Devil's Kitchen Schedule

Thursday, Oct. 25

• 8-9 p.m. – Student Center Auditorium – Readings by Mary Jo Firth Gillett and Wendy Rawlings

Gillett's collection of poems, "Soluble Fish," published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2007, won the 2006 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Gillett teaches poetry workshops for Springfed Arts-Metro Detroit Writers and co-edited the anthology, "Mona Poetica." Her poetry appears in publications such as the Gettysburg Review, Southern Review, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Green Mountain Review and in the anthology "New Poems from the Third Coast: Contemporary Michigan Poets."

Rawlings won the Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction with her collection, "Come Back Irish" and won the 2007 Michigan Literary Award for her novel, "The Agnostics." Her essays and stories also appear in The Atlantic Monthly, Agni, Tin House, Fourth Genre and Cincinnati Review. She is part of the graduate faculty in creative writing at the University of Alabama.

• 9-10 p.m. – Festival Reception, J.W. Corker Lounge in the SIUC Student Center

Friday, Oct. 26

• 10-10:50 a.m. – Student Center Auditorium – Poetry Panel featuring Betty Adcock, Mary Jo Firth Gillett, Patricia Spears Jones, James Kimbrell and Simone Muench

Adcock teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. A Guggenheim Fellow for 2002-2003, she was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at North Carolina State University in 2003. Her poetry books include the award-winning "Intervale: New and Selected Poems," and "Walking Out," "Nettles," "Beholdings," and "The Difficult Wheel."

Jones has two poetry collections, including "Femme du Monde," which was named one of the Top Ten Poetry Collections of 2006 by www.About.com's Poetry Forum. She is part of the downtown New York City poetry and theater scenes, and works with the experimental Mabou Mines theater collective, for which she wrote "Song for New York." She writes a column for Calabar Magazine and teaches workshops.

Kimbrell's poetry collection, "My Psychic," won the 2007 Devil's Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry. His other works include the collection, "The Gatehouse Heaven," co-translation of a collection of modern Korean poetry and poems appearing in "The Bread Loaf Anthology of New American Poets," "American Poetry: The Next Generation" and "Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century." He is an associate professor of creative writing at Florida State University.

Muench won awards for her first two books of poems. "The Air Lost in Breathing," her first book, won the Marianne Moore Prize. Her second, "Lampblack and Ash," won the Kathryn A. Morton Prize for Poetry and was an editor's choice for the "New York Times Book Reivew." She has two chapbooks and her poems appear in such publications as Iowa Review, Denver Quarterly, Luna and Swink as well as the anthology "The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for a New Century." She directs the writing program at Lewis University, teaching both creative writing and film studies. She is on the advisory board for Switchback Books and is an editor for Sharkforum.

• 11-11:50 a.m. – Student Center Auditorium – Fiction Panel featuring Kerry Neville Bakken, Dale Ray Phillips and Wendy Rawlings

Bakken's collection of short stories, "Necessary Lies," is the 2007 Devil's Kitchen Reading Award in Prose winner. An assistant professor of English at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, she has stories in Glimmer Train, Story Quarterly and Arts and Letters.

Phillips holds the Watkins Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at Murray State University. His stories appear in his collection, "My People's Waltz," and in publications including The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Ploughshares, Best American Short Stories, and New Stories From the South: The Year's Best.

• 2-3 p.m. – Student Center Auditorium – Readings by Simone Muench and Betty Adcock

• 3:15-4:30 p.m. – Old Main Lounge, Student Center – Festival readers' reception and book signing

• 5-6 p.m. – Student Center Auditorium – Readings by James Kimbrell and Kerry Neville Bakken

Saturday, Oct. 27

• 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m. – Student Center Auditorium – Readings from the new anthology "Surreal South." Readings include several of the authors and the editors, Laura Benedict and Pinckney Benedict.

• 2-3 p.m. – Student Center Auditorium – Readings by Dale Ray Phillips and Patricia Spears Jones

Submissions

I want to encourage all of you to submit to the undergraduate literary magazine Grassroots. We need submissions. The deadline is October 31st. You can submit in poetry, fiction, nonfiction and visual arts. I am going to attach the link at the bottom of this post to Grassroots on Facebook. If you get on there then you will be able to view the submission guidelines. All voting of works to be published is anonymous. Please submit. If you don't have a facebook account you will need to make one in order to view this page.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=535181558
You can submit works to: grassrootsmag@gmail.com please submit them as a Microsoft Word attachment. If you have any questions about submitting send them an e-mail and they will let you know how to get it to them.
Make sure you attach the following on a separate page
Name
Title of Work
Email
Phone Number
You may submit as many pieces as you would like and the prose pieces must be 7,000 words or less.
Again, please submit. It's worth a shot!

hyphen

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/?refid=6

This poet really likes to use hyphens. I still don't understand using hyphens. To me it draws out the space and makes it sound weird. What is you take on it?

