Advantages to Marking Up Electronic Books

My students are learning digital literacy by studying from Kindle ebooks in my Shakespeare courses this year. We are exploring the brave new worlds of ebook literacy from various angles. In this post: advantages of highlighting passages and making notes within Kindle ebooks: Ebooks and their notes are preserved in the cloudYou can...

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My Sonnet: To What An End

*Before I get to the sonnet, I just wanted to say how much I loved this assignment. Back in high school, I thought I was a bit of a poet, (admittedly a poor one) and it was nice to get back in that vein. I had never written in iambic pentameter before, but I found it to be a refreshing and pleasantly challenging exercise. To What An End To what an end these means may justify? What purpose, the, could such an effort serve? Where...

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Dr. Pepper Addiction

My friends do claim I am addicted when I go to get a dark brown fizzy drink. Alas to their misguided deep chagrin It cannot be as bad as they all think. So should I let the Dr. Pepper go? Are well meaning friends right to have concerns? I don’t think I should really have to show That even though my heart and tongue do yearn- And the world starts to feel like quite a waste When I don’t sip that carbonation- I am not...

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Musings on Virtue No.2

Can I go into that cold night alone? to wander with no family at my side where stillborn snow like feathers softly roam and anchors make deep footsteps in the night here fire warms my aching bones of flesh and someone speaks sweet words into my ear the stone casters have all been made to rest and I am sovereign of each...

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Hope in the Wrong

The television screen is turned to on As I stare, unprepared to really see. I’d wearily state my faith is not gone But f I bet, I'd only have a fee, "Go, go" the women clad in black may scream, as masked men cheer in hopes of  victory. And hopefully this hope is not in dreams; Reality is contradictory. The game begins and...

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Wandr'ing Storm Cloud and the Like

Photo Credit: Sebastian Gabriel The wand’ring storm clouds high up in the sky, the little running blue grey birds in line, green leaves that pop as sky veiled, seems to cry, the wind’s cool gentle lick, of sun and brine; Poppies of orange and yellow tulips bright, the river’s gasp while running off the brink, the...

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In Defense of Quiet

So oft I’m prodded come “out of your shell”-- that noxious expression which clearly states introversion must be a form of hell, a disappointment and second-class trait. A notion that also fails to proclaim some animals carry shelter where they go, and that some humans are just the same. It does not mean that they have less to...

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Finding My Space

Photo credit: Alice Keeler Just as I feared there is no space. Cars lined  this street and back, for miles and miles. Unjust  are parking patrollers who search and find  poor tired souls whose parking bluff they'll bust.  A boot or ticket lucky prize, worst case,  of course, they'll take my car to lock it up.  A...

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Thoughts of the Student Athlete Academic Center Drop-in Writing Tutor

I wait. The door (propped open to invite the passing athletes to come in and sit with me)—symbolic, meaning "I can't write"— is why, each day, alone, I read. Permit me now to dissipate this myth that they are fearless, though they play with courage on the field; or court; or track; for all obey dear Pride's controlling voice....

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The Creature Inside

Last night my friends sent me a text in jest (A funny meme of Shrek’s protected swamp) I missed the chance to chortle with the rest of them because my cognizance was romped by some internal creature craving sleep! Is she a fiend, or is she my old friend, replenishing my energy to keep my time well spent when time I have to lend? The...

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Bemoan the Careful Paths

Poetic inspiration can come from anywhere... even a stolen grounds sign. Bemoan the Careful Paths Shall I compare you to the white grounds sign? You are more passive and inanimate. And while your love is grown by inches, mine Is dying by the feet. Dispassionate And led by you, I kept to careful paths. But I would...

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Timely Inspiration

Timely Inspiration Shall I compose this piece for you, my dear, A timely effort to unveil the truth? I'll sit for hours with thoughts of love and cheer And search for words that play our story smooth. The light will sink and moon rise up three times and I'll rehash and throw my pen again in quest for perfect and uniting rhymes, but Nature...

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Melissa's Sleepy Sonnet

Sleepy Sonnet  I'd like to go to sleep tonight, But homework won't be put aside. Until I reach the morning light, Which wakes my friends and makes me blind. My eyes are red and full of sleep. Yet my thoughts race through poetry. Short stories, essays, they just won't keep.  No matter how I try to sleep. If only...

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Three Simple Words

Three simple words can change all of your life That once filled up with doubt, the space no more Subsides but words I read upon thin leaf Release fears of my adolescence, for Lies my hope in something more or someone Who answers questions of my heart and writes: “I know that if ye shall follow the son.” This simple phrase, discovered,...

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