Sketch 3

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She liked to study atop the low prod of a straight beat—determined, laid back, but low. She thought it genius that, during the 90s, old music was made new; sampling records from earlier decades, musicians fashioned elderly hits into contemporary jams. These songs often had the characteristics she preferred to study with: that low beat, the skidding tempos, the jazzy chords, the sexy soft whispers...

And yet, her music was infused with a thin sense of nostalgia; the first time she’d heard these songs was when she was only eight, nine, ten, eleven—when life was simple. Tangy orange sodas. Free little legs kicked back in sprint. Smooth skin and scraped knees. The awe of summer fireflies.

Late afternoon. The big, west-facing glass door and the hanging pollen melted by thick, golden-red sun.

The more she worked, the more distracted she found herself. Tonight, the subtle tones of Slick Rick, Color Me Badd and Everclear were pulling her farther away from homework and into a different realm: she stood up, walked away from her carrel desk, and lost herself in an unpopulated aisle.

Her iPod turned up and eyes closed, she walked soft circles around a step stool.

Aww tick tock, you don’t stop—stop

Each step, each measure, each line... she felt warmer and warmer. Leaves were falling outside. The library never had adequate heating. Her boundless but sometimes jailed imagination was let free to stretch for a moment, and the bookshelves around her faded away.

Disconnect the phone so nobody knows

It’s a public library. What am I doing?

That booky smell wasn’t too far away from the round smell of freshly cut grass, or hot shingles and half-melted tar...

That gray sound of bicycle wheels skidding across rocky pavement. The quick flash of a white smile, a tiny line of freckles—and then the hair, pulled back by the wind but now hanging along his ears and electrified by sunlight...

Just lay back, enjoy the ride... yeah

In that moment, she experienced something she’d never felt before. All the worry of her world, all the stress of exams, grades, papers, work, and responsibility simply faded away. Almost instantly, and in the last fourteen seconds of “I Wanna Sex You Up,” she discovered her place in the universe, the meaning of life, what people want, the harmony of Earth, and everlasting love—all at once.

Her childhood rushed back. The power of her memory its aid, a smile of sizes never before discovered swam across her chin. She didn’t care if anyone was watching—if they were.

And when the song ended, it slipped away. She opens her eyes, adjusts her sweater, and stares down the aisle.

Her iPod starts playing “This Is How We Do It.” Her sense of belonging is on the other side of a foggy mirror. Now, she has the humbling understanding of individuality, soleness, Einzelgängerheit.

It’s the attitude she has to take to be an Adult. A real Citizen of the world. A working Man.

What’s so good about that again?

Sketch 2

The legislators in Harlem decided, speedily and with great self-inspired satisfaction, to immediately task city workers with replacing the red lights at every intersection along Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard with red lights three times their original size in hopes of deterring uptown-bound taxis from unceremoniously ignoring them when they saw no crossing traffic along the streets. After completing their work, the workers did not notice a decrease in such moving violations among taxicab drivers but instead observed a sudden increase in their illicit behavior.

One of the workers was asked to speak at a meeting of the policy makers, and when they asked her to testify, she merely imparted this: “By making the red lights larger, we’ve made them easier to see.” A particularly haughty politician responded with, “Well, that was the point! We called you here not to summarize our efforts but to provide insight into why these taxicab drivers continue to break the law.” 

She replied, “The laws no one wants to follow are best left un-enlarged.”

Sketch 1

When I was a child, I lived with my father on a farm 10 kilometers northeast of Praxis. There was a wheat field I watched grow tall each year from my window. Year after year, I anticipated their long stalks grow to heights seemingly shorter than years before, turning golden-brown and then being cut down with my father’s sharp blade.

On warm nights in the summer, I’d open my window and step out onto the straw roof of our barnhouse. If I looked over my shoulder, I could see the thick fog from Praxian reactors breathing light from the Zentrum. If I really squinted, I could see tiny points of moving light above the Earth’s surface, skittering along in skewed lines like marching ants.

The story I’m about to tell you began on the day the lights stopped glowing, and the ants scattered in all directions. The reactor fog stopped flowing in straight plumes toward the sky and started to be pulled in all directions like an angry spider’s web. That year, the wheat didn’t grow at all, but my father found another use for his blade.

I knew something had gone wrong when I approached the house one afternoon to see my father standing in the doorframe. With his cell in one hand and the TV remote in another, his eyebrows tilted up like the pitch of the barn’s shingles. That night, the absence of light from Praxis darkened the sky, sucking out its amber haze. The fog, too, was nearly gone, and the sky had reacquired some rightful dominance. My father peered out the window over the kitchen sink at the sky.

