Week Four - Original Prompt

Owen sleeps in a mound of blankets between our feet. Henry sleeps in my arms. All the way across the Atlantic, there is turbulence; bulkheads shake, glasses tinkle, galley latches open and close. We are moving from Boise, Idaho, to Rome, Italy, a place I've never been. When I think of Italy, I imagine decadence, dark brown oil paintings, emperors in sandals. I see a cross-section of a school-project Colosseum, fashioned from glue and sugar cubes; I see a navy-blue-and-white soap dish, bought in Florence, chipped on one corner, that my mother kept beside her bathroom sink for thirty years. More clearly than anything else, I see a coloring book I once got for Christmas entitled Ancient Rome. Two babies slurped milk from the udders of a wolf. A Caesar grinned in his leafy crown. A slinky, big-pupiled maiden posed with a jug beside a fountain. Whatever Rome was to me then -- seven years old, Christmas night, snowflakes dashing against the windows, a lighted spruce blinking on and off downstairs, crayons strewn across the carpet -- it's hardly clearer now: outlines of elephants and gladiators, cartoonish palaces in the backgrounds, a sense that I had chosen all the wrong colors, aquamarine for chariots, goldenrod for skies. On the television screen planted in the seat-back in front of me, our little airplane icon streaks past Marseilles, Nice. A bottle of baby formula, lying sideways in the seat pocket, soaks through the fabric and drips onto my carry-on, but I don't reach down to straighten it for fear I will wake Henry. -- Anthony Doerr. Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World 

I'm all about juxtaposition and this "there's two sides of Rome" idea we have been playing with for the last month. I think this Anthony Doerr exemplifies the concept in a new way brilliantly and offer that as my prompt for this week. I love the way he weaves the old and the new together--not the excepted old and new, with cars zipping past monuments, for example. Rather, it is his own old and new: the newness of being a new father with this new experience of traveling and traveling with twins and moving to a new location, alongside all of the preconceptions he has had about Rome/Italy. Those, too, I think we could draw upon: he does not offer one single pre-image of Italy but instead a series of preconceptions, from emperors to coloring books. Prompt: Juxtapose a uniquely adult experience within/about Italy with a series of childhood/younger-self ideas and images about/of Italy.

Week Three - Response to Shaunna's "Part 3 of Pros"

Part 3
A Memory Named Joe
(Spolethome)
The track is wrong, it was 2-B not 2-A. The five of us beat our blistered bubble feet as we burn our legs to the train that was readying to leave. So desperate we wanted the hour and a half to pass so we could kiss the humid air of Spoleto. Leaping in the doors, as eager as the pigeon’s bobbing bread with their beaks, we scattered amongst the coach for a vacant seat. Mine lingered in the isle next to a woman with burnt curls, who hovered over her cell phone, chaotic in texts. The black man across from her stared out the nine PM window, at a reflection of himself. And finally the last of our four was a Roman who shocked the memories of elementary school play grounds and a classmate who, if not for this man’s lazy almond eyes and Spanish features, would have remained lost in the haze of my twenty-one year old timeline. Yet, I see this boy, let’s call him Joe, so clear in my dazed gaze out across the trains’ car, as I occasionally slipping eye contact with this stranger.  I see Joes’ slothful eyes, wet with tears from the toddler bullies who stole his chocolate Debbie cake. They tried to take mine but I was daring enough to take my plastic fork and award him Spiderman band aids from the teacher’s desk. Joe never did anything but cry and squeal. I remember those screams and snot drenched nostrils that bubbled with every exhale. No one in the classroom wanted to touch him in that state of chubby cheeks creasing his drowning eyes and mouth webbing with nose slush. The only thing we did was walk away till he realized no one cared about his stolen Debbie, or knocked over building blocks, and that no one was going help him out of the mud from the morning rain where the little shit of a seven year old shoved him. Joe, like me, was an outcast among outcasts, which meant we never received the new toys, we only ate the leftover oatmeal cookies, our naps consisted of the blanket with moth holes and heads resting on frigid metal air vents, and we never got to be on the good team for kick ball. I will never know what happened to Joe, or was it Jose, maybe Eduardo. Whatever was written on his third grade name tag I will never recall, however, Joe now has made an impact on me, for this hour of a sleep tempting train ride, he branded four sheets of my journal and ran my pen dry. 

