1. Let’s sort of start by just yapping a bit about the whole creative enterprise. What quotation did you select in Skittish Libations, and why? What, for you, is “art”? What is “creative writing”? What is the process one goes through on the way to creating fabulous poetry and fiction?

2. Formalist Formalist Formalist Creative Writing
A confrontation with reality; facing reality
Note that some types, such as satire, mock or interrogate reality
The invention of reality
Formalist
Creative Writing
The improvement
of reality (art as a hammer
An escape from reality; a
sedative or distraction
Formalist
Defiance of reality; reality as it ought to be
A magnification
of reality
Formalist

3. Art Formalist Formalist Formalist Process… Creative Writing …Product…
Something produced solely for others; a means of pleasing an audience
A mysterious inborn talent
Formalist
A commodity
Expression that is shaped and crafted
The honoring of tradition
A pile of crap; a hoax; excuse for not having a REAL job
Creative Writing
Art
Formalist
A learnable skill
Emotional or psychological therapy
The subversion of tradition
Expression that is wide-open and free
Self-expression; solely for self ; exploration of one’s unique vision
Formalist
…Product…

4. Maybe writing’s a constant
NEGOTIATION
of binaries
SELF OTHER
Artist Audience
Past Present

5. Speaking of Past and Present, here are a couple of competing claims:
Creative Writing (Literature) is the art of language in the present moment. The live, unstable, mysterious evolution that is happening continually and right under our noses. Brand new poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, script-writing, and genres we don’t yet know how to name.
Creative Writing (Literature) is the art of language as an ancient activity. Something we’ve been doing since we first opened our mouths to speak, write on cave walls, and sing around a fire. Some theorists say that the impulse to create poetry is at the root of the human impulse to communicate, period.

6. Ok. So nobody knows how to define it. Or there’s no final definition.
Then how do we learn it?
How does it get taught? Should I, as a teacher, emphasize process or product? Craft or free exploration? The work of antiquity or the work of the future?
How is it distinguished from any other kind of writing and so what’s it’s place in the schools at any level? In other words…

7. What is “Creative Writing” with a capital C and W?
= the branch of English Studies that involves teaching and learning how to write creatively, right?
Yeah, but…

8. Isn’t all writing “creative”? Why call it Creative Writing?
Can it really be taught? Isn’t it about talent and a mysterious ability to summon the muse?
What’s it doing in a university? How do you evaluate it?
How does it relate to Rhetoric and Composition, Literary Studies, Linguistics, Technical Writing? Isn’t writing in these fields creative also?
What’s more important: the writing of literature or the study of it?
Isn’t all language creative, really? Why even have a distinct field called Creative Writing? Can’t business reports, department memos, shopping lists, Facebook status updates, even check-writing all be “creative”?

9. Did you know…
In some of its earliest appearances in higher ed, Creative Writing was offered to help students understand literature better. I.e., it was in the service of literature studies.
The idea was that by writing some fiction, poetry, or drama themselves, students would better understand the masterpieces of literature.

10. But also…
a bunch of teachers who were also writers wanted to get together with other writers and blab about their work—
in a college setting. (Couldn’t hang out in the bistros of Paris or Gertrude Stein’s salon anymore, so had to get together somewhere…)

11. It’s always been a bit of an outlaw…
Not scholarly like other disciplines. The MFA is a studio degree. Very different criteria.
Not really “academic.” Considered to be even a “spiritual” discipline.
A “soft” subject. Workshop approach is considered by some to be whimpy: writers who want to talk with other writers sit in a circle and read/discuss their stuff, while a teacher/published writer chimes in.

12. Since the 80s, though,
It has been influenced by postmodern theory, composition studies, and English education.
The way it is taught is changing here and there…
You can now study “the teaching of Creative Writing” as a subject itself. Or “Creative Writing Studies” which examines:
Creative writing pedagogy
The culture of creative writing/creative writing in the culture
The history of creative writing in the university.
You can get an MA and PhD in “Creative Writing Studies.”

13. Me. What in the heck do I do as a teacher of the stuff
Me? What in the heck do I do as a teacher of the stuff? When I go into the creative writing classroom…

14. I teach genres. Poetry, fiction. Creative nonfiction
I teach genres. Poetry, fiction. Creative nonfiction. Some script writing.
I encourage wide-open, glorious self-expression. Go for it.
I encourage self-denial and disciplined attention to the needs of audience. Craft.
I encourage demented new ways of thinking about the world.
I encourage thoughtful appreciation of very old traditions.
I try to do everything.
That’s why I’m burning out.
That’s why I’m insane.
Don’t tell my boss.

15. ok

16. Poetry

17. Maybe it starts with just loving words.

18. What’s figurative language?
How do you say that someone is drunk?
How many animal metaphors do we use everyday?
Where did most worn-out metaphors come from, and how do we keep the language alive? Look at Lorrie Moore…

19. Worst High School Metaphors
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

20. 7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. Instead of 7:30. 
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

21. 13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. Traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. At a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are want to do.

22. 20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

23. Sometimes it helps to take a really unusual perspective…say, that of an animal.
Once a student wrote a piece from the point of view of a deer. It described a hunter’s gun as “a branch that barks.”

24. Poetry The private, inward-directed lyric poet. The community bard.
Focusing on particular traditions:
The private, inward-directed lyric poet.
The community bard.
The craftsman or maker.
The mad or divinely inspired visionary.

