I can’t keep this up, not even sporadically.  This is a notice to say that if you want to steal anything from this site, you have another seven days from today, Friday, August 22.  Next week Friday, I’ll remove it from the web permanently.  After that?  Who knows.  I’ll think I’ll just stick to masturbatory writing.  Ah, there’s no pleasing me like I please me!

–DeEee.

and as a Writer!  This is  a handout I’m giving out for a panel.  The first part, the guidelines, is something I gave my students last semester.  I probably won’t use it this semester because I’m teaching a different kind of rhetoric course, one that (oh, so gladly for me) involves a lot more reading.  And literary reading to boot!

Here you go!  Use freely.

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Rhetorically Analyzing Visual Art – A Guideline

–When looking at the work for the usual suspects (ethos, pathos, logos) and determining its audience and purpose, you may want to consider the following prompts below in your response (in no particular order).

• Describe the image.
  • Some things to consider when assessing the piece: color, form(s), shapes, space used and not used, lines, etc.
  • Abstract imagery, realism, surrealism, iconic imagery, style
• What do you bring to the image?
  • What are some of your experiences that may lend to the piece you’re viewing?
  • How are you feeling right now? How does your present emotions affect your opinion and/or understanding of the work?
  • Do your political and/social background inform your thinking of this piece of art?
• What is your immediate reaction?
  • Do you think the artist anticipated this reaction?
  • Do you like the piece? Hate it? Are you disturbed by it? Emboldened? Why do you feel this way?
• Contextualize the piece.
  • Is there other artwork next to it, around it? If so, do they lend to the piece you are analyzing? Why and how?
  • Is the work in a separate room by itself? Is it an installation piece? Do you think that it’s a main attraction at Sheldon?
  • Did Sheldon supply a comment book by this piece? If so, what are some of the comments? Are there any recurring reactions?
• What do you think the work means?
  • Why do you think the work means this?
  • Is the painting coherent? Is it cryptic? Poetic? Plain?
  • Why do you think the artist created this piece? For whom did s/he create the work?

————

Of course, not all of visual rhetoric is limited to fine art. I’m sure some of the guidelines I’ve created can be applied to film, advertisements, photojournalism, or anything visual.

Gallagher, Victoria and Kenneth Zagacki. “Visibility and Rhetoric: The Power of Visual

Images in Norman Rockwell’s Depictions of Civil Rights.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 91.2 (2005): 175-200.

Gallagher and Zagacki ask the questions, “What is it about making something visible that is so rhetorically powerful? In what ways do visual images work rhetorically to open up or close down ways of seeing?” (181). They argue that imagery – specifically those of Rockwell and generally imagery of the Civil Rights movement – had an important impact on American people. The essay offers the idea that Rockwell’s prints “The Problem We All Live With,” “Murder in Mississippi,” and “New Kids in the Neighborhood” are significant because Rockwell is white and privileged and that as an artist for the Saturday Evening Post, Rockwell was a shaper of ideal imagery of the American lifestyle. These three prints’ existence, Gallagher and Zagacki claim, are a direct challenge to that American idealism because they were not the common image of black people (that is, derogatory caricatures or marginalized servants) created by white people, especially whites as influential as Rockwell, at that time.

The essay defines visual rhetoric as, “A rhetorical perspective . . .[that] focuses on how images interrogate viewers so as to invoke self-awareness about the conscious lived experience of the other,” rendering images as more personal and/or specific pieces rather than as an appeal to the general.

Hill, Charles A. and Marguerite Helmers, eds. Defining Visual Rhetorics. Mahwah, NJ:

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004.

A diverse collection of essays that define visual rhetoric from many disciplines. The chapter by J. Anthony Blair, “The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments,” is very relevant to the role that imagery plays in rhetoric as an argument as a whole. Marguerite Helmers’ chapter, “Framing the Fine Arts Through Rhetoric,” gives great insight into reading fine art. She closely explores the cross-disciplinary possibilities with writing and art. I found the Horace quote I use at the beginning of the handout in this chapter.

If you have time for nothing else but want to consider bringing images of any type to your class, I’d suggest reading the introduction to Defining Visual Rhetorics.

Lucaites, John Louis and Robert Hariman. “Visual Rhetoric, Photojournalism, and

Democratic Public Culture.” Rhetoric Review 20.1/2 (2001): 37-42.