If I am understanding this concept correctly, I love it. We see huge crowds of people here--why do we notice one or two in particular? Why do they stick with us? Connecting/remembering/recalling someone the speaker knew previously is a very smart move.

It could, of course, move a bit quicker. I would suggest you jump right into the description of the person you call Joe and cut out the scenery beforehand, including the other people. (Keep  lazy almond eyes and Spanish features for Joe, which I adore. I might go into the meaning of Spanish features a little bit more.). Then, dig deeper. What is it about this man that recalls a bullied childhood school friend? Maybe it’s the entire environment: Joe cries and squeals, a fact you remember as the train screeches on the tracks? What is it about the person sitting across the narrator that recalls her own bullying, and how does it affect her in this moment? How does it reach across the barrier—what kind of barrier is it? What cultural or other walls are palpable between the speaker and the subject on the train?—to touch “Joe,” both the real and the doppelgänger? 

5385: Daisy Miller

I'm interested in the gender dynamic in this piece because we have two Americans--a male and a female--acting within a foreign/Italian sphere, which offers, I think, a unique opportunity to consider the way the author treats the opposing genders. Clearly, the female gets the unfortunately awful end of the stick. Her flirty, flighty ways result in disease and death, while he--levelheaded and responsible-- warns against it. She becomes broken down, too, reduced to a series of body parts throughout the narrative: she has "a singularly well-shaped ear," and later she is "still showing her pretty teeth."

The question, of course, is how Italy factors into all of this. We could easily claim that Italy kills the wild, uncultured American. However, she begins to adopt Italy, too: Giovanelli is frequently described as "the little Italian." Immediately after Winterbourne sheds his interest in her after finding her at the Collosseum, the narrator describes Daisy as "the little American flirt" (while Giovanelli becomes "the fourtunate Italian"). So, does Italy kill her, or does she possess Italy? And, because the narrative often highlights the story-telling aspect, is the author, in a larger sense, damning Italy by killing the girl? I have no idea what to do with all of that--but given our interest in ownership, it's worthwhile to note.

Week Three: Image Junkyard 1-4

They stand guard one last time, these flattened soldiers corralled by glass. Their limbs are stone, more barrier than warrior. At home, my brother lays a green plastic man at the top of the stairs, perched to look out over the rest of the house.

At a bar in a gully of parking lots, fluorescent lights sprouting from the ground, we tuck into a pocket at the counter, more comfortable with our backs to the unknown language. Se Captain America. I can feel his Italian on my back. A man with hair slicked away from his face lays a double-layered shot on the counter, red, white, and blue.

Standing at the top of a staircase, it's a straight shot to the rest of the group as they, in a clump of striped shirts and fluorescent backpacks, descend to dinner. From here, I can hear their pigeon calls and laughter. I can see the way we look to the rest, how we travel in a pack of sound, in a beat of constant movement.

It's new, seeing me through him. It is rapid sketch, he says, dangling it in front of me. You want? You smile. I look like her, like the one before, like an Italian that's left him behind in a town of walled ruin and, for some reason, I am okay with this. She is hard lines, deep scratches, rough behind her head in a shadow of blue ink, this girl he has memorialized on graph paper beside the cash register.

Week Two - Original Prompt

I was super taken by the translation workshop we did today. I've thought about translation a lot but never had anyone really sit down and talk through the specific problems of translation with me. I was intrigued by the notion of translating the intent of the poem moreso than the specific words, while trying to retain as much  of the diction and form as possible. Translation is, of course, a key theme of our trip: learning the language, conveying our personalities appropriately to an audience that doesn't speak the same language as us, adopting the culture. The whole trip is translation.

I was wondering, then, about writing the same event twice: once from the perspective of yourself/a narrator, and once from the perspective of another party. For example, I might write about my first solo attempt in an Italian (German, actually) restaurant, where Sydney and I sat down, looked at the menu, realized no one in the building spoke any English, and made a hasty exit. I can imagine the potential pitfalls of this type of exercise--a writer would have to avoid characterizing the waitress as simply unhelpful and tired of Americans. Writing from the perspective of one of the Italians we meet--maybe Elisa, trying to teach Italian to a bunch of students who keep defaulting to Spanish--would, I think, open up interesting opportunities.

