Hello FUSE world:

After deliberating on the notecards, comments, and emails I've received about meetings times for the Fellowship, I've decided that Thursdays at 6pm are the best time for our weekly meetings. They will run from 6-7:30 in Coffman 326, but feel free to come late or leave early if you have to.

However--- I wasn't able to reserve a Thursday Coffman room until next week. That means our meeting for this week is still scheduled for Tuesday. It will be the last Tuesday Coffman FUSE meeting, at 6pm tomorrow in Coffman 326. We will discuss Banned Books Week (which is next week) and set up a FUSE Coffee Hour.

If you can't make Thursday meetings, there are still ways to be involved with the club. Keep tuned to find out when FUSE Coffee Hour will be held, in addition to various special events throughout the semester.

You can also interact with the facebook: www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/FUSE-Fellowship-of-Undergraduate-Students-in-English/111653988825
and the email: fusemn@gmail.com

So that's a meeting tomorrow (Tuesday 9/22) in Coffman at 6pm in 326, and then subsequent meetings Thursdays at 6pm. Invite your friends!

-Max

PS: Check out the ALA's website on Banned Books Week. I was surprised to find how often books are still being challenged and banned in public schools and libraries. http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/index.cfm

Preliminary FUSE meeting tomorrow!

Tomorrow (tuesday) we will be holding a preliminary meeting of the Fellowship of Undergraduate Students in English at 6:00 pm. It will be held in Coffman 326, the last conference room on the southwest corner of the third floor. Come anytime from 6:00-7:30. We'll spent our time talking about the purpose of the club and future events and collaborations we hope to sponsor. FUSE is going to be whatever you the members want it to be, so feel free to show up with ideas and opinions.

At this meeting the officers will take a poll to decide if we should change the meeting time or day. If you can't make this meeting time, feel free to respond to this email and let us know a better day/time. Because we can't obviously accomodate every interested English majors' evening schedule, we'll also discuss setting up an supplementary coffee shop hour each week.

So that's tomorrow, Tuesday, in Coffman 326 at 6 pm. Hope to see many of you there!


Max Schmetterer, president of FUSE

New FB page

Hey guys. In addition to a FUSE Facebook group, I've created a "fan page" for our club:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/FUSE-Fellowship-of-Undergraduate-Students-in-English/111653988825

The nice thing about fan pages is that instead of having to message everyone with an update about an event or meeting, we can post ads directly onto newsfeeds with information. "Become a fan" and invite any of your English major friends!

-Max

Blogs English majors might like

The internet thrives on geek culture. We know this. However, internet culture is usually associated with science and technology. There are some awesome sites for I.T. geeks out there--slashdot, thinkgeek, and xkcd come to mind. And scifi nuts always have wizard, ign, and wookieepedia.

But what's out there for us grammar geeks? Here are few time-waster blogs that an English major would enjoy:

www.passiveaggressivenotes.com

The title sums this up pretty well-- a blog of real life notes seeping with passive aggression. It's a great display of how written language is often used as confrontation avoidance. And some of these notes are funny as hell.

www.apostropheabuse.com

If you're grammar nerd and need to rage hardcore, just spend a few seconds on this blog. I try not lose faith in humanity when I see the hundred's of misused apostrophes cataloged.

www.unnecessaryquotes.com

Another anger-inducer for grammar police. Apparently a "large" population of English speakers seem to think that quotation marks are emphatic markers. Instead of using, you know-- bold font.

www.contrariwise.org

This is a blog of literary tattoos. It takes a devoted kind of literary geek to tattoo oneself with a favorite line of prose or verse, but you'd be surprised how popular these are becoming. For fun, try to spot all the "so it goes" tattoos in honor of Mr. Vonnegut.

That's all I have for now--feel free to comment with your own geeky English major blogs!

-Max

The Weekly Meta-Reader

Once again I am reviewing a book from Tarpaulin Sky. I received Figures for a Darkroom Voice earlier this week in the mail. As I opened the book I realized that it is a jeremiad composed in verse. Noah Eli Gordon and Joshua Marie Wilkinson set out to explain two lines of verse:

When the last mirage
evaporates, I will be
the sole proprietor of this voice
and all its rusted machinery.

-- John Yau

We are leavened in the atmosphere. Figures for a darkroom voice.
Bodies sketched in silt.

--Eric Baus

Yet instead of answering these two verses with straight forward remarks, Gordon and Wilkinson answer with their own riddles of imagery and verse. The images they create are perplexingly beautiful. In the end I would have to say this is a book for people who read poetry. It takes a vivid imagination to construct Figures for a Darkroom Voice into something wonderful (so basically if you are reading this blog you should go pick up a copy.)

