Classmate Response 5

How are your classmate’s linebreaks? Do they speed up or slow down the poem? Is it appropriate for the material? How can they rebreak the lines? Some people like longer lines and some shorter, but understanding the difference and playing with different breaks can be important too. Break the following in your own way. It’s a section from “Engagement” by Adam Sol.

The young man knows he's going to die today, but he's wrong.
The other young man figures the army is the best way to improve his life,
    but he's wrong.
They both think their weapons will protect them, but they're wrong.
They both believe their prayers will help.

Here are a few ways this poem can be enjambed:

The young man knows

he’s going to die today,

but he’s wrong.

OR

The young man knows he going to die today,

but he’s wrong.

OR

The young man

knows he’s going to die

today,

but he’s wrong.

Freewrite Week 5

To continue the sensationalization theme, give it a shot. Find a tragic event to write about or a huge star. To keep this light, much like the Barney poem, think about writing the Big Bird poem or the Jessica Rabbit poem. Will you stick to conventional perceptions of them? That’s not fun. Rewrite the characters.

Reading Response 5

It’s time for the sensational subject. In response to chapter 11 of Writing Poetry. What types of subject can you name that are too large to write about? How else could you rework them so they seem “mundane?” Why do they need to be? Is that not the role of art—to tackle huge events for the public? What is problematic about assigning this role (or not assigning it) to art? Do poets lose an opportunity to rework huge events? Are they restricted if they do?

Freewrite 4

For the freewrite this week, try something new inspired by the poem “Detachable” by Jenna Cardinale.

Detachable

The elk's antlers grow
until the animal is all
antler. Sexy requires
so much.

The angler in
the sticky
bar.

Feathers, too. Tar.

I have thought so much
about bravery.

Cardinale’s work is short and surprising. Try to compact your language like her. Write a poem that is made of a single sentence. Don't forget to play with language. But also remove any extra language.

Reading Response 4

In response to chapter 9 in Writing Poetry, detail the difference between too much clarity and not enough? What are the dangers of both? How do you remain original and fresh in your poetry, and yet make sense to readers? What are some techniques you could use? Also, which of the two are more important to you? Using leaps in language or being understood?

Classmate Response 4

Find a word in a classmate’s poem that is weak or expected. Make a list of at least three synonyms and three alternatives for that word. Share these lists with your classmate and challenge them to create lists of your own. Proper diction is one of the hardest parts of being a poet.

For instance, let’s play with a line from Ezra Pound’s “The Tree.”

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,

Knowing the truth of things unseen before.

Sure, this was progressive for Romantics, but standing as still as a tree is a bit expected now. So, let’s try the exercise. It’s hard to find a synonym for a tree. We have “plant,” but we could also generate several types of trees. Elm, ash, fir, oak, etc. “I was an elm amid the wood / Knowing the truth of things unseen.” Then, we could find something entirely different. A list of three unexpected words: Queen, Militant, Trestle. “I stood still as a queen amid the wood / and knew the unseen truth.”

Reading Response 3

What do you think of Russell Edson’s work? Can a poet write about anything? Dogs walking up walls and a woman sleeping with an ape? At what poet does it stop being poetic? Or does it? What are the motivations for a poet to write such content? To shock the crowds? To play with language and subject material? Do you enjoy the grotesqueness? Is this something you would employ in your own work?

Classmate Response 3

When workshopping another person’s poem, sometimes you have to tell them what to cut out. What language is unnecessary? What is redundant? Like “hard rocks.” We know rocks are hard. Or “sweet honey.” Again, too much. Use an economy of language—the best words only, in the best order. Is there an unneeded line or a confusing one? Cut it. Cut all but the most interesting languages and you can expand later. This is also detailed in Writing Poetry.

When you respond to a classmate’s piece this week, find what language they need to remove. Help them rewrite it, or tell them your favorite parts. This can be a handful of words from the entire segment. Challenge yourself to take a single line from their piece and expand it into something different. Share it with them.

