School is about to start it would seem there’s a lot of spending going on before anybody has learned anything. Every major chain in the world is banking on the labor day school-year spending blitz. Dorms are being re-painted, swept and readied for all those cheap futons, the campus book stores are worse than a B&N on Christmas Eve, and the lecture hall microphones all have new batteries.
That’s why this year, even if you’re not going back to school, why don’t you dust off your academic think cap, sit in on a few top-notch courses and brush up on all those literature classes you missed, for free?
Harvard’s Open Learning Initiative is offering two courses of interest to our readers: The Heroic and the Anti-Heroic in Classical Greek Civilization and Shakespeare After All: The Later Plays.
MIT has a huge backlog of literature materials available, going back as far as 2005, through their Open Course Ware initiative. All areas of study are covered, but here are links to their Literature course wares and their materials on Writing and Humanistic Studies
Also of note is a website called Virtual Professors, where you can find a host of videos ranging from a lecture on the Poetry of Bob Dylan to Executive Communication and Business writing, as well as a series on Milton from the award winning John Rogers. Also there you can actually matriculate into real courses for free. Worth a look.
For a huge amount of information, check out the Open Courseware Consortium (of which MIT is a member) for a list of schools that share their materials online.
Bob Dylan’s new album, Tempest, releases September 11, 2012, exactly eleven years after the release of Love and Theft. Since The Tempest was Shakespeare’s last play, some have wondered if this will be Dylan’s last album. I kind of doubt it, and here’s why. Dylan himself has pointed out that they are two different titles since his drops the article, but he often seems to deflect such questions in interviews. Dylan possesses a proclivity for rewriting Shakespeare, and his upcoming album title is not the only example of said proclivity. Love and Theft clearly shows Dylan’s tendency to re-write Shakespeare. The following list from Love and Theft includes a few of Dylan’s allusions to Shakespeare and allusions to other literary authors and characters.
from “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum”
Dylan’s narrator says, “They’re going to the country and they’re going to retire. They’re taking a streetcar named Desire.” Dylan alludes to Tennessee Williams, making the Williams title a literal mode of transportation for Dylan’s own characters, whose names are taken from characters in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass.
from “Floater (Too Much to Ask)”
Dylan sings, “Romeo, he said to Juliet, ‘You got a poor complexion; it doesn’t give your appearance a very youthful touch.’ Juliet said back to Romeo, ‘Why don’t you just shove off if it bothers you so much?’” With this, Dylan improves upon Shakespeare’s tragic love story, giving Juliet a spine and some spunk.
from “High Water (for Charley Patton)”
Dylan sings, “Charles [Henry] Lewes told the Englishman, the Italian, and the Jew, ‘You can’t open up your mind, boys, to every conceivable point of view. They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on highway 5.’ Judge says to the High Sheriff, ‘I want him dead or alive, either one. I don’t care,’ high water everywhere.” Lewes was a nineteenth century, English Renaissance man. Here, Dylan fictionalizes Lewes’ life, and Darwin’s is also revised.
He says, “Big Joe Turner looking east and west from the dark room of his mind, he made it to Kansas City, Twelfth Street and Vine, nothing standing there, high water everywhere.” Here Dylan rewrites the life of Big Joe Turner, an actual blues man from Kansas City.
from “Moonlight”
Dylan sings, “Trailing moss and [mistletoe?], the purple blossoms soft as snow, my tears keep flowing to the sea. Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, it takes at thief to catch a thief. For whom does the bell toll for [sic], love? It tolls for you and me.” Here Dylan has borrowed from John Donne and Ernest Hemingway and re-used the words for his own purposes. I don’t think of the use as plagiarism; instead, it’s merely an allusion.
from “Po’ Boy”
The narrator claims, “Othello told Desdemona, ‘I’m cold; cover me with a blanket. By the way, what happened to that poisoned wine?’ She said, ‘I gave it till you drank it.’ Poor boy, laying ‘em straight, picking up the cherries off the plate.” In these lines, the author seems to mash up the plot of Hamlet with the names of Shakespeare’s Othello, allowing Desdemona revenge on Othello for falsely accusing and murdering her.
from “Cry a While”
Dylan sings, “Last night across the alley, there was a pounding on the wall. It must have been Don Pasquale [breaking in to make] a booty call.” Dylan alludes here to Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera, Don Pasquale (1843).
from “Sugar Baby”
The narrator says, “Look up, look up. Seek your maker before Gabriel blows his horn.” Here Dylan alludes to the archangel Gabriel, who explained Daniel’s visions and announced the birth of Jesus to Mary.
Speaking of plagiarism, Dylan was accused of plagiarizing South Carolina poet Henry Timrod on the album, Modern Times. Like me, Timrod was born in Charleston, South Carolina. Also like me, he taught in Florence, SC. Here’s a picture of the school:
Like Timrod, Dylan is something of a poet. In the mid-sixties, Dylan wrote a book of poetry called Tarantula (1971), which he claims he didn’t intend to write.
