Dates

Discussions, Readings, & Exercises

Aug. 27

Fetish and Creativity: what seduces us?
Introduction: Syllabus & Calendar

Readings due before class:

Assignments due before class:
1. Be a committed and mature student and writer.
2. E.mail me your phone and address from your most used E.mail account: mortenle@uvu.edu

Sep. 1

Assignments due before class:
1. Exercise 1-a (start)-- Bring your autobiography/juju/fetish box (Metro 205+; be sure the items resonate or are memory soaked--a collection of fetish items that tell about you and your life; this can also be done ironically/pastiche-y because that's sometimes how we are or what we prefer).  You will describe the box, the meaning of things, show off a few items.  
2. ALWAYS bring textbook, jump disks, paper, journal (this will be assumed from now on).
3. Email me from your favorite email address, and include your response to the syllabus assignment.

In Class?--Ex. 1-b started (Metro p. 206 #1)

Sep. 3

Continuing with the Senses, and Poetic Form Part 1
Readings Due Before Class:
--Metro: pp.12-18 (collecting quotes), 52 (Kumin's Appetite poem)
--Web Handout: William Carlos Williams for minimalist imagery, and Koch for minimal parody
--Web Handout: http://www.toyomasu.com/haiku/ (read it for the gist of things; look at Basho's work, and also at new haiku)
--Read first 8 poems in Ariel (if you have the older book, read the Robert Lowell forward too; if you are using The Restored Ariel, click here to access the TOC of the original publication and read in that order (as best as you can given that there are some different poems in the restored edition, and poems that have been cut)

Assignments due before class:
1. Ex 1-b (in class): Metro p. 206, #1--at home, "open your box in front of you and write without stopping for half an hour"--what words "spark and play there"?  Where does the language seem to be taking you?  Follow the language until you get a story (non-fiction or fiction), a poem, a fragmentary dream, or a play (obviously these will be early drafts).  Here's Lee's Juju piece as a sample non-fiction (I will collect this).
2. Ex. 1-c: choose three images or lines from ex. 1-b and use these to help you draft three haiku.  The third haiku can try combining words/ideas from the first two for added complexity.  Click here for basic haiku rules, and a history of haiku.
3. Journal: you should write in your journal 2-3 times a week (or more)--start now by writing down observations/obsessions/descriptions of "interesting" things  you see, hear, taste, feel, think, intuit; or a bit of fetish language or phrases you read or think up; or some deep philosophical issues you are intensely engaged with (things you could bring into your writing); or try an exercise in Metro we aren't doing in class.  Then choose one of your items and freewrite about it for 10 minutes to see where it goes (this is a form of associative writing).  Also collect things like Metro suggests p. 12-18--epigraphs and quotes (try Brianyquote and look up your favorite authors).  I will ask for evidence of this journal at midterm & final.

More on Form, and Demystifying Poems
Readings Due Before Class:
--Metro: pp. 18-23 (inhabiting a poem), pp. 412 (glossary), 95-96 (metaphor) 
--Web Handout: A quick guide to neo-formalism at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5667 
--Marylin Hacker's pantoum at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16449 
--Information on the Pantoum at http://www.baymoon.com/~ariadne/form/pantoum.htm 
--L. Hughes p. 284--and hear/see Langston also at: http://www.learner.org/catalog/extras/vvspot/Hughes.html 
--Keats p. 286
--Handout: Poetry vocabulary.

Assignments due before class:
1. Post your Haiku on Blackboard Discussions (if you didn't get a chance to in class); then read and reply to everyone else's Haiku (think about what works and why, and what might not work and why; your main reaction to a haiku might simply be "I liked the 3rd one best," but please try to struggle with why.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. What genre do you most want to play with with your juju draft?
3. Outside Reading Reactions--a sample.
3. Form and sound in poetry (see readings, web); neo-formalism (see Maxine Kumin's "killer" neo-formal poem "Woodchucks.")
8. Another Haiku web site
6. transformation/density (see Metro p.?? )
7. Metonymy link #1; metonymy link #2 (Nixon bombed Hanoi).
5. Poetry vocabulary: Endjambs vs Endstop; alliteration, assonance, consonance; end rhyme, slant rhyme, off rhyme, internal rhyme; meter: iambic pentameter in sonnets; rhyme schemes in sonnets;
8. Elektra (in her many mythological, theatrical, theoretical, and pop-culture forms) and Hacker's neo-formalist sonnet

Sep. 15

Persona/Tone in Poetry, and more Neo-formalism
Readings Due Before Class:
--Handout: Outside Reading Reaction Assignment
--Read Ariel through p. 27
--Handout: Sylvia Plath bio and poems http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/11 
--Metro pp. 70-77 (acrostic); 89-95 (sonnet); 179-181 (seeing shapes)
--Hacker p. 282 (neo-formalist sonnet)
--Shakespeare p. 305
--Frost p. 306
--Pinksy p. 308 (a sort of anti-sonnet sonnet)
--Handout: Lee's Comment Guide