We had stayed up in the night to listen for news. The TV channels stopped broadcasting, so my father unearthed a radio from the attic. Sometimes we heard voices weaving in and out of the static.

What I couldn’t understand was the magnitude of the sky’s brightness. With the Praxis light extinguished, I could see more stars than I had ever imagined seeing with my own eyes. Images I’d only seen from orbital telescopes were passing through my eyes—images of a thousand, million, glowing points of light in all directions, a spinning shaft of bright clouds jutting out from the horizon. The sight was more amazing than any building in Praxis, any rocket launch or anything like that. I had seen the sky for the first time—the real sky.

A Partial Literacy Narrative

Why We Write

I write because I’m fancy.
No, really, I do—fanciness is something to be admired, exalted. Fancy writing is like yodeling in English, only everyone can identify the yodeler, and the yodeling is kept among three double-spaced pages. But don’t get me wrong: fanciness is not to be confused with gaudiness. Gaudiness is much more noticeable. Next time you take a flight longer than three hours, look over the seat in front of you. See that paperback your fellow traveler bought in the airport bookstore? That’s gaudy. Incidentally, it’s also a waste of six dollars.
It’s hard to describe the writing-feeling. For me, it’s kleptomaniacal: I write for fear that I’ll forget my ideas. For some, it’s compulsory: I know students who dread the act of writing, and who’ll only write what is absolutely necessary. For others, it’s reflective; author Joan Didion seems to fall into this category. In her short work titled Why I Write, she explains that she writes “to find out what [she’s] thinking, what [she’s] looking at, what [she sees] and what it means” (3).
But, if we write for different reasons, why are we all called writers? What makes us all part of this group? Didion claims that a writer is “a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper,” but this isn’t right—by Didion, some of my best writer-friends aren’t writers, but merely people who exploit the English language in an essay to get an easy A (2). Writers don’t have to be people who spend hours upon hours writing; writers aren’t nearly as special as Didion thinks so. We’re all writers, no matter what we do, and there’s no escaping it.

Flight of the Reader (and Writer)

There’s something happening to writing. In fact, it’s a change that’s rippling through the writing and reading communities simultaneously. The thing is, nobody realizes that it’s the same change, and it’s happening all at once.
The reader-writer relationship is changing, and Billy Collins offers a peek into how with his poem “Flight of the Reader.” In the poem, the speaker exposes something tender about the relationship between writers and readers: the relationship is not as unidirectional as Didion likes to think. The speaker in Collins’ poem frankly addresses his readers, playfully acknowledging them for their dedication and solemnly ruing the day “[he] wakes up to find [them] gone” (line 19). Sentimentally, Collins reveals a previously-ignored truism: without readers, there would be no writers. The relationship is not unidirectional. Perhaps without realizing it, readers support the livelihood of their beloved writers, and writers are only now beginning to understand that symbiosis.
Contemporary literature is to blame for making this relationship obvious. With the advent of publishing on the Internet, writers are not only reaching new readers, but they’re finding that new readers can reach them. In an evolution unparalleled in English literature history, writers are now closer to their readers—in the sense that they can respond to their readers’ comments, opinions, and misunderstandings. With this, a new perception of readership is emerging.
It’s becoming apparent that no two readers understand a text in the same way. I don’t mean in reference to their technical, grammatical understanding—I mean that readers bring their own habits, histories, emotions, and individual reading environments into their perception of a text. (Thanks to new technologies, the ability to read in a multitude of places is influencing this realization.) Readers, in a sense, are writers in their own minds; altering the text as they see it—a product of their own consciousness. As the boundary between writers and readers breaks down, writers are no longer bourgeois, and readers are no longer drones.

A Redefinition of Great Writing

Great writers are great readers. Proof that this exists lies in Ron Koertge’s poem titled “Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?” In it, Koertge calls for writers to “go out into the world:” experience it as a reader does, and then write (line 2).
The best writers are great listeners. They set themselves on the pulse of a society’s population. To do that, they must read. But not just read in the typical sense, but read in the abstract: they must read expressions, read reactions, read responses. They must read history, news, and new technological developments. Because readers define a writer’s career, writers must write about what will be read, and to do that, writers must be readers.

Are You a Writer?

We’re all writers, and we have no choice but to be writers. Writers are creators; writers write on varied canvases. When we use our senses, we’re writing in the pages of our minds. When we read, we transcribe the thoughts of others into our own writings, adapting and refashioning them into new works. As the definition of writing and reading evolves, it reflects a new concept of writing and reading—as something more interrelated than ever before.

