I don’t know how to start this blog post. I want to talk about death. Generally American American culture compartmentalizes death from life. Instead of integrating into the “circle of life”, like the New Orleans dirge does, we see life as a linear start and finish. Death inevitably visits us all, and keeping death away from life slows the grieving process. I deeply appreciate when artists like Steve Prince speak about death and loss, as he did in his Kitchen Talk at Geneseo, which I will talk about below. When I see someone like Steve Prince who lives so wholeheartedly and creates positivity from painful experiences, I feel like I can talk about those things in my life too. The institutional, slow violence that Prince as a black man in America experiences and has spent his career being an activist against is different than regular medical tragedy, but death is a commonality that all of humanity can relate to.
Art and Memes
We gather around the plate of glass onto which light purple, blue, and yellow paint is dabbed, overlaid on a picture in a magazine. Garth Freeman let us loose on the paints and paper after he spoke about his experiences as a collage artist. This method he introduced of plate glass printing allows free expression of color, replicability, and intertextual interaction between existing media like magazines, or copies of the Lamron, and us as the artists.
Connections of Mourning Through Music
I know jazz is conceptually crucial to this course, being the music of the New Orleans dirge, incorporating repetition, and just as a genre invented by black Americans.
Reflecting on the Semester with Lucille Clifton
surely i am able to write poems
celebrating grass and how the blue
in the sky can flow green or red
and the waters lean against the
chesapeake shore like a familiar
poems about nature and landscape
surely but whenever i begin
“the trees wave their knotted branches
and…” why
is there under that poem always
an other poem?
— Lucille Clifton
I will be honest. My relationship with the Toni Morrison quote given to Bonnie Angelo, though complex and enriching, has been a tough one. And I am moving away from it for this reflective essay. I do not want it to seem as if I am evading this difficulty, but I have decided to work through Lucille Clifton’s poem at this time as a way of understanding this course. I will return to Morrison in my reflection later on, even as I use a new epigraph as my main focus. It was interesting to me that, as Dr. McCoy pointed out, this particular epigraph received no mention in the first round of blog posts at the beginning of the semester. However, as I write this now in May, it seems to me that this poem is much more meaningful after having worked through the “amazingly varied literature we’ve engaged this semester” (McCoy 2019). Indeed, making sense of things, ideas, concepts, and stories in retrospect seems to be fundamental to recursive learning and a classroom dedicated to looking back while moving forward. Therefore, this epigraph works well with the GLOBE mission of reflection because of its recursive nature. Additionally, it connects both the texts we have engaged with and the practices we have developed throughout the semester from the fugitive slave narrative to contemporary drama to Big Machine to jazz music, quilting, and beyond. Continue reading “Reflecting on the Semester with Lucille Clifton”
Awareness and Responsibility: Final Reflective Essay
To me, Dionne Brand’s epigraph “my job is to notice… and to notice that you can notice” speaks about how actively we must listen and pay attention, both in school and in life. Beyond that, we should use what we have learned to the benefit of ourselves and others. Keeping this epigraph in mind has helped me appreciate more what makes my life comfortable, realize my limitations and my advantages, and learn to be a more respectful person.
