Craft matters. Point of view matters-its controlling effect often overlooked in the study of authors' rhetorical choices. This book showcases creative writing from students in the University of Vermont Honors College course, Crafting Point of View, that evolved through experimentation. These writers tackled stylistic imitations of novelists, memoirists, and poets who chose unconventional points of view in their prosaic and poetic story telling: the dialect and direct-address of Celie's letters to God in Alice Walker's The Color Purple; the masterful and inventive manipulation of multiple points of view, sometimes within the same chapter or paragraph, in Lydia Davis's Collected Stories-predominantly "Break It Down"-and Abigail Thomas's Safekeeping; the surreal seemingness of "How to Tell a True War Story" in Tim O'Brien's metafictional The Things They Carried; the ways for means that poets like Maya Angelou, Donald Hall, and Jane Kenyon shift points of view, sometimes to alter the lens on pain; and the utilization of that "say you are...," "imagine this," all-inclusive assumedness of the second-person in Jay McInernay's Bright Lights, Big City and Mark Richard's House of Prayer No. 2. In the explorations that follow each story, essay, poem, or media message, student reflections on the crafting process will enlighten readers about the power and purpose of this often-undervalued element of style in writing: point of view.
About the Author: Jenny Grosvenor earned her B.A. in English Literature from Smith College, M.A. in English Education from Teachers College, Columbia University (while working in publishing/advertising copywriting for LIFE and Sports Illustrated magazines), and M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Bennington College. Parts of her memoir-in-process have appeared in Writing On the Edge, On Writing and Teaching Writing, and The Bennington Review. She currently teaches in the English Department at The University of Vermont. Being able to infuse college students with a love for writing and all its purposes-tapping into their storytelling potential-constitutes Grosvenor's truest vocation. Her obsession with shaping story through point of view grew from two things: the need to process through writing her husband's tragic death and its traumatic aftermath; and a brief, magical encounter and sharing of loss with the prolific writer, Donald Hall. In between raising four babies, she kept writing as a journalist and public relations director. Her greatest achievements and sources of joy to date are the four twenty-somethings she has launched into the world. She lives by Henri Bergson's definition of maturity as the ability to endlessly recreate oneself and relishes the focused, in-between commute time from her home in Stowe to campus in Burlington, VT; to maximize point of view, she always sits in the far back of the bus.