Dis/Course
Marina Vishmidt Reading Group: A Dis/Course Workshop with Andreas Petrossiants
The genres “poetry” and “fiction” are too often separated from each other when, really, they’re kissing cousins. What is a short story—or even a novel—but a long lyric? And what is a poem but the distillation of impulses that animate the most sprawling novel? This workshop is for poets who want to learn the techniques of fiction. Each week we’ll consider a different aspect of narrative prose: character, setting, dialogue, scene, and that big bogeyman called plot. We’ll read a broad spectrum of writers, from the most “poetic” and “experimental” (Can Xue, Michael Ondaatje [early work!!!], Jean Toomer) to “realists” like Mary Gaitskill, Wanda Coleman and Breece D’J Pancake to unclassifiable classics Isaac Babel, Katherine Mansfield, and Clarice Lispector. Half of class time will be devoted to talking about how they do what they’re doing, all the way from the line level to the inevitable sweep of choice-and-consequence across time and pages. The other half will be devoted to generative exercise and sharing. I want everyone to come away from this class feeling like they have their hands around new tools that can break open their work. Or that can at least help them write a little story.