Initially, Brand’s quote speaks to an awakening, that realization that you’re noticing something previously in the peripheral vision of your mind. Throughout the course of the semester, there were various times both in and out of class in which I felt awakened, like something finally clicked. One such moment occurred when we took a class trip to the heating plant on campus. As I stood staring at the crisscrossing maze of colored pipes and tubes that covered the walls and ceiling of the plant, it dawned on me that beyond the few janitors and cleaning persons I had met over my time living on campus I had no concept of the complex system of working peoples that sustain SUNY Geneseo. Just like those pipes, every worker was at times alone and at times interacting with each other, but all were part of a greater institution that I have massively underappreciated. Continue reading “Awareness and Responsibility: Final Reflective Essay”
Looking Back to Notice More: Part 2
When I was first asked to consider the main epigraphs for this course, one quote quickly stood out to me due to its repetitive nature. Dionne Brand’s quote, “My job is to notice…and to notice that you can notice” repeats the word “notice” three times in order to emphasize its main message. The repetition of the word “notice” creates a small-scale recursion, or as author Ron Eglash would explain in his book African Fractals, “a sort of feedback loop, with the end result of one stage brought back as the starting point for the next” (Eglash, 8). Through repeating the word “notice,” Brand conveys that human beings are capable of understanding so much, but in order to understand, we must be more aware of our surroundings. Continue reading “Looking Back to Notice More: Part 2”
The Measure of Our Lives
In my first blog post, I wrote about an epigraph from Toni Morrison that says, “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” Morrison’s quote has been on my mind since I wrote my first blog post, where I only scratched the surface of what she was trying to communicate. I saw a few parallels between what she was discussing and what we addressed in class, but I nonetheless felt a disconnect between what I was learning and what Morrison was saying. However, I started to understand more as we progressed through the semester. Soon enough I could grasp important concepts and ideas, which I expanded in my blog posts and thought about in my free time. This process helped me reach a conclusion about Morrison’s epigraph and how it applies to the literature we have read throughout the semester, as well as my growth as a student. What Morrison is communicating is that language is powerful and that we engage with it on a daily basis through cycles of repetition and revision. It is through this process of constant engagement with literature, as well as with other art forms that I was able to recognize the themes, motifs, and greater ideas present in this class. While I still struggle with them from time to time, I nonetheless have the ability to discuss, think about, and break them down.
The first work of literature that put me in this cycle of intense engagement with language and literature was African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design by Ron Eglash. Ironically, the realizations that I had about this book didn’t come until long after we stopped reading. I was more confused than anything when I read the first few chapters. It would be a lie to say I wasn’t shocked by having a math book assigned as part of a three-hundred level English course. I took Dr. McCoy’s 203 class last semester, which also featured varied, abstract ideas and works of literature, but I had never seen anything quite like this and doubted how a math book could pertain to a course on African American literature. In spite of my confusion, there was a quote that stood out to me, “We will start by showing that African fractals are not simply due to unconscious activity. We will then look at examples where they are conscious but implicit designs…” (Eglash, 6). This idea was fascinating, profound, and yet I could barely relate it back to the course material. How could a geometric pattern relate to African American literature or culture? How could something this pervasive and widespread be an intentional design choice in so many cultures? These questions loomed over me as I read this book and while they troubled me at the time, I am glad I had these doubts since they made me more conscious and aware of what to look for as the semester progressed. This process of doubt and questioning helped me reach major realizations around the time we reached the group blogging assignment.
I wrote about the importance of this project in one of my blog posts, however, I want to address what exactly that assignment meant to me. Up until this point, I was struggling much more than I thought I would. After a few underwhelming, haphazardly written blog posts, I started to doubt my ability to succeed in this course. Needless to say, I found this assignment and the synthesis it required to be daunting. Tying together a food journal, books about African farming techniques, a chapter from Invisible Man, and a book of poetry seemed like an impossible task. I feared the worst when I was told I would not only have to write about these but to write about them in a group setting. Although it seemed daunting at first, I found that this challenge was exactly what I needed.
My anxieties over this assignment were not quite as founded as I made them out to be. In fact, I would say that they were just another part of the process of repetition and revision that I engaged with throughout the course. When I started this assignment I was analyzing the course material in the same way I had engaged with everything else up to this point. Only something about the literature made more sense, and the enormous diversity of these works became easier to digest and understand. As these things started to come together, I was reminded of a quote from the Snead article, where he claims that European culture, “does not allow for a succession of actions or surprises.” That’s when it hit me. I expected myself to make steady, measurable progress in a linear fashion. After all, that’s part of the deeply European idea of constant progress and forward momentum, which myself and others were taught time and time again. We are expected to learn something and get better, better, and better until we can perform a task with complete certainty and precision. I was forced to realize that such a thing is not entirely possible or true and that my ability to understand these materials was cyclical as opposed to linear. I had ups and downs, a dynamic cycle of change and growth. While I have a better understanding now, I’m still with faults and do not always have a perfect understanding. Regardless, I am more equipped to recognize patterns and ideas because I have engaged with these works.
