ENG 111: Of Mice and Memoirs, Part I

Posted on September 2, 2020October 1, 2020 by janemlucas

Spiegelman, Art. Maus I. Pantheon, 1986. p. 6.

Summary

Last week I asked you to focus your journal writing on the epigraph for Maus I, first by writing a short summary and afterward by writing about how the short two-page epigraph relates to Chapter 1.

Here’s my version of that journal exercise:

In Art Spiegelman’s epigraph for Maus I, “Rego Park, N.Y., c. 1958,” he recounts the events of a summer’s day when he was ten or eleven years old. He and two of his friends are racing together on roller skates until one of Artie’s skates comes loose and he falls. Rather than waiting for Artie, the other two boys skate away, leaving him behind to be the “Rotten egg” (5). After Artie returns home, his father asks why he is crying. When Artie tells his father what happened, his father questions his son’s use of the word “friend.” He replies, “If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week . . . / . . . Then you could see what is, friends! . . .” (6).

The cutting remark that Spiegelman’s father makes as he saws wood illustrates the communication breakdown between him and Artie. Spiegelman’s depiction of that gulf foreshadows the trials he will encounter: struggling to understand his father and himself as he aims to make meaning of their lives through his comics.

Notice how the first paragraph, the summary, does not express my opinion. By definition, summaries are objective. When you write a summary, you aim to convey a text’s main ideas in your own words but without offering your own opinion.

Analysis

In the second paragraph, I turn to analysis. I connect the father’s cutting, or unkind, remark to the sawing of the wood, which is itself an act of separation—a detail that I might add to the paragraph if choose to develop my analysis.

Summary and analysis are building blocks of both academic and professional writing. We summarize to increase our understanding of texts, and we analyze them to demonstrate our ability to think critically.

For more information on summary and analysis, see pages 63-64 of A Writer’s Reference.

**Writing about Maus in Your Journal**

After you complete each reading assignment in Maus, summarize it in your journal. You are not required to analyze each reading, but you should make note of any questions you have and points that you would like to address in class.

What to Focus on as You Read Maus

Because Maus is a memoir and your first essay assignment for English 111 is a literacy narrative, a form of memoir, focus on this question: How can Maus serve as a model for my own memoir, my literacy narrative?

In your literacy narrative, which you will draft and revise in September, you will write on one of these topics:

any early memory about writing, reading, speaking, or another form of literacy that you recall vividly
someone who taught you to read or write
someone who helped you understand how to do something
a book that has been significant to you in some way
an event at school that was related to your literacy and that you found interesting, humorous, or embarrassing
a literacy task that you found (or still find) especially difficult or challenging
a memento that represents an important moment in your literacy development
the origins of your current attitudes about writing, reading, or speaking
creating and maintaining your WordPress blog

Maus isn’t a precise model; it’s a book-length comic rather than an essay, but Spiegelman’s memoir serves as a guide for us as writers. Here are some points to consider:

Consider the title, Maus, the subtitle of the book, A Survivor’s Tale, and the subtitle of Part I, My Father Bleeds History. What does each one tell you about the book? After you decide on a topic for your literacy narrative, ask yourself what you want the title to tell the reader. Will your essay also have a subtitle? Sometimes the best title isn’t clear at the beginning of the writing process. Think about your title, but don’t get hung up on it. Return to it after you have finished drafting.
Study Spiegelman’s scenes. Your narrative will include one or more scenes, but yours will be created solely with words, rather than with words and drawings. As you examine the panels in Maus, note which ones convey conflict, either a character’s inner conflict or a character’s conflict with another character. Conflict is essential to narrative.
Note that the epigraph for Maus could be scenes in a literacy narrative. Imagine the two scenes in paragraph form. What would Art Spiegelman add as the final paragraph to give his readers some sense of the narrative’s significance? (What did it mean to him, and what did he learn from it?)

Spiegelman, Art. Maus I. Pantheon, 1986.

Teaching, Writing

Burrowed Time

Posted on August 25, 2020 by janemlucas

It started with the rock. Actually, it started for me with the rock. For you, the story would start elsewhere, I’m sure. I came across the rock, now your rock, in the backyard shortly after my husband and I moved into the house. I was struck by the granite’s natural beauty, its graceful belt of pale stripes. I moved the rock from its cradle of broken bricks and overgrown grass to a spot on the corner of the deck. There I could see it from the window in the kitchen door, and from there I would soon see you, too.

