Wednesday

Hello, everyone.  I'm not here today, but you don't need me--yesterday, I saw a lot of great early drafts of  book reviews, "One Reader" memoirs, and RIYL pieces, so just continue that good work. I also saw a good number of people invested in some interesting Ted talks and TAL podcasts, so consider spending some time with those today, too.  There is a post just below with a few links to get you started with the Ted videos, but you should browse some on your own there, too--it's a great site. 

See you tomorrow for the vocab test.

More Group B ideas: Ted Talks

If you like to see your podcasts and not just listen to them, think about browsing the Ted site, which is organized really well and lets you select for talks by tags like "jaw-dropping," "funny," ingenious," etc.

Here are a handful of suggestions, but ever time you go there, you stumble upon more.

"Love letters to strangers"

"How to spot a liar"

"Are games better than life?"

A note on how to play these at school:

The embedded player won't work here, so click "Download," click "Save video to iTunes," and then right click on "download/save file as."  Sounds complicated, but it should work.

Nemesis Press: Lab Day

What are you going to make today?  You have a lot of options.  Maybe you could look at Judd Apatow's "My Ideal Bookshelf" entry as a model for your own, or my "RIYL" column, both in the edmodo PBL Categories library. 

Also in the PBL Categories library is a handout that explains the ins and outs of the brief book reviews you can write, modeled on the excellent site Teenreads.  Maybe you could get a solid draft down for one of those--get somebody to read a book you like.

Or you could work on a Group B project today, listening to a TAL episode or browsing some longreads.  I've linked to seven interesting possibilities in the post below. 

No matter what project you pursue today, enjoy it. 

The Shortlist Seven

 

1

7 links that might be good subjects of an e-Shelf blurb this week:

“‘I Pretty Much Wanted to Die’: The origins of Lost, as told by the people who made it, in an exclusive first serial excerpt from The Revolution Was Televised.”  Grantland.

“Giving Thanks for the All-Chuckers Team:  Inefficient ball hogs. Remorseless gunners. Shot-hungry heathens. Say hello to the NBA's fearless firing squad.”Grantland.

“Re-Awakenings: How a woman who couldn’t stop sleeping woke up.” First sentence: “Anna Sumner’s craving for sleep began when she was an 18-year-old high school senior. She thought nothing of it.” From The Last Word on Nothing, via Longform.org.

“A Sorry State: Pop Marketing & Rihanna's Unapologetic Provocation for Profit? Assault as a Marketing Accessory? Why the Rihanna PR Machine show sad signs of our times.” From The Quietus, via Longreads.

“An Imperfect God”  A discussion of the Biblical God as compared to the idea of a perfect god.  From the Times blog Opinionator.

“The Hard Life of an N.F.L. Long Shot,” a look at one player’s efforts to keep the dream alive.  The cover story in this week’s New York Times Magazine.

“Nintendo Confronts a Changed Video Game World” Games for mobile devices have challenged Nintendo’s turf, but the video game maker is pinning its hopes on Wii U.  From the Times. 

Final Blog Review

As of this week, your weekly blogging requirement is concluded.  I hope that you continue checking out books from our library and continue reading, but it is no longer mandatory that you update your reading online. 

If you do continue your blog, however, extra credit is available to you.  Updating it through week 9 of this quarter qualifies you for up to 3% extra credit, the maximum I am allowed to give you by law. 

Today, after your publishing group has submitted its proposals, spend the remainder of the class reviewing what your peers in this or other classes have been writing lately.  Leave comments on at least three blogs that you feel have done an above average job this semester at making their online presence interesting, original, thoughtful.  Tell them what you like about their blog, let them know they have an audience.

Abouts

Some sample "About" statements:

The Online Photographer

The Paris Review

The Selby

A Restless Transplant

Launching The Ambivalent Nemesis

Well, it's here.  Have a look around.  I hope the images show up, but if they don't, it's no big deal.  I would like you to make some suggestions for how to improve either the articles you see here or the next issue we put out.

So, today, two tasks:

(1) Read any number of the articles you see in this issue of The Ambivalent Nemesis and compose a brief post that responds to it.  What article is your favorite and why? What article could be revised in some way, and how?  More detail--what kinds?  Less detail--which ones? What suggestions do you have for the next issue?  Should we try "themed" issues, like "The Music Issue" and "The Film Issue," or should we continue with the kind of variety you see here?

