Well, I gone and done it again.  I'm going to retire so broke at this rate.  I've been contributing to the GDP of If-you-love-it-so-much-why-don't-you-marry-it.com. 

Mountain Man Dance Moves/The McSweeney's Book of Lists

MMDM is "ball-bouncingly" funny! There's a curious-yellow Bergmanesque fascination with unicorns.  Don't ask me why.  It really is a book of lists.  They're so hilarious that I wish they were longer.  The titles of the lists are even funnier than the lists themselves as many are quite brief.  I would love to see another edition of this book come out.  The premise of the book so totally meshes with my moyen de philosophie. Or do I mean mien?  (Dodgy French; please bear with.)

• Signs your unicorn is cheating on you:  every time you say the word "magic", it sighs forlornly.

WTF???!!!

Funny? Yes.  But it begs the question -- who the EFF is the unicorn cheating on?  Everyone knows unicorns wouldn't cheat!  Duh!

• What makes unicorns cry?  Renegde wizards who refuse to join the alliance; seasonal allergies.
• 5 signs that your child may be using unicorns: newfound interest in prancing; confused and sleepy one minute, enchanted and magical the next.

The writers of these lists, including Dan Kennedy and Bob Shea, among others, do this comedy writing right.  They take their topic completely seriously. Their lists are presented as serious lists. Therein is the magic of written humor. Not unlike on-stage humor. Play it straight, and trust the audience/reader to get the joke and respond accordingly.  (Are you listening, Mike Myers?)

-- IS TO GET REALLY, REALLY, REALLY CLOSE TO A MAN -- WHO WILL LEAVE US ALONE!!!

[Elayne Boosler, 1986]

 Moving Violations § Lora Leigh, Veronica Chadwick

Moving Violations: Law enforcement officials and military men, especially special forces, are the new erotic idols of popular romance.  The new phallic symbols, if you will.  I don't create these trends; I just bring them to your attention. Tell you what, we could do worse. 

MEN

• stewardesses
• secretaries
• nurses
• maids
• dancer
• debutantes
• foreign sexpot (esp. in combination with any of the above)

WOMEN

• millionaires
• billionaires
• moguls
• tycoons
• landowners
• royalty
• secret agents
• Navy SEALS/Army Rangers/commandos
• Pilots
• playboys (esp. in combination with any of the above)

So I haven't started reading the book yet, but it has a solid pedigree so it's bound to be good.  Bound!  Oooh, naughty!

Franklin Library CANTERBURY TALES

APPROACHES TO TEACHING CHAUCER'S Canterbury Tales Joseph Gibaldi, ed.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Damn, you thought traveling in the back seat of your parent's smoke-filled, windows-up Chrysler was tough. Well, back in 13-ought something or other, a motley crew of medieval characters set out on a pilgrimage to Canterbury, a cathedral town in southern England.  It's not that it was far from London, (today, a couple of hours' drive) it was that they had to go on horseback and on foot.  And of course, there was no M4 motorway.  On the bright side, no road rage.  It's hard to have road rage when there's no traffic!

To stave off boredom, they told stories to each other.  And this is where Chaucer is both narrator and storyteller in one.  He tells the stories of these characters telling * their * stories! GENIUS! Not impressed? Not my problem. You see, back in the 1300s, English was the language of serfs and servants.  Nobility and clergy, the top of the social strata spoke French and Latin.  Courtiers like Chaucer straddled both upper and lower classes because they were born common, but worked among the nobility.  So he had his French, his Latin, but he also used English. 

And this is why he's famous: he used English, the language of the common people to create a poem of incredible depth and breadth of human characters.  AND, he stratified his stories like English society itself was stratified -- The knight first, all the way down to the lowly pardoner.  A "Boethian" Cosmos -- if you will.

So I think you will agree, teaching CT is also an exercise in soul-searching. According to ATTCCT, there are several possible approaches:

• Linguistics
• Languages
• History
• Political Science
• Poetry
• Biography
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Religion
• Sex Roles

Pick the one you like and have at it.

ATTCCT has a fantastic table of contents.  (There's a sentence you don't see too often in the English language.)  It's arranged by Materials (Part 1) and Approaches (Part 2).  Part 2 then has chapters on different course configurations such as a Chaucer course for non-majors or -- I love this one -- "The Crooked Rib: Women in Medieval Literature" by Susan Schihanoff.