Lucaites and Hariman almost immediately state that visual rhetoric encompasses a large body of work, “from architecture to. . . public memorials” (37). The essay, nonetheless, focuses on iconic photographs (think of the Rosenthal’s Iwo Jima shot or the similar picture of the firemen, “Ground Zero Spirit” taken on Sept. 12, 2001). The essay tries to find if these iconic photos inform public “liberal-democratic” culture and, mainly, Lucaites and Hariman “believe that they mark fundamental relationships between the practice of photojournalism and twentieth-century American democratic public culture” (38).

Lucaites and Hariman argue that iconic imagery, synecdochic for whatever furor is moving the nation (they use Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” as an example), moves the masses to act, seemingly on emotions alone. They call this phenomena “individuated aggregate.” They argue that this individuated aggregate, moving a collective through a synecdochic image, is a liberal tool, but I wonder if this was written well before September that year. Obviously, it was before the Iraq War; “Ground Zero Spirit” was used constantly by the conservative right.

MacEdo, Ana Gabriela. “Through The Looking-Glass: Paula Rego’s Visual Rhetoric, An

‘Aesthetics Of Danger’.” Textual Practice 15.1 (2001): 67-85.

“Whether in the political violence of her pictures from the 1960s on the Portuguese dictatorship, or in the psychological violence of Rego’s representations of the family as an oppressive and often perverse institution; whether in her subversion of fairy-tales and nursery rhymes, or in the representation of violence against women and children in the later paintings, Rego’s visual rhetoric exposes a hidden world of secret lies and veiled truths in which she claims as an ‘ideologically strategic terrain’ her own territory in art.” (68, quote within from Rego is from ‘Vision, Voice and Power: Feminist Art History and Marxism’, Block, 6 (1982), pp. 2–21 (p. 5)).

The essay focuses on the place women play in Rego’s work. The nice thing about this piece is that there is a lot of Rego’s voice in the essay via many direct quotes from the artist herself.

Haven’t written in a while because I’ve been grading papers. About half of the students followed directions with this assignment. Most did not include a rhetorical analysis, which was the main point of the assignment. I got some pretty good papers, but only one that I felt comfortable enough to respond to the thinking and reasoning in the paper itself instead of just the grammar problems, the direction problems, the citation problems, etc. Some didn’t even have an argument and the class is based on argument.

Ah well. At first, I was afraid that I didn’t give good directions, but I looked at the assignment sheet again and had a colleague look it over. It is as clear as crystal. Then, I thought that maybe they didn’t know how to complete the assignment, but I remembered a class where we did a rhetorical analysis on an essay together. Maybe those that omitted it just wanted to do the least amount of work possible and still pass.

But this post is entitled rejection letter.  That’s what I got in the mail today from Indiana Review.  It came back in my SASE, form lettered onto a little slip of yellow paper:

Dear Writer,

We have read your submission carefully and regret that we do not have a place for it in Indiana Review at this time.  Unfortunately, the large volume of submissions we receive makes a more personal reply nearly impossible.  However, we do appreciate your support and hope you try us again in the future.

The Editors

Sigh.  I don’t care how you look at it, I hate these impersonal responses.  I think I’d prefer a 3 X 5 card with “No thanks,” scribbled on it with an illegible signature.  I know for some zines, different colors mean different tiers.  I wonder if that’s the case for this one or if the story (whichever it was — I have forgotten which story I sent to them and I’m in the wrong office now) just sucked that much for them.

Whenever I get a rejection, I stop believing my adviser and committees.  I stop believing all of the profs and students who have read my work and said to me that it was good.  If my stories are so good, why do they keep getting rejected?

Oh, well.  Back to grading papers.

Went to my office today. Here’s my writing journal entry:

It’s been a while since I’ve been here. Well, I stopped here to get my CV; I’m in need of a summer job, but that was briefly. I had a routine (for them, not me) surgery, was ill, and now here I am. I’m behind in my writing.

Well, I wrote a sonnet at home. It needs some revising. I think that’s what I’ll work on today: revisions. I may work on Clara, I have some short story ideas, I don’t know. Not in much of a mood to write. I’ve been down these last few days. I feel like I’m not doing much with my life. Yeah, I know I’m in grad school and all, but I haven’t published yet. I think I’m just frustrated that I haven’t got a summer job lined up and that, in real life when grad school is over, that I won’t have a job because I haven’t published yet! Then what? Then I’d be poor and wanting. I want a kid now. I want a lot.