Assignments due before class:
1. Reading Reaction #1: do a 300 word reaction to ONE or TWO of the readings we've done so far (What is this piece about? is ok to start with, but less interesting than:  Why do you like it or hate it?  What does this scene/line/word do to surprise you in subject matter and in technique?  What seems obsessive or surprising about this piece?  How does this piece compare or contract stylistically to one of the other pieces we've read? What do you learn about writing from this piece?)...you will have time to upload this to Blackboard during class, so bring a digital copy if you can.
2. Ex. 2: a neo-formalist sonnet (Metro p. 95-96); The Marilyne Hacker sonnet on p. 282 is a neo-formalist sonnet, writing about the here and now with more contemporary language and situations; click here for a quick guide to the two sonnet forms; you can use metaphors or not, that's your choice (but metaphors are often a great way to turn the abstract into the "concrete", or to create fresh images). Be ready to upload this to Blackboard during class, so bring a digital copy.

Today In Class: Reply to two other Reading Reaction #1's from peers in Blackboard.

Sep. 17

More on Imagery, Sound, and the Sonnet
Readings Due Before Class:
--Read Ariel through p. 40 (through "Medusa"--click here to access the TOC of the original publication if you are reading the restored Ariel)
--Handout: Studies on Contemporary American Poets at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/17149  (take notes on the new things you learn)

Assignments Due Before Class:
1. Reply to your peers' sonnets in Blackboard (keeping some of the Workshop advice in mind, along with the )

Poetic Anti-form
Readings Due Before Class:
--Handout: Poetry vocabulary.
--Metro pp.178-181 (Bly's Leaps), 218-237 (experimental forms), 273-275 (density)
--Bishop p. 303 (a found ghazal)
--Gertrude Stein's concrete/conceptual Tender Buttons (read the start of the Food section, especially focusing on "Butter" and "Roastbeef") on line: http://www.bartleby.com/140/
--Visit Ubuweb and surf through the concrete/conceptual strangeness at http://www.ubu.com/; Listen to Gertrude Stein's A Complete Portrait of Picasso
--Amiri Baraka (beat poet): Somebody Blew Up America

Assignments Due Before Class:
1. Reading Reaction #2: do a 300 word, double-spaced reaction to ONE or TWO of the readings we've done so far (What is this piece about? is ok to start with, but less interesting than:  Why do you like it or hate it?  What does this scene/line/word do to surprise you in subject matter and in technique?  What seems obsessive or surprising about this piece?  How does this piece compare or contract stylistically to one of the other pieces we've read?). Be ready to upload this to Blackboard during class, so bring a digital copy.

Workshop, Nitty Gritty Poetry, and Publishing
Readings Due Before Class:
--Iglesia's "Thursday Afternoon" a prose poem at http://webdelsol.com/tpp/sp99-hi.htm
--Finish Ariel
--Metro pp. 39-43 (workshop)
--Handout: workshopping.

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Exercise 3: the acrostic poem organized using the first letters of your name and the bulleted prompts on p. 74.  See my sample (be ready to display it for the class).  As you revise this, think about p. 274's advice on cutting to add density.
2. Exercise 4. A found, concrete, or conceptual poem
3. Bring digital copies of poems for in-class revising (save your documents as MS Word 2003 or earlier, or as an .rtf file).

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Discuss what we learned in our magazines.
4. Making workshop comments (focus on what surprises and what doesn't, and why; what makes them poems?  Where do they break away from expectation as in texts of bliss?).
2. Discuss my commenting style-- Lee's Commenting Guide
6. ...The better word, the better word, the better word...W. Gass on revision
8. More on clichés...
10. Commenting on work as if it were your own--how would YOU revise your peers' poem?
12. Risk?  Tension?

prose poetry: Iglesias, the poet Ai

Minimalism—short, but certainly without metaphor, adjectives, adverbs; with prose (or prose poems), not much or any exposition or philosophizing, explanatory, or argument-oriented

Maximalism—heavy on metaphor, very dense, philosophizes more perhaps…more language play (assonance etc), Bly’s leaps (surreal?)…less explanation, more call to read between the lines

Getting Ready for Workshop
Readings Due Before Class:
--Metro pp. 39-43 (workshop)
--Handout: workshopping.

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Sammie, Keyra, Aaron, Chelsea P., Joel, Randi, will bring 13 copies of a poem you most want workshopped?
2. Comment on acrostics and the concrete/conceptual "poems"

William H. Gass said about revision that one should always find “the better word, the better word, the better word”

Oct. 6

Workshopping
Readings Due Before Class:
--Be sure you've reviewed the Poetry Vocabulary Handout (I am often updating this, but you might have printed it earlier in the semester)
--Read and comment on classmate poems (keep them with you until we are done with the Oral Workshop in class).
--Handout: Lee's Commenting Guide

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Alina, Ken, Linsay, will bring 13 copies of a poem you most want workshopped?
2. Bring written-on comments on classmates' poems thinking of the workshop questions, or focusing on surprise, or fetish/obsession, or on pleasure vs. bliss, or on romanticism vs. modernism vs. confessionalism, or on endjambs vs. endstops, or sound, rhythm, and form problems, or persona/voice issues, or obscurity/amorphous/density problems (too dense?  not dense enough?), cliché problems, bloatedness problems (this likely means something is wordy, or very not dense); you can also start practicing your poetry vocabulary by noticing certain technical moves like anaphora, synesthesia (see our vocab list); you can give the author an interpretation of the poem which can also be helpful.

