Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Poem-a-Day

Notes on the Below

 
Ada Limón

About This Poem

 
“This poem came out of a recent, almost urgent, need to point back to the earth. We have done so much harm in this life—to one another, to the ground we think we own—and I wanted the chance to speak directly to a sacred place and look for answers, or to simply lay my buzzing mind down at the mercy of the earth’s core.”
—Ada Limón

Dialectical Poems/Scholastic/ Favorite Poem Script

AGENDA:

Finish dialectical poems for workshop.

Submit entries for Scholastic.

Begin work on script for Favorite Poem Video project.

Monday, November 21, 2016

Book Talk with Rene Denfeld

By Fiona Ortiz
(Reuters) - Non-fiction writer Rene Denfeld draws on her work as a death penalty investigator in her first novel, "The Enchanted", the story of a prisoner who invents a horrible, liberating beauty deep underground.
Although he doesn't even have a window in his cell, the first-person narrator imagines life on the outside, especially that of a character known as "the lady" who works to redeem death-row prisoners, much as Denfeld does in real life.
In the end all of the characters in "The Enchanted" turn out to be prisoners in one way or another. Perhaps the freest of all is the walled-in narrator, whose disturbed fantasy life leads to a poetic sort of justice.
As a licensed investigator since 2008 Denfeld has interviewed prisoners, on and off death row, and traveled to "the worst parts of the country and the worst streets and homes" to find friends, relatives and teachers who might help her clients avoid or overturn a death sentence.
"The Enchanted" comes after Denfeld's non-fiction books including "The New Victorians", about victimism in the women's movement, and female aggression and violence in "Kill the Body, the Head Will Fall".
Denfeld, from Portland, Oregon, lived on the streets when she was 15, sang in local punk bands, worked as a bartender and journalist, has done amateur boxing and is a mother to three children she adopted from foster care.
Denfeld spoke to Reuters by phone from her home in Portland, about her new book, released in March by HarperCollins.
Q: I learned a lot about prisons from "The Enchanted", much of it disturbing. But it is also a very poetic book. How did you achieve a blend of lyrical and didactic?
A: I wasn't expecting to write a novel, the story came about. I had written non-fiction books and started doing this work as an investigator. The work existed in this magic, special place because I knew I couldn't write about it in a non-fiction way, because it is confidential and privileged. By using the narrator's voice I was able to tell the truth of his prison and of these people, and to do it in a way that captured his particular love of language and this gorgeous poetry flowed out of him. It wasn't that I set out to blend the two, but it happened in a way that felt very authentic.
Q: Is the novel now feeding back into your work as an investigator in some way?
A: I think the novel helped me crystallise and understand the things I witness; it helped me clarify where my own heart was in my work and the nature of my work and I feel blessed to do this work, it gives me a lot of insight. People honor me with their stories and their truth, I get to bear witness to a lot of things.
Q: Can you describe your transition to fiction?
A: What happened was I was leaving the prison in Oregon that has a death row. It's like an ancient stone fortress. It was a beautiful day, and I was walking out to my car after visiting a client on the row. I heard a voice tell me: "This is an enchanted place." And I very slowly followed the voice into the novel. I felt the narrator was telling me the story and I had to transcribe it. The transition felt so completely natural to me. I felt the act of telling fiction allowed me to tell a deeper and more complex set of truths than I've been able to tell in non-fiction. I was able to set aside my ego and opinions and thoughts and tell the story.
Q: Do you hope to inspire prison reform with the novel?
A: The entire time I was writing the novel I didn't tell anyone I was doing it. I didn't give a thought to anyone reading it. I didn't actually give any thought to that. It wasn't meant to be an advocacy book, it was meant to tell the truth of the narrator. The issue of the corrupt guard and what he does to the character called the white-haired boy, that happens and that is the truth.
Q: Is the prison in the novel based on a particular prison? You describe something called the Dugdemona Cage where death row inmates are chained for visits with lawyers and investigators. Does that exist?
A: The narrator is based on all the clients I've had and the prison is based on all the prisons and jails I've visited. One thing that is common is the cage that was described. It's a cage that looks like something out of "Silence of the Lambs".
Q: Why are some characters named and others are not?
A: The men on the row are all named, most of the inmates are named, but the people that work outside, the lady, the warden, the priest, they are largely unnamed. For the narrator, they are like mythical creatures. They live lives that he can only imagine. The usual construct in our society is that prisoners are nameless, but inside a prison that's their world and the people outside are the nameless ones. I've noticed we tend to make these people invisible. Thousands of people go into these places and effectively disappear.
Q: Books are a salvation for the narrator. Have you seen that really happen to prisoners?
A: A lot of people are illiterate when they go in. It's not until they do a terrible thing that they start learning to read. It's heartbreaking because through books they realize they had other choices, there were other possibilities, other lives they could have lived. They discover all this too late.
(Editing by Michael Roddy)

