English Copyright (c) 2013 California Polytechnic State University All rights reserved. http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp Recent documents in English en-us Fri, 25 Jan 2013 17:32:49 PST 3600 Illuminating the Need for Fiction to Love within a Postmodern Reality http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/14 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/14 Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:19:06 PDT Jonathan Safran Foer in his novel Everything is Illuminated (2002), engages and overturns traditional notions of love. In his work, love, as an exalted feeling, does not exist outside of animalistic desire. Instead, as Foer proposes through the numerous and complex relationships of his characters, love exists in an illusion as the individual defines and creates it. To love is to willfully choose to believe in this idealism. For this idealism, whose existence is impossible within the broken nature of this world, must be sustained in an artifice once-removed from reality. Everything is Illuminated thus suggests that without fiction, reality is impossible. Language and fiction become a catalyst, connecting the love created in one’s illusion into a tangible narrative reality may recognize. Without language, illusions go undefined, love is not created, and the modern awareness of one another’s depravity is re-exposed, rendering relationships and thus procreation impossible.

]]> Alexandria Lightsey Ambush http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/13 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/13 Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:50:34 PDT This is a manuscript of original poetry.

]]> Anna K. Bush Dickinson and Smith: Years Apart But Not So Different http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/12 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/12 Tue, 06 Jul 2010 08:50:36 PDT Even though there were sixteen years separating them, Stevie Smith and Emily Dickinson had much in common. They both use death as a theme to explore and mock life. Their small poems have a lot to say about life and death.

]]> Nicole Day The Tales that the Universe Told: an original manuscript of poetry http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/11 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/11 Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:10:59 PDT This is an original manuscript of poetry.

]]> Calvin Cantrell What Do You See? http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/10 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/10 Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:10:59 PDT This senior project is a manuscript of original poetry.

]]> Taylor Musolf Shriveled Veins of My Stories http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/8 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/8 Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:10:58 PDT This is a manuscript of original poetry.

]]> Jacob W. Franks Byzantium 2010: Cal Poly's 20th literary annual http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/9 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/9 Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:10:58 PDT The concept behind this year's theme, "Bold," actually came from concepts our art director, Melissa, showed us during our first meeting. We had tossed around ideas of "Timeless," "Enduring," and "Vintage," amidst our discussions of how in the world we were going to raise money for the journal this year. With the economy tanking, we knew art programs like ours would be the first to suffer. We wanted to find a theme that captured how we felt about art and how art made us feel. We kept coming back to the same idea: We have to just be bold and go forth with this project, as if nothing in the world could stop it. As soon as Melissa showed us the black background with neon lettering, we knew exactly what our theme was to be this year.

Art has to be bold in order to achieve anything. It has to punch limits in the gut and spill its own soul on the page, canvas, or music sheet. It must stand out and stand on its own. The poem from which the journal gets its name, "Sailing to Byzantium," is about striking out for a land where people are not afraid to be individual and create art that is bold. For us, the journey of getting Volume 20 published has felt much like the journey to Byzantium: long and arduous, but extremely rewarding in the end.

We set out boldly, and we "have sailed the seas and come/To the holy city of Byzantium."

]]> Mateja Lane et al. Wanton Introversion http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/7 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/7 Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:42:34 PDT This senior project is a manuscript of original poetry.

]]> Ivan Van Wingerden Mr. Chetco Marine http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/6 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/6 Thu, 27 May 2010 08:51:06 PDT This is a manuscript of original poetry. My inspiration comes from a combination of events in life that have affected me in profound ways, as well as moments of imagination that transport me away from the realm of personal experience.

]]> Gavin Pruitt Defying the Feminist Dilemma: Eavan Boland's "Listen. This is the Noise of Myth" http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/5 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/5 Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:55:05 PDT Boland creates a narrative poem, “Listen. This is the Noise of Myth,” that repudiates all legends that show men to be stronger and the savior of women, and suggests both that there are endless ways to depict any myth.

]]> Rachel Newman "In Memory of W. B. Yeats": Elegy for a Man and an Ideal http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/4 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/4 Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:55:05 PDT Travis McDonald: “‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’: Elegy for a Man and an Ideal” W. H. Auden’s 1939 elegy for W. B. Yeats recognizes the passing of his contemporary as well his own belief in the social efficacy of poetry. The form of the elegy serves the traditional commemorative purpose while simultaneously enabling Auden to critique both Yeats and politically intentioned art.

]]> Travis McDonald Christ Being Hopkins and Hopkins Being Christ http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/3 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/3 Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:55:03 PDT This paper compares and contrasts Gerard Manly Hopkins’ sonnet “As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame” to the “terrible” sonnet “Carrion Comfort.” It asserts that since both sonnets explore opposite ends of a paradoxical relationship between man and Christ, which Hopkins often meditated over, both sonnets should work together as spiritual complements of one another, rather than proof of Hopkins’ spiritual derailment.

]]> Cory Ames Realism in Russian Literature: Capturing Truth and Eliciting Responses http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/2 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/2 Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:09:57 PDT The Russian realist authors Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn communicate the importance of questioning social conventions and religion in order to gain personal and political freedom and avoid living a mediocre life. They challenge readers to recognize selfish tendencies and strive to improve society.

]]> Leanne Lopes Everything Is Permitted: Three Essays In the Spirit of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Underground http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/1 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/englsp/1 Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:09:33 PST Gina Nichole Caprari