At first, the novelty of seeing you drew me to the window. Then I began to meditate on our similarities, not the fact that I’m a small mammal, too—not chipmunk-small, but human-small—or that I’m omnivorous. Instead, my thoughts turned to how we are both solitary creatures who construct intricate tunnels.

Back in mid-March when the civilized world was forced to shelter in place, I developed a heightened awareness of my tendency to burrow, as well as my need to emerge. Teaching from my burrow, rather than in the classroom, confined me to a solitary labyrinth that I tunneled through by writing. The writing—the blog posts that I composed for my students and the comments that I posted for them— distracted me from the uncertainty that came with COVID-19. Writing had a calming effect. Yet at the same time, all that tunneling within a tunnel meant too much solitude.

Moving to a new burrow and returning to the classroom—the actual, not the virtual, classroom—has roused me. But I am not up to speed. The back-to-back trials of navigating remote instruction and packing my life into boxes led to a state akin to your annual torpor. I am still crawling out, even as the tunneling act of writing continues to help me make sense of it.

Now, as I continue to forage for the right words, I pause in my writing and picture you back on your perch, contemplating life. The stripes in the granite reflect the ones that border your curved back.

I don’t know whether you visited the rock before I moved it, or whether you simply like the corner where you found it. I only know that seeing you stake your claim has brightened the quiet moments when this human has watched you from the window.

Thank you for welcoming me home.

Teaching, Writing

ENG 111: WordPress RSVP

Posted on August 21, 2020 by janemlucas

Welcome to WordPress blogging. For English 111, you will publish an introductory post and the revisions* of your three essays to your blog. You are welcome to post additional items, but keep in mind that websites are public spaces. If you want to compose a private post, change the post’s visibility from public to private.
After you have set up your blog and before you write your introduction, reply to this post. To do that, scroll down to the bottom of the post, and look for the image of the air mail envelope. If you don’t see it, click on the post’s title, “WordPress RSVP” and scroll down again. I will use the blog addresses in your replies to create the links on our class page, “English at GTCC.”
If you encounter any technical difficulties, email help@wordpress.com.
WordPress will automatically save your drafts as you write, but posts will not be visible to others until you publish them.
You can repeatedly edit your posts after you publish them. If you see something that needs changing, return to the editing mode, make any changes needed, and click “update.”
I encourage you to maintain your blog after the end of the semester. Let it continue to grow and evolve to suit your personal and/or professional needs.

*In addition to posting your essay revisions to WordPress, you will post them in Moodle.

Teaching, Writing

ENG 126: Poetry Workshop, Session 2

Posted on May 4, 2020 by janemlucas

Reading your recommendations for revisions last week reminded me of poet Marianne Moore’s relentless revisions, including changes to one poem titled “Poetry,” which she tinkered with for five decades. Many of her readers were puzzled and frustrated when they opened The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1967) to find “Poetry” radically reduced to three lines. Gone from the poem were thirty-five lines, including this metaphor that speaks to many forms of art: “imaginary gardens with real toads in them” (line 32).

Our imaginary gardens thrive, with toads springing to life, when language transforms the artificial landscape. But there are so many choices. What words do we plant, and where do we plant them, and when do we uproot and start over?

Welcome to our final workshop session, and thank you for your thoughtful feedback on the “He is the Man,” “Change,” “Dependent,” and “Self-Preservation.” Before we turn to the last poems, “The Concessions of the Conscious Collective” and “Disappearing People,” I offer these follow-up notes:

“He is the Man”

Mia and Brandy noted the stark contrast between the connotation of “he is the man” and the voice of the poem, and Mia recommended ending the first line with “man” to intensify the discrepancy between between readers’ expectations and the meaning that unfolds on the page.
Zane recommended developing “He is the Man” into a poem with multiple stanzas.
Brennan remarked on the poem’s assonance (no, known, tomorrow) and its internal rhyme (man, plans). His recommended revision for the poem created a slant or half rhyme with “doubts” and “thoughts.”
Brandy observed that the final line of the poem is the only one that ends without an s sound.
Consider how that change Brandy noted affects the last line and the impact of the last word. As Janet Burroway observes in Imaginative Writing, “the end of just about anything—line, paragraph, stanza, story—is the strongest position, and the beginning is the second strongest” (306).
It’s also worth noting that poem’s final word, “die,” drops the s sound but continues the internal rhyme of “crying” and “silence.”

