Readings and Assignments for the Week of September 26-October 2, 2005

Tuesday, September 27, 2005:

Please read Chapter 5 (The Sound (and Look) of Sense) from Writing Poems.

(Special guest reading by Elliot Harmon today!)

Thursday, September 29, 2005:

Please read Chapter 7 (Tale, Teller, and Tone) from Writing Poems.

And here's the memoir prompt from The Autobiography Box for blog posts due on Sunday, October 2:

Is there a piece of music that reminds you of a particular time and place in your life? In Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, there is a violinist named Vinteuil who plays a simple and not very interesting theme of music. But as the years go by, Marcel finds that even a mediocre piece of music can carry with it lots of memory. The music that may cause an outpouring of memories for you may be a Beethoven sonata or a silly pop song. Thin of one of these tunes and describe the memories that come to you.

Don't forget that Poem #2 (A Poem About Family and/or Childhood Memory) is due on Tuesday, October 4!! Here are the guidelines:

Please write a family-related poem and/or a poem of childhood memory.

The challenge of this assignment is to write a poem dealing with family and/or chilhood memory that completely avoids hackneyed language, cliche, and sentimentality.

The poem should incorporate concrete details and sensory images.

Be sensitive to the music of language, and carefully consider how sounds are determined by word choice, line length, line breaks, etc.

Please make sure to give your poem a title, and that your poem is typed/word-processed.

And finally, here's a listing of upcoming literary events that you might want to check out! (Don't forget that you can do write-ups of outside literary events to replace up to two absences and that you will need to attend a minimum of one outside literary event to write one of your Writerly Immersion Papers:

Sunday, September 25, 2005: Omaha Slam Team Members reading at U. Brew, 7:00 p.m.

Thursday, September 29, 2005: VLP Poetry Slam (with Featured Readers Elliot Harmon and Alex Charalambides), Coffee Shop Gallery, 7:00-9:00 p.m.

Thursday, October 27-Saturday October 29, 2005: John R. Milton Writers' Conference (Three days' worth of readings by prize-winning authors, and creative/scholarly panels on the theme of "Frontier Nostalgia." Featured readings are free and open to the public, or, as an USD student, you can register (before October 1) for the entire conference for a cool $5). Click on the website listed below for a complete schedule of events, info on featured authors, and a downloadable registration form:

John R. Milton Writers' Conference Website

Readings for Week of September 19-25, 2005

Tuesday, September 20, 2005:

Please read Chapter 3 (Making the Line (I)) in Writing Poems.

Important!! Poem #1 (Image-Based Poem; see detailed guidelines in the post below) is due today!!

Tuesday, September 22, 2205:

Please read Chapter 4 (Making the Line (II)) in Writing Poems.

And finally, here is this week's memoir prompt from The Autobiography Box for blog posts due on Sunday, September 25:

Recall your greatest accomplishment. Was it an award? Did you have a child? Was it something you were honored with publicly or was it a secret thing? Did you do it alone or with a group of people?

Readings and Assignments for the Week of September 12-September 18, 2005

Tuesday, September 13, 2005:

Don't forget that class is cancelled today, as I'll be giving an out-of-town poetry reading. See you on Thursday!

Thursday, September 15, 2005:

Please read Chapter 2 (Verse) and Chapter 10 (Finding the Poem) in Writing Poems.

I'm listing the guidelines (see below) for your first "official" poetry assignment, which will be due for collection on Tuesday, September 20. Feel free to e-mail me if you have questions, and we'll also review the guidelines briefly in class at our next class meeting on Thursday.

Guidelines for Poetry Assignment #1: Image-Based Poem (Due Tuesday, September 20, 2005)

Write a poem that is saturated with concrete, sensual imagery.

Poem can be on any topic.

Poem must utilize at least five of the seven different types of imagery discussed in class.

Try to make the imagery as precise as possible, while also using imaginative word choice and methods of description to make the imagery lively and fresh.

Avoid cliché and hackneyed language. Avoid using abstractions. The poem should “show vs. tell” and use detailed, concrete language.

Remember that imagery doesn’t necessarily have to be “pretty,” and that poems don’t necessarily have to evoke beauty, although they can and some do.

Poem should be in free verse (i.e., please don’t attempt to make it rhyme).

Remember to give your poem a title when you are finished.

Please type/word process your poem and bring a hard copy to classon the due date. I'll write comments/suggestions for revision for you to work with, and this will be the first piece that you revise for submission in your creative writing portfolio. (With this in mind, please make sure to keep the first version/draft that I return to you with comments for the "before" part of your "before and after" portfolio submission.)

*****

Finally, here is this week's memoir prompt from The Autobiography Box, for blogs due on Sunday, September 18:

Describe a moment of pure joy. There are times in our lives when everything comes together in a chemical reaction of joy. It can be the siimplest thing: you are sitting outside on a sunny day drinking wine with your best friend, and he tells you a funny joke, just as a bird lands on a branch nearby to sing, and suddenly, your heart lifts, your spirit is up in the air, you feel ridiculous and glorious all at once. Once you've returned to earth, you realize that something has changed--you are not the person you were a moment before. Can you recall such a moment?

Since we didn't actually have time to complete an in-class exercise this week, don't forget that for this week's in-class exercise blog post, I asked you to post a rough draft/wor-in-progress of your assigned poem due Tuesday, September 20 (see guidelines above). And then, as usual, your third blog post for this week will consist of a process post (a 250-word disucssion of any of the course readings for the past week, poems/writings discussed in class, your thoughts on the writing rocess, etc.) Don't hesitate to e-mail me at lroripau@usd.edu if you have questions!

Readings and Assignments for the Week of September 5-11, 2005

Tuesday, September 6, 2005:

Please read Chapter 6 (Subject Matter) in Writing Poems, as well as Chapter 3 (Seeing is Believing: Showing and Telling) in Writing Fiction.

