This week’s challenges have been split between self-care and enjoying week 7 of Modern & Contemporary American Poetry over o the Coursera platform.
It’s week two of the CHIP program, and the constant weather changes have been playing with my aches ‘n pains and sinuses. I’ve been learning a new relaxation technique so I am hoping that will help me refocus away from that. I had started taking some supplements but they seemed to just give me more issues, so stopped again. It isn’t good to self-diagnose anyway. So let’s forget those and think about MODPO!
This week we studied the New York School, looking at Frank O’Hara’s The Day Lady Died and A Step Away from Them. These were an intro into O’Hara in preparation for Assignment 3, to do a close reading of Why I Am Not a Painter. Not really happy with my essay, but it is done, and that is the main thing.
We also looked at a funny pastiche by Kenneth Koch Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams which lead to a discussion forum on creating our own pastiche on this or one of the other or all of the poems we’ve looked at over the last seven weeks. This made for some really fun and strange offerings, with some poems a mix of many poets and styles parodied. (I’m not sure where some folks find the time to write so many of these or to follow so many of the discussions. This week I had to concentrate on the assignment as I tried to decipher the difference between anti-narrative and alt-narrative.Not sure I got it right.)
We also looked at Barbara Guest‘s 20 before considering Some Trees and Hard Times by John Ashbery. We also met Ted Berrigan in his poem, 3 Pages, and finished up with Bernadette Mayer‘s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Next week’s intro and discussion forums are now up, and tomorrow we start looking at the essays we are assigned to evaluate. And we do the intro week to Language poetry, starting with Ron Silliman who was here in Ottawa in March for a reading and workshop at A B Series. Ron was a fascinating speaker with an incredible memory for all things poetry. He even keeps up on the Canadian scene, which is great. We’ll also look at Lyn Hejinian, Bob Perelman, Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, and revisit Rae Armantrout before concluding with more of Silliman.
Looks like another great week of poetry immersion!
So last week, I was a bit down due to eye stuff, but this week beginning to bounce back a bit. First off, I was invited to be one of four featured readers at Hot Ottawa Voices, Aug. 14 at Tree Reading Series in Ottawa. (I am hoping to release my second chapbook that night too!)
Second, I went to see my family doctor who told me I am doing wonderfully with my blood sugar control. That’s good news because it takes away the guilt I was feeling last week. So the eye things are not something I could have avoided by staying off chocolate and ice cream (well, perhaps, if I had done that twenty years ago!) So a friend and I have gotten together to form our own little support group and to get back on track with our CHIP program. That is the Complete Health Improvement Project. We tried it out a couple of years ago, and it worked well, but I think neither of us were as committed to becoming vegans (or at least vegetarians, or even flexitarians) as we are now. However, over the five weeks last time, I lost 7 pounds, dropped some points off my blood sugar and cholesterol levels and cut way back on animal proteins in my diet. The CHIP program was developed by Dr. Hans Diehl, from Loma Linda, and you can check it out here: http://www.chiphealth.com/
Diets in Review gives this program an excellent rating. http://www.dietsinreview.com/diets/chip/
This week’s challenges have been split between self-care and enjoying week 7 of Modern & Contemporary American Poetry over o the Coursera platform.
Quillfyre 