“Change”

Brennan, Zane, and Brandy recommended developing “Change” into a longer poem.
Mia remarked on the double meaning of change in the poem and recommended incorporating more imagery.
Trevor suggested additional lines to address freedom apart from financial independence.
Brandy noted the effectiveness of repeating “no change” in the last line to emphasize the inevitability of repetition in the absence of change.

“Dependent”

Brennan addressed the ambiguity of the title and noted how the poem conveys a sense of the complexity of dependency. Brennan also questioned the choice of presenting “Everyday” as a one-word line at the beginning of the second stanza.
Mia remarked on the poems’s ambiguity.
Zane and Mia both recommended additional figurative language.
Trevor remarked that “Dependent” addresses the human condition with “nuance and skill.”
Brandy observed that the final stanza seemed out of place. Consider whether the last stanza would seem integral to the poem if were the first stanza or the third. Does the last stanza seem out of place because the third stanza, the one that immediately precedes it, conveys a strong sense of finality?

“Self-Preservation”

Zane remarked on the appeal of speaker‘s perspective on happiness and the aptness of “slivers” and “chunks.”
Brennan and Mia addressed how effectively the first stanza evokes the hidden cost of casual exchanges. They also both noted the shift from the first stanza to the second, which made the second stanza seem out of place. Consider the distancing effect of a shift from first person to third.
Trevor noted that the poem addresses the universal human condition with “tact and grace.”
Brandy remarked on the appeal of the poem as one whose speaker aims to describe self-preservation and connect with others. Her recommended revision reverses the order of the first four clauses in the third stanza. Notice how those changes result in end words that are more concrete (“rises” replaces “this” and “face” replaces “reach”).

As you read the poems for this week’s workshop, again consider where the writers indicate pauses with punctuation and line breaks. In Imaginative Writing, Janet Burroway notes that “[t]he line directs the breath; the rhythm of the line is played against the rhythm of the sense, and this is one of the ways that poets alter, stress, and redirect their meaning” (305-06). As an additional example, consider Marianne Moore’s final revision of “Poetry”:

I, too, dislike it / Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in / it, after all, a place for the genuine. (36)

Look carefully at any caesuras, or pauses within the line (such as the ones in all three lines of Moore’s poem above). Do the poems include any enjambment, the running of a thought from one line to the next (“one discovers in / it, after all . . .”)? Are the lines of the poems end-stopped? In other words, does the end of each line coincide with the end of each thought?

In addition to the pauses and line breaks, here are some points to consider. As always, these are not ones that you’re required to address in your comments. I offer them as suggestions only.

“The Concessions of the Conscious Collective”

Consider the definitions of concession. It’s a special allowance, or something granted, and it’s also a device used in written arguments to acknowledge an opponent’s point. How does the sequence of poems convey one or both of those meanings of the word?
Is the alliteration in the title of the poetry sequence repeated in any of the poems? If so, where?
The verses that follow the title “The Concessions of the Conscious Collective” are presented as individual poems. Might they serve as stanzas in a single poem, or are they more effective as individual voices that contribute to the collective? Why?

“Disappearing People”

Consider the poet’s use of assonance, slant rhyme, and repetition. What do they achieve?
Note that the word appear appears within disappear. How might the poet play on that through enjambment?
How might the form or content of the final stanza amplify disappearance? For example: What would be the impact of tapering lines or the absence of “I”?

Remember to check your CVCC email and Blackboard regularly for updates.

Works Cited

Burroway, Janet. Imaginative Writing. 4th ed. Pearson, 2014.

Moore, Marianne. “Poetry.” The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore. MacMillan/Viking, 1967. p. 36, n. 266-67.

Teaching, Writing

ENG 011/111: Revisiting Your Reflection

Posted on May 4, 2020May 6, 2020 by janemlucas

Directions:

Compose a short commentary (fifty words or more) on your reflection, and submit it as a response to this blog post. For recommended starting points for your commentary, see the list of questions below.
After you post your response, read the reflective essay written by the classmate whose name precedes (not follows) yours on the class page, and post an assessment of twenty-five words or more on the student’s blog. If that classmate’s blog post is not accessible, comment on the post by the student whose name precedes that classmate’s. If your name is first on the list, comment on the reflection of the student whose name is last.

