Contest entries today! Bennington and Nancy Thorp

AGENDA:

Morning Reflection by Kaneil:
Cry Reads: I'm a 911 Operator

Submit to Bennington and Nancy Thorp TODAY!

https://www.hollins.edu/academics/majors-minors/english-creative-writing-major/nancy-thorp-poetry-contest/

More Thomas and Beulah

Work on poetry cycles

Poetry Cycle--Conspirator's Daughter

The Conspirator’s Daughter:

A poetry cycle about Anna  Surratt, daughter of Mary Surratt who was hanged with three others as part of the “Lincoln conspiracy”

Epigraph

She was an only daughter, and had lived with her mother, who was a widow.

 Poor Anna! I can never forget her look, or the sound of that restless footstep in the room above me. The two haunt me yet, and will until my dying day. It matters little to that poor mourner, that the whole trial has been declared by authority unconstitutional and illegal. That does not bring back the dead, nor lessen the grief of the survivor, nor can it blot out the shame and disgrace which will forever attach itself to the nation, which suffered such flagrant abuse of power to pass unnoticed and unrebuked.  –Virginia Lomax

A Five-turn Knot

            I really did not think Mrs. Surratt would be swung from the end of it, but she was, and it was                demonstrated to my          satisfaction, at least, that a five-turn knot will perform as                successful a job as a           seven-turn knot.—Colonel (Captain) Christian Rath

Upstairs in his room at the penitentiary,

the hangman prepared

four nooses for the executions,

carefully measuring out the lengths

of Boston hemp brought in

from the Navy Yard,

cutting and saving one last length of rope

for mother-- just in case--still praying

he would not need it the next day.

Three seven-turn knots

for three of the condemned.

Three regulation hangman knots

neatly wound military style.

The captain slighted the fourth

coiling only five turns.

A shoddy job, he must have thought,

or perhaps his heart was not in it

or  he was tired

and placed it aside.

The ropes still needed testing, though.

He tied each noose to a tree limb

and a bag of buckshot,

then tossed the bag to the ground.

The ropes performed successfully

as they would the next day.

Stretched taut, the ropes held

All four lifeless bodies slowly swinging

in the sweltering heat of a July afternoon--

the coiled knot of the noose

underneath four white hoods

tight against each left ear.

Morning, Noon, and Night

               I found this in the back room of the first floor of Mrs. Surratt’s house. The back part was all                sealed, and my     curiosity               was excited by noticing a piece torn off the back. I opened the back and        found the likeness of J.       Wilkes Booth,       with the word “Booth” written in pencil on the back of it.—   Lieutenant John W. Dempsey,          May 19, testimony for the prosecution

Louis Weichmann tried to kiss me and gave me presents.

One was a carte-de-visite of an elderly man sitting in a chair,

one arm around his grandson’s shoulders,

the other holding the young lad’s hand.

The old man’s eyes gaze down at his granddaughter

who is seated on the ground, a finger raised to her lips,

perhaps rebuking the playful dog sitting at her feet. 

The picture is titled Morning, Noon, and Night.

Leaning against the old man’s chair is the mother,

her head tilted to one side, looking wistfully at the camera.

She reminded me of mother, so I placed it on the mantel

in the back room of our boardinghouse on H street.

One day, Honora Fitzpatrick and I went to a daguerrean gallery

to have her picture taken.  Much to our delight and surprise,

we saw some pictures of  the actor, my brother’s new friend--

Mr. Booth. We bought two photographs of him.

But when Johnnie saw the photographs he was angry

and told me to tear them up, throw them in the fire,

or he would take them from me.  So I hid them behind

the sentimental lithograph Louis Weichmann had given me.

And this was the proof they used against mother.

