Category: Uncategorized

caveat 1.
I’m one person with strong ideas, so read all of the below with as much skepticism as helps. Also: nothing in here can guarantee you’ll get into the MFA program of your choice. Your writing sample is going to do the major lifting there.

But I’ve been reading MFA applications for five years now at two very different programs, and as a person with strong ideas I see the same misfires come up enough that I thought I might write this guide to help. It’s a weird thing to write, an SOP, particularly when your purpose for MFA school seems ignoble. You’re out of options. You’re afraid of office environments. You’re sick of the town you live in. You’re tired of just reading books but have no idea how to write them, and you trust higher education so much that you want to run back there to learn how.

Those were pretty much my purposes. They tell you why I wanted to go to grad school, but they don’t tell you what I planned to do there, which is one of the things I’m looking for when I read SOPs.

what I’m looking for.
I want to know how we’re going to work together. The best SOPs give me a sense of what kind of student the applicant will be in and out of the classroom. It tells me what the work alone can’t. I’ve found this comes down to two data points I always want in an SOP but rarely get:

1. A sense of the applicant’s plan for how they’re going to spend their time here.
2. Some evidence the applicant is thinking critically about their own work.

your plan.
So many applicants treat the SOP as a kind of defense: explain to readers why they are most deserving of admission. Or even crazier: why they desire it more than any other applicant. You are not in competition with other applicants. (Not in this way, at least.) So, never begin with a story about how you’ve always wanted to write, or were born a writer, or a reader, how at a young age you wrote poems or novels or read the backs of cereal boxes. I just don’t care about it. And why I don’t care is that I’ve never been shown how a lifelong love for writing translates to success in graduate work. The logic of it seems wrong. People come to our program having discovered writing very late in life, with maybe two years of experience behind them, and they succeed as incredibly hard-working students who improve dramatically in two years and go off to write the rest of their lives. Are they for some reason less deserving of admission because they didn’t write their first illustrated novel at age eight?

I was one of them. I came to my grad program after just like a year or two of thinking I wanted to try to be a writer. So maybe I’m reacting personally here, but even if I am, the truth of SOPs is that 75 percent of them begin with some story on how the applicant has been writing since they were little. Maybe even 80 percent. And if there’s one thing you shouldn’t do in an SOP, it’s something that everyone else is also doing. The SOP is just as much a place to stand out as the sample is (though see “more don’t” #1 below).

It does help to give me a sense of who you are and how you came to want to apply to our program. But it’s at most 20%-of-your-total-SOP important.

Instead, focus on your plan. Not why you want to come here but how you imagine spending your time once you’re here. You have two or three short stories and you’d really like to write enough to end up with a full collection, but you don’t know how to do that. You’ve written a lot of poems but they all look the same and have the same sense of the line and you’d like to expand your understanding of what else poetry is and can do. You want to focus for two hard years on your novel. You want to dabble in every genre and emerge a well-rounded writer. Whatever it is. Ask yourself: what’s the best way I can imagine spending my time in my MFA? Then tell me about it. Talk to me about the work you want to work on.

caveat 2.
With your plan, always be personal, honest, and specific. Write what is honestly relevant to you and where you are, not what you think I want to hear from “an applicant”. And by “specific” I mean avoid the generic ideas everyone puts in their SOPs. Everyone wants to find themselves immersed in a community of writers. Everyone wants the time to focus on their own writing. Everyone wants to grow in a supportive environment. Don’t do what everyone else is doing in the SOP.

your own work.
So much of MFA instruction involves thinking critically about other people’s creative work that it helps to see your ability to do this kind of work with your own. Looking specifically at your writing sample, or at the stuff you’re writing more generally, what do you feel are its strengths, and what do you feel you need help with? What is your work doing that other writers’ work is not doing? What are you concerned with as a writer that you wonder why others aren’t as concerned with? Do you celebrate a kind of regionalism in your work? Is it important that you depict the lives of sex-positive people, given the oppressive role of shaming in our culture? Is it time, do you think, for a return to the 5? essay form?^[*] And don’t be afraid to talk about weaknesses. We want to know what we can help you with. Do you find dialogue a challenge? Does it feel like your essays are too narrow in focus, or that you rely too much on outside research?

