com | IP: 71.105.103.249

Hey, Midd kids!

I’m writing this from a cafe in lovely, sunny Los Angeles – where I experienced a truly bountiful farmer’s market this morning near UCLA. There were some pretty amazing booths, including a Greek guy who made his own yogurt (Greek yogurt is amazing – go buy Fage with honey from the Middlebury Co-op RIGHT NOW) and cured his own olives and made his own Feta (very difficult!), a set of the nicest Mexican women ever who made their own spreads, guacamole, salsas, and organic white corn tortilla chips with sea salt (unbelievably good), and – of course, very California – the quintessential group of produce purveyors who picked fresh citrus from their groves at about 5am this morning. There were blood oranges, tangelos, tangerines, six types of oranges, grapefruit, pumelos, Meyer lemons (the best!), limes…of course, we bought everything.

That being said – think about a very important concept right now. In NYC, the farmer’s markets are flourishing, but with quite different selections. There are apples, of course (Did you know that New York state is only second to Washington state in apple production?) but there are mostly root vegetables. Do you even know what a root vegetable is? They’re pretty remarkable beasts…they can thrive under harsh conditions in climates like the cold, cold Northeast. In any case, that’s a challenge for all of you — do you know what’s in season right now in different parts of your own country? Do you understand the agricultural differences between types of fruits and vegetables? Do you think we should be importing oranges into California from Florida (crazy!) or is that okay, because it provides jobs for migrant workers?

The great food debate is rife with ethical and moral issues. I’m not even talking genetically engineered or modified foods…I’m talking the basic American creed, and the idea that we should have as much choice as possible whenever we walk into a supermarket. You all went to Shaw’s. What do you think? Is this excessive? Should we feel entitled to the bounties of California all year ’round, just because we’d be ‘banished’ to eating (delicious but different) root vegetables for a few months during the year? What makes this country what it is is the great agricultural landscape…how different it can be between counties, cities, states, regions…think about that, and consider what went into buying those strawberries in January in Vermont.

be well, eat well. i’ll have some blood orange juice on your behalf!