Source:

(That picture belonged to me; it was given to me by that man Weichman, and I put a photograph of John Wilkes Booth behind it. I went with Miss Honora Fitzpatrick to a daguerrean gallery one day to get her picture; we saw some photographs of Mr. Booth there, and, being acquainted with him, we bought two and took them home. When my brother saw them, he told me to tear them up and throw them in the fire, and that, if I did not, he would take them from me. So I hid them. I owned photographs of Davis, Stephens, Beauregard, Stonewall Jackson, and perhaps a few other leaders of the rebellion. My father gave them to me before his death, and I prize them on his account, if on nobody else’s. I also had in the house photographs of Union Generals—of General McClellan, General Grant, and General Joe Hooker.)

Anna E. Surratt, testimony for the defense, May 30, 1865.

A Pallet, A Pillow and a Prayer

               “Don’t forget to send the pillow upon which her head rested and her prayer beads, if you can find         them--these things are      dear to me.”—Anna Surratt, letter  to General Hartranft, July 9, 1865

The Washington Arsenal  was reopened

to hold the prisoners and conduct the trial.

Mother’s cell was 3 ½ feet wide, 7 feet long,

 7 feet high with a straw-filled pallet

for sleeping on the cold floor.  A metal bucket

rested in one corner of the cell, reeking,

waiting to be emptied by the young guards

who snickered about  the womanly red flow

that plagued mother  and made her ill.

A table and wash basin in the other.

Four times a day, the prisoners were fed:

soft bread, salt pork or soup, coffee or water.

Mother would not eat at first until finally

Her hunger was unendurable.

We prayed into the night. Then I watched her rest

her head upon the pillow on her wretched pallet.

What dreams she had—I can only imagine—

I know my own.

Sources:

Prison cells in the female ward (these cells were twice as large as the men’s cells) were cleared and inspected.  Shuck mattresses were delivered to the cells and nails were taken out of the walls to ensure that the prisoners would not harm themselves or possibly others.

The prisoners’ meals usually consisted of coffee or tea, bread and salted meat.  After finishing their meal, the bowl in which their beverage was served was removed.  No other items would be brought in to the cell.

Each cell measured 7′ by 3 ½′ by 7′ with solid masonry walls eighteen inches thick. Their iron doors opened alternately to the north and south to prevent the prisoners from communicating with each other.

Rita Dove

Morning Reflection
Read "Mandolin"

Take notes about imagery and image patterns

Visit website:


www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=6719

Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove
© Walter Benefield
Mar 9, 2001

Like snapshots in a photo album, Rita Dove’s award winning collection of poetry "Thomas and Beulah" provide glimpses into the lives of two people in love living together yet apart in an imperfect world. Dove mixes biographical, historical and social elements to create a journey of love, marriage, life and death in 1920's Middle America. Dove’s collection of narrative poems are based loosely on the lives her maternal grandparents.
The journey begins with Thomas in the poem entitled “The event.” Thomas and his friend Lem venture out of Tennessee onto a river boat "with nothing to boast of but good looks and a mandolin", which is a pear shaped stringed instrument. This departure by Thomas would eventually bring him to Akron, Ohio and Beulah.

The poem "Courtship" has Beulah on one "Fine evening...waiting-for what? A magnolia breeze, someone to trot out the stars?" Beulah meets Thomas. "Promises" a poem of marriage contains one of the most beautiful verses in the collection. "A deep breath, and she plunged through sunbeams and kisses, rice drumming the both of them blind." In that, most natural of processes after marriage comes children. "Variation on Guilt" shows Thomas the expecting father in a hospital waiting room less than pleased when "the doors fly apart...It's a girl, he can tell by that smirk." Thomas and Beulah in all have four children all girls.

Dove poetizes the emotional subject of sickness and death in several poems in the collection. In a more descriptive poem "Thomas at the wheel" shows Thomas in his car and eventually "he lay[s] down across the seat, a pod set to sea, a kiss unpuckering", having a heart attack. The poem "Company" is a tragic but fitting near end to the collection, Beulah leaves her dying husband this message, "listen: we were good, though we never believed it."

"Thomas and Beulah" is one personal history told from two perspectives and does not hold to a precise line of chronology and only the most rational of critics would protest; Dove the consummate artist creates her own order of things.