Lee's Lecture Notes:

Workshopping and Revision
Readings Due Before Class:
--Be sure you've reviewed the Poetry Vocabulary Handout (I am often updating this, but you might have printed it earlier in the semester)
--Read and comment on classmate poems (keep them with you until we are done with the Oral Workshop in class).
--Metro: pp. 165-169 (what to do with criticism)

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Bring written-on comments on Alina's poem.
2. Chelsey R., Brett, Taren, Nicole,Where were you?? Bring 13 copies of your poem

some postmodern strategies: meta--self-aware; humor; tech worship; anti-poems (or poems critiquing traditional poetry expectations)

looking at plath's facsimile revisions (shutting up; ariel)

a different tone in the Bee poems

Workshopping, Revision, and Plath
Readings Due Before Class:
--Be sure you've reviewed the Poetry Vocabulary Handout (I am often updating this, but you might have printed it earlier in the semester)
--Read and comment on classmate poems (keep them with you until we are done with the Oral Workshop in class).
--Metro pp. 173-184 (revision techniques)
--Finish Ariel (bring it so we can look at her revisions more closely)

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Bring the poems you got comments on so we can play with some revision exercises in class.
2. Anyone else needing to bring 13 copies of a poem draft??
3. Reading Reaction #3: 1 page (300 word), double-spaced reading reaction to something specific and writerly from Plath that you haven't already commented on. Be ready to upload this to Blackboard during class, so bring a digital copy.

Non-Fiction, and the One Thing More
Readings Due Before Class:
--Metro: p. 184-190
--Handout: Lee's non-fiction lecture.
--Naked: first two stories "Chipped Beef" through "The Women's Open."
--Handout: Prose Vocabulary list.
--On Web: David Sedaris Interview at http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/1in10/97/02/SEDARIS.html
--On Web: David Sedaris--hear him read at  http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/lists/sedaris/index.html (hear him read from his famous Santaland Diaries).

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Ex. 5: complete one of the advice/revision exercises in Metro pp. 165-169, 173-184 for one of the poems you've written for this class (for instance, on p. 168, #6, you could write three versions of your poem based on three readers' bits of advice from your workshop; this could be a parody of the three readers' voices--#5; or you could choose #6 p. 180--strip the poem into pieces, and use those parts to write a series of haiku; p. 183 you might try 1--introduce a question to your poem)...post to Blackboard discussions.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Non-fiction and truth and excess...
2. Sedaris's fetishes and grotesques (and Flannary O'Connor)--a southern tradition; Sedaris as O'Connor on Steroids), hyperbole/excess; a master of timing and pacing, dialogue and character
3. what makes us so judgemental?  lee answers: janie gets home late from the bar ... (some writer's brains avoid explaining; some writers, like myself, are low on the exposition scale); Story Considerations
4. Handout: Lee's non-fiction lecture.
5. Concrete details--showing (concretes/dramatizing) vs. telling (exposition/explanation)

??????

Revision, Prose Poetry, and Publishing
Readings Due Before Class:
--Have Touchstones Literary Journal read and bring it to class, ready to discuss (purchase Fall 2007 issue in LA114).
--Handout (hard copy): poems by Ai "She Didn't Even Wave" via Maryline Monroe
--Read and comment on Peer poems if needed

Assignments due Before Class:
1.Reading Reaction #4: 1 page (300 word), double-spaced reading reaction to the Fall 2008 Touchstones: what editorial biases did you notice--give examples?  What works did you like most and why?  What does reading this magazine tell you about publishing?  What would you "normally" be compelled to read based on the first sentence/line (and why)?  What doesn't compel you and why? Be ready to upload this to Blackboard during class, so bring a digital copy.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Do you have a better or worse idea of what poetry is now?
3. Prose poems.
9. "Chopped Prose"--what of Charles Bukowski?
3. Thinking about revision-- What to do with workshop comments-- Revision advice (incubate!).  A page of Howl under revision; Bukowski, Ariel under revision
2. Discuss publishing--go to our course publishing information page.
7. More on publishing--cool new e journals, http://www.locusnovus.com/  ;  http://www.bornmagazine.com/ ; http://monkeybicycle.net/  ; http://www.terrain.org/  ; http://www.altx.com/ebr/threads/threads.htm  
5. More on publishing; Touchstones, Quarterly West
6. Toni Morrison: "You marvel at the economy and this choice of words. How many ways can you describe the sky and the moon? After Sylvia Plath, what can you say?"

9. Robert Bly's leaps revisited Metro p. 66, 181!
2.Other forms Jabberwocky; Absurdity and Surrealism.
1. Political poetry: Beat poet Ginsberg's Howl--his "bardic rage against material values"; About Alan Ginsberg ; And Langston Hughes' "Harlem" (metro p. 284)
2. Alex Caldiero on the use of Bad Words from The College Times.
8. More on "the keys" to Plath (her repetitions, her fetishes)--The Arrival of the Bee Box p. 59
9. High and low culture--semiotics
4. The poet Ai, prose poems, and inhabiting the Other (often the famous, like Marilyn Monroe).

