Today I have been reading Gertrude Stein. Or rather, I did an extra shift at work (bah, student debt) and grappled with Stein in my lunchbreak. How civilised.
For those of you who haven't encountered this woman, and I hadn't until I was forced to today, her poetry is not what one might call conventional. Initially, I revelled in this fact. To go off on a slight tangent, my lovely boyfriend cooked me a wonderful, romantic dinner on Saturday night, and made me feel thoroughly special. When I mentioned this, he laughed, and told me that I was indeed, extremely special. Whilst he might have been imagining the 'special needs' side of my personality, I delight in not being normal. Not in a weird way, I hope, but in a kooky, try-something-different, be-your-own-woman kind of way.
And so, Stein. Ok, she doesn't follow the expected form, and her poems don't always make a lot of sense, but that doesn't stop them being stunning: even if people don't do exactly what you'd expect, and you don't understand why they do some of those things, it doesn't mean they aren't uniquely beautiful. Stein's poems when read aloud have an amazing aural quality that I have seldom experienced. The words simply flow through you as you read, and it's less about understanding the words as a whole, but feeling each syllable as you form it in your mouth...
But, of course, I have to talk about this in a seminar in 12 hours time without resorting to some over-simplified rant about how everyone is special in their own right. Yes, I love that Stein is different, but let's not lie, I've got to write an essay on it now, and to do that, I feel like I should try and understand it. Rrrrubbish.
Monday 16 February 2009
Thursday 12 February 2009
Blogging - a worrier's thoughts
So, I thought to myself, the best way to get my thoughts out of my head (so dangerous to keep them in there with work due) and to share them with a vast, potentially faceless, community is to set up a blog.
Articulating ones thoughts is therapeutic, cathartic, but almost certainly narcissistic, surely? My dissertation for my final year centres around women's diaries: it seems that for hundreds of years people have been recording their thoughts in this deeply personal way. Who hasn't read Samuel Pepys, Anne Frank, Virginia Woolf and thought 'wow, that's a real insight into that time, or place, or situation'.
Diaries seem to have become, at least in the minds of many critics, a women's medium. The feminist within me argues that this is because is a wholly patriarchal literary world, it is one of the few openings for personal thought that women have left. I don't know how I'm going to dispel or argue this in 8000 words that will hopefully cement my first, but we'll see. Our fascination for exploring the lives of others is apparent through the popularity of novel such as Fielding's Bridget Jones' Diary, a personal favourite, not least because I can see some of myself in the hapless, hopeless central character. Of course, this was entirely Fielding's intention: Bridge (we're on personal terms) is an every-woman for that single, 30-year-old career woman that we all are, have been, or expect to become.
I've kept a hand-written diary for 6 years. Sad, maybe, but to return to my earlier point, is it narcissistic? I'm not sure whether my diary has an intended reader, but my blog does, and that's you, if you've got this far! Is diary-writing for those who feel they have no one to talk to, those who have a lot to say, or those who just enjoy the sound of their own voice (keyboard). Things to ponder, for sure.
Articulating ones thoughts is therapeutic, cathartic, but almost certainly narcissistic, surely? My dissertation for my final year centres around women's diaries: it seems that for hundreds of years people have been recording their thoughts in this deeply personal way. Who hasn't read Samuel Pepys, Anne Frank, Virginia Woolf and thought 'wow, that's a real insight into that time, or place, or situation'.
Diaries seem to have become, at least in the minds of many critics, a women's medium. The feminist within me argues that this is because is a wholly patriarchal literary world, it is one of the few openings for personal thought that women have left. I don't know how I'm going to dispel or argue this in 8000 words that will hopefully cement my first, but we'll see. Our fascination for exploring the lives of others is apparent through the popularity of novel such as Fielding's Bridget Jones' Diary, a personal favourite, not least because I can see some of myself in the hapless, hopeless central character. Of course, this was entirely Fielding's intention: Bridge (we're on personal terms) is an every-woman for that single, 30-year-old career woman that we all are, have been, or expect to become.
I've kept a hand-written diary for 6 years. Sad, maybe, but to return to my earlier point, is it narcissistic? I'm not sure whether my diary has an intended reader, but my blog does, and that's you, if you've got this far! Is diary-writing for those who feel they have no one to talk to, those who have a lot to say, or those who just enjoy the sound of their own voice (keyboard). Things to ponder, for sure.
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