- Art of Confrontation
- Emily Bronte’s “Wild Workshop,” Wuthering Heights
- Is Mr. Darcy a Feminist?
- It Was Books That Made Me Feel Perhaps I Was Not Completely Alone
- The Last Ship
- Letting Lips Speak
- Make up the breakup
- Our Literary Manifesto
- A Passionate Defense of Genre Fiction
- Poems for Slughorn
- Robert Walton’s Sieve of Nectar
- The Search For Truth
- A Societal DEvolution
- A Slughorne Contribution
- To Absorb or to Ignore
- Unpredictable Demonstrations of Literature
- Comparative Analysis of “Who Goes There?” and It’s Adaptations to Film
- What One Makes of It
by Katie Smith
OUR
LITERARY
MANIFESTO
Immortalized echoes.
Our experiences are complex collections of words and moments, both shared and singular, echoing onwards. These are our words. As we arrive at the end of undergraduate experience, let us remember the words that inspired us onward.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;”
Join together, let us sing:
“Long Live Literature!
Long Live Literature!”
Together let us celebrate the principles of our passion: Our literary manifesto.
- Don’t look back.
We say that taking the road less “traveled by” has “made all the difference”. Now is our opportunity to put our money were are mouth is. so let us Stand still no longer.
“Run, you fools” There is adventure to be had Remember.
“There is no try, only do”
- Be a Global Citizen.
“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”
We sing on the songs of our ancestors, lives long lived and passed, still:
“Long Lives Literature!
Long Lives Literature!”
- Go outside. Stay There.
“The earth has music for those who listen.” Yet, only if we are silent and linger long enough to listen.
“Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise”
- Get Gritty.
We say that “We are the music makers” and we are the “dreamers of dreams”, yet we have learned the hard way that we “pay for everything in this world one way and another.”
“Read a little bit of Leviticus.
All the kids are a little too little for this.
All the parents nod in agreement –
“I think I can vaguely see what he meant.”
It’s too early in the morning glory
To read another allegory story,”
Wake up and do something that will make you sweat, put dirt under your nails.
“True grit is making a decision and standing by it, doing what must be done.”
Let us work for a better tomorrow today, pressing on, moving forward, with tireless tenacity.
- Bathe Often.
“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Come into us at midnight very clean. It hopes we’ve learnt something from yesterday”.
Honor thy body. Bow thy head
Allow the rain to wash over you, rain of love, hatred, humanity.
“I wanna feel the thunder
I wanna scream
Let the rain fall down
I’m coming clean, I’m coming clean”
- Get Good
“Rage! Rage! Against the dying of the light!”
Our work is never over. . .
There “the wearisomeness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s waking life was spent watching one’s feet.”
. . . In fact, it’s only just begun
“Do not go gentle into that good night.”
We are the writers of the next great American novel. The Neoclassiest. Swaggiest. Millennial-est that ever existed.
“Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free.”
It is we who can “call into the past, far back to the beginning of time, and beg them to come. . . . And they must come, for at this moment, I am the whole reason they have existed at all.”
“ WE NEED THE UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF HUMANITY—their stupidity, animalism and dreams. . . . We believe in no perfectibility except our own.”
Long Live Literature!
Without it we would be lost!
We are the echo, the reverberation of the visions of all that we have read screaming an immortal message:
“I am. I am. I am.”
- KICK ASS!
We have a voice of our own, a megaphone of might held by a hair trigger.
Now is our moment. This our message, our literary legacy, our Manifesto.
Let us not repeat, Let us learn, Let us change.
“Pioneers, o pioneers”
Let it be us who are the captains of industry and insight. Ambassadors to the ever-echoing past screaming:
I AM. I AM. I AM.
We Are. We Are. We Are.
Of course, this is but my modest proposals. A compilation of my education, spat out and condensed like soup for the soul. Remember: No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. “Lead on. Oh captain, my captain.”