Category Archives: Reading

Shine

Posted on October 14, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Robert Haas ends “Songs to Survive the Summer” which itself ends Praise with the following set of verses: all things lustered by the steady thoughtlessness of human use. Through the polish of use the objects in our daily lives develop … Continue reading →

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Punctuating

Posted on September 17, 2008 by Francois Lachance

bp Nichol, “Y for Victor” collected in As Elected: Selected Writing. The form is of an ABC acrostic. Note the initial words to each line: alphabet […] beginning […] creates […] dreams […] escape […] These form the first line … Continue reading →

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Working It Through

Posted on August 12, 2008 by Francois Lachance

In the concluding pages of The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin one finds a nice summation of the novel: […] belief is the wound that knowledge heals. And the irony is that reading fiction progresses by a suspension of … Continue reading →

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Textual Autonomy Read Radically

Posted on July 19, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Brian Stock, “Language and Cultural History” in New Literary History v. 18 (Spring 1987), 657-70. However in a written as opposed to a spoken text, the author is no longer physically present, and the audience, being abstract, is potentially universal. … Continue reading →

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Scratches, Pauses

Posted on July 8, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Reflecting on Barthes invoking tmesis (also spelt tsmesis), thinking about pauses in our reading and how skimming is like swimming, I come to realize that speed like going slow is a fast way to the undertones of the undertow of … Continue reading →

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What Works Well

Posted on May 25, 2008 by Francois Lachance

The preparation for reading appeals to all the senses. It is a cross-modal activity. It sounds like a lot of fun. Teachers help children become more aware of the phonemes within words through a sort of armamentarium of opportunities — … Continue reading →

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Proofing, Reading, Discovering

Posted on May 19, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Jonah Lehrer in the chapter “Gertrude Stein: The Structure of Language” in Proust Was a Neuroscientist What Stein discovered was a writing style that celebrated its grammatical mistakes. In her most radical prose, she manages to make us conscious of … Continue reading →

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Literacy Promotion

Posted on April 23, 2008 by Francois Lachance

A newspaper clipping explaining “When the button on the blank foolscap-like poster is pushed, a voice explains there are no words on the ad because ‘five million adult Canadians would not be able to read them.’” The message from the … Continue reading →

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Fluency and Literacy

Posted on March 18, 2008 by Francois Lachance

The following, rearranged as verse, strikes one as more than just a call to pay attention to oral dimensions. It is in a sense a call to overcome self-censorship in order to become engaged. What you think, you can say. … Continue reading →

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Entranced

Posted on February 21, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Alice A. Parker in the entry on Nicole Brossard in The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage: A Reader’s Companion to the Writers and their Works from Antiquity to the Present edited by Claude J. Summers writes Translation, like writing, opens … Continue reading →

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