Penn Professors on Writing in English

Dr. Al Filreis

About the Professor

Professor Al Filreis is a Kelly Professor and Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House. He is strongly interested in poetics, particularly contemporary poetics. His most recent book, Counter-revolution of the Word, discusses the impact of Cold War era rhetoric on contemporary American poetics. Professor Filreis is also known as an experimenter in online learning. He hosts a variety of thematic websites on certain literary topics.

Personal Writing Process

"For my scholarly articles and critical essays: I do a great deal of research and reading, then I write the opening paragraph or two, and then I make an outline in the form of sheets of paper laid out on my home office floor. I then write the essay section by section, going through everything on my floor; I always end the day's writing by leaving a final point half written, so that I will know just where and how I should continue. I must begin again with a point I know well and think is good. I never leave off on a point that confuses me. For my informal writing (e.g. Jacket2 commentaries) I will often write a first draft straight through with few notes. But in every case, I revise and revise and revise. I revise repeatedly at every level. My last few rounds of revision entail working through every sentence."

Writing Tips

"Many tips, but I will confine myself just to this one: please don't give me a piece of writing that you yourself have not gone through again and again and again. There should be no indications at all that sentences were not carefully considered. Such indications make me lose confidence in the argument. I can handle a weird or way-out argument but only if I have confidence that the whole piece of writing has been carefully considered."

Other Great Writers in English

Dr. Filreis recommends Brian Reed, Marjorie Perloff, and John Richetti.

Genres

"I write scholarly articles and book chapters (literary history, based on primary research), critical essays, reviews of poetry books and projects, short informal commentaries that are akin to blog posts. I also, alas, write my share of bureaucratic memos. I love writing very succinct reviews."

Dr. Filreis's University Webpage