Art that helps me see and address my shortcomings:

Fear of Failure/Self-Doubt → Confidence
These are a few of the mediums that have influenced how I think about failure. My attitude of persistence and tenacity has been defined in part due to the below books, poetry, and music. My optimistic and cheerful mien can also be attributed to the art I am exposed to.
 
Good Enough by Paula Yoo (book)
Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas (book)
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (book)
"What Kind of Asian Are You?” by Alex Dang (poetry)
“Packing for the Future” By Lorna Crozier (poetry)
“Best Day of My Life” by American Authors (music)
 
Spotlight: Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters by Lesley M. M. Blume (book)
This is a book I read in the 3rd grade, from which I learned to embrace what makes me different. The main character in this book, Cornelia, is the lonely child of two musicians, who find solace in words. Cornelia’s aptitude for language sets her apart from her peers, but finds herself a friend in a new neighbor, an elderly woman who regales Cornelia with tales from her youth. I wouldn’t define myself as shy, but similar to Cornelia, I find it difficult to connect with others easily. This book taught me to put myself in difficult, uncomfortable situations, and gave me the confidence to be more outgoing.
 
Procrastination → Smart Work 
I am and always have been a hard worker. However, a lesson I still struggle to learn is how to work smart, not hard. Smart work, entailing time management and organization, is the key to success in not only school, but also everything else I am involved in, from playing tennis to playing my clarinet. Below are a few mediums that have taught me to redefine what I view as work and understand the implications of procrastination. While I still struggle daily to practice the concept of delayed gratification, these have inspired me and have given me the tools to change my habits.
 
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (book)
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart (book)
“Inside the mind of a master procrastinator” by Tim Urban (TED Talk)
Gifted Hands by Ben Carson (book)
The Thinker by Auguste Rodin (sculpture)
 
Spotlight: “Postcard” by Frank Ticheli (music)
This uniquely challenging piece was one I played with my band in 10th grade. Up to date, it is the hardest piece of music I have successfully performed, and it represents months of practice and dedication. This piece represents the difficulties and joys of the learning process; to learn a skill or concept, we must always start with the basics, no exceptions, and once learned, the skill/concept must be practiced until flawless.
 
Stubbornness and Hubris → Selflessness and Empathy
Pride and a single-minded focus are not necessarily bad, if one also practices the complementary traits of selflessness and empathy. My difficulty is finding the balance. To what extent should I remain uncompromising and driven by self-interest, and to what extent must I sacrifice what I want to what is right? These mediums, especially The Mahabharata, help me understand not only the facets of my personality, but also my role in society.
 
East of Eden by John Steinbeck (book)
“Stories of Akbar and Birbal” (animated cartoons)
The Onion (website)
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (play)
Heidi by Johanna Spyri (book)
Bhagavad Gita (ancient epic/book)
Invictus (movie)
 
Spotlight: The Mahabharata (ancient epic/book)
I consider myself to be religious person, and one reason for this is that I believe that religion provides us with a moral compass and general guidelines on how to live. Having been raised with the stories of Lord Rama, Krishna, and the Pandavas, I feel that it is only natural that I take these stories to heart and allow them to shape my view of myself and the world. Reading the Mahabharata, an ancient epic that describes a war between the families (the Kauravas and the Pandavas) of two brothers, I was taught the dangers of arrogance, jealousy, and lack of discipline. I was also taught that what is right for me may not be right for someone else- the concepts of right and wrong are not as easily defined as I naïvely believed them to be. 

​Written by Sree Y.

This December, the personal goal I set for myself was to read through books that fell into the weird, not-really-a-genre-genre of magical realism. A quick Google search of “Best Magical Realism Books” pulls up results that pull books from and about authors and cultures all over the globe. Some repeat-offenders on these lists include One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, various works by Toni Morrison and Haruki Murakami, and Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. These are all excellent authors and books, and all of them made my short reading list. As well, starting to recognize some of these big names drew me to my favorite book of at least the last six months, Salman Rushdie’s newest novel, The Golden House.
 
