Walk in beauty: Writing the Archetype (10 weeks)
Is beauty a fixed ideal -- or one which changes according to time, place,
and taste? We'll explore notions of beauty in nature, the human body and
art. We'll also look at ugliness -- is it war, ecological destruction? And
we will explore the personification of Beauty, as in fables and fairy
tales, and write our own. Using numerous writing techniques, we'll
create short prose pieces exploring this subject, and set our own
aesthetic standards for beauty in our writing.
- Week 1: What is beauty?Is it always visual, or based on the
senses? Can it be emotional, or moral? This week, we'll do two ten
minute writings by way of introduction.
- Week 2: A look at nature. Using the grid "I see," "I feel," "I
believe" "I see" we will examine the objective, the subjective (is
beauty in the eye of the beholder?), and cultural context.
- Week 3: Beauty personified. Beauty can be treated like an
idea--or a person, as in fairytales. Using techniques of
personification, we'll find out what Beauty eats, even does for a
living.
- Week 4: The fairy tale or folk tale explores the relationship
between the good and the beautiful. We'll learn about the structure of
the folktale, and follow Propp's functions -- a version of the heroic
quest. And maybe even turn around some notions of beauty!
- Week 5: The body. Taking Kathleen Fraser's ode to her knees as a
model, we'll write a piece praising. describing, and investigating a
part of the human body--and look at some blessings for it as well.
- Week 6: The Ugly Field Trip. This week each person will go
somewhere thatthe writer defines as "ugly." It can be industrial, urban,
natural, or even at home. What makes it the antithesis of beautiful?
- Week 7: War. The poet Sappho says: "what is the most beautiful
thing in the world? Not the horsemen arrayed for battle." Can violence
ever be beautiful? Or war? Using a shared experience--movie, the news, a
book--we'll explore this issue.
- Week 8: Ekphrasis--looking at a piece of art, and writing about.
We'll learn the traditions of this form, and how it investigates beauty.
Also, some sources of inspiration.
- Week 9: How do you define beauty in terms of your own writing?
Is it smoothness, completion, or do you enjoy leaving a rough edge, an
unfinished portion. We'll write a short "ars poetica" -- a definition of
our own personal standards.
- Week 10: To conclude, we'll revise and share a piece based on
how we want to finish it in beauty.
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Writing Poetic Forms: Taking the Ancient Path of Poetry (10 weeks)
Too often when we create poetry we write as if we were the first -- and
only -- poets on the planet! But poetic structure is like an ancient
footpath trod by those who went before us. In this class we'll explore
and experiment with traditional poetic forms from several cultures, both
European and Asian. The focus of the class will to be become acquainted
with more than a half dozen forms -- through reading examples, learning
the details, writing our own, and sharing with each other. You'll
discover what techniques work particularly well for you, and what parts
of an ancient craft speak to your own writing. We'll also honor the
tradition of free verse in which most of us write today. What are its
actual rules and history -- free though it may be? And how can the use of
rhyme and meter actually occassionally spice up free verse?
Look to this workshop to deepen your practice of poetry on both the
technical and spiritual level, for the use of form is just that-- a
kind of muse in itself. Look to this workshop to deepen your practice of
poetry on both the technical and spiritual level, for the use of form is
just that -- a kind of muse in itself.
- Week 1: Walking the Line. Through loose free writing, each of us will discover her/his natural line length. We'll learn about traditional lines in English--from iambic pentameter to American syllabics. We'll write ALPHABET POEMS and ACROSTICS to help develope a sense of line breaks.
- Week 2: The Pantoum. We'll venture into the room (stanza literally means room in Italian!) of the quatrain through the compelling Malayan form of the PANTOUM. This repeated form sounds very sophisticated but is actually a pleasure to write. We'll look at how lines repeat, and why this form is good for really obsessive subject matter.
- Week 3: The Ballad is one of the most ancient pan-European forms. it tells a story--sometimes a gothic one, sometimes one of social protest. We'll look at how narrative works in poetry, and at ballad measure, which influences everything from the Blues to the Beatles.
