Whitman's Civil War: Writing and Imagining Loss, Death, and Disaster week 2

Last week we began by reading some of Whitman's writings about war before and after the Civil War. You can see how his experiences changed him and his writing. There's a difference between imagining something and actually experiencing it firsthand. This led to an interesting discussion about whether you can write authentically about something you only imagined. Especially for a speculative fiction writer, this is a valid question. Sure, you can do research about medieval sword-fighting techniques, even put on armor and get whacked with a sword, but you can never personally experience fighting a dragon. A lot of the time you try to take some experience you've had that might in some emotional or physical way resemble what you're writing about and use that. And try to do a lot of research, of course. For the story to feel real, you have to develop a knack for faking the small but crucial details that help sell the story. I feel that many fantasy and science fiction writers do this quite well, but does the subject matter mean their stories are less real than stories set in the real world?

We also talked about the anxieties writers and artists face when turning disaster and death into art. It's a sensitive subject. What if you hurt people? Trigger anxiety and bad memories? Is it disrespectful to use a disaster or even someone's personal tragedy for story fodder? Depends on how you do it, I guess?  Most people don't want to bear witness to the madness that is the world today, but we're forced to. It seems like every week there's another shooting or terrorist attack, and the war in Syria and the refugee situation make the headlines almost every day. A lot of the time writing about death is the writer's way of making sense of what happened. Speculative fiction as a lens gives some distance. Maybe we fantasy and science fiction writers have it easier in that regard?

The writing assignment had us write about disaster while using some kind of constraint, like doing it in sonnet form, because many experimental and modern writers turn to traditional forms when writing about loss. An interesting and challenging exercise.

Lots to think about.

What about you guys? Any thoughts?  

Whitman's Civil War: Writing and Imaging Loss, Death, and Disaster Week 1

Whitman's Civil War: Writing and Imaging Loss, Death, and Disaster, the free MOOC from the University of Iowa, starts this week.

I read up on Walt Whitman, and he's actually kind of fascinating. Born in 1819,  he was an American poet and journalist. His sharp pen and outlandish opinions about things like women's property laws and labor and immigration issues got him in trouble many times, costing him multiple jobs. He also passionately opposed slavery. It's speculated that Whitman was bisexual or homosexual; he denied it, but who wouldn't in the 1800s? His main work is Leaves of Grass, a poetry collection that pioneered free verse and shocked his contemporaries with its sexual content.

During the American Civil War, he worked as a volunteer nurse, and the course will be focusing on his wartime poetry, prose, and letters and how he wrote about all the horrors he witnessed; but this is a writing course, so the point isn't only to learn about Whitman, but to explore the ways of writing about loss and disaster. Sounds interesting, doesn't it?

There's still time to sign up if you're interested...