(2) If TAN is not unblocked yet, I would like us to spend time with our peer's recent work in their individual blogs.  Browse them, in this class or others, and leave at least three friendly, responsive comments.  Secondly, I would like you to suggest some content from these blogs that might work for our next edition of What We're Loving.  To do this, make a post that copies and links to the post that you want to nominate for consideration.  No need to respond to or discuss your selection; just identify it so that our next editors can find worthy material more easily.

What You're Loving: Podcast Edition

In class today, I am asking you to listen and respond informally to an episode from either of the two podcasts listed below, both of which are increasingly famous for the entertaining, thought provoking, and rather original ways they go about looking at life and the world we live it in.

This American Life is a true-life storytelling program,with each episode focused on a general theme like "summer camp," "middle school," or last week's fascinating episode, "What Doesn't Kill You," which focuses on brushes with death.

TED is a series of, well, lectures.  But they are pretty brilliant and they will not bore you, I promise.  Browse their archives by selecting categories like "funny" or "informative" or "jaw-dropping."  Note: the embedded video players do not seem to run on your laptops; to watch these lectures, you simply have to click on the "download" button and download them to iTunes.

What I would like for you to do:

1.  After browsing the archives and sampling a few, try to focus on a single episode.  You won't have time to listen to a full 1 hr. This American Life episode, but you should be able to hear a few segments. 

2. Compose a brief, informal "What I'm Loving" post on your blog that describes it what makes it worth listening to.  Like the posts at The Paris Review, this response should be friendly, personal, and raise interest in the text you are talking about.  Ideally, your post will be compelling enough to be selected by our editors and published online in the magazine.

 If you somehow finish this project before class is complete, feel free to read your independent reading novel or work on your submission for PBL2, which is due Monday. 

Reading log Tuesday: 10.9.12

If you are not an editor and your work has not been selected for publication, you have other, just as significant jobs.  First, I would like you to invest yourself some in the community of bloggers we are building here.  Read their entries, follow their links if they have any and read what you see there, go back and let the them know what you think.  Let these writers know that there is an audience out there for their work.

Today, let's visit some of the blogs from our class. Go to the blog above yours on the blog roll, invest some time there, leave a comment, and then visit the two blogs above it, doing the same.  After reading those three, visit three blogs with interesting titles from either of the other classes, leaving thoughtful comments if you feel like it.  Listen to music as you go if it helps make this a pleasant experience.

If you are curious to see some of our better-made reading logs, here is a list of the blogs receiving an A+ for this quarter:

ETY2: Bob Loblaw's Law Blog, Homeschool Valedictorian, Sugar & Spice & Everything Nice, *Mariposa10

ETY5: My Life as a Reader, Sam Stone's Blog, A Fragile Thought, iCasey, This is My Blog, Canadian Poetry, The Outspoken Sloucher, we live on porches and swing life away.

ETY7: Casual Corner, So Deep it's Shallow, Tipper Gore's Official Rap Metal Appreciation Blog, Hysteria's Lament, Hoosier Nation, Dry Cleaned Wet Suit, Literary Liaison, Windowledge Marius, Justin's Blog, Three Islands Condensed

Second, nominate, on the blackboard, blogs + entry dates for any two of our three possible blog features.  Nominate them in this format:

Consumed: More Cowbell, Please ETY2 (9.22.12)
WWL: Bookworm Days, entry on Palo Alto ETY2 (9.14.12)
Briefly: Happy Go Lucky, link to Cloud Atlas trailer ETY7 (8.25.12)

Our first content: What We're Loving, Consumed, and On the Shelf

Today, I'm introducing three weekly features I plan to feature on the magazine.  Each of them will be pulled directly from your weekly blogging by your peers, with perhaps a little editing here and there.  Each of these features are modeled on columns found at The Paris Review and The New York Times.  I will probably refer to these three as our "blog features."

"Consumed"

If you'll recall,  I suggested you follow the format of the NYT column called "Download," viewable here.  Here is a sample I did on my own blog.Blog feature #1, then, which we'll call "Consumed," will simply re-post to our magazine the single best "on the shelf" post created by someone in our classroom each week.

