Work on pantoum and senryu/RPO poems and contests

Period 1--Computer lab in library

Workshop writers:  So far Alex, Valerie, Whitney, Wade, and Nautica have done workshops.

Workshops

Wade and Whitney workshops

Pantoums and Senryu

RPO Contest and Others

RPO Project and Contests

The next RPO project/contest is for the November concerts.  These have a Spanish/Latin theme.
Please listen to the following recordings and think about creating poems inspired by the music.  The winning poems will be read at the concerts, just like the postcards in September.

 Arild envisioned the poetry to flow off of the Ravel Bolero and/or the Gabriela Lena Frank Three Latin American Dances (Spanish/Latin elements).


Bolero
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-4J5j74VPw

Bolero is a form of slow-tempo Latin music and its associated dance and song. There are Spanish and Cuban forms which are both significant and which have separate origins.^[1]
The term is also used for some art music. In all its forms, the bolero has been popular for over a century.

Bolero rhythm.^[2]

The bolero is a 3/4 dance^[3] that originated in Spain in the late 18th century, a combination of the contradanza and the sevillana.^[4] Dancer Sebastiano Carezo is credited with inventing the dance in 1780.^[5] It is danced by either a soloist or a couple. It is in a moderately slow tempo and is performed to music which is sung and accompanied by castanets and guitars with lyrics of five to seven syllables in each of four lines per verse. It is in triple time and usually has a triplet on the second beat of each bar.

Sample poem:

Interpretation: Ravel's "Bolero"

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Softly, slyly, flute and drum begin to weave their net Of notes; the slow seductive beat evokes the stomp of gypsy feet Inside some smoky dim cantina, where a woman's silhouette Is dancing with abandon to the pulsing, pounding theme Of the flamenco or fandango...the bolero or beguine. It's unremitting rhythm, darkly sensual in tone, Restrains a fierce and frenzied spirit in it's own Measured meter...persistent and alone Beneath the sultry overtones Of the trumpets and trombones, Echoed closely by the throbbing of the strings In which the melody continuously, sinuously sings A refrain that is almost overcome By the passion and the power of the drum, Of the drum. Now, in the same obsessive cadence, and without accelerando, It mounts to it's finale in a thunderous crescendo With the crashing of the cymbals and the gong! And the hot, erotic beat of the drum, Of the drum, of the drum. 2003 Jane Clark

Bolero

Bolero

By Gerald Stern b. 1925 Gerald Stern

So one day when the azalea bush was firing

away and the Japanese maple was roaring I

came into the kitchen full of daylight and

turned on my son’s Sony sliding over the

lacquered floor in my stocking feet for it was

time to rattle the canisters and see what

sugar and barley have come to and how Bolero

sounds after all these years and if I’m loyal

still and when did I have a waist that thin?

And if my style was too nostalgic and where

were you when I was burning alive, nightingale?   

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  Dove, Rita. "Bolero.(Poem)." Ploughshares. Ploughshares, Inc. 2003. HighBeam Research. 20 Oct. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com>.

  Chicago

  Dove, Rita. "Bolero.(Poem)." Ploughshares. 2003. HighBeam Research. (October 20, 2011). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-101261170.html

  APA

  Dove, Rita. "Bolero.(Poem)." Ploughshares. Ploughshares, Inc. 2003. Retrieved October 20, 2011 from HighBeam Research: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-101261170.html

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Bolero.(Poem)

March 22, 2003 | Dove, Rita | 

COPYRIGHT 1999 Ploughshares, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights or concerns about this content should be directed to Customer Service.

 

 
In "Bolero," for example, the rhythm of the dance is duplicated visually
 on the page, with one extremely long line followed by two short lines 
in an approximation of the "slow / quick-quick" of this very slow and 
sensuous dance. I wanted the reader to be stretched out to the limit of 
the page, and only then snapping back to the left margin--to reality? 
back to earth?--where he is allowed to take a breath (i.e., the stanza 
break) before returning to the fray. 

Bolero 
 
   Not the ratcheting crescendo of Ravel's bright winds 
   but an older, 
   crueler 
 
   passion: a woman with hips who knows when to move them, 
   who holds nothing back 
   but the hurt 
 
   she takes with her as she dips, grinds, then rises sweetly into 
   his arms again. 
   Not 
 
   delicate. Not tame. Bessie Smith in a dream of younger, 
   (Can't you see?) 
   slimmer 
 
   days. Restrained in the way a debutante is not, the way a bride 
   pretends she 
   understands. 
 
