So wait—you mean there's a FUTURE in English Studies?
I have had to ask myself that question several times over the years, starting from when I first declared it as my major to just now, moments after having put the finishing touches on my oeuvre to this point, an essay concerning the tragicomic nature of Samuel Beckett's Endgame. While the answer has occasionally oscillated in black moments of self-doubt or writer's block, I can affirm with great certainty that yes, Virginia—there is indeed a future in English Studies.
"Like what?" a friend of mine asked me once. "I thought you didn't want to teach because you hate kids."
"Well, first—I don't hate kids; I hate parents—and just because I major in English does not mean that I have to teach. I could be a dictionary editor; you know how I love new words but hate portmanteaus like 'chillax.' And don't you agree it's high time we officially recognized google as a verb?" I inquired, earnestly.
"A dictionary editor? That seems pretty dry to me."
"Well, discussing last quarter's 'numbers' seems pretty dry to me, and I can only bring myself to care as much I keep getting a paycheck." I retorted.
"Touché, sir."
As mentioned in my previous essay, The Universality and Intimacy of Writing and English Studies, language can be at once private and public. Sewn together by syntax, individual words can carry vastly different meanings, depending on what their neighbors are saying. To uncover those latent meanings and apply them to myself, the author, or the world at large; to sleuth my way through sentences: this is my passion. Sadly, pursuit of one's passions, though noble, is not necessarily a lucrative enterprise. That being the case, I will have to contextualize the pursuit into ways meaningful to people more than just myself. The skill set an English major attains over the course of his or her academic career does dovetail fairly well into the "Real World": strong communicative skills, keen attention to detail, and a sharp sense for the aesthetic are assets in almost any profession.
This should mean the future is wide open. But with the economy in its current state, I will have to play to my strengths other than literary analysis, such as technical writing, practical analysis, and organization. To wit, I have started investigating opportunities in the blog-writing sector. My love of technology, knowledge of online revenue streams such as SEO, PPC, and affiliate marketing, and the fact that most print media has grown obsolete, makes such a position an ideal fit for me. As much as I hate to say it, we are entering the book-less future of Fahrenheit 451 (albeit with much happier, brighter circumstances).
Between growing environmental concerns and ever-improving ways of disseminating information online, newspaper, magazine, and book publishing houses are becoming dying, unprofitable outfits. This necessarily means that the information they do publish becomes what's commercially viable instead of what's aesthetically pleasing. Granted, it's a ultimately a subjective judgment, but personally, I think the world could stand fewer Dan Browns and Clive Cusslers. I know it's elitism, and I'm OK with that.
What's an artist to do?
Thanks to the Internet, an artist can create, compile, and constantly publish—for free. While one does need to be wary of online copyright laws, he or she should embrace the ability to show the world his or her ability to conjure something beautiful, useful, or both without having to fall down the rabbit hole that is the publishing business. What's more is the speed at which you can publish. No sooner than when I click "PUBLISH POST" will this post—fraught with my words, my thoughts, and my ideas—be available everywhere in the world. Instant ubiquity—I like the sound of that.
In terms of immediate plans, I have to finish (read: start) a research essay about Seamus Heaney's poetry. Then, I'll probably get a sandwich and maybe an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Georgia State. Oh yeah—on Thursday, I have to get my emissions inspected in the morning, but I'm free after that.
Jazz Masters Saturday
Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
Madlib - Shades of Blue Note
Cinematic Orchestra - Man with the Movie Camera
Bill Frissell - History, Mystery
Herbie Hancock - Sunlight
Miles Davis - Workin' With the Miles Davis Quintet
John Coltrane - Love Supreme Suite
Cinematic Orchestra - Man with the Movie Camera
Bill Frissell - History, Mystery
Herbie Hancock - Sunlight
Miles Davis - Workin' With the Miles Davis Quintet
John Coltrane - Love Supreme Suite
The Struggle with Cold-Blooded Mythologies: Finding Morality in Modern Times
The following is a close reading of a poem by Yusef Komunyakaa (one of my favorite poets) entitled, "Woman, I Got the Blues," which you can read at http://nathanielturner.com/igotheblues.htm.