The Enchanted

The Enchanted

AGENDA:

Read to pg. 41.  Over the break, finish the book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPokme2t3_s

Think, Pair, Share:
Discuss and respond to questions 1 -4  with a blog  comment that refers to text evidence.  Cite page numbers and quote from text.:

1. The novel opens with the line, “This is an enchanted place. Others don’t see it but I do.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word “enchant” as ”to attract and hold the attention of (someone) by being interesting, pretty, etc.; to put a magic spell on (someone or something).” Why does the narrator call this place enchanted? What beauty does he find in his surroundings that others do not? What does this tell us about the narrator?
2. Talk about the main characters: the narrator, the lady, the priest, and York, the prisoner on death row at the center of the story. How are these characters’ lives and their fates intrinsically connected? What do we learn about the lady and the priest from the narrator?
3. Why does York want to die and why does the lady want to save him? Is he worth saving? How does she go about gathering evidence to understand his case, knowledge that might prevent his execution? What propels her choice at the novel’s end?
4. Think about York. What were your first impressions about him when he’s introduced? As you discovered more about his story, did your outlook towards him change? How does the experience of investigating York’s past affect the lady and her outlook towards York? How does it shape how she sees her own life?

Check out The White Dawn:

The lady, an investigator who excels at uncovering information to save her clients from execution. . . The fallen priest, beaten down by his guilt over a terrible sin and its tragic consequences. . . The warden, a kind man within a cruel system. . . The mute prisoner, sensing what others cannot in what he calls "this enchanted place" . . .The enchanted place is an ancient stone prison. Two outsiders walk here: a woman known only as the lady, and a fallen priest. The lady comes to the prison when she has a job to do. She's skilled at finding the secrets that get men off death row. This gift threatens her career--and complicates her life--when she takes on the case of York, a killer whose date of execution looms. York is different from the lady's former clients: he wants to die. Going against the condemned man's wishes, the lady begins her work. What she uncovers about York's birth and upbringing rings chillingly familiar. In York's shocking and shameful childhood, the lady sees the shadows of her own.The lady is watched by a death row inmate who finds escape in the books he reads from the prison library and by reimagining the world he inhabits--a world of majestic golden horses that stampede underground and of tiny men who hammer away inside stone walls. He is not named, nor do we know his crime. But he listens. He listens to York's story. He sees the lady fall in love with the priest and wonders how such warmth is possible in these crumbling corridors. As tensions in "this enchanted place" build, he sees the corruption and the danger. And he waits as the hour of his own destiny approaches.The Enchanted is a magical novel about redemption, the poetry that can exist within the unfathomable, and the human capacity to transcend and survive even the most nightmarish reality. Beautiful and unexpected, this is a memorable story.

TOMORROW:  Ensemble Theatre Periods 3/4 Master Class
Willa Carroll and Sejal Shah

http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/fall-2013/narrative-outloud/reading-her-poetry-willa-carroll

Friday, November 18, 2016

Ellen Bass

Any Common Desolation

Ellen Bass



Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Poetry Out Loud/GHAZAL

Agenda:
We're going to participate in Poetry Out Loud in a contest at SOTA in December.


Memorizing a Poem:


Go to Poetry Out Loud website (see links on side of blog).  Click on Poetry and Performance, then Find Poems, and then Poets.

Read and comment on 5 poets who interest you and their poems.  Post a blog post responding to your 5 poets and their poems.

Go to Listen to poems.  Listen to 5 readings of poems.

