And now for a little something different . . .

We have made it halfway, we've made it through poetry, so what next?

What's next is we take everything we learned and practiced in poetry and begin applying it to prose. I know some of you are delighted to move on from poetry to get to storytelling and some of you would be happy to spend the rest of the term on poetry. Well, we'll just have to meet in the middle and surrender to the introductory nature of this course which is meant to expose you to the major principles and tenets of creative writing, including that of poetry and prose--prose including both fiction and nonfiction. (Heads up: we're covering all three of the areas in which you can choose to continue study after this class: poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. FYI I'm the one who teaches the continuing classes in creative nonfiction, so I'm super excited we're delving into that territory now.)

The way that we're bridging the two is through the flash nonfiction essay!

What is the flash nonfiction essay? It's short and intense, like a flash. More specifically, for our purposes, it's 750 words long or shorter. Nonfiction means you're not making it up, you're culling directly from experience and memory. There's a connection between the narrator (or as we might say in poetry, the speaker) of the essay and the person writing it. As for its intensity, well, every word counts, and to get more bang for your buck, so to speak, metaphors, similes, strong images and concrete details (sound familiar, from poetry?) are the building blocks of the flash essay--with the addition of tightly crafted scene and character. This is where we're wandering into the territory of storytelling, of prose, and marrying it with what we know from poetry. But we write in paragraphs and full sentences by and large and eschew line breaks. Rhythm and meter, the way the sentences flow and sound, can definitely still be in, though we don't generally use a rhyme scheme, though some internal rhyme could certainly be beneficial.

OK, enough explaining for now. How about you take a look at a few examples to illustrate what I'm talking about?

Here's Candy, by Di Seuss, who used to teach here at K. Notice how it's built on a specific memory to tell a larger story about place, class, gender. Look at how she uses carefully crafted image, including color, to shape both scene, with some dialogue, and to establish and create character. Notice also how she allows herself to shift out of the past scene into observations from her present self--this is a classic move in creative nonfiction.

In Toledo, Ohio 1977 by Sean Thomas Dougherty, memory is central, as is place, class, historical time, though this piece is through a masculine lens that also focuses to some extent on race. Notice the vivid images through detail, again, that create character--several, really, in such a short piece of writing. Look at his admirable use especially of metaphor ("We were Band-Aids ripped off fast.").

Ann Panning's Candy Cigarettes also relies on memory, but it shifts point of view with use of the "you" as if the narrator is speaking to her past self. She also shifts in time, chronologically from past to closer to present, using cigarettes as a focal point.

All of these flash essays come from Brevity magazine, which exclusively publishes the form. Here's a Q&A with its founder and editor Dinty Moore about the form. Please read it to help you better understand the form so you can try it out for yourself!

Which brings me to this week's assignments:

1. Continue your observation journal. Culling images from life is still crucial for writing prose, both fiction and nonfiction.
2. In your journal, consider returning to one of the life events you wrote down at the beginning of term in your journal as subjects you might want to write about. Spend more time free writing about one or more of them, or choose something else, and really focus on concrete images and details as well as dialogue and scene. With fiction it's OK to make things up; with nonfiction it's important to not deliberately deceive the reader.
3. DUE TUESDAY AT NOON: write your own 750-word or shorter flash nonfiction essay, perhaps based on the free writing you did for #2. Focus on using strong images, metaphor and simile, dialogue. Your language should be very efficient, which means you show a lot in very few words (in Dinty Moore's essay he references the ideas of showing and telling, and what I'm asking you to do here is SHOW more than TELL. We'll use this language in workshop and for the rest of term.) You decide the subject matter, you decide which point of view to use (first person="I", second person="you", third person="they" without "I"), you decide how many paragraphs to use, and you're welcome to use any of the above example flash essays as models, or you can spend some time poking around Brevity's current and back issues if you're really into the form and want to see more examples.

For the rest of the term we'll return to Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird as well as read some short stories from the Scribner Anthology. I'm giving you the choice of writing fiction or nonfiction after this week, so there's a significant element of choice. And we'll continue to talk about the similarities and differences between them, the chief difference being that in fiction you get to make everything up (though it undoubtedly will be based on what you have perceived in your life) and in nonfiction you may not deliberately deceive your reader. There are also some different techniques we'll explore, though they both rely on scene, dialogue, character development, and structure (plot for fiction, not necessarily the same kind of plot for nonfiction)--in addition to all the careful tropes and ways we pay attention to shaping language from poetry.

