FUSEblog

2009-09-21T22:25:00.000-05:00

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!

2009-09-15T00:53:00.001-05:00

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

2009-08-01T14:33:00.001-05:00

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

2009-07-28T14:37:00.005-05:00

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

2009-06-12T17:12:00.004-05:00

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

2009-06-05T14:48:00.000-05:00

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

2009-05-09T21:26:00.002-05:00

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.

NYTIMES article on the Kindle

2009-04-25T10:22:00.001-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/fashion/26kindle.html?_r=1&hpw

Creative writing opportunity

2009-04-16T10:08:00.001-05:00

The Department of English has created a new blog specifically for English majors and Minors that have been abroad.

It’s called Tales from the Road

Tales from the road is currently accepting submissions of creative writing relating to a “global” experience.

Did we mention that we are hosting a contest with a grand prize? All students that turn in submissions by May 6th will be entered into a contest to be judged for one of three prizes. The top literary submissions (as judged by our office) will receive a $50 gift card to the University of Minnesota book store. Two runner-up prizes will be given to second and third place submissions (this time its a $15 gift card to the University of Minnesota book store.)

You can find more information by visiting:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/capod001/talesfromtheroad/

Are you interested? You can find more information by visiting the website Tales from the Road Please send any questions concerning submission guidelines to englmaj@umn.edu with "Tales from the Road questions" in the subject line.

Is our way of life worth living?

2009-04-03T15:10:00.002-05:00

In his dialog with Phaedrus, Socrates reminds us of a story told from ancient Egypt:
Everything was good and grand in the world of the gods and the world of man. Men did what they did. Gods did what they did. And that was that. One day, Theuth (the god who invented numbers, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, dice and letters) approached Ammon (another god) after a particularly productive reflection with a concern of his. Ammon, he said, you know those humans sure look happy but let me tell you I got something for them that would make their lives much easier. You see, in all my wisdom of quantification I invented this little thing called letters. Of all the things I have invented, I think letters will help humans remember more, it'll let them write the day of the week, write down how much grain they have, etc.
Ammon took the letters from Theuth and looked at them a little bit and handed them back to Theuth with something short of amazement. You see, Ammon looked like he didn't give two shits about what Theuth was showing him. Well, this made Theuth pretty upset so Ammon proceeded to explain "Now you got it all backwards here Theuth. These letters are great and all but they won't help human memory, in fact they'll practically destroy it! Once these humans start trusting these letters to remember for them, their own natural memories and abilities will fall to pieces. This memory will make those that learn it more forgetful, the only thing you've done is invented something that will forever remind humans of how stupid they actually are. Instead of taking the time to learn and remember their experiences all they need to do is write them down and reread them without actually knowing them!*

Now why in the world would I start something off with that? Precisely because Socrates brings up a good point, mainly: What in the world is writing good for? As an English major I've been trained to spout a barrage of responses, ranging from the rhetorical to the ridiculous. Writing can help us capture a past that is slowly receding. Writing can be used in creative ways that are unique to itself, things that speech will never accomplish. And on and on. However, we still need to ask: in the end of the day, what is reading/writing? I think Socrates gives us a great answer: it is a technology for forgetting.

One important thing to remember is that in Socrates days the world was much smaller, and what constituted knowledge was often written down in a few books (even if a hundred is a few). Still, from his point of view, we could actually know all the knowledge that was out there (or at least his sheltered Greek oriented understanding of knowledge). And how, might we ask, does one go about knowing? For Socrates, unlike all of us studying English, learning means nothing short of memorizing and speaking.

So what does this have to do with English majors? Well one thing, we know where we stand. In a modern age we cannot store all of the information out there in our minds. Instead, we create books to remember for us, we create neural pathways outside of ourselves in the form of books. Those of us, like historians and literature scholars, then take it upon ourselves to become the collective memory makers of our modern culture. During any day to day experience, one could ask: What would my grand-father think of rocket ships? Well, we could get a pretty good idea of what he could think by going back and visiting what people wrote about rocket ships in the 1900's.

