Thursday, May 8, 2008

Assignments

I hope you all enjoyed our guest speaker today, Ada Limon. We got to hear about her job at GQ and a little bit of her poetry (including some new stuff).

And because you don't have enough going on right now with finals and projects, I'm assigning you homework. Well, Ada assigned it, but I think we should all attempt both of these. (I'll be nice and not give you a due date.)

1. Do a letter poem (or essay)
Pick someone that you've never met but want to reach - a deceased family member, famous person - and write them a letter. Within it you have to do three things:
1.) use the lyrics of a song
2.) use one word or phrase from another language
3.) give the writer (yourself) a nickname so that it's not you
Ada said she did this one twice and got completely different poems out of it.

2. Find a piece of writing in a voice completely unlike your own. Ada assigned this for her MFA students at Columbia and people brought in medical papers and NY Times financial pages. Then, try to mimic everything about that writing - the grammar, language, etc.

Let us know what you come up with!

Also, thank you to everyone who donated cans. Nisha or I will drop them off next Wednesday at City Harvest.

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