Preferences Recommendation To Read Dickens’ Great Expectations As Biographical Victorian Classics

Review questionnaire, documenting experiences beyond memoirs journal entries within the novel, stylistically, thematically or in context comparison, drama rehearsals, photography illustration scrap book exhibition and quotation journal fascinates the readers, critics and the classroom environment. Pandemic outbreak disruption unprecedented radio and television learning experiences will flourish with the reading of the text. Public readings from extracts of magazines by Victorian Era’s Charles Dickens can happen in modern times but virtually through online workshops and seminars or symposiums to maintain physically social distancing. Moreover, Miss Havisham’s cleansing symbolizes redemption or salvation of atoned body and purity of soul depicted in the fire: driving beetles and spiders and destroying the faded bridal dress. [Bridal dress symbolically significance of imprisonment]. Magwitch reunion with Estella cannot be evaluated with subtlety since he doesn’t meet her physically but is reminded of her news that she had been alive. Ending of chastened Estella and readers’ guesses can be the subject matter of another great thesis…Pinnacle of elegant society courtship with the periphery of sub urban community.            

Bibliography and Further Reading Or Works Cited Or Reference Guidelines

1. Critical Fortunes of Great Expectations, Richard Dutton, MA (Cambridge), Ph.D (Nottingham), is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Lancaster.

2. A Teacher’s Guide To The Signet Classics Edition of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, Series Editors: W Geiger Ellis, Ed.D, University of Gerogia, Emeritus, and Arthea J.S. Reed, Ph.D, University of North Carolina, Retired. (Laurie Calvert, North Carolina National Board Certificate Licensed Educator Teaching Middle and High School, 2002 Penguin Group USA)

3. UK Essays Website Analysis of Charles Dickens Great Expectations

4. Death And Inscriptions With Respect To David Copperfield, Great Expectations and Charles Dickens, Anna Foley’s thesis submitted in partial fulfillments of the requirements for the Degree of the Master in Arts in English in the University of Canterbury, 2003.

5. The Analysis of Pip’s Characteristics In Great Expectations, Sinchuan University of Arts and Sciences, Dazhou China, Sino Us English Teaching, June 2016, Volume: 13, Issue No-6, Pages no: 499-504

6. Tamai, Fumies, Great Expectations: Democracy and The Problem of Social Inclusion, The Japan Branch Bulletin of the Dickens fellowship, No. 25, October 2002.

7. Studying Great Expectations, Andrew Moore, UK Coordinator of the European Network of Innovative Schools [acknowledged with the epitaph of “Universal Teacher” from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, Forst in May, where the poet recalls his own sterile and punitive education as a boy and hopes for something lucrative for his offspring] *This information of Andrew Moore is extracted from The Guardian’s obituary of “Andrew Moore” by Barbara Bleiman and Julie Blake Wed 12 Apri 2006 21:35 EDT.

8. Criticism of Society In The English Novel Between The Wars, George Orwell’s Essays in Criticism

beat me to the punch
 
i got my nerve
up once to ask
this woman to
marry me
 
i never got the
chance to find
out the answer
 
i guess her wife
beat me to the
punch
 
and on days
like these
 
cloudy, gloomy
a forlorn sun
dying on the
horizon
 
hesitation has
cost me plenty
in this lifetime
 
luckily,
my patience is
finally starting
to wear thin
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
missing the batteries
 
watching the people
again
 
got an old john prine
song on repeat in
my head
 
the minutes slip by
like a clock that is
missing the batteries
 
i see little glimpses
of a dark future in
each of the strangers
that go by
 
i remember a little
boy that never wanted
to get old
 
he knows now
 
suicide was the only
option to make that
possible
-------------------------------------------------------------------
these old hands of mine
 
you can cut
the tension
with a knife
 
her smoldering
eyes and these
old hands of
mine
 
i gave up on
these dreams
years ago
 
the tragic
romantic in me
never gave up
hope
 
hopefully this
one breaks me
for good
----------------------------------------------------------------------
flows the brightest
 
open your third
eye and sink
into the void
at the time the
neon flows the
brightest
 
it's a journey
you have to go
on by yourself
 
the most beautiful
woman of your
memories will
greet you there
 
and explain your
failures in a way
that you no longer
will find the need
to hate yourself
--------------------------------------------------------------------
the evil spirits within
 
my imagination likes
hard liquor the best
 
anytime the proof gets
over 100, the evil spirits
within me like to start
dancing
 
trace every scar with
their tongues
 
sometimes i'll close
my eyes and i can
come down from the
cross and actually
enjoy the view

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know better. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, The Beatnik Cowboy, Terror House Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review and Mad Swirl. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

Truth Never Goes Out of Style

Interviewing American Artist Danielle Shorr

You can never expect when you will find a great read. It catches you in the strangest of places. During an Uber ride, while coming out of an educational center, or in the middle of a heated discussion. Sometimes you’re in the movie theater, watching a silly movie and a bored version of you checks your phone only to find a poem, a thought piece, or a short story that attracts your attention away from the mayhem onscreen.