As adolescents enter adulthood, many of them start to question the truisms spoon-fed to them from their parents, teachers, ministers, and others in positions of power. Perhaps these inquiries arise following the initial breach of a social taboo, such as engaging in premarital relations with another person, trying drugs or alcohol for the first time, or breaking a minor law without censure. These queries occasionally result in the illumination of new truths, which in turn coerce one to live according to a moral code of his or her own creation instead of the code of the previous generation. To be sure, forging one’s own moral code is an arduous and frequently depressing task, so many turn to intoxicants such as music, sex, or narcotics to soothe their rattled minds. Yusef Komunyakaa, in a quest to tread a path to his own moral code, combines all three of these elements in his poem, "Woman, I Got the Blues," which originally appeared in his 1994 collection Neon Vernacular, winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In the poem, Komunyakaa's speaker struggles with how best to handle his baser desires during a modern age when religion-based morality has become passé, and in so doing, he rejects the past and the rules that accompany it before creating a new moral code of his own.
The poem’s title, “Woman, I Got the Blues,” immediately connotes music, beginning in the same way as many of the traditional blues songs of southern blacks from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Unlike the blues songs of the late 19th century, however, Komunyakaa’s song does not have a repeated refrain, yet like most blues songs, it does concern a man’s physical relationship with a woman. The speaker later pays homage to the great blues masters before him when he and his lover “slow-drag/to Little Willie John,” but he casts an eye toward the future of music when they “bebop” to Charlie Parker's jazz, a genre formed from the roots of blues. Later, they dance to “bloodfunk,” a genre borne from jazz and blues.
As mentioned earlier, “Woman, I Got the Blues,” concerns the speaker’s physical relationship with a woman, one whom he happens to meet while at the Museum of Modern Art. This museum, as opposed to a classical art or natural history museum, foreshadows the speaker’s abandonment of the past and his embrace of modernity and a new moral code. The speaker’s “sporting” is soon rewarded when their meeting quickly leads to a tryst wherein the speaker and the woman enjoy each other’s company “with a gentleness that would crack open/ripe fruit.” Somewhat resembling a refrain, a syncopated quatrain appears at the center of the poem wherein the speaker exclaims:
Sweet Mercy, I worship
The curvature of your ass.
I build an altar in my head.
I kiss your breasts & forget my name.
With this, the speaker rejects the old “faith healer” and embraces a new (pardon the pun) “rearligion”—well, he does not quite embrace it quite yet, for he then laments to his lover, “Woman, I got the blues,” recalling the poem’s title. Perhaps the baseness of the physical act of sex or maybe the ease with which he “forget[s] [his] name” and abandons his own past has brought shame to the speaker, who now struggles “with cold-blooded mythologies” as his shadow struggles with his lover’s on the living-room floor. A brilliant metaphor, “cold-blooded mythologies” refers both to the dominant organized religions, all of which were formed during ancient times, as well as to the evil acts carried out in the name of any of those religions, such as the Spanish Inquisition or the Crusades. By labeling them “mythologies,” the speaker implicitly rejects them for their spiritual value and instead views them the same way he may view the stories about Zeus or Gilgamesh, i.e. literature based on the oral traditions of an ancient culture.
Looking back to the first stanza, the speaker’s “floppy existential sky-blue hat” prefigures the internal dilemma of the fourth stanza. Existentialism, a philosophy that places more importance on human experience than human essence, has grown to become synonymous (somewhat unrightfully so) with the malaise of modern times. Living without belief of an afterlife can be a depressing existence, one certainly deserving of the blues. That the hat itself is “floppy” points to some ambivalence toward existentialism on the speaker’s part, however. He has not landed firmly on either side until the “stillness” in him and his lover plants him on the side of experience over essence.
