Unfinished

When I was young, I never titled my poems. It just didn't seem right to add a title to them, and I preferred to not sculpt the poems much past what I wrote in the first mad rush of inspiration. I also (quite wrongly) believed myself the natural heir to ee cummings who rarely titled a poem. So. I took a poetry class in college & the professor, Jim Bertolino* said something about a poem without a title being like a person without a head. Hell. I think it was him who said that. Maybe it was someone else? But most likely it was him. That's who I remember it being.

After that, I got better at titles. I learned to encapsulate the soul of the poem with its name. I'm also pretty good at titling academic papers. I have the art of the colon down-- something academics need to learn. The funny, punchy part of the title, then the serious part. Something like a paper I wrote years ago: "Feminists for the NRA: Sci Fi Chicks with Guns".... My Buffy chapter in the dissertation is titled "The "Girl Power Bit": Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Witches and a Feminist Mission". The "girl power bit" comes from a quote by Spike the vampire and the rest is a synopsis of the chapter's main point. So that's it for titles of the academic sort.

I still don't have a title for the overall dissertation yet. Mostly it's been because it's not finished. But it's really close to being that way now. I'm writing my conclusion. I recently scanned one of the three advised-by-my-director dissertations listed in the database of dissertations, and his conclusion chapter was ONE (count them fellas) ONE page long. So what I had been viewing as a much longer project is actually not so long. And I have about 11 pages right now. That's not including the annotations to the bibliography I'm working on right now, which will swell the ranks considerably, should I choose to annotate the whole thing (haven't decided yet).

I searched the internet today for names of books to include in the genre I'm creating as part of my dissertation. I mean, I don't create it, but I name it as existing. Like if I discovered a new species of Moth. I didn't create it but I named something that already existed and cataloged it, giving it ether and pinning it to a board. Or, as my mother-in-law likes to do to catch her butterflies, putting it in the freezer first to get it to slowly go dormant with the cold and not rip its wings.

But I didn't finish finding books to add to my list. And I'm not sure how long my list needs to be. And/or whether to include any books on the list that I haven't read, but which I'm pretty sure fit the genre. And then there are some which I'm not sure of, have to think about, and will keep there for now. (Like the TV series Charmed. Is it really feminist? I'm not sure. But I think it fits with my third wave, feminism with complexities position)..... So generally, today is about being un-done. Not-finished. In-flux (not in-flight. That's the movie with the germ-laden headphones...)

This blog post will therefore remain point-free. Unfinished. Just rambling about, just ready to make a final claim, and then

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Who, aside from his poems, I admire for his storytelling ability in class most of all-- he had us all roaring one day with a story about being a poet who "represented his people...." who his "people" were is the joke and I won't tell you lest it ruin the punchline for anyone else ever hearing his story in class.... I will tell you that he did, however, create the phrase "lawn dolphins" as a new name for slugs. Which I think is very, very cool. As he said, slugs just needed some good PR for an image change. I feel sorry now that I once waylaid him with a pile full of my poetry wanting him to read them on the spot and tell me how wonderful they were.... I've had students do stuff like that to me since then (not to mention the AWFUL stuff I sometimes get on my womenwriters website) and I know how awkward it was for him. But he did like my parody/spoof of William Carlos Williams... which I never did submit anywhere. Yet.)