- Week 4: Ritual Poem. Poetry is based on magic, think of the two meanings of the word "spell". We'll explore the techniques of the LIST POEM to explore how words can actually affect us, and create a blessing, or a curse.
- Week 5: Senryku, Haiku, Tanka. Thee short Japanese forms are some of the best ways to capture image, feeling, and a sense of what is fleeting in human life. We'll work extensively with these three and five line forms to develope a way of looking at the worlds around us.
- Week 6. Renku or Renga is a chain of tanka written collaboratively. This Japanese form has so many rules it can be played in a group as a game. We'll work together over the web in our own renga clubs, putting a contemporary spin on the only truly collaborative poetic form. These are a huge amount of fun to write.
- Week 7: The Villanelle is a medieval repeated form that produces very lyrical poems. We'll bring together line, rhyme echos, repetition, image, and personal vision to write these.
- Week 8: Anaphor. Take a phrase or a word, something like "I remember" or "Blue" or anything that appeals to you. Repeat the word over and over, starting each line with it. This is an ancient Greek technique. It strengthens the front of the line and allows for innovation and exploration in the poem.
- Week 9: Ghazel. The ancient Persian form, written in couplets. Each couplet is a discreet unit, with a complete thought or feeling. There is a leap, or gap, from couplet to couplet. There are 5-12 coulets. The lines tend to be fairly long. The subject matter is often love, or the divine, and can include intoxication! You sign your name in the last line.
- Week 10: Creating Your Own Form and Delivering It. You will invent your own form, with constraints, and teach it to us. You will also file an example of the form--as you wrote it!
Suggested reading:
I will, of course, post the grids for the forms, explain each one, and
give examples. But the following two books will greatly enhance your
understanding of the forms.
Handbook of Poetic Forms by Ron Padgett (Teachers & Writers)
Unbroken Line: Writing in the Lineage of Poetry by Miriam Sagan (Sherman Asher Publishing)
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Writing Poetic Forms II (10 weeks)
Building on our experience with writing a variety of poetry forms in
the first class -- Writing Poetic Poetic Forms: Taking the Ancient Path
of Poetry -- we will continue to explore how traditional forms meet our
contemporary sensibility. We'll create a deck of poetry cards, and use
them as the basis for sestinas. We'll also write haibun, the Japanese
form which combines poetry and prose. Expect to collaborate in an
"Exquisite Corpse" -- a collaborative form favored by the Surrealists. We
will learn a total of a form per week, focus more on poetry markets, and
write for one directly.
- Class One: Cut-Ups. We will do an assignment created by Rita
Dove for the fine book Practice of Poetry. We will also make a deck of
poetry word cards and share our responses.
- Class Two: Sestina. The sestina has six stanzas of six lines
each. The words at the end of each line recur in a special pattern.
This is difficult but a lot of fun. It pushes the boundaries of
repetition and hinges in part on allowing a narrative flow.
- Class Three: Alphabet poem and Acrostic. These are two playful
forms. The alphabet poem either goes through the alphabet in A is for
Aardvark fashion or takes one letter of the alphabet and goes wild with
it. The Acrostic spells out a secret message, usually with the first
letter of each line.
- Class Four: The Exquisite Corpse. The French Dadists loved
absurdity and the random in both art and writing. This derives from a
drawing game played by several artists at a time. We will write
collaborative poems where there are blind associative leaps but which
often end up remarkably finished sounding.
- Class Five: Persona or personification. Two different
techniques for speaking through the mask of someone else's character or
animating an idea or object.
- Class Six: Haibun. A Japanese form which mixes poetry with
prose. We will do this as a five day journal entry in two genres.
- Class Seven: A poem on a picture. Visual art is a classic
inspiration for poetry. We well write from it, and probably also use a
poetry/art site such as FZQ as a particular market.
- Class Eight: The Sijo. a fascinating form I just discovered from
Korea. It is three VERY long lines on set topics -- an ineresting contrast
to the haiku.
- Class Nine: The Blues. This can be written free verse -- as a
complaint -- or in the traditional song form. Poetic Forms has an
excellent section on it.
