Next Class

American Idiom:
Poets of the Later 20th and Early 21st Century

Dates:

Fall session: Six Tuesdays, October 16-November 27 (no class Election Day, November 6), 3:00—4:30 PM.

Price:

$120 ($100 members)

*When registering, please provide an email address for weekly communications.

Books:

*Above the River: The Complete Poems, James Wright (This title is currently unavailalbe from the publisher. The instructor will provide copies of the poems to be discussed.)

White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946-2006, Donald Hall

Due to the weather-related cancellation of the Tuesday, Oct. 30 session, American Idiom will hold a make-up session on Tuesday, Dec. 4, from 3:00-4:30

In 2012-13, we will revert to our traditional format of reading two poets a session over three sessions within the academic year. After roaming over space and time in the past few years, we will return to poets who have been writing within our lifetimes. We’ll base our reading loosely on the question of what makes an American poetic idiom. “Idiom” is defined both as a phrase whose meaning cannot be understood from the dictionary definition of each separate word, and as a form of expression natural to a person, language or group. “Kick the bucket, hang one’s head, raining cats and dogs” are just a few examples of idiom. We’ll ask the question: what is it that makes American poetry distinctive?

In the fall we will read two quintessentially American writers active in mid-20th-century and beyond: James Wright and Donald Hall. Winter will bring us to Galway Kinnell and W.S. Merwin, and in the spring we will read Lucille Clifton and Natasha Trethewey, the new Poet Laureate.

Do join us this fall. It will be both comfortable and eye-opening to read the poetry of our own time. Those returning to the group will benefit from the enhanced perspective of having read poetry from many different time periods. Welcome newcomers will bring their fresh viewpoint. No experience necessary; just pleasure in the company of others.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Gigi Bradford is the President of the Folger Shakespeare Library Poetry Board.

Reading South Asia:
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's India, 1950 to the present
Alexandra Viets

Reading:

*Heat and Dust, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Out of India: Selected Stories, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Read the introductory essay, "Myself in India," and the following stories: "The Widow," "The Housewife," and "Two More Under the Indian Sun."

*Also suggested: Heat and Dust, the film produced by Merchant Ivory (1983)

Date: Friday, Oct. 26, 1-3 p.m.

Price: $40 ($35 members)

Now 85 years old, novelist, essayist, short story writer and academy award winning screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has been writing about India since the 1950s. Called postcolonial before the term was invented, Jhabvala's work examines themes such as loss of language, land and history in a landscape she both claims and expresses dispossession from. This two-hour class will explore pre-independence and post-independence India through the prism of Jhabvala's Booker prize winning 1975 novel, Heat and Dust, and a selection of stories from her 1985 collection, Out of India. Among the themes to explore will be the integration of Western values, domination and power, the entwining of spirituality and sexuality, and Jhabvala's portrayal of India's urban middle class.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Alexandra Viets is a screenwriter and journalist with a background in South Asia who received her MFA degree from Columbia University. Her first feature-length screenplay, Cotton Mary, won a New York Foundation for the Arts award and was produced by Merchant Ivory. She is currently in pre-production on Ask Me No Questions, a feature film about a Bangladeshi family fleeing NYC post 9/11, and Hijabi Girls, a documentary about Muslim-American teenage girls who wear the hijab. She has also completed Kashmir, a screenplay set in modern day Kashmir and The Bibighar, a wartime drama of 1857 India. A frequent contributor to the Asian Wall Street Journal, her film/theater reviews have also appeared in The International Herald Tribune and The Far Eastern Economic Review. She is the recipient of the Paul Newman Award for screenwriting and an award from the National Film Development Council in Mumbai. She teaches in Baltimore at Towson University's Department of Theater Arts, specializing in film and literature of South Asia. She is a 2011 Fellow with the National Endowment for Humanities in South Asian literature, history and art.

Cuba: A Literary Adventure

Dates:

Five Mondays, November 5, 12, 19, 26, Dec 3. 1-3 p.m.

