poem from overhead...


For John, Falling    by Michael Ondaatje

Men stopped in the heel of sun,
hum of engines evaporated;
the machine displayed itself bellied with mud
and balanced—immense.

No one ran to where
his tense muscles curled unusually,
where jaws collected blood,
the hole in his chest the size of fists,
hands clutched to eyes like a blindness.

Arched there he made
ridiculous requests for air.
And twelve construction workers
what should they do but surround
or examine the path of falling.

And the press in bright shirts,
a doctor, the foreman scuffing a mound,
men removing helmets,
the machine above him
shielding out the sun
while he drowned
in the beautiful dark orgasm of his mouth.

The "group poem" you are to fix for next class...

The When Window

when window frost covers my tongue

a feeling of concern crosses my mind

striking like high heels beneath red lights

during a dark, dark night

and when the warmth fills my eyes

I see it all in a haze

those red lights gleaming

bright and hard 

winter light through a window

harsh on these tired eyes

and suddenly I catch my breath

the forced air stings my lungs

beautiful ice crystals

climb my throat and dye me red

hard and harsh, the red window frost crackles

spreads from my fingertips

chills my core 

rattles the pane

brings memories of a red and cold winter

that seems constant at my core and yet,

despite the cold, the dark, the pain,

I can cut the sinking

life emerges in a burst of heat

and I wonder what brought me here

and why

I wake up wondering

images dancing on the edge of my mind

holding onto, letting go

seeking a special warm night

that rocks steady my soul

my life, a question for pensive monks

a question for a wandering drunk

visual, like the frost on my tongue

from a cold Prince George winter

I lay there, unable to move

fishes nibble on it. . . 

Prewriting Strategies

1. Brainstorming (list randomly, then group/organize)

2. Freewriting (write without stopping or editing for fixed length of time)

3. Morning Pages (Julia Cameron, 3 pages handwritten each morning, uncensored)

4. Looping (choose idea from freewriting and freewrite again on that)

5. Dialogue Freewriting (imagined discussion between 2 or more people)

6. Nutshelling (gist of project in 2-3 sentences)

7. Clustering/Mind Mapping (web-like diagram of circles/ideas)

8. Spider Map (concept, main ideas, details branching out)

9. Journalists’ Questions (who, what, where, when, why, how)

10. Analogy Freewriting (choose one random concrete and one abstract item)

11. Analogy Development ( _______ is like _______ because __________.)

12. Image Streaming (describe as from another place and time)

13. Five Senses (brainstorm for each sense)

14. Chain of Events (initiating event up to concluding event)

15. Cycle of Events (show how events interact to reproduce a set of results)

16. Continuum (choose something to scale and show end points or extremes)

17. Family Tree (for characters, identify and show relationships)

18. Fish Bone (result, causes and details branching out)

19. Storyboarding (chart major events in the story)

20. Short Story Analysis Outline Form

            A. Character            

            B. Setting

            C. Theme

            D. Time Management

            E. Tension

Self-editing Checklist      ENGL 271

A. Content

• abstraction à concrete

• specificity inserts: vague word à specific word, image, detail, research . . .

• enough ‘tension’, crisis, ambiguity, movement, depth . . .

• ‘flab’ check: redundancy, over-explanation; does it all contribute to the ‘tension’

• ethics check: is there a known possibility someone will be hurt by this text?

• accuracy check: have you written something you really don’t know much about?

• is it finished or part of something larger?

• quality of metaphor/simile

• speaking voice appropriate/realism/consistency

• diction consistency

• tense check, appropriate?

• p.o.v./site of enunciation, appropriate?

• deictics—consistency in markers of place and time

• cliché check

• enough description/imagery

• closure check: have I released the reader in a satisfying way?

• have I written past the real ending?

• atmosphere, mood, tone consistency/control

• have I supplied the right amount of stage/screen direction?

• are my scenes a manageable length for stage or film?

• is my script/screenplay a sellable length?

• too many plots? characters?

• production notes

• ‘bathos’/melodrama/sentimentality check

• have I charted the scenes/motion of the piece?

• conventions check; do I have a rationale for breaking a convention?

• title check

• best character names?

• have I workshopped this with someone?

• has this story already been told?

B. Form

• form rationale/meaning

• form consistency

• transition check

• are line breaks ‘working’

• what do spaces, asterisks, and page breaks signify

• paragraph unity

• dialogue form/punctuation

 • proper script/screenplay form

C. Copy edit

• cut overused gerunds & adverbs

• capital use consistency

• margins

• font, consistent use of italics, bold, parentheses . . .