This is good and all, but we are not just in a modern age. Academics the world over are constantly talking about post-modern literature, post-modern politics, post-modern everything! And, I believe, we have to deal with the idea of post-modern reading. Mainly, in this digital age, we have to ask ourselves: as literary critics is our way of life worth living? Or, where do literary scholars, and their dependence on the book, fit into the post-modernizing world?

From the Kindle to Twitter, Digital poetics to spoken word, the new world of creative expression seems to be leaving us book loving persons stuck in history's closet. Our first instinct is to shout: "What are you talking about! The book isn't dead, you just aren't enlightened enough to realize how important it is!" The sad thing is whether we are right or not, a world is slowly developing ignoring our constant battle cry for the good old days of textual analysis under a lamp, underlining page after page of our favorite Faulkner novel.

So what, as understanding literary critics should we do? Should we burn down our nearest google database and hunt down all the staff at Amazon for their blasphemy to the every great novel? Or should we look at how our own sense of what knowledge is (i.e. textual knowledge) should be questioned (or at least pondered.)

I would say that this whole question of "is literary studies (in the traditional sense) dead?" is nothing more than a misunderstanding of how knowledge works. As Nicholas Carr makes clear in his brilliant article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" we aren't loosing our ability to read books, we are simply shifting the way we "read." Reading isn't analogous to reading a novel, reading includes all sorts of symbolic analysis, whether that deals with images, sounds, video or texts. All of these symbolic systems (such as images and sound) add up to our total comprehensive literacy or the way we are able to discern patterns among certain systems. If we embrace this idea of a literacy that includes multiple systems than we can come to an understanding and acceptance of the changing literary climate.

Just like Socrates lamented the rise of the literary culture, we are often quick to lament the fall of our beloved book based academia. However, we shouldn't be so quick to ask what we have to lose, but also the many things we have to gain in this current change from books to website and beyond.

Notes:
*An actual transcript of the dialog between Socrates and Phaedrus can be found in the dialogue entitled Phaedrus. A link is provided although I don't know how accurate it is: http://www.freeranger.com/chris/MM7.htm)

Nicholas Carr's article "Is Google Making Us Stupid" can be found by visiting The Atlantics website here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST!

2009-03-26T11:42:00.002-05:00

This Tuesday, March 31st come to Coffman 305 to view the classic film: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Movie starts at 6pm!

email fusemn@gmail.com with any questions!

Book Exchange!!

2009-03-26T11:41:00.000-05:00

FUSE is sponsoring a Book Exchange in Lind Hall 227. What, you may ask, is a book exchange? Simply put: Take a book, leave a book. Got any books you don't want anymore? Don't throw it away, put it in the book exchange box in Lind Hall 227 and check out the shelf in Lind Hall 226 for books that you might want in exchange (it's so literal!).

Revival

2009-02-25T16:36:00.001-06:00

FUSE has been revived and meets Tuesdays from 6-7 in Coffman Union on the third floor. If you are interested in having events, topics, or other items posted on the Blog please send them to fusemn@gmail.com.

89.3 The Current Presents, "Policy and a Pint: Breakthrough"

2007-10-03T23:24:00.000-05:00

[update]: In a fortunate coincidence, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, the authors who will be speaking at this event, are doing a week-long residence at the TPM Cafe Book Club. They'll be discussing their recent book Break Through. For those who don't know this website, an offshoot of Josh Marshall's popular political blog Talking Points Memo, it is basically a forum in which Marshall invites authors to discuss their books or their political ideas, and invites other experts to weigh in with comments or criticism. Both the featured authors and the outside critics are usually very intelligent, insightful analysts and the debate can be fascinated. In addition, any readers can share their views in the comments section of each post. If you have the time and inclination, check it out. The authors' first post is called "American Power: The Case for an Energetic New Progressive Politics."