Freewrite Prompt 3

Since we’ve been speaking of voice in class, let’s talk about perspective. Check out famous female poet Ai’s poem in Writing Poetry. She assumes the voice and perspective of an angry husband. Here we see that a narrator in a poem is a character—not the voice of the poet. Even if the narrator is supposed to be you, s/he will never be. You are more dimensional than a narrator can be. Keep that in mind when you’re writing or reading a piece. This can also be a great way to edit your poems. Change the perspective. Try to write from a male or female’s voice, from different age groups, or change from first to second or third person. For this week’s prompt, write down a memory from your first-person perspective. Then, change it. Either 1. write the same experience from the opposite gender perspective, 2. from a person fifteen years older, or 3. change it to a third-person perspective. Notice how the syntax, the vocabulary, the tone, or the distance to the subject changes.

Check out this selection of “Little Epiphanies” from esteemed poet, Allison Joseph:

The difference between what’s required
and what’s desired is the difference

between the chocolate and the cake,
the car and the new car smell, the nightie

and the night. There’s so much I want
to twist round my fingers, to stroke

and stir, sketch and stretch, but so much
I should sweep and scrub, strip

and sterilize.  But I’d rather wring dirt
from my pores, turn it to ink instead,

rather scurry to my driveway to study
the moon’s abrupt phrases than kneel

with bucket and mop to banish shadows

Now, let’s change it:

The difference between what’s required
and what’s desired is the difference

between the chocolate and the cake,
the car and the new car smell, the nightie

and the night. There’s so much you want
to twist round fingers, to stroke

and stir, sketch and stretch, but so much
you should sweep and scrub, strip

and sterilize.  But you’d rather wring dirt
from pores, turn it to ink instead,

rather scurry to your driveway to study
the moon’s abrupt phrases than kneel

with bucket and mop to banish shadows

See how this changes the relation? Rather than some introspection, the piece becomes an admonishment. Try it out in your own work.

Reading Response Prompt 2

In Chapter one Davidson and Fraser discuss defamiliarization, concrete versus abstract images, showing versus telling, improving, and keeping a journal. How has your journal already affected your writing or your perspective of writing (I find myself writing often and paying attention to the language I hear on the streets, in films, etc). In the past have you written each day or in small bursts? What does this say about your process or how you work? Do you thrive with the blank page or with a nudge? If you need a nudge, how do you think you could approach their concept of “improv”ing? Do you need prompts? (If you do, don’t worry; that’s temporary). Have you noticed trends or focuses in your writing (mine didn’t leave my childhood house for about a year). Why do you think poetry thrives on concrete language?

In Chapter two Davidson and Fraser detail form and formlessness, question and answer techniques, and expansion and contraction methods. Do you work better with the challenge of forms or the flexibility of formlessness? What do you prefer to read? Are you skilled with expansion or contraction? What do you need help with? Why is one or the other difficult for you? (I am much better at contracting than expanding. I prefer tight language and adding more is difficult). Have you tried the Q&A exercise? (I did, with Nick McRae in my 2060 class.) How might it help or hurt you? What other exercises could you use to spark your writing?

Freewrite Prompt 2

Improv-ing: The best way to learn to write poetry is to study a poet you love and the ones you don’t. My favorite poet is Gabrielle Calvocoressi. She has a skilled mastery of the grotesque, class and gender studies, and history. She has many qualities I admire and when I began writing poetry, I would work with her poems often. (Now I have changed styles and built upon those foundations). But, I still use this technique with my newfound poets. Improv-ing takes many forms. We’ll review all of them later. For now, the most basic—stealing. Find that line you love (or hate). Steal is outright, use the opposite, change it slightly. Pick a single line from a poem you love and use it to write your own. When you’re finished, it shouldn’t matter that you stole that line. You can remove it later. Just use it to copy a style or image that you can use and your poet didn’t.

