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The magic of making things
I hereby direct you to the final project of my May term W&L class: a co-created website for a fictional liberal arts college, Bigglebottom Academy of Magic. The participants in English 239: Magical Education worked through four books in four weeks about schooling for sorcerous types: Le Guin’s novelette “Dragonfly”; Okorafor’s Akata Witch; Grossman’s The…
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Magical education
Monday I’ll teach Magic 101. At stake: what is magic–what are its sources, what can it do, and how is it supposed to differ from science or religion? Does it work mechanically, through wands and staffs and rings and words, or supernaturally, by more-than-human assistance, or in some other fashion? Can anyone be trained to…
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Occult AWP
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She carries me
In the Belly As a woman carries an insect, unconscious of the sign it shapes with diplomatic footfalls across her skin, she carries me. As a lake lifts the sky’s image, all burnished admiration, or proffers a crushed cup, a leaf, a rainbow slick of grease. As your network of neurochemicals and electricity carries, through…
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Easy poetry
“Excitement comes from being lazy and fun loving. O’Hara worked hard, but he also took it easy. His Collected Poems are a manifesto of the high aesthetic rewards that accrue from a life—albeit a tragically abbreviated life—of taking easiness as the gold standard. Like Warhol’s professed love of easy art (or art that was easy to make), O’Hara’s…
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Haunted Matisse & packing light
On the Friday after Thanksgiving, we visited the “Matisse in the 1930s” exhibit in the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts, and there was plenty NOT to like. So many odalisques! The images that stayed with me in a more positive way did so because the way they reflected process struck me as appealingly uncanny. The…
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Five year writing plan for the witches’ new year
As Department Head, I’ve been reading colleagues’ Five Year Plans, which oddly enough are due around Halloween or Samhain (or however you think about this spooky midpoint between the fall equinox and winter solstice). I have an official Five Year Plan myself–I’m halfway through that cycle–but maybe it’s time for a weirder one. I’m a…
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Countdown…and teaching ideas for Poetry’s Possible Worlds
I’m getting very close now to the launch of Poetry’s Possible Worlds and therefore working hard on Poetry’s Possible Publicity. The task is a supermassive black hole tugging at my effort and energy, most of which will vanish without a trace–but I still believe in putting it out there. As Claudia Emerson framed it to…
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Mind of winter (not)
For me, midwinter is a time of introversion. I’m three weeks into my university’s winter term, so I’m planning and leading discussions and meetings constantly, but they’re usually based on study and solitary thinking–not extroverted stuff, even though there’s a social, performative aspect to the work. The class based on NEW reading and thinking is…
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LESLEY WHEELER 