Final Reflection on the most Excellent ENAM 170

Ah, the life of a writer. I felt the pain, suffering, and involvement with my work and this class acutely over this semester. I even had an emotional arc and a progression in my writing and style. When starting our creative writing journey, I was confident in wanting to take this class despite threats and my aged status as a junior. I want a creative writing thesis and according to the underground campus gossip network, Ganley’s creative writing class was the best. Though my sources mentioned work, they forgot to include the blood, sweat and tears involved.
My previous existence as an oblivious critical thinker was obliterated in the onslaught of creative writing exercises, consuming my life and thought. The assignments couldn’t tangibly pile up, being on a blog, but their looming presence was felt. I did the work, and I liked it. It started worrisome but okay, dipped to overwhelming in conjunction with my other classes, slowly climbed to manageable, and finished with my disregard for other classes in favor of writing poetry. And it wasn’t my time management issues that had me stressed, just the course-load from my initial bad decision to take other classes that actually gave homework. No matter what exploratory exercises were assigned, the creative writing coup d’etat on my time was worth it.
As for the writing itself, it was glorious.
I found the creative recesses of my brain that had been lying dormant since I started writing papers for English instead of poetry about rainbows and my Australian godparent’s new babies (titled, I believe, “I am knowledge”). The audiovisual creative realm, which I thought I knew from learning powerpoint and excel, made me feel even more unprepared for the intense creative focus. I didn’t know what to do, and my competency with creating a working experience was on shaky ground. When we explored the short piece of writing that we had turned into a digitalized story I found out how to get beneath my writing, what was working and that a story needs some action to keep things interesting. Saving me from being frightened from my computer was the grounding presence of the hundred word exercises. They were something I could play with, and start moving an action and memory with words. Taking pictures was fun, with nothing for a reader to go on besides my title, it was cool to think of all the emotions and thoughts of the photo I had beneath the surface that I didn’t explain, being all dark and mysterious. No one would realize the extent of my brooding over my teapot picture unless I created an explanatory plaque like in a museum. My writing took on a new tool; you don’t have to explain the entire picture.
Moving into creative non-fiction, I learned what non-fiction really was, and the license allowed with the truth. Non-fiction is truthiness, An exaggerated story that focuses on something besides the general plot movement. Everything I learned was until then unexplored territory. My favorite literary device, if you hadn’t realized, is the braided essay. A brilliant invention that I hadn’t thought of before, and employed in different ways to varying degrees of success. It wasn’t even limited to disparate subjects, a braided essay could also be blending authors, such as in the workshop at your house; it was my first real introduction to Katie, and we made an interesting story out of it. The journey of non-fiction let me focus on memories that I had no idea would pop up as source material, why I chose one memory over another. Many of the stories are half developed, but there is definitely a progression in my writing, and the short “Mental Capacity” gives a great indication about how much fun frustration I was having coming up with stories I needed to tell; “the brain stem should really impart more literate information”. I never knew that there were stories I wanted and needed to write down. That I could find stories that had to be written out to be sorted through, though they are carefully chosen and pruned so I feel comfortable with others aside from myself digesting them.
Fiction was a genre I had been waiting the entire semester to explore. This was a childhood dream, a fantasy of the great American novelist. Before I could start on exposing Tolkien as an amateur in comparison to myself, I wrote some precursors to my future undeniable genius. And fiction was a tough nut. At least with non-fiction I had a basic storyline to work off of, fiction started with nothing, and sometimes went nowhere because I didn’t know what was going on. I know the characters take us a long for the ride, but I think they were slightly lost too. Now that I think about it, several of my characters were at turning points, and they weren’t sure which way to turn. Which is the point, giving that in the situation they experience a change. It still meant that it was sometimes a little hard for myself and others to follow though. I am partial to what I came up with though, it was more workable once I got going, but I stared at a blank screen and page for long periods of time. “Animal Love” was spur of the moment and I really used discussions in class to further how I was writing, It turned out what I need for my stories is a spark of obtuse inspiration to make a good fiction. Like for “Animal Love”, reading a children’s book about having a no good, horrible, very bad day.
Poetry was a breath of fresh air. It changed the makeup of my writing, after getting longer and longer and more explanatory throughout the semester, suddenly it was short and communicating feeling through much smaller numbers of words. Poetry is the usurpation of experience into rhythms. Unlike the other genres, I did experiment with poetry as a kiddie. But I knew nothing. Nothing of why things sound right, of form, of turns and narrators and length and specific subjects. Now my grand Adventure into poetry is getting somewhere. The unit began with varying the tone to produce different feelings with the help of the tutors, and from there I found new ways to write poetry, and realized subjects can be taken from life and not comment explicitly on the biggest pictures. Easy end rhymes went out the window, though I cling to the abab structure at times. Through the exploration of poetry, I slowly incorporated more than the love of alliteration. And that critiquing amateur poetry is going to take more work than I realized, if you read great poetry, there is never anything you can point out as wrong, and who knows with the new-fangled modern poetry these days. I now can bring strength and not shame to the English sonnet, and accept poetry as more versatile than my childhood rhyme scheme would suggest.
My writing, my style and my concepts of creative writing have gone from ugly caterpillar to emerging butterfly from the transformative chrysalis of this class. Each unit was a shock and a lot to take in and create, but the progressive body of work gives a lot to work with, an entire pile of paper purely the product of my own making. Reviewing this testament to my creative powers, I would give myself an A- (feel free to suggest an upgrade). Risk for myself I give an A. I tried things that were uncomfortable and rolled with it, like my long fiction. I experimented with different forms even when I had done the required assignment in poetry, endeavored to find new narrators and voices I had only dreamed of using, from men to old men, to young children. All kinds of narrative distance were employed, and I made a mixed media story that held together. On the group side of the risk spectrum, I talked up in class and tactfully told my opinion in workshop. Embracing the group exercises, we made some awesome work, including the picture projects in class near the beginning. Effort I give an A-. For myself, I give an A because I made the time and I did everything. I worked at even as I struggled with some of the projects and put 100% into each of the pieces, laboring over them even if they didn’t come out right. Where I feel deserves a B+ is group effort. I talked in workshop, I gave my opinion, I wrote on the blog, but I could have written and said more. Too focused on finishing my own work until it was a little too late, some of my group participation on the blog faltered. Improvement only deserves an A. This class was one tough cookie, and it took a while to get the ball rolling, but what I did think up and immortalize in the beautiful medium of literature changed with each week. Taking some risks and listening and reading the assignments came a long way from talking about a road trip away from school. Quality, quality is tricky because I can’t decide how to assess myself and my work; it takes me weeks to relook at a paper I’ve handed in. That being said, I give myself an A-. What I created for the most part I liked, and what I didn’t I really stretched my neck out to do. What deserves the minus is that I haven’t been able to rework any of my pieces to a substantial degree yet. So I can see the improvement waiting, but it hasn’t yet been edited even though I have the workshop comments, so there the quality has suffered. Group quality if that means for group work, I am proud of what we accomplished, some of those stories are great, and some are hilarious. If quality as a group means did I play well with others, then yes.

