For the next-to-last week of class, you will pair up and meet with me for ten minutes to talk through your progress towards the final project. Here is a signup sheet. Every student should sign up for one ten-minute slot, and that’s all the time you have to spend in class the week of 12/4! Use the extra time to get your project into shape.

While we’re on the subject, here’s the template you’ll use for the final project. We will review it this week.

Just for fun, here’s the poem the narrator references listening to, in audio format, in Part IV:

The Door

It is hard going to the door cut so small in the wall where the vision which echoes loneliness brings a scent of wild flowers in a wood. But I see the door, and knew the wall, and wanted the wood, and would get there if I could with my feet and hands and mind.

You can read and/or listen.

And here’s the wax cylinder recording of Whitman–one of the earliest audio recordings of a poem in history–referenced there as well:

For good measure, you can read the text here:

America

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old, Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love, A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother, Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

And here’s the site of the Chinati Foundation, established by the artist and sculptor, Donald Judd. This page shows some of the aluminum boxes the narrator reflects on in IV, and you can also see the “totaled” art of John Chamberlain:

Collection – The Chinati Foundation

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Please come to department’s event tomorrow afternoon, where students will hear from faculty about their courses and have an opportunity for informal chat.

I won’t be there due to a schedule conflict, but would love to see some of you in one of these courses next term:

ENGL 306, “Introduction to Theory”

ENGL 389, “William Faulkner”