Beginnings and Caesurae

I knew coming into the Advance Creative Writing workshop that I wanted to be a writer, and I leave that workshop realizing that I am a writer. The project I completed is very close to being ready to send out to publishers, but that’s not why I know that I’m a writer. I am a writer because I am writing and finishing what I start. I’m not sure why it took until the end of the class for me to realize that. I may have been too focused on the goal of completing my degree, but I look back over the past two years, and I have drafts of short stories, poems, plays, and the beginning of longer works that have been accumulating the entire time. I stand at the beginning of knowing I am a writer and at a caesura in my life, doing that reflection.

This was my third writing class at Southern New Hampshire University, so I came into the class knowing the only process that works for me: I needed to bang out a draft and then work from there. And then I didn’t do it. I allowed myself to be bogged down the first couple of drafts, worried that a first draft of a poem wasn’t good enough. Once I got back on track and returned to what works, “just finish it, and then fix it later,” I was able to get back into the groove. I like to write a draft, think about it, go back over it, and try new things. I also like to layer my drafts, looking at the world in one pass, looking at characters in another, sentence structure in yet another.

The project was a hybrid of fiction and poetry. One thing that I learned in the class about writing fiction is that I like fantastical elements, like the Denisovan grandmother speaking across the ages in my project. I always knew that I liked high fantasy, but this is the second short story I’ve written in as many years that was set in the present and had a fantasy element insert itself into the plot. I believe that magic happens, whether it is science we can’t explain yet, or something else, I don’t know. However, I won’t be surprised in the future when it shows up again in my writing, because I think it’s part of the “what if” I like to explore in my fiction.

I felt that eight weeks was not enough time to do the project complete justice. A hybrid project was ambitious, but I’m glad I chose to do one. I think I did what I could have done in eight weeks; I didn’t work on it every other week when a draft was due, I worked on it every day. Throughout, I wished I could write more quickly. I hope as I continue to write I’ll speed up.

I had fun playing with the fiction in this story. I didn’t know where it was going to go when I started. In fact, I didn’t think it would go anywhere in the direction it took me, especially fantasy.

I wonder if I sometimes over-think things, though. I don’t know if anyone reading the story in the workshop recognized the painting above Ari in the coffee house as a reproduction of Gaugin’s “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” It supported a theme I was exploring in the piece, but it might have been esoteric.

Another thing I learned is that I have a hard time writing short stories. I had the same problem in the Fiction Workshop I took a couple of terms ago that I had in this workshop. My stories end up being the start of a novella or novel rather than fitting into a short story. It’s tempting to think it’s because I choose complicated topics that can’t be resolved in a short period of time, but some of it has to simply be practice. Flannery O’Connor explored what I think were complicated themes, and she wrote brilliant short stories. It’s simply another area for me to keep exploring until I get it figured out.

When it comes to poetry, I still feel like a novice. I gained more experience in the workshop and have started playing with various techniques. In my project I played around with a couple of forms, some traditional and some not. I included a haiku and then in a later draft, I took a page from poet Terrance Hayes. I wrote a “golden shovel” poem based on “Jamesian” by Thom Gunn, which didn’t work very well and only survived one draft of my project. I also took Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous sonnet “How Do I Love Thee” and created a sonnet based on the first word of each of the lines in her sonnet. The twist was that instead of the speaker loving a person, it was about the speaker loving her work. That’s one I will play with further because it amused me and I didn’t have time to get it where I really wanted it. In the immediate future I plan to spend time specifically exploring scansion and prosody.

In fact, I will keep working on all of the poems in this project. None of the poems I wrote in this project reflect me as the speaker; it was fun to play around with that.  I believe that I’ve grown more as a poet in this workshop than I have as a fiction writer, perhaps because I had so much farther to grow. I’ve read a lot more fiction than poetry over the years. 

            In the end, this workshop taught me that I still love writing both genres, and I plan to continue working in both of them. I decided to finish my degree in Creative Writing and English because I completed the draft of a novel during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) 2011 and didn’t know what to do next. Now I do, and I’m anxious to apply what I’ve learned. I have one more class at Southern New Hampshire University before graduating, and then there’s no stopping me. I’m a writer. I will continue writing.

