Book Love: Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

Senior Seminar

Row 1 (l to r): Matt Anderson, Kendra Richard, Alison Koentje, Lorraine Cuddeback

Row 2 (l to r): Amy D'Aureli, Courtney Carbone, Raina Fields, Lorraine Wolters, Joseph
DelGabbo, Christopher Varlack

Not pictured: Erin O'Hara, Janet Reuter

In the past few months, the Seminar students have asked a lot of questions: practical questions about grad school and publication; about jobs and vitas; about contests and the ethics of multiple submissions. But they've also been willing to ask the big questions: what makes a book last? How do we know great writing? How do we grow as writers? Above all: how does a writer keep the faith when words or plots prove elusive? And when the rejections pour in?

I think they know.

Their college years have yielded insights and rich rewards. Among their collective honors and pursuits: the prestigious Academy of American Poets Prize; internships at local magazines; editorships of Forum and Garland (our nonfiction and literary magazines); columns in Loyola's student paper, The Greyhound; departmental essay prizes; the production of Warnings (a student-directed ‘zine); in collaboration with Dr. Robert Miola (renowned Shakespeare scholar), the production of Measure for Measure, as a text in the Aperio Series of Classics at Apprentice House) ; the production of an anthology of poetry and fiction from the Carver Center, a Baltimore school for the literary arts.

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Writers' Workshop: Prompts & Possibilities

In the novel, Falling Man, by Don DeLillo, writing becomes a vehicle to memory. The Alzheimer patients, for instance, write down interesting occurrences as a means to reconnect with their experiences as well as with themselves. The claim is still made by DeLillo, however, that "writing is sweet music up to a point. Then other things take over" (60). Write about the various forms of expression (music, photography, painting, etc) that you are attracted to when writing fails to capture an idea. How does these alternate forms take over, allowing you to connect with an idea as well as yourself?
*Chris Varlack

Foreign correspondences: Many of us have traveled abroad. For those that haven’t, there has surely been a time when you felt like you were in a foreign place outside your comfort zone. Write about a time when you encountered a different culture or environment. Did you expectations match your actual experience? What surprised you? Which beliefs or assumptions did you have to reevaluate?

*Alison Koentje

Write as if you are telling someone you have never met, someone you may not necessarily identify with, a story from your past four years at college. Just as Changez communicates with the American man without illustrating this man’s perspective throughout The Reluctant Fundamentalist, ask this person questions, acknowledge his or her responses and reactions, and work towards revealing truths about yourself and your experience without changing point of view.

*Amy D'Aureli

In Edwidge Danticat's memoir, Brother, I'm Dying, Granme Melina told stories to children concerning death or other profound matters that were meant to teach a lesson. These stories involved mystical and often religious characters (the serpent and Angel of Death for example). Write a story in a similar tradition that pertains to one of the themes of the book.

* Joe DelGabbo

In Dave Eggers' novelistic biography, What is the What, Valentino Achak Deng observes: “When I know someone is listening, and the person wants to know everything I can remember, I can bring them forward. If you have ever kept a diary of your dreams, you know how the mere recording of them each morning can bring them forth in your mind. Backward from the part you remember most, you can recreate the night’s adventures and wishes and terrors, conjuring everything from when you lay your head on the pillow.” (29)

1. Write about an experience as if you were telling another person, someone who may learn or benefit from your explanation. It can be a dream, or it can be an actual event. Following Eggers/Achak’s advice, start from the most vivid part of your memory, and try to extract every detail/feeling from that experience.

2. Take a moment to think about a memory you have that you share with many other people, as Achak shares his story with thousands of other refugees. The stories are not exactly the same, but vary slightly from person to person. You may have heard other’s accounts of the story and may have become desensitized to certain details that seem to repeat (for example, Achak says “It was not interesting to us to hear more of violence and loss). Construct your story through a series of poems or a few paragraphs. Strengthen the description of things you remember most while blending memories not so familiar with the memories of others in your situation.
*Matt Anderson

*Janet Reuter

Michael Chabon constructed the novel The Yiddish Policeman's Union with a range of stylistic tools. Take some time to explore his method. There are two options:

o Create a “what-if?" scenario. Take a moment in history, or in your personal life, and ask "what if this had happened differently?" Try to choose something where a choice was made, and imagine if the opposite had occurred. Think about how it would affect your personal life, your everyday habits, relationships, or society as a whole.

o Or write a few paragraphs with Chabon-esque dramatic metaphors. His is a fine craft between description, narrative tangent, and metaphor that keeps a reader engaged in the text. Think of a metaphor and run with it: use actions, not explanations to develop the description.

*Lorraine Cuddeback

*Courtney Carbone

In Infloresence, Sarah Hannah used her knowledge of wildflowers—a hobby she and her mother shared—as a way to enter into this memoir-in-verse. What has resulted is a rich account of her own memories and her mother’s struggle with terminal illness; the reader, in turn, receives a beautifully tragic character portrait of a woman grieving a deep loss. Using a subject or pastime most familiar to you, write a poem or a few paragraphs of prose reflecting on a loss you’ve suffered. Try to replace what would be an overzealous statement of emotion with an image pertaining to the pastime you’ve chosen, ultimately letting your personality come through to the reader without overstating or “telling” too much.

*Lorraine Wolters

Write a series of poems (long or short) about someone or something mythical, biblical or even from fantasy or science fiction. Write the poems with the conviction that Judith Hall uses in Three Trios to create translations from the "apocryphal" poet JII. Try to play with interesting and radical line breaks or to play with punctuation. Allow yourself the freedom of accepting your own "apocrypha" as reality and creating a tangible voice for it. Give your fictitious character life, as if you took a story from the news and decided to write about it.

*Kendra Richard

Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter greatly echoes the improvisational nature of jazz. Jazz is often fragmented, blending melodies and riffs that repeat in various places, sometimes random, sometimes expected. Try writing in a similar fragmented nature – blending historical events with fictional events, blurring genre lines. Use Michael Ondaatje’s method of combining myth, lists, lyrics, and your own personal voice to create erratic and thematically coherent writing.

*Raina Fields

In Strange as this Weather Has Been, Ann Pancake Appalachian folk speech, perhaps running the risk of having her characters (and their thoughts) appear too "simple." However, as you come to understand throughout the novel, the language Pancake employs allows her to express characters' emotions much more freely. Her most poetic, striking, and beautiful phrases are often complex in their simplicity: "stunned golden inside with the dream and the crave and the new of that boy"; "we learned his new body together", and "the old house contains nothing but gone." Try to write a narrative--fiction or nonfiction--in a simple voice (if you're choosing to write nonfiction, perhaps your younger self), allowing yourself liberties with grammar and other restrictions and conventions that may normally limit you. Blend parts of speech, allow yourself to ramble, and see where it takes you.

*Erin O'Hara

Book Love

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

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