Go to Videos and check out how to perform a poem.

GHAZAL:


Ghazal


Ghazal
The Ghazal is a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain. The form is ancient, originating in Arabic poetry in Arabia long before the birth of Islam.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/ghazal-poetic-form

Ghazals

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghazal

Poets.org:  Heather McHugh  www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15452

The Ghazal page:   www.ghazalpage.net/2010/fall_schmottlach.html
  • A ghazal is a series of couplets. Each couplet is an independent poem, although a thematic continuity may develop. This feature leads to "jumps" between couplets, a discontinuity similar to the linking in a Japanese renga. According to Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr., what in English is a couplet is, in Persian, one long line with a strong caesura.
  • Traditional themes that focus on romantic love and mysticism.
  • Both lines of the first couplet (called the "matla") and the second line of each succeeding couplet have the same monorhyme ("qafia") and refrain ("radif").
  • The refrain (radif) is the same word or short phrase (or even syllable, according to Ali).
  • A. J. Arberry says that each couplet of the Persian ghazal ends in a monorhyme (words ending with the same vowel+consonant combination), but he does not mention the refrain.
  • All the couplets are in the same meter. (Ali does not mention meter.)
  • The poet "signs" the last couplet ("makhta") by including her/his name or pen name ("takhallus").

Ghazal (pronounced "ghuzzle") is an Arabic word that means "talking to women."
History.
The Ghazal was developed in Persia in the 10th century AD from the Arabic verse form qasida. It was brought to India with the Mogul invasion in the 12th century. The Ghazal tradition is currently practiced in Iran (Farsi), Pakistan (Urdu) and India (Urdu and Hindi). In India and Pakistan, Ghazals are set to music and have achieved commercial popularity as recordings and in movies. A number of American poets, including Adrienne Rich and W.S. Merwin, have written Ghazals, usually without the strict pattern of the traditional form.
Form.
A traditional Ghazal consists of five to fifteen couplets, typically seven. A refrain (a repeated word or phrase) appears at the end of both lines of the first couplet and at the end of the second line in each succeeding couplet. In addition, one or more words before the refrain are rhymes or partial rhymes. The lines should be of approximately the same length and meter. The poet may use the final couplet as a signature couplet, using his or her name in first, second or third person, and giving a more direct declaration of thought or feeling to the reader.
Style.
Each couplet should be a poem in itself, like a pearl in a necklace. There should not be continuous development of a subject from one couplet to the next through the poem. The refrain provides a link among the couplets, but they should be detachable, quotable, grammatical units. There should be an epigrammatic terseness, yet each couplet should be lyric and evocative.
For examples and more on Ghazals, see the anthology edited by Agha Shahid Ali:Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English (Wesleyan University Press, 2000). Included are seven lovely Ghazals by William Matthews and a number of other fine ones.


History: did the form of the Ghazal influence the form of the Sonnet?
Editor's Postscript [JZ]: While composing the essay on the Sonnet, I asked Len if he thought the form of the Ghazal influenced the form of the Sonnet. His reply is helpful: "I have my doubts. I would guess that many other rhyming forms were common in Italy and elsewhere in Europe in the centuries before the 13th century. The Sonnet would then be a new variant of rhyming poetry. The Ghazal employs a repeated refrain preceded by a rhyme, not just a rhyme." Len illustrates the Ghazal's form with this layout, where "1R" represents the repeated refrain preceded by a rhyme; the other lines end with non-rhyme words, represented by "A," "B," and so on:
1R
                                  1R

                                  A
                                  1R

                                  B
                                  1R

                                  C
                                  1R

                                  etc. 
  


