The A-to-Z of Sharr White's ANNAPURNA: Part 1

Letters A-E

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Alcoholism: 

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Alcoholism is the addiction to or dependency upon drinking excessive amounts of alcoholic beverages. Since the late 20th century, it has been considered an addictive disorder. It is characterized by compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcohol, usually to the detriment of the drinker’s health, personal relationships, and social standing. Like other drug addictions, alcoholism is medically defined as a treatable disease.

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Annapurna the Goddess of the Harvests:

108 names of the goddess Annapurna: http://www.nriol.com/indianparents/goddess-annapoorni.asp

Annapurna the Mountain:

Atonement: 

The dictionary definition for Atonement is:

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1. satisfaction or reparation for a wrong or injury; amends.
2. (sometimes initial capital letter) Theology . the doctrine concerning the reconciliation of God and humankind, especially as accomplished through the life, suffering, and death of Christ.
3. Christian Science . the experience of humankind's unity with God exemplified by Jesus Christ. 
4. Archaic . reconciliation; agreement.

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From: http://www.merriam-webster.com/

Avalanches:

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An avalanche is a sudden rapid flow of snow down a slope, occurring when either natural triggers or human activity causes a critical escalating transition from the slow equilibrium evolution of the snow pack. Typically occurring in mountainous terrain, an avalanche can mix air and water with the descending snow. Powerful avalanches have the capability to entrain ice, rocks, trees, and other material on the slope. Avalanches are primarily composed of flowing snow, and are distinct from mudslides, rock slides, and serac collapses on and icefall. In contrast to other natural events which can cause disasters, avalanches are not rare or random events and are endemic to any mountain range that accumulates a standing snow pack. In mountainous terrain avalanches are among the most serious objective hazards to life and property, with their destructive capability resulting from their potential to carry an enormous mass of snow rapidly over large distances.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalanche

Black Angel(s):

-       a personification of death

-       Black Angel was a novel published in 1943 that was then turned into a film noir. The plot is as follows:

“The novel follows the story of a woman's desperate attempt to prove her husband's innocence after he has been sentenced to death for the murder of his mistress. She tracks down four men in the victim's life, one of whom she suspects may be the real murderer, and systematically destroys them. In the end, her obsession becomes madness and she has ruined her own life along with her victims' lives to save her philandering husband.”

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The woman in the film is referred to as a “black angel.”

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Angel_(novel) 

Boxing Moves:

Charles Bukowski:

Henry Charles Bukowski (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. It is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books. In 1986 Time called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife".  Regarding Bukowski's enduring popular appeal, Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, "the secret of Bukowski’s appeal. . . [is that] he combines the confessional poet’s promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero."

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski

It appears that certain people think that poetry should be a certain way. For these, there will be nothing but troubled years. More and more people will come along to break their concepts. It's hard I know, like having somebody fuck your wife while you are at work, but life, as they say, goes on.

Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.

If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose.

Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.

There is a time to stop reading, there is a time to STOP trying to WRITE, there is a time to kick the whole bloated sensation of ART out on its whore-ass.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

Never get out of bed before noon.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

From: http://bukowski.net/

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Columbia University in the 1970s:

Columbia University Professors of Note (from around the 70’s):

• Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature Emeritus, James V. Mirollo has taught Literature Humanities since 1973. Longtime chair of this program, Professor Mirollo received the Great Teacher Award from the Society of Graduates in 1988, he was co-recipient of the first Award for Distinguished Service to the Core Curriculum in 1993, and he was honored with the Mark Van Doren Award for Great Teaching in 1995. 
• Professor of English Emeritus Carl Hovde '50 has served the core curriculum as both teacher and administrator. A longtime teacher of Literature Humanities, Professor Hovde served as dean of the College from 1968 to 1972, when the core underwent fundamental changes. He received the Great Teacher Award from the Society of Columbia Graduates in 1975. Since his retirement in 1995 he has served as chair of the Friends of the Heyman Center and also is a member of the Society of Senior Scholars. Professor Hovde received the Award for Distinguished Service to the Core Curriculum in 1997-1998.
• As a member of the Department of English and Comparative Literature, Professor Emeritus Wallace Gray taught Literature Humanities for over thirty years. His experiences teaching this course formed the basis for his celebrated book Homer to Joyce (1985). He received the Award for Distinguished Service to the Core Curriculum in 1997-1998. Professor Gray continued to teach the course as a member of the Society of Senior Scholars until his death in 2001. 
• Helen Vendler (poetry critic)
• Jonathan Allen Lethem (writer)
• Colson Whitehead (New York-based novelist)
• Richard Ford (Pulitzer Prize winning novelist)
• Han Ong (Filipino high-school drop-out and youngest MacArthur “genius” grant winner)