You can also view a youtube clip of Joshua Marie Wilkinson and Noah Eli Gordon reading excerpts curtsy of The Continental Review.

The Weekly Meta-Reader

If you haven't yet heard of Tarpaulin Sky, you really need to get on the ball. I don't think I can explain what Tarpaulin Sky is better than what I found on their website:

Founded in 2002 as an online literary journal, Tarpaulin Sky took the form of 12.5 internet issues (see the archive) before its first paper edition in November 2007. The magazine continues to publish new work both online and in print, often curated by guest-editors.

Tarpaulin Sky focuses on cross-genre / trans-genre / hybrid forms as well as innovative poetry and prose. The journal emphasizes experiments with language and form, but holds no allegiance to any one style or school or network of writers (rather, we try to avoid some of the defects associated with dipping too often into the same literary gene pool, and the diversity of our contributors is evidence of our eclectic interests—eg., John Yau, Matthea Harvey, Juliana Spahr, Brian Evenson, Dodie Bellamy, Brian Henry, Brenda Iijima, Rebecca Brown, Laura Mullen, Bill Luoma, Chris Abani, Douglas A. Martin, Laird Hunt, Eleni Sikelianos, Bin Ramke, Ethan Paquin, Michelle Naka Pierce, Renee Gladman, et al). Several of our past contributors were first published in our magazine; many had published only a few times before; and other Tarpaulin Sky contributors have published numerous books and received numerous awards (the Glatstein Award, Fence Books Alberta Prize, Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, Slope Editions Book Prize, Sawtooth Poetry Prize, National Poetry Series, Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Whiting Award, Iowa Poetry Prize, Field Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, to name a dozen and leave out more) along with grants and fellowships from the likes of NYFA, the MacDowell Colony, the Camargo Foundation, the Karolyi Foundation, and the NEA.

Tarpaulin Sky is an established force in the underground of contemporary American poetry. If nothing else can be said about the founder, Christian Peet, he has set the mold for poetry in the age of the internet. Peet has turned his literary journal into a powerhouse of a press pouring out trade paperbacks and hand crafted books with an quality that you can only find with small publishers.

This past week I found in Wilson Library a copy of The Pictures by Max Winter. The first thing I couldn't help but notice when I grabbed the book off the shelf is that it looks and feels like it is a part of the Pocket Poets Series. The soft black and white cover instantly rushed memories and feelings of nostalgia. And then it hit me when I opened up to the first page, this is a complete series of poems. The first half of the book, entitled Still, paints a series of strong cerebral paintings. The second half is pure cinema.

There are two subjects and Winter cover every angle. As with many current chapbooks, there is a common unifying theme; however unlike most, the subject never gets stale. Each poem is its own poem, and the book flows from page one to the finale.

Max Winter's The Pictures is shiny example of what every cerebral artist should strive to become.

So do yourself a favor; check out both Tarpaulin Sky and Max Winter

FUSE 2009-2010 officers

Hey there Fusefolk! I’m Max Schmetterer, your 2009-2010 president. I just wanted to introduce myself to those who don’t know me. I’ll be a fourth year next year, English major and CSCL minor. We have three other officers on board for next year:


Sam Derleth, PR and communications
Jessica Orton, event coordinator
Austin Moore, meeting manager

What is FUSE? The Fellowship of Undergraduate students is a student group that serves as an informal meeting place and refuge for all English majors, minors, and prospective students. It’s a club for anybody who’s ever been asked, “what the heck are you going to do with a B.A. in English?” It’s a club for anyone with an uncle who doesn’t understand why you “spend all your time reading poems.” It’s a club for the Milton obsessed, the Brontë crazed, and the Vonnegut starved. It’s for the freshman who doesn’t know which classes to take, and the senior working on job applications. It’s okay to be a literary dork at FUSE. In fact—we welcome it.
Membership equals showing up, and we welcome in new attendees anytime during the year. FUSE will also sponsor events like movie nights and coffee hours, so watch out for announcements throughout the year.

If you’d like to get on the email list for FUSE, send an email to mnfuse@gmail.com

This blog serves as both an announcement place for the club and a supplement for all things English majory. You may see book reviews, articles from the literary world, or announcements about local events in the twin cities. Make sure to check back in the summer— we’re hoping to schedule a few events in July and August.

Good luck with finals everybody,

Max Schmetterer


PS: Make sure to check out shootingstaronline.org, a new online literary journal set up by Sam.