Plunge your gaze into the mirror of the Marvelous: your tales, your legends, your songs—you'll see inscribed, luminous, the sure image of your Self.

-Aimé Césaire, from the class description

The purpose of this "blog" is to give me an easy way to share what I am writing for and in response to my experience in the program "Sacred Monsters" (from the French, monstres sacrés) at The Evergreen State College. The program has several sections, mine focusing on modern French and Caribbean literature.

There are reading assignments every week. My favorite selections last quarter were Madness and Civilzation, by Foucault, Death and the King's Horseman, by Soyinka, and Marat/Sade by Weiss. I didn't have enough time to do a thorough reading of Clitandres's Cathedral of the August Heat, or Cesaire's Lyric and Dramatic Poetry, but I had the impression that both texts are brilliant, deep, and certainly worthy of a closer examination.

A lot of what I post here is things I have written for class, and thus they may tend to rely on references to whatever materials we have been consuming (reading, watching) as part of the program. That said, I'm trying to make them comprehensible for a more general audience, so that those who are not in the program with me can follow along.

I hope you enjoy what I've written. Please let me know what you think. Leave comments!