Stealing from Midrashic Poets

When I began taking creative writing classes at a University, tackling a bible story or retelling it frightened me. Fear struck because I was afraid of being unprepared; not knowing enough about the biblical passage. It wasn't until I took a Bible in Literature class when I found certain outlets for this. It was because of the way these writers dodged cares about giving wings to their imagination. It was inspiring and the techniques from writer to writer varied.

            One of the writers in our class readings was the author Jorge Luis Borges. In one of his works, titled “Legend,” Borges creates an amazing story out of a biblical passage in Genesis 4:1-16. The story in the bible tells us that Cain and Abel were brothers and that God in some way accepted Abel’s offerings and not Cain’s. Ultimately, the bible says that Cain killed Abel on a field. What Borges does, however, was give a twist to this passage. He creates a narrative between the brothers after Abel’s death – perhaps afterlife. The writer goes on to make the reader imagine that in afterlife, Abel has forgotten the incident until Cain begins to ask for forgiveness. I thought this was extremely clever in many ways. In one way, Borges very subtlety hints that Abel might rethink his relationship with his brother. In another, Borges explores the guilt of the “evil” brother. It makes the reader identify with both characters because of its depiction of reality; reality being that no one is one-hundred percent good or one-hundred percent bad.

            Another writer I want to mention is Dan Pagis. Pagis wrote “Autobiography,” which was a poem fictionally narrated by Abel. It begins to vividly picture Abel’s burial. “If my family is famous, not a little of the credit goes to me,” the writer paints a picture of bitterness in the character. He states that he feels like he has been forgotten (perhaps in scripture and throughout generations). The bible no longer references his death after Genesis and he writes that Cain continued to be talked about when he multiplied while his body remained in the soil of the earth. Ending the poem, Pagis taunts the readers with Abel’s intentions of getting his brother back. “His legions desert him and go over to me, and even this is only half a revenge.”

            In Gertrude Landa’s “Jewish Fairy Tale: Giant of the Flood,” Landa creates an imaginary tale about Noah’s hard decision in receiving the Giant Og’s help in boarding a large unicorn. He retells the story as if Noah was faced with the decision of doing an impossible task which was to get a gigantic unicorn onto the Arc. Noah was hesitant at first because biblically, giants are demons. However, after a long mournful plea to be saved, Noah ends up helping Og be saved and Og helped Noah board the Unicorn. What I can steal from Landa’s tale is the writer’s creative imaginative story telling. The way Gertrude told the story was without fear of being wrong and wasn’t ashamed of telling the story according to his imagination.

            A fourth story I was inspired to model my writing after was Itsik Manger’s poem “Hagar’s Last Night in Abraham’s House.” The bible talks about God’s promise to Abraham and a prophecy of Abraham receiving a son. In Genesis 21:14, Abraham sends Hagar – a slave woman away along with Abraham’s son out of wedlock son. Now, Manger gives his poem a twist by giving the slave woman a twist and making a villain out of Abraham. After all, Abraham did abandon his duties of being a father and raising his child. The poem projects Abraham’s wife, Sarah, as an angry wife who demands Hagar to leave. What Manger does in his poem is give the story an edge by adding elements of modern day relevance. Also, Manger writes about Hagar’s true attachment to Abraham and her sentimental state of mind while she is being kicked out.

What I believe is a solution to getting over my fear of being wrong is trying to explore the possibilities of what might have happened and being clear about my creative inventions. The writers we read about in class took on many minor incidents in the bible. They gave a voice to characters in the bible who never had one. It gave a voice to women who never were seen as more than property. I can model one of my poem’s after Itsik Manger’s “Hagar’s Last Night in Abraham’s House,” and give a voice to a woman in the bible; perhaps the female fortune teller in Acts 16 where Paul and Silas become irritated with her and banish the prophetic fortunetelling demon out of the slave woman.  I think this is an amazing way of incorporating the bible into my writing; I can also attempt to model a poem or short story after Jorge Luis Borges’s “Legend” and giving a voice to a character in the bible that isn’t understood – Judas Iscariot’s feelings on betraying Jesus.