Like most texts that handle classic literature, it's top-heavy with self-conscious, self-imposing, self-righteous prefaces and introductions, yet in a humanistic vein. This one has 2 prefaces and an introduction with an array of pompous, high-falootin', fancy-schmancy, hoity-toity (gah! I'm starting to sound like Inspector Grim!) expression you would expect to find in a book put together for English professors BY English professors.  For instance:

• milieu
• cri de coeur
• sub aspicies eternitatis (Sheesh! If I had a nickel...)
• Boethian Unity

If you're interested in bringing this book into your classroom, here's what you do:  read CT first. Read it all the way through at least 3 times.  Give yourself a couple/three months for this.  Get a fix on YOUR ideas and approaches.  THEN read the ATTCCT.  Adjust accordingly.  Don't try to bring it in the same year.  You need to plan for the following school year.  (These are just suggestions.  My advice is based on 12 years of classroom teaching and reading materials from NCTE, IRA, and NWP.)

Canterbury, England

What Blanca Means

You are full of energy. You are spirited and boisterous. You are bold and daring. You are willing to do some pretty outrageous things. Your high energy sometimes gets you in trouble. You can have a pretty bad temper at times. You are relaxed, chill, and very likely to go with the flow. You are light hearted and accepting. You don't get worked up easily. Well adjusted and incredibly happy, many people wonder what your secret to life is. You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic "Type A" personality. You are very intuitive and wise. You understand the world better than most people. You also have a very active imagination. You often get carried away with your thoughts. You are prone to a little paranoia and jealousy. You sometimes go overboard in interpreting signals. You are very open. You communicate well, and you connect with other people easily. You are a naturally creative person. Ideas just flow from your mind. A true chameleon, you are many things at different points in your life. You are very adaptable.

This was amusing, but the results are mostly bollix.  For accuracy, reduce the adjectives by about 25%.

Touch typing free

..they wouldn't -- because they're CATS!

But hey, we can read (well, most of us anyway), and you don't have to be a cat/cat lover to love, adore, and treasure this jewel of a book of poems translated from "cat" by Henry Beard.  In a word, GENIUS!!!  This book is feckin' amazing.  The poetic styles are adapted and executed so perfectly that you will actually understand the original better.  It's the Mad Magazine effect -- comprehension through parody/the back-door effect. [Plato & A Platypus Walk Into A Bar:Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes]

EXCERPTS

From the Old English school:

"Grendel's Dog," from "Beocat":

. . . Then boasted Beocat     noble battle-kitten,

Bane of barrow-bunnies     bold seeker of nest-booty:

. . . I would lay the whelpling low with lethal claw-blows;

Fur would fly      and the foe would taste death-food . . .

The English Romantic school (mid-to-late 1800s)

William Blake's cat's poem, "The Mongrel":

Mongrel! Mongrel! Barking blight,

Bane upon my yard at night;

What infernal hand or eye,

Could frame thy vile anatomy?

Other fantastical adaptations include Do Not Go Peaceable to That Damned Vet, There Is No Cat Toy Like a Mouse, & The End of The Raven.  I really like how Beard starts with the oldest poetic form in English and works his way forward through Middle English, Neoclassical, Naturalistic/Realist, and modern -- refashioning the jazzy, acidic HOWL! by Allan Ginsberg into -- of course -- MEOWL.  Aaaaahahahahahaha! Hysterical. 

Beard does not take any shortcuts.  He's totally and utterly committed to his adaptations.  The genius is in the details.  He has superb eyes and ears for poetic writing and comedy.  I would love to be able to write something like this.  I wish he would come up with some more -- a book of poetry for dogs or something.  Why not.  He doesn't skimp.  MEOW is just like the original: long paragraphs, syncopated line rhythms, delirious imagery.  And the villanelle! Oh my God! He did it!  It looks so effortless and perfectly crafted that you just know he lost a lot of sleep to get it just right. 

People who don't get poetry might think it's cute if they are cat people.  To be fair, this book could actually turn you on to poetry, mainly because it's easy to understand.  No tiresome analysis required. 

If you genuinely love literature/poetry, you can love this book.  Notice I said "genuinely love".  Intellectual snobs and people who take their intellectualism way too seriously might be afraid of this book.  You will want to like it, but your snobbery will not allow you room to take it seriously.  You might see it as dumbing down lofty poetic ideals.  I feel sorry for you. 

But on a more positive note, this book is also really good for reading aloud.  If you can keep from laughing.

BOOKS IN EXILE: books I have in storage.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/lit_per.html  (Period Descriptors)

LOVE THAT DOG by Sharon Creech