Ghazal: America the Beautiful

Do you remember our earnestness our sincerity
in first grade when we learned to sing America
The Beautiful along with the Star-Spangled Banner
and say the Pledge of Allegiance to America
We put our hands over our first grade hearts
we felt proud to be citizens of America
I said One Nation Invisible until corrected
maybe I was right about America
School days school days dear old Golden Rule Days
when we learned how to behave in America
What to wear, how to smoke, how to despise our parents
who didn’t understand us or America
Only later learning the Banner and the Beautiful
live on opposite sides of the street in America
Only later discovering the Nation is divisible
by money by power by color by gender by sex America
We comprehend it now this land is two lands
one triumphant bully one still hopeful America
Imagining amber waves of grain blowing in the wind
purple mountains and no homeless in America
Sometimes I still put my hand tenderly on my heart
somehow or other still carried away by America




Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Nate Marshall: BreakBeat Poetry

Agenda:
Read Nate Marshall's poetry and essay on BreakBeat poetry

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/nate-marshall

Check out "praise song"--


On Being Website

Here is the link to On Being.  Check out interviews with Mary Oliver, David Whyte, Michael Longley, and John O'Donohue and other poets as well.  There's a new poem by Mary Oliver there, too.

Great website!

http://www.onbeing.org/

Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way: A Poem

If you're John Muir you want trees to 
live among. If you're Emily, a garden
will do. 
Try to find the right place for yourself. 
If you can't find it, at least dream of it. 

                                             •

When one is alone and lonely, the body
gladly lingers in the wind or the rain, 
or splashes into the cold river, or
pushes through the ice-crusted snow. 

Anything that touches. 

                                             •

God, or the gods, are invisible, quite
understandable. But holiness is visible, 
entirely. 

                                             •

Some words will never leave God's mouth, 
no matter how hard you listen.  

                                             •

In all the works of Beethoven, you will 
not find a single lie.

                                             •

All important ideas must include the trees,
the mountains, and the rivers. 

                                             •

To understand many things you must reach out 
of your own condition. 

                                             •

For how many years did I wander slowly 
through the forest. What wonder and 
glory I would have missed had I ever been
in a hurry!

                                             •

Beauty can both shout and whisper, and still
it explains nothing. 

                                             •

The point is, you're you, and that's for keeps.

New prompts---Choice/Liminality

AGENDA:

Look over the many, many new prompts in the previous post.  Select a prompt to work on today---your choice!

Looking for a "favorite poem" to read for your video project?

Check out this blog:
http://www.stevenkharper.com/poemstoliveby.html



What is liminality?


Liminality

In anthropologyliminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold"[1]) is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the ritual is complete. During a ritual's liminal stage, participants "stand at the threshold"[2] between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes.
The concept of liminality was first developed in the early 20th century by folklorist Arnold van Gennep and later taken up by Victor Turner.[3] More recently, usage of the term has broadened to describe political and cultural change as well as rituals.[4] During liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt.[5] The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established.[6] The term has also passed into popular usage, where it is applied much more broadly, undermining its significance to some extent.[7]



Liminality and poetry


Liminality magazine:
http://www.liminalitypoetry.com/


Friday, November 4, 2016

Dream of a Thing

Dream of a Thing (Cora Brooks, The Sky Blew Blue)

Imagine an ordinary object, one that you could hold in your hands.  Imagine that you could take this object to a field where you put it down and leave it.

Imagine that someday you come back to the field and find the object that you placed there.

Know that the object has been sleeping.

You are magic.  You can tell what the object is dreaming.

In the same way you can dream impossible or strange things, so can the object.  

Write the dream of the object.

Many, many new prompts

Poetry Writing Exercises
from The Poetry Resource Page
www.poetryresourcepage.com/teach/pex.html
WRITING EXERCISES: POETRY

Alliteration Exercise
Make a list of twenty phrases that use alliteration, such as the sun settled on the south hill withsudden color. Pick two or three of these phrases and try to build images around them. Use at least one of these images in a poem.


Body Exercise
Make a list of fifteen physical experiences that you’ve had, such as falling out of a tree, riding a roller coaster, or jumping on a trampoline. Choose one from your list and use images to create a lyric poem about the experience.
(by Jay Klokker, from The Practice of Poetry, Robin Behn and Chase Twichell, eds.)


Body Part Exercise
Write a poem addressed to a particular body part. Make sure you maintain a consistent tone and focus.


Childhood Exercise

Try to remember everything you can about a particular event that occurred when you were a child. In can be any type of experience, now matter how insignificant. Make a list of all the details you can remember.

Once you’ve finished your list, build a narrative poem around it. Keep in mind that you don’t have to be faithful to the past. You can change details, descriptions, or actions if the change will make the poem work better.