Knowing you’re thinking critically about your writing tells me you’re ready to be a writing student.

why us?
It’s often a good idea to include some explanation on why you’re applying to that program specifically. This is tricky, because you’re probably applying to multiple programs. Yes, I think you should tailor your SOP to each individual program. Don’t use the same reasons for every school you’re applying to. Don’t just find-replace to swap our University of Iowa with University of Michigan or wherever you want to apply. Again (see above), know that everyone else is doing this.^[?]

Instead say something honest. Most people want to come to USF because they love San Francisco. That’s fine. That’s 100% perfectly fine and well and good. We hope to be the best MFA program in the Bay Area. We actively try to make connections to SF’s literary history and community. If that’s the only reason you’re applying, great. Fine. Well and good. It’s specific. If you sincerely like that we have cross-genre courses, or something else you’ve found on our Web site, also great.

But don’t blow smoke up our asses. Just be honest. With everyone. If you want to go to Iowa because it’s the oldest and most prestigious MFA program in the country, great. It’s your loss, but say that.

more don’ts.
The SOP, I feel, is not the place to show off your creativity. Your writing sample is the place to show off your creativity. This is the place to show off your teachability. Or if that sounds too passive or Orwellian, then think of it as the place to show your readiness to learn and work. So can it with the vivid verbs and dramatized moments of discovery.

Maybe don’t mention any faculty members by name. It can be a bummer to read an SOP that mentions many of my colleagues by name but not me. Especially when the SOP lists every single NF professor except me. Do I get over it? Of course. Can you ever know who will read your SOP? No. Is it your job not to damage the fragile psyche of neurotic, insecure writer-teachers? No. But still: it’s a bummer. Best not to bum me out before I’ve read your sample.

Don’t say that getting your MFA will help you realize your dream of teaching, especially at the college level. This makes us feel bad because it’s untrue. MFA degrees don’t guarantee anything in this job market, and most of the time there’s nothing we faculty members can do about it. That’s a dean- or state-admin-level problem. If you want to teach, it’s not impossible, but use the SOP to focus on your time in the program, not what you’ll hope will come after. (So don’t talk about wanting an agent or book deal, either. There’ll be time to get there once you’re in.)

caveat 3.
I should say I’ve never passed on an applicant because of anything they wrote in an SOP. Again, it’s the writing sample that matters. Also, I’ve never made the lone decision on an application. Both programs I’ve taught in required at least two readers for each application because a colleague might see something I didn’t in an applicant, and vice versa. It’s hard to find this out, but if the school you’re applying to doesn’t put at least two eyes on your application, don’t try to go there. (At Iowa, students working toward MFA degrees read your application, btw.)

Last night we read the script for the 30 Rock pilot and then watched the actual episode. Many differences, many of them instructive. As my students have a script or sketch assignment coming up, I had to go over script formatting, which I’d long since forgotten. Plus I didn’t know the easiest way to go about it if one doesn’t have Final Cut. Do you use lots of tabs? Which margins do you set and when? I decided to practice. I think I’ve got the makings of something here.

HIRSHHORN GALLERY
(mostly closed for renovations)

Jeremy Deller’s “English Magic” (2013)
[worth waiting for or fast forwarding to 09:00]

Continue reading Things I Saw at the Smithsonian Today That I Love

Dr. Robert E. Witt, Chancellor of The University of Alabama System, announced the following this afternoon:

“I am pleased to announce that Jo Bonner will join The University of Alabama System’s senior leadership team as Vice Chancellor for Government Relations and Economic Development on Aug. 16.

“Jo’s extensive government experience and outstanding economic development record make him ideally suited for this important new position.”

