Gannon University Poetry Contest

Deadline:  Feb. 1

http://www.gannon.edu/Academic-Offerings/Humanities-Education-and-Social-Sciences/Undergraduate/English/Poetry-Contest/

Prose Poetry (BOA author)

In the Light of One Lamp   Sean Thomas Dougherty

I crawled into bed and closed my eyes and not long after heard the small hooves of the horses, the tiny ones that gallop in our dreams, or are they the dreams of our children, galloping through the black ruins. Everything we do is against the crippling light. To hear them cry at night is to know they are alive. When they are scared they come galloping down the long hall calling your name. Tonight, it is our oldest daughter, the red mare with her fiery mane, she snuggles in between us and falls back to sleep in your arms, to that secret place inside her, she barely moves, crossing over the river, through a grove of alders, through the black ruins, she is the one who once whispered, the grass it knows everything.            Copyright © 2017 Sean Thomas Dougherty. Used with permission of the author.

New poems/Famous Poem Project

AGENDA:

Work on new poems for marking period and workshop.

Find a poem and poet for FAMOUS POEM video project (see previous post)

Naomi Shihab Nye

AGENDA:

Work on poems

WORKSHOP

The Young Poets of Winnipeg

Naomi Shihab Nye

scurried around a classroom papered with poems.
Even the ceiling, pink and orange quilts of phrase…
they introduced one another, perched on a tiny stage
to read their work, blessed their teacher who
encouraged them to stretch, wouldn’t let their parents
attend the reading because parents might criticize,
believed in the third and fourth eyes, the eyes in
the undersides of leaves, the polar bears a thousand miles north,
and sprouts of grass under the snow. They knew their poems
were glorious, that second-graders could write better
than third or fourth, because of what happened
on down the road, the measuring sticks
that came out of nowhere, poking and channeling
the view, the way fences broke up winter,
or driveways separated the smooth white sheets
birds wrote on with their feet.

Wild Turkey Tracks in the Snow   Tim Engleman           This image is in the public domain.

Scholastic deadline/More poetry prompts

AGENDA:

Scholastic portfolio deadline!

Select  and write 5 (five) poems from poetry prompts.

Handout:

Favorite Poem Project

AGENDA:

This is a long term project that involves selecting a favorite poem and creating a video of your reading of the poem and explanation of why the poem has personal meaning for you.

To find out what the project entails, go to the link on this blog:
Favorite Poem Project

We'll take a look at a video example (a break up poem from the Renaissance period) and then you can explore the website.

Michael Drayton's "Since There's No Help"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sonnet-lxi-since-there-s-no-help/

Sonnet XI

Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part, 
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me, 

And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have giv'n him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover. 

Michael Drayton


Continue to work on poems and contest entries.

WORKSHOP?

New prompts! Scholastic

Agenda:

Work on previous poetry prompts and Scholastic: Epistemology, Apocalypse, Scholastic portfolios

http://www.artandwriting.org/

http://www.artandwriting.org/what-we-do/the-awards/categories/#WritingPortfolio

 WORKSHOP!

And for those of you wanting new challenges:

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 with sudden 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, no 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.

Epistemology/Technical Term Poem/Etymology Poem

Epistemology Catherine Barnett

Mostly I’d like to feel a little less, know a little more. Knots are on the top of my list of what I want to know. Who was it who taught me to burn the end of the cord to keep it from fraying? Not the man who called my life a debacle, a word whose sound I love. In a debacle things are unleashed. Roots of words are like knots I think when I read the dictionary. I read other books, sure. Recently I learned how trees communicate, the way they send sugar through their roots to the trees that are ailing. They don’t use words, but they can be said to love. They might lean in one direction to leave a little extra light for another           tree. And I admire the way they grow right through fences, nothing stops them, it’s called inosculation: to unite by openings, to connect or join so as to become or make continuous, from osculare, to provide with a mouth, from osculum, little mouth. Sometimes when I’m alone I go outside with my big little mouth and speak to the trees as if I were a birch among birches. Write a poem that explores how we "know" things or write a poem exploring the meaning of a technical term or write a poem exploring the origins of a word (check with the Oxford English Dictionary).

And a sonnet!

American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin Terrance Hayes

But there never was a black male hysteria Breaking & entering wearing glee & sadness And the light grazing my teeth with my lighter To the night with the flame like a blade cutting Me slack along the corridors with doors of offices Orifices vomiting tears & fire with my two tongues Loose & shooing under a high-top of language In a layer of mischief so traumatized trauma Delighted me beneath the tremendous Stupendous horrendous undiscovered stars Burning where I didn’t know how to live My friends were all the wounded people The black girls who held their own hands Even the white boys who grew into assassins

What's happening in this poem? Golden Shovel?

We Named You Mercy Amanda Johnston

after Gwendolyn Brooks I count the years after you, know your would-be ages and remember the sadness that consumed me with the bitter sound of you, my almost-children. Could not conceive in conceiving you our muted heat and all that got through heaven’s gate to become that half-wing that was your soul. Was you. I saw your face once and, yes, I did kiss your cheeks and cry for your sweet not- quite nose, not-quite lips. Would I get another chance to see you if I held the knife? Cold, the sterile taker’s tools, my hands, bloody and damp. In the darkness, I felt your toes bloom small petals against my ribs. Your closed eyes, pulps of possibility. Did you see me? The one with empty arms stretching to embrace a a silhouette of you? A ghost with little more than hope for history. Or did I make that up to keep you with me a little longer? Did you stay until the no I set upon your body untangled itself from sprigs of hair and released you from the softness that tethered you to the love in our cold mercy? Quieted blues, your singers whose band tucked away their baritone horns and my chosen grief. How those little workers of sadness gathered me up, my heart, that splintered with your hard stop. I will never know the joy to have handled your urgent cries against my chest or thirst for the almost milk that did not swell, but was light as air. Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "the mother"

New Marking Period

AGENDA:

Work on Apocalypse poem, "This is Not" poem, Scholastic portfolios or single entries, Gannon poetry entries!