Price:

$120 ($100 members)

For more than 50 years, political tensions have kept citizens of the United States and Cuba, one of our nearest neighbors, in a state of estrangement. Fortunately, newly relaxed restrictions on travel are allowing Americans to once again visit Cuba through educational programs and “people-to-people” exchange. In this class we will explore the history and culture of Cuba, as well as the complicated nature of Cuban-American relations through reading and discussing essays, poetry, fiction and nonfiction by Cuban and Cuban-American writers as well as writers from other places.

Books:

*November 5: Selections from Bridges to Cuba (ed. Ruth Behar)
*November 12: Selections from A Reader’s Companion to Cuba (ed. Alan Ryan)
November 19: Dreaming in Cuban (Cristina Garcia)
November 26: In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd (Ana Menendez)
Dec 3: Adios Hemingway (Leonardo Padura Fuentes)

*The instructor will e-mail the class with details of the reading assignments for the November 5 and 12 classes.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, teacher, and writing coach. She has created and taught literature courses in Paris, Florence, Hawaii, and Cuba for Hunter and Queens Colleges of the City University of New York, and Writing from the Heart workshops in Essoyes, a village in the Champagne region of France. Her articles have been published in Smithsonian and the Christian Science Monitor, and she writes about travel, literature, and writing on her blog, Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road. She is coauthor of Moving On: A Practical Guide to Downsizing the Family Home, and is currently working on her next book, A Long Way from Iowa, a writer’s memoir.

American Idiom II

Gigi Bradford

Six Tuesdays:
Jan. 8, Jan. 15, Jan. 22, Jan. 29, Feb. 5, Feb. 19 (no class February 12), 3-4:30 p.m.

Price: $120/110 members

Books:
New Selected Poems, Galway Kinnell
Migration: New & Selected Poems, W.S. Merwin

THIS CLASS IS NOW FULLY ENROLLED. To be added to the waitlist, email mravenscroft@politics-prose.com.

REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can only issue class refunds within seven (7) days of the first class session.

Join us as we continue our investigation into what makes contemporary American poetry distinctive in content and form. We will read two Pulitzer-Prize-winning poets active in the second half of the 20th century up to the present: Galway Kinnell and W.S. Merwin. Kinnell was born in Rhode Island and has honed his poetic voice in rural New England. Merwin lived as a youth in Scranton, PA, but has spent latter decades in Hawaii. Though they were Princeton classmates (1948) and have been friends since college, these poets write completely differently from each other. Kinnell is a devotee of Whitman’s long lines and plain speech; Merwin’s work reflects imagistic Chinese and Japanese poetry with American themes. You will find these poems accessible and perhaps even familiar. No previous poetry experience or expertise is necessary, just pleasure in mutual reading and exploration.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Gigi Bradford is the President of the Folger Shakespeare Library Poetry Board.

Paris: The Literary Adventure Continues

Janet Hulstrand

Register for One Session:
Daytime Session: (Seven Fridays) January 11, 18, 25, February 1, 8, 15, 22
1:00-3:00 p.m.
Evening Session: (Seven Mondays) January 14, 21, 28, February 4, 18, 25, March 4
7:00 – 9:00 p.m. in Modern Times Coffeehouse

Price: $150 ($140 members)

Books:
Paris, Paris, David Downie
The Paris Wife, Paula McLain
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
The World at Night, Alan Furst
Sarah’s Key, Tatiana de Rosnay
Paris to the Past, Ina Caro

*This is a companion class to Paris: A Literary Adventure but it is not sequential and is open to anyone who is interested in the literature that will be discussed.

REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can only issue class refunds within seven (7) days of the first class session.

