This Level of Living

Authors

Rose Havard, Cedarville UniversityFollow

Document Type

Portfolio

Publication Date

Fall 11-2013

Keywords

Creative writing, nonfiction, fiction, poetry, christian creative writing, creative writing portfolio, portfolio, level, ostranenie

Abstract

This portfolio contains poetry, nonfiction, and one short fiction story. Two nonfiction pieces appearing here, “Welcome to the Armory” and “Survey: Headphones” have also been published in the online journal Prick of the Spindle. All pieces were written between August of 2012 and May 2013. I consider this collection the best of my college writing.

I pay extra attention to sounds in my pieces. I also try to achieve a certain level of ostranenie—a poetry term that means “making the familiar strange”—because I am fascinated with the attempt. This Level of Living refers to a state of high awareness, of thoughtful observation and meditation required of the person who does not want to live passively but “deliberately.” Here my subjects are small things, like buttons or mushrooms or cells’ cytoskeletons, which are on different levels of living than I.

My other subjects revolve around disconnected relationships—not just the personal, but detours and distance, hypnagogic hallucinations, and other strange events or things that detach us from our usual lives.

Recommended Citation

Havard, Rose, "This Level of Living" (2013). Creative Writing Minor Portfolios. 3.
https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/creative_writing_portfolios/3

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.