Thursday, February 25, 2010

Contemporary Literature

Next week we read Wallace Stevens and Ezra Pound

TUESDAY 03/02
The Stevens Readings are all here. The poems are on links to the right.
I would like for you to have read for Tuesday:
The main page biographical information plus:
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
The Snow Man
Sunday Morning
The Idea of Order at Key West
The Emperor of Ice Cream

All links are on that site.

THURSDAY 03/04
For Thursday and Ezra Pound please have the following read:

The biographical page plus

All the Cantos on that page.
The River Merchant's Wife
At a Station at the Metro

Have a great weekend.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Prompts for W-F Fiction Class.

Choose one trigger statement and take off from it:

1. If it wasn't_________________, if you/s/he/I weren't________________ and they had not__________________

2. Without _________________ for so long now, we/you/I/s/he remembered instead__________

3. Say it's your house that______________, that it's you now living_______________
and...



Without color for so long now, what we remembered were monochromes, memories that tested nothing against shadows or the food of shadows, the dim.

Without color for so long, I asked for Sam's bones from a little shack like the ones in Greece where my grandmother retrieved her sister's skeleton, broken-down, washed-clean, the bones like heavy dry-cleaning dropped off some decade before and neatly-laundered, picked up again. It was the kind of dream that wouldn't stop dreaming, running itself through itself reel to reel until the real life of my rumpled bed, early morning ran into the morphine river of my day and even, after waking, the shower, caffeination, I felt the strange weight of his bones in my arms as I lugged them through Monday.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

"These fragments I have shored against my ruins."
T.S. Eliot

Consider that line and Modernism. How, if you think it does, does it illuminate some of the principle ideas of the movement?

Reading Assignment for Contemporary Lit.

Have the following read for class
Thursday 02/25

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

Monday, February 22, 2010

TODAY AT 11 Your Teachers Read from Their Works

Come check us out, won't you?
Canzani Auditorium

Contemporary Lit.

Tomorrow will be Intro. to Modernism. Your next reading homework will be for Thursday and posted later today. (Anthology: one place, teacher: another.)

Friday, February 19, 2010

FICTION WORKSHOPS

02/23 Tuesday Group TWO workshops. Group Three distributes.

02/24 Wed. Group TWO distributes. We workshop Sara and do an in-class assignment.

02/25 Thursday Group THREE workshops. Group Four distributes.

02/26 Friday Group TWO workshops. Group Three distributes.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Story to be Read by Wednesday/Thursday

For the Fiction Workshops:

Group One distributes stories during our next class but please, also have this piece read, printed-up and ready to discuss.

THE PLAN FOR TUESDAY CLASSES 02/16/10

Hey Gangs (Fiction, Contemporary Lit.)

I came through horrific weather to get as far as Dublin last night. The roads were the worst I have seen in my time here and the number of accidents and "derailed" vehicles, jarring. CCAD's official plans aside, I will let you know in the later on in the morning if our classes will not be taking place.
*For now, assume that they are happening according to plan.*
Even so, I may have trouble getting in as I set out. If you all get there and I am not there, for Contemp. Lit. please just sign a roll sheet and have a student plan to bring it to me on Thursday.
For Writing Fiction, Group One should plan to distribute their stories to one another and be sure to bring one in for me (and any absent students) on Thursday. Group Two should plan to distribute stories on Thursday per the original plan.
Please note W/F Writing Fiction classes have their first stories due for class distribution (22 copies stapled, edited, ready to be read and critiqued) on Wednesday 02/17 for Group One. Group Two will distribute stories on Friday.

WRITING FICTION:
As stated above, the workshops begin with distribution today and the first workshop taking place on Thursday. Group Two should plan to distribute their stories on Thursday for Tuesday workshop.

CONTEMPORARY LIT:
We'll finish up with Whitman and probably have a video. Your anthology readings will be posted next. For now, plan to get your first projects ready to turn in one week from today.

***Lit. Class Project One Due Tues. 02/23/10***
Using the epistolary form and borrowing from the style (in some way/s) from one of the people we have discussed, write a letter (or series of "postcard-shaped" paragraphs) to one of these authors. Consider their subject matter, and what, in particular, you would like to "speak back to" in their work. Example: Writing to Emily Dickinson about how one of her concepts is resonating now. (How hope gets used, misused or what it might mean to be "a thing with feathers." You might write to Whitman in Whitmanian fashion, about a place you know well.
Many possibilities.
The skinny: the piece must be at least 2 full pages or 500 words in length. It can be longer, but I don't want to see it be any skimpier than this.


Monday, February 8, 2010

FICTION WORKSHOP

The reading for Thursday and Friday's discussion and exercises has arrived. I will either get you the link for the story or distribute in class.

The assignment for your writing will be to write a story that takes place in an implausible setting.


Note: Group One for both classes, your first workshop stories will be due on Tues. and Wed. of next week (02/16 & 17) with copies enough for your entire class. Make sure it is completely ready, stapled, typed etc. at the START of class. We will workshop on Thurs. and Friday when Group Two will distribute their stories.
Whitman Poems for Contemporary Lit:

http://www.blackcatpoems.com/w/to_a_locomotive_in_winter.html
http://www.blackcatpoems.com/w/to_a_certain_cantatrice.html
http://www.blackcatpoems.com/w/a_twilight_song.html
http://www.blackcatpoems.com/w/when_lilacs_last_in_the_dooryard_bloomd.html
http://www.blackcatpoems.com/w/italian_music_in_dakota.html
http://www.blackcatpoems.com/w/i_sing_the_body_electric.html
http://www.blackcatpoems.com/w/song_of_myself.html
http://www.blackcatpoems.com/w/to_you.html