Non-Fiction Genres
Readings Due Before Class:
--Metro: 9-12 (again); 23-26; 48-51; 
--Baker p. 334-336
--Read Naked: and "True Detective" through "I Like Guys"

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Reading Reaction 4: do a one-page, 300 word, double-spaced reaction to one of the Sedaris pieces we've read for today (why do you like it or hate it?  what does it do to surprise you in subject matter and in technique?  Dialogue? Characterization? What seems obsessive or surprising about it?). Upload this to Blackboard.
2. Are you remembering to gather good material in your journal???

Lee's Lecture Notes:
2. Signifiers.
2. Discuss final book--will contain something from each genre.
3. Inhabiting the Other--memories, concretes, dialogue/ways of talking, fixations
4. 50 Character questions: Metro p. 131+
5. Orwell's 1984--what if?  The central question of fiction...
6. G. Lish's fiction workshop--tell us a secret, something no one else knows...(but did I tell you it didn't have to be true?)
1. Frost: a poem (or any writing, says lee) is about one thing and one thing more--what are the deeper Truth's in some of Sedaris' essays (or are some simply yarns?)?6. David Sedaris' modern "piquaresque."

The “larger” problem of meaning…

• Frost—“a poem (or any creative writing) is about one thing and one thing more”
• Gerard—apparent subject vs. deeper subject

The “smaller” problem of material (Metro p. 49)

• If you are writing what really happened, you might feel obligated to put everything in, but then you’ll end up with a lot of tedious situations, or even plausibility issues—“truth is stranger than fiction”…a cliché,  but often what really happens can be so bizarre that it simply doesn’t work as is in a constructed piece of “art”
• What’s the most “bizarre” thing that’s ever happened to you (and how would you write about it)?—or is your life boring?
• The Pakistani in New Orleans slapping me on the ass as we shopped for boas and clove cigarettes
• Dancing drunkenly on a baja beach with a white painted face, shaking maracas, the moon, the drug damaged boy kissing on the dark traveler
• The Lenin Restaurant…but that was just a bizarre place…the video equipment in the toilets, and the porno videos playing out in the restaurant
• The hotel rooms in Moscow…but again that’s a place…
•  
• What’s the most boring thing that’s ever happened to you?
• If you are writing from “pure invention,” you might avoid anything from “the real” or “true” at all
• Often it doesn’t sound like the writer knows what they’re talking about (unless they’ve already created a whole world in advance of their writing)…

Non-Fiction and Narrative Anxiety
Readings Due Before Class:
--Metro p. 129-133 (character questions)
--Naked: "The Incomplete Quad" and "C.O.G." (the picaresque period)
--Begin going over Prose Vocabulary

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Exercise 6: freewrite/draft due of a secret narrative (Metro p. 50 from Oct. 10; middle of page: 1). write down a secret narrative for yourself in a journal form (First person, or "I" POV); 2. revise the secret narrative by putting it in 2nd person (YOU POV); 3. revise the narrative into 3rd person (Her/Him POV; Omniscient or Limited) and change certain key elements...this will likely make you cross into some "fictional" qualities; where do end up changing things, and why?).

Lee's Lecture Notes:

1. Freytag's Triangle (rise, climax, falling off; a more linear narrative design)

in class??

and what to leave out

http://www.the-writers-craft.com/point-of-view-in-literature.html

Narrative Anxiety, and what to Leave Out
Readings Due Before Class:
--Naked: "Ashes"
--Creative Non-Fiction Handout (Hard copy): Lopez (desert notes, the wind), B. White (bicyclists, distillates), Codrescu (secrets, nymphettes); J. Winterson (oranges ch. 1 excerpt)
--War Stories: "Homecoming" at http://www.pbs.org/weta/crossroads/about/show_operation_homecoming.html  

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Exercise 7: choose 10 of the 20 character questions in Metro p. 131-32 to help you explore a character (other than"yourself") from your secret narrative, and answer the questions for them; choose "yourself" as a character (from your secret narrative) and answer the questions for you.  Go back to your secret narrative and play with these additional ideas.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Dialogue in creative non-fiction!
2. Prose and poetry.  Voice and narrative.  See Lopez, Iglesias, Ai.
3. Prose Vocabulary list.
3. More on Dillard's weaving techniques.
5. Truth vs. truth and one thing more--my non-fiction handout.
10. Poetry Quiz feedback.
11. Narrative and Freytag's Triangle--in media res; one thing more and epiphany; 
12. Floyd--the sound of dialogue (mimesis vs. dialect); what to leave out, what to put in (Dillard)--see Floyd's interview: p. 1 segregation; p. 8 g. liberation; p. 11 segregation, experience, black panthers; the story of his mama making sure everyone had food on p. 1 was tied to the prevention of lynchings on p. 8
6. Are there only 60 plots?  7 plots?  2 plots?  Cecil Adams gives us the straight dope about plots...
13. Character: the angry man who got barred from Hogie Yogie!
14. Research...and black panthers
15. How is Sedaris creating an ordered universe?

