Objectives:
This course will help you learn the building blocks of writing in different modes and genres. Topics covered include: the sentence, diction, figurative language, image, voice, dialogue, plot, rhyme, form, meter, and narrative. The writing assignments emphasize verbal experimentation and imitation and are meant to expand your repertoire of literary techniques as well as to make you aware of your own preferences.  In order to concentrate on the one lesson of the week, you are asked to rewrite the "same" short-short fiction piece/poem throughout the semester. Thus, this is foremost a class in process rather than product. In addition, by reading the work of visiting writers, and having the opportunity to talk with them, you will gain some insights into the writing life.

You should spend a couple of hours on each weekly assignment--these will form the main part of your grade, along with readings of both professional and class work (and reading quizzes if necessary), attendance at poetry readings, and class participation.

Course requirements:

(1) Attendance and participation in discussion. More than two absences preclude an A, more than six and you will fail the course. Call me if you must miss a class. 30% of grade.

(2) A weekly one-page short-short story or poem, typed, single spaced, 300 words or less, applying the concept we discussed the previous week. In other words, re-write your own short-short in light of the topic we examined in the professional samples. Make copies for everyone in the class. Suggestions are included in the syllabus, but feel free to modify assignments to make them more challenging for yourself. I think "failures" are as interesting as successes, so don't hesitate to submit something you're not happy with; it will give us a chance to figure out why. 60% of grade. I grade these according to how well you incorporated your understanding of the lesson, not according to the literary quality of the whole. These one-pagers should, however, be written as carefully as a longer paper; be sure to write several drafts before settling on the final version, and proofread and spellcheck.

IMPORTANT: At the bottom of each one-pager, write a discussion question related to the reading (either new or old). Since we may not get to all elements of every reading assignment in class, these are one way for you to let the rest of us know what is important to you.

 
(3) I will establish a shared email folder for our class into which you are required to make one posting each week, giving feedback to one of your classmate's one-pagers, or addressing an issue we did not get to in class. 5% of grade. In order to do this, you must activate your Westminster email account by calling the help desk at 2070. It is possible to have your Westminster email forwarded to your home address if you prefer.

(4) Leading the discussion/activity for one of the topics into which I have divided the material. Supplementary material is suggested or you can find your own, perhaps by leafing through the stories and poems that are not on the syllabus to find other good examples. I hope that you'll dream up some fun things for us to try in class, some exercise that will clarify that week's concept(s). These are due the week after we discuss the professional examples. 5% of grade.

(5) A final story, encompassing all the skills of the semester, 5-10 pages.

(6) A portfolio of the semester's work, to be handed in the last day of class. If you want my comments, enclose two copies and a stamped self-addressed envelope. I grade your portfolios on overall effort and improvement: you will earn an "A" for the portfolio if you complete each assignment by demonstrating your understanding of the previous week's reading and discussion. I encourage experimentation.

(7) Attending at least two of the semester's poetry readings (at Westminster) or poetry and fiction readings (at the Art Barn on Finch Lane on Thursdays at 7:30 P.M. or the City Art Readings at the Public Library on Wednesdays at 7:00 P.M.) and writing a paragraph on the experience. Westminster's visiting writers will also be available for luncheon meetings with students; I will plan these for different days of the week so that you may all have a chance to attend.

Required Texts:
(1) The Story and Its Writer, Ann Charters, 5th Ed. St. Martin's, 1999 (referred to as SAIW in syllabus) Note the useful glossary at the end.
(2) Selected Poems 1960-1990, Maxine Kumin. Norton, 1998
(3) Neon Vernacular, Yusef Komunyakaa. Wesleyan, 1993

Plus copied material. Also please expect copying expenses of your own.
 

SYLLABUS

31 August  (all in-class work)
Introductions
topic: the sentence
order, length, punctuation, clauses/linkage, active vs passive voice, tense.

Write a paragraph about your experience with/in writing.

