Although a talent can be perfected through an effort of the will, no effort in the world can cause its initial appearance.

—

Lewis Hyde The Gift (via zoeellenbryant)

So maybe all that can be taught is to be more attentive to the elements of craft and technique?  Either you have talent or you don’t.  Discuss….

» "The Evolution of a Beastie"

My most recent post over at Image’s Good Letters blog. This one is on the death of Beastie Boy Ad-Rock.

We cannot enrich the minds of our students by testing them on texts that purposely ignore their hearts. By doing so, we are withholding from our neediest students any reason to read at all. We are teaching them that words do not dazzle but confound. We may succeed in raising test scores by relying on these methods, but we will fail to teach them that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them.

—

I think part of the problem is that we call them “texts” not “books,” and we therefore think of them that way, as objects to be mined for info that is then spit back on an AP test.

a public school teacher in Manhattan, “Teach the Books, Touch the Heart,” NY Times (via settledthingsstrange)

"You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead" is the title of a short story Flannery O'Connor wrote that later became the first chapter of her novel The Violent Bear it Away.

It's a line that has been ringing in my ears ever since I read it fifteen years ago, and it's the inspiration for the book I'm finishing up--Pyramid Scheme: Making Art and Being Broke in America, a book about the connection between poverty and creativity.

This blog is a visualization/scrapbook of the book-in-progress, which is inspired by many images, lives, and works of art. Among the book's influences:

St. Francis of Assissi, Edgar Allan Poe, Knut Hamsun, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Day, Federico Fellini, Jacques Maritain, Jean-Luc Godard, Flannery O'Connor, Agnes Varda, Joan Didion, and Lewis Hyde.

Please browse.