--Web Interview: browse Floyd's narratives (an African American WWII liberator telling his story; pick two of the web pages): www.tellingstories.org/liberators/fdade/fdade_frameset.html 

Nov. 5

Non-Fiction and Fiction Techniques
Readings Due Before Class:
--Creative Non-Fiction Handout (Hard copy): Dillard (total eclipse--read carefully)
-- Metro: p. 58-70
--Paley p. 367-370
--Wright p. 327-333
--Handout: the 7 basic plots...?

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Outside reading reaction 1 due (600 words; 30 pts): a writerly reaction to a live reading or video that shows live readings (there are also videos on poets in the Library (Voices and Visions videos--in our library--on various poets are available, for instance; also Codrescu on NPR; Sedaris too--other than Santaland Diaries); you can email this to me.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Share writing.
2. Truth vs. truth and Frost's one thing more--my non-fiction handout.
3. Share reactions to readings and narrative.
4. Discuss Sedaris (one thing more, and his "story considerations").
5. Secret narrative, voice, and character.
7. Plots--movie genres, book genres, closure codes; literary genres; 
8. More on the 4 elements: exposition, narration, description, dialogue/dramatized scenes
9. Starting a story in media res

Childhood Place that means something…
My old home, decaying like my parents, decaying around them, a hole in the ceiling of the “guest” bathroom never repaired…going back, what more broken things will I find…
My grade school—Madison No. 1…how it looked so small…the field of mud from a broken water pipe (in the middle of the desert)…now it’s completely redone, modernized, large as a high school (no more outside hallway with water fountains, no more cafeteria/gym with 60’s linoleum, no more basketball court where no one would choose me for dodge ball, no more dusty play ground where the girls put sand down my pants…memories of the perpetual sty and the large, tinted classes, the eye patches…)
One year of High school, dead cat in my briefcase for anatomy class, the sum of my sad persona…

Think of details first…

…then start crafting it into a story or a piece of prose…

Non-Fiction and The One Thing More
Readings Due Before Class:
--Naked: "Ashes" and "Naked"
--Handout (reminder): outside reading reaction assignment

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Reading Reaction 5: 2. Reading Reaction 5 (300 words): writerly reaction to a story from the creative non-fiction packet.  What was the "one thing more"?  What was the high point?  What did you envy most?

Nov. 17

Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction
Readings Due Before Class:
--Cisneros: section 1 (childhood years); in section 2 read "One Holly Night" (adolescence) and also the story "Woman Hollering Creek" from section 3 (adult years)
--Metro:  350-360 (O'brien; a story about story telling)
--Metro: pp. 98-111 (y in x land; what if; against grain; facts as malleable; drama; 51 prompts)
--Handout: The Authorized Cisneros Web Site
--Handout: Raymond Carver's "Popular Mechanics"
--Handout: "Minimalism and Raymond Carver" 

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Exercise 8: (email to me) you may choose any prompt for a draft from Metro non-fiction prompts pp. 58-70 (with a view toward getting a workshop draft if you don't already have one you want comments on).  You could try the place memory one on p. 59 (think of an interesting place; freewrite details, oddities; what emotions come up from that place?  Was it a good or bad place?  Why does it have power?  What's the story or conflict?  Other characters?  What is that place like to me now--p. 61).  Or you may choose to freewrite about birth year (Metro p. 9 #4 or #5--do research on your birth year/birth day on www.google.com and explore; take notes in journal, and write from those (here's great stuff from 1964).  You can also write an associative narrative inhabiting something from nature like Barry Lopez does (Metro p. 66, #7).  There are also numerous other prompts you can follow from these pages of Metro, or you can try writing in the style of the authors we've been reading (maybe you want to do a commentary piece like Andre Codrescu, or a maximalist piece about an event you were at like Annie Dillard's "Total Eclipse"; you might also want to start your autobiographa a la Jeanette Winterson, or write a small story about a place like Bailey White; and of course, you can always try your hand at writing about people, or grotesques, like Sedaris does). ..write another fiction draft based on any of the Metro prompts from the 17th (y in x land; what if), or pick a great starting line or character from your journal collections; you can also try playing with some postmodern strategies (see the pomo laundry list).

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Share writing.
2. Discuss two favorite readings thus far--think of form and style and voice.
4. More on voice--experiments with drafts--point of view.
5. Gass and close reading.
6. Postmodern writing--Winterson's list; The Simpsons as pastiche; mixing genres; anti closure; excess
1. Share writing.
2. Discuss two favorite pieces--think of form and style and voice.
6. Share some of your exercises.
8. concretes and scenes...
9. Sedaris and Pacing...where are things too slow?  Too fast?
2. Your questions about creative-nonfiction!
4. Dramatizing scenes and some tips on writing dialogue

Wes was one of those kids

Which do you like most?
Narration—descriptions of action…
Exposition—trying to argue for a point; philosophizing, or doing thematic work
Description—characters, setting, the land, the city, that give a certain mood to the scene…imagery can be one of the slowest paced items aka Dillard
Dialogue—the slowest paced material—characters talking—but in prose, you can more easily avoid giving backstory/exposition (than, say, in plays)