Week Two - In-class Calisthenics

I didn't expect to fully realize Italy, its crepe paper air and the impression of steep walkways, the way words hang like pearls slung against each other, or the coffee like the skin of a statue roughed against my lips only in that moment. It should have been, I thought, Juno 1949 etched into the Colosseum. It should have been the two year old boy skipping past my daily cappuccino, waving a balloon animal over his head. It should have been the bus driver angling his job down into the pavement, or American passing salami skewers around me in the lobby of Hotel Clitunno, or lining our English up in front of a classroom full of future tour guides and bartenders. It should have been one of those human moments, grainy beneath my fingernails, ragged and pinned to each other. The boy because he is my own little brother, barefoot on the front June lawn, thousands of miles across the ocean, a plastic sword in his fist. Juno, who is us, sixty years ago, seeing the same patched stone, only with one less carving.

But I never thought of the R's rolled down narrow alleyways or rain clouds dipped into valleys every day of the afternoon or a tour guide lining Italy with English. I thought of my grandmother--step-grandmother, my aunt would correct--with flour on her hands in a yellow tiled kitchen, every cabinet thrown open and wind whipping in the one, small Brooklyn window. It's of her, the way she peppered her stories with "ya know?" and her nails drummed against your shoulder, it's how she nicknamed all of her friends after pastries. It's that Italian Christmas she tried to cook right after marrying my grandfather and the bits of cheese that slung down the pavement when he threw the lasagna out of that one window, demanding pork.

Week Two - Memory

Seventeen, three months before my aunt and I board a plane from LaGuardia to Rome, I am sunk into a corner of the couch, hunched over my laptop exploring Turkey electronically. We have options, here, though the horseback tour of an Izmir beach is too much for her. The air conditioned bus ride of Istanbul, or the tour that drops us at the Grand Bazaar for three hours, opening up an expanse of hand-stitched purses and painted bracelets.

"We should be different people on the cruise," my aunt Shannon says. She's here in Georgia with me to see my graduation and help plan the finer details--excursions, transportation--for our upcoming two week trip to Europe. It will be the first time, in my memory, that we will spend a vacation with just the two of us. Every weekend of my childhood, my aunt Coll helped me tie my beauty pageant dresses or my aunt Tracy took me to Splish Splash. Shannon, though she lived in our basement apartment until we moved to Georgia two years prior, was loved but distant. On Christmas she would help me make donuts in a new Easy Bake oven. At Christmas parties, she tumbled down the stairs after too many beers. Some nights, she called me on the phone from the basement to ask I liked any boys yet, every word a slow slide into the next.

I don't understand what she means, that we should be other people. "Ya know, different people at dinner. Tell them you're--the daughter of a wealthy orange grove owner. I'm your publicist because you have a book coming out about--about the fashion company you started at fifteen that quickly went under."

Week Two - Reportage

It's dark by the time we realize we can't find the train station. Packed with the tastes of Italy--a layered, dark chocolate pastry from an old world bakery with glossed wood counters, a scoop of lemon gelato beside steps stretching the entire length of the main square, an entire Caprese pizza straight from a wood burning oven--I try to guide myself and six other study abroad students down the side of the mountain (giù, giù, keep going down, we'll find the station) winding past expanses of night-time Perugia and cavities of McDonalds, shuttered newspaper stands, and dark forms of people crouched in doorways. We form a pocket with ourselves, the girls layered on the inside against stares and repetitive pick up lines: beautiful, beautiful, the only word that tastes Italian to them. Giù, giù we go, spiraling downward, learning each other's limits with each step. We pause along the way, ask two girls how to get to the train station. They are awesome, one tells me. She's young, maybe nineteen, hooked at the elbow with her friend before the unlit--closed, in any language--bus station. They are awesome because they point us down a curve in the road, promising a train station, in English. They are proud of their demolition of the language barrier, of this opportunity to reach across the ocean. I wish I could do the same.

5385: Response to Radcliffe's /The Italian/

I can't help but think of Radcliffe's The Italian, and really this entire section of literature in general, as it compares with An Italian Affair and other texts like it. Truthfully, is it not misusing Italy in a similar manner? Granted, the writing itself is significantly better, empty as it is of lines such as "In the middle of the night I was woken up by a mosquito and found myself already crying." However, similar crimes are committed by Radcliffe: that characters act in unnatural ways and, deeper than that, Italy becomes a place where "something" happens. In commercial fiction, that "something" is romance and passion and finding, ultimately, finding oneself. Here, it's a place in which danger can occur--danger brought on by the supernatural and danger brought on by some kind of dark love.