Columbia University--Students & Writers of Note:

• Carson McCullers (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter)
• Eudora Welty (Pulitzer Prize winner The Optimist’s Daughter)
• Jack Kerouac (Columbia’s most famous drop-out & beat poet)
• Langston Hughes (writer and poet)
• JD Salinger (Catcher in the Rye)
• Allen Ginsberg (beat generation poet)
• Paul Auster (post-modern author, The New York Trilogy)
• Terrance McNally (playwright)
• Kate Millett (feminist and author of Sexual Politics)
• Richard Howard (Poet Laureate NY State, Pulitzer Prize winner)
• William Jay Smith (US Poet Laureate & Rhodes Scholar)
• Hunter S. Thompson (Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas)
• Patricia McCormick (author for young adults)
• Louise Gluck (US Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winning author and many others)
• Anthony Hecht (US Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winning poet and many others)

Cowboy Iconography from Late 70s/Early 80s:

Robert Redford in the 1979 movie The Electric Horseman

John Travolta in the 1980 movie Urban Cowboy

Creative Writing Degree Program at Columbia University:

Courses: 36 points are required. 5 workshops, 4 seminars, and 3 related courses.

Workshop Curriculum

15 points within the division in the following courses. One workshop must be in a genre other than the primary focus. For instance, a fiction writer might take four fiction workshops and one poetry workshop:

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Beginning Fiction, Poetry, or Nonfiction Workshop (3 pts)

This course is open to non-majors, and will have sections in fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. Beginning workshops are designed for students who have little or no previous experience writing literary texts in a particular genre. Students are introduced to a range of technical and imaginative concerns through exercises and discussions, and eventually produce their own writing for the critical analysis of the class.

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Intermediate Fiction, Poetry, or Nonfiction Workshop (3 pts)
Permission required. Admission by writing sample. Enrollment limited to 15 students. This course can be repeated in fulfillment of the major. Intermediate workshops are for students with some experience with creative writing, and whose prior work merits admission to the class (as judged by the professor). With sections in fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, the intermediate workshops present a higher creative standard than beginning workshops, and increased expectations to produce finished work. By the end of the semester, each student will have produced at least seventy pages of original fiction or non-fiction, or twenty original poems.

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Advanced Fiction, Poetry, or Nonfiction Workshop (3 pts)
Prerequisite: Intermediate Workshop. Permission required. Admission by writing sample. Enrollment limited to 15 students. This course can be repeated in fulfillment of the major.
Building on the work of the Intermediate Workshop, Advanced workshops are reserved for the most gifted creative writing students. A significant body of writing must be produced and revised. Students in the advanced workshops will have taken several courses in the major already (workshops and seminars), and they bring their additional literary experience and knowledge to the classroom, which at once raises the level of discourse and potential for achievement.

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Senior Creative Writing Workshop in Fiction, Poetry, or Nonfiction (4 pts)
This course is restricted to seniors who are majors in creative writing. Enrollment is limited, and is by permission of the professor. The senior workshop offers students the opportunity to work exclusively with classmates who are at the same high level of accomplishment in the major. Students in the senior workshops will produce and revise a new and substantial body of work.

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Seminar Curriculum
12 points within the division. Two of the seminars must be from “Craft and Practice”, and two must be from “History and Context.”

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Creative Writing Seminar: Craft and Practice (3 pts)
“Craft and Practice” seminars offer close examination of literary techniques such as plot, point of view, tone, suspense, and narrative voice. Extensive readings are required, along with creative exercises.

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Creative Writing Seminar: History and Context (3 pts)
“History and Context” seminars offer a broad view of literary history as it relates to the concerns of a writer. These seminars cover specific genres or periods of time, and seek to inform students about the kinds of approaches that are possible in their chosen genre. Extensive readings are required, along with short critical papers or creative exercises.

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Creative Writing Master Class: Special Topics (1 pt)
Based on graduate courses such as R6307, R6303, R6301
Master Classes put students in contact with distinguished teachers for concentrated tutorials on a variety of literary topics, all of which relate to the creative pursuits of a writer. The Master Classes are offered, usually, by visiting faculty of the highest level, and are restricted to students in the major.

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Related Courses
9 points in the following courses:
Related courses should provide concentrated intellectual and creative stimulation for the student writer, exposure to a body of ideas that will enrich the student’s artistic instincts. These courses will necessarily be different for each student writer, but they might be drawn from departments such as English, Comp. Lit, Philosophy, History, and Anthropology (among others). Students will determine, in consultation with their faculty advisors, the related courses that will best inform their creative work.

