Welcome to Contemporary Writers 2009-2010
1. Go over course criteria sheet and overview of course
2. Introduction to Anne Michaels--go to website, read poems. We'll be getting the novel next week.
3. Look at Fugitive Pieces trailer--video bar
4. Writing Exercise: The Role of Memory
from Natalie Goldberg's Old Friend from Far Away Test #1
I Remember/I Don't Remember exercise
Shana Harris
ReplyDeleteI remember my aunt Regina taking out the trash and she tripped and fell on her face were she scrapped her knee and twisted her ankle.
I remember my little cousin cooking a little snack then she left a cloth on the stove, flames started to rise from the stove were it was blazing a hot fire.
I remember late at night sitting on my porch with my friends talking we kept getting interrupted by the annoying chirps of the crickets.
I remember my fifth grade teacher she always was very hip and was in love with the African culture. Her hair was always nappy and she would sometimes twist it up very nice. There was always the scent on her of smoked ciggarates
I remember my mother in the kitchen one thanksgiving holiday cooking up loads of delicious foods. The smell woke me up from my sleep and I craved the food as my stomach growled.
I remember a hot sunny day walking down the street with a couple of my friends. We all were laughing and cracking jokes, we had a long way to walk but it seem like it was going very fast. The sky started to get dark and the cloud began to move in. The rain poured down on all four of us. We all were soaked walking own the street, and there was still a long way to go.
Chicken
Gasoline
Kool-aid
Dirt
Fall
Smoke
Basement
New shoes
Nail salons
Lotion
-Shana
James Botsford
ReplyDeleteJames Botsford 9-3-09
Creative Writing Exercise
I remember my grandmother used to love spending time with my brother and I. Whenever my brother and I would go somewhere, she would always ask about it and relate to it.
I remember the tomatoes in my grandmother’s garden on a hot summer day. They were ready to be picked and would shine in the light.
I remember the sound of firecrackers exploding near my house. It was in the early evening as the sun was just starting to go down.
I remember my third grade teacher, Ms. VanDerwater. She had long, dark blonde hair, was tall, and would have all the students pull cards if they weren’t behaving. If you were on green that was a warning, on yellow you filled out a responsibility form, and red was a phone call home.
I remember when I was just a little short of nine, I tasted my first Italian-Assorted submarine sandwich. I was at a small deli right near Ellison Park when I tried it. I was with my dad who strongly insisted on trying it.
I remember rain on my first day of sixth grade. I was so excited to be one of the oldest kids at my school and had hopes of it being a nice sunny day with a few good friends. It wasn’t sunny and I didn’t really have fun with any of the kids. Rain typically reminds me of disappointment.
Paint
Pepper
Pepsi
Lemons
Smoke
Money
Coffee
My Dad
My Dog
My "I Remembers..."
ReplyDeleteGrandmother
My grandmother might be the easiest of these motherly figures to remember because I only have memories of her at this point. I still have a bottle of this lotion that she used to wear, and I might have thought it was just how she smelled. It’s just that warm smell, and that warm sense that she gave off. She had this curly Slavic hair and the sweetest smile that turned to an elder grin when she knew that she had the best hand when we played cards, and she let me win.
Red
From the next room, I could hear, in the back of my head, that the cartoon that my brother was watching in the kitchen had turned to a commercial, and although the bathroom was only a few feet up the stairs, he decided that he wanted to run as fast as he could over the just-mopped floor. The scream arrived just before his bloody handprints followed him up the stairs, and finally into the bathroom he sought initially, where he spat the remains of his mouth that he was lucky to have.
Sound
I remember one particular concert at Giants Stadium, where we sat literally right in front of the speakers that were designed to have everyone in the back row hear what the band was playing. It became, after the intensity and excitement of the show, a show that took what I could hear away from me. This due to the superfluous noise that rocked my entire body more so than my inner ear. But between the band and the 50,000 people singing themselves, I’ll always remember what I did hear that night.
Teacher
Perhaps I appreciated adults later in grammar school than earlier, but I think the fact that Mrs. Rothfuss had the most vibrant and steady-headed personality compared to how I remember my other teachers in that school is why I hold her so high today. She was not as slim as she is today, but she was still just as short, of course. In any case, she was still comparable to most of the students in the class. Her sense of humor, strong-mindedness, and ease of teaching, even for a class of sixth graders, made her what she is in our memories.
Meal
I am not sure that I can pick out particular meals, seeing as how I eat three of them a day. Granted not all are as special as half of those that my dad makes for us, or even his mother, when she was around to make them. I would still probably name one of my favorite meals a dinner meal, and there must be countless meals. I know there must be countless meals, and I mean good suppers, that I’ve had because I can’t pick out one out of the many things that I know I’ve eaten and loved. With the family, we all cleaned the platters before they went into the sink.