Yeah...

Okay, I'm going to preface this by letting you know I'm a star wars fan, so this is hilarious to me.

http://mesajarjar.blogspot.com/

It doesn't follow the movie's storyline at all, but its a really funny look at the galaxy from Jar Jar's eyes. Seems to be a great example of dialect and being able to write from a characters point of view. Anyway, Jar-jar haters and lovers alike should enjoy this. :D

Cosmology

After reading the poem Cosmology I would have to a agree with a general statement that Ms. Bell made in class about modern poetry. The poem seems to be well written which makes me like it, but like so many modern poems I'm not sure I grasped the whole meaning. I feel like the music and word choice were good, the form was interesting, but the story seems to lack clarity. However this could work for or against the poem. I like the phrase drowsy rain, a use of personification. I also like the simile used in "like marionettes.." This provides a good imagery. The form is interesting, in that the author chooses to capitalize the first word of the line only occassionally, this keeps it from being predictable. Another element that is particularlly nice is the repitition of words like beneath, and under throughout the poem it makes the reader feel like we keep getting deeper and deeper into the poets psyche. The words clay, shale , slate sound nice together with the repitition of the long a sound. Also the repeating reference to clouds, ghosts, and hovering is nice for unity.
-Nathan

Poem

I meant to post this Tuesday but I didn't get a chance.

Assignment: Read Cosmology and comment about the elements of craft within the poem. And I do not want any comments about MEANING.

Decipher

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16430

Here is a poem by Dylan Thomas that I thought was very interesting. I'm putting my comment in a cynical way. I have never been really big into poetry because a lot of the time I'm not really sure what they're talking about. I start to lose myself in the words and before I notice I'm so far into confusion.

My question is this, What is the best way to go around deciphering the more obscure poems?

Hopefully some other students in the class were secretly thinking this theirself and it could help not only me.

Schedule

1: TH / 23 AUG - Poetry: Craft

2: TU / 28 AUG – Poet's Companion / Craft

TH / 30 AUG – Poet's Companion / Craft / In-Class Exercises

3: TU / 04 SEP – Workshop Etiquette

TH / 06 SEP – WORKSHOP 1

4: TU / 11 SEP – Legitimate Dangers

TH / 13 SEP – WORKSHOP 2

5: TU / 18 SEP – Jack Gilbert et al.

TH / 20 SEP – WORKSHOP 3

6: TU / 25 SEP – Forms

TH / 27 SEP – WORKSHOP 4

7: TU / 2 OCT – Fiction: Character / 10,000 Story Ideas

TH / 4 OCT – Structure / OSC's Characters and Viewpoint

8: TU / 9 OCT - OSC's Characters and Viewpoint

TH / 11 OCT – Beginnings / Nancy Kress

9: TU / 16 OCT – Middles & Ends / Nancy Kress

TH / 18 OCT – Dialogue

10: TU / 23 OCT – Stories TBA

TH / 25 OCT – In-class Exercises

11: TU / 30 OCT – Stories TBA

TH / 1 NOV – WORKSHOP 5

12: TU / 6 NOV – Stories TBA

TH / 8 NOV – WORKSHOP 6

13: TU / 13 NOV – Stories TBA

TH / 15 NOV – WORKSHOP 7

14: TU / 20 NOV – Stories TBA

TH / 22 NOV – NO CLASS / THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY

15: TU / 27 NOV – TBA

TH / 29 NOV - WORKSHOP 8

16: TU / 4 DEC – PORTFOLIO & PUBLISHING

TH / 6 DEC – PORTFOLIO & PUBLISHING

New Class

As I invite the current 119 students, I will be removing those students who were authors during the summer. For those former students, if you would like to continue to post please e-mail me so I can re-add you as an author.

Writing/Reader Group

If anyone is interested in meeting once a month or so to workshop writings and share readings, let's organize before the final. This class is so wonderfully diverse in backgrounds and interests...and we actually have a comraderie. I think that some sort of continued contact would be a good thing. It would be nice to figure out if others want to meet as well...and figure out what that would look like. Where? When? etc.

