Well, I'm not dead.
It's amazing how the last few weeks of vacation, no matter how well-remembered and documented, have been relegated to a kind of dreamlike blurriness: no time seems to have elapsed. We all come back from winter break and school is still implacably there. And I still need to clean my apartment before I am crushed to death under the weight of falling literature. It might be an appropriate end, but I'd still really mind.
Classes started here on Monday. I am TA'ing this semester for a course called Odysseys: Ancient and Modern Constructions of Nostalgia that involves the Iliad, the Odyssey, James Joyce's Ulysses, Derek Walcott's Omeros, and the films The Fast Runner, Chunhyang, Contempt, Toto the Hero, Kings and Queen, and After Life. From the two classes that have met so far, I think it's going to be fantastic. There's been music. There will be more. My duties mostly involve showing films, running sections, and the occasional lecture; it's all part of my cunning plan to audit the course while still fulfilling my teaching requirements. I've been given formal permission to introduce Seamus Heaney's Station Island in the second half of the course; and next Wednesday, I'm lecturing on Book 9 of the Iliad and The Fast Runner. I should write that soon.
In writing news: nominations for the 2006 Rhysling Awards are now open until February 15. You must be a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association to make nominations or vote on the Rhyslings, but memberships are only $18 a year and you get all sorts of cool poetry in the mail. (I have no poems in the current issue, but Postcards from the Province of Hyphens was very favorably reviewed by JoSelle Vanderhooft, whose fiery and Midwestern "Joan" is worth reading.) Go forth and nominate. I must pick up my photographs from Sunday and read some Homeric epic. It's poetry; it counts . . .
It's amazing how the last few weeks of vacation, no matter how well-remembered and documented, have been relegated to a kind of dreamlike blurriness: no time seems to have elapsed. We all come back from winter break and school is still implacably there. And I still need to clean my apartment before I am crushed to death under the weight of falling literature. It might be an appropriate end, but I'd still really mind.
Classes started here on Monday. I am TA'ing this semester for a course called Odysseys: Ancient and Modern Constructions of Nostalgia that involves the Iliad, the Odyssey, James Joyce's Ulysses, Derek Walcott's Omeros, and the films The Fast Runner, Chunhyang, Contempt, Toto the Hero, Kings and Queen, and After Life. From the two classes that have met so far, I think it's going to be fantastic. There's been music. There will be more. My duties mostly involve showing films, running sections, and the occasional lecture; it's all part of my cunning plan to audit the course while still fulfilling my teaching requirements. I've been given formal permission to introduce Seamus Heaney's Station Island in the second half of the course; and next Wednesday, I'm lecturing on Book 9 of the Iliad and The Fast Runner. I should write that soon.
In writing news: nominations for the 2006 Rhysling Awards are now open until February 15. You must be a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association to make nominations or vote on the Rhyslings, but memberships are only $18 a year and you get all sorts of cool poetry in the mail. (I have no poems in the current issue, but Postcards from the Province of Hyphens was very favorably reviewed by JoSelle Vanderhooft, whose fiery and Midwestern "Joan" is worth reading.) Go forth and nominate. I must pick up my photographs from Sunday and read some Homeric epic. It's poetry; it counts . . .
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