Thursday, February 22, 2007

Three Beautiful Things 02/21/07: Dylan Thomas, WR 122, Hands Flopping

1. Introducing my Poetry students to the villanelle and looking closely at Dylan Thomas' exquisitely structured "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", examining how it moves from idea to idea, stanza by stanza and ends up as a poem trumpeting to his father to live fully and vigorously right to the last breath.

2. Listening to another group of WR 122 students who wrote about memories and other associations that listening to Bach's Goldberg Variations awakened in them.

3. My bipolar/anti-depressant medicines sometimes affect me in haywire ways. At 9 pm my hands started leaping all over my keyboard involuntarily and I started to experience vertigo. I had to stop responding to student essays and go to bed. The beautiful part? Going to bed at 9:00. I fell right into a deep sleep, only interrupted once by my bladder calling for attention. Sometimes I think the hand leaping and vertigo occurs because not only is my medicine helping stabilize my mood, it might also be helping me acknowledge that I need more sleep.

1 comment:

Dubya said...

villanelle? I don't know, but I think you means villainess--y'know, a female villain.