Part 2: Travel Writing
Complete assignment #23 and any three of the other seven remaining assignments. You may do more for extra credit. These assignments must be typed, double spaced and turned in. Computers and printers are available in the computer center at the Rome Center.
You must do all the reading even if you only do four written assignments. The readings for this section are photocopied or available on-line.
18. Read “Roman Fever” by Edith Wharton
Available on-line at: http://www.geocities.com/short_stories_page/whartonromanfever.html
Of all the places Edith Wharton could have chosen as a setting for telling her story, why do you think she chose the Forum? How does the Forum support both the thematic center of the story, the definition of the relationship between the two women in the story, and the revelation of the secret past? Read the story carefully and try to determine where were the two women sitting when they were talking and gazing out over the Forum.
Find a place you like to be and describe the setting about/from there. It can be one specific location or an amalgam, but your place should carry a sense of dramatic capability.
19. Reading: Selection of Elizabeth Bishop’s poems
Think about identification and point-of-view in Bishop’s poems. Now try this exercise: begin a poem with the title “Tourist Info” or “Some Helpful Phrases.” This poem should be aimed at helping someone navigate and understand you, however you decide to interpret that. Think of directions, maps, points on a compass, etiquette, climate, warnings, general care of, etc. Use your guidebook for help.
20. Reading: Chapters 12, 15, 24, 33 of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love
If you haven’t already, study fountains, study ice cream. What is your favorite thing to say in Italian? What is your word? Construct a short personal narrative (1-2 pp) around these ideas.
Also, choose a short article from an Italian newspaper, and scan it for words that jump out at you. Make a “translation” of these words into English, following your eye (the Italian word looks like this English word) and your ear (sounds alike). Don’t worry about literal sense. To do this assignment, in fact, the less Italian you know, the better. When you’re done, you should have a short poem or paragraph.
21. Reading: Anne Carson’s “The Fall of Rome: A Traveller’s Guide”
“Italian is a beautiful language,/ also very difficult./ So long.” What do you notice about Carson’s style, and how does it compare to Italian language and lifestyle? Write a poem in sections, like Carson, following her premise. Ask the question “Why have you/ come here?” and answer it. Write between 10-15 sections.
22. Reading: Jorie Graham’s “San Sepolcro”; Barbara Hamby’s “Wild Greens”; John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
The images in these poems are what strike me, their vibrant replication of the visual through language. So far, what is your favorite piece of art in Rome? Write a poem about it.
23. Reading: Selections from Matsuo Basho’s Back Roads to Far Towns, and from Anne Carson’s “The Anthropology of Water”
How are these pieces alike? Would you consider your own trip to Rome a kind of pilgrimage? If so, in what ways? For your assignment, try organizing a few images of Rome into “photographs,” as Carson does, and write short prose pieces with them in mind. How is the reader implicated in these passages? Also, see if you can do as Basho does, and make the leap to haiku at the end of at least one of your prose pieces.
24. Reading: Barbara Hamby’s “Ode to the Lost Luggage Warehouse at the Rome Airport” and Lynne McMahon’s “We Take Our Children to Ireland”
What humorous things have befallen you in Rome? What mix-ups, bad translations, tricky situations? What was the flipside of this amusement? Write a poem or a short-short story about it.
25. Reading: Elizabeth Bishop’s “Questions of Travel” and Martha Silano’s “Traveler’s Lament”
Silano uses the construction “I miss. . .” to respond to Bishop’s lines. What do you miss when you’re away? For Silano it’s common, everyday things. “Should we have stayed home and thought of here?” Answer Bishop’s question in whatever way you choose.