It'll be fun. I promise.

Also, I'm looking forward to reading your midterm portfolios ASAP and getting back to you with feedback!

It's midterm already?!?

Congratulations! You've made it almost halfway through your first (and let's hope last) distance-learning quarter at K. For this class, that means your next assignment is your midterm portfolio. But before we get too far into that, there's also some reading to help you prepare for revision.

From The Poet's Companion, please read "The Energy of Revision" (186-192), and pay particular attention to the very practical numbered tips on how to tackle a poem again as well as Jane Hirschfield's "Possible Questions to Ask of Your Poem in Revision" to help you revise your poems. Take heed Addonizio and Laux's suggestions about what revision is: "a re-visioning of the poem's potential and the strategies it has used so far" (187). Remember that "the more willing you are to let go of your own words, to demand more of your language and push your limits to get to something better, the more likely it is that you will eventually produce a worthwhile poem" (188).

Okay. Now to the nitty gritty. Here's what belongs in your midterm portfolio, due 5th week Thursday, April 30, emailed to me at heinritz@kzoo.edu by noon:

1. Revisions of the three poems you've submitted for workshop: Where I'm From, Color, and your choice from the four journal exercises due this week;
2. Your journal up until this point, including exercises offered as assignments on the blog (writing meditation, observations, etc.);
3. Process Writing (see below).

Process Writing
Along with each poem, include a paragraph or two about how you approached the poem, what you learned in workshop, how and why you decided what to change and what to keep. Write about your process for how you decided what to write about, how you felt about how it was working, and how you revised it. In addition, write a more global "process writing" essay about your writing overall for this course thus far. What have been your challenges and your breakthroughs; what have you enjoyed; what have you struggled with; most importantly, what have you learned about yourself as a writer through the reading, writing, workshopping, and revising you've done so far in this course? About 250-500 words minimum, but no upper limit. Think of this essay as your opportunity to think about the thinking and work in poetry that you've done over the last month--with benign acceptance and a spirit of discovery--a sort of writing you do for yourself, but that I'll be reading, too.

Please put all the revised poems with their accompanying process writings in a single WORD document (including the more global process writing at the end) and the journal in a single WORD document as attachments. If you need an extension, please ask by Monday of 5th week, proposing how much additional time you would like and why.

Make sense? Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll do my best to clarify. Revision and thinking through your writing process is a hugely important part of the creative process, and I hope you find it as useful and enjoyable as I do!

Making Music with Poetry

This week we're moving from a general focus on the carnal, the sensory details and ways we make them come alive in writing, to a stronger emphasis on how we use form, rhythm, rhyme, sound, and repetition to evoke in language. In other words, how we make music with poetry.

Please read from The Poet's Companion:
The Music of the Line (104-114)
Stop Making Sense (129-137)
Meter, Rhyme, and Form (138-150)
Repetition, Rhythm, and Blues (151-160)

The Music of the Line takes us through some of the building blocks of poems: line lengths, line breaks, and stanzas. Begin noticing the effects of each. What do long lines do? How do shorter lines both effect and affect meaning? When you break a line, why do you choose to do it where you do? Is it deliberately to emphasize the word on which you end or to break the sentence where it forces the reader to pause where she normally wouldn't? Or are you simply looking at length? Clusters of lines together, or stanzas, are like little rooms within the house of your poem ("stanza" is the Italian word for "room" as in a room in house). Are you constructing them for deliberate purposes as you would rooms that fit in a house?

Stop Making Sense gives us permission to play and dream with language, so that we may create "something ineffable, something beautiful and even beyond words" (129). Poets have historically made language itself the subject of their poems, the center of attention, and sometimes in so doing, the poems themselves aren't linear or logical. They invite the reader more into the experience of language as creator of meaning, and ask that you start to familiarize yourselves with this notion that poetry as an experience in language is always co-created (133). You're starting to see how this works, no doubt, in the feedback you're seeing in workshop.

