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Course Description

Summary

John Burroughs wrote that “Until science is mixed with emotion and appeals to the heart and imagination, it is like dead organic matter; and when it is so mixed and so transformed, it is literature.”  Using this directive, students would be asked to document their own observations of the natural world; field notes and almanac will serve as raw material from which to develop finished work--essays and poems--that may touch on a wider sphere of experience.  The premise is that the rigorous research and close attention to the facts at hand can serve as the basis for a more expressive narrative. Student writing will be workshopped weekly.  Accommodating both prose and poetry, the reading list will include The End of Night by Paul Bogard, The Forest Unseen by David Haskell, Radial Symmetry, the poetry of molecular biologist Katherine Larson, and For the Time Being by Annie Dillard.