Patching the House, a cento from poems by twelve poets

Two people in a room, speaking harshly.

Now we will count to twelve

This house in one year fallen to decay

guarded in elegant blackness

won’t be forgotten

Hopes, left with those hangers-on

All doors from their lives are entrances

like a window in a building on fire. For Jesus

And silence is always coming,

but nothing lasts forever

There’s a bankruptcy that’s pure gain.

The heat of the night is giving us new things

and the house             after all            is half paid

Sources: [Adrienne Rich, Pablo Neruda, Robert Frost, Audre Lorde, Sappho, W.D. Snodgrass, Rainier Maria Rilke, Terrance Hayes, May Sarton, Nikki Giovanni, Jelaluddin Rumi, Mark Strand, Nikki Giovanni]

Works Cited

Frost, Robert. “The Census-Taker.” Intro. Louis Untermeyer. New Enlarged Pocket Anthology of Robert Frost’s Poems. New York: Washington Square Press, 1969. 179. Print.

Giovanni, Nikki. “Age” Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1978. 45. Print.

Giovanni, Nikki. “Poem (for Ema)” Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1978. 74. Print.

Hayes, Terrance. “Coffin for Head of State [Trouble Sleep].” Lighthead. New York: Penguin Books, 2010. Kindle file.

Lorde, Audre. “Timepiece.” Comp. Judy Grahn. Another Mother Tongue. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. 101. Print.

Neruda, Pablo. “Keeping Quiet.” Trans. Stephen Mitchell. Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems of Pablo Nerudo. New York: Harper Perennial, 1997. 155. Print.

Rich, Adrienne. “Novella.” Poems: Selected and New, 1950-1974. New York: Norton, 1975. 65. Print.

Rilke, Ranier Maria. “Girls.” Trans. J. B. Leishman. Possibility of Being: a selection of poems. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1977. 9. Print.

Rumi, Jelaluddin. “One Who Does What the Friend…” Trans. Coleman Barks. Soul of Rumi. New York: HarperOne, 2002. N.Pag. Rumi Poetry. Web. 27 August 2014. http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/Rumipoetry1.html#anchor_16450

Sappho. “100.” Trans. Mary Barnard. Sappho. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958. n.p. Print.

Sarton, May. “Of the Seasons.” Ed. Serena Sue Hilsinger and Lois Brynes. Selected Poems of May Sarton. New York: Norton, 1978. 121. Print.

Snodgrass, W.D. “Snow Songs.” Ed. A.R. Ammons. The Best American Poetry 1994. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. 169. Print.

Strand, Mark. “The Mysterious Maps.” Ed. A.R. Ammons. The Best American Poetry 1994. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. 175. Print.

Dialogue and The Dining Room

A.J. Gurney, Jr.'s "The Dining Room" is a series of french scenes that show the decline of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) through a day spent in a dining room that represents dining rooms across time in America. However, it's also a look at intimate relationships and how they have changed with the culture. One of the scenes early in the second act, is a scene between Jim, in his late sixties, and his daughter Meg, who is about thirty. After a series of messy relationships, Meg wants to move home with her three small children and her father doesn't want her to.

In this short scene, Gurney effectively uses "interpretation and misinterpretation.... to carry the essential freight of theme and characterization" (Downs and Russin 145). When Meg tells Jim that she's left her husband, her father interprets it to mean she's taken a vacation from her husband, because he doesn't want to hear what she is really saying (Gurney 339) and he doesn't want to have the conversation that he knows is coming. He tries to avoid the conversation he knows is coming by trying to not be alone with his daughter, and when that's impossible, tries to steel himself for it with alcohol.

Another technique Gurney uses in this conversation, is to weave the exposition into the conflict. When Jim reveals that he had an affair and that Meg's mother ran off the "other woman" it is exposition, but it's also part of the reasoning behind his argument: that Meg should toss the other woman out and try to make things work with her husband. Similarly, Meg explains that this won't work because she's not only had an affair of her own with a married man, but also with a woman.

Guerney uses dialogue to support the scene but also the overall theme of the play. When Meg says "I want to... do all those things you and Mother used to do with all of us. I want start start again, Dad," she is talking about her own life; she's also longing for the WASP culture that doesn't exist anymore. She says that she can't go back to the way it was in her married life and Jim says that he can't either. He means that he can't go back to the way things were in his marriage as well as to the way things were culturally when he was raising Meg and her siblings.

