Classroom Calendar

Registration: https://classroom.ruthstonehouse.org/product/at-the-still-point-of-the-turning-world/

Come read and discuss one of the most ambitious, lyrically stunning, and finely wrought meditations on time, memory, and the divine! Instructor Ben Pease has been obsessed with the Four Quartets since his graduate school days when he memorized and recited the whole poem alongside Alexandra Zelman-Doring. We will cover one quartet per week, accompanied by a handful of critical texts that shed light on the musical, religious, and philosophical underpinnings of the work. Each week, students will also have the opportunity to select their favorite passages and lead a discussion on it!

Registration: https://classroom.ruthstonehouse.org/product/re-vision-for-poetry-flash-fiction-and-micro-prose/

A generative space of conversation, discussion, in-class writing.

Two sessions; 75 minutes each

How do you go beyond “editing” into re-visioning and re-seeing your work? If you have a lot of material but aren’t sure how to move it forward, how do you make progress? In this two-part generative session, we will take our inspiration from Adrienne Rich’s essay “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision,” as well as other other writers’ craft essays (such as Kim Addonizio and Carl Phillips), to understand revision in a new way, shed light on our inner critic, and generate new work.

In each session, participants will learn several revision techniques or exercises and have a chance to practice with them in real time. These exercises/prompts are best suited for poetry and short prose forms (lyric essay, flash fiction, and hybrid work that tends to be approximately 500 words or less). We will also address the ever-present inner critic, one of the major obstacles for revision. There will be time for sharing our work and reflecting on the process.

Participants will receive a write-up of the revision strategies and techniques. All are welcome, from beginning to more experienced writers. Students should have at least 3 existing pieces of writing they are interested in revising and can bring to the class.

Adrienne Rich writes, “You have to be free to play around with the notion that day might be night, love might be hate; nothing can be too sacred for the imagination to turn into its opposite or to call experimentally by another name. For writing is re-naming.”

Registration: https://classroom.ruthstonehouse.org/product/at-the-still-point-of-the-turning-world/

Come read and discuss one of the most ambitious, lyrically stunning, and finely wrought meditations on time, memory, and the divine! Instructor Ben Pease has been obsessed with the Four Quartets since his graduate school days when he memorized and recited the whole poem alongside Alexandra Zelman-Doring. We will cover one quartet per week, accompanied by a handful of critical texts that shed light on the musical, religious, and philosophical underpinnings of the work. Each week, students will also have the opportunity to select their favorite passages and lead a discussion on it!

Registration: https://classroom.ruthstonehouse.org/product/at-the-still-point-of-the-turning-world/

Come read and discuss one of the most ambitious, lyrically stunning, and finely wrought meditations on time, memory, and the divine! Instructor Ben Pease has been obsessed with the Four Quartets since his graduate school days when he memorized and recited the whole poem alongside Alexandra Zelman-Doring. We will cover one quartet per week, accompanied by a handful of critical texts that shed light on the musical, religious, and philosophical underpinnings of the work. Each week, students will also have the opportunity to select their favorite passages and lead a discussion on it!