Creative Writing
Professor Sarracino
Spring, 2004
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Office Hours: Wednesdays and Fridays, 1:30- 2:30 PM, and by
appointment. (Wenger #274) My office phone is x1237;
e-mail: sarracct@etown.edu;
Required texts: You will purchase The Art of Drowning by Billy
Collins, the current poet laureate, and The Unswept Room, by Sharon
Olds. Although the main emphasis of this course will be on your
own writing, it is important to read poetry as well. In the
course of the semester, you will select a Collins or Olds poem that you
especially like and memorize at least 10 lines.
(More on this later in the syllabus.)
Generally speaking, your own work and the work of your classmates will
comprise the main text for this course. In this connection, you
should plan on
photocopying poems almost every week-- enough copies for the whole
class. Also, everyone should purchase a notebook which will be
used exclusively as
a journal. You should also buy a manilla folder in which to keep
everything
that you write as an assignment. Throw nothing away.
Purpose of the course: The purpose of this course is to provide
you with a healthy critical environment in which to experiment with
language: to find out by trying what works and what does not work in
your writing. Our main interest will be in the process of
writing: not writing as mere recording,
but writing as a means of generating ideas, metaphors, narratives--
poems.
I will not be the sole, or even the chief, critic of your
writing. It is important for you to realize this at the
outset. Do not look to
me for “the word” on what you should do in a given writing
situation. Consider alternatives. Try them out on readers,
and pay attention to their responses. Then make your own
decisions.
Do not expect the decisions to be easy. Part of what you will
learn in this course is how to take criticism from many sources-- often
conflicting-- and then sort out for yourself what you should apply and
what you should disregard.
Try to stay focused your writing itself, on creating the best poem you
possibly can, rather than on whether readers are praising or
criticizing you. Disparagement and even praise and admiration
should be regarded with some wariness. Bear in mind, for instance, that
the preeminent American poet when Walt Whitman’s 1855 edition of Leaves
of Grass appeared and was ignored, was John Greenleaf
Whittier. Who wrote... what? Only a small handfull
of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published in her lifetime. (We
could
site many more such examples.) Let us remember as well the
immortal
words of Johann Albrechtsberger “He has never learned anything, and he
can
do nothing in decent style.” He was referring
to
one of his poorest music students, a young man named Ludwig von
Beethoven.
You will find me to be very open-minded, and I will encourage
open-mindedness in everyone in the course. There are, however,
two attitudes toward writing that are simply incompatible with a
serious committment to writing. If you identify strongly with
either, then EN 381 is not the right course for you.
The first can be expressed this way: “I write only for myself. If
what I write works for me, that’s all I really care
about.” If this is true, why bother to show us what
you’ve written? Our questions, offers of help, and suggestions
for revision will strike you as irrelevant at best, or even
annoying. Writing “for yourself” might be an effective form
of therapy, but therapy is not the chief concern of poets.
The second attitude can be expressed: “A poem means
whatever it means to a particular reader. If I get something from
a poem, then that’s what it means to me. If someone else gets
something different, then that’s what it means to them.” It is
true that a poem may have a wide range of possible meanings. And
one may apply a particular meaning to different areas of experience. In
these ways we may have divergent but equally valid readings of the same
poem. But to claim, as Humpty Dumpty does in Alice in Wonderland, that
words mean whatever we want them to mean (“When I say ‘honour’ I mean a
knock down, drag out argument”) is to disconnect language
from community and abandon it to chaos.
Because it is valuable for writers to read poetry, we will
all read poems by Collins and Olds. Everyone must memorize at
least ten lines of a poem of his or her choice, to be recited
from memory. You may not have a copy of the poem in front
of you while you recite. If your memory fails you, you can ask
for a prompt. You will be allowed a total of three such
prompts. Beyond that, you will have failed to meet the
requirements of this assignment, and it will be recorded as a missed
assignment (see below).
We will also read poems aloud. This will be an important
and essential part of class participation. Following your
reading, I may ask you to comment in general on the poem. Your
commentary might touch on the overall structure of the poem, its sound
values, three or four key words, one or two important images, its
emotional tone-- whatever you think is important, or moving.
Grading: You will be graded “P/NP.” You can expect to write
in every class meeting and also, most of the time, to bring a
duplicated
assignment with you. You will also be expected to write in your
journal
every day except weekends (i.e. Mon., Tues., Wed., Thurs., and either
Fri.,
or Sun.).
If you miss three classes without a documentable good excuse, you will
receive an “NP.” If you miss three assignments (including journal
entries, or
memorization of a poem, or any other assignment) without good reason,
you
will receive an “NP.” (Let me make very clear that each journal
entry
counts as one assignment-- and you must have five dated entries each
week.
Even if we do not discuss journal entries in class, or if we go for
weeks
without in any way working with the entries, you are still expected to
keep
up in your journal writing. You should regard your
journal-keeping as
an extended creative writing exercise in itself.) In short: if
you miss
three classes, or three assignments, or any combination of classes and
assignments
totaling three, you will receive an “NP.”
At the end of the term you will hand in a portfolio of 8 to 12 of the
poems you regard as your best. In order to finish with 8 to 12
poems that please you, you will have to write many more than that
number. If the portfolio is unacceptable, that will be sufficient
reason in itself for an “NP.”
Beyond the requirements of this course, a strong portfolio can be very
helpful to you in getting your work published, in applying for jobs in
professional writing, and in applying to graduate school.
Schedule of assignments: In the beginning of the course
(for the first five weeks) we will focus on creative writing
exercises. Later,
in the middle third of the term, the emphasis will shift to your own
inventiveness
as the source of poems: writing from journals, memories,
photographs. In the last five weeks you will be working quite
independently, refining your
work for the portfolio (due on our last class meeting).