Requiescat in Pacem

William Sloane Coffin was “the conscience of the country,” says Cora Weiss, peace activist. “He questioned authority before that phrase came into vogue.” In an interview with NPR in 1994, Rev. Coffin said,

Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world. If your heart is full of hope you can be persistent even if you are not optimistic. I keep the faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing does the evidence have any chance of changing.

Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., civil activist who opposed nuclear arms, poverty, anti-Semitism and championed civil rights, died on April 12, 2006 at age 81

Appearance as Text

When does size matter?

Appearance as Text

What do we read in Cindy Jackson's images? Is that the same as or different from what she intends us to read?

Appearance as Text

What do we read in Mr. Universe's text?

Trivia

On Wednesday (tomorrow) at two minutes and three seconds
after 1:00 in the morning, it will be
01:02:03 04-05-06.
This will never happen again in our lifetimes!

Poem for a Spring Friday

English 112-55 Class Poem
03-31-06

The spirits of trees leap in green promise
yet the fright of being sky-high
impedes the kite’s flight. The sin of the unkept pledge
weighs down a soul like the burden of tiredness.
Seasick boats in the thunderous ocean,
our hearts beat in sympathy for the hurt
when some days, the dragon wins.
The written word holds feeling
despite my creativity’s fleeing.
In my neverending education,
prismlike, I redirect my light
till I am ready to give the world all of me.
sunbeams and the song of the robin
free my spirit. The clear air of my potential
lifts me in anticipation and I soar
expecting delight
and finding
spring.

The Bridge of Sighs

"The Unsayable Said" and responses to poetry

Donald Hall, in The Unsayable Said, says, "Poetry is not talk. It sounds like talk...but poetry is talk altered into art, speech slowed down and attended to, words arranged for the reader who contracts to read them for their whole heft of association and noise...Reading with care, so that a wholeness of language engages a wholeness of reading body and mind, we absorb poetry not with our eyes only nor with our ears at a reading. We read with our mouths that chew on vowel and consonant; we read with our limbed muscles that enact the dance of the poem's rhythm; we read alert to history and the context of words."
What images or lines in the poems we read in class support Hall's concept that poetry demands more of a response from us than merely mind or eyes can give?
ProfC

Orwell and Language

"The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose...the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse."
George Orwell expressed these thoughts sixty years ago in "Politics and the English Language." To what extent do his words apply today? Also, in trying to avoid your own essays reading like his "prefabricated henhouse," how helpful do you find the questions he poses and the rules for writing he suggests in his essay?
ProfC

Langer and You

Please post a reflection on one way in which a concept in Suzanne Langer's "The Cultural Importance of Art" reflects, enlightens, or contradicts your own experience. Refer directly to the text, and use a specific reference to your life.

All but the first person to post should comment on one other student's post.

Have fun!
ProfC

FYI: links to "art-icles" and related sites

http://www.alternativemuseum.org/
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm
http://www.southernct.edu/~hochman/Graffitilegend.htm
http://www.southernct.edu/~hochman/Prisongoodforwriting.htm
http://www.southernct.edu/~hochman/Videogamemusicians
http://www.southernct.edu/~hochman/WLAinterviewCHE
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1559.htm
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1841.htm
http://www.southernct.edu/~hochman/Powerofimagery.htm