Week 3
Class Ground Rules
Read all the assignments before class.
Keep yourself on mute unless called on.
Raise your hands electronically.
Focus your comments only on the question at hand rather than straying to other parts of the story.
Discuss the author's story, not your own story.
Refrain from offering a review of the whole story or jumping to the end.
Try to support your comments by referring to details from the text.
Listen to and respond to others with respect.
READ (at least twice): "Watershed," pp. 159-192. (Published in Delicate Edible Birds, 2015.)
Water infiltrates the sad tale of a woman's courtship and marriage.
Think About:
First person narration and the "you" to whom the narrator is speaking.
Symbolism of water (and the different kinds) throughout the story.
Significance of the two versions of the diver's story.
The Niagara Falls story.
Purely Optional - but beautiful writing!
Click on the picture to the left to read Lauren Groff discussing the connection between rowing and her writing process.
Purely Optional - Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Epithalamion," is referenced on p. 175 of "Watershed." Although only tangentially related to the story, the poem has interesting descriptions of water.Â
Epithalamion.pdf