So, when I came across Danielle Shorr’s poetry and her graphic essays, I was mesmerized. She talked about some heavy stuff in a smart, raised-eyebrow manner. Not only did she openly unbandage old wounds and show a vulnerable, raw side of her, but her writing was also quirky, funny, and too smart for our systemized modern world to read sans context.

I googled Shorr and had an Elle Woods moment. This gorgeous blonde is rewriting what it means to be a poet and a creative, with her perfect blonde hair, her hourglass figure, and her cyan blue eyes. I sought Shorr and she generously agreed to be interviewed by none other than your favorite Egyptian author/poet. I wanted to introduce Shorr as a poet but then I noticed her visual essays and realized there’s more to her than met the eye,

“I’d like to say an artist in general. I love writing but also digital art and drawing. I think art can and should be interdisciplinary when possible.”

Slowly, I learned all about her artistic journey, influences, and background,

“My story isn’t anything crazy. I started writing in high school, mostly music, and then I moved towards poetry/essays/etc. College is where I was able to develop my writing more, but when I was eighteen, I won a poetry slam and became a member of a slam poetry team representing Pomona in Los Angeles, California. That’s where I give most of my credit for finding my voice. That opportunity taught me how to speak up and write about the things that matter. I like writing because you don’t need money to write. You need minimal supplies, just a pen, and paper. Anyone can do it anywhere and that’s what’s so lovely.

I have so many artistic influences! A lot of those are my friends and teachers. Poetry-wise I’m influenced by Mary Oliver, Maggie Smith, Frank O’Hara, Yesika Salgado, and many more. [Of the most moving poem she read] I love Good Bones a poem by Maggie Smith. I always return to it.”

Reading Shorr’s powerful graphic essay, My Neighbors Can See my Nipples and Other Observations I immediately connected with a sense of Christmas nostalgia. Being a Muslim girl who was not allowed to own a Christmas tree because of her faith, I was particularly struck by this paragraph,

“Being Jewish, I have never owned a Christmas tree. This is unfortunate because I have always been a sucker for holidays and kitsch. Christmas time as an adult is a special joy for me, as I get to witness the decorations around my town that I so desperately longed to have myself as a kid. “Jews don’t decorate for Christmas,” my mom would remind me”

It never occurred to me that I would connect to a fellow Christmas non-celebrator, not in the US. As a sucker for Hollywood family and teen movies when I was growing up in the 90s-00s, I always assumed that Christmas was raved and celebrated all over America. You didn’t have to be Christian to celebrate it, only Western and enjoying all the festivities, the food, the decorations, and the lights. To hear Shorr’s honest testimonial about her similar Christmas-less childhood, I was inspired,

“I’m so glad my essay resonated with you! Interestingly, Christmas and Christmas decor is so mainstream ingrained and we don’t often realize how alienating it can be to be of faith outside of Christianity during the holidays.”

It was downright ridiculous not to bring up her looks. Women are prone to judgment and scrutiny based on how they carry themselves around. And a woman in the arts had to have a certain air around her, or else her talent would be questioned and sometimes doubted. Looking like a Hollywood babe and writing thought-provoking poems and essays, I had to ask Shorr how that experience affected her creativity,

“That’s such an interesting question. I think I have met my fair share of people doubting my writing abilities/teaching abilities because I do value aesthetics in how I look. I think it’s so important for people to learn and see that your sex appeal does not diminish the quality of your work, that you can be hot and sexy and confident and that doesn’t detract from your talents/skills. I think it’s important to emphasize that valuing your appearance doesn’t make you any less of an artist/creator/educator, etc.”

Shorr surprised me with every answer she had to offer. Her artistic mind was calculated and yet sensitive and vulnerable. She carried her fragility like a swan, and that’s what made her shine inexplicably with vibrant, unexpected answers to my inquiries,

“I think there is this idea that artists are always filled to the brim with ideas they have to express and in my experience that hasn’t been true. For me, the urge to write comes and goes, and sometimes I’ll go weeks or months without writing. But I don’t stress about it because I know it’s something I’ll always have and that the stories and words will come to me when they’re ready.

