Thursday, March 3, 2011

For Fiction Workshop, I did the assignment with you

After Sam, there was no more daily-vitamin, I sort of curled up, unwilling to give my body the extra years of what I could only picture as alone years. Then months gathered up in folds and when I pictured time like that: some blanket ocean frozen on its way in, I started trying to rejoin the human world.

I started craving certain foods again, imagining their flavors and textures in my mouth and not just taking in a portion of some nutrition that tasted only, always of sawdust.
So it was when I remembered smoothies the milky pastel shapes and the mellow tartness that I went down to Edith's and asked for a mango-peach and watched as a woman at a nearby table arranged a collection of vitamins that she took and washed down with a chai latte.

Vitamins, I remembered now, that ritual of faith each morning as I made sure to make a piece of toast and swallow the colorful handful consisting of one multi. extra C,E, calcium and magnesium and fish oil. I always took that one last, reveling in the look of it, a drop of sunlight, a single teardrop of gold. I remembered my birthstone: topaz and how in childhood its color was such a color but later it got a publicist, a marketing campaign and could mostly only be found now in shades of blue or a chocolaty color called smoke. I recalled the gems class that I took one spring break and found out that true gem-diagnostics don't employ color so I have no way of knowing if the little placard in my costume jewelry box that reads "November: Topaz" bears any resemblance however golden or smoky or blue, to anything in the real mineral world.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

SPRING BREAK ALL CLASSES

Obviously, I had different plans for the week of March 21st than you probably did.
I guess your dumb plan (sun, relaxation, play) out carpe diems mine. Some of you do have a reading assignment that is placed in that week but you are welcome to do it earlier or the Sunday or Monday of the next.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

WRITING FICTION

Week Six: 03/01-03/03
T: Completion of Round One Workshops
In-class writing, reading assignment.
HOMEWORK: Bring an object that seems, in some way mysterious to you. Bring something that you don't mind handing over to someone else. It can be an object from the natural world: feather,seashell pinecone, stone, or something more manmade: page from magazine, a postcard, a small figurine,piece of glass, beads, tin foil sculpture,foreign currency, origami...

H: In-class writing, reading
Homework: Reading assignment TBA.


Week Seven 03/08-03/10

T In-Class Writing & Discussion
H NO CLASS TODAY.
Homework: Workshop Round Two Begins
Group One be ready with second stories for distribution on Thursday, Group Two the following Tuesday and so on.

Week Eight 03/15-03/17

T TBA
H Group One Distributes Stories

Week Nine 03/22-03/24
T Group One Workshops
Group Two distributes

H Group Two workshops
Three distributes

Week Ten 03/29-
T Group Three workshops
Four distributes
H Group Four workshops
Five distributes

Week Eleven
T Group Five workshops
Homework:

H TBA

Poetry of Witness...

Week Five 02/22-02/25T Continued Discussion of WWI and the Soviets
H Writing Assignment due.
Discussion.
Homework: Read the introduction to WWII (p. 177-178)

Week Six 03/01-03/03
T Continued discussion of Russian Poets.
Homework: Read Spanish Civil War section 147-170
Read pp. 179-199 inclusive of all biographical notes on each poet.
H Discussion of Spanish Civil War and possible intro to WWII.
Homework: Read pp. 222-253

Week Seven 03/08-03/10
T Discussion of WWII selections.
Homework: pp..277-288 and pp. 324-355 choose some representative poems for discussion and observe the difference in form and formal strategies used throughout.

H NO CLASS TODAY.
Homework: Read Holocaust bio and pp. 357-383

Week Eight 03/15-03/17

T TBA (Likely an in-class video/movie)
H WWII and Holocaust Discussions

Week Nine 03/22-03/24
T 03/22 continued discussion
H 03/24 continued discussion

Homework: Readings from Eastern & Central Europe Section Intro (405) through Milosz (442) and 455-467 (through Cassian’s poems)

Week Ten
T 03/29 Discussion of Eastern & Central Europe readings
Homework: Read selections from Mediterranean section including intro. 487-507
Also, from Indo-Pakistani 521-526
H 03/31 Discussion
Homework: Readings:War in the Middle East p. 529 and pp.542-564 (Kovner, Amichai, Adonis, Darwoush)
And Latin America: 567-578
Week Eleven
T 04/05 Discussion.
Reading Homework: Civil Rights 621-662 and from Vietnam & Korea 677-693
H 04/07
Homework:
Vietnam Section
Next assignment: write a short poem from one of the pieces at the Wick Speak Peace exhibit. Bring the piece to class and be prepared to show the piece that inspired it.
http://www.soldiersheart.net/pdf/vietnamese_childrens_art_exhibit.pdf
Readings:
Week Twelve
T 04/12 Continued Discussion
H 04/14 Continued Discussion
Homework: An ekphrastic response to anything we have read so far. This will be an assignment to be presented and is due at the beginning of class on Thursday 04/21

Week Thirteen: 04/19-04/21
T 04/19 Discussion continued or TBA.
H 04/21 PRESENTATION OF Ekphrastic pieces
Homework: Read Blind Date with Cavafy and be prepared to discuss it.

Week Fourteen: 04/26-04/28
04/26 Discussion of Fellner’s book
04/28 “ “ “
Homework: Read Dougherty’s book and be prepared to discuss it next week.
MANDATORY READING: Monday Consider some things that you would like to ask Steve Fellner about his work.
Monday, May 2, 11 a.m.–12:30 p..m Canzani Center
Steve Fellner's first book of poems, Blind Date with Cavafy, won the 2006 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize and the 2008 Thom Gunn Gay Male Poetry Award. “Steve Fellner’s poems have a wonderful innocence and playfulness that so many of us lose or forget that we have,” said Jim Daniels. “They sneak up on you—while you’re laughing and admiring their wit and sparkle, they’ll swoop down and kick your ass.”
Fellner’s 2007 memoir, All Screwed Up, focuses on his relationship with his ex-trampoline-champion mother. He currently lives in Brockport, New York. Presented by the English Department of CCAD’s Liberal Arts Division.

T 05/03 Discussion of Sasha Sings…
H 05/05 Continued discussion

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Week Fifteen
05/10 TBA
05/12 Final Day of Class. TBA