Dr. Judy Bonner, President of The University of Alabama and sister of Rep. Bonner, responded with the following statement:

“I am very pleased that Jo will continue to serve the state of Alabama in this new capacity with the UA System office. Certainly, his experience and expertise in the area of government relations and economic development will be invaluable as he works with all three campuses to enhance the quality of life for all Alabamians. On a personal level, I am very proud of him, of the contributions he has already made and the work he will accomplish in this new position.”

Die Deutschen lieben ganz vieles!

So this was a thing we’d do in 8th grade German I class, taught by Frau um … who knows. The actual East German Frau teaching German at Herndon Intermediate School in 1991 and not the—Frau Griffith!

Her name was Frau Griffith!

At any rate, Family Guy had a thing last week about a show where a German man approved a series of named things by saying “Das is gut,” which I shouldn’t have to translate. It reminded me of this thing we’d do in 8th grade German I class. Frau Griffith would go: Also! Was lieben die Deutschen?

This means: “Okay, now! What do the Germans love?”

And we’d answer in a kind of list. Here’s the list:

(i.e. hiking, flowers, coffee and cake, fresh air, beer, chocolate, and order. ORDNUNG!)

A question that was never asked = Who among earthlings doesn’t also love these things?

Growing up, and still probably, the lion was my favorite animal.

Soon I can walk somewhere to eat one.

Subject: A Message from the Dean of Students
Date: April 9, 2013 4:26:57 PM CDT

Faculty and staff,

Bama Students for Life will be sponsoring a display from the Genocide Awareness Project on the Quad on April 10 and 11. The display includes extremely graphic anti-abortion photos. Students who are upset by the display should be encouraged to contact the Women’s Resource Center or the Counseling Center.

Dean of Students

I need to ask for a lawyer's help. Rogelio
looks at Velazquez's paintings. The students pay
for the bill. We listen to the radio program.

Catalina asks, "Where are you?" He succeeds in winning
the lottery. Are you waiting for the airplane's arrival?
The professor won't ask me questions. The police

look for evidence. Who is asking
for Jaime?

From today’s Good Morning America, on at my folks’:

1. Heidi is talking about a pair of 12″-high gold boots she once wore, I think to one of her costume parties? “With those boots I wanted to take it literally to a higher level.”
2. Heidi is referring to the Hollywood makeup artist who transferred her face into a mess of faux jewels as part of I think a Cleopatra costume? (I’ve been paying poor attention) using his right hand alone to fix each jewel carefully to her skin: “He worked literally single-handedly for hours.”

Frivolous locutors: Paß mal auf!

deranged adjective her deranged cousin has finally been locked up

From some dumb article on Lifehacker:

Even though I really enjoy writing, I despise proofreading and editing. Like to the point where I rather just not write at all so I don’t have to deal with the proofreading part. Nothing kills my flow more than having to re-read what I just wrote 1000 times.

Emphasis his. Spoken—I mean, written—like a true hack.

Reading Alex Ross’s review of the 6-hour production of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mittwoch in the Sept 10 Style Issue of The New Yorker—which opera has a movement where string musicians play while up in helicopters—I started to wonder what a 6-hour literary reading might feel like.

Like a 12-hour root canal you say and har har har. I’m as vocal as the next guy on the importance of short readings, themselves comprising the reading of several short pieces instead of one long one, and of course it has something to do with attention. A reading is not a visual performance—which is a strange thing to realize because neither’s a lecture or a standup set, but audiences thereof gladly sit still for an hour or more. Lectures have slides, often. Comics clown. They also look their audience in the eye, whereas a poet stares mostly at his pages.

Another problem is the problem of attention, which a reading demands much of, uninterruptedly. Poetry readings will always win out over prose ones in this regard, because when you get distracted by thoughts of dinner or a pretty face or that dumb idea you’ve been working on for improving your overall appearance, you can just keep a pleasant look on your face until the poet ends, your fellow audience members sigh knowingly, and finally after some self-amused patter the poet starts a new one right up. The way some stories and essays get written? Zone out and miss one paragraph and you’ve lost the whole darn thread.