The Golden House follows a young film-maker, who introduces himself to the reader as simply René, living in a wealthy and insular community in New York. René finds himself drawn into the folds of the mysterious Golden family: the criminal-seeming Nero Golden, his new wife Vasilisa, and Nero’s three sons, Petya, Apu, and D. Fascinated by the people he has encountered, René tells their story both in context with himself and as part of the “mockumentary” he has planned around them. As such, the book is a mixture of the family’s events, René’s depictions of events he does not see (done in screenplay format!) and accounts of him working on the screenplay with other characters. The pieces come together in a fascinating sort of meta-commentary on the art of storytelling in three different layers: René hears stories told orally from the Goldens, which he recounts as bits of film, which are told to the reader by venue of the novel. So, that’s number one: if you’re interested in film, or how film and prose work together, this novel spends a lot of time investigating that relationship.
 
Number two is the characters themselves. The book sets up equally provocative relationships between René and each of the five members of the family; he is almost like a sixth family member, who has secret ties to each one. He gets to safeguard their fears, desires, and frustrations, sometimes even the feelings they have towards one another. And each one of the five family members is a hot mess. The Golden House is able to explore a huge number of topics and human questions from these characters psychologies. I was shocked and excited by how quickly the book could transition the reader from protests against Wall Street to discussions about gender identity, from the criminal underworld to the top of the iPhone app best sellers list.
 
Which brings me to reason number three why this book was so engaging: it is, as snooty as the phrase may be, a zeitgeist novel. (For those of you who don’t know the word, as I didn’t for like 20 years of my life, zeitgeist is from the German Zeit (time) + Geist (ghost/spirit), so it literally breaks down into “the spirit of the times.”) Its events span from Barack Obama’s election in 2008 to Donald Trump’s election in 2016. It is therefore completely full-to-bursting with statements and impressions about the time we are currently living in. It comments on political issues without allowing them to take over the entire book. (My personal favorite part is that it only refers to Trump as “The Joker” the entire time.) But it also looks at what New York, especially affluent and artistic New York, has become over the past decade. A warning, though: the book is also a screenshot of a affluent New York artist, so the texture of events can occasionally be drowned out in pages of allusion to antiquity or the classics of film and literature. Just as much as New York bleeds out of the pages, the consciousness of a highbrow narrator bleeds across them. René and the characters he meets often converse and think about things in terms of other things. References are everywhere; but you don’t need to understand them really. They’re merely part of the aesthetic texture of the book, which is rich with wisdom but also with the psyche of a very particular swath of recent human activity.
 
So, to recap, why I liked this book so much:

1. Its incredibly clever use of film as a medium of storytelling within the novel.
2. Its complex, melodramatic characters.
3. Its ability to capture American/New York/intellectual/affluent life from 2008-2016.

 
Oh, also, it’s just, like, good at being a book. Its story has a kind of epic grandeur to it. The book is long, but worth it. When I reached the end, I was impressed with the sort of antique poetic flourish that the whole book was. I hope you consider spending some time with this lovely book soon, and if you do, come talk to me about it!

Written by Erika S.

When I finish a draft of something, I feel like a mad genius. Mad, because I suddenly become aware of the sheer amount of time it took to finish that thing. Also a genius, because I finished the thing, and no matter how many times I’ve read through the earlier sections pointing out plot holes to myself, finishing a draft of something is still finishing. It feels a lot like finishing.
 
I think this is a timely topic for two reasons. The first: yes, in fact, I did just finish a draft of something. I drafted the first book in a series about a year and a half ago, and over the summer, I decided to start re-drafting. After several weeks of telling my suitemates I would “probably finish this week,” finally, the draft is complete. I’ve written those fateful words, End Book 1.
 
Which brings me to the second reason this is timely: in three days, November will close, and with it will come the flurry of people who have won (or not) NaNoWriMo. Maybe you’re one of them! Good for you! Many people around the globe are about to experience that maddening, dizzy rush of having finished a long-term project – and feeling subsequently like a mad genius. The first thing that may be tempting for mad geniuses is to proclaim their success with an all-caps tweet or a dramatic Facebook post or an artsy Instagram/Snapchat photo with a delighted caption over the The End part. Or, if you’re like me, the word count (ugh). This is a fine goal! Go for it!
 
What you may be tempted to do next is to share your piping hot, straight-off-the-presses draft with every single person who liked your post or commented on your tweet. To this impulse, I would recommend letting the draft cool.
 
