Poem-a-day

http://academyofamericanpoets.cmail19.com/t/ViewEmail/y/FB5C9A007D47FD63/F4421A50941B6C7305AF428974F65BCD

Rochester Reads--Master class in March

http://wab.org/2018-rochester-reads-author-announced/

Poetry Prompts

Look It Up

Poetry

9.26.17

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This month, the Merriam-Webster dictionary announced the addition of over two hundred and fifty new words and definitions, including bibimbap, froyo, hive mind, sriracha, and troll. Browse through some of the newcomers, and write two short poems that incorporate one or more of the words. Does the word or term have emotional resonances or a personal connection to you? Play with multiple meanings or your own definitions to present the words in unexpected or surprising contexts. 

Contests: Young Arts, Scholastic, Bennington, BOA Dine and Rhyme

Young Arts:

https://app.getacceptd.com/youngarts

BOA DINE AND RHYME

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/boa-editions-20th-annual-dine-rhyme-celebration-tickets-36721265293

In Autumn/ Long lines--one sentence

In Autumn

 

Mark Irwin

When within ourselves in autumn we feel the autumn
I become very still, a kind of singing, and try to move
like all things green, in one direction, when within ourselves
the autumn moves, thickening like honey, that light we smear
on faces and hands, then touch the far within one another,
something like autumn, and I think when those who knew
the dead, when they fall asleep, then what, then what in autumn
when I always feel I’m writing in red pencil on a piece
of paper growing in thickness the way a pumpkin does,
traveling at fantastic speed toward orange, toward rot, when
in autumn I remember that we are cold-smitten as I continue
smearing red on this precipice, this ledge of paper over which
I lean, trying to touch those I love, their bodies rusting
as I keep writing, sketching their red hands, faces lusting for green.

Dialectical Poem/Workshop/Object Poem/Self-Portrait

AGENDA:

See last blog post.

SELF-PORTRAIT POEMS


We have all seen self-portraits by visual artists—Frida Kahlo’s “Self Portrait with Cropped Hair,” “Self Portrait with Necklace,” or “Self Portrait with Monkey”—and what interests me in these works is what the artist chooses to highlight in these paintings.
For this writing exercise, you’ll begin with a title:
Self Portrait With ______________  (fill in the blank)
You are welcome to fill in the blank with any current obsession or interesting word/words you like.  Try to choose a word that excites you as in this exercise, as you will return to that word many times.  Your title can be anything from Self Portrait with Machete to Self Portrait with Mother Teresa.  You can use a few words to stretch your subject into something more such as Self Portrait with Broken Coffee Mug or Self Portrait with Winning Lottery Ticket.  It is completely up to you.
You are welcome to write a short story, creative non-fiction piece or in the form of a poem.  Or for an extra challenge, use the same title for two different genres and see what happens.
_____________
Self Portrait With Optic Neuritis
by Kelli Russell Agodon

The ophthalmologist is looking through me.
On the other side of my eye
is God or a peach and I can’t imagine

laughing again or seeing the purple
birthmark on my daughter’s arm.
When he speaks, I hear shadows.

I hear the empty mouths
of bells.  I begin to make promises
to remember long words,

to visit Taos before it is a cloudy city.
On the other side of vision, I can’t imagine
the braiding of nerves inside me,

the light reflecting off an unpainted wall
or the red matter, the rug from India
hanging across the window.

The eye chart hides beneath a haze.
They flip through a book and I am to see
numbers, what I say is: I don’t know,

I don’t know.  His assistant leads me
into the waiting room. I hear a man talking
to his child—she must be only two,

her footsteps sound like dancing.
I hear him tell her to follow him,
then say, I think you’ll need to hold my hand.

previously published in In Posse

Also:
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/self-portrait

Workshop/ Dialectical Poems/ Object Poem

AGENDA:
Workshop
Go to:  Object Poem

http://academyofamericanpoets.cmail20.com/t/ViewEmail/y/CDDAFA3905F87F65/F4421A50941B6C7305AF428974F65BCD

Are you interested in writing poetry? There are many different types of poetry, but today’s writing tip spotlights object poems. Discover what an object poem is and see examples of object poems from The Poetry Dictionary, written by John Drury.

What is an Object Poem?

A poem about an inanimate object. It may give us a fresh look at something ordinary, or it may transform a strange object into something familiar.

The term is a translation of the German Dinggedicht, or “thing poem,” and some of the best object poems are by Rainer Maria Rilke, including his “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” Don Bogen has written object poems such as “Card Catalog,” “Salver,” “Necklace,” “Among Appliances,” and “Bullhorn” (which he calls “A gun / for the mouth”). Charles Simic’s “Fork,”which appears on the next page, has two companion poems, “Knife” and “The Spoon.”

Examples of Object Poems

“Archaic Torso of Apollo”
by Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

Wind   James Arthur

it’s true sometimes I cannot stop myself from spilling               the recycling unpetalling apple blossoms raiding a picnic making off with napkins I’m nothing               until I happen flipping an umbrella outside-in                       throwing its owner               into a fumble pelting the avenue with sleet or dust at times downtown               riding over galleries of air so full of high excitement howling I borrow an old woman’s hat               and fling it into the road arriving with news of the larkspur               and the bumblebee at times embracing you so lightly in ways you don’t even register               as touch

A NAVAJO BLANKET / May Swenson (1919–1989)

Eye-dazzlers the Indians weave. Three colors
are paths that pull you in, and pin you
to the maze. Brightness makes your eyes jump,
surveying the geometric field. Alight, and enter
any of the gates—of Blue, of Red, of Black.
Be calmed and hooded, a hawk brought down,
glad to fasten to the forearm of a Chief.