English in the Digital Age

Reflection on Bolter presentation

Chapter 5: The Electronic Book on Prezi

Overall, this presentation was a delight to research and produce. I found my fellow presenters to be motivated and intelligent, diligently absorbing their fraction of the chapter and crafting a suite of Bolter quotations that would best describe his intended meaning. I found myself at ease with the thought of presenting the work, not only because I had confidence in our group’s ability to accurately summarize the text, but because I felt I had a grasp of the entire chapter’s assertions that I could effectively speak and answer questions.

The most challenging (yet exciting and rewarding) task was the use of the Prezi software in crafting an accompanying visual. Before we created the presentation, we knew we’d have to establish a logical sequence of thought that complemented the chapter’s form. Due to Prezi’s nature, it was difficult to move the relative position of each textbox after it’s placement, but easy to establish a path through each point. We decided that we should arrange the points in a circle around the main title as a typographic reproduction of the world, in chorus with Dan’s concluding point.

Retrospectively, I would have preferred to break from our group’s sequential presentation and opt for a more impromptu, collaborative relay of the chapter’s content and implications. Yet, this would require a deep understanding of the entire chapter for each presenter and a comfort with improvisational methods—something we did not all possess. I would have also preferred to wean our presentation off of Bolter’s exact words and use short summaries instead.

Summaresponse to Chapter 6 presentation

Observe
This group adapted a turn-taking style that mimicked the form of the Bolter chapter, providing an effective representation of the writing. The approach was effective because it was straightforward, but suffered from a lack of connections between presenters. Even still, the chapter was effectively communicated and each presenter’s topics were excellently described.

Infer
The group took a distinct position on the new methods of communication and discourse in contemporary society. Using the Internet and new media as a frame, they compared old styles of “dialogues” from Plato and Socrates to scholars such as Wittgenstein. Their main points included: 1. Alternative forms of dialogue exist in Western musical notation, where tonal information is presented alternatively and effectively; 2. Writing and reading do not have to be sequential; 3. Oral storytellers have more control over their content as they tell the story, leading to unique performances and varying content subject to various factors; 4. The “anti-book” is a genre of writing in which traditional themes of narrative and typography are ignored; 5. The inclusion of images and illustrations in essays, although new, presents a transformation of the writing form.

Question
Why did Bolter choose to bring up oral philosophers in this chapter, and what do they have to do with digital media? How is oral storytelling related to hypertext? How can such things as the “exchange of ideas” be refashioned? While the Internet can facilitate the exchange of ideas, how will it transform that exchange? What does textual direction and sequence have to do with dialogue? What does it have to do with anti-books or new practices in essay-writing?

Summaresponse to Chapter 4 presentation

Observe
As an analysis of Bolter’s chapter, the group produced a well-organized and planned presentation. The thrust of the chapter was well communicated, but some details were lost. Definitions were occasionally underdeveloped, but their meanings could be deduced based on each presenter’s use of the terms in their analyses.

Infer
The presentation’s main points were: 1. In some ways, ancient illuminated manuscripts were more effective than early books (and recent revivals), due to their lack of imagery; 2. Today, control of readers is split between the verbal and the visual; 3. The concept of “ekphrasis” and “reverse ekphrasis” concerns the interoperability of print media and the image; 4. Designing text for the web has no longer been a “remediation” of graphic design for print—animation, streaming audio and video, and other multimedia present a “hyper-media” concept of their own.

Question
As the prevalence of digital media increases, will “old” writing practices be replaced by multimedia? How will (or won’t) the publishing industry respond to this change? How will “filmization” of novels contribute to the larger visual media market? If the “ideal image” is a graph, why is an artful for emotional image effective? Is it? Will verbal expression ever expire? How will the use of spoken language conform to Internet-based multimedia?

Summaresponse to Chapter 3 presentation

Observe
The presentation made use of good references from Bolter, citing useful snippets helping the audience wrap their head around questions like: What is hypertext? How is it different from books? What is hypertext’s function? Yet, the addition of futile demonstrations diluted the presentation’s effectiveness. Often, presenters would rephrase themselves to convey repeated topics while explaining differing concepts. As a metaphor for hypertext, this practice worked well. In terms of evoking a feeling of presentational progress, the technique fell short.

