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Poetic Prose: The Prose Poem (10 weeks)
The prose poem for writers of poetry, fiction, essays, and memoir
Which of us, in his ambitious moments, has not dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical, without rhyme and without rhythm, supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul, the undulations of the psyche, the prickings of consciousness? Baudelaire (Paris Spleen)
The prose poem is a border genre particularly suited to tracing consciousness, a natural lyricism waiting to be revealed. If you are a poet, working with poetic sentences and paragraphs in this class might change your idea about what a poem is, revealing new rhythms and forms. If you are a fiction writer, working with the prose poem may help you work on style and inventive structures.
Class outline --
During our ten week workshop, we will read prose poems and some short- short fiction and essays on poetics by published writers. Each week I will provide you with one or more assignments which you can loosely (or tightly) follow. I will respond to each poem or story, discussing what works and where you might take this piece in the next revision. Students will also respond to each other's writing.
Online, every week I will post readings, assignments and a discussion. Over the ten weeks, you will learn about some of the movements in modern and contemporary poetry, such as imagism, surrealism, objectivism and the New York School.
Week 1: We will read a short text about Ezra Pound's Imagism, classical ideas about writing with precision and directness ("luminous details"), as well as William Carlos Williams' call for writing that focuses on concrete particulars ("no ideas but in things"), especially things from one's locality. There will be a prose poem/short story assignment that privileges images and things, coming from a place you know very well.
Week 2.We will read some definitions of the prose poem. There will also be a selection of prose poems which you might want to read by Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Reverdy, Jacobs and Ponge. One of the assignments will be to write a short prose account of a dream or a day dream, following the mind as it wanders. You might consider following a walk through your city or your neighborhood, recording images and observations.
Week 3.We will continue working with images and writing that traces consciousness. We will read some epiphanies written by James Joyce, and the assignment will focus on writing prose poem epiphanies.
Week 4. Gertrude Stein has been a major influence on many modernist and contemporary writers. We will read Stein's portrait of Picasso, as well as Laura Riding's Mademoiselle Comet. The assignment will be to write a prose portrait beginning with one theme or motif and then playing with repetition and accumulation.
Week 5. The cubists (including Gertrude Stein) worked at breaking apart traditional ways of presenting time and space. As a way of calling sequential ordering into question, they worked with collage methods, as well as unusual punctuation and fractured syntax. One of the assignments for this week will be to write a prose poem, then find another text that has a slanted relationship to the subject in the prose poem, cut up both texts and then collage them together.
Week 6. We'll read about the objectivist poets and their ideas about historic and contemporary particulars, an extension of Williams' manifesto about "no idea but in things." We'll also read Langston Hughes' Montage of a Dream Deferred. One of the assignments will be to assemble the fragments of one particular day (afternoon or hour?) into a rambling poem, including history, news, voices of people, casual talk, ruminations, memories, things, etc. Collage these together so the form of the poem follows the non-logical detouring way that life unfolds.
Week 7. Projective Verse & the Beats. If the line is related to be the breath, how can we translate projectivism into written prose? We'll read a few poems by Allen Ginsberg and parts of Charles Olson's essay and then we'll write prose poems that use space in unusual ways, reflecting the expressive nature of the individual writer, the relation of sound to body to paragraph. We’ll also read an essay and some poems by Robert Bly. There will be an option to write poems that begin with a close observation of an object, an animal or a landscape; here the emphasis will be on the intimacy between the writer and the object and an ecstasy as the poet moves from observation to vision
Week 8. We'll read a short essay and poems by New York School writers, O'Hara, Ashbery, Schyuler, etc. The assignment will be to write a lunch hour poem in prose. This will be clearer after reading Frank O'Hara.
Week 9. We’ll continue reading, thinking and writing in the New York School way, this time writing prose poems as fourteen sentence sonnets. We’ll read a transcript of workshop by Ted Berrigan and some
lined sonnets by Bernadette Mayer and Ted Berrigan. We will improvise, writing in prose.