Cisneros—strands of truth from multiple people she knows
Texas live
She knows How he talks: The envy…father’s English was never good…how you say…what do you think la migra said then…thanks to God…now you see.  I no lie…father was shaking…you changos, for you I serving this country, son of a mother…get out a…make me sick
Mother: started talking her English English, naselly

Fiction and Pacing, Minimalism, Postmodernism
Readings Due Before Class:
----Handout: Prose Vocabulary
--Cisneros:  "Never Marry a Mexican," & "Little Miracles"
--Metro: pp. 129-143, 118-129 (playing with time; order, frequency, duration);
--Metro: Paley p. 367-370 (if you haven't read it already)
--Web Handout: Percy on Poetry vs. Fiction
--On Web: Barthelme's "Capitalism" at http://www.jessamyn.com/barth/capitalism.html
--An essay on postmodernism - http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html
--Handout: Lee's Pomo Laundry List
--Browse over this hypertext fiction on the web:

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Chelsea, Aaron, Sammie bring 10 workshop drafts

Lee's Lecture Notes:
2. Cisneros: magical realism and postmodernism--Short Circuit
3. Time/Order in stories--narrative time (the order of events on the page) vs. story time (chronological story the one might summarize off the page), and the complex surprise of playing with linearity and delay.
4. A note on the final "exam"...your book project--see the sample I bring to class.
5. Review workshopping.
7. Authorial Intention and the biographical fallacy
7. Postmodernism in terms of Romanticism (Keats) vs. Modernism vs. Confessionalism (Lee's ism lecture), TS Eliot's modernist"Prufrock"  

Workshopping Prose
Readings Due Before Class:
--Handout: workshopping.
--Handout: some tips on writing dialogue
--Read and comment on Peer non-fictions!

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Linsay, Ken, Alina ?? bring 13 copies of a prose piece for workshop? Be sure you also upload a draft to Blackboard via UVLink for those who might have missed class.
2. Readers!  Carefully read and comment on the workshop story(s).  If you missed the last class, be sure to get on Blackboard via UVLink, open the Non-Fiction discussion, and print the drafts you don't have (you may have to cut and paste them into Word, and then print).Readers!  Carefully read and comment on the workshop story(s) focusing on craft issues (critique, interpret, give advice, praise technical issues based on the Prose Vocabulary sheet and other things we have started to talk about); on the author's manuscript, write down as many detailed reactions as you can, and be ready to talk about these reactions in class.  If you missed the last class, be sure to get on Blackboard via UVLink, open the Non-Fiction discussion, and print the drafts you don't have.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Share writing.

??3. Reading Reaction 7: 300 words due on one of the most recent fiction readings.

Exercise 8: draft a piece of prose (a dramatic monologue or a flash "fiction", 500-1500 words) from the point of view of one of the voices you eavesdropped on (should this voice be quite different than your own?  Try it and see how it feels to write from an utterly different persona).  You will need to focus on voice especially, on showing character and even setting via what this persona sees and thinks about; a realism oriented prose piece (fiction) also has some kind of narrative pull.  Click here for an example of Lee eavesdropping and then writing a poem from the POV of one of the speakers (you should be writing a fiction, however).  You can look back at the poems by Ai for more ideas too.

Workshopping Creative Non-Fiction
Readings Due Before Class:
--Handout: workshopping.
--Read and comment on Peer non-fictions!

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Who has something for non-fiction workshop?  Students 13-16 bring 18 copies!  Be sure you also upload a draft to Blackboard via UVLink for those who might have missed class.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Share writing.

Fiction: Voice and POV
Readings Due Before Class:
--Read and comment on Peer non-fictions!

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Journal: write down some "eavesdroppings" or dialogue that you overhear (30 minutes of listening to others speak)--think of voice/the sound of dialogue, and character, but also try to listen in on people telling stories/narrative.
2. Seth and Justin have something for the non-fiction workshop.  Be sure you also upload a draft to Blackboard via UVLink for those who might have missed class.
3.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Discuss some revision ideas.
3. Cisneros reading Eleven (video)...and Caramelo: how she created the father character (amalgaming "real" details from a variety of fathers)
4. Your Eavesdroppings and dramatic monologues (see my sample); writing other voices; crafting vs. taking dictation...
4. What is fiction that isn't non-fiction?
5. Emma Lou...
6. Power and conflict...
6. A note on the final "exam"...your book project.
12. A Rose for Emily
3. Fashioning prose out of your eavesdroppings...
8. Story excerpt by Lee based on eavesdroppings.
7. Lee's eavesdroppings...