I don't say this to lessen the Gothic or The Italian in any way. However, it's important to recognize the interesting parallel and consider how we've twisted it (and degraded it?) in modern writing. Whereas we once wrote about a man preying upon a younger woman, typically with some kind of barrier (status, religion, relationships, etc.) between them and a heavy sense of danger painted into the "Italian" scenery, we now write about a woman using a man for her own purposes (finding herself, forgetting her ex-husband, the usual), often with an Italian background that is so flat and immobile it is similarly unrecognizable. The question, I think, is whether we can really consider one inherently more Italian/true to Italy than the other, if both emphasize very specific elements of Italian culture rather than Italy as a whole.

Week Two - Classmate Response - Taylor's "Junkyard Quote Post One Week Two"

"grease mullets dance in sweat"
"made by a French accented Italian"
The Capuchin Crypt, filled with real skeletons from the Barberini family, welcomed us with a woman at a granite desk asking five per head. We walked through the same information from the two hour lecture from a St. Francis enthusiast. The crypt, an underground tomb with a set of stairs and one sign that reads no smoking, cellphones, pets, food, or photography, in symbols. We are in Rome, language barriers are the medians.The underground home for the heart of Pope Sixtus the fifth's niece also houses intricate wall decor and chandeliers made from kneecaps and vertebrae. 

Taylor Boltz: "Junkyard Quote Post One Week Two" 

You might consider working more with this. I didn't go to the crypt (though I did see two illegal pictures MacKenzie took), but I'm already struck with something I see in your post. I'm obsessed with this "two worlds" deal we talked about after reading the Calvino.

"filled with real skeletons from the Barberini family, [...] a woman at a granite desk ask[s] five per head"

I think you could have a very interesting juggling/toggling piece that deals with the (necessary?) juxtaposition of the old and the new. This would offer you a very specific way of looking at it. The thought of a receptionist sitting outside of a crypt that is decorated grotesquely with bones is flipping cool. We saw the same kind of a thing at the Spanish Steps, where a sign warned not to "shout squall and sing" (no punctuation, I might add). The crypt example, though, would give you the most interesting, specific -in to a writing topic. It would be a way of talking about the old/new and the history/capitalism dichotomies without delving into baggage-heavy material. I would suggest writing about this experience (even the Comic convention location would be applicable. An escalator system runs through a retired fortress, while a bunch of comic book geeks [I use this term lovingly, of course] huddle to take part in Cosplay contests and sort through fandom memorabilia.). Consider writing about all of the times this sort of juxtaposition occurs. Then, later in the drafting process, pick one specific instance and use the material even if it applied to a different event. That way, you won’t limit yourself in the beginning, but you’ll also have focus for the draft.

Make sense? I'll be happy to private-workshop it with you if you want to go for it.

Week Two - Junkyard Images 1-4

Before a theater still rubbed with the white of the Collosseum, a nun with an ace bandage-wrapped arm stands still, looking up toward the sound of the bell tolling time.

The train jerks forward into movement, the wheels scratching across the tracks with a sound like cranes screeching into a hollow of sky.

Someone has corralled Italy with color. Like a tour guide lining Rome with English, these groups stain the paths between train stations, a trail of lime green words like small chain links hooked together.

A stretching of brick connects us and the boys. We prop in the window, shudders thrown open, silent in a huddle of womanhood. We listen to their crowing, to the squalling of their jokes, a murder pitching voices into the alleyway.

5385: Response to The Italian Affair

I feel like I might be struck down for this, but: So far, this is the book I’ve felt most inhabited the Italian space—and there is a very good chance that’s due to the fact that it’s stereotypically Italian and that the author city namedrops in every paragraph. We’ve come to associate this type of story with the Italian atmosphere: the exotic lover, the single white woman finding herself again, the gaggle of girlfriends.

But if we can look past the terribly characterized women, the absolutely stunning lines (don’t you just hate it when a mosquito wakes you up in the dead of night and you find yourself in tears?), and the simple plot line, we’ve got:

-The romanticizing of the Italian world/culture alongside the romanticized foreigner.

-A preoccupation with food.

-The language element?

-The uncomfortable/strange second-person narration.

