(DOWNLOAD) "About Wishes and Invitations: Four Meditations on Life Writing with Carl Leggo." by Vitae Scholasticae * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: About Wishes and Invitations: Four Meditations on Life Writing with Carl Leggo.
- Author : Vitae Scholasticae
- Release Date : January 01, 2006
- Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 180 KB
Description
I heard Carl Leggo speak at a conference last spring. In a crowded and neonlit lecture hall, the pony-tailed, jean-clad poet/professor took the podium and promised "performance instead of proof." For the next hour, he delivered amply on his declaration; in a frenetic and living concert of theory, reflection and poetry, Dr. Leggo moved around the room engaging each of us--sometimes personally--in a discussion speculating on biography, writing, and identity. For me, it was by far the most gregarious and unreserved keynote address of the conference--perhaps in the entire history of conferences. At one point, I felt a hand on my shoulder as he stopped behind me to read a poem. Surprised by the unexpected intimacy and warmth of the gesture, I had a clear and undiluted thought: "This is just neat." This essay is a response to two of Leggo's pieces, "Light and Shadow: Four reasons for Writing (and not Writing) Autobiographically" (2004) and "Autobiography and Identity: Six Speculations" (2005). As the articles demand, it is a personal and creative attempt at navigating through some of the ideas presented in Leggo's writing. The meditations are my own guideposts to thought. I am aware of my own limitations and unknowings as I write to respond to the pieces, and I know too that this deceptively unified and polished rejoinder is a part of my own story, an unstable attempt at understanding infused with a desire for the warmth of the alphabet, the informality of metaphor or a poet's hand resting against my shoulder under the neon lights of a keynote address.