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Category Archives: Reading and Analysis 2016
Picture Challenge
Back in 1818, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote “Ozymandias” in playful competition with his friend Horace Smith. Their sonnets seemed to be “responding independently to a conversation about the scene,” probably a description and an illustration in Richard Pococke’s A Description … Continue reading
Posted in Reading and Analysis 2016
Tagged Chris Jordan, creative writing, Midway, writing
12 Comments
Conceptual Play
Jane Martin’s Beauty takes the concept of beauty and examines its advantages and drawbacks, what it enables and disables. Pick a concept that you think needs investigation. Write a two-minute play that exposes its myths and its realities. What idea … Continue reading
The Bangkok
David Ives’ one-act The Philadelphia is a serious comedy that creates some problems and solves them. If a Philadelphia is where “you can’t get what you ask for” (79), and a Cleveland is “like death, without the advantages” (82), what … Continue reading
Posted in Reading and Analysis 2016
Tagged Bangkok, David Ives, play, The Philadelphia, writing
16 Comments
Villanelle Challenge
Write a villanelle using the two rhymes: /ɪŋ/ and /iː/.
Battles in “Defender of the Faith”
Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” takes place at a “new front” during the last months of World War II (161). Focus on a “fight” in the story and show how characters acquit themselves on that “field of battle” (166). … Continue reading
Posted in Reading and Analysis 2016
Tagged Defender of the Faith, fight, literature, Philip Roth, short story, writing
16 Comments
Stillness in “Defender of the Faith”
While there are several confrontations at Nathan Marx’s “new front” in Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith,” are there also moments of what Charles Baxter calls stillness, which he says “is simply one of the hardest psychic conditions to get … Continue reading
Posted in Reading and Analysis 2016
Tagged Charles Baxter, Defender of the Faith, literature, Philip Roth, short story, stillness, writing
12 Comments
First Grade Recollections
What do you remember most from your first year at grade school? In as few words and lines as possible and without saying what the lesson is (as in explicitly announcing “from this experience I learned that…”), convey the scene, … Continue reading
Roundtable Conversation 