This “stillness” formed at the “tip of a magenta mountain” connotes a moment of creation, much like a singularity, the moment of oneness just prior to the Big Bang. Just like the emergence of the Big Bang theory shook the foundation of the big three religions and creationist theory, so too does the speaker’s moment of singularity with his lover shake the foundation of the speaker’s former moral code, which appears symbolically as the moonlight shining on the speaker’s lover “like a rapist.” A challenging simile, Komunyakaa’s choice to liken the white moonlight to a rapist calls to mind stories of Zeus’s forceful seduction of mortal women from Greek mythology; it may also denote similar acts of violence taken out by white slave-owners on their female slaves.
Nevertheless, the moonlight only shines on the speaker’s lover. It does not overtake her in jealousy, as Zeus did Io, Europa, and a host of others. Those “cold-blooded mythologies” will not suppress the pair, but they will resonate within the two somewhat, for the breath of the speaker’s lover blooms into a “dewy flower stalk” from the moonlight shining upon her. Aside from its obvious reference to the moment of orgasm, the flower stalk represents the creation of that new moral code, borne from personal and present experience.
Depending on whom you ask, life without an afterlife can be a depressing existence because it discounts the individuality felt by most people. It can also be a liberating one, for the dismissal of commandments handed from heaven allows one to discover and try new things. Either way, uncertainty exists, so one must seek answers in the way of relationships with others as well as an appreciation of all things beautiful, regardless of whether they were created by God, Allah, Yahweh, or a Big Bang.
As adolescents enter adulthood, many of them start to question the truisms spoon-fed to them from their parents, teachers, ministers, and others in positions of power. Perhaps these inquiries arise following the initial breach of a social taboo, such as engaging in premarital relations with another person, trying drugs or alcohol for the first time, or breaking a minor law without censure. These queries occasionally result in the illumination of new truths, which in turn coerce one to live according to a moral code of his or her own creation instead of the code of the previous generation. To be sure, forging one’s own moral code is an arduous and frequently depressing task, so many turn to intoxicants such as music, sex, or narcotics to soothe their rattled minds. Yusef Komunyakaa, in a quest to tread a path to his own moral code, combines all three of these elements in his poem, "Woman, I Got the Blues," which originally appeared in his 1994 collection Neon Vernacular, winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In the poem, Komunyakaa's speaker struggles with how best to handle his baser desires during a modern age when religion-based morality has become passé, and in so doing, he rejects the past and the rules that accompany it before creating a new moral code of his own.
The poem’s title, “Woman, I Got the Blues,” immediately connotes music, beginning in the same way as many of the traditional blues songs of southern blacks from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Unlike the blues songs of the late 19th century, however, Komunyakaa’s song does not have a repeated refrain, yet like most blues songs, it does concern a man’s physical relationship with a woman. The speaker later pays homage to the great blues masters before him when he and his lover “slow-drag/to Little Willie John,” but he casts an eye toward the future of music when they “bebop” to Charlie Parker's jazz, a genre formed from the roots of blues. Later, they dance to “bloodfunk,” a genre borne from jazz and blues.
As mentioned earlier, “Woman, I Got the Blues,” concerns the speaker’s physical relationship with a woman, one whom he happens to meet while at the Museum of Modern Art. This museum, as opposed to a classical art or natural history museum, foreshadows the speaker’s abandonment of the past and his embrace of modernity and a new moral code. The speaker’s “sporting” is soon rewarded when their meeting quickly leads to a tryst wherein the speaker and the woman enjoy each other’s company “with a gentleness that would crack open/ripe fruit.” Somewhat resembling a refrain, a syncopated quatrain appears at the center of the poem wherein the speaker exclaims:
Sweet Mercy, I worship
The curvature of your ass.
I build an altar in my head.
I kiss your breasts & forget my name.
With this, the speaker rejects the old “faith healer” and embraces a new (pardon the pun) “rearligion”—well, he does not quite embrace it quite yet, for he then laments to his lover, “Woman, I got the blues,” recalling the poem’s title. Perhaps the baseness of the physical act of sex or maybe the ease with which he “forget[s] [his] name” and abandons his own past has brought shame to the speaker, who now struggles “with cold-blooded mythologies” as his shadow struggles with his lover’s on the living-room floor. A brilliant metaphor, “cold-blooded mythologies” refers both to the dominant organized religions, all of which were formed during ancient times, as well as to the evil acts carried out in the name of any of those religions, such as the Spanish Inquisition or the Crusades. By labeling them “mythologies,” the speaker implicitly rejects them for their spiritual value and instead views them the same way he may view the stories about Zeus or Gilgamesh, i.e. literature based on the oral traditions of an ancient culture.
