To be hosted by the UConn Co-op

Tuesday, April 24th, 6 PM

Come for the treats…

Stay to support your friends, your school, and our amazing literary journal.

While always a monument in its own right, this building is now a monument to literature.  The entire conversion and restoration process is reflective of what writers do every day: we see the old things, old stories, forgotten buildings, and broken pieces.  We dust them off, clean them up with language, and give them back to the world as something new, hopefully while maintaining their integrity.

This building has a structure and a past.  It tells a story in the restored frescos on the ceiling, and the tombs beneath patrons’ feet.  The building itself does what great literature should do, and what all writers should hope to do – tell a story that lasts through the ages.  I take comfort in this type of change, when I know that so much of my own life is bound to change forever within a few months.  For a writer, it is comforting to see a place where parishioners have been replaced by patrons, and one book has been replaced by many, but this is still a place where the written word is being celebrated and worshiped.  I cannot think of a more perfect, beautiful repurposing for a church.

(Photos courtesy of Crossroads Magazine)

There is just something about having a limited amount of space and slaving over lines and diction to make sure absolutely every line-break and word is meaningful and poignant to the overall poem.

That being said, a lot of poets seem to think in order to write a good poem they must call upon the styles of famous poets like Shakespeare and Milton. This results in work that sounds like it could belong in an 15th or 16th century anthology of poetry. That’s not necessarily a bad thing! However part of what made Shakespeare and Milton so great were their abilities to take the dialect and style of speaking in their time and turn it into something beautiful. Did you know Shakespeare’s comedies are filled with puns and slang? 16th century slang, of course!

Professor Pelizzon made this valid point in my poetry class last week; this is a wonderful time and culture we’re living in right now!

There are all sorts of things unique to our time. Before the popularity of Twitter, the number sign (#) was used as an abbreviation for the word “number,” just something that needed to be pressed after you entered your 4-digit code to get your voice mail. It is now called a “hashtag,” and used to categorize tweets, statements of 140 characters or less. These hashtags link your comments to others’, in every category from the #superbowl to #RulesInARelationship. Both of which are trending now on Twitter!

This is such an exciting time we’re living in right now – and there’s no reason why poets of this generation shouldn’t write about it!

The rise of social networking, smart phones that you can talk to (and talk back!), going green and paperless, there’s an app for that; These concepts are all a part of the culture we’re living in right now. Its wonderful to pay tribute to classics, but why not let the present be your inspiration, and become a classic yourself?

I switched for many reasons, but the easiest one to explain is that I had lost interest in reporting and in the simplicity of news writing. I decided I wanted to be a more versatile writer than a journalism degree would prepare me to be. I wanted to learn about other types of writing and everything that went along with writing skills, like editing, publishing, and design. It was the prospect of doing something, creating something more than a list of facts in paragraph form, punctured by “he said” and “she said” every few sentences. The only drawback was, well, everything that was not a writing class.

I have always felt out of place in most of my English classes. I have not read all the classics which everyone else seems to know from cover to cover. I cannot sing eloquent sentences in discussion to rival the author’s own words. Poems are often lost on me, and when I write my own, I feel squirmy and exposed. I have not taken classes with any of the professors about whom my classmates excitedly compare experiences. I usually feel like an imposter when I tell people I am an English major. I love to read and I love to write, and I do love and defend the major when my scientific friends attack its practicality. But it was not until the very end of my seventh semester that I realized I am, in fact, very much an English major.

This did not occur with the resolution of my English major insecurities. It did not arise from a literarily profound moment. I did not engage in a heated discussion, nor did I become so consumed in a book or an essay or a poem that I needed to be pulled back to reality.

No. The moment I suddenly realized I am an English major occurred when I packed for the library only to find I could not fit all of my books into my bag. There were books of poetry, of prose, of plays, of fiction, of non-fiction, books centuries old and books born within my lifetime, and I knew every single one—and it was vital for me to protect every single one from plunging to the wet ground. My arms were full and my bag was so precariously packed that I had to lean as I walked to prevent the topmost books from spilling out.  I laughed when I finally saw my reflection in the glass door.

Hermione Granger had nothing on me that night.