Circular Poem
Write a short poem that begins and ends with the same line. The reader should feel differently about the line the second time around because of what has happened in the poem.


Confession Exercise
Write a poem in which you confess to a crime you didn’t commit. You can create the circumstances – perhaps you’re talking to a priest, or you’re being interrogated by police. Turn your confession into a narrative poem in which you describe the events leading up to your crime.


Construction Exercise
Write a poem in which you literally build or take apart something for the reader. Describe each step of the process for the reader, incorporating technical terms and descriptions of materials. Create a lyric or narrative poem that “shows” the reader how it’s done.
(by Deborah Digges, from The Practice of Poetry, Robin Behn and Chase Twichell, eds.)


Crime Exercise
Write a “confession” poem detailing an emotional crime and how you committed it.
ORWrite a poem in the voice of a murderer. Make the reader sympathetic to the murderer.


Death Exercise
Freewrite about the first experience with death you can remember, whether it involved a person or an animal. Then freewrite about your most recent experience with death. Combine the details, memories, and images from the two into a lyric or narrative poem.


Dream Exercise
Many people have recurring dreams – of flying, of being chased, of being in a particular location or situation. Write a poem about such a dream that uses repetition to capture its obsessive nature. Try to repeat fragments rather than simply initial words or complete sentences; let the repetition interrupt the flow of the dream-story.


Dying Exercise
Write a poem in which you speak after your own death. In it, describe what death looks and feels like. Describe how it feels to be conscious at the time of death, what your emotions are. Give advice to the living about how they should face death.


Elegy Exercise
Using the third person, write an elegy poem for yourself, imaging that you’ve just died at the age of ninety. Include a description of yourself, and things that you would like to be remembered for/by. You may want to include places you’ve been, inventions you’ve created, famous people you’ve met, your talent for singing or dancing or cooking, your favorite book or movie or color, where you had your first kiss, what you did for a living, how many times you were married, how many children you had, all the states or countries you’ve lived in, etc.


Endless Exercise
Write a poem of about thirty lines that consists of a single sentence. Experiment with clauses and phrases and parallel structure. Try to keep the sentence moving forward, enjambing it across lines in different ways, while making sure it is grammatically correct. This type of exercise will help you develop flexibility as a writer, teaching you new ways to phrase things and new ways to play with the syntax of a line.
(by Richard Jackson, from The Practice of Poetry, Robin Behn and Chase Twichell, eds.)


Erotic Exercise
Brainstorm a list of everyday activities, such as washing the dishes, chopping vegetables, mowing the lawn, going grocery shopping, etc. Choose one and describe it in precise detail, focusing on every action it requires, all the little sensory moments involved. Take all of these details and images and use them to write a lyric poem in which you make some everyday experience sound erotic.
ORChoose a landscape to describe. It can be any kind of landscape, but try something nontraditional – a junkyard or an empty parking lot. Use your descriptions and images to write a lyric poem in which you make the landscape seem erotic.


Good and Evil Exercise
The traditional imagery for good and evil is light and dark, white and black. Brainstorm a list of images called up by the two opposites. Then write a poem that reverses traditional expectations. In other words, write a poem about what is beautiful or inspiring about the dark, or a poem about what is awful or terrifying about the daylight.


Fairy Tale Exercise
Write a lyric poem in which you adopt the persona of a character from a fairy tale. For example, you could describe the way Snow White feels while she sleeps inside her coffin, or how the Prince feels as he holds Cinderella’s glass slipper in his hand.


False Memory Exercise
Write a poem in which you “remember” something that never happened. Use strong sensory images to convince the reader it really happened.


Family Exercise
Write a poem in which you adopt the persona of a parent or grandparent. Write the poem in the form of a letter addressed to your significant other. Describe your feelings for this person, the way they look and smell, memories that you have of them, where or how you met, etc.


Fear Exercise
Think of something you were afraid of as a child. Write a poem in which you describe what it was and how it made you feel. You can write from the point of view of an older person looking back on it, or you can write from the point of view of the child you once were.