Translation poem- Li Bai

下終南山遺斛斯山人宿置酒
暮從碧山下，山月隨人歸。
卻顧所來徑，蒼蒼橫翠微。
相攜及田家，童稚開荊扉。
綠竹入幽徑，青蘿拂行衣。
歡言得所憩，美酒聊共揮。
長歌吟松風，曲盡河星稀。
我醉君復樂，陶然共忘機。

http://www.legacy1.net/poems/libai_nanshan.html

Even as I sit

I observe the cars, shining silver.
Passing through, past my flowers.
Delicate nature, through a window.
Soft spring leaves, slowly turning.
Remaining still, reading people.
Everyone is contained, in themself.
Trees in gardens, watching time.

I found this poem by Li Bai, one of the most famous Chinese poets. They didn’t have cars when he was writing, but I felt my poem worked. I looked at the characters for inspiration, though I read them backwards.

Family Prose turned Poetry

The double bed can barely fit
us two. I’m young and fascinated
so I take less room and the point is to read with me
before I go to bed.
Dad leans the book
so I can see it,
I can read too but he reads for me,
the better to look at the pictures. Russian fairytales,
and the pictures are fanciful, rich, delicate and beautiful.
Of legendary horses and princes
and houses with legs,
Dad shows me and every night,
we see more.

Light blue velvet presses
and warms us as we sink slowly down
to the depths of the shallow end.
Sunlight plays
across the bottom, dancing with our undulations
to keep to the cool rough tea room.
Cross legged
and facing each other properly
and moving with the pulls of the pool,
we eat
to our hearts content,
quickly serving and stuffing
to have the full service
before our breath runs out and the surface beckons.