In “Paris: The Literary Adventure Continues,” we will explore one of the world’s most beautiful and fascinating cities, with the inside knowledge, insightful perspective, and storytelling skill of some very fine writers to guide and enrich the experience. We will begin with David Downie’s Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light, a delightful collection of illuminating essays on topics ranging from Coco Chanel to the boat people of the Seine, and Beaumarchais’s Marais. Next we will read and discuss The Paris Wife, in which Paula McLain tells the story of Ernest Hemingway’s first marriage from Hadley Hemingway’s point of view; followed by The Sun Also Rises, the “quintessential novel of the Lost Generation” that Hemingway was writing during the time period covered in The Paris Wife. Next we will read Alan Furst’s espionage thriller, The World at Night, in which a Parisian film producer is drawn into moral and ethical dilemmas—not to mention a kind of activity he is entirely unprepared for—in the murky world of Occupied Paris. In Sarah’s Key we will read the haunting story of a contemporary American journalist who makes a terrible discovery in the course of her work covering the infamous 1942 roundup of the Jews in the Vélodrome d’Hiver, and finds her own life changed because of it. We will round out the class with Ina Caro’s Paris to the Past: Traveling through French History by Train, part travel guide, part travel literature, and part French history lessons, helpfully aimed at an American audience. The last class will give us the chance to summarize our literary journey in a final, wrap-up discussion.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, teacher, and writing coach. She has created and taught literature courses in Paris, Florence, Hawaii, and Cuba for Hunter and Queens Colleges of the City University of New York, and Writing from the Heart workshops in Essoyes, a village in the Champagne region of France. She is a regular contributor to Bonjour Paris and France Revisited, and she writes about travel, literature, and France on her blog, Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road. She is coauthor of Moving On: A Practical Guide to Downsizing the Family Home and is currently working on her next book, A Long Way from Iowa, a literary memoir.

Moby-Dick

Joseph Fruscione

Five Thursdays (every other week):
January 24, February 7, February. 21, March 7, March 21,
1:00 - 3:00 p.m

Price: $120 ($110 members)

Books:

Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville (Norton edition)

1/24: "Extracts" and Chaps. 1-27 (pgs. 8-107)

2/7: Chaps. 28-54 (pgs. 107-214)

2/21: Chaps. 55-89 (pgs. 214-310)

3/7: Chaps. 90-114 (pgs. 310-373)

3/21: Chaps. 115-135 and Epilogue (pgs. 374-427)

REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can issue class refunds up until seven (7) days before the first class session.

"Call me Ishmael"--perhaps the most famous opening line in American literature. For this winter 2013 course, we'll read the rich, powerful, and complex novel that follows this memorable opening line. We'll learn what Ahab means when he says "I'd strike the sun if it insulted me," or why the cook Fleece 'preaches' to sharks, or why Ishmael catalogs the different types of whales so thoroughly (and obsessively). Over our five class sessions, we'll discuss the many layers and nuances of Melville's novel: Ahab's revenge quest, Ishmael's geographical and metaphysical journey, the scientific and technical material about whales and whaling, the darker elements of Ahab's sense of self, and much more. We'll also learn the how and why of Melville's wonderfully named characters: Starbuck, Stubb, Flask, Queequeg, Daggoo, Tashtego, Pip, Fedallah, Father Mapple, Captains Peleg and Bildad, and others.

The class will start Thursday January 24 and run every other week until March 21. Winter can mean getting to those long novels you've always meant to read. Surely, Moby-Dick is one of them.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Joseph Fruscione is adjunct professor of English at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and an adjunct assistant professor of First-Year Writing at George Washington University. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Delaware (BA, 1996) and graduate work at George Washington University (PhD, 2005), and he has been teaching literature and writing at the university level since 1999. His first book, Faulkner and Hemingway: Biography of a Literary Rivalry, was published by Ohio State University Press in January 2012 (http://ohiostatepress.org/). He has published articles and reviews about several American authors, and he writes the annual bibliographical essay on Fitzgerald and Hemingway studies for American Literary Scholarship. He has also written on Ralph Ellison's complex relationship with Hemingway in an essay from the collection Hemingway and the Black Renaissance (eds. Gary Holcomb and Charles Scruggs, Ohio State UP 2012).