It is here where the Morrison epigraph comes into play. The idea that language as the measure of our lives deeply fascinated me, esoteric as it was. In this class, we have spoken at length about the power of language and what specific words can mean. Dr. McCoy has pointed this out countless times, even pointing out the strange, possessive quality of expressions like “let you go”. Language is the measure of our lives because it has power, an intangible, pervasive quality that flows throughout all these immense, “fractal” thru-lines that run throughout the readings and course material featured in this class. People engage with language on a daily basis and are constantly learning and understanding the many different things that make language so influential. My failures and difficulties forced me to realize the importance of Morrison’s quote. Language may be the measure of our lives and I am just starting to engage with it on a higher level. There are ups and downs in that process, sure, but I am ultimately coming out as a stronger reader, writer, and thinker because of it.
Morrison’s epigraph absolutely matters when held up to GLOBE’s standards of revision and reflection over time. If language is “the measure of our lives” that means we are constantly interacting with it, much like how I was constantly engaging with the course material throughout the semester. In the same way that life follows cyclical patterns, so does language. The ability to reflect on this and look back ties directly into the core GLOBE standards that SUNY Geneseo promotes and displays a parallel between both the literature featured in this class and one of the core principles of this institution. Language is the measure of our lives because the things we convey throughout language pervades every aspect of our lives, existing in literature, art, music, and things as mundane as everyday conversation.
Having Faith in Doubt; Having Doubt in Faith
“Doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men.” — Victor Lavalle
As I begin writing my final reflection essay, I remind myself that at the same time, the act of writing this reflection marks not only the symbolic closing of a chapter — English 337: African American Literature, but the closing of a book: my college career.
Continue reading “Having Faith in Doubt; Having Doubt in Faith”
Through-Lines, Journeys, Poetry, Reflection
surely i am able to write poems
celebrating grass and how the blue
in the sky can flow green or red
and the waters lean against the
chesapeake shore like a familiar
poems about nature and landscape
surely but whenever I begin
“the trees wave their knotted branches
and… why
is there under that poem always
an other poem?
–Lucille Clifton
I have so many things that I want to say in this post. For those of you who do read, I thank you. I understand that there are a ton of these going up in this moment, which creates an interesting dynamic for a blog.
I want to take this opportunity to reflect on this semester through the course epigraph by Lucille Clifton. I see many different things in this poem that bring the course into view for me; almost like a reflecting pool where I can see myself at various stages of the semester. I’ll move through the poem as I move through the semester, traveling week by week and line by line simultaneously, unpacking my time in this course as I do so. Additionally, I’ll attempt to discuss the prevalence of a through line (which I believe is present in this poem) and, in closing, discuss GLOBE, or Geneseo Learning Outcomes for Baccalaureate Education, and their discussion about the reflective process as it pertains to this assignment in particular.
Ready? Set? Go! Continue reading “Through-Lines, Journeys, Poetry, Reflection”
“My job is to notice…”
Most recently I have felt internally challenged by some of the events that have taken place on campus this year and in the three previous years that I have attended this institution. I have also been concerned and confused by the ways in which these events have been “handled.” I mention this again, as I did in one of my earlier blog posts, not to beat a dead horse, but maybe to save a live one. On the first page of the syllabus Dr. McCoy lists the values of the campus as being learning, creativity, inclusivity, civic responsibility and sustainability. These are values that she emphasizes in all of her classes and tries to instill in her students, however a question that often comes to mind is what she wrote about in her personal blog post today. The question of whether or not the small impact of her classroom and a few other professors, actually reflects the values of the campus overall. I want to draw your attention to the epigraph by Dionne Brand, “my job is to notice…and to notice that you can notice.” I intend to demonstrate the validity of this statement through many examples that may seem unrelated at first, but ultimately explain the root of my everlasting internal challenge that I have faced at Geneseo. Continue reading ““My job is to notice…””