Dear Students,
Like painters, writers craft in layers. Whether ideas begin in a rough sketch or a vague brush stroke, every artist must start somewhere.
Deep thinking drives the artistic process, but mishaps, confusions and mistakes chart the course. What ultimately comes out on the canvas is the result of careful attention to form, but inherent in this process is that which is unforeseen at the outset. Slowly the layers build and as they do, they inspire new ideas and in this way writing is mysterious, surprising and utterly unpredictable.
As students enrolled in Composition 1A, you are all writers now. Your individual blogs provide you with a canvas for contemplation and reflection, a place to explore and experiment.
Your goals here are simple: Read, Think, and Write!
Welcome to the Humanities.
by Stanley Kunitz
I have walked so many lives
Some of them my own
And I am not who I was
Though some principle of being abides
From which I struggle not to stray
When I look behind as I am compelled to look
Before I gather strengths to proceed on my journey
I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon
And the slow fires trailing from the abandoned campsites
Over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings
Oh I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections
And my tribe is scattered
How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends
those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn, exalting somewhat with my wings intact
to go wherever I need to go
and every stone on the road precious to me
In my darkest night when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage
A nimbus clouded voice directed me, “Live in the layers. Not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written.
I am not done
with my changes.