Ideally, your blogging this quarter has been regular and varied, including brief descriptions and/or evaluations of anything from novels you are reading to online "long form" journalism to games you are into and music you have on repeat.  And "Consumed" will recognize and profile our class's readers who do this in the most interesting, original, or thoughtful way, as determined by you each week. 

"What We're Loving"

This feature is based upon The Paris Review column of the same name.  In essence, it is comprised of individual entries--quick discussion of a book, an old movie, a link--from several students' weekly "On the Shelf" posts, again, selected by you each week.

"Briefly"

Our last blog feature will be modeled on The Paris Review column confusingly titled (sorry) "On the Shelf." Where "Consumed" focuses on the reflections of an individual student and "What We're Loving" has more of a collective voice, "Briefly" is simply a list of links with a word or two of introduction--no description, simply (school-appropriate) links to articles of interest, entertainment, or other news and notes.

TODAY:  You will be nominating blog content for each of these three categories.  In the margins of No White Stone, you will see links to the blogs of all the students in my Etymology courses.  Today, let's limit ourselves to looking at the blogs of your classmates.  Browse, read deeply, skim, follow their links, if they work, just keep clicking.  Listen to music while you go, if you like.

And do these two things:
(1) leave at least three friendly comments on blogs other than those of your besties.  Ideally, these will be comments that relate to the content in some way of a post and do more than simply say "that's cool" or "me too."

(2) leave a comment here, on this blog, that nominates someone for each of the above three categories: a blog name/post date for "Consumed" and blog names/more specific post dates and directions for "What We're Loving" and "Briefly."  For example, your nominations comment might look like this:

Consumed: More Cowbell, Please (9.22.12)
WWL: Bookworm Days, entry on Palo Alto (9.14.12)
Briefly: Happy Go Lucky, link to Cloud Atlas trailer (8.25.12)

The World of Online Publishing: Our Entry Event

This semester, our class will be driven by the following question:

How can we create an online magazine that documents and reviews the culture of your generation?

As I have said, this driving question cannot be answered without raising and pondering a lot of smaller questions.  Today, we should start asking those little questions, and answering a few of them.

Visit the web magazines that I have sampled here for you.  Some of of them are not designed for your generation, or interests, but that doesn't matter--we can still go to them for ideas. 

Go deep into these sites, skimming more than reading, and make a blog post that links to at least three articles, features, pieces of content of any kind, really, that you think might, if the subject matter were changed to something you care about, would fit in an online magazine that we produced. 

While you do all this browsing, questions about this project will occur to you.  On your own or with others, compile a list of as many questions, any kind of questions, that you think we might have to answer.  Put at least ten in your blog post, too. 

Here are links to some sites of interest:


NY Times Style Magazine
Page Turner
The Morning News
Kill Screen
Joystiq
All Songs Considered
A Public Space
The Paris Review
Kotaku

Catching Up With On The Shelf

The New York Times has a column called "Catching Up With"that serves as a kind of inspiration for our own weekly "On the Shelf" assignment.  Try reading a few examples here to get a feel for how they are put together and try modeling your own on them. 

What I really like about the column is the diversity of subject matter you see in them, as well as the brief descriptions of what each person responds to in each item he or she lists.

For our OTS posts, I'd love it if we could follow a similar format.  I do think that ours should be weighted a little more heavily toward the reading we do--either online or off--and a little less on the other forms of media, though.  See what you can come up with.  And visit the links on the right for some ideas of places to find some good online reading.

"Catching Up With" samples:

R.A. Dickey, a pitcher for the Mets.

Joshua Bell, a famous violinist who attended Indiana University.

Richard Branson, eccentric, ego-centric founder of Virgin Group (Virgin airlines, records, etc.)

Jimmy Wales, of Wikipedia fame.

And my recent OTS post that follows this format.

Joseph Ceravolo, "Perpetual Life"

 

PERPETUAL LIFE

The sun disappears behind hills,
a white light still remains.
No pink or red or orange
with tight purple streaks, 

through a white cloud.

I suddenly feel
we can never be destroyed,
but I know otherwise.
        It's only a daydream
        an overwhelming breeze
a constriction that I can't see
opening up in the heart
on a warm evening.

Dana Gioia, "Entrance"

At the great site Poetry 180.

William Stafford, "Love in the Country"

Also brought to you by The Writer's Almanac.

