All experience rushes into this vortex. All the energized past, all the past that is living and worthy to live. All MOMENTUM, which is the past bearing upon us, RACE, RACE-MEMORY, instinct charging the PLACID, NON-ENERGIZED FUTURE. The DESIGN of the future in the grip of the human vortex. All the past that is vital, all the past that is capable of living into the future, is pregnant in the vortex, NOW.
The vortex is the point of maximum energy. It represents, in mechanics, the greatest efficiency. We use the words ‘greatest efficiency’ in the precise sense—as they would be used in a text book of MECHANICS. You may think of man as that toward which perception moves. You may think of him as the TOY of circumstance, as the plastic substance RECEIVING impressions. OR you may think of him as DIRECTING a certain fluid force against circumstance, as CONCEIVING instead of merely observing and reflecting.
Clearing out the iCloud, I’ve posted to YouTube the remainder of my pandemic-era online lectures from my penultimate year adjuncting in a large public university’s English department. This was Introduction to Literature in Spring 2020. The first two-thirds of the class, on fiction and drama, were held in person; then the rest, mostly on poetry, were online. These were almost my first video lectures, so they should be amusingly rough.
Above is the first video. Here is the playlist of four videos. The first three are a very basic introduction to poetry with major examples; I cover Pound, Eliot, Plath, Heaney, Walcott, Hopkins, Dickinson, Stevens, Yeats, and Keats. The third lecture, in which I explain why Yeats uses symbolism wrongly and Keats uses it rightly, might be the most fun—I like a strong opinion—but the middle one, where I trace faith, doubt, and skepticism in literary form across three poets, may also entertain.
The final video in the playlist is a q&a. I invited students to submit whatever questions they still had after the course was through. I answer such queries as: is literature superior to other media? is older literature better than contemporary literature? are Shakespeare’s borrowed plots a stain on his achievement? should we read “problematic” (racist, etc.) books? what makes a classic? what’s my favorite Jane Austen novel? and more. Please enjoy!
You came in out of the night And there were flowers in your hand, Now you will come out of a confusion of people, Out of a turmoil of speech about you.
I who have seen you amid the primal things Was angry when they spoke your name IN ordinary places. I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind, And that the world should dry as a dead leaf, Or as a dandelion see-pod and be swept away, So that I might find you again, Alone.
