Search results for creative writing 101.

The Poetry of Steve Roggenbuck

Steve Roggenbuck is the author of two poetry collections, i am like october when i am dead and DOWNLOAD HELVETICA FOR FREE.COM. Both collections feature what could be called minimalist poetry, notably short poems of only a few lines, sometimes one phrase, and both were self-published into the public domain, both in print (for purchase) and online (for free).

Here is the title poem from the former:

i am like october when i am dead

there is my hand

i am like the killers of people

Here is another poem from that book:

to my nephew on his birthday

i will choke your dad

i dont care

im not afraid

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Author Spotlight / 83 Comments
March 16th, 2011 / 12:39 pm

“Kill me outright with looks” : 139 Books I Read in 2010

MacGyver, that sexy-bellied genie show, and the show about California highway cops with the weirdly lowercase i—all of these television shows ran 139 episodes. In 2010, I read 139 books. I mean, I think I did. Most chapbooks I didn’t include in this list, even really good ones, so there’s that. Also there’s always an also, so who knows? Here are 139 books I probably read this year and what I spontaneously remember of them. As a bonus, I am sometimes unexpectedly or tangentially “mean-ish” in my notes, so if you have an idea of me as being “unable to be mean,” maybe this will change your mind (probably not): READ MORE >

Roundup / 62 Comments
January 1st, 2011 / 8:57 pm

The Center for Writers Loses Barthelme; Rick Magazine Is Born

Frederick Barthelme will soon leave The Center for Writers and the Mississippi Review, and it seems that he’s taking the Mississippi Review Online editorial staff and vision with him in order to create a new online magazine.

A few weeks ago, The Hattiesburg American ran this article about Frederick Barthelme’s leaving The Center for Writers and the Mississippi Review. There was a little bit of a spat in the comments section of that article, then Brevity picked up the news, as did the MFA blog, but that’s about all the coverage the story received (that I could tell from briefly clicking around yesterday). Then, several days ago, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a story about how Barthelme’s departure will directly affect the status of the Mississippi Review:

The Chronicle asked Barthelme via email what’s going to happen with the Review. “At present, then, there is no staff at all, and there is no one here who has actually run a magazine previously,” he responded. “The interim department chair has been talking to other English faculty (non-creative writing) about taking over the magazine.  He is also talking to the remaining CW faculty about the same thing, and it’s unclear which way the tree will fall.”

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Uncategorized / 27 Comments
July 22nd, 2010 / 10:52 am

Christine Schutt on the NYFA Chalkboard

What a happy thing to stumble upon! Christine Schutt–NOON editor, 2009 Pulitzer prize finalist, all-around badass–has written a short essay for the New York Foundation for the Arts website, about her work as a creative writing teacher at the Nightingale-Bamford school for girls. It’s a great piece about teaching, but there’s also a highly informative craft essay tucked inside it.

Another gift afforded the writer in teaching is the opportunity to read aloud to students and thus discover the flat places in stories—what material a writer might have profitably cut out. Reading aloud to a room full of students, who are often hungry and tired, has made me acutely aware of what holds a reader’s attention. I read my own work aloud to myself, of course, and pay attention to the moments I rush through and dream past, for these should be deleted.

I’m in complete agreement with Christine on this. I think reading one’s own work aloud is an essential part of the writing process. When something has been through enough drafts, I print it out and do an edit by ear, while listening to myself. The rule is: if I can’t say it in the world the way I’m hearing it said in my head, then it’s not done being written yet. And as a teaching tool, it’s incredibly useful for any kind of writing. Last semester, about mid-way through the course, I started encouraging my 101 students at Rutgers start reading their comp papers aloud to themselves, and the ones that did it improved measurably in areas like grammar, syntax, and overall coherence. What happened, I think, was that they heard with their ears what they couldn’t hear with their eyes. Once they saw the spread between what they thought they’d written and what they’d actually produced, they were in a position to start working on how to close the gap. Plus, that work to re-write sonorously forced them to do another whole revision. I think next semester everyone will be forced to do it from the get-go. But enough about me. Go read Christine’s essay.

Author Spotlight & Craft Notes / 29 Comments
July 31st, 2009 / 12:42 pm

A LONG-ASS INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS HIGGS

chris higgs was nice enough to do an interview with me at my request.  here is the interview.  it is long.

(interview after break)

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Uncategorized / 101 Comments
June 14th, 2009 / 5:39 pm

Word Spaces (13): Elizabeth Ellen

Elizabeth Ellen is the author of Before You She Was A Pitbull (Future Tense Books 2006), and has work featured in two chapbook collectives: A Peculiar Feeling Of Restlessness (Rose Metal Press 2008) and Fox Force 5 (forthcoming from Paper Hero Press). She is a Deputy Editor at Hobart and edits Short Flight/Long Drive, Hobart‘s books division. Stories/poems of hers can be found in print issues of Hobart, Sleepingfish, Keyhole, Opium, and online in Waccamaw, Dogzplot, ActionYes, Juked, and 3AM.

I wish I had met Elizabeth at AWP. I think I spoke to her once, but I never found the courage to introduce myself. I don’t really have a rational explanation for my being timid, and I realize how silly of me it was to worry about that sort of thing. I think, though, it had to do with my feeling awe, maybe, in her presence. Elizabeth Ellen’s was one of the first names I remember seeing everywhere when I began to discover that writers had made their way onto the internet.

So it makes me really happy to post Elizabeth Ellen’s word space/essay for you.

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Word Spaces / 44 Comments
June 3rd, 2009 / 4:00 pm

Reviews

Cover to Cover: NOON, Part 2

(Did you miss Part 1?) Yesterday I taught Ernest Hemingway’s very short story “A Very Short Story” to my English 101 class. It was a pretty successful venture, I think. After teaching the story twice in as many hours, I got on the 4:26 New Brunswick->Penn Station train, and read “Pet” by Deb Olin Unferth.

There may not be quite a PhD dissertation to be written on similarities between Hemingway’s and Unferth’s work, but all the same, I found myself dwelling on how my two tours through “A Very Short Story” seemed to have primed me for  “Pet,” which I heard Unferth read once but hadn’t yet myself read on the page. 

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20 Comments
April 9th, 2009 / 11:54 am

Sucks to be a Mushroom: in which we read David Orr’s essay on poetic greatness until our hangover goes away

In this weekend’s NYT books section, David Orr weighs in on the sweat-to-brow question of whether Poetic Greatness is suffering–or has already suffered–its Peak Oil moment.

In October, John Ashbery became the first poet to have an edition of his works released by the Library of America in his own lifetime. That honor says a number of things about the state of contemporary poetry — some good, some not so good — but perhaps the most important and disturbing question it raises is this: What will we do when Ashbery and his generation are gone? Because for the first time since the early 19th century, American poetry may be about to run out of greatness.

Yikes. I keep wanting to be annoyed with this essay, and when Orr is throwing out gems like “Poetry has justified itself historically by asserting that no matter how small its audience or dotty its practitioners, it remains the place one goes for the highest of High Art[,]” it’s really hard not to just smack myself in the forehead, except my head already hurts for some seriously non-poetry-related reasons, so I’m going to save all self-flagellation for the repentance session I have scheduled for later this afternoon.

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Author Spotlight & Random / 23 Comments
February 21st, 2009 / 1:11 pm