 
Read Jamaica Kincaid, "Girl" (handout and in SAIW 829)
Read Maxine Kumin, "We Are" (63)

Write one paragraph with a period only at the end. Or rewrite Kincaid's story with hypotactic linkage or by using subordinating conjunctions.
 

7 September
Bring copies of a story no more than 300 words. Make it fit on one piece of paper. Pay particular attention to the sentences.

topic: lexicon (word choice) & etymology
Read Henry James, "Paste"  (SAIW 710-721)
Read Raymond Carver, "What We Talk About..." (SAIW  256-265)
supplementary material: Martin Heidegger's essays on language (Poetry, Language, Thought) particularly "Building Dwelling Thinking"; Jacques Derrida, Spurs.

 (9 September Art Barn Reading: poet Michael Collier and fiction writer Mary Clyde)

14 September
Rewrite your short-short to emphasize either Latinate or Anglo-Saxon diction. You can think of this as either a James or a Carver imitation, and imitation their syntax also. Bring copies.

topic: point of view (who is speaking and why?)
Read Toni Cade Bambara, "The Lesson" (SAIW 108-113)
Read Eudora Welty, "Why I Live at the PO" (SAIW 1342-1351)
Read Margaret Atwood, "Reading Blind" (SAIW 1423-1426)
Read Maxine Kumin, "Sisyphus" (33)
Read Tomas Salamun, "Shepherd" (handout)
Read Yusef Komunyakaa, "Stepfather: A Girl's Song" (45)

16 September
Lunch with Maxine Kumin (details to follow)
Maxine Kumin reads in the Jewett Center, 8 p.m.

18 September Book Festival at Westminster
(I'll distribute a schedule of events.)

21 September
Rewrite your short-short to emphasize the speaker's voice/point of view. Bring copies.

topic: tone, audience, irony, stance
Read Komunyakaa, "The Way the Cards Fell" (59)
 
Read Kumin, "For My Great Grandfather.." (61) and "Apostrophe to    a Dead Friend"  and "Address to the Angels" (131) and    "Progress Report" (137) and "A Calling" (275)
Read Flannery O'Connor, "Everything That Rises..." (SAIW 1080-1091)

supplementary material: Aristotle's Rhetoric;
Thomas & Turner, Clear and Simple as the Truth; Frank Stringfellow, The Meaning of Irony: A Psychoanalytic Investigation; D.J. Enright, The Alluring Problem, an Essay on Irony.

28 September
Write two versions of your story, one directed to a specific audience (name that audience) and one to an unknown reader. Or change the tone of your story by changing the narrator's attitude toward his or her subject. Or in some other way rewrite your story in awareness of audience.

topic: narrative
Read handout: J. Hillis Miller's essay
Read SAIW 1683-1695 "Elements of Fiction"
Read Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk" (SAIW 889-893)
Read Kumin, "Woodchucks" (80)
Read Komunyakaa, "Salt" (6)
Read Tobias Wolff, "Say Yes" (SAIW 1384-1386)

secondary topic: tense
supplementary material: Style in Fiction, Leech & Short
supplementary material: Gerard Genette, Narrative Discourse; essays by Ron Tanner and William Gass on the use of present tense in fiction.
 

5 October
Rewrite your story by making it adhere to Miller's criteria for narrative.

topic: dialogism
Continue discussion of O'Connor story.
Read Casebook on Flannery O'Connor, (1613-1642 SAIW)
Read Kumin, "The Pawnbroker" (35-37) & "Fraulein Reads Instructive Rhymes" (19-20)
Read Komunyakaa, "Elegy for Theolonius" (71)
supplementary material: M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination & Leech & Short pp. 288-317, "Conversation in the Novel."

MID TERM EVALUATION OF COURSE
Conferences this week and next. Bring your portfolio and I will evaluate it for a "midterm" grade.
 