And that’s in the end the problem: few to no book writers (only Sedaris comes to mind) write for a live audience of listeners.^[!] We ask book writers to read aloud to live audiences the way we might ask sopranos to publish their penciled score notations. No reading is ever fully successful because it’s an inherently ersatz form.

Maybe well bred opera audiences can sit still for three uninterrupted hours, but I’d be happy working on devising a reading that could last the 90 minutes working-class moviegoers are capable of relinquishing. And not a set of three 30-minute ones, either—one author’s own intermissionless ninety minutes.

Problems/thoughts/strategies:

• The reading would have to be both episodic and arc-ful, like a play. Scenes and acts and a finale.
• A printed program might be in order, so that audiences would be always grounded in the course of the evening, able to follow along with its progress. (Sarah Vowell’s dad pencilled a check on the program next to the title of each piece her high school band concluded, getting ever closer to the concert’s end.)
• No audience would sit 90 minutes for an unknown, and therefore it’s the duty of our Kings, Chabons, Orleans, and Pinksys to pioneer this new form, the way Griffith led the way for Murnau.
• Voicey stuff has to reign. Orchestra concerts are, save for the wavings of bows and batons, not a visual performance either, but we follow along because it pleases the ear to do so. Voicey need not mean dialogue-driven, or even overly stylized. But perhaps what I intend here is to argue that a piece that gets read aloud should at some point in the drafting be written as a piece to be read aloud—i.e., with an ear toward the way it’s going to sound in the room’s back row.
• Performing writers might want to take a voice lesson or two. Or, better, yet, MFA programs can build this into their curricula.
• All that said, without an intermission, it might be advisable to share the stage. Bring another writer up to read dialogue lines voiced by opposite-sex characters. Read a piece written with/for instrumental accompaniment. Let sound happen for a while, any way you can. It’s ninety minutes. There’d be nothing to rush. Think act breaks. Audience participation. That portion of the evening where the writer indulges in crowd work. What might previously composed crowd work look like sound like?

Keeping our readings light and short seems to acknowledge that as an art form or even just a performance they’re inconsequential. And we writers tacitly agree: the page is the thing. But as advertisements for what’s on (or what could be on) those pages, readings are little more than pots of piss. That’s a sentence that’s not so much true as fun to type, but what I’m wondering here is whether whatever’s hurting of The Written Word can be healed through a retooling of our live performances, our in-the-flesh interactions with our audiences.

Anyone with other suggestions are invited to add them in the comments. Folks interested in staging such a reading—in Tuscaloosa or elsewhere—can get in touch (honest) via peopleoughtnotreadforthislongoutloud [at] davemadden.org.

This seems to have been a kind of column. Points West!

There’s a thing in me that wants in writing essays to make every possible connection and to trace things to their deepest roots. It rarely ends well. The standard result is that I take a whole morning tracking leads on library databases and newspaper archives only to discover some old, repeated truth: There Is No Single Truth Of The Matter.

I’m working on an essay called “Some Daisies”. I neither care about daisies nor know much about them. My approach, then, is to suck up like a Dyson anything Daisy-related I can. Then I filter by interest. (Sorry, Daisys Duck and Fuentes.) Then I process the thing until I find something interesting to write about.

What’s helped recently is that the U.S.’s first and thus most famous campaign attack ad is called “The Daisy Ad”. In talking about this a friend mentioned the iconic image of a hippie placing flowers in the barrel of guns at the March on the Pentagon in October 1967. I checked and those aren’t daisies. But there’s that above photo of a woman holding a daisy up like a talisman to a line of bayonets. Perfect.

The Internet these days is such that it took no hard Binging to find this woman’s name, email address, and phone number. I can interview her about the daisy in her hands! I realized a few weeks ago, and did. Yesterday, she replied to my email.

It was a chrysanthemum. Some girl somewhere had handed her a chrysanthemum.

