Okay, I’m a few days late. I hope that you had a good time with The Art of Attention: A Poet's Eye by Donald Revell, I did.So here is how I would like this to work. I’m going to post a few questions and then we can have a discussion in the comments of this post. Feel free to expound about your over all experience with the book on your own blog and send me the link. I will add links to your posts below.
Questions for discussion in comments:
1. Will having read Revell’s book change the way you observe the world around you? How?
2. How can you include more visual detail in your writing?
3. How did you feel about Part 2, specifically, what Revell had to say about translation?
4. What did you find most helpful for your writing (please quote something)?
5. If you were asked to write a book that would be apart of the Art of Series, what would it be? What element of craft matters so much to you that you could write 166 pages about it?
Links to Posts from participants:
Next up!
The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot by Charles Baxter (Read by April. 30, 2008)
The Art of the Poetic Line by James Longenbach (Read by June. 30, 2008)
The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again by Sven Birkerts (Read by Aug. 30, 2008)
I hope to see you all back in April.
Until then,
The Soulless Machine
1 comments:
1. I think that I will make sure to be a more passionate observer of the world. When I’m on the buss on my way to work, I will make a more concerted effort to think about the people I’m riding with and what things I pass. I think that ultimately, Revell is asking us to slow down, take a big breath, and sit still long enough to see the beauty abound us. The challenge then becomes to include that beauty in our writing.
Today, I will stand on my newly refinished porch and see what I see (hear, feel, smell, touch) and try to include that in my thesis work.
2. I think that Revell had a good way of thinking about how we need to make sure that details are included in our writing. So often I find myself with a narrator that would not pick up on some of the odd and specific details that readers enjoy (that I enjoy).
3. Part 2 is where Revell lost me. I have little to no interest in art of translation. I’m glad that there are others like Revell that find it meditative and fulfilling. Without translators we would bed trapped in an incestuous tradition that breads deformity. So, bravo Revell. I just didn’t care to read about his process.
4. “On Mirabeau Bridge Apollinaire reminded me that there is no difference between ‘eye’ and ‘I’ (p. 66). As a writer of short stories, I love point of view. You can’t write a story if you don’t first answer ‘Who is telling the story?’ So, I really like the phrase “there is no difference between ‘eye’ and ‘I.’”
5. My book would have to be about point of view. However, I think that a book on point of view would be much longer than 166 pages.
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