2013 Recap

We’re now on winter hiatus until February 6, 2014 so here’s a chance to take stock of what we did in our 13th session.

We spent about half our class time this fall writing on invented or short word prompts: “letterhead”, for example, and “I mailed it in my sleep,” and “open letter.”  Over the years we have fallen into a rhythm of spending 10-15 minutes on an opening prompt. People come in, sit down, grab a pen and start writing until the energy wanes. Usually this is evident and collective; the group tends to finish around the same time. This fall what we noticed is that we sometimes spent 30-40 minutes on the opening prompts, no matter how simple they are. Is this the result of working on a persistent theme (letters)? Have we learned from our year’s investigation into architecture with The Stanza Project?

 

The other half of our two hours together was spent reading outside texts. Here’s a list of most of them:

 

Daniel Simko’s Mythology/ from the Fragments

 

Elizabeth Bachinsky’s When I have the Body of a Man

 

Publisher’s rejection letter to Gertrude Stein

 

Found letter at the New Orleans Ritz

 

Found letter inside a book in Germany

 

Anne Sexton’s Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound

 

W.S. Merwin’s To Luck

 

Lewis Carroll’s Letter to Annie

 

Gillian Anderson’s Dear Me letter

 

Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad letters

 

Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

 

Czeslaw Milosz’s Dedication

 

Tess Gallagher’s Love Poem to an Illiterate Friend

 

Charles Bukowski’s 8 Count

 

Irit Shimrat’s letter to Thursdays Writing Collective from Beirut

 

Wikipedia definition of mailbox

 

Nick Flynn’s Haiku (failed)

 

This last one we looked at under special circumstances: Nick Flynn, who had popped by to write with us before, visited as a guest author. He read his poem out loud to us and answered questions about form, method, content, intention. He also led us through a writing exercise on description that turned our thinking on its side. His ideas about the subconscious and symbolism provoked a lot of after class discussion. Thanks, Nick!

 

Our winter break can seem long to those of us accustomed to a writing practice based on collectivity. We’re looking forward to resuming in February when we sink into more writing on the theme of letters and begin editing our work towards a 7th publication.

 

Happy New Year, all!