Delving into research before writing this review of "Thomas and Beulah" I unearthed some disturbing facts about this award winning collection of poetry.

Rita Dove received the Pulitzer Prize for this work in 1987. Many considered the eighties a time of upsurge in the popularity of poetry with increases in published works as proof. Despite the positive climate, the New York Times newspaper respected for its quality literary coverage never reviewed “Thomas and Beulah.” I only make light of these facts because there are other fine works like “Thomas and Beulah” that go unnoticed by those who are suppose to notice.

Rita Dove Thomas and Beulah

AGENDA:

 

Test: Bloodsucking Fiends, Finish Flash Fiction stories

Begin reading aloud Thomas and Beulah
Check out link to her web site!
www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=6719 
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/rita-dove#about

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/rita-dove 
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/rita-dove 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=7duHFUjieME
Critical article: personal.georgiasouthern.edu/~jpellegr/articles/dovearticle.html 
www.suite101.com/article.cfm/african_american_lit_retired/62567

The poem cycle set to music:
www.amazon.com/Thomas-Beulah-Rita-Amnon-Wolman/dp/B000065C

Bloodsucking Fiends STUDY GUIDES/TEST

AGENDA:

Morning Reflection::


Work on your flash fiction stories.

Finish your study guide Part II/III for Bloodsucking Fiends.

Contest entries

Handout:: BSF Part III

Homework: Finish reading Bloodsucking Fiends for WEDNESDAY

THERE WILL BE A TEST ON THE BOOK!

Nancy Thorpe Poetry Prize

https://www.hollins.edu/academics/majors-minors/english-creative-writing-major/nancy-thorp-poetry-contest/

Bloodsucking Fiends

AGENDA:

Morning Reflection: Faduma
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMbHLF_zwjs

Hand in Study Guide Part 1 (to Ch. 14)

Work on Flash Fiction for Bloodsucking Fiends

Contests:  Hollins poetry (women), Bennington, Scholastic

Friday, BOA  6-9

https://www.boaeditions.org/pages/20th-annual-dine-rhyme

Bloodsucking Fiends Study guide 1/Flash Fiction

AGENDA:

Work on Flash Fiction and Study Guide 1

100 Reasons Why I Write

https://writenow.nwp.org/one-hundred-reasons-why-i-write-a2811e7ce2f9

Tropes/Flash Fiction

Tropes

EQ:       What is a trope?
A literary trope is the use of figurative language.^[1] For example, the sitting United States administration might be referred to as "Washington". Since the 1970s^{[citation needed]}, the word has also come to mean a commonly recurring literary device, motif, or cliché.^[2][3]
The term trope derives from the Greek τρόπος (tropos), "turn, direction, way", derived from the verb τρέπειν (trepein), "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vampire_traits_in_folklore_and_fiction 


 Activity:    What are some tropes of love stories?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SoYouWantTo/WriteALoveStory 

Bloodsucking Fiends Assignment

Flash Fiction

AGENDA:

 Chris Moore video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbo2Ae-pj-4

Here it is:
FLASH FICTION:

Write a Flash Fiction story (2-3 double-spaced pages) that PARODIES (makes fun of) an established genre (your choice--Science Fantasy, Horror, Romance, Western, etc.).   Choose this option if you want to try your hand at HUMOR and PARODY.
or

Write a Flash Fiction story that follows the conventions and uses the familiar tropes of a HORROR STORY  (vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts, etc.) or a LOVE STORY.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_fiction 

and http://www.flash-fiction-world.com/

Flash Fiction/Sudden Fiction

AGENDA:

Morning reflection:




EQ:  What qualities of plot, character, and structure make these stories strong examples of flash fiction?  How do writers achieve compression in short short stories (aka flash fiction)?
Please complete and turn in any missing work!