Jim Harrison, "The Quarter"

At The Writer's Almanac.

Charles Bukowski, "Startled into Life Like Fire"

At The Writer's Almanac. It's about cats.

For tomorrow's peer review, please bring printed drafts with your alias in the header.  If you have two drafts, please staple them together.

Charles Bukowski, "Fingernails;Nostrils; Shoelaces"

At TPH.

Robert Creeley, "One Day"

Hadley Ann Hill, (b. 5.3.12)

One Day

One day after another—

Perfect.

They all fit.

 

  -- Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley, "The Language"

At TPR.

and Youtube.

Anthology, final draft, tomorrow.

William Stafford, "In the White Sky"

at The Writer's Almanac.

The homework folder for the final draft of your anthology notes is now open.  They are due by Friday morning, 7:45.  Please remember to use your last name for your filename, and to add your artifacts (links, poems, etc.) to the end of your notes.  Any artifacts that are physical (like copies of prose passages, for example) can be handed in on Friday during class.

Mark Strand, "Black Sea"

at The Writer's Almanac.

Mark Strand, "Keeping Things Whole"

At the Foundation.

This week: Anthology revision and book reviews.

The Anthology
Friday, the final drafts of our anthology notes are due.  I would like you to submit them to me electronically, in my homework folder, as an essay.  Please make your filename your last name. Your artifacts I would like attached at the end of that document.  If you have links to videos, include them there.  If you have images, the same.  If for some reason, you have included an artifact that you cannot attach electronically, be sure to hand in a physical copy.

So, most importantly, this week should be about revising your anthology notes so that they sound authoritative and are full of specific, well-articulated judgment about the pieces you have included.  Those judgments, as we have practiced all semester, should be both observational and inferential.  Evaluative judgment is for our last remaining assignment of the semester before our end of course presentations: the book reviews.

Book reviews
If you will recall, you have a choice in how to satisfy this requirement: (a) compose two brief reviews of books you read this semester, or (b) compose one review plus one video, either a book trailer or a poem video.  The handouts I provide you today will give you more guidance, but you can also revisit Teenreads for examples, too.

Peer-review drafts of written book reviews will be next Wednesday. If you make a book trailer or poem video, it will not be due until your semester presentation, which will come the last week of class.


This week, then, you have a short menu of options in class: (1) revise your anthology, (2) compose your reviews, or (3) work on a video. 

Jack Gilbert, "Once Upon a Time"

Once Upon a Time

We were young incidentally, stumbling
into joy, he said.  The sweetness of
our bodies was natural in the way
the sun came out of the Mediterranean
fresh every morning.  We were acidentally
alive.  A shape without a form.
We were a music composed of a melody,
without chords, played only on
the white keys.  We thought excitement
was love, that intensity was marriage.
We meant no harm, but could see the women
only a little through the ardor and the hurry.
We were innocent, he said, baffled when
they let us kiss their tender mouths.
Sometimes they kissed back, even volunteered.

                                           --Jack Gilbert
                                              Refusing Heaven

Jack Gilbert, "Married"

 Married

   I came back from the funeral and crawled
   around the apartment, crying hard,
   searching for my wife's hair.
   For two months got them from the drain,
   from the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator,
   and off the clothes in the closet.
   But after other Japanese women came;
   there was no way to be sure which were
   hers, and I stopped. A year later,
   repotting Michiko's avocado, I find
   a long black hair tangled in the dirt.

                           --Jack Gilbert 

Reminders for Friday's peer review:

*  Four pages, double-spaced, 12 pt Times font, 8-10 artifacts.

*  An introduction, like the one sampled on our notes page.

* Signed with your alias.

* No need to include your actual artifacts.

* Try to include brief introductory transitions and descriptive lines 

that identify your artifacts, and then move into your claims. 

Jack Gilbert, "It is Difficult to Speak of the Night."

Today, Dave Etter, “Marcus Millsap: School Day Afternoon.” 

