Rhetorical Analyses of Publication Venues + process narratives

We spent the first part of class going through the publication venues and creating a class list of who would present on which venue.

Just to make this clear: these will be informal presentations.  I am not looking for a powerpoint and handouts.  Rather: you will post an analysis of your chosen publication venue on your blog.  This analysis will hit the points on the assignment sheet.  Basically, your writing on the blog should include three things:

1.  The title of your journal with an embedded link so your classmates can click around the site as you talk.

2. A discussion of the audience, purpose, form expectations for CNF essays published in you journal.  You do not need to write plot summaries of all the essays you read.  Rather, you should give a kind of summary of the features of the essays you read (like we did in class 11.13 for Brevity).  Characterize the formal features (there may be several different forms, but give your assessment of what the "preferred" forms are), the voice within the narratives, the subject matter, the "ideology" (belief systems these essays seem to support); their "aesthetic"=> and so on (the features listed on the handout). 

3. A list of "nuts & bolts" kinds of information which someone interested in submitting to your journal will need to know (again, this list is on the handout).  In addition to talking through these requirements (and writing them on your blog), it would be a good idea to embed links for classmates - so they can go directly to the pages/sections where this information is available.

About choosing a journal to revue:  Choose a journal which has a robust interest in publishing CNF.  If the journal primarily publishes fiction or poetry and only one or two pieces of CNF per issue/per year, you should probably choose a different venue. 

List so far (if you want to change your venue - send me an email and I will revise).

Alessia   Not yet decided

Angelica  Better Magazine

Courtney  South Loup Review

Danielle Hippocampus Magazine

Dave Riverteeth

Filip Fourth Genre

Kristen Switchback

Kristi The Brooklyner

Maria Bellingham Review

Nikki Blue Mesa

Rafael   Arcadia

Robert WLA Journal

Sara Narrative Magazine

Tobey Sweet

 

We spent the last part of class discussing the process narratives.  As I said, you will not be required to write a process narrative essay - just a process narrative blog post.  We did not get to pull together your groups' thoughts about what these narratives do (you were asked to notice the different observations/moves the writers made/what parts of the writing process they focused on), how hey work, and how they are CNF. 

I also showed you the sample portfolio created through Google.sites: Chandler Portfolio. 

For next class:

We will begin class with a blitz discussion of how  process narratives work.  Then you will give your presentations on publication venues.  At the end of class you will have time to work on your portfolio.  Come to class with questions about google.sites, if you have them.

Blog 12:  Draft short essay 2 (due around TG so I can return your work with comments).

Blog 13: Publication venue handout

Have a happy Thanksgiving and see you in two weeks!

Sample Portfolio

Chandler Portfolio

Just a note

I am reading through your short drafts and I am not kidding, I really do think your writing is better than a lot of what we summed up for the publication venue discussion.  You are wonderful writers.  What a pleasure to read these essays!

11.13 Using description, and rhetorical analysis of publications

Discussion of famous descriptions
In the four descriptions, we idenitified a number of different "moves" the writers made to get the reader to read through the literal description as a way to evoke a feeling, idea or sense of "the way things are" in the story.  In the Joyce excerpt from "The Dead," we noticed the repeated military references, so that the description of the food on the table also became suggestive of two armies staged for a battle.  The extended references to food and objects in terms of military descriptions, whether the reader picked up on it consciously or not, evoked a sense of impending confrontation.

In the excerpt from "Prue" by Monroe, we noted the language construction of "denial" - all the insistence of what the act "was not" => as if the main character's rebellion and resistance were built into the grammatical structures of the description.  We also noticed the use of symbolic objects (of addiction), the candy and the tobacco, and the significance of the action portrayed (possession without consent).

In Ozick's "Existing Things,"  we noted the incongruence of the poetic/symbollic language/metaphors associated with the description of the mica ("hypnotic semaphores signaling eeriness out of the ground") and the heat, and the light, as compared with the more straight-forward descriptive language for other objects.  We also noticed the empty street, the absence of adults - the aloneness of the narrator in the presence of her realization - so that the physical correlate of the realization paralleled the sense of being "in your head with a big realization".

Finally, Dybek's "Thread," the story about his loss of faith, as in the other stories, also seemed to make the objects take on double signification = both with their literal meanings and with symbolic meanings.  The act of "strangling" his finger, weighing the thread, tasting it for "gold" were all suggestive of parallel meanings in terms of his relationships to his beliefs.

You then wrote some descriptions with the material you brought to class - and they were wonderful.  You were all working with the ideas/writerly moves from our past couple of weeks, and I am looking forward to see how these in-class writing exercises are morphing your writing!