Field Guide Exercise
Read the descriptions in a book of natural history or a field guide, such as a guide to birds, mushrooms, or wildflowers. Write a poem about a plant, bird, rock, animal, or fish from the book. Incorporate information from the book in the poem to help the reader identify your subject.


First Line Exercise
Take one line from a poem of your own that is unfinished or a poem by another poet. It does not matter where the line occurs in the poem, but you want to select the best line from the poem. Use this line as the first line of a new poem. Try to maintain the same quality of sound, language and thought that the first line presents.
(by Stephen Dunn, from The Practice of Poetry, Robin Behn and Chase Twichell, eds.)


Foreign Objects Exercise
Many poems arise out of everyday life – something you may have walked or driven by a hundred times and suddenly noticed for the first time. Part of learning to write poetry is learning to look around and observe both the ordinary and the unusual.

Exercise: Spend half an hour walking around outside (on campus or in a parking lot, for example). Pay attention to the objects you see. Make a list of five “foreign objects” (such as a Band-aid stuck to a stop sign or a scarf hanging from a tree).

Once you’ve made your list, try to imagine the story behind the object – how it ended up where you found it. Build a narrative poem around the object.
ORDescribe the scene in great detail – the landscape surrounding the object, then the object itself. Build a lyric poem around the object.


Function Exercise
Choose one object in your room and make a list of all of the ways you could use it, or all of the things you could do with it. For example, a glass can be used to drink from, to pour from, to collect rain water, to turn upside town and catch a fly under, etc. Turn your list of functions into a lyric poem, using the object as the title.
(by Jack Myers, from The Practice of Poetry, Robin Behn and Chase Twichell, eds.)


Gesture Exercise
Spend twenty minutes observing people in a public place. Make a list of the gestures that people make, no matter how subtle. For example, the way a child twirls her hair around a finger, or the way a woman tucks loose strands of hair behind one ear.

Choose one gesture and describe its motions in great detail. Build a poem around this moment and what you think it tells you about the person.


God Exercise
Write a poem to God. Make it a tirade, a complaint, a request.
ORWrite a poem as God. Let God explain, refute, deny, defend.
ORWrite a poem in which God is a traffic cop, a new anchor, a porn star, a grocery clerk.


Hands-on Exercise
Choose half a dozen small objects from around the house (like a fork, a toothbrush, or a stapler). Close your eyes and run your hands over each object. Write a description of what the object feels like, and how you think it looks. Use metaphor and simile to compare the feel or shape of the object to something else. When you have written descriptions for each of the objects, choose one to write a poem about. Describe the poem in such a way that a blind person could tell what it looks like.


History Exercise
The poet James Merrill wrote “we understand history through the family around the table.” Think about ways your own family’s story overlaps with the story of others – a historical event, an ethnic group, a social issue. Write a poem about someone in your family and how his or her story is related to history.
(based on an exercise by David Wojahn, from The Practice of Poetry, Robin Behn and Chase Twichell, eds.)


Home Exercise
Think about your childhood home, recalling the inside (hallways, rooms, closets, etc.) and the outside (the front yard, back yard, trees, swing sets, etc.). Focus on a place inside or out that was special to you. Describe the time you spent there, the things you did, the discoveries you made, the emotions you felt, why you went there, etc.


Imitation Exercise
Find a contemporary poem that you admire. Write a poem in which you imitate the style, tone, theme, sentence structure, etc. of the original poem. You may want to borrow the poem’s first line and use it to write a poem of your own. You may want to write on a similar topic – a childhood memory, describing an everyday object, providing a narrative for a photograph, etc.


Inanimate Object Exercise
Choose one inanimate object in your room. Describe what it looks like, and describe the room around it. When you’ve finished your descriptions, write a poem in which you adopt the persona of the inanimate object: what does it think, what does it feel, what does it look out at day after day after day, etc.


Interior Monologue Exercise
Write a poem in which you adopt the persona of someone famous (they can be dead or alive). Imagine this person sitting alone, looking out over the Grand Canyon at sunrise, reflecting on his or her life. Write a poem in which you convey this person’s character through his or her internal thoughts.


Isolation Exercise
Write a description pf one particular element of a set. For example, you can describe one book on a shelf, one face in a crowd, one bird on a telephone line, etc. Try to describe both the characteristics of the group/set, and to distinguish what makes the one member you’re focusing on different from the others. Turn your description into a lyric poem.