Go to:
http://flashfictiononline.com/main/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_fiction 

http://www.100wordstory.org/

Flash fiction is an umbrella term used to describe any fictional work of extreme brevity,^[1] including the Six-Word Story,^[2] 140-character stories, also known as twitterature,^[3] the dribble (50 words),^[2] the drabble (100 words),^[2] and sudden fiction (750 words).^[4] Some commentators have also suggested that some flash fiction possesses a unique literary quality, e.g. the ability to hint at or imply a larger story.
FLASH FICTION: 3 EXEMPLARS (MODELS)

Read Margaret Atwood's "My Life as a Bat"
http://www.sweetdave.com/moon_safari.htm.


Ron Carlson's "Bigfoot Stole My Wife"

Bigfoot Stole My Wife

By Ron Carlson

The problem is credibility.

The problem, as I'm finding out over the last few weeks, is basic credibility. A lot of people look at me and say, sure Rick, Bigfoot stole your wife. It makes me sad to see it, the look of disbelief in each person's eye. Trudy's disappearance makes me sad, too, and I'm sick in my heart about where she may be and how he's treating her, what they do all day, if she's getting enough to eat. I believe he's beeing good to her -- I mean I feel it -- and I'm going to keep hoping to see her again, but it is my belief that I probably won't.

In the two and a half years we were married, I often had the feeling that I would come home from the track and something would be funny. Oh, she'd say things: One of these days I'm not going to be here when you get home, things like that, things like everybody says. How stupid of me not to see them as omens. When I'd get out of bed in the early afternoon, I'd stand right here at this sink and I could see her working in her garden in her cut-off Levis and bikini top, weeding, planting, watering. I mean it was obvious. I was too busy thinking about the races, weighing the odds, checking the jockey roster to see what I now know: he was watching her too. He'd probably been watching her all summer.

So, in a way it was my fault. But what could I have done? Bigfoot steals your wife. I mean: even if you're home, it's going to be a mess. He's big and not well trained.

When I came home it was about eleven-thirty. The lights were on, which really wasn't anything new, but in the ordinary mess of the place, there was a little difference, signs of a struggle. There was a spilled Dr. Pepper on the counter and the fridge was open. But there was something else, something that made me sick. The smell. The smell of Bigfoot. It was hideous. It was . . . the guy is not clean.

Half of Trudy's clothes are gone, not all of them, and there is no note. Well, I know what it is. It's just about midnight there in the kitchen which smells like some part of hell. I close the fridge door. It's the saddest thing I've ever done. There's a picture of Trudy and me leaning against her Toyota taped to the fridge door. It was taken last summer. There's Trudy in her bikini top, her belly brown as a bean. She looks like a kid. She was a kid I guess, twenty-six. The two times she went to the track with me everybody looked at me like how'd I rate her. But she didn't really care for the races. She cared about her garden and Chinese cooking and Buster, her collie, who I guess Bigfoot stole too. Or ate. Buster isn't in the picture, he was nagging my nephew Chuck who took the photo. Anyway I close the fridge door and it's like part of my life closed. Bigfoot steals your wife and you're in for some changes.

You come home from the track having missed the Daily Double by a neck, and when you enter the home you are paying for and in which you and your wife and your wife's collie live, and your wife and her collie are gone as is some of her clothing, there is nothing to believe. Bigfoot stole her. It's a fact. What should I do, ignore it? Chuck came down and said something like well if Bigfoot stole her why'd he take the Celica? Christ, what a cynic! Have you ever read anything about Bigfoot not being able to drive? He'd be cramped in there, but I'm sure he could manage.

I don't really care if people believe me or not. Would that change anything? Would that bring Trudy back here? Pull the weeds in her garden?

As I think about it, no one believes anything anymore. Give me one example of someone believing one thing. No one believes me. I myself can't believe all the suspicion and cynicism there is in today's world. Even at the races, some character next to me will poke over at my tip sheet and ask me if I believe that stuff. If I believe? What is there to believe? The horse's name? What he did the last time out? And I look back at this guy, too cheap to go two bucks on the program, and I say: its history. It is historical fact here. Believe. Huh. Here's a fact: I believe everything.

