Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
Upcoming Salons in London—Jan-March 2014
Ulysses by James Joyce (20 week study-£300)
Black Voices in American Literature (12 week study through City Lit-£98)
“The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot (One-meeting Intensive-£35)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (One meeting Intensive-£45)
Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner (Five week study-£75)
Moby Dick by Herman Melville (Eight week study-£125)
The Odyssey by Homer (Two meeting Intensive-£55)
Dates listed are start dates unless the Salon described in a one-meeting intensive…more details and registration information is listed under Events: use the link for each
January:
14 .01 Black Voices in American Literature : Weaving history, diverse traditions and a collage of voices, we will explore the struggle and celebration of black experience through Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, works by James Baldwin and Harlem Renaissance artists. Study offered at City Lit; London’s largest adult university.
Intimidating, broad and beautiful—this is the Modernist work that tops the charts and requires a real commitment on the part of the reader. A Salon participant described the experience of reading Ulysses “has made me a better reader, writer and human being”. The book is full of humour, food, sex, urban life and language play—Joyce’s love letter to Dublin and his critique of his Irish nation provides deep perspective on our contemporary living.
20 week study, Thursdays 8-10 PM at the London Literary Salon in Kentish Town
The Wasteland is one of the most famous and most difficult poems written in English during the 20th c.; here is Mary Karr on how (and why) to approach the poem: “The boundary between 20th century verse in English and its 19th century predecessors –Romantic poetry and the genteel Victorian stuff after it—didn’t simply dissolve. It came down with an axe swoop, and the blade was T. S. Eliot’s “Waste Land”. William Carlos Williams said the poem “wiped out our world as if an atom bomb had been dropped upon it.” Its publication in 1922 killed off the last limping, rickets-ridden vestiges of the old era and raised the flag of Modernism…”
February:
02.02 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley One Meeting Salon Intensive 5-10 PM
There is renewed interest in Mary Shelly’s gothic? Feminist? Science fiction? classic. Recent productions have peeled back the layers of the block-headed, bolted monster and gets down to Mary Shelly’s original concern: what is the relationship between the created and the creator? Edward Mendelson offers: “Frankenstein is the story of childbirth as it would be if it had been invented by someone who wanted power more than love.” The form of the story also draws the reader into the entangled and unlimited relationship between the Creature and its creator as we move through narrators to get to the frozen final confrontation.
The Salon intensive is a five-hour gulp…we take in the whole book at once and the resulting discussion tends to be energetic. Frankenstein is not a big read- most versions are between 110-135 pages…but it is worth giving yourself sometime to read and consider closely the many layers contained in the work.
Starting in March:
26.03 Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner (five week study, evening or afternoon options)
16.03 & 30.03 –Two meetings for Homer’s The Odyssey
Starting end of March—Eight week study of Moby Dick
