So last night I previewed Graffiti Verite! for our last humanities class, a video that makes distinctions between tagging and graffiti art, interviews mixed with wall shots right out of L.A., ending with a plea that this community-based art, which is starting to move into museums and galleries, and people are buying, just to have a piece of this energy, that the artists say is all about "working the cans" and freedom of expression, right after this, not 2 minutes after I've hit the rewind button on the VCR, waiting for the tape to rewind, one of those Fox alerts comes on from Channel 10 news that says Eugene police are tracking down a group that painted graffiti at the college. Don't know more but then this came this morning from webshots, from one of my favorite photographers, Steve Axford. And today in class, we'll talk about the culture of the 21st Century. Hmmmmm.


by steveaxford
Graffiti in Eugene: http://www.eugeneweekly.com/2005/02/03/culture.html#visart2
Graffiti in Corvallis: http://www.gazettetimes.com/articles/2005/07/06/news/top_story/wed01.txt

This week marks the end of the term. In Latin American literature we're reading two short stories for our last session: Jaime Manrique's "The Documentary Artist" (influenced by Bartleby) and Jorge Volpi's "Ars Poetica." So before tomorrow, we reread Pablo Neruda's "Ars Poetica" and just perhaps write an "Ars Poetica" of our own. Here's mine.

Impressions: Ars Poetica

A long afternoon,
A singer without a song,
Leaves trembling on the trees,
A winged mermaid floats near the ceiling,
White daisies bloom and fade,
Voices murmur in the hall,
Circling boxes and hidden rooms,
Measured time turns backward while
Letters unwritten and unread
Begin to dance.


More information:
On Jorge Volpi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Volpi
Wikipedia's definition of ars poetica: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_poetica