Journal Prompt #6: This Penn State Life

For your sixth journal prompt (to be posted on your personal blog), you will need to listen to the entirety of this podcast about Penn State's party school status on NPR's This American Life. It's an hour and a half long, so be sure to allot yourself the time necessary. I promise, it's gripping.

I am looking first of all for a general, immediate response from you. How did this make you feel? As a Penn State student? As a college student in general? Do you think this is an apt portrayal?

Think about the appeals as you listen. Where is ethos particularly strong/weak? For the arguers? For the people interviewed? What about pathos? Where were you most moved/confused/angered/proud and why? Finally, how well does the piece make use of logos--statistics, reason, facts--to make its case?

What issues of definition are at stake in the piece? Small ones (hint: a jacket you wear to a frat party is called a___?) and large ones. How does this piece define PSU? Our students? Faculty?

Please address the above in at least 500 but no more than 1000 words.

Due Thursday, October 27th by noon.

Journal Prompts 4 & 5

Good news!

I'm counting your memoir's first scene and the comparison you did between the two suicide-themed poems as journals # 4 & 5.

Stay tuned for prompt #6...

Poet Anne Stevenson to Read, October 20th

Anne Stevenson is widely recognized as an eminent Anglo-American poet. Her many books of poetry and criticism include a collectedPoems 1955–2005, which won her the Neglected Master’s Award from The Poetry Society of America and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lannan Foundation. She is the author of two critical studies of Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry and an important biography of Sylvia Plath. Her fourteenth collection of poems, Stone Milk,appeared in 2007.


October 20th
7:30pm
Foster Auditorium

Poet Heather Jordan to Read Wednesday, October 5th at 12:10 pm

Wednesday, October 5, 12:10 p.m.

The Palmer Museum of Art 

Heather Jordan, lecturer, Department of English

Heather Jordan published a collection of poetry titled Cheap Grace with Finishing Line Press in 2011 and will soon release a second book of poetry, Lottery Ticket, with the University of Wisconsin Press.

Paper # 2: Memoir/ Personal Narrative

Length: 3-5 pages double-spaced

Purpose:

Recall, retell, and analyze a significant experience in your life, carefully choosing a sequence of events that supports a specific thesis and helps you fulfill your rhetorical purpose regarding a specific audience.

A narrative based on personal experience can serve to communicate some insight into our experiences, our feelings and our values. A meaningful narrative is more than just a list of things that happened: “I woke up, answered the ringing telephone, heard my mother’s voice tell me that my dog, Rover, was killed by a hit and run, threw the phone down, threw myself down and began to cry…” A meaningful narrative makes a point: “After my dog died,  I threw myself into the work of cleaning out my top desk drawer, culling and sorting through bits of love letters scribbled on angel-blue paper, red ribbons from swim team in seventh grade, a matchbook from Senior Prom at the Fireside Inn, a swatch of taffeta that was ripped from my dress as I clambered over the country-club fence to have a night swim with my date—the domestic energy and descent into living memory distracting me and pulling me through the grief of losing my beloved pet…” That’s the purpose of this writing: for you to draw upon your memory of a real, true experience that makes a point that all of us can learn from.

Invention:

Write about an experience that changed you. Think about a time in your life when something caused you to question or shift your perspective on life. This does not mean that it must be a tragedy or a death, though these are appropriately fertile options as well. A life-changing experience could very well be something that seems, at first, insignificant, boring or small: the summer you spent on your grandmother’s farm, the stranger you talked to at the bus stop this morning, how eating ice cream at the Creamery made you reconsider what it meant to be on your own for the first time. What did you learn from this experience? How are you different for having gone through it? In any case you will need to think of a moment which has stayed with you, one you know deep down had some real effect on you, and try to figure out what and why. Tell us the story so that we may feel what you felt, react as you reacted and learn what you learned.

Remember that you must limit your scope. You can’t possibly write about your entire life (Nor should you! That is autobiography, not memoir.), or even about your entire experience playing high school basketball in one essay. You must focus on some one thing: an experience within a larger context; a moment of change in a relationship.

Be sure that whatever you choose to explore in writing interests you and then write to interest readers and affect them in some way. As you decide what to write about, keep in mind:

* What do you want to say? What point are you trying to get across?

* Who are you writing to and why should they care? What do you hope they will do or feel as a result of reading your memoir?

In the end, you must work to evoke a powerful pathos response in your reader through the use of vivid, memorable, language, concrete details, plot, character and setting.

         

           

Expectations:

A successful personal narrative will:

• Focus on a significant experience;
• Use ample sensory details;
• Include dialogue that reveals information about your characters;
•  Employ transitions that will help your reader follow your narrative and/or logic;
• Showcase a personal narrative voice—your voice! (e.g, use a variety of sentence patterns and Lengths, don’t sound like you come from the bureau of statistics, and so on); and
• Provide reflection and analysis in order to help your audience understand the significance of the experience.  

Join the Staff of Kalliope!

Folks, as you know, I am the faculty advisor for our fantastic literary magazine, Kalliope and we are currently looking to fill staff positions for the 11-12 school year. Below is a message from our editors with more information about how to get involved. No experience necessary. Just bring your enthusiasm for writing and art!

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We're looking for people in the following departments: 

-Readers for all sections: poetry, art, nonfiction, fiction.
-Production (especially: book and advertisement production)
-Social networking personnel

If you're interested in joining the reader, production, or social staff, visit http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SMPR66J for our online application. 

Thanks!

Kalliope Editors 

Nate Davis, Jess Brenn