Really, all of it seems to be romanticized. Even when the narrator hates whichever island she is on, the food is great. Later, the professor (naturally, because teachers are another sexualized literary figure; and, perhaps, teachers are also an element of danger due to the fact that they are typically off-limits because of the student/teacher relationship) loves the sound of the word “gorgeous,” literally drawing a connection between beauty and language. He “likes that word, tasting it like wine,” pulling the food element in, too.

I don’t know what to do with the second-person, on a literary level. In the commercialized fiction world, it is clearly meant to fold the reader into the narrative. I wonder if we could look at it as another type of possession. Sitting here, in the breakfast room, listening to the American tour group talk to each other, I’m struck by just how often we (I already want to distance myself from them, but I’ll say we anyway) claim possession. One woman mentioned someone “speaking American” (she clearly meant English). Another claimed that “they only use espresso here, not American coffee.” On the way in, our group slipped into this, too—where was OUR city on OUR hill? Perhaps the second-person narration works in a similar manner. We possess the narrative fully, experiencing Italy as she does.

Week One - Original Prompt: Calvino/Taylor

I can't get my mind off of Calvino's Invisible Cities. I want to read it, devour it, pick it to pieces, rub it into my palms, and wrap it around me like silk. Love. It. That said, I keep wondering how we can utilize his genius in our own writing.

"At the end of three days, moving southward, you come upon Anastasia, a city with concentric canals watering it and kites flying over."

Really, the text as a whole is what I'm looking at--this quotation doesn't do a great job of highlighting what I'm interested in, which is the idea of speaking to someone. I'm bridging Calvino and something Taylor wrote, where she imagined Luca as a young boy. Two parter:

1.) Take a cue from Calvino or the dramatic monologue, in which the narrator speaks to a very specific audience--we have to know, through your words, who s/he speaks to. You'll take them on a guided tour through the city, but not just random, varied sites. Rather...

2.) Introduce them to a specific person. I like the use of Luca because, particularly for us, he has such a specific job. Introduce your audience/the "you" to someone heavily characterized by something in particular--their job, the first thing you saw them doing, a conversation you had with them, etc.

Week One - Response to Taylor's "Junkyard Quote Four Week One"

I think we're all mulling over how to best handle this baggage-heavy material we have in front of us. I, for one, find myself stuck because I'm so afraid of how to talk about, say, cobblestone without presenting only a cliched Italian town, ya know? I think you've stumbled on something worthwhile, though--

"A family of snails sleeps on the wall where Luca and his friends rode bikes when they were our age." You might have a really, really cool toggling piece inherent in this line/image. I'd love to see you develop a scene with Luca (or any other Italian you've met, or one you make up--though my sense is that you'll feel more grounded, less likely to dip into a flat character if you base it on someone real) as a child juxtaposed with either a.) the narrator as a child or b.) Luca/subject now. It would be a good way of going at the subject of the history of a place like this without relying on, well, actual history. It would offer you the opportunity to use the imagery of the aqueduct (a very specific location) and imagery from home (again, I would choose a very specific location—somewhere you/the narrator grew up). 

5385: Response Two, "A Room with a View."

I worry that my reading of this text simplifies it in some way; that I'm missing some integral part of this story that opens it up to wider possibilities, like the secret entrances that Miss Bartlett searches for her in room. My initial reaction, though, is that the story does not deal with Italy at all, really. This first section of the text offers Italy only as a large, unmanageable, baggy concept; we get little of the scenery, other than the rain, and the characters discuss it as an idea even while inhabiting it (on the rare occasion that the narrator offers any other description, it does not travel past "dirty," depicting a scene that could fit into any country at any time). Italy appears in a variety of ways, seeming to function in whatever way is necessary for that particular character on that particular page. Repeatedly, they tie the location to abstractions: "One doesn't come to Italy for niceness" or "she hopes to find the true Italy." When the narrator asks, "Who would suppose this is Italy?" we realize that, as of yet, there is no central Italy to describe. From the very beginning--the title, even--we understand that Italy is something to be seen, not experienced. In one moment, it has supreme agency--"For one ravishing moment, Italy appeared," and later "receded"-- only to devolve not long after into something conquerable, possessable, owned by Miss Lavish ("My Italy," she claims). In the end, we get the sense that as "Mr. Emerson look[s] for his son, Miss Bartlett look[s] for Miss Lavish, [and] Miss Lavish look[s] for her cigarette-case," Lucy--and perhaps the text as a whole--looks for Italy.

