My paper started with a passion for language. I recognized there was something very pleasing to me about certain combinations of words, certain sounds, certain imagery, and I desired to write a paper on the ability of language to bring us to awe. My inspiration came from Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" which was the first piece of literature I ever read and came away with an overwhelming sense of awe -- at the images evoked, at the minimalism, at the fact that every word in the poem was acutely selected. However, this felt extremely broad, and so I decided to shift toward another interest of mine that I felt could still allow me to incorporate my love for language. I chose to focus on storytelling, and I planned a paper that would allow me to examine the influence and endurance of story throughout time, what elements have changed, what elements have stayed the same, and where awe has fit in with story in marking stories important and influential. I began to write about stories and their transcendent nature/influence when I came across a letter from my late father written to his brother. The letter served for me as my first exposure to his "voice" and in sensing a significant connection with him which caused me to think about how literature is transcendent in the sense that it can bridge the gap between living and dead generations. It also contained a book list of highly recommended books by him, and therefore served as a way of his parenting from the grave. The letter meant so much to me that again, I started over, this time hoping to create a paper that would identify the inherent awe and transcendence of literature by using examples from my classmates' personal literary narratives. Ultimately , I wanted to show people how literature facilities the dead speaking to present generations, present generations speaking to dead ones, and present generations preparing to speak to the unborn. My paper did do a lot of this, but I'm extremely bummed out that I did not have the time necessary to fully investigate the majority of sources I had originally obtained. I am submitting it to Life Story Journal's reflections section.
No comments:
Post a Comment