Week 10. In this last assignment you will have a choice of writing a poem in response to a selection of poems and prose poem writing experiments by contemporary poets; or you can write a short-short story with one over arching metaphor, including some action, description and dialogue, but giving minimal attention to poetic style.
Reading List – During the ten weeks, I well be providing you with websites and scanning a lot of material for. For those of you who would like to read more or in advance, I suggest the following works.
Baudelaire, Charles. Paris Spleen. NY: New Directions, 1947. Baudeliare is often described as the father of the prose poem.
Benedikt, Michael. The Prose Poem. NY: Dell, 1977. This book is presently out of print now, but you can find a copy in the library. I remember liking it when I owned a copy
Caws, Mary Anne, The Prose Poem in France. NY: Columbia Univ Press, 1983. This is a theoretical work.
Joyce, James. “Epiphanies.” Poems and Shorter Writings. New York: Faber, 1991. Beautiful story-poems.
Lehman, David, ed. Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present. NY: Scribner, 2003. An excellent anthology to supplement this course.
Rimbaud, Arthur. Illuminations and Other Prose Poems. Louis Varese, trans. NY: New Directions, 1946.
Rothenberg, Jerome and Pierre Joris, eds. Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry. Vols. 1 and 2, University of California Press, 1995.) While these volumes are not focused exclusively on the prose poem, they provides a very good history of modern and postmodern poetry; it is easy to see how the prose poem became one way of challenging traditional ideas about poetic form.
Gertrude Stein. Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms. Dover, 1997.
Williams, William Carlos. “Spring and All.” In Imaginations. NY: New Directions, 1970. W
Flash Fiction: Writing the Short-Short Story (10 weeks)
In the first volume of Sudden Fiction, the editor writes, "It may well be that the new popularity of the short-short story began in the spirit of experiment and wordplay in the 1960's" (xiv). Since the mid 19th century, the spirit of the experiment has been important to American writers of poetry and fiction. In this workshop on short-short fiction, we will examine some unusual structures and approaches for writing, including appropriating some of the techniques, forms and approaches typically used in poetry. We will also discuss traditional elements of fiction as they apply to your particular stories
My objectives in teaching this course -- To introduce you to some new approaches and forms for writing short-short stories, to cultivate your interest in fiction written by a variety of writers in the 20th and 21st century, to engage you in the process of writing and revising short works of fiction, as well as discussing each other’s work, and finally to participate in an on-line community of supportive writers.
How the class will proceed. Each week you will read a letter/lecture I write (usually about the assigned stories, but also about theories and ideas), a selection of flash fictions, and links to sites related to the writers we are reading. I will pose questions each week for discussion of several published stories, analyzing and responding to the writer’s style and the structure of the story. (If my plan works right, week four's assigned stories will somewhat resemble the structure of the assignment you were given for week three.)
This class is a writing workshop, and every week you will be able to write and post one short short story (or a revision), and respond to other students' work with critically supportive suggestions. With your work, I hope there will be some attempt for the story to grow out of the assignment, but our creative energies often pleasantly take us elsewhere. And that's fine, too. Also if one particular assignment is very productive for you and you want to write a series of stories in that vein (in the following weeks), that's ok, too.
Tentative Weekly Plan
Week One: Introduction An Overview of the Class. Discussion of some elements in fiction with excerpts from critics on fiction, as well as Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”. Posting bios and threaded discussion in response to some questions about your fiction writing life, and also in response to the quotes on the opening page of the class.
Week Two: Haiku in Prose Discussion of haiku and the importance of images and detail in fiction. Read examples of haiku by Kerouac, Richard Wright, Basho and Issa. Read a short selection from Banana Yoshimoto’s novel, Kitchen. Write a short travel narrative with at least three or more haiku embedded within the story. Class critiques of each other’s work.
Week Three: Experimental Fiction? Discuss the differences between experimental and traditional fiction writing, as well as stories by Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Grace Paley and William Carlos Williams. Assignment: Write an auto-flash fiction using material from your journal. Class critiques of each other’s work.
