WORD AS MATERIAL

Assignment FOR THURSDAY APRIL 3rd:

1. Title your piece (poem, essay, meditation, story, musing) with a single word.
2. Go to www.oed.com on a St. Lawrence associated computer (let me know if you can't get on)
3. Research your word--its several meanings over times, the sample sentences from history, similar words that developed from the same root
4. Infect your piece with this new knowledge--make the word heavy with other ideas (than its singular "meaning"). Show how the word connects with tangentially related ideas/images/words.

TENTATIVE PIZZA AND SODA DATE--TUESDAY APRIL 29th 630-830 then head over to JAVA

Oh, and watch this for happiness: MAN'S 30-YEAR-OLD THEORY OF BIG BANG PROVED, HIS REACTION CAUGHT ON VIDEO

Happy April!

First lines of Eliot's The Waste Land and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales below:

The Waste Land (excerpt)

BY T. S. ELIOT

                                  FOR EZRA POUND
                                IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

              I. The Burial of the Dead

  April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

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GENERAL PROLOGUE (excerpt)

           from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

1         Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
                  When April with its sweet-smelling showers
2         The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
                 Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
3         And bathed every veyne in swich licour
                 And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid
4         Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
                 By which power the flower is created;
5         Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
                 When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,
6         Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
                 In every wood and field has breathed life into
7         The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
                 The tender new leaves, and the young sun
8         Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
                 Has run half its course in Aries,
9         And smale foweles maken melodye,
                 And small fowls make melody,
10         That slepen al the nyght with open ye
                 Those that sleep all the night with open eyes
11         (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
                 (So Nature incites them in their hearts),
12         Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
                 Then folk long to go on pilgrimages,
13         And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
                 And professional pilgrims to seek foreign shores,
14         To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
                 To distant shrines, known in various lands;
15         And specially from every shires ende
                 And specially from every shire's end
16         Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
                 Of England to Canterbury they travel,
17         The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
                 To seek the holy blessed martyr,
18         That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
                 Who helped them when they were sick.

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