The first draft of something in particular (and, in my opinion, at least the second), represents an outpouring of work that is extremely valuable, but didn’t have the full scope of the project yet. You never really know what the last sentence of the book is going to be until you write the last sentence. You didn’t know if that foreshadowing you dropped in Chapter 2 that you intended to come up in Chapter 15 actually would come up in Chapter 15 – at least not while you were writing Chapter 2. Some breathing room and another read-through may point these things out to you right away.
 
So, dear mad geniuses, my recommendation is to pause. Take a deep breath before rapid-fire sending your long-term project to everyone you know. Put it in a drawer for at little bit. Start a new project. A few weeks, a month maybe down the line, pull that draft back out and read it front-to-back, either making comments on it or reading it without touching it. Then decide whether it’s something you want feedback on right now, or if there are major sweeping reforms to make, to the point where you’d be receiving feedback on ideas, characters, plot points, and scenes that you’ve already changed. Getting feedback on things you already intend to scrap might help in the abstract, and your readers might be able to point out things you can include in your second draft. They might also convince you to save something doomed for the chopping block, or cut something you thought was safe. If you’re proud of your first draft, for sure, get feedback on it! But, the most valuable feedback is that comment you weren’t expecting, that you as the author - the person who is supposed to know the book best - couldn’t find on your own. So take some time to get your distance, tame your genius, and look back over your work to decide: is my next step something I can do alone, or should I get help?

Written by Erika S.

Have you ever been itching to buy a thriller, but the ones at Half Price Books just won’t do? Do you ever get tired of downloading sketchy, badly formatted PDFs of classics like Agatha Christie, or getting a Trojan instead of an ePub of the newest Harlan Coben? Do you want to buy books with fascinating titles, like Fudge and Jury and No Cats Allowed, along with cool merch like book-inspired handmade t-shirts?
 
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you should venture outside the hedges and stop by Murder by the Book!
 
This bookshop opened in 1980, making it one of the nation’s oldest and largest mystery specialty bookstores. But their selection goes beyond mere mysteries, as they sell an incredible amount of thrillers, sci-fi stories, and fantasy novels. They also have a cool selection of novelty items, magazines, and some really awesome t-shirts (this blog post writer is still hyped over her new Margaret Atwood shirt).
 
But beyond their book selection, what makes Murder by the Book special is its ambience. The shop is packed full of interesting things and interesting people. There are very comfortable old leather chairs and sofas just begging you to curl up on them with a nice murder mystery, and since the shop is crammed full of bookshelves in bewildering configurations, it is very easy to literally lose yourself among them. If you do, don’t worry—the employees are wonderful, and always willing to lend a hand or give out recommendations.

A poem’s beginning should be striking and compelling, urgent and invigorating. A reader should want to continue to the next line, and finish the rest of your work. The first line of any piece of poetry not only has a stake in deciding its artistic merit, but also its commercial value. If your first line isn’t interesting enough, no one will bother with the rest. No pressure.

But as a writer, more often than not, your first line simply represents the struggle of making a start, of beating the crisis of the blank Word document, the I-Don’t-Know-What-I’m-Doing stage of any new project. So here are ten great first lines of poetry I collected so that you can analyze what makes them stand out, get inspired to start writing, or simply admire some of the openers to your favorite poems. 
​
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical
-Allen Ginsberg
 
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
-Elizabeth Barret Browning
 
Because I could not stop for Death
-Emily Dickinson
 
Let us go then, you and I
-T.S. Eliot
 
People disappear. And go looking for a place to be looked at.
-Alex Dimitrov
 
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary
-Edgar Allen Poe
 
We were very tired, we were very merry
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
 
I would like to watch you sleeping
-Margaret Atwood
 
Drink to me only with thine eyes
-Ben Jonson
 
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky
-John Masefield
 
Written by Sanvitti S.

In this day and age, poetic form gets a bad rap. Somewhere along the line, free verse poems became considered modern poetry, and everything else kind of fell by the literary wayside. Sonnets are for Shakespeare, rhymes are for kids, and when was the last time anyone cared about a trochee, anyway?

Free verse poems are great, but I’ve always been drawn to fixed form poetry. So today, I thought I’d share one of my favorite forms with you. (Yes, hello, it’s me: the annoying girl in your English class who raises her hand to talk about the significance of enjambment).