Meter, Rhyme, and Form asks us to read poems aloud. Have you been doing that with your own work and that of your workshop members? For most of us it's the only way to get acquainted with the sounds of language, including the formal elements of meter, which is organized rhythm, and rhyme, which is a kind of echo, or repetition (140). They argue that these elements, in other words the way you say something, can be as crucial as what you are saying (143). And it's fun to have more tools. So, familiarize yourself with what we mean by "foot" and "feet" in poetry as well as their names (141-142), so you know what we're talking about when we say "scansion" as well as the various sonnet forms. But don't sweat it. There won't be a quiz. Though you may want to make use of these tools in your crafting and reading of poems.

Repetition, Rhythm, and Blues takes repetition and rhythm to a place most of us have some familiarity with if we've listened to any American popular music from the 20th Century: The Blues. We're introduced to the ideas of "repetend," or "the irregular repetition of a word or phrase at various places throughout a poem; "anaphora," which "is the repetition of a word or group of words at the beginnings of lines" (152),and "caesura," which is a pause in the middle of a line, perhaps from a comma or a period (156).

For this week's assignments, write the following in your journal:

*observations (the practice begun last week--see previous blog post for a refresher).
*#1 on p. 135--record a dream right after you have it.
*#12 on p. 137--jot down scraps of overheard conversation (this can be live in person, or from the radio or tv if you're alone).
*#1 on p. 159--write a poem that uses anaphora.
*#4 on p. 160--write a short poem that begins and ends with the same line.

For the poem you'll turn in to workshop next Tuesday:
choose to expand, flesh out, or otherwise keep working on one of the previous journal exercises. Flex your knowledge of and play with line breaks, stanzas, rhyme, meter, repetition, and overall rhythm. Yes, you have more freedom this week with your assignment. How does that make you feel? Excited? Afraid? If you feel you'd like more structure, you're welcome to try out a sonnet. Or use the other poems in the text as models and inspiration. You decide what you need. And if you need help, let me know.

And please have a look and listen to this four-minute video with Poet Laureate Joy Harjo in which she reads her poem "Perhaps The World Ends Here" and reflects on her childhood, the way the kitchen table unites us and the renewed connections she hopes will emerge out of this difficult time.

Images and Similes and Metaphors, oh my!

This week we're getting up close and personal with what we perceive as well as translating sensory details in a way that invites readers to experience things the way you do. This is the alchemy of poetry: with language, you invite a reader to see the world through you in a visceral way. The result: empathy. All of a sudden we gain access to another person's ways of perception and experience.

But first, a slight diversion.

Listen to George Saunders' advice to his graduate creative writing students in upstate New York when the pandemic became real. It's beautiful, it's sound, and it's good. Consider keeping a daily diary right now if you haven't already. Write your experience as you're having it, no matter how mundane or how outlandish it may seem. As Saunders reminds us, people in 50 years will be reading our accounts of this time in order to understand it. If we don't record it, they won't know this moment in history. Generations to come within your own families need to know how you're living and making it through right now. And even if no one ever reads your diary, the act of writing it will be therapeutic. I promise. Get it out. (This can be part of what you turn in to me as part of your midterm and final or not. You decide who gets to read whatever you write. Always.)

And this brings us back to image, sensory details, and a powerful writing prompt and practice I'd like to share with you. I call it Writing Meditation, though it's really an exercise in mindfulness. Here's what you do:

1. Set a timer for 10 minutes.
2. Drop into the present moment. Notice what you are perceiving RIGHT NOW, in this moment, through all five senses.
3. Capture it in words. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? What do you feel? What do you taste? Write it down in as much vivid detail as you can.
4. Notice when your mind begins to shift into the past or the future. When it does, bring it back to the present moment by beginning your next sentence with "Right now . . . ".
5. When your timer goes off and 10 minutes are up, read what you've written with openness and curiosity, with a spirit of benign acceptance of what emerged, and without judgment.
6. Underline or otherwise note any sentences or words that feel important or meaningful.
7. Allow yourself to keep writing if you so desire.

This is the way I begin every writing session. It brings me into the present moment and, over time, gives me insight into my state of mind, themes I'm working with but otherwise wouldn't be conscious of, and allows me to notice. It develops a habit of sensing what is, which in itself invites a habit of acceptance. It also develops the skill of close-up perception, which is crucial for a poet.