A.R. Gurney, Jr. is a master at using dialogue to convey characterization and theme. "The Dining Room" gives examples of how to do this over and over in each of the scenes of the play. I'm hopeful that I can learn from him and employ similar technique in my playwriting.

Works Cited

Downs, William Missouri and Robin U. Russin. Naked Playwriting: The Art, The Craft, and the Life Laid Bare. 1st ed. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2004. Print.

Gurney, A.R., Jr. "The Dining Room." Plays From the Contemporary American Theater, ed. Brooks McNamara. New York: Signet Classic, 1988. 339-342. Print.

Larger Than Life: Sister Mary Ignatius

Note: This blog post contains spoilers (about a Chistopher Durang play that's over thirty years old, so if you haven't read it yet, what are you waiting for? It's a one-act, won't take you long at all. Hop to it and then come back here.)

The second play we're reading for the playwriting workshop I'm taking is another play I read when I was at St. Louis University, around 1980 or 1981: Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You by Christopher Durang. I remembered the play being wickedly funny satire; I remembered St. Mary Ignatius being larger than life; and I didn't remember a thing about the plot except that Sister Mary Ignatius lectured about Catholicism. That speaks volumes to me about Durang's effectiveness in creating the eponymous character because, for better or worse, she outshines the other elements of the play.

Durang starts by using the stereotype of a conservative nun in traditional wimple and veil. This could only be used effectively in a satire such as this play, but Sister is more than simply a stereotype used for satirical purposes. I like that Durang creates a positive motivation for the things that Sister Mary Ignatius does in the play. When she shoots Gary it isn't because she hates homosexuals, it's for the best possible reason she could have. She believes he'll go to hell because he's an unrepentant homosexual; by killing him after having gone to confession, Sister is sending Gary to heaven. This isn't rationalization for the sake of justification: she believes it.

Durang also uses selectivity effectively in creating dialogue for Sister Mary Ignatius.  "The secret of good dialogue is selectivity—finding the conversation that most reveals the lives of the speakers, finding the expression that means more than itself, finding the word that the audience can instantly absorb and interpret" (Leib). The catechism that Sister discusses in the play is directly tied to the events of her childhood; the audience quickly understands that the convent must have been a refuge for Sister. Her desire to understand the terrible things that God could allow to happen in life conflicts with her desire to be a good Catholic. When Sister says "the only reason God has not destroyed these modern-day Sodoms is that Catholic nuns and priests live in these cities, and God does not wish to destroy them" (Durang 200), she is making the nonsensical fit within the realm of her Catholic beliefs. All of the dialogue Durang has written for Sister is tied to the specific action and themes of the play.

While the Catholic church has been the butt of jokes for at least decades, probably centuries, I am hard-pressed to think of nuns like Sister Mary Ignatius being lampooned until right around the time when Durang was writing this play. While he was working on this play in New York, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of mostly gay men who dress up as nuns to rebel against gender roles, increase AIDS awareness, and raise money for charities, were coming into existence in San Francisco. It was a time when there was a lot of religious oppression directed at the LGBT community. As a gay man, I think Durang channeled his anger into a very funny play full of dark, unexpected moments.

Still, I can't help but think there wasn't enough plot for this to be a full-length play, and perhaps because of that, I don't come away from reading this play believing that there is much of a character arc for Sister Mary Ignatius. There is conflict and rising action, first with the audience being lectured, and then with the former students admitting they have not come to present the pageant for altruistic reasons. We do see Sister move from verbal action to physical action, as the play progresses; however, I don't think she changes very much from start to finish. By the end of the play I want her to be a changed woman, to have some kind of epiphany, and instead she takes a nap. She's killed two people but she hasn't seemed to really change. While that supports a theme that explores the absurdity of an unbending, behind-the-times Catholic Church, it leaves me somewhat unfulfilled. Sister Mary Ignatius is a well-developed character and I think she deserved a better plot.

Works Cited

Durang, Christopher. "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You." Plays From the Contemporary American Theater, ed. Brooks McNamara. New York: Signet Classic, 1988. 193-225. Print.

