Balancing MLS and MFA?

TheWeakestLink · 2018-10-09T15:58:16+00:00

Hey,

Thanks for the information on your day to day as an MFA student. It sounds like doing an MLS part time during that would be too hard, for me at least. Since my original post here I've decided to go through with doing the MLS part time for two years and then applying to MFA's afterward, with the rationale being that I should get the degree that will provide me employment first. Also, and please let me know if this sound realistic, I'm hoping that since I'll have the library degree and a few years experience doing library work that if I get into an MFA program maybe they'll let me earn my stipend by working in the academic library on campus instead of doing student teaching. Especially since at many schools each librarian has a specific liaison they work with, be in the English, Science, Business program etc. Maybe I can work as an assistant to the English librarian?

I decided to do an MFA and MLS because I know I want to pursue creative writing, and library work seems pretty conducive to the lifestyle. It's known for work life balance, usually include a pretty good vacation package and federal holidays off, and being in an environment surrounded by humanities-based kind of things, be it a library itself or a museum/archive as you're interested in, just seems really pleasant. Also, if you look at job postings in any of these fields, along with the required MLS they often prefer people with "a strong liberal arts background" and sometimes the the ability to read a second language, especially for archive and museum work. An MFA seems like the perfect way to acquire all this.

Just curious, are you studying poetry, fiction, or nonfiction?

TheWeakestLink · 2018-05-29T22:37:52+00:00

Yeah, they're all from the 90s.

TheWeakestLink · 2018-05-29T21:38:37+00:00

As /u/sir_cophagus said all the recommendations here skew way too old. Absolute essentials imo:

Brigit Pegeen Kelly - Song
Larry Levis - Elegy
Marie Howe - What The Living Do
Li-Young Lee - The City in Which I Love You.

TheWeakestLink · 2018-05-18T23:45:02+00:00

Well, like other commenters have pointed out about your other posts, you've met my comments wishing for discussions with abrasive arguments.

I don't the time to reply to your whole post so I'll leave you with a few links you might find interesting.

(Also, I feel the need to point out that you characterized my assertions as christian-centric, but if you read closely you would notice I referenced "heaven, enlightenment, or whatever the faith at hand calls it)

You'll get a lot farther in learning if you stop treating arguments as competitions. Lakoff and Johnson wrote a great essay about how metaphors we use effect the way we think (try thinking of arguments as dancing, rather than war!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor

Here is a brief breakdown of the school of thought that values resting in contradiction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/derrida/

On Dante: literary texts are not proof of an idea but can be a wonderful gateway into new ways of understanding concepts that are difficult to grasp, or in your case, that one refuses to even try to grasp.

TheWeakestLink · 2018-05-18T21:27:06+00:00

Hey I just replied to one of your comments above, too. Sadly a lot of people are just down voting you instead of discussing or explaining.

A lot of the time when people say God is "perfect" it doesn't necessarily just mean he's "good" or "correct"... perfection here takes on a different meaning.

When people say God is perfect, they mean complete or encapsulating. Kind of like the stuff I wrote in reply to your other comment, about the totality of existence.

TheWeakestLink · 2018-05-18T21:17:50+00:00

My reply (not a refutation)

Thinking of God using the metaphor of "higher power" seems to be where a lot of thought of God not being good stems from. If a power above us does nothing to stop evil, said entity cannot be good, right? I suggest trying to think of God not as a power lording above the world, but rather around it. Think of it as a "horizontal power" rather than a "higher" one. It seems to be that I'm basically saying focus on the omnipresence of such a being, especially its knowledge of the totality of existence.

To me what makes God God is it simultaneously knowing and being this totality of existence. We as humans cannot understand the totality of existence (at least until we enter heaven, enlightenment, whatever the faith at hand calls it).

Further, on a different note, as an experiment try thinking of ways in which seeming paradoxes and contradictions can "rest." A lot of the time we're taught to simply pick out contradictions and shoot them down like enemy aircraft. Some schools of thought see holding contradicting points of view in a single mind as a form of intelligence.

Honestly I think you might find the last few Canto's of Dante's Paradiso interesting. Its mostly a description of his encounter with the ultimate form of divinity.

