Tuesday, April 28, 2009

This week on the interweb, MFA style

  1. "These days, Big Brother isn't just watching you — he wants to know your superpower and the name of your childhood pet. And he already knows you like to Google yourself, so don't try to deny it."

  2. "Unfortunately this mass-production university model has led to separation where there ought to be collaboration and to ever-increasing specialization." Another hard-nosed look at graduate programs here.

  3. In the new issue of Third Coast, the essay entitled "How Not to Write a Personal Essay for Freshman Composition." And some poems by a recent Montana MFA grad (Brandon Shimoda) and a current Montana MFAer (Scott Alexander Jones).

  4. Edgar Allen Poe is enjoying a wealth of scholarship for his 200th b-day year. Turns out, he was quite the liar/exaggerator. He gets his own square. And everyone has decided he died of rabies.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even Dr. Benitez (who first came up with the "Poe died of rabies" hypothesis) has backed away from it. The current thinking is more a simple case of malnutrition and exposure.

(I got a tour of his gravesite this past fall, in fact. Very strange place.)

(Who is this mysterious stranger who's posting all this, you ask? Just someone who reads your blog and appreciates all that you're going through. Thanks for taking the time to do it.)

Kelly Kathleen Ferguson said...

This has been a tough grading week. I seriously can't take any more essays on the marijuana. This is your brain as it is forced to read the same essay over and over. I've noticed gay marriage is on the rise in Fresh Comp. "They are peoples just like everyone else."

I did have one essay by a student with cerebral palsy that actually made me cry. It made me cry because it was touching and it made me cry to finally read something good.