Semester Schedule:
Please note - The assignment descriptions below are tentative. Our work will be revised weekly to address our needs and interests as a class.

RADI OS -
You will receive a text in class for adaptation. Use the existing work to create your own in the manner of Ronald Johnson's Radi os.You have total discretion in the choices you make for your adaptation. You can simply black out words and lines or you can be more creative in your visual presentation of the adapted text.

See small samples in our course anthology. You can find fun samples of professional and student erasure poetry here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and probably in a great many other places.

Bring completed sheet to class 2/7

Jabberwocky Translation -
Philosopher and linguist Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that while we use langauge to communicate, we can never really know what another person means when they use langauge to describe their experience.
Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" is written in English...sort of. The "sort of" makes this poem a great test of Wittgenstein's theory. Translate "Jabberwocky," and we'll see in class how similar our translations really are.

Interested in seeing "Jabberwocky" translated into other languages? Click here.

Have your translation to read 2/7, submit any revised versions by email or Blackboard 2/15.

5 Statements of Value -
Use this project to consider language an economic system wherein (as with many such systems) scarcity increases value. For this project you should write a collection of five short poems. Use only what is necessary to communicate something of real import (to you and potentially to a reader or listener). You have two values to assess here: the value of your message and the value of your words. Make them both count.

Interested in the full text of the Tao Te Ching? So is the internet.

Observation Poem -
Train yourself to see what is there, not simply what you expect or hope is there. Revist an environment, present or past. Observe what you see there.

See Blackboard for remaining assignments.