Today was...

[intertext]

A Good Day^TM.

I got all kinds of fussy details done, like rescheduling a specialist's appointment that fell exactly when I'm going to be in San Francisco. Like booking Robinson into a boarding place for the time I'm going to be in San Francisco. Like ordering online some extra Method mop cloths.

I also scored the Keynote Speaker of my Dreams^TM for our DE conference! So that was a great achievement.

And I had a really good class teaching Sylvia Plath's "Daddy." What I was trying to do was show them that it's not all "oh, poor Sylvia, the victim" but a carefully calculated campaign by her to make herself seem like "oh, poor Sylvia, the victim." It's not that I'm pro-Ted Hughes. I just feel that he didn't really get a word in.

And Robinson and I went for a nice walk after work and it wasn't even dark. Spring is coming.

Comments

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

When *are* you going to be in SF?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yes, on Plath.

[superfoo.livejournal.com]

Ah, blessed be the Good Days(tm).

[lidocafe.livejournal.com]

Kudos on a great class, one of many. I am teaching Ted Hughes week after next, and I am looking forward to it. Plath had her moments ("Oh my god what am I?"), but so did he. I love his stuff. And how long must one man atone for having an affair, for Christ's sake? God, can you imagine what the world would be if we held everyone to the standards we have for artists, entertainers, and fictional characters?

[intertext.livejournal.com]

from the 19th to the 23rd of March. (for the Popular Culture Assoc Conference)

[intertext.livejournal.com]

What was really good was someone asked "are we going to be reading any Ted Hughes?" I love Ted Hughes. I wish we were going to be reading some, but next week it's Prufrock (!!).

[frumiousb.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a really fun class. And a fair point about "Daddy". Hughes annoys me, but more because he destroyed her last journal. I understand it, I guess, but he no longer had that right.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes on Plath: and oddly enough, accepting her propaganda at face value diminishes her as a poet as much as it diminishes him as a man.

... I can sort of understand Hughes (who was a fantastic poet - I may be biased a bit by this, but still); it's bloody difficult living with someone who is so ill, and he did handle it badly, and he did make matters worse, but I don't feel confident enough that I'd cope better to condemn him. I would probably cope badly in a different way, but still...

[gillo]

Good. It sounds so much more positive - I think your time off last week really has done you good.

Funny how students don't get that poets of all people are adept at creating characters and personas, including those supposed to represent themselves. I've had students seriously upset on reading "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" when they discovered Yeats was a non-combatant and not a pilot. They seriously felt it invalidated the whole poem.