Hmm…I guess it’s nothing. For a second there, I thought your jealousy was so loud that I could hear it…
Does this make me strange?
Okay, so, recently I submitted some poems to a pretty good journal and I got a personal note back from the editor asking for some more stuff. Also, after a poetry reading in Manhattan the editor of an online journal approached me and asked me to submit some poems to them. These incidents, understandably, made me very excited about my writing life. The funny thing is, there is another incident that has gotten me even more excited. What’s that, you ask? I’ll tell you.
I have a little gnome character named Tiktok in the online videogame World of Warcraft that I play with Alexander Gard. This guild of people who play the game started a monthly short-story/instant-fiction contest. They provide a line of inspiration each month, and then people submit stories incorporating/inspired by the line they provided. After that everyone who uses the website votes. The winner of the contest receives a 16-slot, Mooncloth Bag for their character…and fame and glory. Currently, my story is in first place with the most votes:
| Ashthra |  1 (7.14%) |
| Dalin | 1 (7.14%) |
| Kesler | 1 (7.14%) |
| Nihlia | 2 (14.29%) |
| Oakenthew | 0 (0.00%) |
| Pook | 2 (14.29%) |
| Shandala | 0 (0.00%) |
| Tiktok | 4 (28.57%) |
| Xyra | 3 (21.43%) |
Voting stops on the last day of November. I have my little, gnomish fingers crossed.
Ug
I hate being sick. I’m so sick that I can’t even sleep, and I had to miss going to Whitewater to see my sister, her husband and my nephew. It’s making me feel a lot like this:
DONE
That’s right, I’m done with giganto-essay number one. The bad thing is that I had to come to campus today and I really want to take a nap. I have to go to my poetry workshop tonight as well. This is a boring post, but writing that essay made me go a little crazy. Now I have to start the next one on Friday, but for a few days…I will sleep the sleep of the just.
I take it all back…
All the years of complaining about having to wedge evrything into MLA format have melted away from my mind. How could this be? You may ask…here’s the answer:
“Verse quotations of more than three lines should begin on a new line. Unless the quotation involves unusual spacing, indent each line one inch from the left margin and double-space between lines, adding no quotation marks that do not appear in the original.”
–MLA Handbook, 6th Edition
And there was much rejoicing.
What’s your favorite “portmanteau?”
Mine is probably “Trustafarian,” to describe people with trust-funds who dress like hippies and pan-handle for change while parking their SUV around the corner so nobody can see it.
Portmanteau
A portmanteau (plural: portmanteaux) is a term in linguistics that refers to a word or morpheme that fuses two or more grammatical functions. A folk usage of portmanteau refers to a word that is formed by combining both sounds and meanings from two or more words (e.g. ‘animatronics‘ from ‘animation‘ and ‘electronics‘). In linguistics, these folk portmanteaux are called blends. It can also be called a frankenword (incidentally, this is another example of a portmanteau). Typically, portmanteau words are neologisms. In short, it’s a word that combines two words to form a single word. One of the most well-known examples is cyborg, a term which is commonly used to refer to a cybernetic organism.
Etymology
The word was coined by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). In the book, Humpty Dumpty explains to
Alice words from Jabberwocky, saying, “Well, slithy means lithe and slimy … You see it’s like a portmanteau— there are two meanings packed up into one word.” Carroll often used such words to a humorous effect in his work.“Portmanteau”, from Middle French “porter” (to carry) and “manteau” (a coat or cover), formerly referred to a large travelling bag or suitcase with two compartments, hence the linguistic idea of fusing two words and their meanings into one. “Portmanteau” is rarely used to refer to a suitcase in English any more, since that type of a suitcase has fallen into disuse. In French, the word has the different meaning of “coat rack,” and sometimes “coat hanger,” and is spelled “porte-manteau.” The french word for “Portmanteau” is “mot valise”, which translates literally as “suitcase word”.“Portmanteau word” was the original phrase used to describe such words (as listed in dictionaries published as late as the early 1990s), but this has since been abbreviated to simply “portmanteau” as the term (and the type of words it describes) gained popularity.