Infer
The presentation’s argument, and, in turn, Bolter’s argument, centers around the stark contrast between “text” and “hypertext,” claiming that the latter is an effective “remediation” of the former. The main points included: 1. Hypertext’s representation of “structures” can be more flexible on the computer screen, as opposed to speech or writing; 2. Despite hypertext’s reading difficulties, it presents itself as a formidable opponent to traditional print; 3. Hypertext can be placed in the space between written narrative and visual arguments: it may represent the human mind better than formal constructs; 4. Hypertext can inhibit or exhibit the “natural associations” that a traditional narrative almost always induces, for better rather than worse.

Question
What is so important about the concept: “hypertext is a process as much as a product”—i.e., what’s the big deal about “operating” the text as opposed to just reading it? Keeping the age of Bolter’s writing in mind, how has the difficulty in regards to reading electronic text declined, and what impact does the shrinking of that issue have on the “remediation” process? If hypertext is more akin to human thought, how might that change the linguistic habits of future cultures? How does it change current-day culture? Hyperlinks among hypertext: do they “[give] the illusion of control” (as Bolter says) or doe they actually hand over the control of the narrative to the reader (or “operator”)? Is there something “natural” about the traditional narrative process, or can any reader learn how to read hypertext? What difficulties does the “remediation” of traditional print into hypertext present to the English language and readers? How can this concept of hypertext ripple into young authors who choose to publish in physical format (read: antibooks)?

Where does the alphabet come from?

An amazing article from one of my favorite blogs:

http://ilovetypography.com/2010/08/07/where-does-the-alphabet-come-from/

Check it out—especially the last part, which speaks to the materiality of writing.

Freewrite in the dark

When I was a kid, my family and I would drive to the Adirondack Mountains, to a property remotely squished bin between Lake Placid and a small pond called Boy Pond. TThere, I experienced life at a slower pace, experiencing life at in a test tube, and allowing for my childhood experiences to be bottled up and kept forever.

One

There was a river than ran from pond to pond, running downhill for three miles, pulling and shaking over cliffs and hills, and, at the end of its journey, emptying out into a bucket—Cranberry Rapids,. We;d take Jeeps from place to place before sunset, enjoying the nature sounds and sights.

One night, around a campfire at Crandberry Rapids, I opened my notebook, grabbed a tiny bit of charcoal, and, in trying to keep as natural as possible, wrote a poem in the light of the fire and in the sound of the rapids around me. I still have that poem. My dad remembers the night. That was my earliest and proudest memory of writing—a blip of expression, embracing nature that surrounded me.

Chapter 2 response

In Chapter 2 of Writing Space, Bolter references “students of culture” such as Walter Ong and Jacques Derrida who assert that literate people “structure their speech as they do their writing,” claiming that literacy changes thought and speaking patterns in ways not usually explored. After reading this, I realized how true it is—I, without thinking, will structure my speech as I do my writing, “talking in sentences and even paragraphs.” I’ve never given this any thought, but these habits do seem to be directly influenced by my experience of literature (along with some cultural influences: it is considered correct and mature to speak in sentences).

With this in mind, how would people living before movable type speak? Would they have partitioned their spoken thoughts into sentences? How would writings of that time be different?

Can rigid routines sprout creativity?

Check out an interesting article on the daily routines of creative, productive people:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/The99Percent/~3/5xrB9WzaSnc/How-Mundane-Routines-Produce-Creative-Magic

I’m immediately reminded of the sort of argument against cubicle officework. People say it’s terribly restricting and monotonous. Yet, it seems that there’s something behind the routine of daily life that makes way for deeper, creative thoughts—not to mention the fact that most of the people explored above incorporate some type of physical activity and steady sleep patterns. Perhaps this creative freedom comes from the reduced need to constantly be focused on new challenges: it seems that these people aren’t challenged or surprised on a daily basis... I’d imagine this to be the life of a philosopher, as well.

Response to Bolter

Bolter, across various sections in the first chapter of Writing Spaces, establishes the context in which literature finds itself across human history. Starting with the Bible, and ending in the contemporary age of information, Bolter defines “the late age of print”—the last hurrah of print’s existence in the literary world. Threatened by new technology, the physicality of print isn’t the only thing that could rapidly decline; as Bolter investigates, the literary novel style that accompanied the book will also decline, making way for more interactive forms of literature. He introduces the views of critics, old and new, who each predict the efficacy or weakness of the print medium. Lastly, he addresses the ever-growing prospect of graphics and film as something more suited for the computer screen. With those media, different rules apply for conveying information. All of these media seem to be growing with the rise of the computer, and the book seems to be losing relevance.

