43 research outputs found
Review of \u3ci\u3eBreathing in the Fullness of Time\u3c/i\u3e By William Kloefkorn
The central metaphor in this final installment of Nebraska State Poet Bill Kloefkorn\u27s four-part celebration of life in the Great Plains is air. Whereas his three previous memoirs- water, fire, and earth-explored childhood and adolescent memories, Kloefkorn here focuses mainly on adult experiences in college and the Marine Corps, teaching English at Nebraska Wesleyan, classroom adventures as a poet-in-residence, and his celebrated victory in the North Platte, Nebraska, hog-calling contest. Time and tradition are central concerns in this book, as is desire-in football and marriage, in writing poetry and being a good Marine or hog caller, in overcoming adversities like alcoholism-not his own, but his brother\u27s
Book Review: At Home on This Moveable Earth
In this third of a projected four-book memoir, William Kloefkorn examines his late high school and early college years, a time of physical growth and intellectual exploration, of redefining relationships with parents and community, and of laying the foundation for his career as a teacher, scholar, and Nebraska State Poet. Adolescence is the time for what Robert Bly aptly calls the road of ashes, a period of metaphorical basement work in the kitchen (Iron John: A Book About Men). Kloefkorn\u27s reminiscences focus on basement and earth and tedious physical exertion: excavating a foundation for the Zenda Co-op Grain Elevator one wheelbarrow of dirt at a time, or helping his father dig a basement for the floor furnace, carrying dirt out of the tunnel one calf bucket after another. \u27\u27Anyone who\u27s ever tried it, Bly says, will quickly note that such bucketing is very slow work. Don\u27t let the tornado on the book jacket fool you: adolescence is a time of descent into caves and coal cellars, and of monotonous, tedious, instructional, character-building hard work
Preachers\u27 kids have free will, too : discerning best practices for the spiritual nurture of pastors\u27 children
https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/2136/thumbnail.jp
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Somewhere In-between
What separates human from animal? What borders exist between the real and the imagined, the beautiful and the repugnant, the living and dying, the creator and the made? These questions have driven my recent work.
Through the act of making, I swim in and around these margins, revealing how slippery the answers to these questions are. I create animals that blur species boundaries. They challenge the perceived order and comfortable classifications of life. These animals are tricksters; familiar but also alien, seductive but also scary, animal but also human, alive but also dead. In a world where petals mimic fur and hair impersonates bone, even materials upset their expected roles. These creatures are not to be trusted, for as soon as we identify with them, we admit that perhaps the definitions they upturn are not so clearly defined as we would like to think.
Material and process are the tangible means through which I contemplate the lines separating these opposing worlds. I use inanimate materials that rely on touch to take shape. I sculpt and articulate animal forms to generate a semblance of life. The fleshy coverings are meticulously and lovingly applied, allowing me to both control and understand the figure as it comes into existence. The labor I exert over the animal becomes an empathetic gesture. As the creature comes to life, the line between myself as the maker and the material as the object softens.</p
Review of \u3ci\u3eRestoring the Burnt Child: A Primer\u3c/i\u3e By William Kloefkom
William Kloefkom\u27s second book of memoirs is a blueprint for restoring lives scorched by the fires of fundamentalist Christianity, WCTU crusaders, cigarettes and whiskey, kitchen matches, sore throats, and thermonuclear explosions. The twelve chapters cover Kloefkom\u27s life from age nine, when he torched the family kitchen, to age thirteen, when he delivered news of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to subscribers of the Wichita Beacon. The book fleshes out stories and personalities already familiar to readers of his poetry: parents and grandparents; life in Attica, Kansas; the slaughter of swallows and rabbits on grandfather\u27s farm; landmarks like Turtle Rock and town marks like Butch Mischler\u27s Pool Hall and Urie\u27s Barber Shop. Despite the epic suggestions of the number twelve, this book is more focused than Kloefkom\u27s 1997 This Death by Drowning. (Is fire more contained than water, and should we anticipate forthcoming memoirs of air and earth?) Still, jumpcuts across time and geography open the author\u27s scope: like a Twain tale or a Keillor monologue, Kloefkom\u27s stories begin here, skip to there, circle upon themselves through allusions to previous chapters and digressions which prove to be not so digressive, bringing us safely back through time and space to where we began. Chronology has at best a habit of collapsing, Kloefkom writes, echoing Eliot\u27s famous dictum about time present, past, and future and reiterating a philosophy found in Kloefkom\u27s poetry early (Alvin Turner as Farmer, 1972) and late (Loup River Psalter, 2001).
Restoring the Burnt Child is also an ideal primer for writers. Although beginners might have trouble appreciating (or controlling) a structure that seems so random while being so focused, all writers can grasp-and all readers enjoy-Kloefkorn\u27s vivid recreations of a way of life going fast if not already gone, his talent for seizing the most luminous detail of our gray lives, his love of language, and his feel for the American idiom. Particularly striking is Kloefkorn\u27s observation that any story relies upon a melody, however subtle that melody might be. Particularly pleasurable is the joy of recognizing in a Kloefkorn phrase some subtle echo of one of the local or literary masters of language-Twain or Chaucer, father and grandmother, Sister Hook and her gospel ministry, the denizens of pool hall or barber shop-described elsewhere in the book.
As history both personal and communal, and as performance both written and oral, this book gives us the old maestro at his best
Colour adjustment : race and representation in post-apartheid South African documentary
Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-267).The goal of this dissertation is to examine the process of racial transformation within South Africa's documentary film industry and to assess how the nation's shifting identity is both influenced by and reflected in documentary film. Drawing examples from a diverse collection of local and international films, I have examined changes in who is making documentaries in South Africa and how, as well as the representations of race that result. In particular, I have focused on how the balance of insider vs. outsider storytelling may be shifting and to what effect. At the same time, I have qualitatively examined the representations produced by black/insider filmmakers as compared to those of white/outsider filmmakers in order to assess the impact of the filmmaker's racial status on outcomes. Finally, I have investigated ways in which the tradition of white-onblack storytelling must change in order to satisfy the political shift that has taken place in South Africa and the cultural sensitivities that have resulted
Recommended from our members
Somewhere In-Between
What separates human from animal? What borders exist between the real and the imagined, the beautiful and the repugnant, the living and dying, the creator and the made? These questions have driven my recent work. Through the act of making, I swim in and around these margins, revealing how slippery the answers to these questions are. Icreate animals that blur species boundaries. They challenge the perceived order and comfortable classifications of life. These animals are tricksters; familiar but also alien, seductive but also scary, animal but also human, alive but also dead. In a world where petals mimic fur and hair impersonates bone, even materials upset their expected roles. These creatures are not to be trusted, for as soon as we identify with them, we admit that perhaps the definitions they upturn are not so clearly defined as we would like to think. Material and process are the tangible means through which Icontemplate the lines separating these opposing worlds. I use inanimate materials that rely on touch to take shape. I sculpt and articulate animal forms to generate a semblance of life. The fleshy coverings are meticulously and lovingly applied, allowing me to both control and understand the figure as it comes into existence. The labor I exert over the animal becomes an empathetic gesture. As the creature comes to life, the line between myself as the maker and the material as the object softens.</p