2016 Finley Experience International Views Contest Update

We're coming to the end of another year of the Finley Experience International Views Contest.
Just a few days left to get those views in! Last year's winner was Israel. Who will be this year's winner?

Poems Written for the 5th Annual International Views Contest Winner: Israel

http://poetry.finleyexperience.com/2016/02/fe-ivc-diasporic-israel.html

http://poetry.finleyexperience.com/2015/07/fe-ivc-poem-oisrael-know-thou-not.html

Past Winners
5th Annual Winner: Israel
4th Annual Winner: Ukraine
3rd Annual Winner: Russia
2nd Annual Winner: Russia
1st Annual Winner: Russia

Strolling with Stein and James (or, Romantic Meanderers)

Introduction

            Gertrude Stein and Henry James paint material landscapes as background scenery for readers to stroll through while subtly contemplating the finer points of masculine and feminine dichotomies. The overall pace of their works and their word choices lead readers as if on a leisurely stroll through Hyde Park or the Louvre. In The American, Christopher Newman displays the tensions between strolling and sitting. In The Autobiography of Alice B. Tolkas, Alice exemplifies the tensions between sitting and standing. The differences, in both works, revolve around notions of motion (masculine or feminine) and states of being (active or inactive). Setting up dichotomous states of being increases dramatic tensions within the works. Dichotomies, primarily involving motion and/or lack of motion, also control the speed of scenes. Accordingly, moments of intensity wind up as intriguing bends in the garden’s path (i.e. momentary tangents). In other words, both, Stein and James, utilize the motions involved with sitting and standing to move their readers from one point to the next. The remainder of this paper will focus on explicating a few passages from each work in order to garner a better understanding of the effects of the sit/stand dichotomy as presented by Stein and James. (Note: Due to the length restrictions, I will limit passages to major plot movers specifically utilizing the words: sit, stand, and stroll.)

       

As I Lay Dying: Cash Bundren’s Sado-Masochistic Materialism as a Sign of Faulkner’s Modernism

Introduction

Cash Bundren’s life experiences and personal desires influence his practical preference for the masochistic insanity of sado-masochistic and materialistic society over the sadistic anti-materialistic insanity of individuals like his younger brother, Darl. Or, as Urgo states: “[As I lay Dying] is a drama where human understanding is created and projected by the mind, reflected in the structures and the products of social realities, overturned by human conflict with inherited meaning and value, and created again” (Urgo 13). From the beginning of the novel, initially through Darl’s perspective, we see Cash as a man fixated on materials, who places man-made above natural. Through multiple character perspectives, Cash is depicted as a “good carpenter” (Faulkner 3) dedicated to building his mother, Addie, the best handcrafted coffin possible (Faulkner 20), through use of the new tools he purchased from a catalog (Faulkner 91). The reality is that Cash works to earn money to supply himself with material goods meant to ease his life (new tools make jobs easier; the graphophone makes rest easier).