And here is what one current Homestead junior had to say in response to the poem:

In Dave Etter’s “Marcus Millsap: School Day Afternoon,” the narrator’s colloquial description of his afternoon showcases the meandering thoughts and gleeful appreciation of a child.  As the narrator bounces in the back of a yellow school bus, he decides to make himself a “sugar sandwich” and then look at “the birds/ and the gigantic blue silo” as soon as he gets home. The narrator’s love for sugary snacks and bird watching captures the essence of the child’s mind, focusing on the literal meaning of the words to create a laundry list of what he’s going to do in the afternoon. However, his attention quickly diverted as he goes on a tangent about how his family is going to the farm show but that “farming’s no fun,” and  he’d much rather “do something big” like “grow orange trees in a green house” or “drive a school bus and yell at the kids.” The narrator’s quick shift in focus is similar to that of a rambling child, never quite fleshing out a full thought and yet touching on a variety of subjects. Also, his perception of “big” things is skewed to reflect what is true in his world, a world where growing orange trees and driving buses are the noblest occupations in the world. When the narrator goes home, he grabs his sugar sandwich—a “brown sugar” sandwich, he notes—and then lies in the grass and thinks, “Imagine, a blue silo to stare at,/ and Mother not coming home till dark!” The narrator’s attention to unnecessary details like his brown sugar sandwich, his rapt attention for the blue silo, and his delight when he realizes his mother won’t be home until dark highlight the pleasure that can only be found in everyday life by the mind of a child. The narration of “Marcus Millsap: School Day Afternoon” successfully evokes the feelings of enchantment and the oddly detail-oriented thoughts of a child.

Anthology work day: change to prose requirement

One change to our anthology requirements today.  I have not been too happy with the amount of effort it has been demanding of us to find appropriate prose passages for our anthologies; it worries me that it might be taking some of the fun out of what should be a personal, open-ended assignment. 

As a result, I am going to allow you to substitute a poem for your prose artifact.  Keep in mind, you can use as many poems as you like, for that matter. 

Today, I would like to talk to as many of you as possible about a poem you are working with for this project.  Either share with me some of your work, or bring a poem to me that is resisting your efforts to find a way into it.

This week: Reader's Choice

Our poems will be suggested by classmates this week, so who knows what we'll come up with.

Friday's draft: Three new notes, typed and printed, with an alias on your header.  pass/fail 20 pts.

And a slight revision for the project in general: The full rough draft will be due next Friday.  It will need to be four full pages, typed, in 12 pt Time NR font, and needs to include an introductory paragraph plus notes for between 8-10 artifacts.  The final number is up to you, so long as there are at least four full pages of analysis in your draft.  Again, at least three notes need to be poems, but I have reduced the number of prose excerpts from two to one.

Let me know if you have any questions. 

Dave Lucas, "Suburban Pastoral"

Here, at the Poetry Foundation.

From current HHS junior Jamie Baer's anthology "Subject to Change: Poems about Coming of Age."

            In Dave Lucas’s “Suburban Pastoral,” the homely and bleak setting of a suburban town portrays the dejected dreams of better days. There is no variability or charm to this town, as “everything seems content to settle into archetypal grooves.” Evening comes on “like a second drink”; it is cold, inevitable, and predictable. Sitting in plastic chairs on driveways, men drink beer and talk about the weather. Meanwhile, beyond the “plotted cityscape,” their sons roam around, enjoying the height of their youth. Rather than regret their expired youth, the men find comfort in the dull, familiar surroundings of their wives “on the phone,” the cooler with “Labatt to spare,” and the anticipation that “at nine the Giants play the Braves.” Although “there may be something to romanticize” about their youth, the men go to bed with “nothing to say but ‘night.” The dismal suburban setting asserts that the glamour of youth eventually fades into a dreary, yet comfortable, existence.

For today's Peer Review. In a duo, read the notes for the two blogs you have been assigned and then, in a comment, give them a score from 1-3 for each of the following categories:  Claim, Support, Discussion (inference), and Language/Style.  Leave a comment, too telling them something you like about their notes, or which one you like the most.  Lastly, pick one of the two as a "star" and indicate that they are one that comment.

Once you have your winner, read the winner of the first round match you are paired with and discuss with the other two peer reviewers which of those two star posts is the "winner."  Tell them so in a new comment.