Although, as mentioned, you can steal a favorite line from a great poem, I stole and inverted a line from a poem I don’t enjoy: Elizabeth Bishops’s “One Art”:

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

I took the line “The art of losing isn't hard to master” and flipped it. Then I began writing. At the time, my family was tiling the kitchen floor. My draft:

Tile

The art of losing is hard to master

and sounds like creaking knees

as I bend to tile a floor.

Drips of water saws drown the whir of blades

ripping squares of kitchen tiles.

Swipes of dulled blades to mortar

and plastic pegs to separate

my work from yours.

I ease my way out of the back corner

one edged tile at a time, and

remind myself of the games we’d

invented. Dinosaurs and astronauts soon

paled to the magic of angolo and

counter rails, majolica and formella. Yet no

running bond could keep us together—

you, with your no-childhood face

glaring at me as we swipe yet again.

A lifetime apprenticeship for you, my son,

the only token I had. Not enough for your

mother, not for you, and your eyes

smoke of her. Your hair shrouds the gray of

that eye, and I wish again I’d had a girl.

A girl to sweep and butter after

your mother left to open a

no star restaurant with linoleum floors

and empty walls where our picture should

fall. A girl to remind me of her, to

fashion and crackle better than you

ever would. My son, with your feminine

hands, keep your chin to mortar and

mastic, and smile a tune to me.

The line is slightly different. Yet, the piece varies incredibly from Bishop’s. So much that I didn’t need to remove it. It was no longer similar enough. Yet this line provided a poem I wouldn’t have written otherwise.

Note: Remember how to begin analyzing a poem? This title sucks. It’s not one that furthers the piece (we know it’s about tile). Rather it’s one for me to quickly reference. Also note how Bishop’s poem signals differently than mine. Hers follows a form, rhymes, and heavily depends on abstract concepts. Mine, however, doesn’t. Which method suits you better?

Classmate Prompt 2

How to review a poem: These are a few of the many things to consider when reviewing a poem. To begin, I use the example from Melissa Stein’s collection Rough Honey, “Olives, Bread, Honey, and Salt”:

Olives, Bread, Honey, and Salt
The lanes are littered with the bodies of bees.
A torrent took them, swarming in branches
just as the white buds loosened their hearts
of pale yellow powder. Each body is a lover:
the one with skin blank as pages; the one
so moved by the pulse ticking in your throat;
the one who took your lips in his teeth
and wouldn’t let go; the one who turned
from you and lay there like a carcass. If we were
made to be whole, we wouldn’t be so lost
to each offering of tenderness and a story.
Therefore our greatest longing is our home.
There is always the one bee that circles and circles,
twitching its sodden wings.

1.      What does the poem mean? (Basic level). Here, there was some sort of flood during springtime. The water ruined a hive and killed most of the bees.

2.      Are there interesting connections? What is a larger meaning? Stein writes about relationships (“Each body is a lover”). With this line, the broken bees become couples. With the last, lonely bee who “circles and circles,” we are reminded of mourning.

3.      What are the components?

a.      How does the title work? Is it expected? Is it the first line of the poem? Does it add to the poem, or is it a quick naming that we’ll find later in a line? What would work best for this poem? In this poem, it’s not the first line, but we won’t find it in the piece either. It seems to suggest some of the basic components of life (food), and this will add to the system of relationships and life revealed later.

b.     What about the line length and form? Following a structure reads differently and into a tradition of poetry. Breaking that tradition also sends signals or critical “signs.” Short lines are read differently than long lines. Punctuation can slow or speed a poem. Read the poem out loud. Is each piece of punctuation necessary?  Do the enjambments (line breaks) add to or hinder the piece? This poem is not in form, though Stein often uses form. Here, she uses no rigid structures, no rhyme schemes, no self-imposed rules. Her form is open, allowing her more liberty in leaps and words. The poem is slow. There are medium-size lines with long-pause punctuation (lots of periods, colons, semi-colons, etc). This adds to the gravity, forcing us to become that last bee.