Please also come prepared to share/read the writing exercise for your blog that we set up at the end of class on Tursday (showing/evoking an abstraction through the use of concrete details, examples, imagery, using Jack Gilbert's "Michiko Dead" and Mary Oliver's "Happiness" as models).

Thursday, September 8, 2005:

Please read Chapter 8 (Metaphor) in Writing Poems, as well as Chapter 9 (Is and Is Not: Comparison) in Writing Fiction.

Here is your Memoir Prompt for this coming week for blogs due on Sunday, September 11, 2005, by midnight:

Describe an event in your life when you exerienced a very particular and intense assault on your sense of touch. For example, have you ever been severely burned, or caught in the cold? Have you had invasive surgery or the best massage in the world? Describe those sensations with as vivid a vocabulary as you can manage. Do you notice how the number of words we have to describe feeling, especially pain, is very limited? How can you find other ways to approximate the sense of touch?

And finally, I wanted to encourage you all to consider joining the Vermillion Literary Project--a student-run literary organization that hosts monthly poetry slams, publishes an annual literary journal, broadcasts a weekly radio show, holds an annual short story competition and an annual poetry festival, and much more! It's a terrific organization that gives you the opportunity to learn and/or use valuable real-life skills, and it's also a lot of fun. Come and check out the first VLP meeting of the year on Friday, September 9, 2005, at 4:00 p.m. in Dakota Hall 201. You can also click HERE for more information, or e-mail Michelle Rogge Gannon at mrogge@usd.edu.

Readings and Assignments for the Week of August 29, 2005-September 4, 2005

Thursday, September 1, 2005:

Please read Chapter 1 (Starting Out: An Introduction) in Writing Poems, as well as Chapter 1 (Whatever Works: The Writing Process) in Writing Fiction.

Here is your memoir prompt from The Autobiography Box for the week of August 29-September 4, 2005:

Is there a food or dish that you destested as a child that you like as an adult? Can you pinpoint the moment when you gave that food a second chance? How, in general, has your sense of taste changed? Think about the kinds of words that we use to describe taste--sweet, sour, tangy, spicy. Is there a certain food writer you like for his descriptions of food? What kinds of observations does s/he make that you admire?

This blog post (250 words minimum, approximately) will need to be posted to your blog no later than midnight on Sunday, September 4, along with two other blog posts: One of these posts will be a more polished/cleaned-up version of an in-class exercise of your choice from the prior week's in-class exercises, and the other remaining post will be a 250-word process post where you discuss your thoughts on your writing process and/or any of the assigned readings from the past week.

Please make sure to clearly title/label your blog posts as illustrated below (with the appropriate week's dates, of course), so that I can easily identify them and give you credit:

Week of August 29-September 4, 2005: Memoir Prompt

Week of August 29-September 4, 2005: In-Class Exercise

Week of August 29-September 4, 2005: Process Post

BLOGGING INSTRUCTIONS

Important!! Don’t forget to regularly visit the Main Course Blog for reading assignments, written assignment guidelines, and important course reminders and announcements. All the information that you need will always be at your fingertips at the Main Course Blog. (The syllabus will be posted as the first entry on the Main Course Blog, and you can download a hard copy of the syllabus from this same entry as well.)

The URL for the Main Course Blog is: http://english283fall2005.blogspot.com

To set up YOUR course blog (an online journal website), first go to Blogger at http://www.blogger.com to sign up for a Blogger account. Blogger will take you through an easy, step-by-step process to help you set up your blog and create your very own URL. Your new URL will look something like: http://INSERT-YOUR-OWN-TITLE-HERE.blogspot.com.

A Few Tips On What To Expect When Setting Up Your Blog:

If this is your first time visiting Blogger, click Create on Create Your Own Blog now. You will be prompted to set up a user name and password. Tip: Make sure to write down your user name and password so that you can access, edit, and post to your blog.

Once your account is set up, click next/continue, and you will be prompted to give your blog a name/title, and create a URL for your blog (In other words, choose your own address for the "INSERT-YOUR-OWN-ADDRESS-HERE" portion of your URL http://insertyourowntitlehere.blogspot.com. Tip: Make it something easy to remember).

Hit next/continue, and you will be prompted to select a template (i.e., a layout for how your blog will look on the internet . . . you can change it later, if you wish.)

Blogger will create your blog for you, and then give you a Start Posting prompt. I definitely recommend writing and publishing a test post at this point (even something as quotidian as TESTING, TESTING, ONE TWO THREE . . . you can delete it later if you like) to establish the blog on the internet and familiarize yourself with the posting process.

When you're on the posting and editing screen, you can just type in your entries (or cut and paste from a word processing program—-for longer, assigned entries I definitely recommend cutting and pasting from a word processing program so you don't accidentally lose an entire post should there be a technical glitch). When you're finished with your entry, simply click on the button labeled Publish. Blogger will publish your post on the web, giving you a message that your post was published successfully once it’s done publishing. At that point, you can then you can click on the link to view your blog post on the internet.

Once you've posted an entry you can always go back and edit it by clicking on the edit posts link. This will pull the entry back as a text window where you can edit it as much as you like, or even delete it altogether. You might want to play around with posting, editing, and deleting test posts a bit to get a feel for how all this works.

On subsequent visits to Blogger, you will simply go back to http://www.blogger.com, then log in with your account name and password, and you'll see the title of your blog listed on your Blogger Dashboard once you sign on. You can simply click on that link and your editing menus will come right up for you.

This should hopefully be enough information to get you started. Please don't hesitate to e-mail me with any questions at lroripau@usd.edu, or feel free to come visit me during my office hours or set up an appointment if you need further assistance. Good luck, and have fun blogging!!