Spinning Jannie: Anne Sexton was indeed a pretty poet but very wise under all that beauty

Workers' Compensation

Jannie M. Dresser has completed a manuscript tentatively titled Workers' Compensation: Poems of Labor & the Working Life. Written over 40 years of holding jobs, having a career, freelancing and being a part-time teacher, the book tackles what work is in the tradition of poet Philip Levine, who taught at Jannie's alma mater, California State University Fresno. Unfortunately, Jannie was too scared when she was a young woman at Fresno State in the early 1970s to take Levine's class. She is grateful to poet Philip Everwine and her other English professors for introducing her to the great masters of poetry and giving her a start at learning poetry's craft.

LIT OUT LOUD

My Literature "Out Loud" group just voted to read The Aeneid by Virgil in the acclaimed translation by Sarah Ruden. In less than two years, we have read Moby Dick by Herman Melville (it took about 5 months), Paradise Lost by John Milton (3 months), Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland as a kind of palate cleanser, and lastly Mark Twain's wonderful, and sometimes controversial novel Huckleberry Finn, Voltaire's Candide and Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Reading for only one hour one night a week, we complete each book entirely OUT LOUD, sharing the joy of the oral tradition.

Oh, Brave New Word!

Thermoluminescence - phosphorence developed in a previously excited substance upon gentle heating, a dating technique
Theodicy - concerning the defense of God in the face of evil
Steganography - the art of long-disance communication employing angels as a postal service
Priggishness - marked by overvaluing oneself or one's ideas, habits, notions, by precise or inhibited adherence to them, and by small disparagement of others
Panmixia - when people choose their mates from throughout a population rather than from within a distinct subgroup (share the love)
Kairos - (from Greek), a propitious moment, theologically speaking
Hypertrophy - excessive growth of an organ or part of an organ

Spinning Jannie

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Anne Sexton was indeed a pretty poet but very wise under all that beauty

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