Photo: A page from Frida Kahlo's JournalThis is a note to myself: change the organization of the course, Theresa, so that you avoid the false dichotomy of mind/body. Instead, organize according to the students' required assignments:
(1) Creative Journal (show examples from the Journals of John Gardner, Theodore Roethke, Frida Kahlo, Kurt Cobain, Edvard Munch)
(2) Confession Postcard (show examples from Post Secret, my own postcards, postcards I received in the mail from bloggers and the people I met at Esalen)
(3) Photograph or painting (show examples from Frida Kahlo, Edvard Munch, Vincent Van Gogh, Philip Guston)
(4) Letter (share examples from Donald Hall, James Dickey, James Agee, James Wright, Vincent Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo,)
(5) Poem (share examples from St. John of the Cross, Theodore Roethke, John Berryman, John Ciardi, James Wright, Donald Hall, Robert Lowell, Frida Kahlo, Anne Sexton, and others)
a. Two kinds of poems, personal and confessional. More on this later.
b. Must discuss how to keep from seeming "Angsty" or "self-absorbed." More on this later.
(6) Prose (share examples of my own work, as well as examples from John Gardner, A. W. Frank, Dorothy Allison, James Agee, and others)
a. Prose to be workshopped during final 6 weeks of the course.
b. Three kinds of prose: essay, memoir or autobiographical fiction. More on this later.
Background reading on Art and Healing by: A. W. Frank, Viktor Frankl, Ernest Becker, Rollo May, Louise DeSalvo
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2 comments:
In regard to 5b.:
Discuss healthy and UNhealthy types of writing--consider using unfinished works of Sylvia Plath before her suicide (she basically talks herself into the act). I think it might be DeSalvo that mentions this, not sure--her or Pennebaker. Consider Pennebaker as supplemental?
Might also take a look at Kay Redfield Jamison's "Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament..."
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