You can sleep at the center,
attended by Sun that never fades, by Moon
that cools. Then, slipping free of zigzag and hypnotic diamond, find your way out
by the spirit trail, a faint Green thread that
secretly crosses the border, where your mind
is rinsed and returned to you like a white cup.

FORK / Charles Simic (b. 1938)

This strange thing must have crept
Right out of hell.
It resembles a bird’s foot
Worn around the cannibal’s neck.

As you hold it in your hand,
As you stab with it into a piece of meat,
It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:
Its head which like your fist
Is large, bald, beakless and blind.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/archaic-torso-apollo



The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.

He didn't fight.

He hadn't fought at all.

He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely.
 Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown 
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.

He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.

While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.

I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed 
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.

They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.

--It was more like the tipping 
of an object toward the light.

I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip 
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.

A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines, 
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap 
when it broke and he got away.

Like medals with their ribbons 
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.

I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings, 
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Dialectical Poem/Workshop

AGENDA:

Contnue to work on your dialectial poems.  Each partner's poem should have at least twelve lines of "if I/then you" pairings.

Remember:  The ending should have a synthesis clause using "if we/ then we"

BE CREATIVE!

WORKSHOP:  In small groups, share out the Dialectical poems, the Golden Shovel poems,
the Paradox and Oxymoron poems.  Make sure you have an Ashbery 12 line poem for workshop on Wednesday.

WORKSHOP

AGENDA:

1. Share:
Workshop Paradox and Oxymoron and Golden Shovel poems

2. New Poet Laureate:Traci K. Smith
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/newly-named-u-s-poet-laureate-power-poetry-opening-others/

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/books/tracy-k-smith-is-the-new-poet-laureate.html 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/tracy-k-smith 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56376/the-good-life 

3. WRITE: The Dialectical Poem

Golden Shovel Poem

Goldenshovel

AGENDA: Poetry180:https://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/

1. Morning Reflection: Poetry and Politics:  Terrance Hayes

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=terrance+hayes&adlt=strict&view=detail&mid=63BD3114B3661F38A25863BD3114B3661F38A258&FORM=VRDGAR

2. Introduce the "Golden Shovel Poem" and Terrance Hayes

From Writer's Digest: Golden Shovel: Poetic Form

By: Robert Lee Brewer | June 24, 2014

Earlier this year, I came across a mention of the “golden shovel” form created by Terrance Hayes and made a note to check it out. I’m so happy I did, because it’s a fun poetic form.

Here are the rules for the Golden Shovel:

• Take a line (or lines) from a poem you admire.
• Use each word in the line (or lines) as an end word in your poem.
• Keep the end words in order.
• Give credit to the poet who originally wrote the line (or lines).
• The new poem does not have to be about the same subject as the poem that offers the end words.

If you pull a line with six words, your poem would be six lines long. If you pull a stanza with 24 words, your poem would be 24 lines long. And so on.
If it’s still kind of abstract, read these two poems to see how Terrance Hayes used a Gwendolyn Brooks poem to write the first golden shovel:

• We Real Cool, by Gwendolyn Brooks (original poem)
• The Golden Shovel, by Terrance Hayes (golden shovel poem)

As you can see, the original golden shovel takes more than a line from the poem. In fact, it pulls every word from the Brooks poem, and it does it twice.
This form is sort of in the tradition of the cento and erasure, but it offers a lot more room for creativity than other found poetry.
*****
Workshop your poetry!

Here’s my attempt at a golden shovel:

“Aging Well,” by Robert Lee Brewer
-after Basho as translated by Allen Ginsberg
The funny thing about growing old
is you never know how to respond
until after the fact. Like a frog
that sits and then eventually jumps
there’s absolutely no thought given
to the process. You’re young; then, kerplunk!

www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/golden-shovel-poetic-form

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55678/the-golden-shovel 
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/92023/introduction-586e948ad9af8 
https://web.njit.edu/~ronkowit/poetsonline/archive/arch_goldenshovel.html

4. Write a Golden Shovel poem:

Resources: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems?page=4


HOMEWORK: Create a "Golden Shovel poem" for Tuesday workshop

WELCOME BACK, SENIORS!

AGENDA:

BUSINESS:
1. Review Course Criteria
2. Election of Creative Writing Officers
3. Reminder to bring in and collect Field Trip Medical Form

Celebrating John Ashberry--Paradoxes and Oxymorons

AGENDA:

EQ: What are paradoxes and oxymorons?

1. Go to:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/50986

View video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=islbtl1NkPM

2. Go over Teaching Tips Learning Resources:

3. Post responses to discussion questions

4. Explore all the learning lab content.especially the essay about the poem:

http://academyofamericanpoets.cmail19.com/t/ViewEmail/y/5D3DAD1ABB05C602/F4421A50941B6C7305AF428974F65BCD

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/50986#guide

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/ashbery/paradox.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes
ACTIVITY: Teaching John Ashberry

HMWK:  Read Ted Kooser's article