Leib, Mark E. "Overview of Playwriting." Writing Commons. n.d. Web. 18 July 2014.

Withstanding the Test of Time

I am taking a playwriting workshop this term and writing a ten-minute play as part of the class. Last week I turned in a pitch for my play; this week all of us in the workshop are critiquing everyone's  pitches. We also had to read and blog about Beth Henley's play, Crimes of the Heart, and how techniques that she used may be helpful with our own plays. There's a Works Cited section at the bottom even though I didn't quote from the play. I simply wanted to acknowledge the version of the script I read this week. Here's what I wrote for the class:

I first read Crimes of the Heart the year that it was produced on Broadway. I was a Theatre major at St. Louis University, and it was a play about women in a time when there weren't necessarily a lot of great roles for female actors; a lot of people in the department were doing scene work from this play. The first thing that struck me about this play were the characters: they were all women I have known in my life and they were all women I saw a piece of myself in. I am not from the south and do not have any sisters, but I really liked this play when I read it the first time; I still do.

I like that Henley made the setting of the play in the kitchen of the MaGrath house. Kitchen are the places where people, especially family, gather. The moment the curtain goes up, the audience is informed that this will be an intimate play; it's a good foundation for the other spectacle elements of the play that she cannot control, such as the actors' performances and the set. The ten minute play I pitched takes place in the parlor of a Bed & Breakfast inn for much the same reason: my play will explore family in an intimate context but in a slightly more public one.

My play will have all female characters who are lesbians and I have worried about distinguishing them from one another since they are friends with similar interests. In Crimes of the Heart, Henley effectively uses the sisters as foils for each other and I think that is a good approach for me to take as well. Lenny, Meg, and Babe have common family experiences as well as being sisters. Despite the commonalities, Henley wrote them as women who have made different life choices; they have different personalities, and the dysfunction in their family provides ample opportunity to show those differences.

It's no surprise to me that this play won a Pulitzer: it uses all of the elements of drama effectively. It's a play that still speaks to me even though it's been over thirty years since the first time I read it.

Works Cited

Henley, Beth. “Crimes of the Heart.” Plays from the Contemporary American Theater. Ed. Brooks McNamara. New York: Signet Classic, 2002.

The Witches of Macbeth: Fate, Free Will, and the Influence of Evil

            In the 17^th century, the English believed in the power of the supernatural and the ability of evil to influence otherwise honorable people. Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Mac.) is the story of a loyal and honorable Scottish Thane who becomes a murderous and tyrannical King because he succumbs to the influence of three prophesying witches. Macbeth would never have become a murderous tyrant without the evil actions and influence of these witches.

In the opening scene of the play, the witches reveal their evil strategy to meet with Macbeth and sow the seeds of their plot (Mac. 1.1.1-7). “War plows the soil. Who wins is not what counts. It is what seeds are planted…that determines the future” (Goddard 494). The witches intend to turn Macbeth’s world upside down by planting the seeds of evil that will lead to his downfall.

When the witches tell Macbeth he will be Thane of Cawdor and then King, he insists that the thane of Cawdor is in good health and that “to be king / Stands not within the prospect of belief” (Mac. 1.3.72T74). Macbeth has no thoughts of regicide when he hears the prophecy. Still, “in these opening scenes, the triple repetition of the adjective ‘rapt’ (1.3.55, 141; 1.5.5), connoting a seizing from high, emphasizes that Macbeth is acted upon by forces external and above: the witches, or the three weird sisters” (Langhis 4). The witches focus on manipulating Macbeth’s ambitions to an evil end and he is unable to resist them.

The witches do not provide details and disappear when Macbeth would ask them more information. Soon thereafter, Macbeth learns that he has been chosen to be the new thane of Cawdor, and he starts to take the prophecies seriously, even though Banquo warns that evil may speak truth to cause harm (Mac. 1.5.23-24). Banquo recognizes the danger and exercises his free will: he hears his fate but does not act to hasten it, lest he fall prey to evil influences.

In 17^th century England, people believed in the power of witches. “Though England never had witch hunts of the sort seen in Continental Europe, there was a legal framework for the punishment of witchcraft, and witches were an accepted reality” (Lander 8). The fact that Macbeth is manipulated by the witches indicates that this is a play about sin and the effects of evil influence.