Week Four: Auto-Flash Fiction Discuss automatic/autobiographical fiction writing and stories by Kenneth Koch and Yasunari Kawabata. Descriptive writing assignment and class critiques of each other’s work.
Week Five: The New Novel Writers Read selections from Alain Robbe-Grillet and Nathalie Sarraute. Discussion of the new novel project. Two possible fiction assignments: Writing long sentences or dream assignment. Critique, as usual.
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Week Six: Vertical Fields & Dream Narratives Discussion of stories by Fielding Dawnson, Barry Yourgrau, Richard Brautigan and Kenneth Koch. Text-inside-a-text assignment, following-a-line-or-a-shade, retelling an old story, or the hyper-language-conscious narrator assignment. Critique as usual.
Week Seven: A Text Inside a Text/ Retelling/ or/Tilling the Telling Discussion of stories by Julio Cortazar, Dale Herd, David Kaplan, Charles Baxter, Raymond Carver, Steve Katz, and Gertrude Stein. Sentence-paragraph life story assignment and critique, as usual.
Week Eight: One Sentence at a Time Discussion of stories by T. Coraghessan Boyle, Lewis Warsh and Linh Dinh. Assignments options: restricted senses; I wanna be someone else; and accepting the unacceptable. Critique, as usual
Week Nine: Something’s Wrong Here. Discussion of stories by Pagan Kennedy, Mitch Berman, Eugenia Montale, and Ferdinando Sorrentino. Assignments: Write a story that unfolds form a list. Critiques as usual.
Week Ten: Narrative Lists & Exercises in Style Discussion of stories by Steve Katz, Jamaica Kincaid, Bobbie Louise Hawkins and Cathryn Alpert. Transformation assignment with examples from Raymond Queneau and Clarice Lispector. Critiques as usual.
Writing the Prose Poem - 2 (10 weeks)
In this class. students will write a poem every week. I will provide an assignment, however, you are free to work on other sequences you have already started as long you are working predominantly with prose poetry. This particular class is designed for those who already took "Prose Poetry/Poetic Prose" or for others who have experience writing in this genre. (If you are interested in the class and you were unable to take the first class, feel free to write me and discuss your experience). Every week I will provide you with an assignment, we will workshop the results, and we will discuss specific prose poems. There will be an introduction to a few poetic and artistic movements that we did not discuss in the first class. Most of this class, however, will function as a workshop. Most of the published poems we will be discussing can be found in David Lehman¹s"Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present" (Scribner, 2003)
Fiction Workshop: Expanding the Narrative Self (10 weeks)
In this fiction workshop there will be several writing assignments designed to expand your notions of a fictional narrator. The idea is to become as inclusive as possible, or as inclusive as consciousness actually is, circling out from the inner self to the outer observer. We will work with incorporating other genres and voices. Mikhail Bahktin, a 20th century Russian philosopher thought the novel was wonderful because it could hold many different voices, a naturally dialogic genre (The Dialogic Imagination is the title of his book) whereas poetry (the poetry he knew back then) tended towards the monologic, a singleness of voice. Some contemporary poetry has become dialogic, other remains a single closed voice. Much of our contemporary fiction writing, however, has a monologic fictional voice, the third person subjective or the first person with blinders on. Granted, this is the way many of us live. Some of this fiction is nonetheless beautiful and effective. The goal of this course is to expand your narrative possibilities. We will start the course by reading and writing in response to some short fiction by Hemingway and Raymond Carver. Then we will read Marguerite Duras, Jack Kerouac, some stories by the poet Bernadette Mayer, a short story by Walter Abish, and a few others.
Course Plan. There will be five fiction writing assignments, and five journal responses to readings. We will also respond to revisions of the fiction writing assignments. It will be necessary for you to have a copy of The Lover by Marguerite Duras and Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. Both of these books are readily available. The other material I’ll provide.
CLASS PLAN -- This is a rough outline of how the course might unfold.