Looking back to the first stanza, the speaker’s “floppy existential sky-blue hat” prefigures the internal dilemma of the fourth stanza. Existentialism, a philosophy that places more importance on human experience than human essence, has grown to become synonymous (somewhat unrightfully so) with the malaise of modern times. Living without belief of an afterlife can be a depressing existence, one certainly deserving of the blues. That the hat itself is “floppy” points to some ambivalence toward existentialism on the speaker’s part, however. He has not landed firmly on either side until the “stillness” in him and his lover plants him on the side of experience over essence.
This “stillness” formed at the “tip of a magenta mountain” connotes a moment of creation, much like a singularity, the moment of oneness just prior to the Big Bang. Just like the emergence of the Big Bang theory shook the foundation of the big three religions and creationist theory, so too does the speaker’s moment of singularity with his lover shake the foundation of the speaker’s former moral code, which appears symbolically as the moonlight shining on the speaker’s lover “like a rapist.” A challenging simile, Komunyakaa’s choice to liken the white moonlight to a rapist calls to mind stories of Zeus’s forceful seduction of mortal women from Greek mythology; it may also denote similar acts of violence taken out by white slave-owners on their female slaves.
Nevertheless, the moonlight only shines on the speaker’s lover. It does not overtake her in jealousy, as Zeus did Io, Europa, and a host of others. Those “cold-blooded mythologies” will not suppress the pair, but they will resonate within the two somewhat, for the breath of the speaker’s lover blooms into a “dewy flower stalk” from the moonlight shining upon her. Aside from its obvious reference to the moment of orgasm, the flower stalk represents the creation of that new moral code, borne from personal and present experience.
Depending on whom you ask, life without an afterlife can be a depressing existence because it discounts the individuality felt by most people. It can also be a liberating one, for the dismissal of commandments handed from heaven allows one to discover and try new things. Either way, uncertainty exists, so one must seek answers in the way of relationships with others as well as an appreciation of all things beautiful, regardless of whether they were created by God, Allah, Yahweh, or a Big Bang.
The Universality and Intimacy of Writing and English Studies
My love affair with English language and the written word germinated humbly in elementary school before blossoming into a full-blown obsession in high school, wilting somewhat during my early twenties, and returning to full bloom in my final year of college. Immediate plans for post-graduate studies remain murky for now, but they will assuredly contain graduate-level studies in creative writing at some to-be-determined university. When asked why I would choose English as my choice of study, I can only look to what others have said before me for guidance. Perhaps Thoreau stated it best when he declared, “a written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself.” Indeed, the catholic nature and intimacy of writing and literature studies are what drove me toward the discipline.
To understand why I chose English as my major, it helps to trace my experience with the written language from its origins. I learned to read in between naptimes and popsicle-stick projects in my first year of elementary school. Each week, we would learn about a new letter of the alphabet, and the teacher would underscore the lesson with one of the aforementioned popsicle-stick projects or some type of construction-paper creation, which had to show items beginning with the letter of the week. This proved to be an effective teaching method because I had no problems learning to read and excelled among my peers. I thus spent much of my elementary school years wrapped up in Hardy Boys mysteries, the surrealist settings of Roald Dahl, and Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes, a wonderful comic strip in which a precocious and imaginative six-year-old chews on ideas as big and varied as environmentalism, politics, and religion. While I enjoyed the Hardy Boys mysteries at the time, Calvin & Hobbes deeply impressed me in many ways that Frank and Joe never could. The strips taught me to challenge authority, to play by own rules, and above all else, to dream.