• repetition of certain words, phrases, sentence types

• punctuation check:

                  --comma splices

                  --comma overuse

                  --only use as serial commas, between noun clauses, to set off clauses

                  --apostrophe as possessive (Claire’s) and contraction (it’s = it is)

                  --semicolon joins independent clauses

                  --colon introduces list (: = “such as”)

                  --double dashes interrupt

                  --hyphens create compound words (well-wisher)

• grammar:

                  --avoid passive (“to be” verbs)

                  --sentence fragment

                  --run-on sentence

                  --agreement (subject-verb, singular vs plural, pronoun)                 

Tendencies in Strong Writing

1. ‘no ideas but in things’ (Pound); the sensual, the action, the concrete

2. creates tension, questions, mystery

3. doesn’t rewrite what has already been done; avoids cliché; ‘if it’s possible, why do it?’ (Stein)

4. edited, rewritten, workshopped; had a writing community read it already

5. not about something the author didn’t know; lived or researched

6. aware of form; not constructed by default

7. aware of contemporaries in the genre/style

8. takes chances; surprises; lets language loose

9. many-leveled; rich and available for multiple readings

10. clean, copyedited, and free of reading stumbles

ENGL 271         Out of Class Assignments 

All students should complete assignment #1 & #2.

1. magazine review (due January 23)

Pick any contemporary Canadian literary magazine (available in library, at Books & Co., or Spruceland News) and write a 4 page response to the creative writing in it. Discuss the overall tone of the magazine but also focus on a few specific pieces that caught your attention. Finally, relate what you are reading to your own writing.

2. imitation (due Feb 27)

Pick a title from my individualized reading list and write an imitation of its style, structure, and/or form. You may choose a specific poem or passage to emulate or you may want to try to capture the overall style of the book. The imitation should be 4 pages.  Then, in a paragraph describe the specific aspect(s) of the text you are imitating.

Choose one of these assignments to write a four page creative piece. (This assignment is due March 14.)

3. reading review

Attend a literary reading (outside class)(here or abroad) and write a response/review/evaluation of what you see and hear. Talk about the writer’s work in terms of your writing.

4. writer interview

Find a local published author (I can help you with contacts) and arrange an interview either in person or over email. Prepare astute questions based on a knowledge of their work. If the interview goes over 4 pages, submit the best four pages.

5. autobiographical piece (prose or poetry)

Express ‘who you are’ in one of the following ways:

a)     a frozen moment described without background, story, commentary, or explanation; the image or tableau should express enough

b)     a monologue/speaking voice that is an alter-ego. The voice should be talking about something mundane so it is the voice itself that conveys your inner self OR

c)     the biography of a single body part. Not a ‘guess who I am’ exercise but more a chance to think about the physicality of your history

6. collaboration

Write a piece (poem, prose, or script) in which you collaborate with another classmate. You may wish to pass the text back and forth, allocate different parts,

or structure the collaborative process in any way you wish.

7 ‘found’ writing

Base a piece (prose or poetry) on non-literary language you encounter. This can be anything: ads, signs, graffiti, manuals, recipes, etc. The piece should, in some way, reflect on the difference/sameness of literary vs non-literary writing. Some possibilities for procedure might be: a) record all language experiences within a circumscribed time frame, b) record all language experiences on a specific walk or during a specific event, c) sample from a collection of target texts (newspaper, magazine, 7-11 . . . ), or d) sample online with a specific google search and excerpting procedure.

8. response to other media

Create a piece that is a response to a piece of music or visual art. Find a way to acknowledge the piece you are responding to. Explore the ‘translation’ from one medium to another.

9. etymology

Write a piece that has as its base the etymology (history) of a word.

10. dialogue collaboration

Construct a dramatic persona with a list of personality traits and descriptors. Write a 3/4 page monologue of this character and, as they contemplate being lost in a forest, have your character and another classmate’s lost character meet and begin to have a conversation in this forest. Make sure to stay in character throughout.

10. how it could have gone . . .

Choose a target novel or short story (recent, 1990 - ) beginning (1 or 2 paragraphs) and write onto it an alternative continuation trying to maintain the original author’s style.

11. the new erotic

Write an original erotic or romance scene by a) providing a unique circumstance for the scene, or b) construct a unique dynamic between the two people. By “unique” I mean unusual, original to the point of strangeness, not necessarily “kinky” (“kinky” is often cliché).

13. historical fiction

Write a fictionalized account of a historical moment you have researched.

14. small

Write an intensely descriptive piece (be too descriptive) of a) a stone lion, b) a person’s hand, or c) anything tiny.

15. how to

Write a humourous poetic “how to” list of something mundane or simple (eg. falling asleep or getting lost).

16. Prince George

Write a poetic portrait of Prince George. See Barry McKinnon’s  Pulp/Log or The Centre.

17. online writing

Create an online poem employing hypertext links, flash animation, scroll menus, etc. See Darren Wershler-Henry’s Nicholodeon. See me before embarking on this one.

18. word art

Compose visual or concrete poems that might include drawings, cartoons, or images but must contain a textual focus. See bp Nichol.

19. spoken word

Record a sound poem or a spoken word performance. See Carnivocal CD. See me first.

20. procedural

Write a procedural poem by a) use only one kind of vowel per stanza (See Bok’s Eunoia), b) use only words with “er” in them, c) using only prepositions and one other part of speech, or c) create your own parameters.

21. biomimicry

Create a piece which uses “biomimicry”  (i.e. the imitation of a natural/biological formation or process) as a structuring device.

22. political

Write an overtly political piece about government, injustice, or power issues. You might address issues of the environment, race, gender, sexuality, disability, ageism, etc. Name names. But don’t write an essay. How can we influence the world in fiction and po