An update from our thirty-ninth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, May 28, plus some of the output published below. This week, Conner lectured on something he never had before: long sentences, which have become in today’s day and age somewhat of a dying art form. To begin, we looked at two paintings: Hieronymus Bosch’s Christ in Limbo, which we found to be dark and disturbing, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Battle Between Carnival and Lent, which we found to be more comedic and prosaic. We then spent five minutes trying to transcribe each of these two hectic paintings, analogous to long sentences, into words. After this short writing exercise, we looked at four examples of long sentences. The first came from Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. We found this sentence to display the speed potential of long sentences by eliminating punctuation and repeating the word “and.” The sentence itself was literally a run-on, enacting the running of the horses. The second sentence came from Don Quixote and was somewhat of an anthesis to McCarthy’s. It was filled with punctuation and interrupted itself, which produced a sense of self-consciousness. The third sentence came from Italian Hours by Henry James, which we were able to synthesize into one sentence: to dwell in a modern city is to live a double life. The sentence was somewhat of a hybrid between the one from All the Pretty Horses and the one from Don Quixote. The fourth and final sentence was from Blood Meridian, also by Cormac McCarthy. We found this sentence to be somehow short and long at the same time, another hybrid. Ultimately this sentence best represented the long sentence’s ability to build upon itself. The Challenge: Write a poem or story in one long sentence. Don’t worry about whether or not your story or poem makes sense. Only concern yourself with how much you can fit into the writing. Make your sentence as long as possible. See what happens. The Participants: Emma, Josh, Ellie, Fatehbir, Shiva, Chelsea, Alice, Zar, Lina, Samantha To watch all of the readings from this workshop, click here. Emma Hoff, 10(Bronx, NY) In the Room of Pharaohs, We Meet Emma Hoff, 10 There were many different countries in the world, and she, he, you, and I knew that, but we would investigate and learn about the world, the universe, the planet, and we would eventually meet in a strange place, the museum, where outside that ominous building the grasses grew tall and had also been sheared short into the gray cement and where there was a fountain, with little gray steps that dared you to climb them, because that was where the little children ran and played in their bathing suits and bare feet; the opening of doors in the night on the other side of the world and the closing of them in the morning stayed in rhythm with the constant laughter emitted by the children, and a couple of businesspeople walked along the streets which matched their prim and perfect suits, but we were not those people, we were from different places and we would all meet in a strange place, the museum, where some briefcases flinched from water droplets and some people bathed in them, where carts selling food wafted their aromas into the faces of innocent passerby and portraits and paintings and photographs created their own museum outside, and smiling faces waited in lines with a few scowling and tired children, or with the happy ones, which scampered around, excited for their turn to climb up the dull-colored steps that led to exotic rooms and echoing chambers and big displays, but we did not have children, we were from different places and we would all meet in a strange place, the museum, and bikes were scary to animals and dogs were scary to daring mountain climbers, and cars skidded along the edges of sidewalks and fences cut you and glared at you, but beyond the fences were trails and flowers and a place to run and dew-soaked hedges and bushes and the crisp air that is humid, warm, and cold, the type you want to walk in forever when you get out of a car, but we did not own any cars, we walked into different places and we would all meet in a strange place, the museum, while looking at Egyptian statues of cats.
Conner Bassett
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #38: Anaphora
An update from our thirty-eighth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, May 21, plus some of the output published below This week we focused on the literary device of anaphora, meaning a repetition of word or phrase at the beginning of successive sentences or poetic lines. From the greek, literally “a carrying back.” After reading the opening passage of A Tale of Two Cities, Walt Whitman’s “I Sing America,” and excerpts from “The Gospel of Mark,” T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” Mary Ruefle’s “I Remember, I Remember,” Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech, we were able to diagnose what anaphora brings to writing: rhythm through repetition, intensity/tension, energy, emphasis, and speed. The Challenge: Write a poem or story using anaphora. If you don’t know what phrase or word to repeat, you can an example from class: “I Remember,” “and,” “Blessed are,” or “I saw.” The Participants: Emma, Josh, Ellie, Fatehbir, Shiva, Chelsea, Alice, Zar, Lina, Samantha, Anna To watch all of the readings from this workshop, click here. Emma Hoff, 10(Bronx, NY) Things Are Like Onions Emma Hoff, 10 You see dreams as you pad down the hallway. You see the things in your head. You see monsters bragging they can best Death and monsters lounging around doing nothing. They’re not that scary, now are they? You see your face laughing on a screen. You see a newswoman doing your makeup and your hair and your clothes just so that you can see and hear yourself bray an alarm call. You see a monster that has your face. You see