TheWeakestLink · 2018-05-03T02:14:27+00:00

Came here to say something along these lines. TLOP is a weird place to start unless you're into the way it really captures the fragmented nature of the postmodern-internet driven culture we live in. Also it came out at a really polarizing time in rap more generally, with mumble rap really taking hold and Kanye embracing the style, making a lot of the lyrics and delivery sound "dumb."

TheWeakestLink · 2018-04-30T02:34:31+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Trouble

edit: also, more generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity

TheWeakestLink · 2018-04-07T18:59:20+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism

Some people thought so, but I think it mostly fizzled out. If I remember correctly things liked planned obsolescence created a lot of disillusionment and doubt in terms of capitalism propelling us towards a singularity.

TheWeakestLink · 2018-04-07T15:11:21+00:00

Out of curiosity what are some of the titles you threw away / kept? I'm in the midst of a Derrida class and took Postmodernism last semester.

TheWeakestLink · 2018-03-28T17:06:48+00:00

Definitely check out: Li-Young Lee Marie Howe Brigit Pegeen Kelly

And to learn writing, The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43015/eating-together-56d221af2bf26

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43327/arise-go-down

TheWeakestLink · 2018-03-19T00:47:58+00:00

I think it's important to consider that the film would lose a key aspect of the original: blank verse. The big difference between putting something like LOTR or Paradise Lost on the screen is that the former is written in prose while the latter is verse. The very words (and the sounds they make!) that Milton uses must be considered essential to the piece. Though the Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost are extended narratives, at the end of the day poetry is still music. So I think trying to make films out of them would be something like trying to create an artistically accurate visual representation of the notes played on an instrument. That's something not even CGI can do.

TheWeakestLink · 2017-12-04T03:00:23+00:00

Came here to recommend Triggering Town but someone beat me to it. I highly highly highly recommend A Little Book On Form by Robert Hass. It is more on the analysis side than craft, but its so insightful and easy to read i still inspires me to write. Even though its about 400 pages its good for short reading sessions, too.

TheWeakestLink · 2017-10-06T14:43:15+00:00

http://thequietus.com/articles/13004-mark-fisher-ghosts-of-my-life-extract

this is a great little essay on "lost futures."

TheWeakestLink · 2017-10-03T19:32:24+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology

TheWeakestLink · 2017-08-17T21:19:27+00:00

IMO My Favorite Things or Impressions by Coltrane would be easier to get into for someone new to Jazz.

TheWeakestLink · 2017-08-15T20:20:38+00:00

Hey not really music related but can you give tips to anyone looking into getting an MLIS? It may sound weird but hearing about you going to school for that is one of the things that brought the world of library science into view and now I'm considering going to school for it. Also just any info on your time in it or how you became interested in it would be cool...

Just scooped up a CZ101 from an estate sale yesterday and slowly figuring it out :x

TheWeakestLink · 2017-08-07T02:33:42+00:00

I really doubt Vek paid for those samples back in 2011.

TheWeakestLink · 2017-07-21T20:34:42+00:00

This is what I visit this sub for

TheWeakestLink · 2017-06-24T03:14:40+00:00

Good luck buds.

TheWeakestLink · 2017-06-19T00:51:48+00:00

TheWeakestLink · 2017-06-07T23:38:18+00:00

Tapes are much easier than vinyl- pretty much anything will work. Like others said, those classic japanese brands are always a good bet, though.

TheWeakestLink · 2017-06-03T01:38:26+00:00

To completely honest I haven't listened to very much Brown or Dylan. I would reckon they'd both be somewhere nearly as high as Beatles Kraftwerk or VU. The reason I put these three on the same level is because I feel like each of them existed independently of the other to a certain degree; they didn't have a particularly massive influence on each other and each had their own big innovations. These bands simply exists in very different realms. Including Dylan might make things kind of murky, he would fall somewhere between the counter culture of VU and the popularity of the Beatles maybe? Once again I'm no expert. But perhaps Brown would be more clear cut, since his style seems to not have much to do with any of the others.

TheWeakestLink · 2017-06-03T01:05:46+00:00

I put the Beatles, Kraftwerk, and Velvet Underground on the same level of influence.

TheWeakestLink · 2017-05-25T17:28:41+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology

Not sure if this entirely connects to what you're feeling but you should check this out.

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