Ricky Martin?

Something tells me I may be setting myself up with the title of this entry. You see, I’m really talking about living la vida existencialista: Nietzsche and Heidegger.

A few hours ago, the text message I so didn’t want to receive appeared on my phone. Of the two courses I had registered for this June, one–the last of my electives, actually–had been dissolved.

Ever since I paid my tuition fees, I had been constantly checking the online list that indicated whether anyone else had signed up for the course. No luck there, and I guess its dissolution was inevitable.

Despite that, however, I was hoping against hope that a graduate seminar on poetry would interest more students. Since I plan to “declare” poetry as my chosen genre for my MA in Creative Writing, I was hoping that a Comparative Literature course on it would be the best option for my final elective.

(I feel frustrated, to be honest, because I’m also reminded of how I faced the same problem just this summer. With too few students interested in a course I was so looking forward to teaching, I had to dissolve it as well.)

Anyway, I’ve heard good things about the teacher, and I’ve been floored by a couple of her poems. I’m tempted to approach her, introduce myself, and ask if I could make copies of the course materials she would have used for the course.

(I probably won’t do that, though. I’m too shy, and that’s too forward.)

Now, I have one day to work on my “change of matriculation” (a.k.a. “load revision”). That’s my short-term concern. The one for the long-term is whether the Creative Writing workshop courses on poetry I’m hoping to take are vulnerable to this kind of thing as well. An undergraduate friend of mine said yes, unfortunately.

Back to the more immediate concern, which is to look for a course I was interested in that could fit my schedule this semester. In addition, I should be prepared to justify why a Creative Writing graduate student would take that elective.

My choice? Philo 289: The Sources of Post-Modernity – Nietzsche and Heidegger, which brings us back to the title of this entry.

How do I justify taking the course (under the inimitable Fr. Luis David, I should add, an inspiration to me), besides the following vaguely general remarks?

1. Nietzsche wrote poetry, and his thought itself is relevant to poetics.
2. As for Heidegger, there’s Poetry, Language, Thought, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” and other related works. Heidegerrian poetics can be and has been applied to theories of education, discussions of technology, and Heidegger’s own controversial political history.

Great. Now I really want to take that philosophy course now. Here’s hoping I won’t be disappointed.

In the meantime, thanks to this, I just found out about the ten-year-old BBC documentary Human All Too Human, which provide general introductions to our friends…

Ricky! Martin! And, um, J. P. Yeah!