I gave myself a deadline to get something accepted. I think it was something like September or something. I can’t remember. It was a verbal contract with myself (I make good company!), something along the lines of “If I don’t publish by such and such date, I’m going to stop trying and get a real job.”

I think I’ll try to work out a schedule again. I’m sure I did it before, that’s why I say again. A deadline schedule. Send out a short story on X date. Send out a group of poems. I should start writing poems again. Seriously. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

her blog, her short stories, you name it, she ain’t writing it. Hardly reading. Reading lots of short stories lately, though. One almost made me cry. Sweetest story I’ve read in a while.

Know any protest songs?

Google’s search engine is dark today.  They’re symbolizing a lights out effort to conserve energy.  Via the organization Earth Hour, Google and many others are turning out the lights from 8pm til 8pm in [your] local time zone.  This is a concerted effort — cities, towns, countries, companies — to raise awareness about our environment.

Any ideas of what to do in the dark (it’ll be dark here where I am!) during this time?  It’s not good for your eyes to work on the computer when the lights are out.  Reading’s out.  Writing can be done with candles, but it may cumbersome.  The only thing I can think of is telling stories aloud, either ones you know or ones improvised.  Fables would be good!

Mingus‘ drummer, Danny Richmond, said that Mingus gave him his first drum lesson:

“. . .even though I knew where I was and the tempo was really, really, very, very fast, I was thinking in terms of trying to play all the things I could play in just a certain amount of bars. And, when we finally got a chance to talk, . . . Charles said, ‘Well, look man, I like what you’re doing, but you must remember that your playing is the same as a conversation. When you walk in a room, you just don’t. . .’” talk to everyone really loudly. “That’s the way I was playing then.”

The interviewer offers, “Trying to say it all at once?” and Richmond says,

“All at once.  And [Mingus] said, ‘First you say ‘hello,’ take a breath. ‘How are you?’ a la Charles Parker’ and ‘How is everything tonight?’ a la Fats Navarro. And you take another breath.’”

You can find the complete quote here, around five minutes and forty-five seconds into the clip. If you go to the clip, listen to what Mingus has to say a little before that. It’s along the lines of playing the notes around the lines, not on the line, to help define that line. Before I explain it, let’s move on (feel a little like I’m teaching) to a literary example. And I have to thank one of my old professors for giving this to me, and that’s Dr. Teresa Burns.

Ernest Hemingway has a VERY famous short story called “Hills Like White Elephants.” Click on the link, read the story (it’s very short), enjoy it. There is so much said in that story with nothing being said at all. What I mean is that there is so much implied and, I think, most readers would be able to discern immediately the taboo word in that situation. The beauty is that Hemingway never says explicitly what is being discussed. Look at the title of the story — and I’m paraphrasing Dr. Burn’s here — the hills are like elephants. The character doesn’t see elephantine trunk and ear shapes, only great white humps in the distance, suggesting elephants’ backs, suggesting elephants. This is very much like that rhythmic railroad line that Mingus says he and Richmond plays around, not on, the line: “We don’t play the line — we suggest this line.”

This is how short stories should be written.  Don’t explain everything, don’t describe everyone, don’t tell your reader about every object in the room, plot turn or twist.  Tell them some things, but suggest a lot!  Give them the elephant’s back and they’ll see the elephant.  Give them the the rocks, the struts between, the bridges around the railroad tracks and they’ll find those parallel lines rolling behind the city.  I guess all fiction writing, and of course poetry, can be written this way.

I wish I can erase these words and/or phrases from previous posts:

1. rough draft
2. MLA plug in
3. rhetoric
4. pathos
5. logos
6. ethos
7. it’s Friday night and I ain’t got nobody

I’m sure I’m missing some.  These words have attracted visitors looking for rough drafts, MLA plug-ins, definitions, analysis directions, etc.  But if I were to remove those words, those posts wouldn’t make sense.

In other news, don’t think I’ll go to the writing office, yet.  I may.  We’ll see.  I am showing an optional movie outside of class time and I wonder if any students will come.  I wrote a sonnet that I have to revise for the “Prairie Home Companion” sonnet contest.  You can find the submission form on the website and the poem is due by Friday, April 11, 2008 at midnight central time.  They say they only want fourteen lines, preferably about love.  But I like the idea of using iambic pentameter and a volta. You can win a mattress (if you submit, good luck).

Trying to be more regular for my blog.  It’s the blogging Metamucil!