Rhetorical analysis of writing venues.  We talked through the assignment sheet for the analysis of a writing venue assignment - and you didn't seem to have many questions so I am guessing you have a good first approximation of what is expected.  We spent the last 15 minutes of class clicking through the essays in the last issue of Brevity and classifying them in terms of the features listed on the assignment sheet.  We looked for patterns in the publication's preferences for subject material, form, "mindsets" or value systems that shape the "take" or message embedded in the material, genre (really sub-genres of CNF), and so on. 

Our discussion suggested that Brevity's audience was interested short CNF that was a kind of conservative, literary, personal reflective essay.  In this case, conservative means that readers are interested in reading form as a feature of content in a way where form is central and varied  but there is nothing really edgy or experimental about the forms used in this journal (they were mostly "traditional" variations on narrative = segments, stream of consciousness, metaphoric, letter etc.)  The texts were literary in that they mostly complied with the definitions by Lott & Gutkind in terms of their earnestness/seriousness in terms of subject matter, were reflective and presented a "realization" (circling around a question/contemplation/representation).   The subject material was serious =difficult, striking "revelatory" experiences portrayed through many of the descriptive moves we analyzed this evening. 

For next week
Read:  Zion, 402+ On writing Zion, 410 by Stanton,  Pope, Teacher training, 388, Composing 'Teacher training'" 394.

Blog 11:  Short essay 2 brainstorming

Also, look through the list of possible venues for CNF.
In addition to the link posted to the right, you might want to check out:
Fifty (plus) journals that publish CNF
Poets & Writer's Search Engine for publication venues (you can enter your own search terms)

Come to class with 3-4 possibilities for your analysis of a publication venue.  We will work on figuring out who will present on which venue, and get started on your handouts for your presentations in class.

During the second part of class we will talk about setting up your portfolio and creating your reflective/craft essay (where you write about your writing process/what you learned about writing I this course).


 

11.13 Revised calendar

W Nov 13

Tonight=> workshop on using description + rhetorical analysis of publication venues

Read:  Zion, 402+ On writing Zion, 410 by Stanton,  Pope, Teacher training, 388, Composing 'Teacher training'" 394.

Blog 11:  Short essay 2 brainstorming

 

Week 12 

W Nov 20  

Work on publication venue assignment

Presentation on craft essays + porfolio

Blog 12:  Draft short essay 2

 

Week 13 

W  Nov 28 No Class = Thanksgiving

 

Blog 13: Publication venue handout

 

Week 14

W Dec 4

Publication venue presentations

in-class workshop on revision + portfolio

Read:  TBA

Blog 14: draft craft essay + any essay you would like to work on for revision

 

Week 15

W Dec 11 Due: Revised best short essay

in-class create portfolio

practice for reading

Blog 15: Best essay revised

 

Week 16 

W Dec 18  Final portfolio due

Reading

Famous descriptions

1.  A fat brown goose, lay at one end of the table and at the other end, on a bed of creased paper strewn with sprigs of parsley, lay a great ham, stripped of its outer skin and peppered over with crust crumbs, a neat paper frill round its shin and beside this was a round of spiced beef.  Between these rival ends ran parallel lines of side-dishes: two little minsters of jelly, red and yellow: a shallow dish full of blocks of blancmange and red jam, a large green leaf-shaped dish with a stalk-shaped handle, on which lay bunches of purple raisins and peeled almonds, a companion dish on which lay a solid rectangle of Smyrna figs, a dish of custard topped with grated nutmeg, a small bowl full of chocolates and sweets wrapped in gold and silver papers and a glass vase in which stood some tall celery stalks.  In the centre of the table there stood, as sentries to a fruit-stand which upheld a pyramid of oranges and American apples, two squat old-fashioned decanters of cut glass, one containing port and the other dark sherry. On the closed square piano a pudding in a huge yellow dish lay in waiting and behind it were three squads of bottles of stout and ale and minerals, drawn up according to the colours of their uniforms, the first two black, with brown and red labels, the third ad smallest squad white, with transverse green sashes.



2.  She doesn't mention that the next morning she picked up one of Gordon's cufflinks from his dresser. The cufflinks are made of amber and he bought them in Russia, on the holiday he and wife took when thy got back together again. They look like squares of candy, golden, translucent, and this one warms quickly in her hand.  She drops it into the pocket of her jacket.  Taking one is not a real theft.  It could be a reminder, and an intimate prank, a piece of nonsense.
//
When she gets home she puts the cufflink in an old tobacco tin. The children bought this tobacco tin in a junk shop years ago, and gave it to here for a present.  She used to smoke, in those days, and the children were worried about her, so they gave her this tin full of toffees, jelly beans, and gumdrops, with a note saying, "Please get fat instead." That was for her birthday. Now the tin has in it several things besides the cufflink-- all small things, not of great value but not worthless, either.  A little enameled dish, a sterling-silver spoon for salt, a crystal fish.  These are not sentimental keepsakes.  She never looks at them, and often forgets what he has there. T hey are not booty, they don't have ritualistic significance.  she does not take something every time she goes to Gordon's hous, or every time she stays over, or to mark what she might call memorable visits.  She just takes something, every now and then, and puts it away in the dark of the old tobacco tin, and more or less forgets about it.


