Blog Post 3

The closed system Dalton mentioned (scholars writing for other scholars, poets for other poets, etc.) reminded me of a favorite book, Camile Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn, which aims to communicate with a general rather than an academic audience. The subject is poetry, and the approach is critical. Incredibly, and best of all, Paglia’s prose is not only intelligible but pleasant to read. Oh, and insightful, too.
You can hear Paglia briefly discuss critical culture by following the links below.

Segment One

Seg 2

Seg 3

When I am not embittered and/or amused by the self-congratulatory and absurdly insignificant hamster wheel of institutionalized writing, reading, and talking about literature – the ‘discipline’—I remember through books like Paglia’s how much I like this stuff.

Oh, and the last poem she discusses? Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock.” So thank you, Ms. Paglia, for rescuing me from dark and futile musings.

And now for something completely different. I agree with Kevin that the tutorials have been most instructive. I found exploring Google scholar to be especially useful because I had not used the advanced features before. I was able to find several full-text PDF novels for my research paper by using this tool and an article I used for a pedagogy presentation as well.