 

 
12 October
Rewrite your story to make it as "dialogic" as O'Connor's story. Or rewrite it as a play.

topic: imagery
Read Komunyakaa, "The Tongue is" (37)
Read Kumin, "Photograph, Maryland Agricultural..." (264)
Read D.H. Lawrence, "The Odor of Chrysanthemums" (SAIW 859-873)

 (14 October Art Barn reading: poets Shirley Kaufmann and Scott Cairns)
 

19 October
Rewrite your story/poem to emphasize imagery. Bring copies.

Topic: metaphor & metonymy (handout)
Read Updike, "A&P" (SAIW 1321-1325)
Read Komunyakaa, "Passions" (49) & "February in Sydney" (178)
Read Kumin, "Late Snow" (55) and "Watering Trough" (56)

Supplementary reading:Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors to Live By and Lakoff & Turner, More Than Cool Reason. Aristotle, Poetics; Jill Matus, "Proxy and Proximity: Metonymic Signing." University of Toronto Quarterly 58 Winter 1988.
 

21 October Tomas Salamun reads at Nunemaker, 8 p.m.

23 October 10:30 a.m. brunch with Tomas Salamun

26 October
Browse through the anthology for a passage that uses metaphor and metonymy especially well. Write out this passage on the bottom of your own page where you rewrite your story exploiting metaphor and metonymy.

topic: dreams and nonsense, fantasy and surrealism
Read Maxine Kumin, "My Father's Necktie" (134) & "The Longing to be Saved" (129)
Read Tomas Salamun, "One, My Arm" and "Ambergris" (handouts)
Read Komunyakaa, "Corrigenda" (54)
Read Borges, "The Garden of the Forking Paths" (SAIW 170-177)
Read Bierce, "An Occurence at Owl's Creek" (SAIW 161-168)
Read Samuel Beckett, "Dante and the Lobster" (SAIW 152-160)

2 November
Rewrite your story to make it dreamlike or fantastic or surreal.
 
topic: genre differences
Read Frank O'Connor, "The Nearest Thing to Lyric Poetry is the  Short Story" (SAIW 1523)
Read Grace Paley, "A Conversation with Ann Charters" (SAIW 1526- 1529) and "A Conversation with My Father" (1141-1144)
Read Edith Wharton, SAIW 1570-1572
Read Edgar Allen Poe, SAIW 1531-1533
Read Sandra Cisneros, SAIW 337-342

(4 November Art Barn reading: poet and translator Richard Howard)

9 November
Rewrite your story as a poem. If you have already tried the switch, write a poem based on one of the short stories we have read.

topic: image & symbol
Read D.H. Lawrence, "The Odor of Chrysanthemums" (SAIW 859-873)
Read Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried" (SAIW 1065-1078)
In class: handout exercise from Douglas Hunt
 

16 November
Rewrite your story by choosing a central scheme of imagery to unite it.

topic:meter & the sounds of words
Please choose additional poems for us to discuss.
Read Kumin, "Prothalamion" (42) and "Purgatory" (43)
Read Komunyakaa, "Salt" (6)
In class exercise on scansion.

18 November: Yusef Komunyakaa reads in the Jewett Center, 8 p.m.

23 November
Rewrite your story into a poem of 14 lines of iambic pentameter OR lard it with internal rhyme and alliteration OR do both.

topic: finding the form to suit the subject
Read Maxine Kumin, "400 Meter Freestyle" (21) & "Song for Seven Parts of the Body" (110-112)
Read Komunyakaa, "The Falling Down Song" (106) & "Changes..." (8-10)
Read LuXun, "Diary of a Madman" (SAIW 923-932)
Read Barthelme, "At The Tolstoy Museum" (SAIW 129-138)
 

30 November
Rewrite your story or poem into an entirely new form.
Read Louise Erdrich, "The Red Convertible" (SAIW 460-467)
We'll use the Erdrich story as the basis for an in-class synthesis of all the topics we've covered.
 

Since December 7 is a study day, and December 14 is the scheduled exam time for this class, let's talk about having some kind of end-of-the-semester dinner at my house or elsewhere. I would like you to write an overview of your work this semester, an introduction to your portfolio of one-pagers, outlining your strengths and weaknesses and what you learned.