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Jennie Pau
Zack De Piero
Writing 2
4 March 2015
Changing One Genre to Another
There are many ways to change one genre to another genre and gear them toward a
specific audience. The article I chose for this writing project is Robert Morgan: Genius as
Music by P.H. Liotta. In this article, Liotta writes about his time when he attended Cornell
University for graduate school. He was admitted into a MFA writing program. There, he met a
professor who changed his perspective in writing and the way he writes. The professor whom he
admires is Robert Morgan. Robert Morgan is a well-known poet who also wrote short stories,
novels, and non-fictions.. Since the main point of the article is about admiration, I chose a poster
genre for the younger audience and an invitation card to an opening of a museum for the older
audience.
The entire article is about the time when Liotta learned how to improve his writing from
Morgan. He mentions how he admires and looks up to him. In order to gear this genre for a
younger audience, I decided to make a poster. Posters, to me, are objects that people can hang on
walls for decoration, viewing, or even for admiration. They are something that shows what you
treasure or like. They can be pictures of peoples favorite childhood television show or their
favorite character. There are many teenagers nowadays that have posters of their favorite singer
or band. The specific age group that I am gearing towards is age thirteen to eighteen. I chose this
age group because I think people around this age starts to think about what they want to be in the

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future and develop a deeper interest in what they want to do. They will find role models that are
successful in what they want to do. Kids younger than thirteen might not care about their future
job yet because they are not at that age to worry. To be more specific, my audience are people
who have an interest in writing as their profession. Since Morgan is a famous poet, a teenager
with a poster of Morgan must really like his work, looks up to him, and wants to be famous like
Morgan as they go into that profession.
While drawing the poster, I had to choose what important details to bring out and to
include. By doing so, I had a choice of frame. (McCloud) In Scott McClouds Writing with
Pictures, he states that the choice of frame is showing readers what they need to see, creating a
sense of place, position and focus (McCloud 37) and the stage where you decide how closely to
frame an action to show all the pertinent details. (19) I did not draw Morgan in the center of the
poster because I did not want him to be the only one that is in the spotlight. I drew a picture of
Morgan to show people who he is and also provide a picture of how he looks for those who do
not know him. I decided to add in a quote on the poster that is often said by Morgan. It says
Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity. (Morgan) This quote
is significant for this article because Liotta explained how Morgan taught him to see and accept
other peoples writing in a different perspective even if he does not agree with them, and how to
write in a different way. I also wanted the quote he uses often to be in the center with him
because both the quote and Morgan are inspiring. I want the viewer to focus the face of Morgan
and the quote. I only framed Morgans top body and zoomed in to his face to let the viewer have
a more intense face-to-face and feel like Morgan is there with them. On the top, I put Morgans
full name in big, fancy font. I did that to make the poster less dull and boring and more attractive

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to get the viewers attention to the poster. To also make it less dull and boring, I wrote the quote
in purple to give the poster a more colorful picture. On Morgans portrait, I included Morgans
autograph to let the viewer know that Morgan signed it and it worth a lot and is a big treasure for
a fan of Morgan.
Liotta wrote about his college life at Cornell University with Morgan. Morgan is wellrespected and well-known. After researching a little more about Morgan, I learned that Morgan is
well-known for some of the awards he achieved for his writings. To gear this article for an older
audience, specifically those who are older than thirty-years-old, I chose to make an invitation
card for an opening of a museum dedicated to Robert Morgan. I chose the age of thirty and older
because these people seems to be at the age where they would visit a museum frequently. I
decided to do this because a biographical museum can show the life of a person, their works,
their accomplishments, how they became successful, etc. Morgan have achieved many great
things and he deserves a museum dedicated to him. Thus, an invitation card to a biographical
museum would attract people to visit and learn what accomplishments Morgan had made.
On the invitation card, I created borders on both side. On the side borders, I colored a
green border to make the invitation card less plain, which attracts the readers attention to the
colorful borders. This also attracts the readers attention to look at the side to see what the
pictures are. The pictures are of the book covers that Morgan wrote. This allows readers to see
what works he had done and if they can recall anything about Morgan or his poetry or books.
Between the two borders, I let the middle part to be plain because the borders already have
colorful pictures of book covers. The readers can focus on the information that is provided in the
middle and not be bothered by the design or the colors if it were to have colors. The middle part

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consist of the name of the museum, the brief information of who Morgan is, and the reason why
we are inviting people to the museum. I named the museum as Museum of Robert Morgan to
keep things simple. This also allow the reader to know that this museum is about Robert Morgan
just by looking at the name. I included a brief information of Morgan because it lets people know
who Morgan is. I also wrote we invite you to celebrate his success and the opening of the
museum to give a reason why and for what we are inviting them. Even Losh and Alexander of
Understanding Rhetoric mentions that each writing situations has its own demands, its own
expectations, and its own sense of how writing is to be presented. (Losh and Alexander 9) The
invitation information is to let readers understand why they are being invited, not just for a
random event they do not know of. Under these information, the time and location is centered in
the middle to show a parallelism. The parallelism helps organize the information and make it
look neat. It also helps the reader see the information clearly and easily to find out where and
when to meet.
Through the moves I made for these two translated genres, I want to show how I used the
main idea from the article and turn it into the genres. With the idea of admiration from the article,
I chose poster as one of the genres since posters have conventions that allows people to have the
feeling of looking up to someone or something. An invitation card to a biographical museum
allows me to invite people who are interested in Morgans work. It also allows me to provide a
little information about the person, whether it is through pictures or words on the card.

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Works Cited
Liotta, P.H. Robert Morgan: Genius as Music. Southern Quarterly. Vol. 47. Issue 3. Spring
2010: p182-188. 7p. Article. 2 March 2015.
Losh, Elizabeth, and Jonathan Alexander. Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to
Writing. Bedford/St. Martins. First Edition. 304p. 15 March 2013. Print. 2
March 2015.
McCloud, Scott. Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels.
William Morrow Paperbacks; 8.6.2006 edition. 272p. 5 September 2006. Print. 2 March
2015.

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Writing 2 Feedback for WP3

Writer: J-Pau
Did Not Meet
Expectations

Met Expectations

Translated/Transfor
med Genres
(Overall)

Younger Genres
Conventions and
Rhetorical Factors
Older Genres
Conventions and
Rhetorical Factors

X-

Exceeded
Expectations

X
Consideration of
Big Ideas
in the Scholarly
Article
Perceived Effort

X/X-

Self-Analysis
Reflection
(Overall)

Description of
Moves
Attention to
Genre/Conventions
and Rhetorical
Factors
Use of Translated
Genres as
Evidence of
Moves
Use of Course
Readings
(McCloud and
Losh/Alexander)

X
X

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Sentence-level
Clarity, Mechanics,
Flow

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J-Pau,
As you noted in your reflection, I think that you did a very solid job of picking two
genres that convey the central theme of admiration. Once I realized that that was what
you were privileging, everything made a lot of sense.
One note that initially caught my attention was: did not draw Morgan in the center of
the poster because I did not want him to be the only one that is in the spotlight.
However, he (pretty much is) in the center and no one else is in the spotlight/picture, so I
was a bit confused about your statement.
The museum invitation was such a cool, original ideaI commend you for that.
I think that you made especially good use of our readings in your reflection, and you
seem to be very fluent in the language of art. J
If you choose to revise this for your portfolio, Id like you to bring more of the important
content out from the original source. What was so great about this guy? What kind of
impact did he have on the field of music and/or musicians? How and why?
Z
8/10