Homework for Tuesday, 11/16

 

Write a poem in which you preserve the memory of a place, person, thing… whatever! Title it “Memory Keeper of _____.”
Consider what you would collect as the memory keeper. What smells are in your smell jars? What sounds? Images? Pictures? Voices?

Try to keep it around 14 lines.
Try to avoid the first person “I.”

As always, all rules come second to the muse.

This is similar to the Street Sonnet (which you all crushed) so feel free to borrow/steal from that assignment.

 

Please read and comment on Chloe’s workshop poem!

Homework for Tuesday, 10/28

Read and respond to Tristan and Chena’s poems

Make sure group ghazals are done and ready to be shared.

EXTRA CREDIT: Write a Halloween Ghazal!

 

Homework for Tuesday, 10/26

Final Poem 2 is Due on Tuesday! Please submit a revised poem along with the original draft (make sure you indicate which is which). You can drop it here.

Homework for Tuesday, 10/19

 

STREET SONNET

slightly adapted from Matthew Rohrer

 

  1. Take a fourteen block walk. For each block, you will write one line. You might want to choose a neighborhood you aren’t familiar with.

 

  1. Keep your eyes peeled for language: the poem must contain 3 words or phrases that you see on your walk (on the side of a building, a sign, license plate, bumper sticker, something inside a store, etc.).

 

  1. The poem should contain 3 bits of overheard language (scraps of conversation, etc.). Try your best to do this in the spirit of the Lyrical Ballads— i.e.: listen in on any dockworkers, coal miners, cab drivers, the forsaken, the travelers, etc. that you happen to pass. In other words, try to get the “common people” into your poem.

 

  1. Before starting, google the name of the neighborhood in which you’ll be walking. Take the title of your poem from a website that comes up on your search.

 

  1. You thought you were getting off easy! However, your poem should strive toward iambic pentameter (which for our purposes here is 10-syllable lines). You don’t have to rhyme, but if you want to try a Shakespearean or Petrarchan rhyme scheme, go for it!

POST HERE!

Homework for Tuesday, 10/12

Please read this short article on the sonnet.

Also, make sure you submit comments to your classmates poems!

 

 

Homework for Tuesday 10/5

Hand in your first final poem! Drop it here.

Read this article on revision.

If you haven’t done so already, drop your responses to workshop poems here. 

 

Homework for Thursday 9/30

Read and Respond to the three poems being workshopped. Post your responses on one doc in this folder.

 

Workshop and Responses

 

When it is your turn to have a poem workshopped, the poem is due before the workshop. Keep in mind that while there are no strict regulations on the length of these poems, we are limited by how much time we can spend on each poem.

 

Every week for each poem we’re workshopping, you will save to the Google folder: a copy of the poem (with your comments and scribbles) along with a list of the following:

  1. Three objective observations
  2. Two questions
  3. Three suggestions for strengthening the poem
  4. Optional: three things that struck you as new, heartbreaking, amazing, the bees knees

 

Workshop Procedures

 

Respect for each other and the process is crucial.

 

Each person will come to workshop with a marked-up copy of the poem. Because we’ll only have 10 minutes to workshop each poem, it’s very important that people come prepared to respond.

 

First, the writer will read poem.

After this, the writer is not allowed to speak nor take anything personally.

Rather than praise, each student will make an objective observation about the poem.

Those who offer empty praise will be shunned.

Do not equate the writer as the speaker of the poem.

If there is time at the end of each workshop, we may allow the poet to ask questions.

 

For Thursday, 9/2

  1. Read this article 
  2. Work on your image list!

Love, I’m Done with You

You ever wake up with your footie PJs warming
your neck like a noose? Ever upchuck
after a home-cooked meal? Or notice
how the blood on the bottoms of your feet
just won’t seem to go away? Love, it used to be
you could retire your toothbrush for like two or three days and still
I’d push my downy face into your neck. Used to be
I hung on your every word. (Sing! you’d say: and I was a bird.
Freedom! you’d say: and I never really knew what that meant,
but liked the way it rang like a rusty bell.) Used to be. But now
I can tell you your breath stinks and you’re full of shit.
You have more lies about yourself than bodies
beneath your bed. Rooting
for the underdog. Team player. Hook,
line and sinker. Love, you helped design the brick
that built the walls around the castle
in the basement of which is a vault
inside of which is another vault
inside of which . . . you get my point. Your tongue
is made of honey but flicks like a snake’s. Voice
like a bird but everyone’s ears are bleeding.
From the inside your house shines
and shines, but from outside you can see
it’s built from bones. From out here it looks
like a graveyard, and the garden’s
all ash. And besides,
your breath stinks. We’re through.

Teaching the Ape to Write Poems

James Tate – 1943-2015

 

They didn’t have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him into the chair,
then tied the pencil around his hand
(the paper had already been nailed down).
Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder
and whispered into his ear:
“You look like a god sitting there.
Why don’t you try writing something?”

 

Poets on Poetry

  1. One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is: ‘Whatever you do, don’t be boring.’ –Anne Sexton

 

  1. “Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.” —June Jordan

 

  1. “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” —T.S. Eliot
  2. “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” —Emily Dickinson

 

  1. “Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.” —Mahmoud Darwish

 

 

  1. “Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.” —Rita Dove

 

 

  1. “People should like poetry the way a child likes snow, and they would if poets wrote it.”― Wallace Stevens