[ SECRET POST #2073 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2073 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[MCR/Killjoys]


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04.
[Stephen Merchant]


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05.
[Mobile Suit Gundam]


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07.


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08.
[Lord of the Rings]


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09.
[Eureka]


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11.
[Zeta Gundam]


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13.
[Game of Thrones]


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14.
[Hannibal Lecter]


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Notes:

Important: I'm really sorry about this, but I accidentally misclicked and deleted the submission post from last week instead of saving it. Managed to save the first page (25) of secrets, but the rest (about 100 or so) are gone.

If you submitted something last week (Aug 26-Sept 1), please resubmit it here.

The submissions post for next week is below as usual.

Secrets Left to Post: ?? pages, ??? secrets from Secret Submission Post #296.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

06. http://i.imgur.com/JJylP.png

[(Anonymous)]

Reminds me of a prof I had in college who had just gotten tenure at the time and lived to put me down because she thought I was stupid or something. I still don't know why I didn't drop the class and taken something else. :|

[(Anonymous)]

i agree with your teacher

[galerian-ash.livejournal.com]

But the people you suggested aren't poets. They're rappers, and music -- however lyrical the actual text may be -- isn't the same thing as poetry.

I'm sorry if your teacher didn't explain this to you in a respectful manner, but her basic point isn't wrong (IMHO at least).

[lunabee34]

And this is the kind of teacher who gives the rest of us a bad name. I frequently start my humanities class by watching and analyzing a video of a song that most of the students say they like during an introductory exercise in which the students interview each other. Last time I did that it was a Lil Wayne song. :)

[(Anonymous)]

Did you try to discuss why you consider lyricists poets or did you just walk off and fume quietly? I've had some profs that did something similar but when I explained my POV they understand and will give me a chance to do it my way.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like I can understand the teacher only because letting in rap would open up a whole can of worms of what is and isn't poetry and would force a large discussion on the topic. Not that this is necessarily bad but teachers can't always do as they wish, they usually have to answer to a school board or a director, even at college level. If the school doesn't want rap in a poetry class, you won't have rap in a poetry class.

Though I must admit I don't know if I'd take you seriously if you told me you wanted to write about Eminem.

[(Anonymous)]

Ugh. This guy's face and his expression. I hate guys with those giant lips and stupid tacky diamond jewelry. It makes you look like a huge superficial twit.

[anonamaton]

Ha...I brought several Nightwish songs in and told the teacher it was translated Finnish poetry.

She later googled the lyrics, and discovered what I'd done, but she liked the music so she let me get away with it.

[magyargirl3.livejournal.com]

See, this is completely different from my school experience. I was forced to discuss the "hidden meaning" in I Am a Rock, I Am an Island (yes, the Simon and Garfunkel song) and pretend that it was sooo deep and mysterious. I was 13 at the time.

Don't get me wrong; I love Simon and Garfunkel, and I like that song. But being forced to pretend that it was high art, incomprehensible to the unwashed masses, was infuriating.

Then, when I was 15/16, my English teacher had us pick songs we liked to do a poetry report on. One of my classmates had a song that mentioned pot, but my teacher had us talk about it and refused to let it get titillating. She will always have my respect for that.

Rap is poetry. However, it's also quite violent, crass, and profane at times, and I'm sure many teachers look down their noses at it because of that. Also, it could have been a policy of the department not to allow that, because of the possible controversy - not all teachers are as brave as my 10th grade English teacher.

[(Anonymous)]

I personally find the question about what defines 'real' art, literature, poetry, music, and the like incredibly interesting, as well as the race and class issues it often brings up. Why can't rap verses be studied as poetry? Or is there a difference?

Anyways, I find your teacher's response to you pretty darn uninspiring. Anyway, if I had been your teacher I would have told you to be serious and then assigned you Q-Tip. Jk

[streetcake]

Well stories/poems used to be sung way back in the medieval days so it could be seen as poetry. Plus Tupac was a poet.

I don't know if the teacher dismissed it because it's rap or because it's music, though. Maybe she wasn't allowing music lyrics.

[(Anonymous)]

Creative Writing major here. I had to take four writing workshop courses for my major. The first workshop prof I had was awesome. He didn't put down anyone or any of their writing, which I appreciated as a big fan of sci-fi and fantasy. When asked about those genres, he said something along the lines of how they were done to death and terribly cliche and had a bad rap because of it, but if you wanted to do it, you "better be a fucking badass". That was the phrase he used whenever he knew something in our writing would be hard to pull off well, and so told us that if we wanted to do it, put everything into it and make it fresh.