William Butler Yeats

Christopher Griffin

This class is now fully enrolled. To reserve a spot on the waitlist please email mravenscroft@politics-prose.com

Four Fridays:
January 25, February 1, 8 and 15, 1:00-3:00 pm

Price: $100 ($90 members)

Books:
The Yeats Reader: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose (Revised Edition), ed. Richard J. Finneran

REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can only issue class refunds within seven (7) days of the first class session.

William Butler Yeats is a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and perhaps the greatest poet of the 20th century. His poems are among the most memorable in the English language. His words have become part of our language, as in “A terrible beauty is born” and “Things fall apart.” In these three sessions we will sample not just some of W. B. Yeats’ famous poems but also some of his plays and prose. With Lady Gregory, Yeats founded the Irish National Theatre and provided a space and institution at the Abbey where playwrights like themselves could celebrate and criticize the human condition. Yeats was a poet of the theatre. Although rooted in his native culture and a senator in the first Irish government, Yeats claimed that “art is tribeless, nationless, a blossom gathered in No Man’s Land.” As Yeats said, “Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric; out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.” And memorable poetry he did indeed create, as in “The Wild Swans at Coole”:
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky. . . .

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Christopher Griffin is from the “real Yeats country” in south Galway near Yeats’ Thoor Ballylee. His grandfather, Christy Griffin, sometimes decorated Coole House and brought Lady Gregory news of “the Troubles” 1919-23, so, like Yeats, he is quoted in her journals. Christopher studied Irish literature in English at Trinity College and University College in Dublin, and presented a paper at the Yeats Summer School in Sligo. He has taught courses in Irish literature at George Washington University for over six years and at Politics and Prose for about 20 years. He was a study leader on two Smithsonian Journeys to Ireland.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Melanie (Penny) Du Bois

Three Tuesdays:
February 19 and 26 and March 5, 1-3 p.m.

Price: $75 ($70 members)

Books:
Metamorphoses: A Play, Mary Zimmerman
Metamorphoses: A New Translation, Charles Martin

REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can issue class refunds up until seven (7) days before the first class session.

Ovid’s great epic or anti-epic poem The Metamorphoses was considered dubious or second rate in periods of political and aesthetic solemnity, but in an age when camp, indeterminate endings, and ambiguous morality reign in art and entertainment, he attracts many imitators, translators and scholars. A brief course on Ovid leading up to an Arena Stage performance of Mary Zimmerman’s theatrical version will concentrate on analyzing the texts of its best-known stories. It is necessary to cover some background of Augustan Rome and Ovid’s constant allusion to other poets of his heritage to begin to understand the complicated suggestions of his text. We shall try to figure out how his racy satirical humor can intensify rather than cancel out pathos, horror, and humanity. We shall also consider the range of Ovid’s influence; he is the classical writer who has inspired not only other writers and playwrights, most notably Shakespeare, but also painters, sculptors, choreographers and musicians. Our discussions should prepare us to grasp and be grateful for Mary Zimmerman’s marvelous imagining of the myths. We shall read from Charles Martin’s delightful and helpful translation; selections for each class will be posted on the store web site.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Melanie (Penny) Du Bois has been a teacher of reading and literature for many decades, specializing for a long time in theatre. Branching out from English literature to works of many languages and periods and from university teaching to freelance courses for adults, she has taught several other courses at Politics & Prose, on reading, modern poetry, Pinter, Ibsen and Chekhov.

Starting at the Beginning

Ann Hood

Date:
Thursday, March 14, 10 a.m. - noon

Price: $40 ($35 members)

Books:
The Obituary Writer, Ann Hood (available March, 2013)

REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can issue class refunds up until seven (7) days before the first class session.