Questions to consider include the following:

Which assignments of yours and which features of the course served as the focus of your reflective essay? In the process of drafting your essay, did the focus change? If so, how?
How did you organize your reflection? Did you begin by defining or describing your subject, or did you start with an anecdote or observation? Is your essay a series of reflections that together create an overall impression?
Did Westover’s memoir, Educated, or one or more of the essays that you read in The Norton Field Guide to Writing serve as a model or source of inspiration? If so, which one? See the list below.
At what point in the process did you decide upon a title? Did you change the title during the writing process? If so, what was the original title?
What image that documents part of your writing process away from the screen did you include in your blog post? (Is it a photo of a page of your journal or part of your draft? Is it a photo of you reading, drafting, or revising?) Why did you choose that particular image?
What do you consider the strongest element of your essay?
If you had more time to devote to your final reflective essay would you have addressed additional assignments or features of the course? If so, which ones?

Reflections and Memoirs in The Norton Field Guide to Writing

Barrientos, Tanya Maria. “Se Hable Español.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 693-96.
de la Peña, Matt. “Some Times the ‘Tough Teen’ is Quietly Writing Stories.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 688-91.
Dubus III, Andre. “My Father was a Writer.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 891-99.
Feslenfeld, Daniel. “Rebel Music.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 81-84.
Kassfy, Ana-Jamileh. “Automotive Literacy.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 84-86.
Lepucki, Edan. “Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 256-59.
Sedaris, David. “Us and Them.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 883-89.
Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 697-703.
Vallowe, Emily. “Write or Wrong Identity.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 75-81.
Yousafazai, Malala. “Who is Malala?” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 900-04.

Teaching, Writing

ENG 011/111: Revising Your Reflection

Posted on April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 by janemlucas

As you revise your reflection for Wednesday, review the pages of The Norton Field Guide to Writing that cover key features (259-61) and methods of organizing a reflective essay (262-63).

If you find yourself stuck, browse the opening paragraphs of the reflections in the textbook. The first lines of one may give you an idea for your own starting point. Try the same browsing exercise for your concluding paragraph. Since conclusions can be particularly challenging, I have included a link here to Harvard’s excellent guide on closing paragraphs, “Ending the Essay.”

Below you’ll find a comprehensive list of the reflections as well as literacy narratives and memoirs (both forms of reflection) in The Norton Field Guide to Writing. One of the essays, “Us and Them,” is part of David Sedaris‘s* book-length memoir Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, which is featured in the photograph in this post.

Young adult author Matt de la Peña, who wrote one of the literacy narratives we studied in early February, has posted a series of thoughtful blog entries for home bound students. If you have children or younger brothers and sisters at home, I encourage you take a look at “Dear Stuck-at-Home Student #1-#12.”

You are not required to comment on this blog post. Your online assignments for this week are (1) post your revised reflection to the 111 Blackboard site, (2) post your revised reflection to your blog, and (3) complete the 011 quiz on MLA documentation.

*Note that the possessive form of the last name Sedaris appears above as Sedaris’s with an apostrophe followed by an additional s. AP (Associated Press) style, which most newspaper use, omits the second s. MLA (Modern Language Association Style), which we use in the humanities (English, history, philosophy, religion, and art) includes the second s. For more information on apostrophes and possessive, see the MLA Style Center and M erriam-Webster

Remember to check your CVCC email and Blackboard regularly for updates and assignments.

Reflections and Memoirs in The Norton Field Guide to Writing

Barrientos, Tanya Maria. “Se Hable Español.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 693-96.
de la Peña, Matt. “Some Times the ‘Tough Teen’ is Quietly Writing Stories.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 688-91.
Dubus III, Andre. “My Father was a Writer.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 891-99.
Feslenfeld, Daniel. “Rebel Music.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 81-84.
Kassfy, Ana-Jamileh. “Automotive Literacy.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 84-86.
Lepucki, Edan. “Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 256-59.
Sedaris, David. “Us and Them.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 883-89.
Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 697-703.
Vallowe, Emily. “Write or Wrong Identity.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 75-81.
Yousafazai, Malala. “Who is Malala?” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed., by Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg, 2019, pp. 900-04.

Teaching, Writing

ENG 126: Poetry Workshop, Session 1

Posted on April 25, 2020May 1, 2020 by janemlucas

The presence of double slash marks in one of our workshop poems led me to reflect on the ways we use slashes in writing and how they both connect and separate (and/or). In a passage of prose that quotes lines of poetry, we use slashes, or virgules, to indicate a line break. Some playwrights use a slash mark to indicate the start of the next spoken line when one character talks over another. Since that stylistic convention doesn’t figure in the plays that we read in Imaginative Writing, I’m including an example here. David Lindsay-Abaire uses slash marks repeatedly in Good People to denote Margaret’s, “Margie”‘s habit of talking over Stevie:

STEVIE: Margaret, listen for a / second—

MARGARET: (But she keeps going) I don’t think they did Christmas dinners though. And your grandmother had passed by then, so there was no dinner to go to. So your mother comes into Flanagan’s, and she’s out to here. (Indicates belly) When’s Jimmy’s birthday? (6)

As you read the poems for this week’s workshop, consider where the writers indicate pauses with punctuation and line breaks. In Imaginative Writing, Janet Burroway notes that “[t]he line directs the breath; the rhythm of the line is played against the rhythm of the sense, and this is one of the ways that poets alter, stress, and redirect their meaning” (305-06). As an example, she offers the opening lines of John Milton’s Paradise Lost:

Of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast*
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe. (qtd. in Burroway 305-06)

Milton gives prominence to the apple, the forbidden fruit, by placing it at the end of the line. As Burroway observes, “the end of just about anything—line, paragraph, stanza, story—is the strongest position, and the beginning is the second strongest” (306). With that in mind, pay close attention to the first and last words of each line. Also look carefully at any caesuras, or pauses within the line (such as after “Disobedience” above). Do the poems include any enjambment, the running of a thought from one line to the next (“and the Fruit / Of that Forbidden Tree . . .”)? Are the lines of the poems end-stopped? In other words, does the end of each line coincide with the end of each thought?

To supplement our study of the poetic line, I have developed a short exercise to accompany your workshop comments this week.

Directions:

Read aloud the poem or stanza beside your name in the list below.
Read the poem again, and consider how caesuras or enjambments would alter its effect.
Revise two or more lines of the poem or stanza without changing any of the words. Change only line breaks and/or punctuation.
At the end of your comment for the poet, include the revised lines and a brief explanation of the changes you made.

This exercise isn’t meant to be prescriptive. It’s not a way of saying, these are changes that the poet should make. Instead, it’s a way of showing how someone else might see and hear the words.

Brennan: “He is the Man”
Zane: “Change”
Mia: “Dependent”
Brandy: “Self-Preservation,” stanza 1 or 3
Trevor: “Self-Preservation,” stanza 2

As always, the points I have included below are not ones that you’re required to address in your comments. I offer them as suggestions only. I will address some of them in the follow-up remarks that I’ll post at the beginning of our next session.

“He is the Man” and “Change”

Where in the poems does the writer use assonance, internal rhyme, and slant rhyme?
How might the writer develop the exploration of one or both notions of change in the second poem?
Might these two thematically similar poems evolve into two stanzas of one poem, or alternately evolve into two poems in a longer sequence of poems on the same theme?

“Dependent”

Where in the poem does the writer depict the abstract idea of dependence with concrete images?
Where do metaphors or similes appear in the poem?
Where might the poet add figurative language?

“Self-Preservation”

What discrepancy does the poet create with “slivers” in line one and “chunks” in line three? How and where might the writer develop that apparent contradiction?
Consider the sequence of pronoun shifts (I > we > I > they > I). What does the distancing effect of third person indicate about the poem’s speaker or persona? What change, if any, does the return to first person signify?
Why might the writer have chosen to use double slash marks?

Remember to check your CVCC email and Blackboard regularly for updates and assignments.

Works Cited

Burroway, Janet. Imaginative Writing. 4th ed. Pearson, 2014.

Lindsay-Abaire, David. Good People. TCG, 2011.

*Seventeenth-century spelling of taste.

Reading, Teaching, Theatre, Writing

ENG 126: Drama Follow-Up, Introduction to Poetry

Posted on April 20, 2020April 26, 2020 by janemlucas

Drama Follow-Up

Thank you for all of your thoughtful and detailed feedback on the untitled monologue and The Story of Shabath. Before we turn from drama to poetry, I offer these follow-up notes:

Untitled Monologue

Mia noted the problematic detail of Deen’s parole. I didn’t mention that issue in my introductory remarks because it’s one with an easy fix. The officer needs a motive for his encounter with Deen, but that motive needn’t be a parole violation. A confrontation prompted by an unrelated minor offense—such as a speeding ticket or a shoplifting arrest—would add to the monologue’s irony. That said, who other than an officer might prompt Deen’s rant?
Brendan, Zane, and Brandy recommended delaying Deen’s revelations about her role in her family’s tragedies. I addressed the subject of sequence in my previous post for the same reasons that Brendan, Zane, and Brandy mentioned. If the audience is introduced to Deen as an unlikable young woman but one who is nevertheless a devoted friend to Carol, the revelation that Deen is responsible for her parents’ death and her brother’s paralysis will transform her from mildly annoying to morally reprehensible. The structure of that transformation might be similar to that of Donald Barthelme’s “The School,” as Brendan suggested.
Trevor recommended “Six Feet Under” and “An Inconvenient Inheritance” as possible titles. Is there a line of Deen’s—such as “So here’s the thing”—that might serve as the title?