After meeting the witches, the prophecies are obviously on Macbeth’s mind a great deal. In act 1, scene 5, Lady Macbeth reads from a letter that mentions them. She remarks that he is “too full o’ the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way” (Mac. 1.5.16-17), implying that on his own, Macbeth would never resort to regicide. She decides to convince him to murder King Duncan to expedite the prophecy that Macbeth will be king. He loves his wife and allows himself to be influenced by her.

            “The sense of urgency which incites the protagonists to commit their errors gains force from the internal necessity of the tragic plot” (Habington 11). Macbeth’s hamartia is directly related to the evil actions and manipulations of the witches; it is similar to that of Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. “Both Macbeth and Brutus underestimate the urgent expressive force that blood will acquire after it has been shed, and both will be marked for death when the allies of their victims rally to oppose them” (Habington 73). Macbeth is a warrior who has just participated in a bloody war on behalf of King Duncan. The world is in upheaval. Urged by his wife to commit a murder that he feels ambivalent about, Macbeth miscalculates what the response will be to his having murdered Duncan. That is Macbeth’s fatal mistake.

“Macbeth’s adversaries do not prosecute and sentence him for high crimes and misdemeanors; he is hunted down and killed as a sinful blight on the body politic. The first crime is complete early in the second act, but the sinfulness of that one crime alone lingers as a momentous issue until the end of the play” (Colston 61). Macbeth isn’t a play about crime; it’s a play about a man who subverts the natural order of loyalty and murders family and friends at the prodding of unnatural influences.

By the fourth act of the play, Macbeth actively seeks out the witches. When the second witch says “By the pricking of my thumbs / Something wicked this was comes” (Mac. 4.1.44-45), she is referring to Macbeth. The witches have won. They have taken an honorable man and made him into a wicked one. He demands to know further prophecies, regardless of their evil origin.

The apparitions yield ambiguous prophecies, but Macbeth is so consumed by his arrogance and his drive to maintain his kingship, that he misinterprets them; the witches do not correct his misinterpretation. Two of the three final prophecies occur during the play: Macbeth should beware Macduff, none of woman born kills Macbeth, and he is safe until Birnam Wood moves to Dunsinane Hill. The last prophecy is only an image of eight crowned kings walking by, with the last carrying a mirror and followed by Banquo’s ghost. (Mac. 4.1.112-123). The witches refuse to tell him the meaning of the final vision and once again disappear. Macbeth is doomed, even if he fails to see it himself.

In act 5, scene 5, Macbeth receives news that the trees of Birnam Wood are advancing and recognizes that he has misjudged that prophecy, but he still clings to the prophecy that no man born of woman can harm him and fights Malcolm’s forces. Macbeth meets up with Macduff in act 5, scene 5 and learns that Macduff was born by caesarian section. Evil has triumphed and the great man has fallen. Audiences experience catharsis when Macbeth dies, and the way is paved for the final prophecy about Banquo’s heirs to come true. Sadly, had Macbeth exercised the free will that Banquo did, he would have resisted the witches’ evil influences, and the entire story might have been different.

Works Cited

Colston, Ken. "Macbeth and the Tragedy of Sin." Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 13.4 (2010): 60-95. Project MUSE. Web. 2 Apr. 2014. 

Goddard, Harold C. The Meaning of Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951. Print.

Habington, William Andrew. "Necessary Evil: The Interplay of Compulsion and Necessity in Doctor Faustus and Macbeth." Order No. MQ36458 Dalhousie University (Canada), 1998. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 5 Apr. 2014. 

Lander, Jesse M. Introduction. Macbeth. By William Shakespeare. Ed. Jesse M. Lander. New York, NY: Sterling Signature, 2012. Print.

Langhis, Unhae. “Character and Daemon, Fate and Free Will.” Shakespeare’s Macbeth: Critical Contexts Series. Ed. Boris Drenkov, Howrah: Roman Books, 2013. Academia.edu. Web. 9 Mar. 2014. 

Shakespeare, William. “Macbeth.” The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Ed. W.G. Clark and W. Aldis Wright. Vol. 2. Garden City, NY: Nelson Doubleday, Inc., n.d. 792-815. Print.