As a young kid, I begged my dad for a computer. At the time, even the slowest (by today’s standards) of computers were expensive, and my father felt he needed to delay the purchase until I was older. When that day came, I was enthralled. Ever since then, I’ve been a geek—fascinated with new technologies. Yet, I still feel attached to both the physicality and literary structure of a real novel... Unlike my children, who will probably never touch a physical book (or, perhaps on a less drastic level, think that books are archaic), I know I won’t be able to part with a hard, non-electronic copy of my favored literature.

Taylor Mali’s “Like you know”

Taylor Mali’s performance video





Typographic adaptation




I appreciate Mali’s performance of his poem much more than the typographic adaption video because this type of poem is best seen while it’s delivered. Mali’s physical movement and appearance contribute to the poem’s meaning: his facial expressions contribute to the overall feeling of satire, as does his hand movements and body postures. It is true, as well, that Mali’s criticism of contemporary thought expression concerns the physical postures as well as grammatical structures. As such, I felt that the performance video was more compelling.

Response to Shelley Jackson’s “Stitch Bitch”

Body Not Whole

In this section, it is Jackson’s objective to continue the thought she introduced in her preface, when she claims she’s (not) the author of a text about “the patchwork girl.” In a way that seems to introduce the fragmented form of the complete text, Body Not Whole aims to describe the oddity of the body, separate from the mind, as a “patchwork” (adapting the word from her preface and self-proclaimed title). Later in the section, she discovers that the “project of writing” lies in “unhinging” the mind as it tries to solidify its own hold on reality by “[substituting] an effigy for that complicated machine for inclusion and effusion that is the self.”

Gaps, Leaps

This section, which occurs later in the sequence, is a comparison between modern literature (the novel) and “hypertext.” As Jackson begins: “a conventional novel is a safe ride,” implying that the literary structure of novels, entangled with their existence in a physical form, has dictated their linear form. But as Jackson continues, it is seen that the physical form of a novel affects readers in more ways than one. Describing the novel as ”the mechanism of the chute,” Jackson criticizes it by asserting that its too quick, equating it to a ”slalom.” Hypertext, on the other hand, is random, formless, and dependent on the reader’s moods, attitudes, or other constraints. It’s existence without physical form and traditional scaffolding, Jackson implies, makes it attractive to “piratical readers, plagiarists and opportunists.”

Response to sample essay

In response to Sample R.

In this analysis of Kress, you claim that a “proper” sequence of writing entails ideas that are “sequenced,” implying that verbal arguments progress in a linear fashion. In describing proper form, you claim that “everything must occur subsequently” and that “one word comes after another, followed by a punctuation mark and the start of a new sentence.” What, then, do you make of poetry and non-linear writing? I’d assert that they are makers of meaning just as versatile as visual arguments. Verbal arguments need not take such rigid forms. Similarly, your assertion that visual arguments, “no matter how they are presented, still drive the same point across.” Visual arguments are not as clear, nor are as direct as you maintain. Your characterizations of verbal and visual arguments are too extreme; visual arguments are flexible, but are prone to misinterpretation. Further, visual arguments need structure in the same way verbal arguments may not need them. You claim that “one cannot take a paragraph and mix and match sentences,” yet this mixing and matching is seen frequently in poetry and can serve argumentative purpose—and perhaps provide that meaning more efficiently than prose.

Response to Rodney Jones’ “Hubris at Zunzal”

hu•bris. n. exaggerated pride or self-confidence

Jones’ speaker, at the end of the third stanza, describes a change of heart, and with it, the poem’s tone changes. After dumping his rum and coconut juice-filled coconut into the water, the speaker momentarily laments the act, saying “then the idea I was not finished, / then the act of reaching down / with the idea I would get it back.” Here, the speaker stops describing the gorgeous Zunzal beach and refutes the purpose of his own poem-writing: reflecting on a moment that makes the speaker stop to imagine his feelings after wasting his drink.

The poem’s title is significant as well, as it addresses the speaker’s haste in dropping his drink into the water.

“Stitch Bitch” Inkshedding

It is Shelley Jackson’s view that books are not a “natural evolutionary end,” but that books (in terms of both their physical makeup and linear construction style) are merely “formal devices,” or man-made constructions of literature that have defended from early humanity’s first interactions with literature. Yet, the formal structure of the book is still changing—especially exhibited by the contemporary author-publisher relationship. This business model contributes to the constraints placed on publishing, determining what content reaches readers.

Publishers maintain a hold on a book’s final version, working with editors to augment an author’s manuscript. Why? To make it appropriate for audiences to read. In this lies a constraint often overlooked: our favorite versions of popular novels probably do not resemble their original drafts. If they did, would they be less “linear” or more like Jackson’s “favorite texts,” defying “the linear”?

Reflection on Paper 2