Policy and a Pint : Breakthrough

General Event Information
Event Category:	89.3 The Current Presents:
Price:	$10 ($5 students)
* contact the Presenting Organization listed below for ticketing information
Dates and Times:	Tuesday, October 16; 5:30 pm
Artist/Group:	Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of “Breakthrough.”
Venue:	Varsity Theater
Address:	1308 4th Street SE
City:	Minneapolis
State:	MN
Zip Code:	55414
Country:	United States
Telephone:	(612) 604-0222
Email Address:	info@varsitytheater.org
Description
The Current and The Citizens League open the new season of Policy and a Pint with Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of “Breakthrough.” The two stirred up controversy a few years ago when they released an essay called “The Death of Environmentalism.” They argued that the old ways of talking about pollution and acid rain wouldn’t ever change how people go about their lives and that “environmentalism” had to die in order for real change to happen to protect our water, air and land. Their new book expands on their original idea. They believe controlling global warming won’t happen with more calls to end pollution; instead we need to come up with new models that take into account economics, job creation and people’s quality of life. Steve Seel will host the event. Doors will be at 5:30 and the program begins at 6:00. We’ll have books available for the audience to purchase. For more info: http://citizensleague.org/events/past/2007/10/policy_and_a_pi_7.php

Poetry on film: a review of I Want to Be a Pilot

2007-09-30T03:11:00.001-05:00

This evening, I saw the Manhattan Short Film Festival at the Oak Street Cinema. It comprised twelve 'finalist' films from across the globe (though the UK seemed over-represented with four films, and the US curiously underrepresented with only one underwhelming short), which were to be seen and voted on by audiences at 99 theaters throughout the world. It was an interesting concept, and I'm glad I went.

One film that was especially rewarding to me was I Want to Be a Pilot, a short from Kenya. Though the credits revealed that the story was fictional, and the characters were actors, it was almost documentary-like in its look at the tragic life of a child living in an infamous Kenyan slum. The camera work was shaky and the film sometimes grainy, yet the filmmaker managed to capture beauty in unexpected places--I remain haunted by the image of the main character, Omondi, picking through a dump accented by patches of delicate pastel, which the viewer soon realizes are the multicolored plastic bags used as "flying toilets" by the slum residents.

From a literary perspective, the film was interesting in that the only dialogue was the words of the title poem, read by Omondi. The full poem, written by Diego Quemada-Diez, is available at the film's website; I'll quote the opening stanzas below:

I Want To Be A Pilot

My name is Omondi
It means that when I was born
I woke up my mother
early in the morning.

I am twelve years old.
I live in Kibera
the biggest slum in East Africa.

My last meal
was on Sunday
today is Wednesday

I want to be a pilot
to fly very high,
far away from the ghetto

to a place
where kids have parents
that don't die of HIV
everyday

to a place far away
where guardians of orphan kids
cannot abuse us
everyday

to a place far away
where goats eat
things other than trash
to a place far away
where I am treated
as well as white people are.

I want to be a pilot
to wear a uniform
and fly very high

If I had read this poem merely as words on a page, I may not have liked it much: Omondi's story is tragic but grimly familiar; the language simple and repetitive; the poetic 'twist' perhaps a little heavy-handed and predictable. But, in the context of the film, the true poetry of the words is realized. The speaker's simplistic, repetitive language makes sense when delivered in Omondi's stilted, heavily-accented colonial English. The background noise of the village and the score of hymns punctuate the pauses in his rendition; near the end of the poem, all other noise falls out entirely to underscore the devastating revelation that Omondi is HIV-positive and his parents are lost to the scourge of AIDS, while the camera tilts up to follow a small plane soaring out of sight of the speaker's upturned eyes. Likewise, the images support the poem's narrative, and sometimes increase the depth of the poem's words: the image of a small group of the desperately hopeful gathered around a pair of charismatic, wildly-gesturing preachers fits perfectly with the speaker's desire to fly

to a place far away
where God just loves me
and churches are just

the mountains
the trees
the rivers

In short, this film demonstrated some of the ways in which poetry, sound, and film can work together to create a unique piece of art. If you can, seek out this 10-minute short--it will be worth your time, both as a student of film and poetry, and as a member of the world community.

Pat Smith
FUSE member

Test

2007-09-27T21:45:00.001-05:00

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