Sometimes feelings drive me to write but sometimes it’s also an idea! For that essay, it was something I said to my fiancé and thought it would be an interesting essay title. I sat down to write not knowing where it was going and it naturally just went in the direction of vulnerability. That’s not always how my process goes but it just kind of developed authentically from there.”

As a fellow trauma survivor and a writer interested in exploring the impact that PTSD and depression has had on her creative journey, I had to ask Shorr how she perceived navigating trauma from a healing perspective versus exploring the traumatized side of her through art,

“I think writing can help navigate trauma but it shouldn’t be the driving reason behind it. I think it’s good to have a certain distance from trauma before writing about it, or else it can be all-consuming. I opted to draw this essay because I thought the visual element would help set the tone for it. I love giving readers a variance in the form and I think images can be effective and helpful in breaking up the monotony of a standard essay.

I think certain kinds of art can romanticize mental illness but fortunately, we as a society are moving towards more honest depictions of what living with mental illness is like. It’s important to write your truth as honestly as possible because although it might not speak for everyone with that, it will likely connect with many. I’ve found that the more honest/vulnerable/personal you are, the more people relate.”

In a critique of one of my guilty pleasures, a movie titled Frankie and Johnny starring Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer, the female -quite a shocker to me- critic disliked how Pfeiffer was cast as a lonely, physically abused woman. She as well as many other critics mentioned that she was too young and too pretty to play a lonely, down-on-her-luck waitress whose chances at love are scarcer as days go by. Not only did I find this ridiculous, but also sexist, as if beautiful women should only be presented as Amazonian winners who always get what they want. I’m glad these critics do not exist in a time where a gorgeous woman like Nicole Kidman plays a battered, sexually abused wife who abandons a successful law career to “wipe runny noses and organize playdates” in Big Little Lies. I mimicked the ignorance of 90s era critics and asked a gorgeous Shorr what she thought of the concept, writing about physical abuse herself,

“I think anyone is vulnerable to toxic relationships, and that unfortunately, nobody is exempt from potentially falling into physically and emotionally abusive relationships. Abuse is so calculated that even if you know your worth, you can still be taken advantage of. I have been with partners who have not been good to me, and in retrospect, good enough for me, but because they were able to make me doubt my worth and what I knew to be true, I stayed. I think a lot about the role of withholding in abusive relationships, and what that can do to a person. When a partner is withholding affection/attention/or love from us, that is a form of emotional abuse. I know now because of the healthy relationship that I am currently in, that a good partner will never make you feel like you’re starving.”

Shorr was a mystic creature, quartz that eludes your definition and defies your expectations. Her admiration for poetry slams stems from the adrenaline, the connection with the audience. She has never been a competitive person so slam was the exception, but beyond the competition aspect, it also gave her a sense of community and confidence. Her favorite literary world to exist in was memoir because -in her words- truth never goes out of style. If she could exist as a poem she’d be a haiku, short and sweet. Her interpretation of how artists perceived the artistic process was too interesting to miss,

“I think it depends on the person honestly. I appreciate the connection aspect of writing but I don’t need recognition or fame to feel satisfied with my work. I do however really value connecting with individuals through art.

I do think a lot of people create for recognition but I also think many simply create for themselves and their sanity.”

By the time our conversation came to an end, Shorr expressed interest in reading my translated work and her affection for works by non-English speaking writers,

“I’ve loved translated poems. Pablo Neruda’s work for example. I think translations can be so powerful and that art can cross cultural boundaries. Some parts of human existence truly feel universal and poetry/art, in general, is a great method of communicating that.”

Danielle Shorr is a force of nature and the world will be her stage someday, just waiting for her to shine.

Humans

They give you 
happy pills
to make you "feel" safe
while they manipulate you
with cookies
to steal your mental freedom
so that you trust people
you never met
or will meet.

Humans.




Porn blows your trust

Porn uses
the ancient Oxytocin 
trust building blast
in this day and age
as a tool
to build trust
with media
you shouldn't trust,
rather than building bonds
with real human beings
that want to live 
together with you
instead of through a screen.



Unconditional Love

Unconditional love:
love beyond measure.

the worms 
eating your flesh
as they crawl into your casket:

be their nourishment
end their suffering,
let them take your body.



True love




What’s More Insane?

What's more insane?

Shamanic wisdom,
Choosing a direction
based on the way a stick falls,
the earth's rotation,
and interaction with living DNA?

Or 

"Culturally accepted knowledge,"
choosing a direction
based on some A
I embedded in a digital map
whose very existence
was created by corporations 
who want to 
turn you into 
an Orwellian product?