The Story of Shabath

Trevor suggested that the monorail could appear as a projected image in the background, and that sound effects and props could differentiate Shabath Aizwald’s memories. Those recommendations remind us that playwrights’ scripts—unlike creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry—are starting points for collaboration (among the director, the actor/s, and the technical crew); it’s important to imagine how the story might move from page to stage. Trevor’s mention of props and sound effects leads me to Mia‘s observation about the number of acts and scenes
If stage hands costumed as citizens of Laghaz entered and exited with the props that signal shifts from one memory to the next, those visual cues could enable the monologue to unfold as one seamless scene.
Brennan, Zane, Mia, and Brandy observed that the audience learns more about the kingdom of Laghaz than they do about Shabath himself. What motivated him to found Faya? What in particular was painful about his regenerative process? What were the physical and emotional costs, and how might Shabath convey those through his words and actions?
Mia noted Shabath’s potential drug problem. Whether the elixir he injects is medicinal or detrimental to his health, its effects could develop his character and serve as a source of tension.
Brennan‘s words “the rain . . . mixed with a man pondering his life on a high-speed monorail” brings to mind Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, a novel that the writer might find instructive to read, or reread, with an eye toward the rendering of the speech of the bounty hunter Rick Deckard.

To the writers of both scripts, I recommend Jane Wagner‘s play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. It’s a one-woman show featuring a series of monologues linked by the narrator, Trudy, a deranged bag lady who befriends alien visitors who are studying Earth as “a planet still in its puberty” (136). I recommend it to the writer of the untitled monologue for the characters’ diction and speech patterns. To the writer of The Story of Shabbath, I recommend examining how Wagner’s monologues develop the individual characters while also addressing social problems.

Work Cited

Wagner, Jane. The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. 1985. Harper & Row, 1986.

Introduction to Poetry

As we turn from drama to poetry, consider again Janet Burroway’s, Carolyn Kizer’s, and Theodore Roethke’s observations about the similarities between the two genres:

Her [Carolyn Kizer’s] mentor Theodore Roethke . . . advised thinking of a poem ‘as a three-act play, where you move from one impulse to the next, and then there is the final breath, which is the summation of the whole.’ Kizer points out that Roethke’s poem ‘I knew a Woman’ (p. 127) contains the line ‘She taught me turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand,’ which is ‘the essence of the dramatic structure. It’s what a long poem has to do. It doesn’t require physical action, but there has to be some mental or emotional movement that carries through the poem.’ (313-14)

If a poem mimics dramatic structure and involves movement, it will need, like a story or drama, to achieve conclusion. In Roethke’s description, this achievement is the ‘final breath,’ or, in his line above the ‘and Stand’ of the poem. (314)

In Chapter 10 of Imaginative Writing, Janet Burroway includes three self-reflexive poems about language and writing (319-21). If you haven’t chosen a subject for your workshop poem/s, consider writing a poem that focuses on language or one of your own pieces of writing, another poem or a work of prose.

You might also try writing an ekphrastic poem: one about or inspired by another work of art. “Overblown,” the sample poem that I posted for you on Blackboard, is an ekphrastic poem that I wrote based on Momoyo Torimitsu’s Somehow I Don’t Feel Comfortable (the giant inflated pink rabbit in the photo) for an Art of Poetry Catawba Valley event at the Hickory Museum of Art.

For additional models and sources of inspiration, I encourage you to reread these poems in Imaginative Writing:

“I Knew a Woman” by Theodore Roethke (127)
“Nude Interrogation” by Yusef Komunyakaa (156)
“A Story about the Body” by Robert Hass (187)
“Columbine High School/Littleton, CO” by Albert Goldbarth (188)
“Woodchucks” by Maxine Kumin (188-89)
“The Hammock” by Li-Young Lee (189-90)
“The One Girl at the Boys Party” by Sharon Olds (312-13)

Also consider reading Louise Glück‘s “Gretel in the Darkness” as well as her poems posted on the Poetry Foundation website.