Week One -- Introductions. Course overview. Discussion of stories by Carver and Hemingway, the limit and benefits of a restricted narrative voice. Assignment -- to write a third person subjective story in this same mode.
Week Two -- Workshop the first stories. Assignment--Read Dharma Bums.
Week Three -- Discussion of Dharma Bums, the journaling I, as well as haiku possibilities in fiction. Assignment: Write a fictional travel narrative with haiku embedded, first person journal format.
Week Four -- Workshop the narratives. Assignment: Read Marguerite Duras' The Lover.
Week Five -- Discussion of The Lover, the memoir I, and other possibilities for autobiography in fiction. Responding to revisions. Assignment: Write the beginning of a fictional memoir, beginning with and returning to a central image.
Week Six -- Workshop the fictional memoirs. Assignment: Read a selection of short-short stories by Bernadette Mayer, Bobbie Louise Hawkins and others.
Week Seven -- Discuss the short-short stories and the possibilities for fiction writing, using a very easy-going chatty journal writing voice that absorbs and reflects on voices and texts. Responding to revisions. Assignment: A story of a day generated from your journal writing.
Week Eight -- Workshop stories. Assignment: Read Walter Abish's "In the Future Perfect" and selections from Harry Mathew's Twenty Lines a Day
Week Nine -- Discuss Abish's story and the imaginative possibilities--taking your narrator somewhere you have never been before, but some place for which you the writer have very strong opinions and reactions. Discuss Mathew's entries and again the possibilities for fiction growing out of a daily journal writing practice. Respond to revisions. Assignment: There will be two assignments, one generated from the Abish story and one from Mathew's. This week we will also respond to revisions.
Week Ten -- Overview of what we've learned and practiced about
the the dialogic I. Workshop the final stories.
About Barbara Henning
BARBARA HENNING, is a poet and fiction writer, author of two novels and seven books of poetry. Her latest book of poems, My Autobiography, was published in 2007 by United Artists. Two novels, You Me and the Insects (2005), and Black Lace (2001), were published by Spuyten Duyvil. Other works include a series of photo-poem pamphlets; Detective Sentences (S.D., 2001), In Between (Spectacular Diseases, England); Me & My Dog (Poetry New York, 1999); Love Makes Thinking Dark (United Artists, 1995); The Passion of Signs (Leave Books, 1994); Smoking in the Twilight Bar (United Artists, l988). Poems and stories have been published in many magazines, including Poetry International, Zen Monster, Jacket Magazine, the Paris Review, Fiction International, The Brooklyn Rail, The World, Talisman, Lingo, Shiny, Not Enough
Night, Hanging Loose and many others. During the early nineties, she was the editor of Long News in the Short Century, a journal of art and writing.
Barbara holds an MA in Creative Writing and a Ph.D.in English (Narrative Theory and Fiction Writing). She was co-director of the Creative Writing Program with Lewis Warsh at Long Island University in Brooklyn, teaching writing workshops and literature courses. Presently, she is living in Tucson, Arizona. In addition to teaching with us, she teaches in Naropa University's on-line MFA program and at
the University of Arizona's English Department and Poetry Center.
For more information visit her web site here.
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Michelle Vanstrom
I loved the class content & assignments... The content was of a very professional/university level; it is exactly what I would want from an on-line class... Barbara's critiques were very clear, delivered as ideas to ponder and consider; and gave me much to work with during the class and even now, as I continue to revise & study.
Christine Robert
The prose poem course with Barbara Henning was excellent. She was a generous and stimulating teacher, and gave us great ideas and materials. I'd really like to take her course again.
Gabrielle Daly
The lessons and assignments were well conceived and comprehensive. Considerable effort went into designing the content of the course. Barbara was a very attentive mentor, gave honest and valuable feedback, and a pleasure to work with.
Mary Raihofer
Barbara is a superb teacher. She tailors her comments precisely to each student's needs. She is a joy to study with. Your classes are fantastic!
Helen Salter
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