Unfortunately, he left the university just before my last workshop so I was stuck with some bitch woman. She had "the air", you know, the one people put in when they're an author~~~. So she tells us that we're supposed to write a story at the beginning of the course and we'd work on it in stages throughout the class. One girl raised her hand and asked if it was okay to write a sci-fi or fantasy story. I don't think the prof could have made a more disgusted face if she'd instead walked up to her podium and took a shit on her shoes. The prof snobbishly replied, "You'd be better off doing -real- literature." I was so furious I almost wrote a Star Trek fanfiction just to piss her off. Instead, I wrote about a guy that was obsessed with Chinese dolls and mannequins wearing Chinese clothes. Somehow that got interpreted that he wanted to be a woman? IDEK.

Anyway, long story short, professors are asstards and while you have to kiss their skinny butt while you're in their class, feel free to ignore damn near everything they say on your own time. Most writing classes have some nuggets of wisdom in them, but they sure as hell are tainted by the leader's personal perspective and opinion.

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, I don't even like rap, or know all that much about it, but I still know that Tupac can DEFINITELY be classified as an American poet (and I'm sure the other two as well). Heck, there's an actual book of poetry by him in our library. With the poetry.

[gethenian]

See... this kind of shit really pisses me off. It seems like just about everyone has a story of some horrible fucking teacher (or more than one) who ruined poetry for them forever by not being able to teach it or by not giving a fuck. Which, marginally in their defense (but not much), is probably how it was taught to THEM, too.

I feel strongly driven to go out and try to re-teach poetry to people PROPERLY. I'm trying to start a podcast segment doing just that.

[(Anonymous)]

wooooow you are so subversive and special

[blueonblue]

Is this poetry? is a different question from Is this worth studying? I think Tupac's work is substantial enough to be to the focus of academic study, but a class on contemporary poetry might not be the right place because so much of the meaning in a song is connected to the music and the performance.

Also, I think it's part of a teacher's job to encourage students to read what they wouldn't otherwise choose for themselves or be exposed to in other ways. James Merrill is not exactly part of popular culture and probably isn't on the front page of amazon.

[(Anonymous)]

Sucks, anon. I was a creative writing major and I hated modern poetry. Doing a study on rap lyrics would have fascinated me.

I had one professor, a real hippie guy, who argued that hip-hop is excellent poetry because of the rhythm in which the words are spoken. As I was hip-hop curious back then (and still slightly embarrassed about it), this profoundly changed my outlook on the genre. Some of these artists -- definitely not all -- are true poets.

[mutantjules.livejournal.com]

what? Booooo.

[(Anonymous)]

The professor's response upsets me the most. If she explained that rap was off limits in a more respectful manner, it might've generated less hate.

[ariakas]

It's a generational thing. As you can see with the folks above discussing profs/teachers who considered the popular music of their time worthy of study, so too will we when our time comes. I'm already starting to see this happen with video games from "empty, worthless entertainment for children at best, violent corrupting influence at worst" to "of course it's art, it's one of the most exciting new genres of art!" in media studies over the course of the last decade or so. Your prof thinks Tupac was a thug writing drivel; you as a prof will will consider it modern poetry.

[(Anonymous)]

All the more reason for me to love my lecturer. I was working in a bookstore when I saw her browsing a Routledge Guide to Science Fiction and she explained that one of her students is doing a thesis on science fiction novels so she wanted to get to know the subject. I love that she's open enough to new ideas to seek out references by herself instead of shutting down her student for choosing genre literature (as some of my other lecturers do).

[(Anonymous)]

lol ew, Eminem.

[starzki]

Interesting. My undergrad college had a Shakespeare symposium my senior year and a dozen Shakespeare scholars all came to my school to do presentations. At a panel discussion, someone asked them who they considered the "modern-day Shakespeare."

Half of that crusty, academic, English-geeky panel responded with "Eminem." (This was in 2001.)

Coming from a teacher:

[(Anonymous)]

Fuck your instructor. You have every right to resent her. Go look up slam poetry, and people like Saul Williams. Tell her that the biggest surge of interest in poetry in years was born in Chicago by a trucker who wanted to bring poetry back to the common people. Tell her that rap fueled this movement and that they are inextricably linked.

Most importantly, tell her she should be doing something other than teaching if she's that narrow-minded.