Monday, February 28, 2011

Lit Classes (both) Postscript:

No, we're not skipping the Spanish American section. Read all of it (Intro and all poems and we'll get a discussion in on it soon.) Don't worry about having it read for tomorrow as I sprung a last minute WWII reading on you (just the intro for tomorrow.)

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Contemp. Lit & Poetry of W & S WWII Reading For Now

Just make sure you've read the intro to the WWII section in Against Forgetting. We've still some Russians to read.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Thanks fo Alejandro for this one.

I opened my email to find the subject line Writers Who Die!

It is relevent and not uninteresting, if not a little morbid.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

For those who missed today, this is worth seeing









Tonya: In particular, I recalled your enthusiasm to go over Sassoon and Owen and hated to do so without you. This is much of what we did. See you soon!

Interesting Trivia about Our WWI-ers

Writers Who Were Ambulance Drivers in WWI

•Ernest Hemingway
•John Dos Passos
•E.E. Cummings
•Somerset Maugham
•John Masefield
•Malcolm Cowley
•Sidney Howard
•Robert Service
•Louis Bromfield
•Harry Crosby
•Julian Green
•Dashiell Hammett
•William Seabrook
•Robert Hillyer
•John Howard Lawson
•William Slater Brown
•Charles Nordhoff
•Sir Hugh Walpole
•Desmond MacCarthy
•Russell Davenport
•Edward Weeks
•C. Leroy Baldridge
•Samuel Chamberlain
Related Occupation
•Gertrude Stein, visited hospitals and drove for American Fund for French Wounded)
•Marjory Stoneman Douglas, worked at American Red Cross headquarters in Paris because she was in love with an ambulance driver
•E.M. Forster, interviewed wounded in Egyptian hospitals
•Dorothea Francis Canfield Fisher, made home in France for husband while he was ambulance driver
•Archibald Cronin, doctor
•Edmund Wilson, stretcher bearer
•Anne Green, nurse

Sunday, February 20, 2011

The Trouble with "Truth"

Lit. classes (both of you) here is an interesting look at some of the issues we have been discussing in class.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Contemporary Lit. & Poetries of W & S

The iamb saunters through my book
Trochees rush and tumble
While the anapest runs like a hurrying brook
Dactyls are stately and classical


From the Table of Forms

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Daniel Varoujan poems

Poetries of W & S and Contemp. Lit.

Week of 02/15
T 02/15
Discussion Armenian Genocide. Homework: Reading 95-145 Revolu
tion & Repression in the Soviet Union
(We will be discussing this next week, and since you have a writing assignment due on Tuesday, too. I wanted to give you time. The bulk of this reading is indiv. poems so the pages are not so bad as they seem.)

H 02/17
Discussion WWI section (61-93 in Against Forgetting).
Homework: The writing assignment due on Thursday and all of the material in the Soviet section (see above).

Writing assignment: 02/22 For Thursday of next week, be prepared to turn in a piece that covers some facet (a figure, a piece of writing, an artwork,) from one of the areas we have covered and write a creative response to it.
It can be an imaginary letter, a poem, a short story, a scene as from a play, or a dramatic monologue (see Robert Browning's My Last Duchess for a great example, or Girl by Jamaica Kinkaid--both very easily found online). If the chosen assignment is a poem, it must be twenty-lines or more. If you want to get fancy or visual, you can do something like the stuff we saw in Born magazine. (Eliot Wilson's Blank Verse for the Man we Threw from the Sky.) If you have an idea that you find engaging, run it by me. This will be due at the beginning of class on Tuesday 02/22

Fiction Workshop

Week of February 15
T-Workshop Two, In-Class Writing
Group 3 Distributes stories.

H-Workshop 3
Group 4 Distributes

Week of February 22
T-Workshop 4
Group 5 Distributes

H-Workshop 5
Homework: Read this review and be ready to discuss it in class. http://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/23/books/redheaded-hellions-in-the-crape-myrtle.html

IMPORTANT REMINDERS ABOUT THE CLASS:
1. When you are being workshopped, you are not to respond to comments or speak during your workshop. You will get a chance after the workshop to ask a question or make a comment. Please remember this rule as it not only makes it hard for readers to see your story anew, but it wastes workshop time.

2. Your grade will suffer immensely if you are not there on the day of your workshop or if you do not have stories ready to distribute the day before workshop day. These workshops (and your thoughtful, lively presence) are what make up the grade in this course. I cannot base grades on excuses why you were not there or prepared and if I do, they will be grades that differ greatly from your peers. Some of you have already delivered a surplus of reasons why you are not doing the work of the course when it is due and we are only a few weeks into the course. You might really want to consider your commitments, scheduling and time pressures and see if you really should be enrolled in this course at this time. If you decided to stay, please note that I will not punish students who follow the rules and requirements of the course by having your grade and theirs in the same ballpark.

I admit to serious frustration last week and a dread of more of the same, so I expect that you will all be in class, with the stories to be workshopped commented-upon and that you will too, provide verbal comments to the authors. When your group is about to be workshopped, you will have the stories ready and when you are being workshopped, you will take notes and listen thoughtfully. I love teaching and don't want to feel as I felt on Thursday again.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

For my Fiction Workshop

This is in place of a temper tantrum (plus I have long-loved it and had only recently found it again):

Did I Miss Anything?

Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything, I gave an exam worth
40 percent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 percent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring the good news to all people
on earth

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human experience
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered
but it was one place

And you weren’t here

Tom Wayman

Fiction Workshop

Week of 02/08-02/10

T: Group One Workshops
Group Two distributes.

H: Workshops for what remains of Group One and Group Two
Group Three distributes their stories.


Week of 02/15-02/17

T: Group Three Workshops
Group Four Distributes

H: Group Four Workshops
Group Five (?) Distributes.

Poetries of Witness & Contemporary Lit Homework

Week of 02/08-02/10

T Discussion of Intro to Forche's Book
Homework: The Armenian Genocide Section (see below for page #s)

H Continued Discussion
Homework: All of the WWI section 61-93 in Against Forgetting.

Be quiz-ready on this material and the Armenian section. We will be discussing these through next week and so choose poems that you really like, dislike or just want to discuss.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

HOMEWORK FOR CONTEMP. LIT & POETRY of WITNESS...

Read all of the Armenian genocide section. (pp. 55-62) We'll discuss the reading on Thursday. (For Contemporary Lit. please note that we'll pick up the intro. reading that we had to miss today because I am coughing my life away.)