Eyes closed.
Floating princess in bed
waiting to hear the sound of the step.
Was that the creak?
Bang of floorboards!
There isn’t much time to catch her
before she makes it to the kitchen.
Eyes fly open princess clambers
down to knight
to catch the awesome prize.
Little steps race
down the hall,
trip on the stair, keep running up
the carpet to the wood floors that gave her away.
Caught up hugged
by the leg
how did you know I was up? Mom smiles
moment of child love excitement
I can hear you!
Walking to the kitchen I can always hear you.

“My Country”

http://www.imagesaustralia.com/mycountry.htm

A favorite poem

I’d read poetry before coming to Middlebury, I’d occasionally enjoyed it, if given in a small enough dose. My mom has given me a book of Emily Dickinson poetry, that I didn’t read until after we learned about her poetry in class, and I love it’s tight circularity, that you can learn so much from single lines and agonize over their significance. I could explore any one of her poems, like “tell the truth but tell it slant” is a personal favorite. I find that for me it is often something within a large poem that rings true, and one of my favorites is from within Anne Finch’s “The Answer (to Pope’s Impromptu)”, that I read for one of my first English classes here.

We rule the world our life’s whole race,
Men but assume that right;
First slaves to every tempting face,
Then martyrs to our spite”

This was so impressed on me because I could never imitate the precise prose of Alexander Pope, and there is so much bile directed at women in almost everything we read, but this, this directly answered what underlies the obsessive disdain the men in the books I read feel. I read it, and I had to read it again. The superiority of the male is but assumed and projected, and each love they express is not the only one. Especially the last two lines I see play out every day, though not relegated only to men. I love it because I can see the poetry live and communicate a feeling I have experienced and seen.

childhood prose

The double bed can barely fit us two. I’m young and fascinated so I take less room and the point is to read with me before I go to bed. Dad leans the book so I can see it, I can read too but he reads for me, the better to look at the pictures. Russian fairytales, and the pictures are fanciful, rich, delicate and beautiful. Of legendary horses and princes and houses with legs, Dad shows me and every night, we see more.

Light blue velvet presses and warms us as we sink slowly down to the depths of the shallow end. Sunlight plays across the bottom, dancing with our undulations to keep to the cool rough tea room. Cross legged and facing each other properly and moving with the pulls of the pool, we eat to our hearts content, quickly serving and stuffing to have the full service before our breath runs out and the surface beckons.

Eyes closed. Floating princess in bed waiting to hear the sound of the step. Was that the creak? Bang of floorboards! There isn’t much time to catch her before she makes it to the kitchen. Eyes fly open princess clambers down to knight to catch the awesome prize. Little steps race down the hall, trip on the stair, keep running up the carpet to the wood floors that gave her away. Caught up hugged by the leg how did you know I was up? Mom smiles moment of child love excitement I can hear you! Walking to the kitchen I can always hear you.

Unit 3 Review

The fiction section of this course seems fast and compressed somehow, and the squeezing of time I think can be felt in my work. The “Conscious Stream” exercise in the tutor led workshop was fiction, but that I made it into someone “running, breathing, running continuous gasping but humming” to demonstrate my immediate thought process speaks volumes as to how I feel everything and I are going. It started at the beginning of the fiction unit and just didn’t stop rolling, iniatied by my non-fiction poetry piece, “A grand adventure to nowhere,” written on my way to Mexico while literally being stuck at the airport with no sleep for two days. Thankfully, the remaining time was great, but picked up upon our return.

Fiction is bloody hard to come up with, the entire thing you have to pull out of cloth, without the frame of previous experience to give some idea of where the story is going. I attempted five different beginnings for my less than 750 fiction before I was satisfied to go beyond the first few lines with a hazy concept. From there I was able to create an actual character in my head that I could explain to Alex during our conference, but it was an arduous, extremely tortuous process. Then I got stuck at the I love you. I didn’t know what she wanted, whether she should collapse or continue with the relationship. And I did make the end undecided, but more of her thought process, more of the character’s state of mind was included. Even creating the common fantastical piece was a slow ticking to a workable creation of a world of small.

