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English
103: Literary Forms of Transgression
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Creative Writing Exercises |
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What is a fragment? Write about a time in your life when the pieces were more important than the whole (or visa versa). Go back through this writing and "cull" fragments (pieces of text, word units) from this writing. Designate into sections; isolate pieces from the whole; let the fragments stand alone. Prompts for The
Elegiac Activist Read the newspaper and cut out all of the stories about death and loss. Write a poem in which these stories appear as factual evidence. Read a chapter from a book in which a clear idealogical position is outlined: Marx, Trotsky, King, Arendt, King, Malcolm X. Write a poem in which you mourn or exclaim the presence of an specific political position. Identify an object to stand in for your sense of loss. Write about this object, without mentioning what it is you are mourning. Read an elegiac poem very closely in order to Identify the point of trauma, or essential sadness. Allow this to be the point at which you begin a poem. Identify something that you pass every day as a monument (to whatever). Take notes on how your monument changes day by day, for an entire week. Write a cento for a dead poet, recollaging his/her words to make him/her come alive. Take the title from an elegiac poem, go on a walk and think about the title, then come back and write. Write a letter to someone who has died. Write their response. Anthropomorphize an object. Make it speak or think in writing. Dream the end of a conflict. Write out of this experiment with an intention of efficacy. * some of these exercises are ammendments to Anne Waldman's
"Creative Writing Life" exercises (Vow to Poetry, 297-305). |
Some poetry sites, good for teaching: The Vaneigem Series and other projects by Brian Kim Stefans Fence Magazine Electronic Poetry Center Charles BernsteinŐs Experiments Bernadette MayerŐs Experiments Resources for teaching: Cybergraphia Featured Poems with exercises Academy of American Poets, Online Poetry Classroom Grammar list
Sound sites Ubuweb.com Penn Sound
Essays on Poetry |