Credibility.

When I was thirteen years old, my mother's trailor was washed away in the flooding waters of the Harley River and swept thirty-one miles, ending right side up and neary dead level just outside Mercy, in fact in the old weed-eaten parking lot for the abandoned potash plant. I know this to be true because I was inside the trailor the whole time with my pal, Nuggy Reinecker, who found the experience more life-changing than I did.

Now who's going to believe this story? I mean, besides me, because I was there. People are going to say, come on, thirty-one miles? Don't you mean thirty-one feet?

We had gone in out of the rain after school to check out a magazine that belonged to my mother's boyfriend. It was a copy of Dude, and there was a fold-out page I will never forget of a girl lying on a beach on her back. It was a color photograph. The girl was a little pale, I mean, this was probably her first day out in the sun, and she had no clothing on. So it was good, but what made it great was that they had made her a little bathing suit out of sand. Somebody had spilled a little sand just right, here and there, and the sane was this incredible gold color, and it made her look so absolutly naked you wanted to put your eyes out.

Nuggy and I knew there was flood danger in Griggs; we'd had a flood every year almost and it had been raining for five days on and off, but when the trailor bucked the first time, we thought it was my mother come home to catch us in the dirty book. Nuggy shoved the magazine under his bed and I ran out to check the door. It only took me a second and I holldered back Hey no sweat, no one's here, but by the time Ireturned to see what other poses they'd had this beautiful woman commit, Nuggy already had his pants to his ankles and was involved in what we knew was a sin.

It if hadn't been the timing of the first wave with this act of his, Nuggy might have gone on to live what the rest of us call a normal life. But the Harley had crested and the head wave, which they estimated to be three feet minimum, unmoored the trailer with a push that knocked me over the sofa, and threw Nuggy, already entangled in his trousers, clear across the bedroom.

I watched the village of Griggs as we sailed through. Some of the village, the Exxon Station, part of it at least, and the carwash, which folded up right away, tried to come along with us, and I saw the front of Painters' Mercantile, the old porch and signboard, on and off all day.

You can believe this: it was not a smooth ride. We'd rip along for ten seconds, dropping and growling over rocks, and rumbling over tree stumps, and then wham! the front end of the trailer would lodge against a rock or something that could stop it, and whoa! we'd wheel around sharp as a carnival ride, worse really, because the furniture would be thrown against the far side and us with it, sometimes we'd end up in a chair and sometimes the chair would sit on us. My mother had about four thousand knickknacks in five big box shelves, and they gave us trouble for the first two or three miles, flying by like artillery, left, right, some small glass snail hits you in the face, later in the back, but that stuff all finally settled in the foot and then two feet of water which we took on.

We only slowed down once and it was the worst. In the railroad flats I thought we had stopped and I let go of the door I was hugging and tried to stand up and then swish, another rush sent us right along. We rammed along all day it seemed, but when we finally washed up in Mercy and the sheriff's cousin pulled open the door and got swept back to his car by water and quite a few of those knickknacks, just over an hour had passed. We had averaged, they figured later, about thirty-two miles an hour, reaching speeds of up to fifty at Lime Falls and the Willows. I was okay and walked out bruised and well washed, but when the sheriff's cousin pulled Nuggy out, he looked genuinely hurt.

"For godsakes," I remember the sheriff's cousin saying, "The damn flood knocked this boy's pants off!" But Nuggy wasn't talking. In fact, he never hardly talked to me again in the two years he stayed at Regional School. I heard later, and I believe it, that he joined the monastery over in Malcolm County.

My mother, because she didn't have the funds to haul our rig back to Griggs, worried for a while, but then the mayor arranged to let us stay out where we were. So after my long ride in a trailer down the flooded Harley River with my friend Nuggy Reinbecker, I grew up in a parking lot outside of Mercy, and to tell you the truth, it wasn't too bad, even though our trailer never did smell straight again.