Reading this effected in me the same feeling as getting an editor’s rejection email forwarded to me from my agent with a note from her: “Don’t get discouraged!”

It was only discouraging. An enormous setback.

Here’s my point: I continue to have this notion that if only I in my looking and thinking can tie heretofore unconnected things to each other some mystery of the universe will make itself known to me, and that in the subsequent written revelation my essay will become good.

I understand that the above is part of the essay’s bailiwick, that I’m able to bring in to the essay quite word-for-wordly everything I’ve written here so far, that the process of working toward answers or understanding is often the meat of an essay, of the essay, of the attempt. But I won’t do it. I’m becoming less interested in the essay as attempt. I want essays as completion. I want to exercise the courage to be wrong. But amid this thirst for certainty, I’m also continually relearning that set truths are too elusive to pin down adequately in writing.

My solution: I’m writing univocal essays with someone else, destroying the essayistic I. Hopefully for good.

in boardwalk empire, we see all kimds of Nucky situations. he,s getting people jobs, he,s romanicng women, he,s at parties, he,s getting work done. rothstein, our villain, is only seen in his offices working to cinvince lesser men of hi importance. it works very well. rothstein is spared the humanity of being a person with doubts and provlems. all he is is a man who talks proudly and condescendingly about himself while playing pool very well. even the playing of pool! it lways helps in constructing a villain to mke him good t omething mot people are bad at.

(From the Washington [Pa.] Observer-Reporter.)

Raymond E. Myers, 93, of Coal Center, Clover Hill, died Saturday, January 14, 2012, in Consulate Health Care of North Strabane, Canonsburg.

He was born June 5, 1918, in Claysville, son of the late H. Edwin and Gladys Fonner Myers.

Mr. Myers retired as a truck driver for Peoples Natural Gas.

He was a veteran of the U.S. Army, having served during World War II as an ambulance driver in the 4th Division (Ivy), and participated in several major campaigns in the ETO.

He was an active member of First Baptist Church in Bentleyville and member of West Pike Run Grange.

On March 28, 1942, he married Dorotha Morris, who died December 31, 2003.

Surviving are a daughter, Pamela Madden and husband Ted of Williamsburg, Va.; three grandchildren, Shani Madden of Alexandria, Va., Jenny Ward (Adam) of Fairfax, Va., and Dr. David Madden of Tuscaloosa, Ala.; a sister, Aldene Cox of Washington; and several nieces and nephews.

Deceased are four brothers, Harold, who was killed in action in World War II, Randolph, Roland and Kenneth Myers, and an infant sister, Corina Louise.

Friends are welcome from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Monday in Thompson-Marodi Funeral Home Inc., 809 Main Street, Bentleyville, 724-239-2255, where services will be held at 10 a.m. Tuesday, January 17, with Pastor Shirley Edgar officiating. Interment will follow in Maple Creek Cemetery, Fallowfield Township.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to First Baptist Church, c/o Janet Ladisic, 113 Washington Street, Cokeburg, PA 15324. Visit www.thompson-marodi.com to leave a condolence message, order flowers and share photos.

Doing some research on flowers, I found this: “The Marigold is emblematical of pain; place it on the head and it signifies trouble of mind; on the heart, the pangs of love; on the bosom, the disgusts of ennui.”

How the heart is differentiated from the bosom is nothing I can figure out. Is it left breast = heart, right breast= bosom? For help I went to the dictionary, which didn’t help.

But look here!

• (the bosom of) the loving care and protection of: Bruno went home each night to the bosom of his family | the town has taken the gay community to its bosom.

I hope not literally.

Okay so it’s not an interview with Tiger Beat, but it felt like an interview with Tiger Beat, and it was very fun to do. Ani Smith over at the litblog We Who Are About To Die asked me a whole bunch of questions that I tried to answer in a way that was entertaining for people. Because I gladhand. It’s what I do.

You can read the interview here.

Wow, Bob, Wow!