I'm going to save my bibliography online so that I can access it easily.

( Read more... )

this isn't really an update, I'm just posting the finished version of my first checkpoint if anyone would like to read it:

( first checkpoint )

I just found 

 

( this interesting review )

 

of The General in His Labyrinth, which references the myth of Theseus, which the critic believes apparently underlies the trajectory of the novel. I am going to briefly research this myth and how it might connect with the story of the general as told by Marquez.

Right now I am still reading The General in his Labyrinth, which is a fictional account of the last days of life of General Simon Bolivar. Bolivar was known as the liberator of Latin America, having participated notably in the revolutions (and serving as President) of Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia and Peru. In 1828, he declared himself dictator through an "Organic Decree of Dictatorship," which caused dissent and disatisfaction among his political opponents, leading to a narrowly escaped assasination attempt a month later, in September. In 1830, he resigned from the office of president of Gran Colombia, and left on a journey to set sail to Europe. However, before he reached his ship, he died of tuberculosis. The days between his resignation as President and his death are the subject matter for The General, thought the novel does dramatize and elaborate on the known facts. 

I am currently reading ( this review )of the book, which praises Marquez's language and the elegance it gives to Bolivar's last days. Right now I'm finding the novel a slow read, but I hope as the plot develops it will become a bit more fluid.

Right now I am working on my first check in, which is going to be an evaluation of two of Marquez's short stories, and looking at how they both contain similar themes and ideas, as well as how they differ. I am going to post my paper here so that I can have access to it at school and at home. 

 
( beginning of first check in )

I am currently at a friend's house so I cannot make a video, but I am going to talk briefly about what I have been doing in the past couple days. Right now I have been reading The General in his Labyrinth, which is a fictional treatment of Simon Bolivar's last days. However, since my first check in is about short stories, I am going to share some more thoughts about the two I've decided to focus on for my check in. Jennifer sent me a link to some analysises of "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings," which do a good job of pointing out the instances of magical realism in the story, as well as discussing several themes. Here is my favorite, with some of the best quotes highlighted:
 

So far I've read:

Eva is inside her Cat
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World

thoughts:
part 1:


part 2:

( A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings )

I'm going to try using video updates as well, just because sometimes I don't want to write everything down, I just want to talk about my ideas. This is my video introduction:


I'm using the same diary from my english elective last year, so every post from now on is for fourth quarter, 2009. I will also use a new icon so its more immediately obvious where my new entries begin. 

For this quarter I would like to focus on the writing and ideas of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a notable Colombian author. He pioneered the style of "magical realism" and wrote some of the most internationally well-known latin american novels. I am planning on reading several novels and short stories of his and literary criticisms of his writing to see how his writing developed, what themes he focuses on, the historical context and connections of his novels, etc. I have already read A Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, both of which I enjoyed immensely. I will probably try to connect what I read with these two works, but I don't plan on rereading the entirety of either.  
 
I am planning on reading:
- The General in His Labyrinth 
- The Autumn of the Patriarch
-Memories of My Melancholy Whores
-"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and other short stories
- literary criticisms of each of these works

This week I've been working on my annotated bibliography mainly, as well as putting together my presentation, much of which I took from my second check-in. I had trouble with the presentation because there were so many abstract ideas I wanted to talk about, but most of them required more indepth knowledge on the basic subject.

The main other thing I've been doing has been reading this collection of essays/sketches, partially for the project and partially just for fun/getting ready to leave. I found this very interesting "guerrilla poetry" organization that dropped poetry leaflets in Chile after Pinochet seized power, and in Guernica during Franco's rein, as well as in other sites. I thought it was interesting in that it is a real-life example of the interconnectedness of poetry and politics, and how poetry can be a powerful tool in enacting change.

good luck to everyone with your annotations!

I echo Miranda's post.. why is this week so ridiculously busy?! I did a bunch of more relaxing things this week for this class-- mainly I finished Clandestine Poems and have been skimming through this book some as well, which touches on economic theory more in depth than a lot of other things I've read. I've been half-heartedly attempting the annotations, although I can't find your link to them so I'm not all that sure I'm doing them correctly. Otherwise I've been kind of lackadaisical and trying to figure out the most accessible way to present my information to the class. I think I'm just going to do a powerpoint as a reference tool and then talk about what I learned and ask for questions, reflections. To make it more interesting I might try to take some of my themes and broaden them so people can offer their own interpretations without knowing much about my subject area.

There was rampant unproductiveness in all of my classes this week, which is sad because there was also so much free time.. I worked on my annotated bibliography some-- I've picked my ten sources and I started writing the annotations for a couple. Other than that I've been reading this book and also this book for spanish class that I think ties in to questions about identity and home countries and patriotism. I'm going to try to sit down and get more done this weekend, as well as deciding what I want to spend the last couple weeks doing as well as the bibliography. I'll post some poems in the next day or two as well.

