Dig It

This is one of my favorite poems to read with freshmen.  It's rich, accessible, and every year students find new meanings and connections that I haven't seen before.  I think the first time I read it was as a senior in high school in AP Lit. with Mr. Desmond (who was a big fan of Heaney and all things both Irish and literary).  Some of these college professors love teaching it too.  Like I said, rich and accessible on many levels.  (Don't click the link until you read the poem a couple of times and give yourself a chance to think about it).  Enjoy.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging.  I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge dep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By god, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper.  He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf.  Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

                                      --Seamus Heaney (1966)

Dear Blog,

I have been a bad blogger.  I realize I'm not doing too well with the whole concept of a blog having frequent and regular posts (or at least semi-frequent and semi-regular posts).  Even though I haven't written, I have been thinking of you.  In fact, I have the beginnings of several new posts saved as drafts, with just no time lately to adequately develop them with the time and consideration they deserve.  Some people say the blogosphere moves too quickly anyway, for genuine dialogue and sustained reflection, so consider this hiatus my way of slowing things down, in keeping with the anachronistic part of your title.  (On a side note, is it strange that Blogger's spell check doesn't recognize the word "blogosphere"?  Silly red squiggle.) 

Don't worry Anachronistic Inkling, I haven't forgotten about you.

In the meantime, here's a little outside reading in defense of Amazon's Kindle.  (For those detractors out there--you know who you are!)

Good Friday

I'm a week late, but I meant to post this poem by G.K. Chesterton last Friday:

The Donkey

When fishes flew and forest walked
And figs grew upon thorn
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

                       -- G.K. Chesterton

A Day in the Life...

Today I'm going to blog about my day as a high school English teacher--the ups, downs, ins and outs of a regular old day on the job. Kind of a live blog, but not really, because I can't actually blog and teach at the same time. But I'll be updating this in draft form throughout the day, and post it at the end.

7:20 am
Got to school later than I would've liked. My schedule today: teaching first three blocks. Already prepped for my first block class (Honors British Literature), but I need to photo-copy a packet for my second block class, and I won't have time in between. Throw the packet on the copier and get to class--I can swing back by the copy room and get it between classes (assuming someone doesn't remove to someplace I can't find).

7:30 am (Class: Honors British Literature, Grade 12, twenty students)
Into the classroom. The lights are off and a student (one of my goofier ones) is standing across the room, opposite the door, wearing a sombrero and rings a bell (the type that you ring at a hotel desk) when I walk in.

A Reason to Get HBO

http://grrm.livejournal.com/136965.html

http://grrm.livejournal.com/137285.html

HBO will be producing a series based on George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones (and subsequent novels in the epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire). The pilot was produced this past fall, and HBO has reportedly ordered nine more episodes. The series is currently slated for spring of 2011, so there's still have time to read the first four books (A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows) and the fifth one (A Dance with Dragons) if it's finished and released in time.

Get excited. Now if only production of a certain fantasy film could speed up, 2011 would be a really good year for on-screen fantasy.

Inadequate

Reading over my previous post. So much more to think about there, so much more to unpack.

Towards a Better Definition of Myth

While searching for job openings, I've been browsing the course offerings of English departments at various schools I think I might be interested in. In particular, I'm interested to see what kinds and how many (if any) electives departments offer, as I would very much like to continue teaching an sf&f course, or something similar, either by proposing and starting a new elective wherever I end up, or taking on a preexisting course.

One course I'm always happy to see offered is Mythology, or some such variation. I'd love to teach such a course, but even if I never get to, I'm happy about a school where kids can study myths and mythology in a dedicated class. What upsets me is the misleading, oversimplified, and imprecise definition of "myth" that I've seen in more than one course description:

"Myths are stories ancient people created to explain what they didn't understand."

Not really.

Here's what I imagine when I read that definition:

Ancient Man 1: Hmm... I wonder what that big, bright thing in the sky is?

Ancient Man 2: That's the sun.

Ancient Man 1: I know it's the sun. But what is the sun? How did it get there and what's it made of? Why does it move across the sky like that?

Ancient Man 2: Hmm.

Ancient Man 1: I know, right? I just don't understand. I'm not really sure there's any way of knowing from way down here.

Ancient Man 2: Oh, well. So what?

Ancient Man 1: Well, my kid was asking.

Ancient Man 2: Oh, well why don't you just make something up?

Ancient Man 1: Good idea! I can say it's a golden chariot pulled across the sky by a team of horses and a god named Apollo!


It's an okay definition for elementary school, but it really sounds to me more like a definition of fable (a story created to explain something). The crux of the issue is this: ancient man didn't know he didn't understand natural phenomena like the sun, or death, or earthquakes, or thunderstorms, or the inner workings of the human soul. Myths were how he understood these things, much in the way that science is how we now understand these things.

I mention science because the problematic definition is one that reeks of scientific egotism. It's a definition for a modern, scientifically educated American who likes feeling superior in intellect to countless preceding generations of humanity. ("Those poor ignorant fools!"). But it's utterly wrong to see myth as some infantile, ancient human predecessor to science, as if those pitiable ancients couldn't comprehend our science, so they had to settle for myth. On the contrary: they did not know myth as we know it. To them myth was as inevitable as the human impulse to wonder. That's what I mean when I say that myth is how they understood--it was not consciously constructed to fill a void of ignorance. It was their knowledge.

If one accepts such a conception of myth (I don't assume it's inevitable that you do), then something surprising happens: myth and science become quite closely related in the human psyche. They become analogous modes of understanding the universe. I love science. I love myths too. They each offer greater understanding and opportunity for wonder in their own ways. To me, an infinite, ever expanding universe is just as magical and marvelous as the notion of planets on musical spheres or a god driving a flaming chariot across the sky. On the other hand, myth is as ill-equipped to explain the atomic (and sub-atomic) nature of the material universe as science is to explain death.

I'm well aware that hard-core, religiously scientific thinkers will disagree with me on that last point--theirs is the view that there is nothing that science does not have the potential to explain. Who am I to say that they're wrong? Like the ancients, I cannot even perceive what I don't understand. But I will say this: on the day in the far-flung, mystical future when science becomes omniscient and explains all, it will not have replaced myth in our imaginations. It will have become one with it.