Creative Paper #1 due February 27

REMEMBER: Reading Exam #2 is scheduled for today (Friday). If you miss class it's your responsibility to reschedule it next week. You must take it next week to get credit for it (you can't take it 2-3 weeks later, for example).

Below is the Creative Paper #1, which is basically like your mid-term assignment for the class. Start thinking about it, since you still have over a week before it's due. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. 

Creative Paper #1: Seeing the Way

INTRO: For your first paper, I want you to think about how we describe or discuss something that really transcends language, and that we almost have to see, or experience, to truly understand. The Tao te Ching and The Bhagavad Gita are so many things—both everything and nothing—which is too vast for our limited minds to contemplate. But like poetry itself, a metaphor can bridge the gap between the seen and unseen, the known and unknown. So what VISUAL metaphor could help us ‘see’ some of the meanings and ideas in either book, and lead us close to ‘meditation’ from ‘practice’?

PROMPT: I want you to find a work of ART somewhere out in the world that you think provides a useful metaphor for seeing or discussing a pair of passages from the Tao te Ching and The Bhagavad Gita. By “work of art” I mean one of the following:

• A painting (famous or not)
• A drawing or illustration (famous or not)
• A poster or album cover
• Comic book illustration (a cover or an individual frame)
• A photograph
• A sculpture
• A building/structure

In other words, the work of art should be something we can see and contemplate/interpret. For your paper, I want you to do two things: (a) introduce the work in question by describing it and helping us ‘see’ it without the use of an image, and (b) use it to ‘read’ or interpret two related passages (one passage from each book). Don’t choose two random passages: make sure each passage seems to express similar ideas or concepts. Be specific, and use the artwork as a visual metaphor; try to imagine that the work of art is literally based on the poems. What would it show us? What would it explain? What would it clarify?

REQUIREMENTS

• This should be about 3 pages long double spaced, but you can do more (that’s a minimum).
• You must describe the work of art to someone who has never seen it, and feel free to tell us why it moves you, or interests you—but make sure we can ‘see’ it (don’t rely on a picture, and you don’t have to include an image).
• You must quote from the poem and show us how individual lines can be seen in the work of art itself.
• As you write, try to go beyond practice and really concentrate, meditate, and even surrender. In other words, communicate and think—don’t just write for a grade.  
• DUE  MONDAY, FEBUARY 27 by 5pm (no class that day)