Now you can believe all that. People are always saying: don't believe everything you read, or everything you hear. And I'm here to tell you. Believe it. Everything. Everything you read. Everything you hear. Believe your eyes. Your ears. Believe the small hairs on the back of your neck. Believe all of history, and all of the versions of history, and all the predictions for the future. Believe every weather forecast. Believe in God, the afterlife, unicorns, showers on Tuesday. Everything has happened. Everything is possible.

I came home from the track to find the cupboard bare. Trudy is not home. The place smells funny: hairy. It's a fact and I know it as a fact: Bigfoot has been in my house.

Bigfoot stole my wife.

She's gone.

Believe it.

I gotta believe it.

Bruce Holland Rogers "Murder, Mystery"
http://flashfictiononline.com/author_bruce_holland_rogers.html

The Dead Boy at Your Window

This story is an illustration of a fixed form as described in Bruce’s column for November 2008. It’s a little long for flash — about 1,300 words — but it illustrates his points nicely and it’s a multiple-award winner: the Bram Stoker in 1998 and the Pushcart Prize in 1999.

In a distant country where the towns had improbable names, a woman looked upon the unmoving form of her newborn baby and refused to see what the midwife saw. This was her son. She had brought him forth in agony, and now he must suck. She pressed his lips to her breast.

“But he is dead!” said the midwife.

“No,” his mother lied. “I felt him suck just now.” Her lie was as milk to the baby, who really was dead but who now opened his dead eyes and began to kick his dead legs. “There, do you see?” And she made the midwife call the father in to know his son.

The dead boy never did suck at his mother’s breast. He sipped no water, never took food of any kind, so of course he never grew. But his father, who was handy with all things mechanical, built a rack for stretching him so that, year by year, he could be as tall as the other children.

When he had seen six winters, his parents sent him to school. Though he was as tall as the other students, the dead boy was strange to look upon. His bald head was almost the right size, but the rest of him was thin as a piece of leather and dry as a stick. He tried to make up for his ugliness with diligence, and every night he was up late practicing his letters and numbers.

His voice was like the rasping of dry leaves. Because it was so hard to hear him, the teacher made all the other students hold their breaths when he gave an answer. She called on him often, and he was always right.

Naturally, the other children despised him. The bullies sometimes waited for him after school, but beating him, even with sticks, did him no harm. He wouldn’t even cry out.

One windy day, the bullies stole a ball of twine from their teacher’s desk, and after school, they held the dead boy on the ground with his arms out so that he took the shape of a cross. They ran a stick in through his left shirt sleeve and out through the right. They stretched his shirt tails down to his ankles, tied everything in place, fastened the ball of twine to a buttonhole, and launched him. To their delight, the dead boy made an excellent kite. It only added to their pleasure to see that owing to the weight of his head, he flew upside down.

When they were bored with watching the dead boy fly, they let go of the string. The dead boy did not drift back to earth, as any ordinary kite would do. He glided. He could steer a little, though he was mostly at the mercy of the winds. And he could not come down. Indeed, the wind blew him higher and higher.

The sun set, and still the dead boy rode the wind. The moon rose and by its glow he saw the fields and forests drifting by. He saw mountain ranges pass beneath him, and oceans and continents. At last the winds gentled, then ceased, and he glided down to the ground in a strange country. The ground was bare. The moon and stars had vanished from the sky. The air seemed gray and shrouded. The dead boy leaned to one side and shook himself until the stick fell from his shirt. He wound up the twine that had trailed behind him and waited for the sun to rise. Hour after long hour, there was only the same grayness. So he began to wander.

He encountered a man who looked much like himself, a bald head atop leathery limbs. “Where am I?” the dead boy asked.

The man looked at the grayness all around. “Where?” the man said. His voice, like the dead boy’s, sounded like the whisper of dead leaves stirring.