Desk update

Friday was disappointing. I ended the last published blog with something around the lines of "I'm not ditching my dad." Well, he ditched me. X____X I feel pretty lame and want to put it down... butttttttttttt.... I promised myself I wasn't going to take down anything I wrote this summer.

After being at Matt's Cash & Carry, Lowe's and The Home Depot since 3:oo pm, we came home at about 5:3o pm and ate bowls full of mom's Caldo de Res. Howevah, before I was even done eating, he (dad) took off and said, "te miro alrato," and closed the door. I resumed... (well, I never really stopped) eating.

Once I got an extra corn and potato, I sat outside with my panting dog and my sleeping dead fat cats and waited for my dad to come home.

6:oo pm

                          6:2o pm

                                                    6:45 pm

                          7:1o pm 

I got up off the swing chair and gathered all the equipment: hand saw, hammer, pencil, ext. cord.

By 7:3o pm I grabbed my sweat soaked phone from my pocket and called him... (I'm not going to drag this out anymore cause it's starting to piss me off again.) He was with his rancher friends probably watching his rooster get the shit beat out of. Anyway, a tantrum later ~~~~ which included me throwing the nailed boards, throwing cages and freeing enslaved chickens (idiots didn't go anywhere cause they've never been out of their 2x2 sq ft cages & it was getting dark) and wondering why he's always ditched me, why he's always ran to father my elder cousins, why he coached them and never tried to push me to join a sport, how he was super anal about me and my mom caring for my nephew when he was here, why I always make up things to do to spend time with him (like this stupid ass desk project which made me spend over 2oo dollars and the Spurs season tickets)  ~~~~ I decided to try and build the desk myself. I blasted up music in the garage and flipped the desk into its place and began mapping out the plan.

Sat. 6.16.12

I woke up at 8:oo am to open up the store. 

Got home. 

Napped.

Repented and prayed about my anger.

After this, my dad asked me to help him with the desk. I was angry and said, "no." I recut almost everything I cut by myself yesterday and was stuck again. I swallowed my pride and asked dad to help me... I'm glad I did! 

Adan the Builder

Adan as in my dad of course! haha 

We've been meaning to build a desk for quite some time... (I bought supplies in March!) I made him get out of bed Tuesday morning when he heard the table saw turn on. I skipped school Tuesday and Wednesday but it was well worth it. 

The fear of losing my parents is always there and I want a hand full of knowledge to be passed down to me.

My mom is a beast at gardening, sewing and a master genius in the kitchen! I've spent so much time with my mom growing up that I've adapted some of her art. I put together a little shirt for my dog using her sewing machine in April and I've known how to make flour tortillas for years.

However, I haven't learned a lot of things from my dad. I was raised primarily by my momma. Up until I was five, my dad wasn't around much. He was always at my cousin's games. (I'm probably an awesome uncle cause of my dad, huh?) My dad was a full time carpenter, plumber, gardener, extinguisher... He's always had a job, the same one. He worked for an older man named Don Hartshorn and his chinese wife Shinshaw Wakamoto.... kidding she's from Singapore but her name is Nancy.

Anyway, so when my dad got home around 4:30 pm, he was always dead tired. I had the opportunity to learn things from him during the summers right after sixth, seventh and eighth grade. Those summer days were spent working/painting a fence that was about two miles long. It was awesome. I got to spend it with my dad's co-worker's sons and my childhood/neighborhood best friends. There, I learned how to use a nail gun, how to paint and everything there is to know about how to make paint brushes last long.

My dad has been unemployed since my senior year of high school and since then, I've gotten to know him better. I bought 2010-2011 season tickets for the Spurs and when we had gas money we went. I invited some friends a couple of times but I ended up ignoring them because I couldn't ditch my dad. Sorry.

Short Story

Las Vecinas 

The sun's morning rays didn't hit the covered walkways at the Flea Market in Alamo, TX when the redheaded Latina employee, Olga, struggled to lift the rusty roll up doors. When she was in, she busted out a large bowl and placed it in the sink while she allowed hot water to run, she squirted soap and some clorox into the bowl. Once the bowl was full, she threw in a towel in it and with it began to wipe down her cutting board that had dead flies and fried roaches.


