Today's Grad Methods class was enormous fun - thanks to Catherine and Katie who were introducing it. Remember that the room is half full of creative writers, half of critical folk ... those two are poets. We were talking about Description ... they led us in, via our reading from Mark Doty's The Art of Description, by asking us to write a description of a sound that they played us (for me, it was as if a woodpecker had been followed by a terrible snore, but it was actually an Elk Rage Grunt (just remind me never to go anywhere near a cross elk). They had us looking at a Frieda Kahlo painting and went round the room with each of us finding a new detail; they gave us paint color cards, and made us text SF MOMA at 572-51 - ask them "send me ..." and fill in a noun that's close to the color we were each given - to be sent an image (try it!) and then to write a description of it (I was sent a Richard Misrach photo of a house evacuated for Katrina, that proved to be full of angles and triangles). We talked about Perec and lists, and a chunk of James Wood about Serious Noticing, and Patrick Fessenbecker on paraphrase, and, yes, Sharon Marcus, Heather Love and Stephen Best on "Building a Better Description" - and they had us discuss the opening of Pound's ABC of Reading, and then discuss whatever we think the author(s) that each table was allocated would have to say about it. And so we could get into the spirit of that, each table was given their speaking heads, their voices to ventriloquize, to hold up. Or ... give some smart graduates a range of texts, and see where they take you ... it was a stellar exercise in bringing ideas home through practice.
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