Sometimes it pays to be a sappy poet…
So, I’m embroiled in this very long reserach paper that I’ll be writing this weekend and turning in on Tuesday. It’s about H.D., who I mentioned in one of my earlier posts. I’m pretty frustrated with the “Cannon” right now, because I’m working on my second graduate degree, and until this semester, I had never read H.D.’s poetry. This is directly related to the fact that H.D. is a female poet, and there’s a historical prejudice against female writers and poets in our country. I love her poetry and it turns me on more than Pound or Elliot, even though she’s doing a lot of similar experimentation. Anyways, I was reading this critical article as part of my research in my tutoring office the other day when I didn’t have any students in there. The article is written by a very prominent feminist literary critic, and I started getting very emotional reading it because her writing was so beautiful and she was articulating so much of what was in my heart about this particular writer and her work. After I read her article I had this really strong urge to thank her for writing it. After a few minutes I said to myself, “aw hell..the internet is used for stupid stuff all the time…why not?” So I googled her, found out where she taught, and then wrote her a brief letter, trying not to sound like a crazy person, thanking her for her critical work and particularly that one article about H.D., because, as a poet, I had never read H.D. until this semester and I think that work by critics like her is the reason that I’m reading H.D. at all…and I think it’s very important to read H.D. SO, I open my e-mail this morning, and Susan Grubar wrote me back. Here’s what she said:
Well, this has made my day! It is rainy, some students cut class, there was a long departmental meeting, but your email brings me such pleasure. Many thanks,
Susan Gubar
Also, here’s a link on Susan Gubar:
http://smpcollege.com/litlinks/critical/gubar.htm
Who knew the internet could do good things?
–Ben
Mao’s Golden Mangoes of Destiny?
Why did I not know about Mao’s Mangoes? Why am I so fascinated by this? For those of you who aren’t hip to the historic ramifications of Mao’s choicein fruit, I present to you the following article about an art exhibit on KU’s campus right now:
Chairman Mao’s Golden Mangoes
opens September 19, 2006
Asia Gallery, Screen Case
On August 5, 1968, two years into the chaos of China’s Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao Zedong sent mangoes to the Worker’s Propaganda Team during their standoff with the Red Guard occupying the campus of Qinghua University in Beijing. The Red Guard, a mass militia of youth established in 1966 and sanctioned by Mao himself, was then spinning out of control. Mao mobilized workers from factories in Beijing to bring the Red Guard into submission. The gift of the mangoes- exotic fruits presented to Mao by the foreign minister of Pakistan-signified that Mao was now siding with the worker-peasant class instead of the students; he was designating workers as the leading class in the Cultural Revolution.
An unexpected side effect of this benevolent yet highly political gesture was the elevation of the mango from fruit to a “religious” symbol. The last half of 1968 marked the height of Mao’s personality cult, and the gift of golden mangoes inspired something close to a religious frenzy. The generous gesture from the god-like Chairman Mao inspired poetry and newspaper articles devoted to the golden mangoes bearing the good will of Mao. Workers lined up to see and sniff the mangoes in awe; when mangoes showed the inevitable signs of decay, they were boiled in huge pots of water, so each worker could share a spoonful of Mao’s blessing. Even then, their veneration for the sacred object did not diminish: wax replicas were made to replace fresh mangoes, and the mango was used as a political/religious motif not only on the National Day Parade floats, but also on everyday utensils praising the kind regards of Chairman Mao.
The enthusiasm for mangoes as a demonstration of the worker-peasant class’s support for Mao endured for about a year. After 1969, mangoes disappeared from the active symbolic repertoire of Chinese politics. Although the Cultural Revolution symbolism of the mangoes has been largely forgotten, its ephemeral significance is inscribed in the artifacts of the era.
Objects on display are loans from private collections.
The best title of a 18th Century Sermon ever written:
One of my research projects I am currently embroiled in is based on early American “Criminal” or “Rogue” autobiographies, and how they relate to the European tradition of the Picaresque Novel. I think this project is hilarious, and I’ve probably done way more research than I should have, just because I think the primary sources are laugh-out-loud funny. Without further adieu, I present to you the title of a sermon I am quoting from, as listed in the library catalogue, and on the piece itself (and yes, I could have used the abbreviated, bracketed title in my Works Cited page, because that’s perfectly acceptable in MLA, but where would the fun be in that??):
“Stephen Burrough’s [sic] sermon, delivered at Rutland, on a hay-mow, to his auditory the Pelhamites, at the time when a mob of them, after having pursued him to Rutland, in order to apprehend him because he had abruptly departed and absconded from Pelham, where he had been preaching the Gospel; shut him into a barn, into which he ran for asylum; when he ascended a hay-mow, which was inaccessible, except in one place, with a weapon of defence in his hand, with which he kept off his pursuers at pleasure, as mentioned in the authors Memoirs, p. 90, 96, and delivered to them the following sermon, on the occasion.”
Every time I think about my seester…
I think about Kraft macaroni and cheese. She instructed me in the lore of its preparation, during our sojurn into Latch-key-kiddom. I’m lucky that Erin also loves macaroni and cheese. We had a very Marxist-fueled discussion yesterday about how Kraft macaroni and cheese in the box is the only real macaroni and cheese, and that the shells and cheese stuff, while very cheesy, was for rich kids. SO, we’re off to the store to buy some. Do I have 40 pages of research to write in about 2 weeks? Absolutely. Did I get home late from a poetry reading at an art gallery last night in which I read a poem? No doubt. Am I going to be in another reading tomorrow, and I still need to work on my poems? For sure. Are we going to gett Mac and Cheese anyways? YES.