Quick side note (again): the supernaturalization element is rather interesting, too, though also potentially obvious. That Italians are a people who "see everything, and know what we want before we know it ourselves," able to "read out thoughts, and foretell our desires," thus giving them a power that leaves the characters "at their mercy" is arguably one of the most interesting elements of the text. It's unexpected (though understandable because it functions rather simply as an othering element), but that the story glosses over this fact, implying easy acceptance, heightens it to intrigue.

Week One - Junkyard Images 1-4

A small boy falls into his own cliche, skipping down cobblestone, a balloon sword cast overhead. His father slows behind him, some unseen limb connecting the two that peak into speed at the same time. His t-shirt fades on the chest, but his boy is vibrant beneath the balloon, lassoing the space in front of him with each gallop.

White drifts through the streets here, little molecules shocked into static, one for each moment of misplaced touch, one for each unrolled R in the mouth of a foreigner.

In a cafe on Corso Mazzini, Eminem and Karma Chameleon shoulder in around the rain-drop tones of Pomp and Circumstance, a march not for graduation but espresso and mini cannolis. A drum roll ushers in the crescendo, exploding in the heart of the cafe in a way that reminds me of the heavy syllables of our American tongue. Later, trying to recall each beat, the sound echoes from my own headphones, brushing against a British woman's request for a cappuccino.

When we take pictures from up above, the city is quaint, something we can capture in one sweep--of a flash, of our gaze, of words. I stitch each section into squares, into creases between my palms, into cloth napkins folded at dinner, into manageable parts. From here, we see everything, perched on the quintessential stone wall in a Nike position beside a farm-to-table sort of house. Here, we see from Spoleto to Middle Earth, hear the waltz of a wooden bowl hitting the table, of a group of students smudging dirt beneath a climbed mountain slope, of a woman kneeling inside the cloth pouch of her dress at the Duomo.

Settimana Una - Response to Sydney's "Image Junkyard, #1 (Week 1)"

Fairly lovely, as always. I'm particularly impressed by the way you took a moment in the morning and connected it to something else you want to write about--I understand that perfectly, given that I'm dedicated to figuring out a way to talk about my aunt while on this trip.

That said, a few specifics, in case you continue this. I'd like to see a little more depth in your interaction with him. It might just be my experience with your work, but I immediately went to a romantic/intimate place when you said "he is not Italian except for his tongue." Your intent--that he speaks Italian--is entirely clear. However, it momentarily sexualizes him, which is obviously problematic when you then use him as a springboard to talk about your grandfather (you and the grandparent sex).

I would also say that, other than the detail that he is Italian and looks American to you, I don't really see why this needs to be in Italy. It could occur anywhere. Given the reason we're here is to write, I would suggest you try to root images a little more in Italy and the way that you see it. Describe the cafe more, or what you're eating, or even the Italian literature you're reading.

"And I wonder why he chose today to speak without words." -- Beautiful. Expand on this. This is a piece all about sound (language, music, piano, etc.). Use your semiotic skills and tell us why he chose to speak without words today.

Settimana Una - Una Memoria

          Sweating and small in our tourism, we searched for Corso Street. For the square cobbled between three roads, for the stop that left us, we hoped, beside the fountain. A man aproned behind a gelato counter pointed out of the window, down a side street, to accented signs and plaques decorating alleyways, and the one bus driver aware of the words do you go here, who might understand my pointed finger and my aunt’s labored shoulders. Pressed on all sides by an age-stained bench and a German family, we missed the view: the purpled fingers of a vendor lifting Nike statues for fifteen euro, the school children crouched at the sidewalk smearing chalk, the steepled left behinds of a victorious battle. We searched for her grace again, for a translation of breath. We hid from edge of a year she’d soon fall off. Five years later, I’m here again, standing before greatness--or what my art history textbooks and the tour guide’s belted speaker explain to me is greatness. On my left, the Colosseum, its speckled skin spinning a lush thread work of decaying history into the air, or something like that. To my right, a field of shot glasses, miniature Pietà statues, and color block t-shirts on folding tables. 

