Welcome to the Class of 2022-2023

Dear Class of 2022-2023,

It is for me a pleasure to welcome you to the University of Oviedo and, in particular, to the Humanities Campus. It is always a pleasure to meet new students and to see so much potential in each new group. But this year the pleasure is even more intense than in the past, because after two years of having online classes and wearing facemasks when in-person classes were resumed, having the chance of seeing you, actually seeing your faces, makes me undescribably happy. 

I hope you'll enjoy your classes and will learn a lot. We--the older generations--need you to do your best, as in just a few years you'll be "out there," in charge of running the world, which you'll no doubt turn into a better place. We're counting on you!!!

But before that, I want to challenge you to a less daunting task. Will you dare to write a few poetic lines? You may choose to write a rhyming couplet with no particular meter or a couple of iambic pentameters with or without rhyme. Who will take the challenge? 

I'm looking forward to reading your lines!

Best wishes,

Carolina

P.S. By the way, I wrote my own lines while thinking of the over-reachers we've been discussing in class and the plums in William Carlos Williams's poem "This Is Just To Say", remember?

Here they go:

"Fruit from Paradise"

The boldest dream may seem within your reach.

The fruit you wish may too. So grab the peach!

William Carlos Williams' "This Is Just To Say"

Today, in class, we discussed the formal aspects that make a poem be a poem. We used several texts that helped us reach some conclusions. Of those texts I'd like to highlight William Carlos Williams' "This Is Just To Say", because I think my students really enjoyed it.

We read the same words written as prose and then in lines, the way Williams actually wrote them. And the transformation was amazing! What looked first, when written in prose, like a mere apology note became an unapologetic defense of transgression once it was in verse. Controlling oneself, saving, brings no satisfaction, the poem suggests. On the contrary, going beyond the limits, eating the forbidden fruit, is rewarded with pleasure and sensuousness. Yeah... let us not forget the sensuousness of those plums... Sooo sweet... Sooo cold... Nor the alliteration that stresses that sensuousness!

I wonder how many of my students noticed the intertextuality with the Garden of Eden, the story of Adam and Eve, which we've already mentioned several times...

I also wonder how many noticed that here, again, we have a few rounded objects and a persona who feels irresistibly attracted to them. 

#WeLoveOverreachers
#WeLoveSpheres