Oh, Unfamiliar World: an invitation to reconsider certainty in prose

Instructor: Jenny Sampirisi

Duration: (4 weeks) 9 March to 30 March 2011 (Wednesdays) 6:30-8:30 PM

“Within the realm of realism lies the assumption that language mirrors all that isn’t language, right? That’s what a narrative is about: telling what is or should be true. A narrative mirrors reality. Now, do I need to say — how simplistic. I want to ask, why bother being so simplistic? Why bother with the lie of realism? Why bother being so miserable, so reductive, when one could play?” — Kathy Acker

The question of this course is NOT how does narrative recreate a reality we already know, but how might it challenge, rearrange, recode, unhinge us from our expectations of the real world? How might a piece of prose make us uncertain of things we take for granted every day and also cast into question the reality of the created world? The internal logic of a piece of writing can (should?) fracture our sense of the familiar and place us inside the poem or narrative’s strange world, a derivative of our own maybe, but certainly there’s something amiss here. This is not Alice Munro’s narrative. This course looks at a handful of writers and artists including but not limited to Gertrude Stein, Lisa Robertson, Margaret Christakos, Samuel Beckett, Carolyn Bergvall, Tony Burgess and Leonard Cohen as students muck about with tenants of reality and narrative convention. Students will be removed from reality each week through a series of poetic exercises. Readings will be sent to students in the days leading up to the course.

Cost: $120.00