3. The lots are empty because no one builds on them.  It is the middle of the summer in the middle of the Depression. I am alone under a slow molasses sun, staring at the little chips of light flashing at my feet. Up and down the whole length of the street there is no one, not a single grownup, and certainly, in that sparse time, no other child.  There is only myself and these hypnotic semaphores signaling eeriness out of the ground.  But no, up the block a little way, a baby carriage is entrusted to the idle afternoon, with a baby left to sleep, all by itself, under white netting.


4.  One Sunday, sitting in the pew, watching flashes of spring lightning illuminate the robes of the angels on the stained glass windows, my mind began to drift.  I studied my gold sash upon which the tarnishing imprint of raindrops had dried into vague patterns-- it had begun to rain just as we marched in off the street.  There was a frayed edge to my sash and I wrapped a loose thread around my finger and gently tugged.  The fabric bunched and the thread continued to unwind until it seemed the entire sash might unravel. I pinched the thread and broke it off, then wound it back round my finger tightly enough to cut off my circulation.  When my fingertip turned white, I unwound the thread from my finger and weighted it on my open palm, fitting it along the various lines on my hand.  I opened my other palm and held my hands out to test if the balance between them was affected by the weight of the thread.  It wasn't. I placed the thread on my tongue and lit it rest there where its weight was more discern able. I half-expected a metallic taste of gold, but it tasted starchy like any other thread.  Against the pores of my tongue, I could feel it growing thicker with the saliva that was gathering in my mouth.  I swallowed both the saliva and the thread.

11.6 Description, indirection, short essays, and titles

You started class with a writing prompt where you were asked to describe a place and a person, to report about three lines of dialog, and to place this material within a mental state.  The mental state was not an interpretive state (I was so happy; it was the most important experience in my life; etc) - rather it was to document the internal response  (a buzzy feeling like too much coffee, a mind going out of focus, a feeling of almost like hunger except in my heart, etc) that won't necessarily correlate with the big labels we have for how we feel. 

You spent about 2 minutes writing these.  For your process, some of you started with a place where you'd had lots of experiences and listed some possibilities; some of you focused on a conversation that you could write to; and some of you found (through listing) an event with that had lots of feeling associated to it.

You read your work and I thought it was very strong.  By standing back and watching - getting outside of your narrative - you opened up space for your readers to make a narrative that would draw them in.   I liked how your stories raised questions, and drew me along to pose connections (which weren't already made for me by interpretive bridges in the writing).   They were clearly written and richly evocative.  And that is exactly what we are going for.

Examples of short CNF. After this exercise we spent some time talking about "The Indian Dog," a piece that uses narrative, characterization (of himself and the dog), and careful selection of language and metaphor to tell a larger story of what he learned about "the heart's longing."  While Momaday gives us extensive illustration of how the reader learned this lesson, ultimately each reader is led to a place where s/he must construct his/her own story. 

An invitation to use form as part of your story.  The pieces in your text presented some different ways to use sections/space to create a short piece.  The challenges are different than they are for a long piece, but the task is similar in that it is about using relationships between the sections in a way that contributes to the work's interpretation.  It sounds like most of you aren't so interested in incorporating image, sound, and/or motion, so we didn't spend much time on that - though we may double back and re-consider if your interests change.

Titles. We finally got around to working on titles.  Process = write a list of ideas from your story; then list language/metaphors associated with those ideas => but which do not state the idea directly (if you are writing about Jealousy, that is the one word you can't use).  The point of these moves is to get a pile of words you can mix up - like paint - to come out with exactly the right color. 

Next, you were asked to combine/permute these words/ideas into 5 possible titles = and choose.

We did some good work with this!   As you continue to explore this method, don't be afraid to go way far afield when you are making your lists of metaphors and words.  Make it anything you can think of list.  This is the searching phase and you want to look everywhere.  The getting choosey phase is later.  Cast a wide net.  Then combine and re-arrange. 

For next week.
Read: cruise around Brevity,(check out the current issue)  and Blackbird (check out the nonfiction gallery)
Blog 10: Draft short essay 

Also: come to class prepared to write a descriptive passage that evokes an emotion/feeling, idea.  No dialog.  No internal reflection.  You may describe humans doing things, but you can't get inside their heads. Should be fun, right?