Rude Students with Attitude and Crazy Gertrude

So I came in this morning hoping not to have to do much. Unfortunately, I have a schedule today that doesn't even have a block off! That means my only time alone is the 25 minutes I get for lunch. Very upsetting indeed. And I don't even get to do that until 12:30. I am hungry now! And this mornings' health class was terrible. I think that having kids work on computers with a sub is not a good idea. They don't do their work. And honestly, there are no real reprocussions if they misbehave with me. I mean, I can leave a note for their teacher. But what can he do after the fact, not even having seen what the kids did? And they know this.

I hate to say this next thing, because so many people in academia would be horrified. I have no wish to sound ignorant or gauche. But Gertrude Stein's work. . . well, I like The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. That's very good. But her other work, like How to Write, How Writing is Written, and *shudder* Tender Buttons? I can respect it for the sake of the fact that she was doing something new and different. But as literature, I can't enjoy it in any shape or fashion. It does the difficult job of getting me to a place of non-linear construction definitely, if I read it somewhere quiet and concentrate on it fully. But I would not ever read it for pleasure. Here is an excerpt from the opening of a chapter titled "Forensics" in How to Write (this is a more intelligible section):


They will have nothing to do with still. They will
had that they have head of the skill with which they divided
them until they knew what they were doing without it.
A dog who has been washed has been washed clean with
our aid in our absence.
After our long decision they will wait for what she does.
She chose to be helped by their coming here.
No distress in elegance.
Quarrels may wear out wives but they help babies.
We will hope they will not wear out wives.
It is an appointment they will keep in singing for them
and they keep an appointment.
They say it would have been better.
To invite.
Would it have been better.
To say.
Would it have been better
To show
Them this.
Forensics are a plan by which they will never pardon. They
will call butter yellow. Which it is. He is. They will call birds
attractive. Which they are. They are. They will also oblige
girls to be women that is a round is a kind of hovering for
instance.
Forensics may be because of having given.


Yeah. That. So as I said that's a more intelligible selection. What follows is about half of a "poem" called "A Chair" from Tender Buttons.


A widow in a wise veil and more garments shows that shadows are even. It addresses no more, it shadows the stage and learning. A regular arrangement, the severest and the most preserved is that which has the arrangement not more than always authorised.

A suitable establishment, well housed, practical, patient and staring, a suitable bedding, very suitable and not more particularly than complaining, anything suitable is so necessary.

A fact is that when the direction is just like that, no more, longer, sudden and at the same time not any sofa, the main action is that without a blaming there is no custody.

Practice measurement, practice the sign that means that really means a necessary betrayal, in showing that there is wearing.

Hope, what is a spectacle, a spectacle is the resemblance between the circular side place and nothing else, nothing else.


Is it fresh? Yes. Is Stein a genius? Maybe. Would it ever fly if I passed that in to an advisor in my MFA program? I really doubt it. That would be butchered in workshop. That's what I believe, anyway. During my undergrad, there was a guy in one of my poetry workshops that wrote really unusual stuff, and no one in the class understood it. I think a lot of the time, the impulse is this: If I don't understand it, then that person must be really smart, so it must be good! And I don't want anyone to think I don't get it, so I'll just heap praise upon this writer and hopefully no one will notice I don't get it! I think that even happens among "scholarly" reviewers and such. I always had a theory that if I secretly submitted an obscure poem by an established poet for feedback/critique, that it would be ripped to shreds. And then the joke would be on all the people who criticize me for doing something that a "real" poet does without receiving any criticism. I think there's this mindset when workshopping (or looking at a poem by a person who is not a professional writer) that it needs to be torn down and rebuilt. I often don't think that assumption is on the part of the worshop leader, either. It's the students. Like, "We'll all look smarter if we attack this thing." Well, writing is imperfect, the avenues for critique aren't perfect, and Tender Buttons definitely isn't perfect.

Craft show tomorrow, and I need to make at least ten more things before then. Meanwhile I'm stuck here right up until the end of the school day. Alas.