In second grade, the curriculum required that all students keep a journal or log in which they were to record our responses to teacher-given prompts. Although most of my responses were accurate and directly addressed the teacher’s prompt, I occasionally wrote replies more fanciful than truthful. One such story involved the family sightseeing the country: we started our journey in Georgia; headed northward to Rhode Island; then shot west to Wyoming before stopping off in California. Fortunately, we got home in time for school on Monday, having crisscrossed the continent in a matter of three days. In writing such fiction, I could turn myself into a hero, a superstar, or anyone other than a second-grader stuck inside in May. Thus, my love for writing was born.
During the summers between school years, my parents often shipped me down the river to Fairhope, Alabama, a suburb of Mobile, to spend time with my grandparents. When the highlights of one’s day become trips to Wal-Mart, saying the rosary, and attending daily Mass, passing the hours of the day as a youngster can be quite difficult. Fortunately, my grandparents also enjoyed a rousing game of Scrabble, which, along with the mastery of new and unusual (and many times unusable) words, imbues many of my memories of those summertime sojourns. I do not play as often as I have in the past, but I still love Scrabble and owe at least some portion of the breadth of my vocabulary to the game.
When I entered high school, I was unsure of what I would want to study after I left it. By the end of my eleventh grade year, however, I was certain that I would pursue a degree in English once I reached college. My ninth-grade English instructor was tough on her students, but I benefited from her strictness. I attained a perfect score on my first semester exam, which dealt exclusively with the rules of grammar. The teacher had not accounted for such an occurrence, so she had to pull me aside during class one day to inform me that although the grade sheet would show 99, in reality I had scored a 100. Having such a keen eye for the technical aspects of writing makes editing and proofreading my work easier, and is inarguably my greatest strength in English studies.
During my junior year of high school, I wrote an essay concerning the death of an aunt which my teacher stated was the “best piece of writing [he] had ever read from a student” at my high school. Hearing my abilities so extolled heightened my interest in writing, and so I started writing poems, short stories, and autobiographical prose all the time, neglecting other frivolities like homework, girlfriends, and extracurricular activities. During this time, I wrote roughly thirty-five poems, twenty prose pieces, and ten short stories. While I am proud to have put forth so much effort, I am not necessarily proud of the output of that effort. The prose of my teenage years is slapdash and rambling; the poetry is fragmentary, needlessly grandiose, and too romantic; and my short stories were feeble attempts at humor the comedy of which has not withstood the test of time.
Having declared English studies as my major from the start, I struggled to stay focused on my studies when I first entered college, a condition that I largely attribute to my need to work full-time in order to keep a roof over my head and food on my plate. As a result, my efforts at writing creatively waned, and I eventually settled into a rut of drafting support email messages to customers and little else. After a few years of trying my hand at concurrently attending college and working full-time, I decided to take a break from school, and I stopped writing and reading literature completely. Once a couple years had gone by, I returned to school this past summer with an invigorated sense of purpose. I started reading for pleasure again, and after a great while, I have started writing creatively again, focusing mainly on poetry at first before delving back into prose.
I have finally realized that in order to become a better writer, I must read. Previously, I read only when necessary from the required texts, conjuring the images and allusions in my own writing solely from my experiences and those required texts. I know now that like any other artist, I must look to all those individuals who have come before me in order to gain a better understanding of what makes technically sound writing creatively brilliant. I must read the greats along with what the critics of their time said about them. I must absorb everything I can before I will be able to wring something beautiful out of my own head. I must grasp the universality of the human condition before I can write intimately about it. To be sure, this is a difficult, daunting, and unending task, but it will be well worth the effort. Not only will I gain greater insight, I will leave my own mark on the literary world and thus become a part of the process for future writers.
To understand why I chose English as my major, it helps to trace my experience with the written language from its origins. I learned to read in between naptimes and popsicle-stick projects in my first year of elementary school. Each week, we would learn about a new letter of the alphabet, and the teacher would underscore the lesson with one of the aforementioned popsicle-stick projects or some type of construction-paper creation, which had to show items beginning with the letter of the week. This proved to be an effective teaching method because I had no problems learning to read and excelled among my peers. I thus spent much of my elementary school years wrapped up in Hardy Boys mysteries, the surrealist settings of Roald Dahl, and Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes, a wonderful comic strip in which a precocious and imaginative six-year-old chews on ideas as big and varied as environmentalism, politics, and religion. While I enjoyed the Hardy Boys mysteries at the time, Calvin & Hobbes deeply impressed me in many ways that Frank and Joe never could. The strips taught me to challenge authority, to play by own rules, and above all else, to dream.
