This American focus on the "I" in creatIve is of interest in a couple of
respects.  It has been shown experimentally now by Pennebaker [Stirman,
S.W., & Pennebaker, J.W. (2001). Word use in the poetry of suicidal and
non-suicidal poets. Psychosomatic Medicine 63, 517-522. A text analysis of
the poetry of poets who committed suicide vs a matched control who did
not -- promising evidence for the power of linguistic tools to understand
psychological state.
http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/pennebaker/reprints/index.ht
ml]
that this seems to lead to suicide.  APA has a book coming out in May on
writing for health.

In my work with writers who want to write about their illnesses I find it
difficult to keep them from dwelling on the "I" even though I point out to
them that that direction leads to boredom for potential readers.

tom bell


----- Original Message -----
From: "Pierre Joris" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2002 7:35 AM
Subject: Re: teaching creative writing (was Newbie)


> Tangentially (or not) to this thread: one of my favorite texts for
teaching
> creative writing (because it elicits such strong pro & con reactions) is
> back in print. It is Clayton Eshleman's "Novices" first published as a
book
> by itself in '89, and now included as opening text in Esheman's bumper
book
> of essays, _Companion Spider_ (with a preface by Adrienne Rich)just out
from
> Wesleyan University Press. The whole book is 330 pages & includes a
further
> range of essays on writing & on translation, reflections on other poets,
> several interviews, etc.
>
> I have my problems with teaching creative writing, and always turn those
> classes into both reading & writing classes -- as I believe that intense
> reading of the contemporaries & their predecessors is core. (& that's not
> just a sale spitch for the MILLENNIUM anthologies, though I do use those &
> have found them very successful indeed for showing students / young poets
> the range of poetries available -- especially important when students
> primarily think of poetry as "self-expression" i.e. come from the
> traditional US mold of "confessional" loose free-verse "I" poetry. Had to
> teach a course several times some years ago called "Personal narrative"
that
> was that programs most over-subscribed creative writing course exactly
> because of that "personal" touch. I would subtitle my version of it: "I is
> another" (Rimbaud) and have a line of Burroughs as epigraph: "I ain't
> innerested in your dirty ole condition." That created some tensions &
opened
> the discussion on the concept and usefulness and limits of the "personal."
> Flank that on the other side with Eshleman's "Novices" & its Artaudian,
> transformatory prescriptions for the personal in the crucible of poetry, &
> you've got as strong a potion as I've been able to brew for such
occasions.
>
> Pierre
>
> ________________________________________________________________
> Pierre Joris
> 6 Madison Place
> Albany NY 12202                 "É melhor ser cabeça de sardinha
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> Fax: (518) 426-3722
> Email: joris@ albany.edu
> Url: <http://www.albany.edu/~joris>
>
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