Please do this Writing Meditation at least three times this week and record it in your journal.

In addition, read The Poet's Companion sections titled "Images" (84-93) and "Simile and Metaphor" (94-103). Also, please read "A Grammatical Excursion" (171-185), especially if you know you have more to learn and master in terms of grammar.

Notice the authors' suggestion that image and memory are inextricably linked and therein lies the magic of poetry, the ability to produce a reality so real it is like being alive twice (86).

Notice also how different the example poems are from one another. T.R. Hummer's "Where You Go When She Sleeps" emerges from a feeling, and makes use of the you in terms of point of view; it's the speaker speaking to himself. Gary Soto's "Oranges," though also about love, is more narrative in form and relies on memory. It tells a story while still relying heavily on visual image, especially color. Marie Howe's "How Many Times" brings to life a murky memory but relyies on sound more than sight--even the absence of sound is important.

Note how each poet's choices evokes meaning in the poem.

Begin jotting down images you notice in your day-to-day life. Look at #2 in the Ideas for Writing section at the end of the Images chapter. Document the sights, sounds, tastes, smells and sensations of your life in your journal. Five per week minimum. We'll call this your Observation Journal within your Journal to turn in. I'll look for 20 observation in list form by midterm. This can be the a frantic squirrel you see out your window, the quality of light illuminating your hand and coffee cup in the morning, or the cold floor on your feet when you get out of bed in the middle of the night. You are limited only by your five senses and your awareness. But the effect of having to notice and write down sensory details is it will start a habit. This, my friends, is a writer's habit. The notes on my phone are full of these things I've captured over years. And yes, I've used some of them in writing I've published. This is how it works, so don't delay in getting started!

Images are inextricable from similes and metaphors. "Good metaphors and similes make connections that deepen, expand, and energize; they stimulate the imagination" (94) and "Strong similes and metaphors are integral to a poem's meaning; they aren't clever comparisons tacked on. Figurative language is a way to deepen and intensify the themes and concerns of your work" (96).

Also for your journal this week, please do #1 in Ideas for Writing at the end of the Simile and Metaphor chapter.

For your poem to turn in to your group for workshop 3rd week Tuesday, write a color poem. Using Gary Soto's "Oranges" as a model, consider how colors are used to express mood and emotion. Commonly, we may think of the following associations:
• Red: anger, love, emotionally intense
• Orange: warmth, happiness
• Yellow: sun, cheerful, optimistic
• Green: nature, calming
• Blue: color of the sky and ocean, peaceful, sadness
• Purple: royalty, rare

Write a poem that focuses on a single color. Use simile and metaphor. Evoke vivid images, not necessarily just visual ones. Your poem can be narrative or not, but it should evoke a larger meaning through language.

OK, I've offered a lot here. I hope you're enjoying the opportunity to flex your creative muscles right now. Write your way through what's right in front of you this week, and I look forward to reading your "Where I'm From Poems". Remember to respond to each of the poems in your workshop group by Thursday at noon. Email me with questions!

Week Two

I hope everyone is hanging in there!

Today we begin our first workshops. Please review my previous post about workshop etiquette, but know the guidelines are simple. Offer positive feedback, something specific about what you think is working really well; and offer something constructive, an honest question or response of inquiry about the poem, maybe an image that isn't clear to you or some repetition that is overkill or a detail that doesn't quite make sense. The best workshop is one that gives the writer something specific to work with as she/he/they go back into the work to make it stronger. It's hard for us to know what's working in a piece of writing until we have readers let us know. That is the gift of workshop.

In order that we streamline the turn-in process, I've set up a Microsoft Team for our class and added folders where each group can upload their poems. Each of you, sometime before Thursday at noon, please read each of your group members' poems, and upload a document into that same folder where your poems are with your feedback. Clearly title your files, please, so they're easy to find. For the poem you wrote, something like MarinH_WhereImFrom would do. Whereas for my feedback, something like Mattd_whereimfrom_marinhfeedback would work nicely.

I'm certain there are more sophisticated ways for us to begin using our Microsoft Team site, but honestly, I'm still figuring it out. I absolutely welcome insights and suggestions from any of you who have more experience with it.

Look for another blog post by noon with next week's assignments!