Prepare the youth

The APA recommends
babies remain alone
on their back
in crib

not for their health persay
but to prepare them
for an isolated
cold
digital future,
"warming them up"
for the lonely 
digital winter
to come
with no human connection:
the singularity



TBHQ for Freshness

Keep the citizens
marching alone,
getting their 
comfort from food 
grown to ensure
the most satisfying pain,
sweet to the taste buds:

The members of 
a preserved society 
don't know
pain and death 
give life.

TBHQ for freshness,
keep the citizens
"fresh" and asleep
unaware of the suffering 
embedded in their tasty treats,
how the American dream,
the dream of comfort,
is always realized
at the expense of 
someone else's pain
and exploitation.

And don't you dare
let the citizens
know.
Keep them meek 
and asleep,
yet alive --
marching forward 
in the game of 
trading death
without 
rational consent.

The Science of Trees

By Abigail George

The photograph is of my mother. In it she looks like someone else. Perhaps someone else’s mother. Our relationship is fraught with difficulties. I’m a fat cutout or rather the curator of fat cutouts. Dark water inside of my head. I can hear her voice. She is calling me. Yes, I am coming. She’s my sun.  A slow word. An open and shut release. She’s a mountain covered with light-green foliage. Her hair is cut in the style younger women wore in those days. The expression on her face is carefree. She is not burdened yet with a brilliant, manic depressive husband, and three spoiled but talented children. She is the storage space where I keep all my childhood treasure. I search for the city language of chronic illness. Find it there, the miracle,  staring back at me on the page. My mother is beautiful even though she is the origin of winter to me. She’s taste, and smell. Sight, and sound. My mother is elegant. I feel when I look at that picture, holding the photograph in my hands that I can have a coffee with the girl that my mother is. Perhaps we can even go for lunch. Share a slice of decadent, mouthwatering cheesecake. That’s what girls do. They go out together, and talk, and talk. She will tell me how she met my gentle, and wise father. She will tell me their love story in so many words. She has all that slicked back magical wavy magazine hair. I only exist because of her. She carried me in her womb for nine months. The pregnancy was difficult. I was delivered by Caesarian section. Late at night while the house is asleep I write. I write to reach all of her. I write in code. She’s warm like a good, hot breakfast of French toast, and oats with cinnamon milk. Syrup and bacon. Eggs and toast. Muesli bird food. I remembered when her belly was gravid with my sister. Then with my brother. Perhaps I can even remember when she stopped laughing. The cold shore of her love ruined me for life. I’ve become a dangerous woman. Dangerous to love. I had position once, that giddy moment but now I’m marked in some explainable way that everyone who has eyes can see when they look at me they know that something is wrong with me. Outside my bedroom window. There’s the high school I went to but never graduated from down the road from where I live. The high school where I was bullied. Teased mercilessly for being too smart, too thin, for being invisible as long division, and dust. There’s the hospital I was born in down Stanford Road. The flat where my parents first lived, played house, settled down to raise a family, have that sunny road, have those kids. The flat opposite the library with the Encyclopedia Britannica that is still there locked in a time machine.

My mother is warm, and sweet but only with people who belong to the same tribe she belongs to. Girls and women.

The smell of clean cut grass is in the air. The scent of my mother’s rinsed hair. Salt and light on the open sandy path at the beach as we make our way to the sea. Curled in the foetal position on the bed listening to music played loud to drown out the other members of the family making their way, marching their way through the order of life in the other rooms of the house. Inside my head are waves. Vibrations of energy. Something snaps. Does it have a sound? A round shape like the shape of this blue planet called Earth? Is it circular like the moon calling the tides down an inquisition through a loophole? Is it the circle of the sun that is causing me this hot, dense, heavy abdominal pain? Knots of butterflies in my stomach. Playful moths in the pit of my stomach. The flame that flickers. Shadows of fingers. The sunlight is considered thin. In the afternoon it hovers against the wall, the comfortable sofa in the family room, after a rain showers flecks. The woman in the photograph is my mother. She is wearing a beautiful dress. She looks very elegant. She is smiling or laughing? I do not know this woman. She is a ‘fiance’. She has found herself a husband. She is not tired of life yet. She isn’t not cold towards her daughters. Not yet, anyway. She’s going to be Eve. Made from Adam’s rib. The world makes me go cool inside. In this photograph she does not have any flaws yet. They haven’t collected her from the hospital with me yet. I wonder if the woman in the photograph knew how to love. I knew she knew about loss. Her brother. The accident. She is not wearing her glasses in the picture. She looks lovely. She is too thin. Has she not been eating because of the stress of planning the wedding? She does not look like Joyce Carol Oates. My mother looks like she is a model in a catalogue. Damn! I, on the other hand, look like Joyce Carol Oates, I think to myself. I think to myself all female writers should look like someone they admire terribly. Alice Munro. Joan Didion. Anita Brookner. Marilyn Monroe, the poetess, and not the actress. Jean Rhys. Harper Lee. I know these things instinctively. It’s my brother’s birthday next month. It’s that time of year again. Easter. ‘Pickled’ fish pickled with onion and lashings of turmeric. White fish flaked with raised forks every year. Buttered toasted hot cross buns with raisins for eyes. Chocolate hollow eggs. Rabbits everywhere the eye can see in the mall. Down the shopping aisle.