In addition to poetry, Dylan has prose literary links, a non-fiction book he wrote called Chronicles: Volume One (2004). So far, there has been no second volume. Here’s a brief audio excerpt of the memoir.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdIi8T2KrZw
There’s also Dylan’s literary connection with Joyce Carol Oates’ short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Apparently, Oates was inspired after listening to Dylan’s “It’s All Over, Baby Blue.”
One other indirect literary connection happened in 2000 when Dylan wrote a song for the film Wonder Boys, which was an adaptation of Michael Chabon’s novel of the same name. Check out the awesome video for “Things Have Changed.”
My guess is that Bob Dylan will continue to make albums as long as he’s alive. Based on his past work, Dylan seems bent on re-writing literature and history. Don’t expect him to start changing that now.
Y is for YOLKS
When living in exile in the Channel Islands, Victor Hugo would rise at dawn and eat 2 raw eggs, drink a cup of cold coffee, then begin writing.
There is a habit among writers — namely writers aiming to cross into the realm of The Known — to mimic the actions of other great writers. We think if we have the writing schedule of Hunter S. Thompson or the home office of William Shakespeare, then maybe we should be able to produce writing that equals their works.
It’s a good idea to learn from successful habits — not that I would be caught mimicking Thompson anytime soon — but at the same time, I think it’s a better idea to forge new ones. In fact, I think it should be a common goal for writers to land on such a list as The Awl assembled. Personally, I find the “B is for Booze” section uninspiring, so perhaps I should aim to be the first author to live solely on broccoli and blueberry juice. It is not that I should want to be set apart by my habits, but that my habits should be a more honest representation of me (and I love broccoli and blueberries).
Set let us endeavor, then, to not mimic, but learn, and then carve our own, wonderful entries in the A-to-Z listing of literature.
Lights off and Andy’s stars shine
down from the ceiling. I don’t know
any of them, but they all seem nice
enough. Buttons sewn into a circle
pattern, a wreath. Must be dozens of them, their
function subverted
for the sake of art. The smell of man
I drank up
has long left this sewing room and
the two cats smile. Handle with care.
When I turned
I laughed at the scented beach
glass, warm and reeking. Fluffer-nutter
sandwiches like candy. Andy must want
to eat it, knows all about this, but he’s married now.
Even the dolls have a
safety latch.
She does love me. Leg up
in a provocative pose. Needles, many pictures,
scissors and their cuts. Hallmark cards. Guilt.
The blade is always covered for safety.
It tasted awful, not privy to my mouth.
The two cats smiled, and it tasted worse
than a handkerchief, embroidered with soap. Put one star
in my bedroom mouth.
Cards line the bowl, and
just like last time, there are piles of Indiana.
What does Nap-town mean, or even a provocative
pose? Andy must want to eat it.
The smell of man to handle. Only one
of the dolls is married
now. There are always her magazines, piles
of them, well read, investigated, in a special
order I am not privy to. Clipped. Needles, too. The year
or the year in pictures, but definitely many uses for
Easter baskets. Corn is free with purchase here
in Indiana.
Andy’s stars shine down on me. A
provocative pose. But he’s
married now and his scent is gone.
Eat the beach glass, it looks like candy.
The server is fluffer-nutter like candy sandwiches.
The ceiling posed upon the window sill
invisible, the hope ropes around
the doll's ankles, I miss you.
My function must be subverted
for the sake of stars.
Guilt ropes me down.
============================================================================ Floydd Elliot is a dad, husband, poet, writer, teacher. A recent graduate from NMSU’s Creative Writing Program. Ex-hockey player. Collector of useless things, such as vinyl records, vintage encyclopedias, and beer steins. He hails from Portland, Oregon and misses the rain and floating aroma of hops and barley that haunts the pubs there. Publications include DIN, SinFronteras/Writers Without Borders, and The Fun Journal.
The adage sentiments the crime.
Hell hath no fury, right?
He’d done you wrong, so you were
Gilda in the role that ruined
Hayworth. You were Scarlett
slapping Rhett.
“Let’s all be manly,” Hepburn said
and she meant it. When Tracy shoved,
she kicked him and they kissed.
No one was confused.
No one was arrested.
If you loved him, if he hurt you,
that relay in your brain to the
amygdala made reason moot.
Even in rehearsals, Davis
slapped Flynn. The vixen Harlow crooned:
“Do it again.”
The Baron slapped Garbo.
Bud slapped the splendor
out of Deanie, fast.
Men slapped women,
women slapped back.
Kathleen Hellen is a poet and the author of The Girl Who Loved Mothra (Finishing Line Press, 2010). Awards include the 2012 Washington Writers’ Publishing House Prize in poetry, with her collection, Umberto’s Night, forthcoming. Her work has appeared recently in Barnwood International Poetry Mag, Cimarron Review, The Evansville Review, Harpur Palate, Pedestal, Poemeleon, Poetry Northwest, among others; and was featured on WYPR’s The Signal.