"Buenos Dias, Vecina!" she told the 1300 B sellers who were displaying big plastic flower hair accessories.
"Como amanecio, Vecina?" Julia replied while she walked away towards her stationed truck avoiding a reply from talkative Olga.


Mariana, Olga's heavier co-worker, was walking by and bumped Julia's table with her big hips.


"Estoy bien cansada," Mariana told Olga.


"I am too, I've been up since three in the morning getting my viejo's lonche ready," Olga replied while scrubbing the greased grill.

Gifted

ACTS 16:16-21

¹⁶ Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. ¹⁷ She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” ¹⁸ She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her. ¹⁹ When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. ²⁰ They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar ²¹ by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.”


They kept me from being the next Moses.
Was it because I was poor?
Was it because I was a woman and nothing more?

Our eyes locked and for the first time I couldn’t see who he was
It was almost as if there was something blocking his life from my visions
So I ran and touched his dirt-glazed chest and I saw him with twelve others
“What in the Lord’s most high name is wrong with this beast looking woman”

I saw a glimpse of joy,

Pure white light!

“If I can only hold him for a little while longer,”
            I thought.

As I began my quest to touch him
I felt a zap sit me right next onto the old woman, Rena’s, sacks of oranges
“Proclaim who they are! They serve the King of Heaven and Earth!”
Stumbling off the sacks my eyes closed shut and
My body cradled towards the ground again

With his voice commanding, “Come out of her!”

I might as well be blind

fifteen nickels

I DROVE FOR COFFEE BEFORE WORK

AND I PLACED MY CUP BESIDE THE REGISTER.

I SWITCHED THE LIGHTS ON AND BEGAN TO TAKE

THE DARK CURTAINS DOWN. I  WAS ANXIOUS 

TO SEE HOW UGLY MY MISTAKES WERE LAST NIGHT.

EVERYONE KNOWS I CAN'T COUNT.

NICKELS AND PENNIES WERN'T LOUD ENOUGH

TO MAKE ANY CUSTOMERS GIVE ME SPACE.

THEY QUACKED, "PERDON, JOVEN" AND I LOST COUNT.

I GRABBED MY COUNTED STASH OF DIMES,

GAVE THEM A BRIEF LOOK THROUGH THE CORNERS

OF MY CAT-NIBBLED GLASSES.

FAKE FACES WALK THE HALLS OF THE MALL

ON SATURDAY MORNINGS

FROM THE LOUD HAIR IRON LADY WITH THE ADAM'S APPLE

WHO SAYS "HELLO HAHN-EEEEEE" TO EVERY

WHISPER WAVES MY EARS PICK UP FROM THE OTHERS.

THEY THINK I'M STUPID.

pardon my tenses. 

Mimetic Critics vs Intertextual Critics

Exam 2

Part A Q. 2

While reading through the intertextual characteristics, I quickly put my old professor's face to this school of criticism. Who would have thought my professor was going somewhere during all his rants of "the greats" and "predecessors." While in my creative writing class, we were made to read a book by one of the authors in "The List of Literature's Greatest" he had given us and then write a ten page essay of everything we could steal from these great authors. For example, he gave us certain books from the Holy Bible (Ecclesiastes & Proverbs) and what we could "borrow" from those books is the application of wisdom. In other words, we could assume that some writers from the Victorian Era who made, although not literary, best selling "How to" books for upper class women who couldn't raise their children, cook etc. borrowed this application of wisdom from these books of the Holy Bible. 

In this intertextual application essay entitled ""Silence and Slow Time": Pastoral Topoi in Keats's Odes" by Lore Metzger, the writer is stubborn about his argument. Metzger, writes that in Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Keats takes some literary elements from great writers of the Romantic Era but adds another element to contribute to literature. "Keats insisted on his right to enlarge the neoclassic canon of "great masters," to test a wide spectrum of masterpieces and to allow the masterpieces to test him. When he turned to experimenting with the Pindaric ode, he evolved both his own stanzaic form and hi own repertoire of topoi by testing literary models, imprinting on them his own design." (307)

Metzger says that Keats informs us that he believes Keats incorporated both a classical literary tradition by molding pastoral topoi elements into his poem. (natural life and mother earth) However, Keats didn't stop there, he added some literary traditions of the romantics. Therefore, Keats made contributed something special to literature: Romantic Classicism. "In some of his odes Keats the classicist deployed pastoral topoi to give allusive resonance to his personal debates, while Keats the romanticist exploited the tensions and dissonances that surfaced in his confrontations with literary tradition."