In second grade, the curriculum required that all students keep a journal or log in which they were to record our responses to teacher-given prompts. Although most of my responses were accurate and directly addressed the teacher’s prompt, I occasionally wrote replies more fanciful than truthful. One such story involved the family sightseeing the country: we started our journey in Georgia; headed northward to Rhode Island; then shot west to Wyoming before stopping off in California. Fortunately, we got home in time for school on Monday, having crisscrossed the continent in a matter of three days. In writing such fiction, I could turn myself into a hero, a superstar, or anyone other than a second-grader stuck inside in May. Thus, my love for writing was born.
During the summers between school years, my parents often shipped me down the river to Fairhope, Alabama, a suburb of Mobile, to spend time with my grandparents. When the highlights of one’s day become trips to Wal-Mart, saying the rosary, and attending daily Mass, passing the hours of the day as a youngster can be quite difficult. Fortunately, my grandparents also enjoyed a rousing game of Scrabble, which, along with the mastery of new and unusual (and many times unusable) words, imbues many of my memories of those summertime sojourns. I do not play as often as I have in the past, but I still love Scrabble and owe at least some portion of the breadth of my vocabulary to the game.
When I entered high school, I was unsure of what I would want to study after I left it. By the end of my eleventh grade year, however, I was certain that I would pursue a degree in English once I reached college. My ninth-grade English instructor was tough on her students, but I benefited from her strictness. I attained a perfect score on my first semester exam, which dealt exclusively with the rules of grammar. The teacher had not accounted for such an occurrence, so she had to pull me aside during class one day to inform me that although the grade sheet would show 99, in reality I had scored a 100. Having such a keen eye for the technical aspects of writing makes editing and proofreading my work easier, and is inarguably my greatest strength in English studies.
During my junior year of high school, I wrote an essay concerning the death of an aunt which my teacher stated was the “best piece of writing [he] had ever read from a student” at my high school. Hearing my abilities so extolled heightened my interest in writing, and so I started writing poems, short stories, and autobiographical prose all the time, neglecting other frivolities like homework, girlfriends, and extracurricular activities. During this time, I wrote roughly thirty-five poems, twenty prose pieces, and ten short stories. While I am proud to have put forth so much effort, I am not necessarily proud of the output of that effort. The prose of my teenage years is slapdash and rambling; the poetry is fragmentary, needlessly grandiose, and too romantic; and my short stories were feeble attempts at humor the comedy of which has not withstood the test of time.
Having declared English studies as my major from the start, I struggled to stay focused on my studies when I first entered college, a condition that I largely attribute to my need to work full-time in order to keep a roof over my head and food on my plate. As a result, my efforts at writing creatively waned, and I eventually settled into a rut of drafting support email messages to customers and little else. After a few years of trying my hand at concurrently attending college and working full-time, I decided to take a break from school, and I stopped writing and reading literature completely. Once a couple years had gone by, I returned to school this past summer with an invigorated sense of purpose. I started reading for pleasure again, and after a great while, I have started writing creatively again, focusing mainly on poetry at first before delving back into prose.
I have finally realized that in order to become a better writer, I must read. Previously, I read only when necessary from the required texts, conjuring the images and allusions in my own writing solely from my experiences and those required texts. I know now that like any other artist, I must look to all those individuals who have come before me in order to gain a better understanding of what makes technically sound writing creatively brilliant. I must read the greats along with what the critics of their time said about them. I must absorb everything I can before I will be able to wring something beautiful out of my own head. I must grasp the universality of the human condition before I can write intimately about it. To be sure, this is a difficult, daunting, and unending task, but it will be well worth the effort. Not only will I gain greater insight, I will leave my own mark on the literary world and thus become a part of the process for future writers.
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