Aunt Walt and Uncle Emily

"Two dangers never cease threatening the world: order and disorder."—LH. What do you make of this? Which of the two seems more dangerous? In the world? In writing?

Poet Lyn Hejinian has written an interesting sequel to her essay, "The Rejection of Closure," which we're all reading this weekend, called, wittily enough, "Continuing Against Closure." It's worth a look. Notice how she brings out, even more strongly than in the earlier essay, the connection between the consequences of hunting for closure in writing and the consequences of hunting for it in the real world. This is like bringing Keat's Negative Capability into a much more comprehensive and social context (though let's not forget he came up with the idea in a letter) for the 21st century.

You can see here I'm making Walt and Emily act like a traditional weblog: a place to record and link to things within one's zone of interest that you find on the web.

For those of you who don't have the course packet, or who are curious about reading the whole of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons, you can access the entire text here.

Happy Labor Day, by the way.

Incidentally, once you've created your blog, please either post its web address here or e-mail it to me. If you can make it a clickable link, so much the better. Also, a reminder: you don't have to use your full name anywhere. Call it "Tim's Blog" or whatever, if you like. You can even make up a name, as long as your classmates and myself can identify you.

Start Your Own

Every student in my class will have their own blog. Get started by clicking here. Need help? Click here. A basic blog is free but you might want to upgrade to BloggerPro if you want to be able to post pictures and/or don't like having ads like this blog does hovering on top of everything. If you have any other start-up questions, send me an e-mail.

Welcome!

I'm pleased to welcome you to my newest blog, which I'll be using as a supplement for the Introduction to Creative Writing class (ENGL 280.8) that I'm teaching at Cornell this semester. Come on in, the water's fine.