5385: Response One, Shelley

The work we are doing in this class seems very foreign to me (pun intended). So, for now, I will try to respond to some of the tropes we discussed in class on Monday:

What struck me most is the way “Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills” does not move. The poem, clearly, begins on a rather somber note: “the mariner, worn and wan,/Never thus could voyage on--/Day and night, and night and day,/Drifting on his dreary way” (3-6). (Even a phrase that initial seems positive, such as “Sun-girt City, thou hast been/ Ocean’s child, and then his queen; Now is come a darker day,”-- implying that previous times were not darker days—hardly reads as entirely positive. The city, in its less dark days, was still “Sun-girt”… girdled, laced, bound) (17-15). By the end, it makes a play at lifting toward something more comfortable, more optimistic: “the light and smell divine/ of all flowers that breathe and shine:/We may live so happy there” contrasts greatly from the image of a skull and bones lying on the shore (350-52). However, this location is non-space, “far from passion, pain, and guilt” (345). While Shelley infiltrates the preceding images with a sense of the Italian space, directly mentioning Venice and Lombardy, building architecture into the landscape of his lines (towers, cities, columns, domes), the last section offers no concrete sense of place. The stanza is peppered with abstractions: “healing Paradise,” “Spirits of the Air,” and “the breath of life,” just to name a few (355, 353, 367).

I say all of this because I came into today’s reading anticipating a very positive image of Italy and a deeply prejudiced view of Italians. Though the initial reading of the poem, as I said, seems to bend up toward a more positive image, Shelley separates it entirely from the Italian space he has already created in the text. Italy—and perhaps, even broader, any concrete, living location—is not redeemed in the end. Both it and the people diminish as the poem descends toward lofty, unanchored local. Readers leave the poem with a sense of nostalgia for the worn mariner trekking through the “sea of Misery,” for the opening scene in which we thought he might venture somewhere more uplifting.

(Side note: I was super excited when I read “We may live so happy there,/That the Spirits of the Air,/Envying us, may even entice/To our healing Paradise/The polluting multitude” because I have an absurd love for “Annabel Lee,” and that section sounds very much like: “The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,/Went envying her and me—Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,/In this kingdom by the sea)/That the wind came out of the cloud by night,/Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee”—and was quite upset when I realized that Shelley was clearly not riffing off of Poe, but “Annabel Lee” was published years later. I wonder if Poe was referencing Shelley?)

Cliches. Pre-Italy.

I had trouble with this one. I can't think of many Italian stereotypes, though I know they exist. The two I think of immediately relate to people: that Italians are a loud, gesticulating people who do a ton of eating. And, of course, the Mafia/hair-slicked back cliche. Both of those might derive from the Brooklyn-based Italians I grew up around.

Expectations . Aspettative . Pre-Italy

At (almost) 23, half-way through the graduate program, this feels like something I need to do. When I signed up for it last year, it was for several really basic reasons: it sounded like fun. Italy is awesome. People I liked were talking about going. All of that is still true, but now it feels deeper than that. I'm not expecting this to be an Under The Tuscan Sun/ Eat. Pray. Love, transformative, find-myself kind of ordeal. But a few weeks and several thousand miles between myself and Atlanta will be, at the very least, welcome.

That said, I'm trying to come at this trip without expectations. I'm excited because it's Italy. I'm excited because of good food and good company. I'm excited because living in another country for five weeks is inherently stupendous. But I don't want to load myself down with anticipated experiences. Or even sights or tastes. Hollywood has taught us that Italy is all beauty. It's cobblestone and pasta and crazy drivers and beautiful pieces of architecture. I can say, from experience, that this true. I saw all of that, in excess, while there. But I'm not interested in what we know we will find in Italy--I want to get there and quickly adapt so I can experience and bring back the new bits of Italy that movies and postcards don't offer us.

Despite having traveled to Italy before, I really don't know what I'm in for. I was only in each city for a couple of hours, and all of the places I traveled in Europe four years ago were very tourist-heavy. I guess that's what I'm most excited about right now: getting to live in Italy for a few weeks. I've hosted exchange students my entire life, so it's going to be very, very cool to be able to relate to them in this manner, to be able to understand being transplanted in a different culture and expected to live an entirely new life. Though we keep teasing Dr. Davidson because he is so persistent in reminding us not to be too American while we're there, that's exactly the advice I'm going to follow. I want to live in Italy (though, admittedly, I might take way more pictures than any Italian would in a given day.)