haibun

This course will teach you how to combine prose, haiku and a title into that stellar combination called a haibun. Learn how to evoke an emotional response with concrete details, thereby letting your reader be an active participant in your work. It is required that students should have successfully completed the haiku class or the haiga and haibun class and the haiku class.

Week I--Review of The Japanese Aesthetic Principes. We'll review how to write a haiku and emphasize concrete imagery and employ an observatory stance. We'll write haiku and read some example haibun.

Week II--Imagistic Haibun. We'll look at a haibun that captures a moment in time and write an imagistic haibun.

Week III--Narrative Haibun. We'll look at a haibun that covers a period of time, possibly a travel diary, and see how it differs from an imagistic haibun.

Week IV--Writing Our Own Haibun. Here students will choose what haibun form suits them and write their own haibun.


Instructor: Alvin Thomas Ethington

About The Instructor: Alvin Thomas Ethington (B.A. With Highest Honors, Oberlin College, 1979; M. Div. With Honors, Yale University, 1983) is a noted teacher, writer, and reviewer. He has taught at Chaffey College, Rancho Cucamonga, California and Triton College, River Grove, Illinois. He prepared community college students for study at major private and public four-year colleges and universities, including Pitzer College, Claremont, California; the University of Southern California, Los Angeles; and the University of Illinois-Chicago campus.

He is a published author and was recently honored for his haiku. His poem "haiku (empty chair)" is on the audio tour of The Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, California, Poets on Site Tour.

He specializes in languages, culture, and religion. He has substituted for the Greek instructor at California State University at Fullerton and has tutored Biblical Hebrew.

He has been a member of FanStory since 2006 and has won Reviewer of the Month six times. He has also performed pre-publication editing for the former Bishop of Los Angeles, Episcopal (The Rt. Rev. Frederick Houk Borsch) and reviewed college textbooks.

His philosophy on teaching comes from his work as a counselor--he believes that teaching should be student-centered and designs his courses according to the students' needs.