4.      What is good about the piece? The title, the images, the line breaks, something disturbing or sweet? For me, it’s the following lines: “Each body is a lover: / the one with skin blank as pages” and “the one who turned / from you and lay there like a carcass” (as if, for humans, the death of lovers are metaphorical and voluntary).

5.      What needs work? Although I love this draft, there are parts I would change. I don’t care for the buds’ powder referred to as “hearts” loosening—it’s a bit too sentimental, especially with the line about the lovers. Also, I would remove “Therefore,” because I think it fragments and jars the piece (not that we need it; after all, our lover just died). Finally, there is something missing before the last sentence. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s a void that tells me this draft was hurried or left incomplete (otherwise abandoned).

6.      What is something you can learn from the piece? Here, I like that she reviewed abstract concepts and life lessons by observing a specific and corporeal incident. With the sodden death of bees, we investigate relationships, loneliness, and mourning. But first, she began with a specific image (seemingly unrelated, and therefore more interesting; we all feel that jump from dead bees to lovers) and moved outward.

Freewrite Prompt 1

Generating material to write about can be one of the most difficult aspects of writing. When you’re stuck or have a block, try one of two things:

1. List fifteen unusual nouns or verbs

2. Find a random word generator online or a dictionary. Pick your favorite fifteen words

From your list, select a promising word or two. Flesh it out (i.e. write about it). Begin with that image, but feel free to move away from it, too. Try not to write thirty lines about the same word. Use it as a springboard. Does the word remind you of a texture, taste, memory, animal, place? For instance, here’s one of mine from this exercise:

But to begin a story with the end
wouldn’t be right. Sure, it would smell
of tangerines, and you could imagine
your own fingertips circling those peels,
your tiny tips dipping to dents. But no
manner of strength of knuckles during
ripping could satiate that frenzied bloodlust
as you pop that first peel between teeth,
your tongue bobbing it to mouth-roof.
Your family physician warns of pesticides
and congeniality, but nothing quite says
Blow me like licking fruit tendons off
the underbelly of your wrist, trails of that
sickening yellow-orange rivering your cheek.

Okay, so clearly my favorite word was tangerine. I didn’t move away from it too much, but here I became more interested in the sounds of the piece (“tiny tips denting to dents”). I could have easily bounced away:

Sure, it would smell of tangerines,

and you could imagine your own

fingertips circling those peels easier

than runes or collarbones, each layer

felling the chalk of sediment and fortunes,

of . . .

No, I don’t know what that means, but I was interested in things my fingers can encircle. I like creepy imagery, so bones popped into my head (runes, collarbones). I don’t care much about meaning yet. We want words on the page. Editing comes later.

Classmate Response Prompt 1

Find a line in your classmate’s poem or junkyard quote that strikes you. Steal it, reverse it or change it, make it strange or quirky, suggest it back to them. Resist the impulse to be logical. This can generate new language in unexpected avenues. For instance, a segment from my peer, Randie Mayo’s draft, “Walking With Marzanna”:

Strange, now, how I could never

face the wind’s bite when Slovakia always ran

through my blood. I had never been to Slovakia,

its language lost to me, much like the language

of birds who stuff their faces beneath their wings

to hide from winter.

Randie’s language here is concise and interesting, moving through images of American-Slovakian traditions and heritages, the power of language and nature, and never gets “stuck” or fixed on a particular image. Yet, let’s change it a bit.

                              Strange how that Slovakian

bite runs through my blood like language,

never lost, never birded—fanning the snow

to patterns of [insert images]

Or…

How strange the hidings of a grouse—

its Slovak blood winging snow like language,

with a bite like loss or home.

Of course, we could generate many more examples. These two renditions reflect the same language, but emphasize different qualities. Do you (or Randie) as a poet wish to emphasize the snow, the language, the birds, Slovakia, etc? When your classmate is stuck, help them revise to generate more images.