Harry Potter

This article is just too funny when you consider that A.) This is a top news story on Yahoo and B.) It's a book

Copies of Harry Potter Leaked

Star People

I found two things of interest when I was researching my past-life regression experience. Brad and Francie Steiger had a book out entitled Star People. It was Francie that first approached me in an audience of about 300 (my memory of it from 1980 or so at the Palmer Hotel in Chicago)and told me that I was indeed a star person...so I guess we should believe her because she literally wrote the book. Sarcasm aside...it was at a seminar organized and run by Dick Sutphen and his then wife Trina or Trini...again, faulty memory. I'll have to look it up again. But when I googled Dick I found this great piece...enough fodder for some really great creative pieces. Go to www.holysmoke.org/wb/wb0315.htm which should link up to a Sutphen article titled "The Battle for your Mind"...Such a blurry area between scifi and paranormal realities! Then of course after so many philosophy courses my litmus test for what is real has altered from the mainstream considerably.

Recommended Reading

You should make a concerted effort to read as many of these as possible, reading actively for things such as POV, story structure, character development, etc.

Online Genre Short Stories:

- Four Short Novels

- Lydia's Body by Vylar Kaftan

- The Other Amazon by Jenny Davidson

- Magnificent Pigs by Cat Rambo

- Fourteen Experiments in Postal Delivery by John Schoffstall

- Start With Color by Bill Kte'pi

- You Can Walk on the Moon if the Mood's Right by Bill Kte'pi

- 2:30 by Leslie What

- The Jenna Set by Daniel Kaysen

McSweeny's Internet Tendency Stories (very short):

- AN OPEN LETTER OF APOLOGY TO THE COUNTRY OF ICELAND

- ROUNDER CHARACTERS IN NO TIME FLAT!

- EIGHT NEW ENTRIES IN THE 2007 WRITER'S MARKET GUIDE TO LITERARY JOURNALS.

- WHAT I WOULD BE THINKING ABOUT IF I WERE BILLY JOEL DRIVING TOWARD A HOLIDAY PARTY WHERE I KNEW THERE WAS GOING TO BE A PIANO.

- ON BEING A CANDIDATE TO TAKE OVER A LATE-NIGHT NETWORK TALK SHOW.

- "HAVE YOU EVER EATEN A BABY? "

- REJECTED AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS SUBMISSIONS, AS LOGGED BY JUNIOR PRODUCTION ASSISTANT INTERN KENNETH POLK.

- I WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGIZE TO THE CLASS.

- I'M STARTING TO SUSPECT THAT A DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS PLAYER NAMED "ELGDORF THE MAGE" IS ABUSING HIS WIKIPEDIA EDITORIAL PRIVILEGES.

Online "Literary" Short Stories:

- Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood

- She Wasn't Soft by T.C. Boyle

- Guts by Chuck Palahniuk (**NB: I'm not quite sure if I can count this as literary, but there's no better place for it... but it's VERY graphic--don't read if you have a weak stomach)

- Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff

- A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor

- Where are you Going? Where have you Been? by Joyce Carol Oates

Found Poetry

The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld

Reminder: No class on Thursday or Friday

Young Writers

In exchange for getting a day off from class, you will be required to attend at least one of these readings.

Wednesday: June 27: Faculty Reading, Harry T. Moore Auditorium (Faner 1326), 8PM: Pinckney Benedict

Pinckney Benedict joined the faculty at SIUC in 2006. He is the author of two collections of stories — Town Smokes and The Wrecking Yard — and Dogs of God, a novel. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Esquire, StoryQuarterly, Zoetrope: All-Story, Best New Stories from South, The O. Henry Award Collection, the Pushcart Prize series, and The Oxford Book of American Short Stories.

Thursday, June 28, Faner 1005, 4PM

Graduate Student Reading with MFA students Nathan Beck (fiction), Sara Burge (poetry), Rachna Sheth (fiction) and Renee Evans (fiction)

Thursday, June 28, Faner 1326 (Moore Aud), 8PM

Graduate Student/Faculty Reading with MFA students Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum (poetry), John Flaherty (fiction), Kerry James Evans (poetry) and YWW Director and Associate Professor of English Allison Joseph

Friday, June 29, Faner 1326 (Moore Aud.) 4 PM

Graduate Student Reading with MFA students Josh Woods (fiction), Helena Bell (poetry), Tracy Conerton (poetry), Mary Keck (fiction)

Friday, June 29, Faner 1326 (Moore Aud.) 8PM: Curtis L. Crisler

Curtis L. Crisler is a graduate of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne and of the MFA Program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. During Curtis's time in Carbondale, he served as Assistant Director of the Young Writers Workshop. His first book of poems, Tough Boy Sonatas, was published this year by Front Street Press. He currently teaches in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

REMINDER

The first Writer's Notebook check will be on Monday. I will be taking the journals overnight so you will be reprieved of your writing obligation for that day.