Balance is easies to maintain in the shorter fiction pieces where I can have a lot communicated in a small space without having to explicate everything that is going on, what they look like, or how they got there. I definitely tried to make things more ordered and coherent, with varying degrees of success. I had a lot of fun with stranger fictions and for some reason, my hugging Santa mini story. There is so much going on and I can think of so many things when we just have to come up with something on the spot and not worry about its capacity for longevity. Things are sluckier that way.

The five page long piece was an idea that was conceived with such high hopes amidst my debilitating cold and fell short of where I was hoping it would go. Grounded in my preteen fantasies and wanting to create something truly fictional, I went for the knight. I also wanted to experiment with changing the focus in narration, like what we read for class. The focus was too broad for five pages, and I was concentrating on a set of characters for a novel, too many for a shorter piece. I wanted the focus to be on George as the lead, and have each character give their opinion on what it meant to have a girl aspiring knight on their squad, while keeping her attitude silent, with the reader relying on the accounts of those around her. The omniscient narrator was to enable a panning of perspective when they all regrouped. Using names indicated closeness and personality, while referring to characters as he and she was my attempt to rebuke or distance them. Dialogue was a writing technique to communicate feeling and a story that I really wanted to explore, especially after Hills Like White Elephants, as I had never thought to use language in that way. The setting was wrong to provoke a true confrontation however, but I didn’t want to plagiarize the plot of my books when they instigate the antagonism and romantic possibility. I am kind of unsure but kind of like the idea of soldiers playing at being knights as a way to escape the situation they find themselves in. Some confusion on the groups part was not knowing anything about knights, and therefore did not understand the concepts of knighthood or the process to it. The experimentation during the tutor led class allowed me to at least reconceptualize the introduction to the story to make it more explanatory, and hopefully, more clear without giving everything away. Next time I will try and risk fewer things at once, experimentation still has to work. Poetry is going to be a whole new ball game.

Salt

Ok, this bus stop til the city, make up an accent and don’t break character or you’ll have to eat a lemon and salt.      Now, vollow me.

Oh my God, Helga, did yew see those slitties today?  macking all ova Hanry?  I was so mad selukilim.

Da darlinque.  Sluckie.  I fixe them for you.

the elderly lady was watching them, the bus driver had already glanced back through the mirror.  They had the bus as their stage and had already summoned an audience.

flight to mother’s

I mean, I’m not saying your making it up she said It’s just hard to believe, since all this time…

Mom.  I’ll be there .  tonight.  Not now, but soon.  k? And I even brought your sister’s husband a mini whiskey and the pretzels from the cart.

Intent on getting a drink, maybe a number before making it to his mothers, Clive entered a bar so he could endure being berated by his mother for finding the happy vocation of being a flight attendant.  No, she did not raise him wrong or not give him enough attention as a child.  Clive, in his consuming interest in a drink, didn;t notice that O’Malley’s was a heavily frequented biker bar and his conversation was not private.

Max, who had overheard the tail end of the conversation from the convenience of the next stool, was on a roll and a little pissed he lost the poker game earlier.  You a flight attendant?

You guessed it

Guys’ get a load of this…

Fiction Reading Response

Richard Ford gave me an in-depth look into writing fiction in his “Communist” piece. Ford pays particular attention to and highlights concepts of time to create an informed past. Using time progressive words, he keeps the reader grounded in the evolution of the story; “What I want to explain happened in November” and further on down the page at the start of the next paragraph, “At two o’clock on a Saturday” (530). The preoccupation with chronology gives different distances from the events as they take place, and this is the first close look I have taken of a present person commenting on a younger past while still maintaining a close young perspective.

The tone Ford uses on his character is a reflective and reserved narrator. Using a kind of relation of facts to inform the reader, he nonetheless shows an account of his feelings of the subject matter and responses he has to what is going on; “Though for myself I believed it was true, and didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything at that moment except seeing geese fly over me and shooting them down” (533). There is a looking back and acceptance of what happened, but also a qualified distance of “that moment”. The moments of strong emotionality catch you up, but they are still in the past but have a more immediate feel. Near the end, the piece distances the reader and brings them more up to the present by relating things in broader strokes, “A light can go out in the heart” (540), voicing opinions on the past rather than relating what was felt then. The reader is then held fast to the story by being related to directly and becoming involved at the end by Ford using “you” and addressing the reader; “I feel the way you feel when you are on a trestle all alone and the train is coming, and you know you have to decide” (542). He pushes the you off onto the reader, wanting them to know the importance of this pivotal piece of the past, it needed to be told.