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Creative Writing--Top Programs Between Colorado & Rhode Island:

1. University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA
Ranked as a 2011 'Best Midwestern College' by The Princeton Review, this public university was the first school in the U.S. to offer a creative writing program. The University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop has trained some of the nation's poet laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners. Students can pursue a Bachelor of English Literature with a concentration in creative writing as well as a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing. Admission to both programs is selective and contingent on submission of a manuscript or selection of poems. It is also host to the annual Iowa Summer Writing Festival, where writers travel across the country to take weekend and weeklong writing courses and workshops. In 2011, Poets and Writers magazine ranked the university's MFA programs as the best in the U.S. for fiction, poetry and nonfiction (www.pw.org).
2. University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
The University of Michigan also has a reputable creative writing program, placing in the nation's top ten by a number of publications including The Atlantic in 2007 and second place in the 2011 edition of the Poets and Writers for top MFA programs in fiction and poetry. The MFA program in creative writing is a 2-year program that is mostly made up of writing workshops and the creation of a master's thesis. There are also opportunities for students in the MFA program to teach undergraduate courses in English or in composition. The program also offers all students a $6,000 stipend for the summer semester to allow them to spend time writing and honing their skills for the second year of the program.
3. University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a large public university that serves approximately 51,000 students in various areas of study including creative writing. Students can either pursue an MFA in English with an emphasis on writing fiction or poetry, or can opt to pursue an MFA in Writing for a more extensive curriculum. The MFA in Writing program is located in the Michener Center for Writers and takes three years to complete. Students are required to select two genres to study. The genres are fiction, poetry, screenwriting and playwriting. All MFA students receive financial support from the James A. Michener Fellowship for all three years they are enrolled in the program. The creative writing program was ranked third in the nation in the 2011 edition of Poets and Writers.
4. University of Wisconsin, Madison
5. University of Virginia
6. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
7. Indiana University, Bloomington
8. University of Montana

From: http://education-portal.com/best_creative_writing_schools.html

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Emma’s Odyssey:

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Emma running from Ulysses with Sam twenty years ago

• Emma flees from their home in Missoula, MT to her mother's in Framingham. Then she moves to Boston, followed by Philadelphia, back to Boston and, finally, Providence. All of this happens over the course of about eight years.
• The trip is about 3,279 miles

Emma's trip from Providence, RI to Paonia, CO

• The trip is about 2,175 miles
• By car, it would take about 36 hours to make the journey

Epic Poetry:

Aristotle's definition of epic poetry may confuse the reader, so it is worth illuminating precisely what he means. Epic poetry is like tragedy in that it reveals man to be better than he is - but it is narrative in form, depending either on an omniscient first-person narrator, a third-person narrator, or a first-person narrating hero. A tragedy, meanwhile, involves the dialogue of two or more characters. Additionally, tragedy and epic poetry differ in length -- tragedy is confined usually to a single day, in the efforts to reveal a quick devolution of the hero. Epic poetry, meanwhile, often continues for a man's full lifetime. Ultimately it seems that tragedy grew from epic poetry, so we find all the qualities of the latter in the former, but an epic poem need not contain all the elements of a tragedy.

From: http://www.gradesaver.com/aristotles-poetics/study-guide/section1/

The most famous epic poems are from cultures in the B.C. eras:

• Homer’s Odyssey (Greek)
• Probably the most well known epic poem, it features the adventures of Odysseus (whose Latin name is Ulysses).
• Homer’s Iliad
• Virgil’s Aeneid

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Other modern epics include the following:

• Endymion by John Keats (1818)
• Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land by Herman Melville (1876)
• The Wanderings of Oisin by William Bulter Yeats (1889)
• The Cantos by Ezra Pound (1951-1969)

A Sample of The Wanderings of Oisin (William Butler Yeats):

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Were we days long or hours long in riding, when, rolled in a grisly peace, 
An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak?
And we stood on a sea's edge we saw not; for whiter than new−washed fleece
Fled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke.

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And we rode on the plains of the sea's edge; the sea's edge barren and grey, 
Grey sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees, 
Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away, 
Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.

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But the trees grew taller and closer, immense in their wrinkling bark;
Dropping; a murmurous dropping; old silence and that one sound;
For no live creatures lived there, no weasels moved in the dark:
Long sighs arose in our spirits, beneath us bubbled the ground.

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And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow night,
For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleams of the world and the sun, 
Ceased on our hands and our faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the light, 
And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world was one.

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The full poem can be read online here:
http://www.csun.edu/~hceng029/yeats/yeatspoems/WanderingsOfOi


Click here to read PART TWO (Letters F-O)

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Click here to read PART THREE (Letters P-Z)