(by Michael Pettit, from The Practice of Poetry, Robin Behn and Chase Twichell, eds.)


Landscape Exercise
Go somewhere scenic – to a park or a lake, for example. Describe the landscape that surrounds you using sight, sound, smell, and tactile images. Build a lyric poem out of these images.
ORGo somewhere urban – downtown Chicago or St. Louis, for example. Describe the landscape of the city using sight, sound, smell, and tactile images. Build a lyric poem out of these images.


Letter Exercise
Write a poem in the form of a letter to someone who is dead. In it, make a confession about something you did to them when they were still alive.
ORWrite a poem in the form of a letter imagining that you are dead. In it, tell them something you meant to tell them while you were still alive.
(based on an exercise by Robin Behn, from The Practice of Poetry, Robin Behn and Chase Twichell, eds.)


Life or Death Exercise
Write a lyric poem in which you describe yourself being born. Describe what it feels like inside the birth canal, what it feels like as you push your way out, what you see, smell, hear or taste, etc.
ORWrite a lyric poem in which you describe the moment of your death. Describe how you feel as you take your last breath. Describe the last thing you see, hear, touch, taste, smell or feel. Describe who is with you, where you’re at, etc.


Metaphor Exercise
Take something negative about yourself – an abstract concept, like fear, depression, hatred, loneliness, or cruelty – and find a concrete image for what it feels like. Maybe it feels like a weight pressing down on your, like walking down a dark street at night, or waking up in an abandoned house. Once you decide on a topic and an image, draw out the image in a lyric poem with the topic as your title.


Newspaper Exercise
Read the newspaper. Pick one story from the paper, and write a poem in which you take on the persona of someone involved in the story. Write a narrative poem in which you tell the story from that person’s point of view.
(based on an exercise by Mary Swander, from The Practice of Poetry, Robin Behn and Chase Twichell, eds.)


Opening Lines Exercise
Below are the opening lines from some short stories and novels. Pick one that interests you and see what kind of poem it generates:
  • Come into my cell. Make yourself at home.
  • Night fell. The darkness was thin, like some sleazy dress that has been worn and worn.
  • There is an evil moment on awakening when all things seem to pause.
  • It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.
  • “Notice the sensuous curve of the breast.”
  • God help me.
  • She lay in the dark and cried.
  • The big house was still, almost empty.
(from Writing Poems , Robert Wallace and Michelle Boisseau, eds.)


Personals Exercise
Write a persona poem in which you take on the personality of an older, single adult of the opposite gender. Write a poem in the form of a personals ad in which you describe yourself and your interests, and then describe the type of man or woman you would be interested in dating.


Personification Exercise
Look around your bedroom, kitchen, living room, or bathroom. Make a list of objects that seem to have moods or personalities. Choose five of them and create a description of each one’s personality or mood. Pick one of your descriptions and build a poem around it.


Pet Exercise
Write a persona poem from the point-of-view of your pet. Describe your environment, your day-to-day activities, the food you eat, where you sleep, where you use the restroom, the toys you play with, what you think about, the way your owner behaves, etc.


Photograph Exercise
Look through an old family album. Find a picture that you’re not in and write a lyric poem that describes the person and/or scene.
ORLook through a book of historical photographs. Write a lyric or narrative poem based on the person and/or scene.


Picturing Exercise
Think of someone in your family, imagining them doing something they typically do – like, your mother gardening or your brother sketching pictures under a tree. Freeze them there in your mind in an “imaginary” photograph. Describe the photograph as if it were real, using the details to reveal something about this person’s character.


Piece by Piece Exercise
Write a poem in which you describe an object – not in its entirety – but piece by piece. Do not say what the object is. Let the individual parts explain the whole.


Language Play Exercise
Make a list of twenty phrases in which you use words as different parts of speech, such as he turned to me with a shadowing stare or her kisses purpled his flesh. Once you’ve made your list, choose one phrase to build a lyric or narrative poem around.


