The Elegiac Chalkboard in Jo Ann Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter”
Amy Bowers
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The story of a woman’s life unraveling is captivating, but an inanimate object that shows up as frequently as her dog and husband struck me: the chalkboard at her office. She returns to the chalkboard nearly a dozen times throughout the essay, each time using the nostalgic motif in different ways. It acts as a tool to bear some of the tremendous emotional weight the author is carrying, especially around the theme of impermanence. The chalkboard also acts as a place to work things out, from scientific equations to personal relationships. The tangibility and physical nature of writing and erasing on the board tethers the narrator to reality when much of her life feels out of control and to be slipping away. Finally, the chalkboard offers the tiniest glimmer of hope as it creates the space to imagine different futures and the ability to create them. Click here to continue reading.
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The Mania of Language: Robert Vivian's Dervish Essay
Theresa Goenner
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When Robert Vivian spent a semester teaching in Turkey, he encountered something he says “made more sense to me than anything else I have encountered/studied/happened upon in literary studies”: whirling dervishes (“Re: Dervish Essay”). A dervish is a member of a Sufi fraternity who practices a dance ritual, an active sort of meditation, where participants whirl, their long white skirts suspended in air. Dervishes tip their heads back and open their arms wide as they seek to lose their personal identities and find union with the Almighty. Their turns are gentle and controlled, gradually increasing in intensity. Rumi first practiced this type of meditation in the 13th century, and the method spread among his followers. When Vivian was on his trip, a dervish shared these words with him: “’We can whirl for hours because, if you are in your head, you get dizzy. If you are in your stomach, you get nauseous. So you have to stay in the heart. Then you can whirl for hours’” (“Re: Dervish Essay”). Inspired by these whirling dervishes, Vivian created a wholly unique essay form which he named the dervish essay. Click here to continue reading.
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Writing Women's Histories
Kathryn Nuernberger
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Perhaps you have noticed that histories that focus on women’s stories, as well as those of other marginalized groups, often include the words lost, secret, or hidden. Even the stories of Katharine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, mathematicians who conducted the calculations necessary to send Apollo spacecraft to the moon is called Hidden Figures. And that was only 50 years ago, barely even history at all. Click here to continue reading.
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The Case for In-Person Conversation
Louisa McCullough
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I have wanted to unplug my computer and throw it out the window from time to time over the last few years, but by the start of the new year in 2021 it was all I wanted to do. Just when it felt our screen time could not get any worse, it did. Jobs, school, doctors’ appointments, meetings, birthday parties, cocktail hours, movie watching sessions, comedy shows, panels and discussions, concerts, cooking shows, tutorials, workout classes, and other blocks of time slipped behind the screen during the pandemic.
And it is incredible that they did. Individuals’ move to the screen allowed others greater access to education, political and social discussion, connection with loved ones and strangers, and the continuation of vital and non-vital parts of the day. Businesses, institutions, companies, social groups, and individuals all showed incredible ingenuity and creativity adapting to a distanced life. While we have voluntarily distanced ourselves from each other for the sake of health and survival, and technology has alleviated some of the negative effects of this isolation, we are in a position where in-person connection is possible again. Click here to continue reading. |
Rupture in Time (and Language): Hybridity in Kathy Acker’s Essays
Kat Moore
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Kathy Acker wrote in choppy sentences, and elided information—which mirrored the way girls are elided from language—which created a jag in time.
Kathy Acker was a poet, a writer of fiction and essays, a feminist, and a major influence on the nineties Riot Grrrl Movement. In 1989, a spoken word poet took a workshop from Kathy Acker. Acker told the poet that if she wanted people to listen to her then she needed to “start a band” (Frere-Jones). This poet, Kathleen Hanna, took Acker’s suggestion and formed Bikini Kill, a band who is now synonymous with Riot Grrrl. Linear time rarely exists within an essay. Or, at least, my favorites essays are never linear. Queer theorist J. Jack Halberstam claims, “…what has made queerness compelling as a form of self-description in the past decade or so has to do with the way it has the potential to open up new life narratives and alternative relations to time and space” (1-2). The essay is, in part, defined by self-description, and its potential to be nonlinear, a form of queer time, offers new ways of presenting narratives and literary critique. Click here to continue reading. |