- Class Ten: The poetry field trip. Each person will set out on a
mini-journey to inspire poetry, and give us a full report. This week
also covers poetry markets (magazines and e-zines) and the mechanics of
publishing.
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Creating Structure in Your Diary or Writer's Notebook (10 weeks)
Many of us enjoy keeping a diary, but find that we write only when we
are in a certain mood. The techniques of a structured diary can expand
your range as a writer and help bring the outside world into your
introspective one.This class will show you how to sink initial structure
into your writer's notebook to create short forms. The basis of the
class is how to structure loose fast writing so that pieces can be
finished with an initial draft or two. The course is geared more towards
initial creative process than revision, although students and teacher
will respond to each piece. It will emphasize "just doing" the
assignments at first to see what they yield, in the tradition of free
writing. The course is good for beginners who want to learn basic
structure, and for those with notebooks full of loose writing they would
like to learn how to finish. We will also look at possible markets and
audiences for finished work. If you enjoy keeping a journal, or want to
get started, this course provides creative techniques that can add a
whole new element of liveliness to your writing.
- Class One: We'll take a look at the basics of keeping a writer's
notebook. Consider getting an actual notebook and working in long hand,
then typing things up for class. The notebook can also be kept on the
computer. We'll cover inspiration, indexing, and hot spots. We'll learn
how to do a short fast free-writing, and use it as a formal basis for
finished pieces. Includes an introduction to the A-B-A form of return in
writing.
- Class Two: Letters. Part of the problem with diary writing is
that the audience is unclear. Who might read this besides the writer?
Using the ancient epistlatory form--letters to people both real and
imaginary--we'll give the diary a different focus.
- Class Three: The Review. We'll do a mini-restaurant review, a
movie or gallery review, or even a book review. We'll learn the
conventions of reviewing, and how to be both informative and
descriptive.
- Class Four: A Short Journey. The theme of this class is travel
writing, whether you take an actual trip somewhere or simply go to a
local spot. Each of us will go somewhere on purpose with the intention
of writing about it. See how this hightens your perceptions.
- Class Five: The Haibun. We will learn and use this Japanese form
of diary keeping which combines prose with tiny poetry break-outs.
Expect to write some haiku and other short poetic forms as well as the
usual prose. The emphasis here will be on observing the natural and
human worlds, and their contrasts.
- Class Six: Food and Memory. The Native American writer Luci
Tapahonso once said that writing comes out of "the specific food of
specific times and places." We will recall foods we've eaten, and their
associations. We'll see how a recipe can be part of a longer piece.
- Class Seven: The List. We all make lists, but we rarely think of
them as worth saving. However, the list technique is a great way to
change your perspective. Make a list in your diary of twenty things
you'd like to do in your life. Make a list of things that make you
angry. What do you think are the dozen most beautiful sights in the
world? Make up your own list questions, and answer them. You can be
sure the answers won't look boring years from now.
- Class Eight: The Flashback. We'll learn a simple but powerful
writing structure -- ABA -- to help give structure to our diary entries. We
will use it to create flashbacks in time and to access memory, not just
for a moody emotional tone but as strong writing.
>Class Nine: How to expand this process to write somewhat longer
pieces. An interesting exercise in intensification written in four parts
that can help expand any piece of fiction or memoir. The A-B-C-A form.
- Class Ten: Using Markets as Inspiration. We'll write directly
for a great short memoir market, The Sun Magazine. Using their "Readers Write"
section we'll create pieces, revise, and meet a deadline. We'll
also look at some other markets, and take an overview of the publishing
process.
There will be suggested reading as we go to help stimulate our writing,
but the reading is for enrichment, not for in-depth study. I will also
suggest web sites, magazines, and any other resources I can -- and hope
you will do the same.
Suggested Reading: Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
Writing Resources:
International Directory of Little Magazines & Small Presses Dustbooks
PO Box 100, Paradise, CA 95969
Poets & Writers
72 Spring St.
New York, NY 10012
$19.95 subscription yearly
Thema
Box 8747
Metairie, LA 70011-8747
The Sun
107 North Roberson St.
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
Readers Write
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