The writer Anne Lamott taught me style. Technique. Jean Le Roux, a distant relative, taught me that you must marry for love. That to be addicted to silences is the most feminine of journeys. The writer Anne Lamott taught me that if I  follow her writing instructions as if I was following an ingredient list for a recipe will it only be then  that I can call myself a writer in the rod of the mist. This sublimity. This cool sumptuous balancing act of vowels and consonants in ink. The proof of language translated onto the page. Her books with their magnificent, stooping  tumult. Then I think about Susan Sontag’s cancer. Nothing seems to matter to me now in this world. Only chronic illness. Only this city that I live in. My mother tongue. Only the kerfuffle of cancer. Cancer cells growing, growing, and growing with no end in sight. The black sheep of disease.  Ah, the bittersweet art. Promises of it all. Life in writing. Life resurrected in writing. Anne Lamott. My mother. Jean Le Roux. Susan Sontag. The search for a self help kind of calm inner peace has taken over all my brain cells like a duck takes to water. My brain cells are part lofty cargo/part meat country. The craft of my writing is novel to me. The wings of the entire establishment of the camp system inside my head are like the proof of a heatwave. I am a free artist. An androgynous artist with the mystique of bipolarity. There is a link. Timing to the kinks, the links in the chain. Always has been. All my life. I have sought feminist writing. Art in language. A spacious museum that I could visit anytime by opening the pages of journals. Black Croxley notebooks. My mother gave that to me. The sun. There was an ocean behind Sontag’s ‘illness as a metaphor’ and a baptism of sorts for me. I longed to copy her. Write brilliantly without any superhuman effort at all. With the death in the family, with the onset of that came stereophonics of cancer in my head. Once I had a beautiful aunt, Jean Le Roux. A distant relative that passed from breast cancer. Life is not just a kerfuffle or an endless stream of traffic. Life is hungry for streets, alleys, theater, for musical comedy, and the drama, voice, the speech of tragedy, I am quiet. The day is quiet. The body is a flower. So beautiful even with the words ‘chronic illness’ on your lips. Even in the throes of death. My mother was the first woman I knew. My first love. Daughters love their mothers even though we might not admit it all the time. She taught me humility. What she didn’t teach me was how to love others. Was she selfish? Did she want me for herself for all of her life? She did not teach me how to love a man, and keep him. Cook, and clean for him. How to get him to marry you, to love you. She did not teach me to be soft. This paradise to be doe-eyed. She did not teach my lips to be loved. My hands feel creamy. There was always this flightless distance between us. This song. This dance. Madness on my part that once illuminated, and shaped my young adolescence, and adult world. All I want to tell her is this. That I admire her. I have always admired her. Her stylish flesh. Her power, and drive.

She’s lived all of her life while I am frightened of everything to death of the feats of the universe around me. The environment I live in. I am tired. Coping is a half-mechanism. I think of him in Joburg. Director. Winner of international awards. The sweet memory of him is ‘killing me softly’ like the song.

There is always this struggle for creativity in every bit of dust and air. For the ray of light, the driftwood that the beach spits out is imagination. There is always the order and the routine of the day. Make dad’s breakfast. Take medication. Hide the pharmaceuticals away from my small nephew’s inquiring gaze. The day is always the same. As fresh and new as rain. I find myself in tall grass. Hair windswept. I find myself standing in front of a mocking sea.

Insomnia. Fleck. Wavelength. Photosynthesis. Mitochondria. Photoelectric cell. Handsome words that comfort me like time’s place in the world. It travels like a nomad. They taste like sugar on my tongue. There’s no struggle that awaits them. Internal or external. No winter. Nothing objectified.  All too soon adolescence was gone. Then the blues began. I didn’t know what to call it back then. I can hear my mother’s voice inside my head.

She’s talking about my brother. How he’s never going to marry that girl.