Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Still Groovin' on the Oulipian


Still have papers to grade but am posting again. The art is from a collage I made, an ATC, artist's trading card. I make them and keep some and trade some.

Ran into a friend from grad school who is applying for MFA programs. If he gets in - I'm sure he will! - I will know yet another person in an MFA program. HOWEVER, I know what oulipian means now, so I'm still, you know, aware.. I think I will start using it incorrectly..

Classes went well I thought. But they haven't turned their first papers in yet, so we all still like each other. It's when they have to start writing papers and getting comments on them and talking to each other about their writing and not just having discussions on the readings that things get a little more ... something.

Read this the other day, from a site I think is funny... THE TROUBLE WITH ACADEMIC PROSE:

While we waste our time fighting over ideological conformity in the scholarly world, horrible writing remains a far more important problem. For all their differences, most right-wing scholars and most left-wing scholars share a common allegiance to a cult of obscurity. Left, right and center all hide behind the idea that unintelligible prose indicates a sophisticated mind. The politically correct and the politically incorrect come together in the violence they commit against the English language.

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