(p.s. does my use of blogging (sort of) make up for my lack of achievement?)

aay, I don't feel like I did very much this week. I finished reading "Hatful of Tigers," but I didn't really have much left to read. I also worked a bunch on my second check-in, both the powerpoint and organizing my ideas. I had a nice discussion with Jennifer on wednesday too.. hmm.. today I got a book from the library called "Clandestine Poems" that I think will be fun to read and related to my project. Right now I am accepting that I cannot possibly research everything, and I'm working on synthesizing the massive amounts of information I already have into both my final project (annotated bibliography) and a main theme/idea. I'm thinking about the universal applications of patterns I've encountered as to make my presentation at the end of the year accesible for everyone and not completely esoteric. Next week I'm going to focus on my bibliography and choosing 10 sources as well as recreationally reading some poetry and maybe posting it here to share.

oook I hope everyone else's projects are going swimmingly.

this is an excerpt from a book I can't find anywhere! but it looks very interesting.

http://www.sergioramirez.org.ni/Adios-Ingles.html

(and here is a review of it: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D03EFDE113BF934A25754C0A9679C8B63

there is also another review a couple of posts down.)

ruben dario is regarded as "the" nicaraguan poet. this is a poem he wrote for Teddy Roosevelt.

( To Roosevelt )

The Colonel

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of the wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.


(From The Country Between Us, by Carolyn Forche.)

( thoughts )

this week has been ok, work wise. I didn't do very much last week (tues-friday) because I was studying for APs and being tired, but I've been trying to do more the past couple days to make up for that. Right now I'm trying to focus on poetry and my individual perspective more than historical evidence. I read "Gathering the Tribes" by Carolyn Forche, a collection of poems that are dedicated to the author's exploration of her past and the way her ancestry has shaped her. While it wasn't directly related to my project, I thought it helped me think more about the idea of home in relation to history and one's past and also the idea of women in different times and places (especially the last poem, White Wings they Never Grow Weary). (I'm going to bring this collection in for you Jennifer, along with the Rushdie memoir.) I don't even know what I mean by "home"-- I want to explore how people define their ancestry, the place they live, where they identify as their home, how political tensions shape or take away a home, what is the place that each individual believes they will go back to, etc. Obviously that is a lot of things, not all of them related, but it's such a recurring theme that I want to keep it on my mind. Also, Carolyn Forche has written a bunch of things about El Salvador and the civil war there, the most famous of which is "The Colonel," which I think very much ties into the purpose of my project (I'm going to look at that and talk about it in my next post.) Other things I've done this week: read more essays from "Hatful of Tigers," summarized and discussed two of the Opposing Viewpoints articles, read a bunch of poetry from Claribel Alegria, and read some reviews of her work, as well a couple of articles discussing the part artists and writers played in the Sandinistas, focusing a bunch on Sergio Ramirez and his vision of a cultural revolution making art available to all. I probably spent about 4 hours since my last update (I'm awful at estimating time).. next week there is a book of collected poems that I want to get out from the library, so I'm planning on looking at that, and also presenting my second check-in/update, which will be a powerpoint webbing my different thoughts and how I see them connecting. Also, I want to try writing some of my own freewriting/poetry in response to the ideas I'm encountering.

here are some quotes and thoughts from Sergio Ramirez's collection of essays titled "Hatful of Tigers: reflections on art, culture and politics." Sergio Ramirez was the vice-president of the sandinista Directorate in Nicaragua in the 1980s, and also a famous poet and writer.

this is mainly just for me, I needed to save the citations of some articles for when I get home.

Agosin, Marjorie. "Claribel Alegria: THE VOLCANO'S FLOWER." Americas (English Edition) 51.1 (Feb 1999): 48(1). General OneFile. Gale. Arlington County Public Schools. 13 May 2008
<http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?prodid=ips>.

Menton, Seymour. "Adios muchachos: Una memoria de la revolucion sandinista." World Literature Today. 74.3 (Summer 2000): p680. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Arlington County Public Schools. 13 May 2008 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=litrc&u=va_s_007_0162>.

since atleast half of the reason I'm not getting any homework done is this continuous rain, I thought I'd post my rainy day music mix cd in place of my uncompleted work. this is really melancholy for some reason, just because this seems like a very intense and heavy rain, but obviously things will bloom after its all over.

soltero- "the priest"
andrew bird- "sovay"
tilly & the wall- "let it rain"
the innocence mission- "the lakes of canada"
kimya dawson- "it's been raining"
soltero- "out at the wall"
herman düne- "suburbs with you"
regina spektor- "poor little rich boy"
beirut- "after the curtain"
mirah- "the sun"
max levine ensemble- "another song about the rain"
bob dylan- "rainy day woman #12&35"
animal collective- "winter wonderland"
belle & sebastian- "dirty dream number two"
sondre lerche- "don't be shallow"
animal collective- "water curses"

some of it is directly related to rain and some is just songs that remind me of rain. reccomend songs if you have any!

(I definitly have an opinion on most of these, and it does come out in my analysis, sorry! If anyone has a different opinion or just wants to discuss different perspectives, we should. But nuclear annihiliation is not a reasonable diplomacy, Matt.)
( does US involvement in Central America foster democracy? )