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  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
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March 10, 2006

SUMMER IN SIENA

Siena Now here's a lovely way to spend the summer.

Word reaches us about the summer creative writing program offer by ISLA, the Siena School for Liberal Arts.  It's located in the heart of Siena, a small hill town in central Tuscany, and a stone’s throw from the Chianti region, Florence, Montepulciano and San Gimignano.

The details are being ironed out but the program will run one week – likely the first week of August. Thus far there will be one fiction and one poetry workshop. The fiction workshop will be run by the wonderful novelist Martha Cooley (The Archivist, Thirty-Three Swoons).  The poetry workshop remains to be determined.  (Judith Baumel, Martha Collins and Pamela Alexander have expressed interest in leading the poetry workshop.) Students choose between the two and will have the opportunity to publish in Verso, a new bilingual lit/arts journal in Italy. The workshop will be open to writers of all ages. 

Readings and lectures given by various writers, Italian and American, will be held in the evenings. There will also be guided trips around Siena and Florence. The program’s mission is to host intimate workshops led by intelligent authors with, when possible, ties to Italy. (Ms. Cooley’s books have been translated into Italian; she has close ties to the language and culture). ISLA also hopes to introduce contemporary Italian authors little known to a wider American audience. For further details contact: verso@sienaschool.com.  You can also look at the website here.

Posted by TEV at 12:27 AM in World Beat |

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Keith

Oh man, Martha Cooley + Siena= nirvana...

Posted by: Keith | March 10, 2006 at 10:46 AM

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