Tag: Liberating Form

Here are the discussion questions for the seventeenth and final email in the AMV Deep Dive of Marden J. Clark’s essay collection Liberating Form.

Click here to read the full archives of Season 1

Please note that comments are moderated, and the goal is to make this a place welcome to Mormons of all stripes (as well as folks with an interest in Mormonism).

1. What do you think of Clark’s overall project, especially his core concept of liberating form?
2. Which essay (or response from to an essay) did you find the most interesting?
3. What might a current version of Clark’s project look like? What would/should it do that Clark’s collection didn’t?

Here are the discussion questions for the sixteenth email in the AMV Deep Dive of Marden J. Clark’s essay collection Liberating Form.

If you haven’t signed up for the email, you can read it (and sign up to receive future ones) here: Graduation! To What?

Please note that comments are moderated, and the goal is to make this a place welcome to Mormons of all stripes (as well as folks with an interest in Mormonism).

1. What’s the best advice to college graduates you’ve ever encountered?
2. What barriers do you encounter when trying to continue to learn? What domains of knowledge/creativity, etc. are of most interest to you right now?
3. Clark is quite taken with his dual-spirals image. Is there imagery–poetic or scientific–you find especially interesting, useful, beautiful to represent something related to Mormonism, spirituality, life, etc.?

Here are the discussion questions for the fifteenth email in the AMV Deep Dive of Marden J. Clark’s essay collection Liberating Form.

If you haven’t signed up for the email, you can read it (and sign up to receive future ones) here: Whose Yoke is Easy?

Please note that comments are moderated, and the goal is to make this a place welcome to Mormons of all stripes (as well as folks with an interest in Mormonism).

1. Do you agree with Alan Keele’s observation as reported by Clark? Or is that just the middlebrow defending its’ middlebrow-ness? Should we even accept the premise of the sublime vs. the trivial?
2. Clark notes that the easy is pervasive in American (and Mormon) culture. How has that changed since the 1980s both in terms of areas of emphasis and intensity?
3. Does mediocrity feed upon itself, especially when it comes to art? Why or why not? Is the same true of excellence?

Here are the discussion questions for the fourteenth email in the AMV Deep Dive of Marden J. Clark’s essay collection Liberating Form.

If you haven’t signed up for the email, you can read it (and sign up to receive future ones) here: In the Midst of Miracle—So What?.

Please note that comments are moderated, and the goal is to make this a place welcome to Mormons of all stripes (as well as folks with an interest in Mormonism).

1. Tell me your favorite poem. Bonus points if it was written in the 20th or 21st century.
2. In what ways might Clark’s three questions What? Why? So What? be useful? Is it less the questions that are the issue and more how one goes about answering them?
3. What literary or other cultural works do you have both a Mormon self and a critical self interpretation of?

Here are the discussion questions for the thirteenth email in the AMV Deep Dive of Marden J. Clark’s essay collection Liberating Form.

If you haven’t signed up for the email, you can read it (and sign up to receive future ones) here: The Virtue of Virtue: A Sermon.

Please note that comments are moderated, and the goal is to make this a place welcome to Mormons of all stripes (as well as folks with an interest in Mormonism).

1. One of the things I enjoyed about this essay are the three poems Clark puts in dialogue with each other. Which cultural works have you put in dialogue with other in interesting ways?
2. Do you feel guilt over choosing one form of cultural activity over another? What governs how you choose to spend your time when it comes to culture?
3. Have you ever bumped up against forms that felt confining rather than liberating? What were they and what did you do as a result?

Here are the discussion questions for the eleventh email in the AMV Deep Dive of Marden J. Clark’s essay collection Liberating Form.

If you haven’t signed up for the email, you can read it (and sign up to receive future ones) here: Paradox and Tragedy in Mormonism.

Please note that comments are moderated, and the goal is to make this a place welcome to Mormons of all stripes (as well as folks with an interest in Mormonism).

1. Are you familiar with this canard that Mormons can’t write tragedy? Where/from whom did you first hear it? What other canards/truisms about Mormon literature are out there that bother you?
2. Do you agree with Clark that tragedy comes out of paradox? Why or why not? What paradoxes has he missed in his essay?
3. What sorts of tragic and/or comic situations do you want to see more of in Mormon literature?