Revise?

Next assignment: Odes
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poems?field_form_tid=417

End of Marking Period/ Prepare portfolios

AGENDA:

Please continue to work on your poems and revisions and portfolio for the marking period.

Workshop in small groups poems that you would like feedback on.

Try out the "Apocalypse" poem handout from previous day.

Poem-a-day

Of the Irresolubleness of Diamonds Monica Ferrell

If my love for you were a teacup, I would praise it for its blue. I’d consider Its delicate handle, the pictures painted there Of ladies, of their parasols. But my love is not a teacup, It is not even the tar pit from which we draw Fodder for the desolate streets, oh lightless at night, Oh pathways asking for feet and their memory, It is not even a tugboat going Bravely into morning, carrying cordage and salt, Nor that saddest, sickest animal In the zoo, carious, mangy, whose hair molts, Who with its wounds sits in the bare Hay-padded corner of a cell and licks At the question of what it means to be here. Yet in winter my love is covered with the brightness Of snow, in winter my love is filled with eyes. It waits for me at the block’s edge, Habitual dog, who walks me back into that gaseous Entity we call life. Others’ loves may wink and smile Like the moon through a resurrection of vapors, Like the coy and barbarous moon, who knows no allegiance. But my love is more like an ice sculpture In a country of perpetual coldness, which the heat Of your anger cannot damage, nor the pick Of your words impugn. Now Lay your worry aside from you, stranger, Put your hands near these curves: do you feel That hallowed temperature? Among my people We call this absolute love.

Bennington/Workshop/Revision

AGENDA:

Submit poetry or prose to BENNINGTON (Extra credit classwork grade)

Continue workshop

Work on revisions and portfolio

Workshop Ekphrastic poetry

AGENDA:

Workshop Ekphrastic poems and others

Learning the poetic line

READ:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70144/learning-the-poetic-line

Richard Wilbur /Bennington entries

AGENDA:

Work on revising poem assignments and portfolios

Workshop--period 2

Enter  Bennington contest

READ:

Richard Wilbur:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/obituaries/richard-wilbur-poet-laureate-and-pulitzer-winner-dies-at-96.html

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/richard-wilbur 

Advice to a Prophet

By Richard Wilbur

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,   

Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,

Not proclaiming our fall but begging us

In God’s name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,   

The long numbers that rocket the mind;

Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,   

Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.   

How should we dream of this place without us?—

The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,   

A stone look on the stone’s face?

Speak of the world’s own change. Though we cannot conceive   

Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost

How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,   

How the view alters. We could believe,

If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip   

Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,

The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,

The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip

On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn

As Xanthus once, its gliding trout

Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without   

The dolphin’s arc, the dove’s return,

These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?   

Ask us, prophet, how we shall call

Our natures forth when that live tongue is all

Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken

In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean   

Horse of our courage, in which beheld

The singing locust of the soul unshelled,

And all we mean or wish to mean.

Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose   

Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding   

Whether there shall be lofty or long standing   

When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.

*What does the allusion to Xanthus represent?

Workshop/Continue working on portfolios

AGENDA:

1. Workshop poems

2. Continue revising drafts and working on portfolio

Ekphrastic Poetry with Historic Photos

AGENDA:

Work on poetry assignments and revising work in portfolio.  Select a poem for workshop on Monday and give it to Ms. Gamzon.

Ekphrastic Poem--Historic Photography
"The Buttonhook"
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/teach-poem

Find a photo that represents a moment in history.  Make a list of descriptive details.  What was that moment in history like?  How did the photo capture it?  Is that moment in history personally relevant?  Create a poem about the photo.

Some websites to explore:

http://www.boredpanda.com/historic-photos/

http://pulptastic.com/40-rare-historical-photographs-must-see/

http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/

http://www.boredpanda.com/must-see-historic-moments/

Annie Edison Taylor, the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, 1901

Revise and Complete Portfolio/ Scholastic

Strictly Speaking

 

David Rivard

There is the question
of bearing witness, of being yourself seen
by yourself, & seen clearly, cleanly,
without weapon or bible in hand;
as this was the wish,
the sturdy & not-so-secret wish
of those who named us—

 

our parents wanted us to be
known to ourselves without confusion:
without judgment,
sans suffering. Never force it,
they said, always find it.

 

OK, strictly speaking, that’s not entirely true.
My particular, sole, insistent, moody mother & father
probably never thought much about it at all.
Those two anxious citizens,
they were never exemplars of patience.
The weightlessness of detachment & acceptance
as I think of it now
would have frightened them—
for good reason.

 

If you could see these words
I’m speaking to you tonight printed on a page
as typeface & magnified x 500
you would feel just how ragged & coarse
they really are, heavy.

 

Well, playing the part of a butterfly
must be tiring, right?
I’m happier being the old ox, right?

 

On some plane of existence
these two scraps are all my news:
where the mess is
that’s where my heart is.