Ekphrasis Syllabus Update

T: Completion of The Red Shoes
H: Discussion of fairytale. In-class composition.

Homework: Read Introduction through page 38 in Poets on Painters
Read: Matisse by Gertrude Stein
Write a poem based on what you were given in class today. (ten line minimum, any interpretation, any form)

T: Discussion of readings & poems. Invention of imaginary artist. (Looking at Pessoa, etc.)

H: Presentation and turn-in of postcard poems. Finishing discussion on reading. Starting The Realms of the Unreal.
Homework:
Ashbery Reading:
John D'Agata in Boston Review on John Ashbery
Biographical notes on John Ashbery

Perloff's review of Girls on the Run

This fascinating tie-in between poet John Ashbery (who wrote about Darger's Vivien Girls) and Joseph Cornell (the artist who inspired Simic's Dimestore Alchemy.

And this short review
plus this brief excerpt from the poem.

T: "These fragments I shore against my ruin." Class Discussion of Ashbery poems, the New York School, etc. .

H: Using the galleries Canzani first floor, museum, etc. write a New York poem, but make it New York in style and about Ohio or a place you know well.


Homework:
Reading
Your Darger Pieces.
New York Poem (about your own "New York"

DO NOT FORGET: Matt Hart's Reading on Monday. He is wonderful, strange, energetic, not to be missed. (He also keeps a fun blog, teaches at an art school, plays in a band, and writes some very cool poems. )

Homework & an overview of upcoming assignments:

1. A collage or mosaiced telling in the fashion of Darger. It needn't be a whole story but narrative should, in some way, come through the
That assignment is due on Tuesday March 6.

2. Begin to lay out a project written after one of the imaginary pieces by your imaginary artist. Remember that you can edit or modify the biography or add on to it to allow for the ideal piece of inspiration. Fully imagine the piece that you'll be using to inspire your piece. Which elements will inform what you do? Which lines or images will you modify or disregard? Will your piece reflect some aspect of the imaginary piece or it will continue the story, begin before or after the narrative of the piece you are working off of? If the piece isn't necessarily narrative, how will you use its style or suggested shapes and images to allow room for yours? This project will be due mid March (after I return from the conference and after you do your Darger/Ashbery pieces.) Begin thinking about your medium, as well as the details of the imagined pieces, body of work and biographical materials of the artist you're working from. Take notes, begin planning, as this will be one of your big assignments. For those of you going to Greece, I will be having you keeping notes in a journal that is by your imaginary artist, so really find a way to make this a figure to which you are fully-engaged, commited as well as intrigued and inspired by.

3. Your Cornell assignment will be select a piece of artwork or literature and depict it in a Joseph Cornell type box. This piece will not be due until late March. (Make sure you have your Dimestore Alchemy books on order as I'd like for you to be reading them by early March.