Everyone knows the importance of the first two pages of your novel, short story, or memoir. As the poet Ted Koozer said, "The first pages are the hand you extend to your reader." In this workshop, we will focus on getting your opening pages in the best possible shape. After a brief discussion of why beginnings are so important, and a look at different ways to begin, I will read aloud and critique your opening pages. Then we will set to work revising them so that you will leave with a polished beginning. Please bring in the first two pages of something you are working on.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Ann Hood's bestselling books include An Ornithologist's Guide to Life, The Knitting Circle, Comfort, The Red Thread, and The Obituary Writer. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, O, The Oprah Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Reading South Asia

Mothers and Daughters: Anita Desai and Kirin Desai

Date:
Friday, March 22, 1-3 p.m.

Price: $40 ($35 members)

Books:
Inheritance of Loss, Kirin Desai
The Artist of Disappearance, Anita Desai

REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can issue class refunds up until seven (7) days before the first class session.

This class will explore the intertwined and overlapping personal and literary worlds of writer Anita Desai and daughter, Kirin Desai, winner of the 2006 Man Booker prize for her novel, Inheritance of Loss. Exploring India’s vanished pasts and landscapes of dispossession against the force of modernization, the class will examine themes of language, cultural identity and the persistence of memory in the fates of those characters who leave India and those who remain behind.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Alexandra Viets is a screenwriter and journalist with a background in South Asia who received her MFA degree from Columbia University. Her first feature-length screenplay, Cotton Mary, won a New York Foundation for the Arts award and was produced by Merchant Ivory. She is currently in pre-production on Ask Me No Questions, a feature film about a Bangladeshi family fleeing NYC post 9/11, and Hijabi Girls, a documentary about Muslim-American teenage girls who wear the hijab. She has also completed Kashmir, a screenplay set in modern day Kashmir and The Bibighar, a wartime drama of 1857 India. A frequent contributor to the Asian Wall Street Journal, her film/theater reviews have also appeared in The International Herald Tribune and The Far Eastern Economic Review. She is the recipient of the Paul Newman Award for screenwriting and an award from the National Film Development Council in Mumbai. She teaches in Baltimore at Towson University's Department of Theater Arts, specializing in film and literature of South Asia. She is a 2011 Fellow with the National Endowment for Humanities in South Asian literature, history and art.

Fitzgerald and Hemingway: The "Great" 1920s
Joseph Fruscione

SESSION 1:
Six Thursdays: May 30, June 13, June 27, July 11, July 25, Aug. 8, 1 - 3 p.m. This session is now sold out. Email mravenscroft@politics-prose.com to be added to the waitlist.

SESSION 2:
Six Saturdays: July 13, July 20, July 27, Aug. 3, Aug. 10, Aug. 17, 1-3 p.m.

Price: $130 ($120 members)

Books:
May 30: This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
June 13: This Side of Paradise and Selections from Hemingway’s Complete Short Stories (Finca Vigia Edition)
June 27: Selections from Hemingway’s Complete Short Stories
July 11: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
July 25: The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
August 8: A Farewell to Arms

Day 1: TSoP: Book 1 and Interlude
Day 2: TSoP: Book 2 and six EH stories (will be announced)
Day 3: four EH Stories (will be announced)
Day 4: Gatsby: Chaps 1-5
Day 5: Gatsby: Chaps 6-9 and AFTA, Books 1 & 2
Day 6: AFTA, Books 3, 4, 5 

REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can issue class refunds up until seven (7) days before the first class session.

How did these two authors become “Fitzgerald” and “Hemingway” in the first decade of their literary careers? What were their common concerns, and what were their major differences? Is The Great Gatsby the greatest American novel we think we’ve read, as one critic recently noted?

