Literary Recommendations

Hello All,

Here are your Winter 2011 literary recommendations:

Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

"How the Camel Got Its Hump" by Rudyard Kipling

When You're Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

"Hope Is a Strange Invention" by Emily Dickinson

"My Dreams, My Works Must Wait Til After Hell" by Gwendolyn Brooks

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison

"When a Woman Loves a Man" by David Lehman

"Footprints" by Caroline Carty

Electricidad by Luis Alfaro

"The Fifth Child" by Doris Lessing

Burro Genius by Victor Villasenor

Technicolor Pulp by Arty Nelson

Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

"My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke

"A Haunted Island" by Algernon Blackwood

"Reluctance" by Robert Frost

"The Price" by Neil Gaiman

"It Couldn't Be Done" by Edgar Guest

Ordinary People by Judith Guest

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

"Dreams" by Langston Hughes

"A Dark Brown Dog" by Steven Cain

"Still Here" by Langston Hughes

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

"Calvary" by Edwin Arlington Robinson

"The Devoted Friend" by Oscar Wilde

"My Mistress's Eyes Are Nothing like the Sun" by Shakespeare

Beloved by Toni Morrison

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

"My Name Is Espada" by Martin Espada

"A Woman Speaks" by Audrey Lorde

Twilight by Stephanie Meyers

Time You Let Me In by Naomi Shihab Nye

"No Woman, No Cry" by Bob Marley

The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa

Toward a Kinship of Faith by the Dalai Lama

"What Do Women Want" by Kim Addonizio

Post for March 9

Hello All,

Some of you have inquired as to websites that feature short stories.

Here are some sites of literary journals that have current writing you might want to peruse:

Prairie Schooner
The Paris Review
Virginia Quarterly Review
Tin House

Here are some sites that have more of the "classic" short stories:

Short Story Archive
Classic Short Stories
Short Stories at Classic Reader
Short Stories of American Literature

Instead of class on Wednesday, find one short story you will include in your anthology, and post a brief explanation as to why you will include it.

Creative Non-fiction

Hello All,

Post a short work (one to two paragraphs) of literary non-fiction. This could be a brief memoir, profile, or meditation, but you should use at least one literary device (metaphor, simile, or so on), experiment with form, and court ambiguity.

Good luck, and have fun!

Post for Feb 2

Hello All,

Post the name of the article you will be discussing for your Research Summary assignment. Remember that this is a two-page summary and response (around 1 1/2 pages of summary and 1/2 page of response).

You can find these articles either through a scholarly database or through the library's collection.

Post for Jan 31

Hello All,

For this post, choose a song whose lyrics you would classify as poetry, and describe/list the literary devices the songs uses.

For example, one song that I like and that I feel can be classified as poetry is Leonard Cohen's "Anthem." I would classify it as poetry because it uses parallelism and antithesis and a multitude of symbols and metaphors, as in this stanza:

The holy dove
she will be caught again,
bought and sold
and bought again:
the dove is never free.

In addition to these literary devices, I like the song's theme, the idea that our imperfections are what give our lives meaning; it's a paradox: our weakness is our strength.

Post for Jan 28

Hello All,

For this blog, you are going to write one entry for the anthology that is due on the day of the final.

Go to the Academy of American Poets website, and find one poem that you like. Then write a paragraph (4-8 sentences) explaining why you find that poem meaningful: you could discuss its theme, its use of literary devices, or how it relates to something you've experienced. Be sure to give your name in the post as well as the name of the poet and the title of the poem.

Post for the weekend of 1/15-1/17

Hello All,

For this post, read William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence" and then pose a question as if you were writing a list of questions for students to answer regarding this poem. The question could concern a literary device, an image, a turn of phrase, or a theme/idea/meaning.

Again, just pose one question, but make sure that your question is not the same as someone else's (read the previous questions your fellow students have posted, unless you're the first, in which case, good work!).