Portfolio due & thank you

FINAL PORTFOLIO OFFICIAL INFO:

10-15 pages. [no special binders, folders, title-pages: just your name, and a staple]

Due: Friday June 15th, 5pm

10-15 pages of your most refined [that is revised] work. The portfolio consists of work you have done from class that has been revised significantly.

5 of these pages will be photocopied from your writing journal, contributing to your overall journal mark. If you did not have your journal for initial examination today, please bring it for next class.

Thank you all for a great class. Big applause once more for all of you who recited poems. Excellent.

Poetry In Voice competitor Alexander Gagliano: "Chapter I", Christian Bök

For those of you in the process of memorizing poems this weekend! Some inspiration.

The Art of Rhyming Is Hard to Master

Dim lady & Shakespeare sonnet

100 and more Poetry Exercises

Experiments

see also Poem Profiler

1.             Homolinguistic translation: Take a poem (someone else's, then your own) and translate it "English to English" by substituting word for word, phrase for phrase, line for line, or "free" translation as response to each phrase or sentence. Or translate the poem into another literary style or a different diction, for example into a slang or vernacular. Do several differnt types of homolinguistic transation of a single source poem. Chaining: try this with a group, sending the poem on for "translation" from person to another until you get back to the first author.


2.             He Do the Police in Voices: Dialect & Idiolect: Translate or compose a poem or other work into a different dialect or idiolect, your own or other. Dialect can include subculture lingo, slang, text messaging shothand, etc. For example, Steve McCaffery's translation of the Communist Manifesto in West Riding of Yorkshire dialect (at PennSound): audio, text. See also Nathan Kageyam's translation of Pound's "The Return" into pidgin (Hawaiian Creole English). Use the dialect engine to translate a text into one of several "dialects," then use the results to make a poem.


3.             Homophonic translation: Take a poem in a foreign language that you can pronounce but not necessarily understand and translate the sound of the poem into English (e.g., French "blanc" to blank or "toute" to toot). Some examples: Louis and Celia Zukofsky's Catullus., David Melnick's Homer at Eclipse: Men in Aida; Ron Silliman on homophonic translation (his own, Melnick's, and Chris Tysh's), and some examples by Charles Bernstein -- from Basque, from Portuguese  and "Johnny Cake Hollow" suite. — Rewrite to suit? 
see also: 
§ bpNichol, Translating Translating Apollinaire
§ Robert Kelly's Celan
§ "Me Tranform O!"
§ "Nuclear Blanks"
§ Sane as Tugged Vat, Your Love
§Mallarmé, “The Four Salutes”
Cf.Six Fillious  by bp nichol, Steve McCaffery, Robert Fillious, George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Dieter Roth, which also included translation of the poem to French and German. (More info.)
See also these YouTube clips: Benny Lava , Marmoset, and Moskau


4.             Lexical translation: Take a poem in a foreign language that you can pronounce but not necessarily understand and translate it word for word with the help of a bilingual dictionary. (Rewrite to suit?) "Language Is a Virus" provides a translation engine.

JUNE 5: INTRODUCTION TO POETRY/NOTES ON FINAL PORTFOLIO

FINAL FICTION ASSIGNMENT WAS HANDED IN. If you missed the deadline hand in Sina's mailbox: LB building, 6th floor. 

Assignment for next class: write a ghazal [http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5781].
Three choices [or choose your own]:

1. Using found language
2. "In the spring men's heads
    turn to _____________"
3. "In the second blue hour
  __________________"

We also looked at erasure poems:
Jen Bervin's can be seen here [about a third of the way down]
http://lemonhound.blogspot.ca/2009/03/buckley-boully-bervin-ongoing-reading.html

and

N+7 Poems:

"S+7, sometimes called N+7 

Replace every noun in a text with the seventh noun after it in a dictionary. For example, "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago..." becomes "Call me islander. Some yeggs ago...". Results will vary depending upon the dictionary used."

 

These originated from a writing group called Oulipo. Poetry written with conceptual constraints. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo

Somebody asked about good use of rhyme. Here is an example by Michael Robbins:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/240798

FINAL PORTFOLIO OFFICIAL INFO:

10-15 pages. [no special binders, folders, title-pages: just your name, and a staple]

Due: Friday June 15th

10-15 pages of your most refined [that is revised] work. The portfolio consists of work you have done from class that has been revised significantly.

5 of these pages will be photocopied from your writing journal, contributing to your overall journal mark. If you did not have your journal for initial examination today, please bring it for next class.

