MFA Residency: Friday, July 10th

Public Event Schedule
10:00 AM
Ransom Fellowship Hall
Daisy Fried: “…ice/Is also great/And would suffice”*: On Flatness
Last July, I lectured on “Heat”: the uses of urgent, angry and upset tones in (mostly) poetry. This July, my subject is flatness, by which I mean dispassion, non- or anti-heroic tones, coolness, even coldness. To allege flatness in a workshop is generally to level a criticism, but when is flatness an engine rather than an error? What’s exciting about lack of excitement? What are the ethical and expressive ramifications of flatness? How is it achieved? Candidates for discussion include Roy Fisher, Karen Solie, Thylias Moss, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Claudia Rankine, Joy Katz, Jennifer Moxley, Rae Armantrout, Louise Gluck and others. Handouts will be provided.
*Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice”

 

11:00 AM
Ransom Fellowship Hall
Robert Boswell: Take Me to the River: Stories that Invent and Manipulate Rituals
No reading is required for the lecture; however, ambitious students may wish to read the following: “Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time,” Peter Taylor; “The Wide Net,” Eudora Welty; “Naked Ladies,” Antonya Nelson; “Royal Beatings,” Alice Munro; “Talk Show,” Charles Baxter; “The Behavior of the Hawkweeds,” Andrea Barrett; “Graveyard Day,” Bobbie Ann Mason; “Barn Burning,” William Faulkner; “In the Gloaming,” Alice Elliott Dark; “Access to the Children,” William Trevor; and “The Day the Pig Fell in the Well” and “The Swimmer,” John Cheever. I’m still writing the lecture and I may not refer to all of these but they are in the mix.

 

Then join us at 4:30pm in Ransom Fellowship Hall for a reading featuring graduating students:
Rose Auslander
Cynthia Gunadi
Sarah Strong
Heather Muller
The Graduation Ceremony will follow these readings.
For more information, including a full schedule of public events, please visit the program website at http://wwcmfa.org/.