Independent Study

I am coming close to realizing a syllabus for next semester. I like the idea of reading six novels. Working from that, here are preliminary ideas:

I will read:
Collected Lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay
Sylvia Plath's The Colossus and Other Poems
Family Business, Kaddish and Howl (Allen Ginsberg)
My Cat Spit McGee by Willie Morris -or- Good Ol Boy: A Delta Boyhood -or- both
Eudora Welty's Golden Apples
C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters
I will of course post on the blog for each reading, although the writing will probably be more free.

Notes:
Though I've read Plath and Millay before, I was quite young and lacking in some of the experiences that I think add newer dimension to their works, so I hope to understand and relate to them in a different way than before. I remember Plath as being somewhat perplexing, so I'm curious to see if there is now any sort of ah-ha! on my part.

The purpose of reading these two therefore is partly experimental.

NAMBLA member Allen Ginsberg has never been someone I was interested in. But now I am. I would like to focus on Howl and Kaddish specifically, and also read Family Business. While Family Business isn't by Ginsberg, and while the writings aren't particularly "creative" in nature, the book is a compilation of letters between Ginsberg and his father, also a poet though lesser known. I'm very curious about that.

Through the three aforementioned works, it will be impossible not to learn more about the poet and his writings.

Willie Morris and Eudora Welty are altogether new to me and were introduced by a Mississippi friend who enjoyed somewhat superficial friendships with them. She will be able to provide interesting photos and notes.

I hope to become acquainted with Willie and Eudora as fellow aphids on this green rose stem we call home and as creative forces.

The choice of C.S. Lewis came of a conversation my husband and I had last night as he went on about how exciting the Lion/Witch/Wardrobe (LWW) movie looks. He asked me if I'd read the books and I dare say I at least read one of them. Probably required reading but perhaps not. At any rate, I remember as much of it as I do anything from Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time. I fancied reading LWW again, but found when it got right down to it, I wasn't really interested, though I am interested in C.S. Lewis. (His conversion from atheism to Christianity is entirely intriguing.) I looked at his bibliography online and determined that I should like to read The Screwtape Letters.

I hope to learn something more about C.S. Lewis as an adult, reading perhaps more adult writings than LWW. I believe The Screwtape Letters are somewhat well known yet thusfar they have been lost on me never having read them at all.

Grading Scale: I propose 15 points for each work read for a total of 90 points. Blog entries will be worth a point each for an additional 6 points. 4 separate posts of collections of my own poetry will be worth 1 point each. Thus, if I do all of these things, I will receive a top score of 100%.

It seems tremendous, intense, much more reading than perhaps the current course. But I think I'm game.