Author: Sarah Holsberg

I start every portfolio letter with saying that the writer’s portfolio is well-constructed. I geniunely mean that statement. Every portfolio that I have had the pleasure of reading is one that is well constructed, sometimes to the point where I’m afraid of toppling the house of cards with a possible revision suggestion. But lately, it feels like I’ve run out of comments.

I am currently in two creative writing workshops. I really enjoy both of them, and I have learned so much about myself as a writer from taking these two workshops. One workshop, poetry, was a genre I felt comfortable in, but still forced myself to grow in. The other workshop, fiction, was in a genre I had not written in a while, and learning to orient myself to being a prose reader and writer was a challenge. I am responsible for writing letters for all the writers in my fiction workshop, plus the select few from poetry. Suffice it to say, I have written a lot of letters. I also think that the more I write on a piece, the more helpful it will be to the writer, especially if I think my letter is lacking and I think of something in workshop. This amounts to many comments I have made on other people’s pieces.

My schedule next semester means I cannot take a creative writing workshop next semester. This development upset me, and I will miss the regular practice of writing, as well as the workshop environment, very much. The next two semesters are very demanding on my second major. Next semester, I will be in Block V, the last block before student teaching. This block contains four education classes, leaving me with very little room to fit a workshop in. Unlike previous education courses, they all take place during workshop times, instead of being slightly earlier in the day. In Fall 2020, I will be student teaching. This entails two placements, certification tests, and no other classes to be taken. Spring 2021, the semester where I will graduate, will be the semester in which I will have the opportunity to take my final workshop and the Senior Seminar. Needless to say, the opportunity to be in a workshop environment won’t come for a while.

How do you plan on writing regularly? What is your reflection process? Let me know in the comments.

Last class we had workshop outside. How could we not? It was sunny and warm, and the green just outside Welles looked so inviting. I was practically skipping outside, and desperate to find a good seat.

Continue reading “The Environment and Poetry”

It’s hard for me to sit at my seat in workshop and not respond to people when they are critiquing my work. So hard. Sometimes I want to run over and hug the person who got the exact intention of my poem, or just wring my hands or roll my eyes at that one person who doesn’t. Ever. Get. It.

During my last workshop, I really wanted to tell the workshop the real story behind my poem. I wanted to tell everybody the stories of Marina Abramovic, of the weaver in Kusadasi, of the meta ideas I had about this poem. I suppose this is my space to do so.

Continue reading “The End of Workshop”

The Art of Losing

Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

So many things seem filled with the intent

To be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent,

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went,

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Continue reading “Confessions about the Confessional”

It’s amazing how much can change in a year. I’m back in ENGL 301, at the same time as last year, and I am comforted by the familiar. I was in the workshop that was the test for the writing pods structure, which admittedly was difficult to decipher the first time around. Now I look at that document and it is easy to decipher, to know exactly what I am responsible for. Back in Welles 119, with the same circle of desks, with the knocking on the desks to signal agreement, with some returning folks and some old friends, feels like coming home.

Continue reading “Re-Visiting ENGL 301”

Ever since David Herd’s reading of Through nearly a month ago, I have found it difficult to get out of my head the idea of “a culture of exception.” This phrase summarizes as an American what I’ve observed both in brief interactions and in historical developments over decades, even centuries. The idea of a culture of exception is so stark and bleak that it’s been behind my obsession with political thought. Now that the midterms are over, an event which has been accompanied by a lot of high stakes, I’m wondering what my imagination will be occupied by next.

Florida today voted to grant over a million formerly incarcerated people (excluding murderers and sexual offenders) the right to vote after serving their time. This proposition was known as Amendment 4, and that is something that I am still in awe of. I spent a lot of tonight checking my phone for the midterm results, concerned about various candidates, but this is a development that has momentarily held the culture of exception at bay.

Let me know what occupies your imagination lately!

In these stressful times, I wonder what will become of the 2010’s, and how we will we be written about in history textbooks. Along with that thought, I wonder how we as older people will explain our actions and our thoughts about this moment we are living in. I’ve been thinking a lot about the poem “First They Came” by Martin Niemoller. It’s almost been like a mantra.

Continue reading “A Poem I’ve Been Thinking a Lot About Lately”

In light of midterms coming up, I’ve noticed a very strong political undercurrent, the likes I have never witnessed before. Of course I’ve seen it during 2008 (age 10) , 2012 (age 14), and 2016 (age 18), but I’ve never seen this high stakes fervor in the midterms. I don’t intend to go in depth about the state of politics in our country, which I can happily discuss in person or in a message conversation. I’m intending to write about how this impacts me as a writer, and how I mused about this as I was writing the poem for my writing assignment.

Continue reading “Midterms (no, not the exams)”

Recently in my Anthropology 100 class we’ve been learning about the concept of cultural capital. A brief definition of cultural capital is that it is the knowledge, habits, and tastes learned from parents and family that individuals can use to gain access to scarce and valuable resources of society, such as a social organization, important position (such as a Supreme Court Judge) and other social arenas. In many cases, the “culture” in cultural capital is the culture of old, wealthy, white, Western, cis, heterosexual men. This theory was developed by Pierre Bourdieu, an intellectual who came from a French farming town and felt looked down upon by the Parisian elite, who made fun of him for his rural accent. He realized that in order to be respected and gain access to those Parisian intellectual circles, he had to change his accent to match the Parisian’s, and his theory of cultural capital came from that experience. Bourdieu migrated to Paris from Denguin, and his struggle with language after his journey is similar to Herd’s speaker in “Through”, who wrestles with the ambivalence of both governmental, informational texts and aesthetic texts. Their struggle with language links them together.

Continue reading “Cultural Capital and David Herd’s “Through””

One of the highlights of my fall break is seeing the “Heavenly Bodies” exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday. This was a really special occasion because it was closing day, the Met Museum was open on a Monday, and I could witness couture in real life. The “Heavenly Bodies” exhibit is part of the Met Costume Institute, which organizes costume and couture in a stunning exhibit. In order to raise money for acquiring both elements, the Met hosts the Met Gala/Met Ball to pay, which is when Rihanna basically owns the red carpet. Sometimes celebrities go on theme, a lot of times they don’t.

Heavenly Bodies is organized around the theme of the Catholic Imagination, which most designers have interpreted as a white European of a certain generation imagination. These pieces revolved around a certain opulence, and often repeat similar biblical motifs such as the colors red, black, gold, white, and blue. Some of the designers featured were Valentino, Alexander McQueen, Dolce & Gabbana, Thom Browne, John Galliano, and many more.

I find a lot of inspiration from fashion because fashion can go in so many directions. Whether you design a piece of clothing for the mall shopper (which is totally valid) or design a piece of clothing as a conceptual art piece (which is also totally valid), that premise is always at the heart of fashion no matter how much capitalism tries to assign value to things. A lot of the big fashion designers now are part of two huge conglamorates called LVMH and Keuring, and it dismays me to see that sometimes. But that premise always gives me hope.

What other forms of art are you guys inspired by? Is there a perception of this form of art that is ill-informed?

Can you assign value to art at all?