Since you are working on your poetry workshop assignment this week, you are not required to post a comment in response to this post, but I strongly encourage you to post one of the following as a brief response:

Any other poems in Imaginative Writing that you recommend to your classmates as models or sources of inspiration
A link to a poem that you admire and would encourage your classmates to read
Any of Janet Burroway‘s “Try This” exercise that have been helpful to you as you’ve drafted your poem/s

Remember to check your CVCC email and Blackboard regularly for updates and assignments.

Work Cited

Burroway, Janet. Imaginative Writing. 4th ed. Pearson, 2014.

Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 011/111: Readings for Reflection

Posted on April 20, 2020August 21, 2020 by janemlucas

Your third and final essay for English 111 will be a reflection on your work over the course of the semester. Think about what you’ve accomplished, and ask yourself what element or elements of our class have contributed the most to your development as a writer, a reader, and a thinker. You are welcome to focus on one component of the course—such as studying Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated, or planning, drafting, and revising one of your previous essays—or you may reflect on a variety of features, including the ones I just mentioned as well writing for an online audience, studying model essays in The Norton Field Guide to Writing, writing in your journal, drafting longhand, writing snail mail, or playing Scrabble.

In your essay, you will cite at least one text that’s relevant to your reflection. For example: If your reflection addresses how the study of Educated benefited you as a writer, you might quote a short passage of Westover’s memoir that you found particularly instructive. If you reflect on developing your word power and creative problem solving skills through Scrabble, you might quote The New York Times article “New Scrabble Words Get the ‘OK’ (Now Worth 6 Points).”

As an opportunity for you to think about the aspects of the course that you may address in your reflection and for additional practice in introducing quotations with signal phrases, I developed the following exercises for this week:

Option One:

Read the article “Blogs vs. Term Papers” by Matt Richtel.
Compose a short passage of twenty-five words or more that addresses your experience maintaining a blog this semester and includes a relevant quotation from the article.
If you name Richtel in the signal phrase, do not include a parenthetical citation. If you do not name him in the signal phrase, include a parenthetical citation with his name alone: (Richtel).

Sample: Here’s what I would write if I were reflecting as an instructor on your blog requirement.

In “Blogs vs. Term Papers,” Matt Richtel reports that Andrea Lundsford’s students who maintain blogs for their composition classes at Stanford, “feel as if they’re actually producing something personally rewarding and valuable, whereas when they write a term paper, they feel as if they do so only to produce a grade.” That value some students find in writing for a broader online audience is one of the reasons that I require my students to maintain blogs. It gives their writing a life beyond the classroom.

Option Two:

Read the article “Skim Reading is the New Normal” by Maryanne Wolf.
Compose a short passage of twenty-five words or more that addresses your experience reading away from the screen this semester (primarily before remote instruction began) and includes a relevant quotation from the article.
If you name Wolf in the signal phrase, do not include a parenthetical citation. If you do not name her in the signal phrase, include a parenthetical citation with her name alone: (Wolf).

Sample: Here’s what I would write if I were reflecting as an instructor on our time spent reading away from the screen.

Psychologists’ studies that indicate “students who read on print [are] superior in their comprehension to screen-reading peers” (Wolf) have led me to devote more class time to reading on the page rather than the screen.

Remember to check your CVCC email and Blackboard regularly for updates and assignments.

Works Cited

Richtel, Matt. “Blogs vs. Term Papers.” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/education/edlife/muscling-in-on-the-term-paper-tradition.html, 20 Jan. 2012, Accessed 20 Apr. 2020.

Wolf, Maryann. “Skim Reading is the New Normal.” The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/skim-reading-new-normal-maryanne-wolf, 25 Aug. 2018, Accessed 20 Apr. 2020.

Teaching, Theatre, Writing

ENG 126: Drama Workshop, Session 3

Posted on April 10, 2020April 10, 2020 by janemlucas

Welcome to our third drama workshop session, and thank you for your thoughtful feedback on The Slow Decline and the monologue from Bound. Before we turn to the untitled monologue and The Story of Shabath, I offer these follow-up notes:

The Slow Decline

Trevor mentioned the jail break in the sixth paragraph as a possible alternate starting point. How might Mr. Castillo’s story unfold between the narration of the jail break, which was “a rather profitable venture” and the change in gun restrictions when the Castillo organization’s “profits plummeted”? In other words, how might a riches-to-rags sequence framed by those events affect the play’s momentum?
Brendan, Zane, Brandy, and Mia all noted the lack of development of Mr. Castillo’s relationship with his father. The detail that he is “quiet” and the writer’s choice of having Mr. Castillo address his grandfather, but not his father, in the conclusion may serve to indicate a gulf between father and son. Was it a relationship that was too difficult for the son to put into words? If so, what in his speech or actions might convey that difficulty?
The question of details–what to leave in and what to leave out–leads me to a question that Mia raised: “What made the main character unsuitable for the job while his father and grandfather ran things so seamlessly?” The answer may lie in something else that Mia mentioned, the moment when Mr. Castillo reveals that as a young man he contemplated running away from the family business. That’s the moment I had in mind when I posed this question: What other obstacles, internal or external, might complicate the delivery of his story?

