A Couple More ENGL 6884 Discussion Posts

Since that one incident with the bootlickers, the floodgates have been opened and I've relapsed into being as rude to strangers on Facebook as I feel like, which is very. For example, the other day I finally had enough of this jackass:

I'm sure the thread has been deleted. If he responded at all, he probably said something really original about me not being Christlike. But one can always hope that I managed to prompt some legitimate introspection about his sad life.

But on the plus side, my last two discussion posts for Creative Nonfiction Writing weren't swear-filled rants. So I can be composed and mature sometimes when I feel like it. For one, Jennifer wrote, "​I want to begin where the syllabus begins, with these words: What a strange world in which we find ourselves - isolated but connected, ordinary but extraordinary, temporary but permanent. If nothing else, the pandemic has forced us to live in the present moment because we simply cannot say for sure what the future might hold. While we know that art can only be made in the realm of pure presence, the grief that washes under all of our feet makes the creation of art difficult these days. I am often reminded of what Theodor Adorno said: 'There can be no poetry after Auschwitz.' Most artists would disagree - but I think we can all recognize in Adorno’s words that when faced with largescale trauma it is sometimes hard to see the relevance of art. And yet. What else can we do but sing even if the song is one of rage, dislocation or violence?

"I am asking everyone to think about whether their ability to create has been altered in the past year and if so how. I am also asking you to think about how, or even if, writing is important in these times - how or if it remains relevant. Should we write directly about the pandemic? At one point is it 'okay' to write about it? Can we write about something that we are living through and have no sense of distance? Or is it best to approach our grief through the side door of research or metaphor or fiction?

"And what about the fact that most of us are having trouble even focusing. How do we actually sit down and write?"

So I said,

See, it's not so much that I have a positive attitude as that I'm acutely aware of global suffering and how entitled Americans are. If it wasn't before, the rest of the world is now also acutely aware of how entitled Americans are.

The next discussion was organized by Kelsie and me, and we have to keep an eye on it and respond to posts until Thursday. Kelsie proposed an idea and I proposed some refinements and we settled on: "Think of a work of creative non-fiction (flash, essay, memoir, etc.) that has shaped you as a writer. What did you like about it? What stood out to you that was *different* from most of the genre and challenged the traditional ways of doing it? How do you try to emulate it as a writer?"

​So I said,

Maybe I sound kind of holier-than-thou in both of these posts. I can't help it. I'm just being honest about my perspectives on things. But I think I meant similes, not metaphors, so I've embarrassed myself yet again.

I turned in a little less than half of my essay last week, so as not to force my classmates to critique 28 pages at once. We will workshop it on Thursday. Jennifer didn't mean to make Kelsie and me turn in our essays the same week we were in charge of the discussion, but these things happen sometimes. My essay, by the way, is entitled "Things That Rhyme With 'Elise'", so anyone who knows me very well can guess who and what it's about.