Proem Three
Still no Interwebs!
The sad Boulder laments -- bird
unable to tweet.
Still no Interwebs!
The sad Boulder laments -- bird
unable to tweet.
Monday saw our class' journey into prose, and an arduous journey it was indeed. We spent a peaceful morning writing, warming up to the haibun by composing waka to send to our parents and friends on postcards. Once the postcards were addressed and ready to go, it was time to return to the haibun. We journeyed to the computer lab to type and post haibun, and 
printed them out for peer workshop later in the afternoon. Then, it was time for lunch.
We've been talking a lot about Robert Bly's theory of the leap, and about the great power held in the juxtaposition of images, especially images and ideas that are, in some sense, opposite to each other. The afternoon was, in some sense, an illustration of this, as we came back from our delicious lunch of fried chicken, green beans, potatoes, and ice cream from the newly-repaired ice cream machine to find a disturbance in the classroom (and in the force). Thankfully, the students managed to rally together and handled the situation with the kind of maturity and grace rare in people twice their age. They're an amazing and impressive group, that's for sure.
We spent most of the afternoon workshopping haibun in pairs, and then moved from poetry to prose with our study of another traditional Japanese form: the zuihitsu. The zuihitsu, or miscellany, is a bit like a tenth century version of a blog: it is a journal, but written for an audience: it's meant to be read, and not just by the writer. The term translates loosely as "following the brush," and is meant to indicate the kind of associative writing associated, in the West, with free-writing. We read several selections from Sei Shonagon's witty, wry, and remarkably relavent Makura no Soshi, or The Pillow Book, a zuihitsu completed in 1002 which describes court life in the Heian period. From their examination of this text, the students determined correctly that the zuihitsu typically contains three basic types of prose:
printed them out for peer workshop later in the afternoon. Then, it was time for lunch.We've been talking a lot about Robert Bly's theory of the leap, and about the great power held in the juxtaposition of images, especially images and ideas that are, in some sense, opposite to each other. The afternoon was, in some sense, an illustration of this, as we came back from our delicious lunch of fried chicken, green beans, potatoes, and ice cream from the newly-repaired ice cream machine to find a disturbance in the classroom (and in the force). Thankfully, the students managed to rally together and handled the situation with the kind of maturity and grace rare in people twice their age. They're an amazing and impressive group, that's for sure.
We spent most of the afternoon workshopping haibun in pairs, and then moved from poetry to prose with our study of another traditional Japanese form: the zuihitsu. The zuihitsu, or miscellany, is a bit like a tenth century version of a blog: it is a journal, but written for an audience: it's meant to be read, and not just by the writer. The term translates loosely as "following the brush," and is meant to indicate the kind of associative writing associated, in the West, with free-writing. We read several selections from Sei Shonagon's witty, wry, and remarkably relavent Makura no Soshi, or The Pillow Book, a zuihitsu completed in 1002 which describes court life in the Heian period. From their examination of this text, the students determined correctly that the zuihitsu typically contains three basic types of prose:
- Random reminiscences and narrative
- Observations, examinations, and social commentary
- Literary lists
- Beward of slushies -- they might be compsed of ground chuck
- Don't shoot panda bears
- Don't leave VAMPY campers and TAs alone with babies
- When more than three people participate in Freeze Frame, the real fun begins
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