You should have 50 drafts of poetry--or enough poetry (long poems, etc) to represent half an hour to an hour's work every day.

~Ms. Bell

10 Things Teenagers Should Know About Writing

Technically I don't think any or many of yall are teenagers anymore, but John Scalzi always has good writing advice:

10 Things

Response to "your writing sucks" arguments: On Teens

Legitimate Dangers

My favorite poem from Legitimate Dangers is “Kelly, Ringling Bros. Oldest Elephant, Goes on Rampage” by Joel Brouwer. This poem appeals to my tastes as it is very descriptive and uses interesting language to paint the picture of the cruel treatment and redundancy that makes up Kelly the elephant’s life. For instance, the lines “squirming toddler cargo/ glopping Sno-Cone on her back, cramped freight cars,/ stale hay, the vets incessant vitamin shots…” illustrate Kelly’s situation while exhibiting great sound and displaying the wonderful alliteration found throughout the poem. I am no poetry expert by any means and have read very little poetry in my life. Within the last week and a half, however, I have realized that I am drawn towards this type of poetry which paints a very descriptive picture and uses a specific instance to ask questions and exhibit themes. This is opposed to the poetry like “Poem to Line My Casket with, Ramona” by Josh Bell, which, although I am sure is a great piece of literature, made no sense to me at all. With Brouwer’s poem I knew exactly what the poem was about right from the start which allowed me to concentrate on the themes and the clever use of language such as “her four tamed tons/ and burst in her meaty head” or my favorite quotation “Nothing remarkable/ about shotgun triggers of train tickets” which is used to explain the ease with which humans can change their situation in the world. Anyone who skipped this poem should definitely give a try and pay particular attention to the colorful language contrasted by the final deadpan line “They shot her forty times before she died.” I really love this poem.

Writer's Workshop #1 (6-15)

Since time was an issue for today's workshop, I wanted to use this as an option to continue discussion.

In terms of my poem, the second to last selection that started as "higher points roll off his tongue", I wanted to explain the meaning of it since I was not able to do so in class. For those that gave their viewpoint on the meaning, you were on the right track. If you look at the fifth stanza, last line this the only place where "him" has been capitalized. This is making reference to God. The other "him"s refer to the character that I will try to explain.

The poem is a story a small town preacher that originates in a small church. The preacher begins to understand that he has a higher calling outside of this church. He begins to travel from small town to small town to spread his message. At this time the only money he takes for himself is the money that is necessary (for gas, food, lodging, etc...). Over the course of his touring the preacher begins to grow in popularity and makes a name for himself. He can be viewed similar to the televangelists that fill large arenas or sell numerous souvenirs. There are now enough people in the crowd to provide the preacher with more financial opportunties. The preacher begins to use the excess money on material items for himself, and not to help the needy or the less-fortunate. The preacher has gone against the teachings of Christianity and the purpose that brought him into religion. Greed has taken over the small town preacher that is now more focused on excess than his purpose. The last line in the poem means that God did not let his son die on Earth so that people can make money off of his son's name.


I enjoyed hearing the poems and I thank everyone for the comments in class today. I look forward to reading the poems that will come over time.

NASA

This has nothing to do with writing, but it's really cool nonetheless. And it makes me want to buy a baby monitor.

If you're looking for some poetry...

Verse Daily Archives

Recommended Reading

Since I didn't write down the list I put on the board this morning, I'll have to compose this list of personal favorites. Feel free to add to this list with your own recommendations in the comments.

Poets:

Jack Gilbert
John Ashberry
Matthea Harvey
e.e.cummings
Sharon Olds
Ann Carson
Donald Platt
James Kimbrell

Novels:

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
A Moveable Feast by Earnest Hemmingway
Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Dune by Frank Herbert
House of the Spirits by Isabelle Allende
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosely
The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Under my Roof by Nick Mamatas

Interesting Book/Film Combinations:

The Princess Bride: Book and Screenplay by William Goldman
The Color Purple: Book by Alice Walker Screenplay by Menno Meyjes
The Devil Wears Prada: Book by Lauren Weisberger Screenplay by Aline McKenna
Starship Troopers: Book by Robert Heinlein Screenplay by Edward Neumeier

Books on Writing:

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Storyteller by Kate Wilhelm

Welcome

This is the group blog for Ms. Bell's English 119 course.