Fiction and Realism's Details
Readings Due Before Class:
--Read Justin and Jorgen's works and make comments

Assignments due Before Class:
1.Reading Reaction 6: 300 writerly words about one of the last fiction readings
2. Andrea, David, and Whitney have something for the non-fiction workshop.  Be sure you also upload a draft to Blackboard via UVLink for those who might have missed class.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. "True" war stories...
7. Mimesis, Freytags, POV...
8. What is the climax of Woman Hollering Creek?
9. Kid voices and the problem of complexity
10. Flash fiction vs. vignette/prose poem
11. 3rd limited/omniscient and uber narrators
4. Concrete details--showing (concretes/dramatizing) vs. telling (exposition/explanation)
2. Monologues, voice, and character 
3. Lee will be available for advice, etc.
4. A note on the final "exam"...your book project.
6. A mini lecture on Genette's ideas about time
7. A Genette style map of One Hundred Years of Solitude
3. Cisneros:  Mexican Feminism starting with Frida Kahlo--her life--her work (attacking sexism, machismo, pain via art); Woman Hollering/La Llorona myth; La Llorona, text of pleasure horror movie.

DO YOU HAVE YOUR TRACY LETTS??

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Carefully read and comment on the workshop story(s) focusing on craft issues (critique, interpret, give advice, praise technical issues based on the Prose Vocabulary sheet and other things we have started to talk about); on the author's manuscript, write down as many detailed reactions as you can, and be ready to talk about these reactions in class. 
2. Cheryl, Kurt, Adam, and Brandon Bring 17 copies, and be sure you also upload a draft to Blackboard for those who might have missed class.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
3. Time/Order in stories--narration vs. description vs. dramatization...pacing...realism vs. stylism
4. A note on the final "exam"...your book project--see the sample I bring to class.
5. Review workshopping.
6. Carver's minimalism, and dramatizing scenes vs. exposition, description, and narration.
5. Marge Percy on viewpoint, and poetry vs. fiction...
2. Using elements from the Prose Vocabulary sheet to help you make craft comments.
7. Regional writing for wider audiences
5. Cisneros and concrete details; and fiction (Eyes of Zapata and magical realism; Todorov's The Fantastic); Little Miracles and the way story and character are shown via "dialogue" alone
5. Character development in non-fiction--see Grace Paley's meta-fictional story within a story in Metro.
7. Pacing considerations...
9. Mimesis--traditional realism often following Freytag's triangle structures.
10. Paley's idea about too much plot drivenness not giving the reader hope--another possible way to comment on people's stories; metafiction; vs. mimesis; vs. Checkhov and other classics (writing about someone who lives across the street).
11. Voice...writing young characters from older narrative POV's.
12. If there are only so many plots (and we are bombarded with them over and over again daily), the story has to be about something else, something more (character); Movies--Six Feet Under starts with the usual ending, a death...but it's mainly about character
13. Trusting the reader
3. Time/Order in stories--narrative time (the order of events on the page) vs. story time (chronological story the one might summarize off the page), and the complex surprise of playing with linearity and delay.

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Workshopping Fiction, Writing What You Know, and Minimalism
Readings Due Before Class:
--Read and comment on Peer Stories (check Blackboard if you didn't get a copy in class)
--Handout (hard copy): Dawn Houghton's "Pure" & Carver's "Viewfinder"

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Justin, Jorgen, & Heather Bring 17 copies, and be sure you also upload a draft to Blackboard for those who might have missed class.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Workshop!
2. Discuss some revision ideas...
3. Fattening up your narratives.
6. Carver's minimalism (vs. Dillard's maximalism) and dramatizing scenes vs. exposition, description, and narration.

Workshopping Fiction, and Revision
Readings Due Before Class:
--Read and comment on Peer works !
--Metro: pp. 165-180 (revision part I)
--Handout (hard copy): "What's at Stake" and other revision ideas from What If

DO YOU HAVE YOUR TRACY LETTS!!?!?!!?

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Who has a story for workshop?  Bring 17 copies, and be sure you also upload a draft to Blackboard for those who might have missed class.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Workshop!
7. More on Character vs. plot...
8. Internal logic of the story
8. Starting in media res--in the middle of action--as a more contemporary move--dramatizing scenes...
9. Concretes

Workshopping Fiction, and Playwriting--Themes and Pitches
Readings Due Before Class:
--Metro: pp. 181-193 (revision part II)
--Handout: Lee's Theme and Pitch notes from Naked Playwriting
--Durang: "Beyond Therapy"

--Read and comment on Peer works (check Blackboard in case you didn't get drafts)

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Carefully read and comment on the workshop story(s) focusing on craft issues (critique, interpret, give advice, praise technical issues based on the Prose Vocabulary sheet and other things we have started to talk about); on the author's manuscript, write down as many detailed reactions as you can, and be ready to talk about these reactions in class.
1. Who has a story for workshop?  Bring 17 copies, and be sure you also upload a draft to Blackboard for those who might have missed class.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Workshop!
2. Discuss some revision ideas...
3. Ok, book can be 1500 or more words of your best work, well revised!!
4. Revision ideas: Metro p. 177--how modern readers read plot...subtleties
6. Working on regional writing: how to convey jargon to a larger audience?
6. Revision advice from Metro p. 181: Read your work out loud; hear others read it out loud; p. 183 open your story up with odd, random additions of elements (but less cliched ones than appear here).
1. Revision p. 184--paper, tape, scissors

Playwriting - Structure
Readings Due Before Class:
--Metro pp. 99-109; 
--Durang: "Sister Mary"
--Shakespeare "Hamlet" excerpt Metro p. 391-396
--Handout: Napoleon Dynamite (a draft without exposition or narration, thus it will only give you the feel of the speech; read the first 5 "pages" or what feels like 5 pages)
--Handout: Lee's Structure notes from Naked Playwriting
--Handout: Playwriting Vocabulary
--Read and comment on Peer works (check Blackboard in case you didn't get drafts)

Assignments Due Before Class:
1. Exercise 10: two 10 minute play or screenplay pitches posted to Blackboard (you are likely to find something good in your journal, or in a previous exercise)
2. Who has a story for workshop?  Bring 17 copies, and be sure you also upload a draft to Blackboard for those who might have missed class.
3. Head up on Honors Assignment...