Rain
Besides the many times that I was already sad and it began to rain and I thought that it coincided perfectly like a movie script or something, I’ll use the story, interesting or not, of the rain at Dairen Lake a few years ago. After a long day, we all felt that it might be nice too cool off in the water park right before we headed home, and as we waited on line to get up to the big slide, we could see, actually literally physically see the blackest clouds roll over the top of the Superman, and we could bet someone was going to get zapped by lightning. We decided to break for it. If we hadn’t tried to run, we wouldn’t have been dry. Coming over the bridge, the temperature must have been 80 degrees 10 feet behind where it was only 70. The people at the exit still tried to stamp our hands. “We don’t want to come back in (idiots),” we told them, and moved out the car, where it opened up like it the first of 40 nights.
Smells
My grandmother
Gasoline
Rain
New shoes
Garlic
I remember my Grandmother, the smell of coffee and good food in the warm air of her house. I remember her drawn on eyebrows raised as she hands me a small cup of coffee filled with milk and sugar so even the slightest bitterness of the coffee could not be tasted.
ReplyDeleteI remember the crimson Christmas dress my mother always put me in for the holidays. I hated its scratchy fabric and the pale tights I had to wear with them. The seam along the toes made me squirm.
I remember the sound of the brightly colored wrapping paper tearing into pieces. I always knew that sound meant tears because I always was upset with the presents I got. I was young and selfish and hadn’t learned to hide my sadness when I didn’t get the present I asked for.
I will always remember my 4th grade teacher Miss Mcglaughlin. She had light blonde hair that she said she had since she was a child but I found myself questioning when I saw the dark hair growing from her roots. She had pearly whites that were always flashing and was tall and very thin. I remember thinking she could be a model.
I remember eating bagels almost every Sunday after church. Most days it was a bit gloomy outside and there would always be seeds and cream cheese on my paper plate.
I remember once when it rained I was playing with my sister outside and we decided we wanted to collect the rain in a glass. I remember running inside so excited grabbing a glass and putting it outside in the driveway. We were so disappointed when the glass never filled.
Campfire
Hay
Alfalfa
Horses
Fish
Coffee
Snow
Burning hair
Wet dog
pumpkins
Nautica Lawrence
ReplyDeleteTest 1
I remember my great grandmother who sits in her rocking chair watching the news. Every now and then stopping to scratch away in hopes of big bucks. The smell of fish fry and bleach suffocate the air surrounding you. The phone rings “heller” and then emerges with conversation with old time friends.
I remember waking up with a weird stench in the air and coming downstairs. My dog lay in the cage with a pool of blood sitting beside him. Spaz was bleeding internally; we knew because he had been wasting and regurgitating blood. A victim of a dog’s disease whose title I can’t recall.
I remember the sounds of my mother gasping for breath; choking rather hands held around her neck, an inescapable trap. I tried to help her with no luck but every now and then I see the man come back and leaving my mom gasping for breath once more.
I remember Mrs. Doyle my loving teacher that welcomed me with open arms after I transferred schools in the third grade. She had a soft voice and was very patient. I remember her green veins always visible on her skin; something to do with capillaries.
I remember going out to eat at the china buffet with my older cousins and my grandmother. After Poppy dropped us off we ate plate after plate until we were sleepy. We ate everything from salad to ice cream with sugar biscuits in between.
Rain is so relaxing. I remember getting my sleeping bag and placing it on my open porch. My little sisters and I just lied there watching the rainfall and the cars race threw the streets splashing water as they went along. As the rain fell the wind blew some in our direction giving us just a taste of its’ beauty.
Chicken
Bleach
Burnt hair
Alcohol
Water
New shoes
Listerine
Fresh air
Morning breath
Urine
Kadisha Phillips
ReplyDeleteI remember my grandmother in all of her amusement and great joy, complaining to her first daughter, the lady who pushed me from between her two dark-brown legs tattered with the vicious marks of mosquitoes and sand-flies, that my never-ending love songs and poems of affection were taking up all of the space on her old-fashioned answering machine.
I remember the day that I paraded down the gloomy streets of an unfamiliar neighborhood, engulfed in his cherry flavored sweater smelling like the breath of a smoker’s black tar lungs and unnerving habits.
I remember sitting on top of a coarse sandy colored couch cushion as the distant echoes of my estranged cousin, called for help from beneath my six-year old weight and the luxury-cotton furniture that her mother had not too long ago purchased.
I remember her voice deep with roots of Hispanic upbringings, screaming at me as I indulged in the great pleasures of Children’s Favorites, an eight hundred-page book loved by my immature six year old soul.
I don’t remember the taste of pale yellow Australian cheese and salty sea-water stuck between my excited taste-buds as I sat half-naked in a mahogany wood chair diving into the strange cooking of a woman whom stood across the table from me seizing an un-forgettable moment in time of a five-year old girl who, tired from the rays of a Caribbean sun and eye-burning crystal clear seawater, eating as she had never eaten before.
In my mother’s dark grey
Dried grass
Goose poop
Sweaty girls
New hairstyles