- Footnotes as direct address or background
- Is a footnote a giant appositive?
- Weaving of voices - analytic vs emotional
- Works cited as part of voice, different types of inspiration in any one work
- maybe too many? More invested in analysis of Dwale than others (resp: stalling to keep from getting to the emotional meat)
- The meat is the contrast between its work and effects on the author in footnotes
- Tangentially, insight into larger conversations about author’s voice
- Overwhelming in some senses (Ditto footnotes)
- Use of ‘you’ to refer to reader, then later to refer to Dwale and becomes author and reader as ‘we’, with ‘I’ reserved to footnotes
- Footnotes++ and voice used in them
- first sample in summer, spiral in footnotes vs balance
- Is there a purpose to footnotes within footnotes? Are they asides? Do they add to the spiral? Not knowing took away from that.
- Footnotes in service of engaging the more human, immediate narrative, made question role as a reader and how engaged one actually is
- What if parallel text? (resp: was planning on doing that for essay 2, did so for ally)
- Overall, not distracting. The text teaches you how to read it. This is slow and deliberate in that sense.
- Voices - footnotes and text: Footnotes addressing someone, text ruminating on seasons/literary analysis. Do they harmonize?
- Again, are they annotations instead of footnotes, do they become elevated as equal? Are they afterthoughts? Footnotes are published in conjunction with the text. What is the integration that is necessary to honor both tones and experiences?
- Annotations, pull quotes, text boxes
- Are the voices equal? (resp: no, were originally more self-deprecating, referencing their own existence and questioning it)
- Footnotes usually skipped, here one is forced to read, essential and compelling
- Why “I” only in footnotes?
- Issue of balance again?
- Brief wonderful life of Oscar Wilde Diaz (maybe?) - book about peaky Dominican kid, footnotes author talking about history of Dominican Republic
- Forced to engage in unique way, can it be pushed?
- Is footnoting interiority vs textual exteriority referencing relationship with writing, writing as vulnerability compared w/ distance of academic writing?
- Even analytical sections intimate and personal in a way
- Voice is still similar in intentional/reflective/elaborate way, but lean on voices of other poets to help connect to seasons
- Could things-associated-with-seasons be taken further? Would it benefit from more elaborate and drawn-out scene in which narrator interacts with seasons more concretely/directly? (e.g: narrator grabbing AC unit from the basement, hauling it upstairs, etc, turning it into more of a story) (resp: true enough, too, window AC before knowing house AC worked. Again with the self deprecation feeling like own work wasn’t good enough, thus relying on others’)
- Maybe too pedestrian for what this piece is doing
- More engaged with narrator and voice
- Am I resistant to that idea?
- Represents how a person curates understanding of subject through engaging with it and how that develops deeper understanding in relationship to artists themselves.
- While beautiful, life is still unfolding. Own experiences situated within larger context of literature/seasons
- layers making meaning out of things, layer on top of layer, narrative voices, past/present, seasons, analysis
- Prefer footnotes to annotations as it’s the same person, whereas annotations are someone else engaging with the text. Could that be the case? (resp: don’t think so)
- Does this illuminate own complicated relationship to reading/writing/vulnerable? How does the form reveal relationship?
- Switch to talking about to talking to - feels too abrupt with this version, rather than slow introduction with back/forth
- Essay as form allows for ruminations, circling around a topic and other areas, but if grief is at the center, how do we understand the connections?
- Forced to footnote our grief in the US.
- The personal essay, instead of lecturing, invites you into the mind of the author…comfortable exploring doubt/self-doubt
- Form is appropriate and makes sense in how the concept is spiraled around, and the way the overtaking of the text in the footnotes turns into an apology for grief in the final part
- It’s good to be haunted, for sure.
Here, we are presented with twelve disparate poems. There are a few connections, such as the two poems of “where the word fat is replaced with x” and a few common themes that are brought up, such as those of bodily autonomy/ownership, fatness, asexuality, and the complications of physical touch, whether it’s intimate, analyzing a face for painting, the imposition of a dog, or violence.