Ekphrasis Camp: Beige Bill

Ekphrasis Camp: Lesson Plan

Ekphrasis Camp: On Loretta Judson's Photograph "Dwight and Callie Martin" viewed at the Regional Artist Gallery, Trout Museum, Appleton

Why I Like The Shaggs

I like the Shaggs because everyone knows how it's supposed to sound. And the Shaggs don't sound like that.

The Shaggs make you wonder:  What music would you have played, if you had been pulled from high school by your father, along with your two sisters and told to make a rock and roll album?

Chances are, nothing you would have made would be as inventive as Philosophy of the World, 32 minutes and 25 seconds of listening that makes you hear music in a brand new way, an album people are still talking about, nearly a half century after The Shaggs recorded it.

tad neuhaus, organ

joanna dane, vocals

Dear Katherina: An Ekphrastic Exercise

Edward Robert Hughes' "The Shrew Katherina"

In Ekphrasis Class The Best Plan Turns Out to Be What Wasn't Planned

What is planned is to play the recording of Stanley Tucci reading Etgar Keret's short story "Creative Writing."  What is planned, is to have the students write about it.  Write what?, they ask. Write anything, is the response.

The plan is that they will all be very inspired. The story offers so many possibilities! Within one five-page story lives: A society where once in a lifetime, a person can divide into two beings, each, half the age of the original; A world where you can only see the people you love, where it slowly dawns on a husband that his wife can no longer see him; A woman who gives birth to a cat that the husband suspects is not his; An enterprising fish who gets turned into a man who becomes so successful he forgets he ever was a fish.

What a bold writer to take four fascinating story ideas and waste them all on one very short one, a writer confident that the world will continue to deliver ideas!

The students frown at their papers.  Some start to write, some don't. Several minutes pass. Cassie asks to use the rest room.  Barbara sighs and rolls her eyes to the ceiling.  Arthur taps his forehead with his pencil. A bird flutters by, a fairy of a shadow dancing across the room.

What is planned is to have the students share their inspired pieces. Bill declines, but Nancy agrees to read. Anthony reads his with a British accent.  Grace, with the laptop, apologizes; she is working on an essay for civics.

Not according to plan, Elliot in overalls stands and says he has something to write on the board. He takes the chalk and draws x/y axes, like Kurt Vonnegut and his x/y axes of storytelling, Worst Despair to Unbelievable Happiness; Beginning to Electricity. But Elliot labels the y-axis: Broadness of Assignment, and the x, Specificity of Source.  With such a specific point of reference (Etgar Keret's short story "Creative Writing"), but with such a broad assignment ("Write anything"), Elliot is at an impasse, and just like last week, feels blocked.  He puts a dot on the graph to illustrate.

What is not planned is to ask Elliot to think of a proper prompt that will place him at a more opportune point on his graph. He suggests writing alternate reality stories, where something that is impossible here and now, is accepted as perfectly normal within the context of the story. He writes a description of a society where people have four arms.

What isn't planned is that Jacob writes a near perfect little story about a young man who has only 18 words left. What isn't planned is that the class suggests that Elliot could make his description into a story by showing a character with four arms living in a society of four-armed people, similar in spirit, they say, to Jacob's.

Thoughts on a Sketchbook Left Inside the Porch Door, #3

* anonymous drawing dated 7/21/92

Thoughts on a Sketchbook Left Inside the Porch Door, #2

* anonymous drawing dated 11-26-78

Thoughts on a Sketchbook Left Inside the Porch Door, #1

* anonymous drawing undated