25. The Oral Tradition (the Bard)
Spoken Word Poetry
The Oral Tradition (the Bard)

26. This stuff is really old…
Hey, Daddy-o
Homer 800 BC
Old English poetry 400 AD
Native American 8000 BC to present
The Beats 1950s
Slam Poetry 1980s to present

27. The Beats (1950s,60s) Getting poetry out of the classroom
Poetry read to jazz accompaniment

32. Ferlinghetti:
Ginsberg:

33. Rap and Hip Hop Came of age alongside the poetry slam phenom.
Hyperbolic, gymnastic, inventive
Heavily end-rhyme based; rhymes often funny, clever, silly
Distinct prosody

34. The Poetry Slam and Open-Mike Coffee House Reading
Harks back to the Beats
Again, desire to get poetry out of the classroom
Emphasis on anyone can write poetry
Tends to be political
Theatrical, sometimes mixed-media

35. How do slams work?

36. check these out!
AND

37. What makes a good spoken-word or slam performance?
Listen to Spoken Word selections,
plus Beat poems with jazz accompaniment

38. Blurring the line between poetry and theater; performances are like one-person, one-act plays.
Aggressive, clever, sometimes funny rhyme, not in any strict pattern (triple rhymes, internal rhymes, slant rhymes, repeated words, etc. In video, “Lazarus, Lazie, Lazy”).
Projection! Loud broadcast.
Number of unstressed syllables don’t matter, maybe. Success depends on how cleverly you get the four stresses in (rap).
Getting into a groove.
Memorizing the material adds interest.
Mixing genres: insert singing, use accompanying sound, etc.
Ritual presence of performer.

39. Ok. So.
Describe what you see on the table. REALLY LOOK. The thing. The thing itself.
Make the object…
luminous

40. STOP ! ! Are you being dull? Are you being predictable?
Are you thinking too much?
Try a thesaurus…

41. Try Being Surreal

42. Surrealism
Surrealism

43. The Surrealist Manifesto
1924: Andre Breton:
The Surrealist Manifesto
“I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a sur-reality.”

44. “The idea of surrealism aims quite simply at the total recovery of our psychic force by a means which is nothing other than the dizzying descent into ourselves, the systematic illumination of hidden places and the progressive darkening of other places, the perpetual excursion into the midst of forbidden territory” (Breton).

45. Between WWI and WWII Surrealism:
the principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or effects in art, literature, film, or theater by means of unnatural juxtapositions and combinations. An attempt, through these random, irrational juxtapositions and combinations, to make make a new reality or a new whole.

46. Instead of:
I saw the rabbit, as soft as cotton, his eyes bright, munching the grass.
you get:
I saw the rabbit, ripe as a hammer, his eyes boiled, baptizing the grass.
(random words from carpentry, religion, cooking)
or:
I saw the rabbit, as Monday as Van Gogh’s ear, eyes in search of Harvard, document the grass.
(random words from stuff on my desk)

47. Early Surrealists Valued:
random CHANCE and the seizing of accident;
“convulsive beauty,” the marvelous, the uncanny, the disruptive, and the unexpected;
strange and unexpected juxtapositions;
defamiliarizing the everyday so that it once again appears strange and new;
liberation of mind from bourgeois modes of thinking;
the oblivion ha-ha silly brain brillo stain
The names of Aztec gods were on one page,
serotonin uptake inhibitors on the other.
Here, you said: another baby avocado tree.
You threw your shoe. I broke
the refrigerator and the fossil fish.
I broke my shoulder blade.
I tried to make jambalaya.
To relax the organism, the cookbook said,
pound with a mallet on the head or shell.
I love you. This remarkable statement has appeared on earth to substantiate the clams.
Here's your fire
extinguisher,
welcome to the glacier.
Don't think I wasn't shocked when
you were a traffic signal
and I a woodpecker.
I can't make it any clearer than that
and stay drunk.

48. Some responses to Skittish Libations by previous students…

49. Deven
Yes! Absolutely! Except…
Creative Writing is any writing that isn’t done for someone else. Creative Writing is for the writer. The same I would say holds true for any kind of art. An artist creates a painting for his/herself, and the folks walking around the gallery are privileged to see it. A musician creates an album about something personal in his life and the listeners are simply “along for the ride”.
Is the audience really that irrelevant? Is this the kind of art you/we typically spend our money on? CDs? Big budget films?
NOT !

50. Yep, completely true! Erica
Creative writing is without restrictions, or not many of them. Individuals are free to express themselves and be original. Too many rules and restrictions suppress creativity since individuals are so limited. Creative writing can be described as freedom of writing where emotions are not concealed and the creator is present within each piece of work.
Yep, completely true!
—except, um, what about form? Craft?
And, again, how come this isn’t the art that most of us actively support?

51. Brian
Rhetorical component of any piece of writing
Creative writing is one of the most powerful ways to expel and express feelings, thoughts, and ideas. Writing and all art is meant to affect and influence the minds and emotions of others. The needs of the audience are important and writer should make some compromises, however a writer should never compromise their message.
Or is it something we do for its sake—without any exterior purpose?

52. Heather
Creative writing is something that I want to do because it helps me feel connected. It is a way for me to tap into my subconscious thoughts and desires. It’s a way for me to express those to others.

53. Chris
Who judges?
Creative writing is for writing very creatively. It is for fun, enjoyment, and school type people. Art is for those people who enjoy art. It is hard to say if the writer’s or audience’s needs are more important because, when juxtaposing them, only an english teacher could determine whose needs institute more need. It should be determined on an individual basis. All students should take creative writing so they can learn to write better.

54. Notice how little attention in these items on the work itself
Carl
genre
Forget all these questions—creative writing is the writing of poetry and fiction. Duh. The end.
Creative writing, in my opinion, is poetry, prose, really it’s anything that you don’t need to do extensive research to write and doesn’t need a bibliography. Creative writing can be something totally new, or something ripped off from one of the greats, just a little different; different enough, at least, to not get sued. It can be a way of expressing yourself, resolving inner conflicts, or just killing time.
therapy (back to the self)
Does/can the work have a mind of its own? Some artists have spoken about it in these terms…