a replacement. You see a reason to go back and a reason to be trapped. You see a river. You see your still done-up face on the screen, drowning in it. You see yourself not being able to swim. You see people holding you down. You see yourself surviving and dying. You see the alarm call that was for you. You see regret and so much fear. Colors: the whole entire rainbow of things and nouns and words. Colors: big bulky sentences you hold up with your scratched hands. Colors: trees and then lampposts and then that big wooden pole outside your window. Colors: can you see it? Colors: your attitude that races ahead of you. Colors: teachers tell you to control yourself but when you don’t you can grow wings. Colors: your class oohing and ahhing at your talent and you suddenly at the back of the crowd. I’m reading an author. I’m reading a book. I’m reading an answer to a question I didn’t read. I’m reading the answer sheet for a test and then forgetting it. I’m reading fun. I’m reading paragraphs and paragraphing myself. I’m reading knives for slicing. I’m reading faces and rooms and body language because people tell me to. I’m reading my own writing as I’m writing it because I am reading. I’m reading buttons and codes and all that stuff. I’m reading what you never read. Why did Sally kill her fish? Why did James stick his finger in the camera when it was about to take a picture? Why did Lulu destroy the pillow? Why did Mary break the glass? Why did Archibald run? Why did Charlie barrel into so many people? Why did Ari ask so many questions? Why did Camila’s limp hand break the glass of her coffin before she was buried? Things are like bird beaks, sharp. Things are like wine bottle corks, popping out of places you never knew existed. Things are like onions. Things are like walls. Things are like freedom and restraint. Things are like things because everything is a thing and that’s just the thing. Things are like the universe and the planets: we swirl everything together.
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #37: Poetry (Revisited)
An update from our thirty-seventh Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, May 14, plus some of the output published below During every session, Conner devotes one workshop to discussing poetry—namely, how a poem functions. This week we again brought our attention to poetry, beginning with a personal anecdote about Conner’s experience watching Waiting for Godot as an 8-year-old. What Waiting for Godot taught him, and what he taught us today, is that if art (more specifically a poem) can be immediately understood, it is likely bad art. “A poem,” he said, “has an emotional importance you can’t quite articulate.” Or, as we learned from “Ars Poetica” by Arhibald Macleish, “A poem should not mean but be.” We also defined a poem as a body of writing more attentive to the “how” of language than to the “what.” In other words, a poem’s mode of writing is the content, and all poems are language about language. From this definition, we discussed two ways to write a poem: one, by focusing on what a poem shows, and two, by focusing on how a poem sounds. Over the course of this workshop we read “Pope John” by Bernadette Mayer, “In the Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound, an excerpt from T.S. Eliot’s “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “The Snow is Melting” by Kobayashi Issa, “marry at a hotel, annul ’em” by Harryette Mullen, and “Poisonous Plants of America” by Elizabeth Willis. The Challenge: Write a twenty line poem with these following prompts: begin poem with a metaphor say something specific but utterly ridiculous use at least one image for all five senses use one example of synesthesia use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place contradict something you said earlier in the poem change direction or digress from the last thing you said use one word you would not expect to see in a poem use an example of false cause and effect logic use a phrase or a piece of language you have overheard in conversation recently write a sentence using the following construction: the, adjective, concrete noun, of, abstract noun write an image in such a way that reverses its usual associative qualities make the persona or character in the poem do something they could not do in real life write a sentence in which you refer to yourself by a nickname in the third person write a sentence in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction write a noun with an unlikely adjective make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that ultimately makes no sense use a phrase from a language other than English make a nonhuman object do something human close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that echoes an image from earlier in the poem. The Participants: Nova, Emma, Josh, Ellie, Fatehbir, Shiva, Chelsea, Alice, Zar To watch all of the readings from this workshop, click here. Emma Hoff, 10(Bronx, NY) The Rose on the Dining Room Table Emma Hoff, 1o The rose was a child’s wrongly stained hand, the eager postman ate his donut while sitting in the mailbox, the lemon tasted sour, smelled sweet, looked salty, felt spicy, sounds like water, the rushing of waves is gray, Emma Catherine Hoff lives in the Bronx, New York City. The rose was a clean and fresh adult, the waves are rocking me so hard, arachnid, if you work out too much, you will wilt and become unhealthy, “the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.” The sinister dishwasher of color, the spiderweb was metal, sharp like a shark’s tooth, Randy Brown hovered upstairs, Em was a girl who had no nickname, she will find this poem on a piece of paper. The cow was bright red, honestly, I’m sure if you just go to the bakery, you’ll find your chihuahua, ya ne chitatel’, ya pisatel’, the glass jar sung its song, the rose is like a bird on a cloud.