Lore Metzger then ties writes about the various themes going on in the poem "The contest between art and life, sculpture and poetry, sculpture and poetry, has reached a moment of equipoise. But increasingly the speakers tone becomes plaintive as he meditates on lovers that cannot age, trees that will not shed their leaves, unheard melodies that, like unconsummated love, will never grow stale." That all of these "cold pastoral" themes are better than a real mortal life full of passion and the way of cheating death is the "silent immortality of the urn." 

In every argument the intertexual critic, Lore Metzger brings forth in his application essay, he ties in the emotional modes, themes and traditions of other types of literature.His need to categorize a writer into a box is what makes him an intertextual critic. Ranking a writer (student) below their predecessors is important because it humbles the student. Once they acknowledge that they are being influenced by another writer, they have to study it in order for them not to just become an imitation of their predecessor. A fantastic example is Hemingway and Dostoyevsky. Ernest Hemingway's predecessor was Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and there are books about Hemingway's constant self comparison and insecurities of living under Dostoyevsky's big shadow. 

571

Part B Q. 3

Josephine Donovan's essay "Beyond the Net: Feminist Criticism as a Moral Criticism," quickly puts her in the the Mimetic school of criticism. This is because she often complains about the way female characters in literature are flawed depictions of reality and how of minimal importance author's of literature focus on presenting work valuable to female readers. Donovan goes on to say that female characters in literature are there to serve men and to apply some sort of aesthetic beauty. "Women in literature written by men are for the most part seen as Other, as objects, of interest only insofar as they serve or detract from the goals of the male protagonist. Such literature is alien from a female point of view because it denies her essential selfhood." (225) The critic is upset by this because men have been writing literature for so long and they haven't presented a woman character who female readers can relate to. "The primary assumption a critic in the "images of women" school must make is an evaluation of the authenticity of the female characters. Authenticity is another concept borrowed from the Existentialists, in particular Heidegger, who meant by it whether an individual has a self-defined critical consciousness, as opposed to a mass-produced or stereotypical identity." Josephine says that any stereotypical persona in literature lacks reality therefore lacks to produce any psychological revelations of reality. For example, if there is one person who is depicted as one hundred percent evil, it is lacking the reality of a person being diverse and vise-versa any character who is one hundred percent righteous is not reality. Biblically speaking, everyone is flawed and falls short of the glory of God. However, will Jesus Christ be an example of an unrealistic character to a mimetic critic? Or will the temptations of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew bring reality to a literary work? If we were to read a story about Hitler that portrays him as evil and only evil, the work has no literary value because Hitler's love for children is known. Josephine Donovan goes on to say that you often see women in literature be only one hundred percent good or one hundred percent bad: the virgin vs the whore, Mary vs Eve etc. the fact that minor characters present only one sided characteristics (good or bad) is not realistic because the characters that do get to have complex personalities are men. "Female stereotypes symbolize either the spiritual or the material, good or evil. Mary, the mother of Jesus, came through time to exemplify the ultimate in spiritual goodness, and Eve, the partner of Adam, the most sinister of evil physicality." Which is true, females do get the short end of the stick in western literature because of the often red headed character in Genesis. However, Adam was with her. Is a man not supposed to lead his wife? Guide her? The fall is Adam's fault just as much as Eve's. But why is it that Eve is the model for the "sinister" woman in literature? Why do we see that just as a female is about to show some complexity to her personality in Henry James's novella, "Daisy Miller," she ends up getting killed as if a woman has to be virtuous to have to live. This, according to mimetic critics is not correct, not literature and we have to be aware of it to fix the unrealistic reality of literature. 

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