Monologue from Bound

Trevor remarked that it was admirable that the writer chose to begin at the end of the narrator’s story and focus on the mechanics of the journey.
Brennan, Mia, Zane, and Brandy noted the number of unanswered questions in the monologue. Zane also noted the apparent inconsistency in the narrator’s mental state. How might the writer convey through the narrator’s speech and actions that his consistent inconsistencies make him dangerous to the gods, or to himself, or to both?
Brandy and Brennan both noted that the monologue felt like part of a larger piece–such as a character’s speech “halfway through a fantasy novel,” as Brennan mentioned. With that in mind, reading and comparing H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds and the radio play adapted from the novel might be a useful exercise for the writer.

Rather than making additional reading recommendations tailored for the writers of The Slow Decline and the monologue from Bound, I am offering one that’s relevant to all of us now: the recent New York Times article “Has Your Dystopian Play Come in Handy?,” which features snippets of conversations with playwrights who have authored plays about cataclysmic events and are now living through one themselves (as we all are).

Marisol, the first play addressed in the article, was written by José Rivera, author of Gas, the Persian Gulf War-era play that we read in Chapter 11 of Imaginative Writing. The eight other playwrights and plays featured in the article are these:

Anne Washburn, Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play (2013)
Jennifer Haley, Nether (2015)
Mac Rogers, The Honeycomb Trilogy (2015)
Penelope Skinner, The Ruins of Civilization (2016)
Zoe Kazan, After the Blast (2017)
Robert O’Hara, Mankind (2018)
Andrew R. Butler, Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of the Future (2018)
Duncan Macmillan, Lungs (2020)

The points I have included below are not ones that you’re required to address in your comments about the untitled monologue and The Story of Shabath. I offer them as suggestions only. I will address some of them in the follow-up remarks that I’ll post at the beginning of our next session.

Untitled Monologue

In the second paragraph of the monologue, Deen reveals the inciting incident, the event that creates the situation in which she finds herself: “and then they died.” In the fifth paragraph, she first mentions her current obstacle: the officer to whom she is pleading her case. Consider how altering the order of the details that Deen presents would affect the monologue’s tension and the audience’s perceptions of Deen.
In Imaginative Writing, Janet Burroway notes the importance of varying shorter lines with longer ones. In her words, “[a] change of pace, from a sharp series of shorter lines to a longer speech and back again, keeps the rhythm interesting” (338). The writer varies lines within paragraphs and also between paragraphs one and three, and again between paragraphs six and seven. What other paragraphs might be presented as shorter–perhaps even one-line–paragraphs?
What suggestions, if any, do you have for a title?
What plays, if any–ones in Imaginative Writing or others that you’ve read–would you recommend to the writer as models or possible sources of inspiration?

The Story of Shabath

Consider the sequence of Shabath Aizwald’s recollections. How would moving what he recounts in 1:2 or 2:1 to 1:1 affect the tension?
What stage directions would clarify how the monorail figures in 1:1? Is it an actual set piece, an image projected on a scrim (a gauze cloth used as a screen or backdrop on stage), or does it figure solely as a diagetic sound?
In Imaginative Writing, Janet Burroway observes that the inability and unwillingness at times to say what we mean “breaks the flow of the talk. This is especially true when emotions are heating up. People break off, interrupt themselves and each other. Use sentence fragments. Don’t always finish their . . . (338). Where might the writer break the flow of Shabath’s words to indicate an inner conflict? What memories might be difficult for him to recount?
What plays, if any–ones in Imaginative Writing or others that you’ve read–would you recommend to the writer as models or possible sources of inspiration?

Post your two responses, twenty-five words or more each, as replies. If you address a point that one of your classmates has written in a previous reply, mention that classmate by name in your own reply. Post by midnight on Friday, April 17.

Remember to check your CVCC email and Blackboard regularly for updates and assignments.