LAST CLASS IS TUESDAY JUNE 12TH.

MAY 29 SETTING, BACK STORY, TIME.

Come having read [CP] Tobias Wolf & Sherman Alexie

In class writing: bring to life one or a few or all of these dead lines: : "She has a smile that would break your heart,"  "He was on cloud nine," "He put me at ease," "I wanted to get her into the sack," "My mother is sad and beautiful."

Homework: Find a compelling image: work backward, how did this happen? [and/or] Write a story in which you slow down the event as long as you can.

NOTE: ANY IN-CLASS OR HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS CAN BE EXPANDED TO SUBMIT FOR YOUR FINAL FICTION SUBMISSION [final submission due June 5].

MAY 24: CONFLICT AND CHARACTER

FICTION ASSIGNMENT 2 DUE

Read and discuss: George Saunders [CP] in class

In class writing: One line descriptions of people, 10 surprising images, story using only questions. 

FICTION ASSIGNMENT 3: WRITE A STORY IN THREE DISTINCT SCENES.

MAY 22nd 'HOW SHORT IS SHORT?' [In which final drama assignements are due]

Read and discuss: Sheila Heti, Lydia Davis, Raymond Carver [CP]

In class writing: 1: An emotionally charged situation described as a list, each sentence beginning with 'He' 'She' or 'It.' 2: Extravagant lies! "She was late because....." "He lost his...because..." In 4 weeks she will..."

FORMAL CONSTRAINTS ARE LIBERATING!

FICTION ASSIGNMENT 2: WRITE A 300 WORD STORY WITH A CENTRAL CONFLICT.

Dialogue, Setting: May 8

DIALOGUE

Read & Discuss (CP) David Ives

What is the setting? 
How do the scenes work? 
What devices are used to advance the scenes? 
How does the dialog operate?

JOURNAL HOMEWORK: Go to a place you have never been: overhear dialog. Transcribe.

SETTING/CONTENT

Notice how the setting is, or is not evoked in the monologues written in class. 
How does setting work in David Ives? What does it add? How did it work in Sally Clark's play? What would be the essential elements on stage? 

JOURNAL HOMEWORK:  Go to 3 new places and describe as if they were a setting in a play. How would you make a setting work on stage? 

ASSIGNMENT 1 DUE (monologue)


Be sure to read Caryl Churshill's Top Girls for Thursday.

ON BEING A GOOD READER

Good writers are generally good readers first. Here are some very basic tricks to get you thinking. 

PRE-READING

Scan the text you are about to read before you start.

Notice how the text is placed on the page, the units it is offered in (paragraphs, sections, etc.)

If it’s paragraphs: how big are they, how many per page?

Are their section titles? Chapters?

Scan the language itself: does it seem dense, simple?

How long is the text?

How will you tackle it?

Is there a bibliography? Footnotes?

Are there scenes? If so, how long are they? How many?

Studies show that in pre-reading, the mind prepares to receive the information you are about to consume, opening up sufficient space, opening files to organize, etc. 

ACTIVE READING

Writers are active readers. They read with a pencil in hand, ready to circle, underline, scribble in the margin. They note the end of a scene, a well wrought sentence, a word they want to look up.  

They summarize sections.

They describe conflict, characters, sometimes plotting through with different coloured pens to note the arc of characters...

They note language, vocabulary.

They look up words they don’t know, or want to think about more.

They note prose style: what is the average sentence like? Is the language itself important, a character? Or is it more pedestrian, functioning to move plot along?

They ask questions of the text, and themselves.
Is this a literary text, or a genre text?

Scene, Conflict: May 3

Discuss SCENE/CONFLICT

Read (CP) Sally Clark

JOURNAL HOMEWORK: Record one new conflict a day. Does it have literary potential? How so? How does the conflict manifest itself?

CREATING CHARACTER

In class writing exercises (using photographs) (we did this on May 1st)

JOURNAL HOMEWORK: Go to a new, neutral place. Do 3 quick character sketches.

ASSIGNEMENT 2: expand exercises into three scenes (due May 15)

Images for Character Development

Students can use these images to develop characters/monologues:

Here are the images you responded to in class, starting your first monologue exercises. Your homework was to expand one of the four into a polished monologue. Bring that for Tuesday's class.

Introduction to Drama, Monologue: May 1

Basic Intro & Syllabus

INTRODUCTION TO DRAMA
1. MONOLOGUE

What is drama? What is a play?