A woman emerged from the grayness. Her head was bald, too, and her body dried out. “This!” she rasped, touching the dead boy’s shirt. “I remember this!” She tugged on the dead boy’s sleeve. “I had a thing like this!”

“Clothes?” said the dead boy.

“Clothes!” the woman cried. “That’s what it is called!”

More shriveled people came out of the grayness. They crowded close to see the strange dead boy who wore clothes. Now the dead boy knew where he was. “This is the land of the dead.”

“Why do you have clothes?” asked the dead woman. “We came here with nothing! Why do you have clothes?”

“I have always been dead,” said the dead boy, “but I spent six years among the living.”

“Six years!” said one of the dead. “And you have only just now come to us?”

“Did you know my wife?” asked a dead man. “Is she still among the living?”

“Give me news of my son!”

“What about my sister?”

The dead people crowded closer.

The dead boy said, “What is your sister’s name?” But the dead could not remember the names of their loved ones. They did not even remember their own names. Likewise, the names of the places where they had lived, the numbers given to their years, the manners or fashions of their times, all of these they had forgotten.

“Well,” said the dead boy, “in the town where I was born, there was a widow. Maybe she was your wife. I knew a boy whose mother had died, and an old woman who might have been your sister.”

“Are you going back?”

“Of course not,” said another dead person. “No one ever goes back.”

“I think I might,” the dead boy said. He explained about his flying. “When next the wind blows....”

“The wind never blows here,” said a man so newly dead that he remembered wind.

“Then you could run with my string.”

“Would that work?”

“Take a message to my husband!” said a dead woman.

“Tell my wife that I miss her!” said a dead man.

“Let my sister know I haven’t forgotten her!”

“Say to my lover that I love him still!”

They gave him their messages, not knowing whether or not their loved ones were themselves long dead. Indeed, dead lovers might well be standing next to one another in the land of the dead, giving messages for each other to the dead boy. Still, he memorized them all. Then the dead put the stick back inside his shirt sleeves, tied everything in place, and unwound his string. Running as fast as their leathery legs could manage, they pulled the dead boy back into the sky, let go of the string, and watched with their dead eyes as he glided away.

He glided a long time over the gray stillness of death until at last a puff of wind blew him higher, until a breath of wind took him higher still, until a gust of wind carried him up above the grayness to where he could see the moon and the stars. Below he saw moonlight reflected in the ocean. In the distance rose mountain peaks. The dead boy came to earth in a little village. He knew no one here, but he went to the first house he came to and rapped on the bedroom shutters. To the woman who answered, he said, “A message from the land of the dead,” and gave her one of the messages. The woman wept, and gave him a message in return.

House by house, he delivered the messages. House by house, he collected messages for the dead. In the morning, he found some boys to fly him, to give him back to the wind’s mercy so he could carry these new messages back to the land of the dead.

So it has been ever since. On any night, head full of messages, he may rap upon any window to remind someone — to remind you, perhaps — of love that outlives memory, of love that needs no names.

HMWK: Read Bloodsucking Fiends to PART 2   

Read Excerpt/PSAT

AGENDA:

Explore Christopher Moore website

Read excerpt: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125676630

Bloodsucking Fiends

AGENDA:

 Register for Scholastic

http://www.artandwriting.org/

 

Continue to read interview from last post and visit websites for videos with Christopher Moore

Emperor of San Francisco: Check out this website:

https://www.google.com/search?q=emperor+of+san+francisco&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

 

Discussion Questions for Bloodsucking Fiends

Reading Group Guide

Questions for Discussion

1. Everyone has been exposed to Vampire lore, either through books, movies, or television. How does Jody's transformation into a vampire differ from how you always thought someone became a vampire? In what ways is it similar?

2. Jody and Tommy's relationship moves at a rather alarming pace, and within a week of meeting each other, they are in love. Is love at first sight possible? Or in their case, at first bite? Why do they connect so instantly?

3. The book is filled with religious connotations, whether intentional or not — from the mention of "the pyramid" (The TransAmerica Tower), to the use of crosses to ward off vampires, to the Animals being referred to as "Crusaders." How intentional do you think this was on the part of the author? What do these add to the story?