   How everything hurts! Each upsurge onto a throbbing toe, 
   the prolonged descent 
   to earth, 
 
   to him (what love … 

Ravel's Bolero
by Kate Burnside
Saturday, May 01, 2004

Ravel's Bolero...

Passions building,
throbbing, pulsating
Tautly rising towards
climactic crescendo

Flashing steel blades
dice and toss,
mixing together
a mele of images:

Firstly, figure skaters
searing through hot ice
Bodies fully charged and tensed
Athletically counterbalanced
Sinuously connected
Sensuous poetry in motion
Pure sex on a stick, oral as gelatti:
even the delicate
touch of his hand
on the small of her back
is suggestive
as the breeze dances
and plays with
the hem of her skirt;
Theirs is a muscular power
braced and under control -
the gleaming flanks of the
purebred stallion
stamping and nodding,
waiting to be unleashed from the stockade...

Then the bathing-suited beauty,
tanned and svelte
bounding along Bondi Beach;
freely flowing later
in the buff,
humping and pumping
slow and rhythmic
Cleopatra cat-like features,
her clattering beaded braids
swaying in time to the music...

Moist heat or dry ice
Ravel's Bolero
Legs 11 out of 10 every time!

Gabriela Lena Frank Three Latin American Dances 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mavn0xKNcEs

And don't forget Hollins (10th and 11th women poetry)


Bennington

 www.bennington.edu/NewsEvents/YoungWritersCompetition/YW_Submission.aspx
Scholastic, New England Young Writers Conference, etc.

 

2

Submission Form

Students in the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades during the current academic year are invited to submit one of the following by the November 1 deadline.

• Poetry (a group of three poems). Poems must be typed.
• Fiction (a short story or one-act play). Short stories must be typed, double-spaced, and fewer than 1500 words. Scripts must be typed, double-spaced, and run no more than 30 minutes (playing time).
• Nonfiction (a personal or academic essay). Stories and nonfiction must be typed, double-spaced, and fewer than 1500 words.

Scholastic Haiku contest

www.scholastic.com/dellhaiku/?eml=SMP/e/20111018//txtl/DellHaiku/0/ContestDeadline/SL1//////&ym_MID=1373091&ym_rid=6224539

Pantoums
www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5786

Senryu
startag.tripod.com/HkSenDiff.html

HMWK: Bring in Poetry Writing books for Monday,  Read Ch. 11-15

Wednesday---College Visit

12th grade College Visit

Final Portfolio/Sestinas/Villanelles

10 Finished, revised poems
Continue to work on your sestinas


Another form:  The Villanelle

Villanelles

The form, according to Turco:

A1  (refrain)
b
A2 (refrain)

a
b
A1 (refrain)

a
b
A2 (refrain)

a
b
A1 (refrain)

a
b
A2 (refrain)

a
b
A1
A2 (refrain)

«

EXAMPLES:

Mad Girl's Love Song

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary darkness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said.
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

--Sylvia Plath

«

The Waking

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

--Theodore Roethke

«

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 everyday. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing further, 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.

--Elizabeth Bishop

«

Villanelle for D.G.B.

Every day our bodies separate,
exploded torn and dazed.
Not understanding what we celebrate

we grope through languages and hesitate
and touch each other, speechless and amazed;
and every day our bodies separate

us farther from our planned, deliberate
ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,
not understanding what we celebrate

when our fused limbs and lips communicate
the unlettered power we have raised.
Every day our bodies' separate

routines are harder to perpetuate.
In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,
not understanding what we celebrate;

wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late
morning as the wind tears off the haze,
not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we separate.

--Marilyn Hacker

Sestinas

Sestinas

/www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5792

Elizabeth Bishop's Sestina
www.poemhunter.com/poem/sestina/  

KNOW THE PATTERN. A sestina consists of six sestets (6-line stanzas) and one tercet (3-line stanzas). Each sestet contains the same 6 end-words, but in different a order for each stanza. The final stanza, the tercet, contains 2 "end-words" per line. Following is the pattern for the sestina ==> stanza 1: 1,2,3,4,5,6; stanza 2: 6,1,5,2,4,3; stanza 3: 3,6,4,1,2,5; stanza 4: 5,3,2,6,1,4; stanza 5: 4,5,1,3,6,2; stanza 6: 2,4,6,5,3,1; final stanza: 1&2,3&4,5&6.

2

CHOOSE YOUR 6 WORDS. When deciding on your 6 words, focus on versatility in terms of parts of speech, meaning, and usage. For example, the word "hand" can be a verb or a noun (as in the sentences "Hand me the towel" and "We shook hands," respectively.) "Hand" can be used in idioms (e.g. give me a hand, on the other hand). And finally, "hand" just has a plethora of definitions (e.g. a poker player's cards, a worker).