Brian Turner, "Here, Bullet"

Here, Bullet

If a body is what you want
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta's opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you've started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

                                --Brian Turner

In Brian Turner’s Iraq war poem “Here, Bullet,” the body is offered, thrown down like a gauntlet before a duel, in a challenge to death and war.  The speaker’s challenge to the “bullet” becomes a kind of taunt and suggests that life does not end with death, but continues, preserved in the written word.  The words the speaker uses to describe his body are hard, literal.  “Here,” the speaker says, “is bone and gristle and flesh./ Here is the clavicle-snapped wish.”  This frank and unsentimental depiction of the body suggests a matter-of-fact intensity—this speaker seems ready to sacrifice.  It feels like a personal grudge, too, disconnected from any larger political purpose about the Iraq war in general: “I dare you to finish/ what you’ve started.”  The confidence shown here suggests the speaker’s faith that in writing itself is the true end:  “here is where I complete the word you bring/ hissing through the air . . . here is where the world ends every time.”  If “here” is the poem itself, the speaker appears to be stealing from the bullet its power over life and death.  Life ends “here,” in the poem, not in the body.  And the final line suggests perhaps that “every time” the poem is read it is a new ending, a resurrection and death that lasts long after the “insane puncture” has taken place.

Note: for tomorrow's peer review, please do put your next two notes in a post on your blog.  If there is a youtube link to your film clip, please include it, but it is not a requirement.  If you like, both of the artifacts you examine for these two notes can be from films.  It will be nice is at least one is, though. 

These paragraphs should probably contain at least 5-10 sentences, depending on how many clauses you have in them.   For credit, these posts should be up by the time that school begins, and should have the post title "Notes 2 & 3" and should be tagged "Anthology."

Han Yu, "Losing My Teeth"

Losing My Teeth

Last year a tooth dropped,
this year another one,
then six or seven went fast
and the falling is not going to stop.
All the rest are loose
and it will end when they are all gone.
I remember when I lost the first
I felt ashamed of the gap.
When two or three followed,
I worried about death.
When one is about to come loose,
I am anxious and fearful
since forked teeth are awkward with food,
and in dread I tilt my face to rinse my mouth.
Eventually it will abandon me and drop
just like a landslide.
By now the falling-out is old hat,
each tooth goes just like the others.
Fortunately I have about twenty left.
One by one they will go in order.
If one goes each year,
I have enough to last two dozen years.
Actually it does not make much difference
if they go together or separately.
People say when teeth fall out
your life is fading.
I say life has its own end;
long life, short life, we all die.
People speak of the gaps in my teeth,
and all gaze at me in shock.
I quote Zhuangzi's story –
a tree and a wild goose each has its advantages,
and though silence is better than slurring my words
and though I can't chew, at least soft food tastes great
and I can sing out this poem
to surprise my wife and kids.

                                --Han Yu

Chinese poet Han Yu wrote “Losing My Teeth” in the year 803.  The poem’s documentation of the poet’s gradual loss teeth depicts a progression of emotion, from horror to shame to resigned acceptance of the body’s inevitable disintegration.  The poem begins with a quick recounting of the loss of teeth:

Last year a tooth dropped,
this year another one,
then six or seven went fast
and the falling is not going to stop.

The direct, matter-of-fact tone helps make the experience more dreadful.  However, at the same time, the word “dropped” suggests a consolation.  It carries associations with the falling of leaves, and has the effect of making the death of the body appear to be a similar natural stage of life.  And the rest of the poem seems to be more about living with what you have than it is about mourning the loss of youth:

By now the falling-out is old hat,
each tooth goes just like the others.
Fortunately I have about twenty left.
One by one they will go in order.
If one goes each year,
I have enough to last two dozen years.

Even in the waning of his body, the speaker here finds an “order” and musters an optimism that he has enough teeth in his mouth to last him two decades.

Sharon Olds, "Topography"

Topography

After we flew across the country we
got into bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly from the left my
moon rising slowly from the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

                                --Sharon Olds

In the Sharon Olds poem “Topography,” the bodies of two lovers become confused in an inter-mingled geography after a moment of intimacy.  This implied connection between the body and land, a commingling of east and west, sun and moon, becomes a metaphor suggesting unity and the exuberant liberation accompanying the joining of opposites.  The poem begins quietly, with the speaker recounting how they “laid our bodies/ delicately together, like maps laid/ face to face, east to west.”  An energy quickly develops as east and west collapse: “my New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho/ bright on my Great Lakes.”  While clearly sexual, there is a tenderness here, too—great distances are being crossed to bring these places together.