Episode 535: I've Manned Up

I think I'm now truly out of my essay funk. In a fraction of the time it took me to eke out about 250 words that I wanted to keep (after all the tweaking of my thesis statement and introductory paragraph), I've managed to nearly double that amount. This is all part of my resolution to man up and just get on with the close reading part of the essay, in the assumption that as that gets put down on the page, the broader argument that I want to pursue will fall naturally into place, and this actually seems to be the case, as I'm already foreseeing that two paragraphs from where I've got to so far, I'm going to throw in something nuanced that just yesterday I was agonising over how to slip into the essay without throwing everything out of whack. Anyway, I voluntarily skipped a lecture today to attend another session with Francisco Goldman. Honestly, I adore Oscar Wilde, but his poetry doesn't do anything for me the way his plays do, and as for Michael Field, never heard of the pseudonym or the two women behind it before I came to university, so I don't think I've missed out terribly by missing the lecture. Also finished another poem, based on the Little Mermaid this time, and was tempted to call it 'Sashimi Love', but I don't want to make Michael Hulse cringe, even if I'm not going to be there to see it, so I've changed the title to something less tongue-in-cheek. ('Market Day'. Makes sense for the poem, but isn't it so unamusing compared to 'Sashimi Love'?)