Poetry & Prose

2:30 pm-3:20 pm, Vollum Lecture Hall Voice as Comp, with Mitchell Jackson Writers with a distinctive literary voice have a greater chance to, as Susan Sontag says, “preserve the works of the mind against oblivion.” Voice consists of qualities that include diction, syntactical usage, sound, and visual logic. At its best, voice is as singular as one’s thumbprint. This craft lecture will present philosophies on voice and some of the rhetorical tools used to compose—yes, it’s an act of composition—a remarkable one. We will read passages from the work of master prose stylists—a list that includes John Edgar Wideman, Joan Didion, Grace Paley, and Denis Johnson—with an eye toward critiquing the elements that make their literary voice distinctive, compelling, enduring. 3:30 pm – 4:20 pm,…