Since I’ve been away from this blog, I’ve read Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and I think that’s it. Notice that all but one of these books are by Africans, and I must say I’m a little Africa’d out!

I’m now reading East of Eden by one of my heroes, John Steinbeck. For my reading group, I’ll be reading something else, but I don’t know what yet. I think it’ll be something by Jesse Fauset.

Hm. Mother to Mother. What to say about Mother to Mother? I’ll start by stating it’s based on true events. Amy Biehl, a white woman — a kid really — was in South Africa on a Fulbright working on the first democratically held elections in 1993. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was killed in the small, black village of Guguletu, Capetown. That’s the true part and what begins the book and the basis for the book.

The novel is somewhat epistolary, but it is entirely narrated by the mother of one of the
murderers. It is addressed to the mother of Amy Biehl. Still with me?

Okay, moving on to the author — and this is my justification for this review — Sindiwe Magona. Magona lived not far from the mother who is telling this story. Besides this work, she has written another novel, a couple of autobiographical books, and a couple of short story collections. She has also written eighteen children’s books. Eighteen books written in a style that children can understand and enjoy. I really think this explains why I had a problem getting into Mother to Mother: the style was somewhat juvenile.

That sounds like a really condescending thing to say, but what can I say? I can’t lie about how I felt reading the book. The story itself was very compelling and Magona makes it very clear the atrocities that were taking place at the time of the murder and prior to the murder. She makes real the horrors of apartheid and power. She writes about the politics of South African sexism and misogyny (similar to so many other sexual politics the world over) with a practiced and careful voice. But, I couldn’t get past the repetitiveness, the simple language, sometimes a la Dr. Gray. For instance, dig this section, obviously written to connote a heavy helplessness, a despair, but somehow doesn’t work for me:

Now they were gone. The police were gone. Gone to wherever they had come from. We could not. No, not us. We could never go back to who we were before they had come. We could never go back to that time or place.

(87)

Granted, not all of the book is written this way, but a lot of it is! And this kind of writing is hard for me to read in its simplicity. It was off-putting.

I feel bad saying that. This book got rave reviews from some pretty heavy-hitters, but here I am, little ol’ me, feeling that this book is inadequate. I was really worried before about emperor’s clothing and whatnot, but then I did a little link research for this here blog and learned that the woman wrote eighteen children’s books. That makes swallowing the short work a little easier. Even with that said, does anybody want a slightly used copy of Mother to Mother?

Here are two old entries from my writing office. I haven’t been there for a while because of illness, losing a gall bladder, etc, but I plan on getting back in the swing of things really soon!

March 4, 2008

Sometimes, like anywhere else, I don’t want to be here. Today I want to be home, semi-lazy, playing online games and looking for summer work. I would rather be at my school ofc instead of here. I think it has something to do with my not having anything to write.

But I do love this place. Yesterday, I had the sickening thought that the fellowship will no longer be there at the end of May, that it’ll be gone and I’ll be somewhat ass out. Since Indy changed jobs, I won’t have the money to cover this place without a summer job and/or a fellowship. Then I’ll have to leave this place. Sigh. The move alone will kill me.

I don’t know what I’ll work on today. Probably some poems, maybe some revising, or fuck around with that novel. Yeah. Not so excited about that novel anymore. At least, not right now.

March 13, 2008

I think that’s the right date. Damn, I got to get this thing fixed. The hiatus this time was due to health. I had the flu, I’m sure of it; a cold couldn’t carry a fever like that. I’m still not 100% myself yet–which is kind of sickly anyways– but I’m a lot better.

The last time I was here, I wrote probably the best description of a person ever. Well, I think I did (I may look at it today and wonder what I was thinking). It is a description of Clara, how she looks now as a centenarian from her own mouth. Very honest, very generous, very funny. Today, I’ll probably work on Clara a little, but I think I should probably tackle another short story. Since I’ve been thinking about working class, I may write something working class-esque.

For school, sort of working on my reading list. I can’t see having it done in time to turn in this semester, but I’ll try. I’ll probably won’t get it done until next semester. Shit, shit, shit. Right now, my field list is 20th century working class fiction. My focus list seems a little more odd: women’s lit from second wave to present day. Not sure how I’m going to try and tie that in with the first list. Do I have to? Should it be working class? Should I stick to 20th century or should I have something like 19 or 18something to the present day working class? Just fiction or poetry? Jeeze, I don’t know.

That’s all for now. On to the thing itself!