This course will seek to answer these and other questions about Fitzgerald and Hemingway, based on some of their early fiction. We will interactively discuss, review, and even debate key themes and aspects of the authors’ works, such as: their distinctive literary styles; their portrayals of 1920s’ manhood and womanhood; their depictions of expatriate life and travel; and their larger public images as adapted by films and other media.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Joseph Fruscione is an adjunct professor of First-Year Writing at George Washington University; he has also taught in the English departments at Georgetown and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Delaware (BA, 1996) and graduate work at George Washington University (PhD, 2005), and he has been teaching literature and writing at the university level since 1999. His first book, Faulkner and Hemingway: Biography of a Literary Rivalry, was published by Ohio State University Press in January 2012 (http://ohiostatepress.org/). He has published articles and reviews about several American authors, and he writes the annual bibliographical essay on Fitzgerald and Hemingway studies for American Literary Scholarship. He has also written on Ralph Ellison's complex relationship with Hemingway in an essay from the collection Hemingway and the Black Renaissance (eds. Gary Holcomb and Charles Scruggs, Ohio State UP 2012).

Right Brain Writing: Guided Prompts

Leslie Pietrzyk

This class is now sold out. Please email mravenscroft@politics-prose.com to be put on the waitlist.

Date:
Tuesday, June 18, 1-3:30 p.m.

Price: $45 ($40 members)

Books:
Speed Enforced by Aircraft, Richard Peabody

REFUND POLICY: Please note that class refunds will be possible only until one week before the class begins. This allows us to accommodate potential participants on the waiting list.

Explore your creative side at this afternoon of guided writing exercises designed to get your subconscious flowing.  No writing experience necessary!  This is a great class for beginners and also for those fiction writers and/or memoirists with more experience who might be stuck in their current projects, looking for a jolt of inspiration.  The goal is to have fun in a supportive, nurturing environment and to go home with several promising pieces to work on further.  Please bring lots of paper and pen/pencil or a fully charged computer.  We will be using as our inspiration work from Speed Enforced by Aircraft, a book of poetry by local author Richard Peabody. It will be helpful if you bring a copy to class.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Leslie Pietrzyk is the author of two novels, Pears on a Willow Tree (Avon) and A Year and a Day (William Morrow).  Her short fiction and essays have appeared in many journals and magazines, including The Washington Post Magazine, The Sun, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, and Shenandoah.  Her literary blog can be found at www.WorkInProgressInProgress.com.

Saul Bellow: Deconstructing a Great American Novelist 
Rich Blaustein

Date:
Four Fridays, every other week, July 12, 26, Aug. 9, 23, 6 - 8 p.m.

Price: $100/$90 members

Required Books:
Seize the Day
Mr. Sammler’s Planet
Saul Bellow: Collected Stories:  “By The St. Lawrence,” "A Silver Dish," and "Him with His Foot in His Mouth,"  “The Theft”
Saul Bellow’s Heart: A Son’s Memoir, Greg Bellow

REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can issue class refunds up until seven (7) days before the first class session.

Inspired by the recent appearance at Politics & Prose by Greg Bellow, who was here to discuss Saul Bellow's Heart: A Son's Memoir, we'll dive into a selection of work by this great American novelist. The class will also incorporate analysis of the man himself, including his conservative turn in politics, his transformation from "a son with questions to a father with answers," and his constant search for the individual and the spiritual. We'll also consider Bellow's characterization of women, of Chicago and New York, and of criminal and university life.

To get a hint of the "young" Bellow, for the first class, participants are requested to have read the novella Seize the Day. For the second class, we will discuss Mr. Sammler's Planet as representative of "change" in the author. Next we will read four short stories from Saul Bellow: Collected Stories: "By The St. Lawrence," "A Silver Dish," "Him with His Foot in His Mouth," and "The Theft.” During the fourth session we will open the class for a discussion of what we have read and also discuss Greg Bellow’s memoir. 

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Rich Blaustein is an environmental journalist based in Washington, DC.  His work has appeared in such places as BioScience, Native Peoples, World Watch, and a variety of other publications.  He has also taught literature courses on Saul Bellow, James Joyce's Ulysses, and the literature of the Jews of Italy at the Jewish Studies Center.