Here, have a villanelle done by a master. This is “Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath:

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Haunting, right? Part of the reason this poem works so well is its form. See the way she repeats some of the lines throughout the poem? This is traditionally represented as:

A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2

A1 and A2 are those repeated lines. Lower-case a and b are for rhyme scheme. Her “a” lines rhyme on “dead, head, red” and her “b” lines on “again, in, men”. This interlocking of rhyme scheme and repetition makes a villanelle easy to spot.

Other examples of villanelles you may know include “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas and “If I Could Tell You” by W. H. Auden.

Forms make you think about words in a different way. When you have limited mobility in one dimension, you have to get creative with the others. In the case of the villanelle, what’s limited is how many different lines and rhymes you have to work with. What’s not limited? Subject matter, meter, voice...the list goes on. Using forms is a great writing exercise because it forces you outside your comfort zone.

Here’s a challenge for you: try writing a villanelle. Plath wrote “Mad Girl’s Love Song” in college, after all, so why not give it a go? It doesn’t have to be your favorite thing you’ve ever written, but I guarantee you’ll be surprised by what you come up with.

​Written by Megan G.

You can’t just put -tober at the end of everything during October, they said.
It’s the end of October, it’s too late to make another -tober a thing, they said.
There’s already too darn many -tobers, it’ll just be lame,  they said.
 
But who cares what people say.
 
If you’re reading this, odds are you’re interested in getting and/or staying  woke. And it’s a good bet you also like to read. So, dear reader, let me welcome you to… Stay-Woketober!
 
In honor of Stay-Woketober, the spookiest of -tobers and one I’m aware is not an original creation, I’ve compiled a list of books (and one podcast) that may get you a bit more woke—and they’ll be a nice, well-deserved break from midterms, too.



​1. Migritude
by Shailja Patel

Shailja Patel is a an internationally acclaimed performance artist and poet, and Migritude is her writing debut: a hybrid of historical narrative, intimate monologue, and powerful poetry, Migritude tells of Patel’s struggle as an Kenyan immigrant living in England who’s trying to connect to her roots while also developing her own identity. It’s a mind-bending read that breaks genres and interweaves stories about British colonialism, silk saris, and Patel’s childhood into a seamless, gorgeous narrative that offers a whole new perspective on culture and immigration.

​I first visited Rice in late February of this year for VISION. When I came back home, my twelfth grade British Literature class had just started reading Frankenstein as a part of what felt like a never-ending hellscape of Romantic literature (although in my opinion it was an improvement upon the preceding never-ending hellscape of Enlightenment literature). I had been anticipating the novel with visions of Boris Karloff in my head, but it continued to hold my interest through my sympathy for the creature. In my opinion, Frankenstein was the monster, and his creature was no more than an abandoned child. An eight foot tall child made up of cut-and-pasted corpses, but a child nonetheless. Who wouldn’t sympathize with the creature spurned by his creator who immediately recognized the abnormality in his creature; who wouldn’t want to reach out to the “poor wretch,” whose only family ran in horror when he revealed his true identity?

Well, a few people. I was told by my classmates that the creature revealing himself to the De Lacey’s as a coming-out allegory didn’t make sense, for a few reasons:

1. it was irrelevant to the time period
2. the male creature later specifically requests a female counterpart
3. a myriad of other marginalization allegories that make way more sense (primarily race and disability)
4. regardless of the allegory, the creature loses the reader’s sympathy once he strangles a child to death.

So I let it go. I finished the Romantic literature unit, I passed British Literature, I came to Rice. Frankenstein would have to be revisited at some indefinite point in the future, if at all. I chose the introductory English class taught by the same professor whose class I had visited at VISION, and eight months later, I’m reading Frankenstein again. It’s funny for a few reasons:

1. the parallels to my life before college, almost too perfect to be fictional
2. the fact that Frankenstein is a lot more seasonally appropriate now than in late February
3. my inability to enjoy analyzing a book in which I sympathize with a monster.

It’s almost unbelievable to me, considering my previous desperation to express my sympathy. I was once annoyed that my classmates didn’t agree with me, but now I’m grateful. Could you imagine, on top of the stress that comes with being a high school senior in the middle of your college applications, your classmates agreeing with you, seeing how you could sympathize with this creature, since you and this gigantic, shambling mess of rotting limbs have so much in common? Now, I’m grateful that I was made to wait to sympathize with a monster until the time of year when we all embrace the monsters inside of us.

Written by Anonymous