4. The book touches upon the idea of euthanasia — the practice of ending the life of a terminally ill person in a painless or minimally painful way in order to limit suffering — in that Elijah Ben Sapir, the vampire who creates Jody, only kills those who are about to die or whose lives are limited in some way. What are your feelings about "mercy killings"? Do vampires have an ethical standard?

5. When Simon threatens Jody after she refuses to turn him into a vampire, she ends up killing him in the front of his truck. Jody then blames the killing on Elijah, however, and never confesses it to Tommy. Why not admit to it when Elijah has been restrained?

6. Why are Jody and Tommy "set up" as the culprits in the recent crimes? What would it mean if they were caught? Why do these crimes need to be pinned on anyone? Couldn't the criminals cover up thecrimes in another way?

7. By the end of the novel, both detectives — Cavuto and Rivera — begin to believe in the supernatural and that vampires could exist. To what extent do you believe in the supernatural, either vampires, ghosts, or even just that some people may or may not have psychic ability?

8. Tommy uses Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat, which of course is fiction, as his "Owner's Manual" for learning about Jody and her new powers. Discuss the author's use of fiction within fiction in order to tell a story. Have any members of your group read The Vampire Lestat? How do the two books compare?

9. Once Jody becomes a vampire, she finds that she has many new and different abilities, including superstrength, heightened senses, and superspeed. Which do you think is her most needed new superability?

10. Though Jody finds herself immortal, she also retains many of her normal human characteristics and failings, including vanity, fear, anger, and disgust. Discuss how even though she has become immortal, and can protect herself from many of the regular dangers of everyday life, she is still unable to disassociate herself from normal human emotion.

11. At the end of the book, the reader is left with the impression that Jody is about to turn Tommy into a vampire. If she does change him into a vampire, how do you imagine their story continues? How would it continue if she does not?

Enhancing Your Bookclub

1. Would you be willing to give up your normal life — being able to go out in the daylight, not being immortal — in order to become a vampire? You'd be able to live forever, have superstrength and -speed, among many other different gifts. Would it be worth it? Why? Why not?

2. To read more about vampires, take a look at the following titles: The Society of S by Susan Hubbard, Vamped by David Sosnowski, The Book of Renfield: A Gospel of Dracula by Tim Lucas, and Happy Hour at Casa Dracula by Marta Costa.

3. Learn more about vampires: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampires.

Christopher Moore is the bestselling author of You Suck, A Dirty Job, The Stupidest Angel, Fluke, Lamb, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, Island of the Sequined Love Nun, Bloodsucking Fiends, and Practical Demonkeeping

Christopher Moore Bloodsucking Fiends

1. Morning Reflection/Discussion: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYOc-LqkrsE

2. Return Mudbound, go down to library for Bloodsucking Fiends


3. HMWK:  Read through Ch. 8 in Bloodsucking Fiends

Christopher Moore on Vampires and Writing

Read and respond with a comment to Christopher Moore interview.  What is your experience with contemporary vampire fiction?  Classical vampire fiction (Dracula)? Have you read Twilight or Anne Rice?
http://www.chrismoore.com/interviews/writing-the-vampire/

TV tropes

Vampire Tropes

Link:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VampireTropes

Videos:
http://www.watchmojo.com/video/id/8357/

Read first chapter online:
http://www.chrismoore.com/books/bloodsucking-fiends/


http://www.chrismoore.com/interviews/writing-the-vampire/



Watch the following videos and the videos on the video bar.
http://watchmojo.com/index.php?id=8330

http://watchmojo.com/index.php?id=8357 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Bhb744dw18

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/22/the-new-vampires-9-possib_n_620202.html#s103541 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBsNmM3ADp0&feature=relate

Nancy Thorpe Poetry Contest/ Hollins University

10th and 11th grade women

LINK: www.hollins.edu/poetry-contest