Reflection Exercise
Look at yourself in a mirror for as long as you can stand it. Describe yourself in as much detail as possible. Build a poem around your own reflection: the way your body changes over time, the small details of your face that no one notices, the reality of “facing” yourself, etc.


Repulsion Exercise
Make a list of things you find repulsive – the smell of garbage, fast food employees, people who never shut up, etc. Choose one and write a poem in which you describe that person, place or thing in such a way that it becomes beautiful.


Sandwich Exercise
Find a short lyric poem you really like and type it on your computer, leaving three blank lines between each line of the poem. Print it out. In the spaces between each line, fill in a new line of your own that seems like it would sound right following the line original line before it. Once you have filled in all the spaces with lines of your own, cross out all the typed lines from the original poem. Revise the poem using only the lines that you have written.

(by J. D. McClatchy, from The Practice of Poetry, Robin Behn and Chase Twichell, eds.)


Scene Exercise
Sit in one place for fifteen minutes and write down everything you observe about the place: sights, sounds, smells, feelings, colors, temperature, lighting, etc.

Once you have a complete description, create a poem that develops a scene through a series of images.


Scissors Exercise
Take a poem that you’ve been working on but have been unable to get “to work.” Type it up, double-spaced, and print it out. Cut it into pieces – cutting so that phrases and chunks of sound or sense stay together. Throw away any extra parts, then take all of the “pieces” and try rearranging them in different orders. Add whatever you need, and keep moving things around until it “works.”
(by Chase Twichell, from The Practice of Poetry, Robin Behn and Chase Twichell, eds.)


Secondhand Memory Exercise
Talk with your parents or someone else who would know about your childhood. Try to find out something you didn’t know about yourself and then write about it as if you remembered it.


Sexual Metaphor Exercise
    THE GROUNDFALL PEAR Jane Hirshfield It is the one he chooses, yellow, plump, a little bruised on one side from falling. That place he takes first.
Using Hirshfield’s poem as a model, write a short (4-5 line) lyric poem that is a metaphor for sex, desire, or love.


Shame Exercise
Write a poem about an experience that caused you to feel a sense of shame.


Shape Exercise
Sit in one room and make a list of descriptions of various objects and their shapes. Try to be as exact as possible, and to make the description of the different shapes distinct.

Meditate on the shape and form of objects. Try to build a poem around one or the objects, a particular shape, or the idea of form.


Suspense Exercise
Write a poem in which you withhold the subject and verb for as long as possible; begin with a preposition or adverb, then pile up the phrases and clauses.


Syllabic Exercise
Write a poem that is composed of only one-syllable words, or a poem that alternates between one and two-syllable words.


Voice Exercise
Write a poem in which you take on the voice of one of the following:
  • A used napkin
  • A scalpel
  • A turtle turned upside down by a group of children
  • A washing machine
  • A framed photograph
  • A ceiling fan
  • An unopened letter
  • A remote control

Widow Exercise
Write a poem in the voice of a widow whose husband has drowned. Invent any story you like about how this happened – he was a fisherman who was washed overboard in a storm or he was in a boat that capsized.

Imagine that the widow, who now hates water, is forced to confront it due to circumstances beyond her control. Perhaps she goes to visit a friend who lives by a lake, or she must jump in a pool to save a child who has fallen in.

Write a poem in which you adopt the persona of the widow. In her voice, describe what you see and feel as you look out at the water.
(by Maura Stanton, from The Practice of Poetry, Robin Behn and Chase Twichell, eds.)


Window Exercise
Write a poem describing a scene outside your window. Do this even if your window faces a brick wall or a boring landscape; use your imagination to make it interesting.


Word List Exercise
Writing poetry teaches you to experience language in new ways, and the most important thing that you can do as a writer is to develop a relationship with words – to look at them individually, to learn how to see and hear and taste and feel the different textures of each word, and then to learn ways to weave words together into poems.

Exercise: Make a list of twenty-five of the most beautiful/sensual/or poetic words you can think of. (For example, some of my favorite words are: obsidian, wisp, hollow, trickle, iridescent, and flicker.) If you can’t think of any off the top of your head, flip through the dictionary.

Once you have your list of words, pick one to try to build a poem around. The word can be the title of your poem, part of an image, central to a narrative, or just a word in a line.