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Drama and conflict--going against the grain.
2. Theater of the Absurd
3. Chekhov--if a gun appears in the first act, it must go off in the third
3. Thinking about LeButte's voices and narrative revelations.
4. What is everyday evil?
5. Writing about where you live...
6. Dynamite Film Clips

???. 9

Playwriting and Character, and Screenplays
Readings Due Before Class:
--Metro: pp. 123-137.
--Handout: Waiting for Godot (read the first few pages of this famous absurdist play).
--Read a biography of Samuel Beckett on-line at: http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc7.htm
--Handout: Lee's Character Notes from Naked Playwriting
--Read and comment on Peer works!  Check Blackboard for drafts!

Assignments Due Before Class:
1. Exercise 11: choose the pitch you most want to work on, then do some character sketching either based on Metro's list (p. 131-32 ) or Naked Playwriting's character ideas, and begin writing your 10 minute play (10 pages = 10 minutes of on stage time; focus on one or two characters; focus on one scene; you can focus on being mimetic, or doing realism, or you can be more surreal, absurdist, or even include some magical realism; mainly plays are about characters in deeper, more focused conflict; think of your set, setting, and time; think of your pacing).
2. Who has a play or screenplay for us to workshop?  Be sure you also upload a draft to Blackboard for those who might have missed class.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Discuss character and dialogue and pacing and scene.
2. Tension...what is at stake in your play?
3. More on everyday evil and LaButte...
4. Beckett and writing about nothing.
3. Cisneros' "Eleven" as another example of monologue.
2. Commenting on plays--character, dialogue, pacing, conflict (see in-class samples).

???. 11

Playwriting, Scope, and Drafting
Readings Due Before Class:
--Durang: "The Nature and Purpose of the Universe" (very excessive, speculative)
--Metro pp. 106-109
--Handout: See the web for Playwriting format: http://www.vcu.edu/artweb/playwriting/formatpage.html 
--Read and comment on Peer works!  Check Blackboard for drafts!

Assignments Due Before Class:
1. Who has a play or screenplay for us to workshop?  Be sure you also upload a draft to Blackboard for those who might have missed class.  Also try to use playwriting format--see http://www.vcu.edu/artweb/playwriting/format.html
2. Reading Reaction 8: do a one-page, 300 word, double-spaced reaction to one of the plays/screenplays we've done so far (why do you like them or hate them?  what does each do to surprise you in subject matter and in technique?  what seems obsessive or surprising about each?).

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. More on dialogue--the appearance of The Real or mundane (without being boring).
2. Dramatizing Scenes.
3. Thinking about stage space.
4. See my play drafts and concerns.
5. Are you showing character?  What is the source of tension?

Workshopping Plays
Readings Due Before Class:
--Read and comment on Peer works! Check Blackboard for drafts!

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Students 6-10 Bring (or be able to print) 19 copies of a short play (10 minutes = 10 pages).  
2. Sign up to meet with me about grades and writing (we will meet in my office, LA 114B).
3. Head up on Honors Assignment

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Workshopping plays.
3. Your Grade Justification Letter: what grade should you be getting in the class based on writing ability, revising ability, workshopping comments, readings and reactions completed on time, attendance, improvement, and overall commitment?

Workshopping Plays, and the Final
Readings Due Before Class:
--Read and comment on Peer works! Check Blackboard for drafts!
--The Final Book Assignment

Assignments due Before Class:
1. Students 11-16 Bring (or be able to print) 19 copies of a short play (10 minutes = 10 pages).  Be sure to use playwriting format--see http://www.vcu.edu/artweb/playwriting/format.html
2. Sign up to meet with me about grades and writing (we will meet in my office, LA 114B).
3. Xerox 4 pages from writerly journal for check off.
4. Heads up on Honors Assignment

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Workshopping plays.
2. Commenting on plays--character, dialogue, pacing, conflict (see in-class samples).
3. Final Book--a creative juju fetish book of your three best works this semester.

Assignments due to LA 114B or Emailed to Lee:
1. Outside reading reaction #2 due: 600 writerly words
2. Any extra credit outside readings reactions or late assignments are due.
3. Prose Quiz!  You can email it to me.
4. Sign up to meet with me in LA 114B about grades and writing--or email mortenle@uvsc.edu .
5. Complete on-line student evaluation in Web CT
6. Grade Justification Letter: what grade should you be getting in the class based on writing ability, revising ability, workshopping comments, readings and reactions completed on time, attendance, improvement, and overall commitment?
7. Honors assignment

???. 21