“The world is too much with us.”

February 16, 2017

Two-hundred years ago, when William Wordsworth published the poem that begins with the line quoted above, critics were not impressed.  In fact, they ridiculed him for using the words “of the common man” instead of using a scholar’s proper poetic diction.  Wordsworth sparked a revolution. It … Read More

“Many modern books on ‘style’ have suggested that there are only two styles: good and bad.”

February 9, 2017

This book, Clear and Simple as the Truth, takes a much different view.  The authors argue that there are many styles for writers to choose from – including contemplative, classic, romantic, plain, oratorical, practical, and diplomatic.  This book focuses primarily on the classic style – its … Read More

“Researchers found that students who wrote prolifically before high-stakes performances, like examinations and final papers, significantly improved their performance on their final work” (69).

February 2, 2017

Interestingly, in this study by Ramirez and Beilock (2011), as summarized by Gary R. Hafer in Embracing Writing, it didn’t matter whether students wrote about the subject matter or about their emotions and anxiety – what mattered was how frequently they wrote. Hafer makes a case … Read More

“Every work of literature has both a situation and a story.”

January 26, 2017

The situation, Vivian Gornick explains in this book about the art of personal narrative, is the context or circumstances, while the story is “the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say” (13). Gornick argues that the most difficult and important work of memoirists is … Read More

“Can you tell a story that doesn’t begin, it’s just suddenly happening?”

January 19, 2017

In each of the six short stories in this collection, which won the 2015 National book Award, things suddenly happen on the first page: there are no descriptions of the setting, no background information.  Instead, the story seems to be already happening.  In an interview, author … Read More

“This all sounds very messy”

January 12, 2017

What I’m looking for – perhaps what we’re all looking for – are learning principles that are most likely to lead to long-term retention – even if they’re messy. In Small Teaching, Jim Lang describes a learning principle called “interleaving” that requires two things: spacing out … Read More

“Keeping secrets was the family business.”

January 5, 2017

What should you tell?  What should you leave out? These used to be the most important questions for memoirists and for writers of all genres.  However, I have come to believe that we are entering a new era where the boundaries of realism are being pushed to … Read More

Five Intriguing Ideas from 2016 Books

December 29, 2016

This blog focuses on one idea from one book each week, and so selecting just five from the 50 or so that I’ve published in 2016 is a challenge. But after looking through them all, I have to say that the ideas that I enjoyed the most … Read More

Five Best Novels of 2016

December 23, 2016

The five novels that rose to the top of my 2016 list are:

The best word to describe Elizabeth Strout’s My Name is Lucy Barton is exquisite. What I love about Strout is her ability to dive right in to the heat of the moment without engaging … Read More

“Attributes like confidence, enthusiasm, and likability can be perceived in the briefest of exposures.”

December 15, 2016

In The Spark of Learning, Sarah Rose Cavanagh describes a study where students were asked to rate professors after seeing 30-second videos of lectures that had no audio. The students’ ratings predicted with surprising accuracy the professors’ actual end-of-semester evaluations. It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise … Read More

“There’s work to be done, there are plots to be plotted, there are scams to be scammed, there are villains to be misled!”

December 8, 2016

This may be Margaret Atwood’s greatest masterpiece. In Hag-Seed, she retells Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” by turning it inside-out and adding a layer.  It’s a play within a play within a novel.  This restructuring results in a  hybrid form of story-telling that’s actually very funny.  In her … Read More

“Bernard Shaw said you should try everything once except folk dancing and incest.”

December 1, 2016

img_2725This is how Michael Billington, “the” British theater critic, who has reviewed more than 9000 plays over the last 50 years, begins his piece on “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles. Charming, gossipy, insightful, authoritative, knowledgeable, and passionate, Billington is a great writer. It’s hard to … Read More

“To look closely with the attention of questioning changes everything.”

November 26, 2016

img_2667“It is,” Jane Hirshfield writes in this collection of essays about poetry, “if undertaken fully, revolutionary.”  More stimulating than a triple-shot of espresso, these essays show what can happen when a great poet sets out to describe how poetry is primarily “an instrument of investigation and a … Read More

“If anything has been learned from this century of research on learning, it is that learning is not one thing but many things.”

November 17, 2016

davisWhat I love about this book is its informed and nuanced contribution to the “lecture vs. active learning” discussion that has been bubbling up for some time now at college campuses.  The authors say that decisions about teaching methodology must be based on learning outcomes. This isn’t … Read More

“The christening party took a turn when Albert Cousins arrived with gin.”

November 10, 2016

patchett-commonwealthI predict that this opening sentence of Ann Patchett’s new novel, Commonwealth, will become one of those classic opening sentences that creative writing instructors refer to when talking about creating tension right out of the gate.  Who is Albert Cousins?  Why did he bring gin to … Read More