3

REVIEW & REVISE YOUR 6 WORDS. Are all of your words nouns? Are they all verbs? Do they seem to point to one specific subject matter you're planning to write about? If so, I'd suggest diversifying. Throw some adjectives in there; open a magazine or book, put your finger on the page, and write whatever word it lands on; or add a word that seems completely unrelated to the others.

4

ORGANIZE. Although it might seem tedious to organize ahead of time, it will save you from the grief that comes when realizing you've finally perfected your sestina, but you accidentally messed up the pattern in the third stanza, making the patterns in stanzas 4, 5, 6, and 7, also incorrect. So, on a piece of paper, make 3 columns. The first column is for the number pattern, the second is for the end-words, and the third is for your lines of poetry. If you are staring at a blank computer screen, make a table with 3 columns and 7 rows. Go to your TABLE panel or dropdown, click "Insert Table," and enter the number or columns and rows. (READ STEP 5 before writing the end-words down.)

5

WRITE. There are many ways to start a sestina, so experiment and find what is right for you. As for me, I like starting the first stanza without a particular order in mind for my 6 words. I just make sure one of the 6 words is at the end of each line. Only after writing that first stanza do I fill in my end-word column.

6

USE OTHER DEVICES. Don't let the end-words fool you; they are not necessarily the most important part of the sestina. Don't be afraid to repeat other words, too. This can actually draw some attention away from the end-words, adding a different type of rhythm and also warding off the dreaded monotony that can result from a sestina gone wrong. Enjambment can also create this effect.

7

BE FLEXIBLE. If you are accustomed to writing free verse, the sestina's constraints may seem to take away from what you want to say or what you're trying to do in your poem. However, I suggest that instead of not quite writing the poem you wanted to write, allow yourself to write a different poem than what you'd imagined when you began. There are many surprises to be found when writing in forms.

/

Morning News

by Marilyn Hacker

Marilyn Hacker

Spring wafts up the smell of bus exhaust, of bread   

and fried potatoes, tips green on the branches,

repeats old news: arrogance, ignorance, war.

A cinder-block wall shared by two houses

is new rubble. On one side was a kitchen

sink and a cupboard, on the other was

a bed, a bookshelf, three framed photographs.

Glass is shattered across the photographs;

two half-circles of hardened pocket bread

sit on the cupboard. There provisionally was

shelter, a plastic truck under the branches

of a fig tree. A knife flashed in the kitchen,

merely dicing garlic. Engines of war

move inexorably toward certain houses

while citizens sit safe in other houses

reading the newspaper, whose photographs

make sanitized excuses for the war.

There are innumerable kinds of bread

brought up from bakeries, baked in the kitchen:

the date, the latitude, tell which one was

dropped by a child beneath the bloodied branches.

The uncontrolled and multifurcate branches

of possibility infiltrate houses’

walls, windowframes, ceilings. Where there was

a tower, a town: ash and burnt wires, a graph

on a distant computer screen. Elsewhere, a kitchen

table’s setting gapes, where children bred

to branch into new lives were culled for war.

Who wore this starched smocked cotton dress? Who wore

this jersey blazoned for the local branch

of the district soccer team? Who left this black bread

and this flat gold bread in their abandoned houses?

Whose father begged for mercy in the kitchen?

Whose memory will frame the photograph

and use the memory for what it was

never meant for by this girl, that old man, who was

caught on a ball field, near a window: war,

exhorted through the grief a photograph

revives. (Or was the team a covert branch

of a banned group; were maps drawn in the kitchen,

a bomb thrust in a hollowed loaf of bread?)

What did the old men pray for in their houses

of prayer, the teachers teach in schoolhouses

between blackouts and blasts, when each word was

flensed by new censure, books exchanged for bread,

both hostage to the happenstance of war?

Sometimes the only schoolroom is a kitchen.

Outside the window, black strokes on a graph

of broken glass, birds line up on bare branches.

“This letter curves, this one spreads its branches

like friends holding hands outside their houses.”

Was the lesson stopped by gunfire? Was

there panic, silence? Does a torn photograph

still gather children in the teacher’s kitchen?

Are they there meticulously learning war-

time lessons with the signs for house, book, bread?

Workshop of First Marking Period poems

As we did on Thursday, let's finish sharing our readings of contemporary poets.


Then let's workshop in small groups, or with a partner, your poems from this marking period.  Make more copies!  Select a poem to workshop with the entire class that can be put up on the Smartboard.  Work on revisions for final marking period portfolio.