Thursday, September 8, 2016

50 questions Exercise/ goldenshovel

AGENDA:
EQ: What are the four poetic temperaments according to the Gregory Orr essay?
What do you think about the ideas in his essay?  Do you agree or disagree? Does his essay provide a "literary theory" about thinking about poetry?    What is your poetic temperament?  Can you merge the other temperaments?

1. Review and discuss Gregory Orr's essay: Look at the poems referred to in the assignment.

2. Share out 50 questions poems.  What did you think of creating these?  Did you feel your imagination freeing?

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

4. Write a Golden Shovel poem:

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

Sign out text books

HOMEWORK: Create another 50 questions or "Golden Shovel poem" for Thursday that we can workshop
on Thursday

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Abiodune Oyewole

Something Beautiful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXnQdXOS7UY

Welcome Back!

AGENDA:

BUSINESS:
1. Review Course Criteria
2. Election of Creative Writing Officers
3. Field Trip Medical Form


CRITICAL READING:
4. Read and discuss Letter 1 of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet
5. Read and discuss Greg Orr's essay

ACTIVITY:
6. 50 Questions Exercise and write poem (for homework)


Thursday, August 11, 2016

Golden Shovel Poem

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:
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.

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Advanced Poetry Course Criteria


Course Description:


This semester course is for senior Creative Writing students interested in studying the craft of poetry and writing original poetry. An open mind and supportive attitude will be essential as we workshop student poems. We will be exploring several approaches to the art of writing poetry through a variety of different exercises to generate poems in open and closed forms. Students will publish their best work in a class-produced senior literary publication (Lambent) and the yearbook. Other projects include recording our own spoken-word poetry CD, participating in Poetry Out Loud, researching a modern-day poet and briefly presenting his/her poetry to the class. Students will organize their best original work into a final portfolio project, and as a class, we will seek contest and other publication opportunities.


One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn't know was in you, or in the world.-- Jane Hirshfield


Course Focus:
This course is designed into two equal parts:
1. Poetry reading, studying, and discussion
  • • your reactions to poets and their work
  • • overall messages and tones of poems
  • • poetic elements’ connection to poets’ purpose

2. Writing and publishing original poems
  • • personal choice; individual inspiration from people, art, and the world in general; and reflection on others’ work will be used to inspire your poet’s pen
  • • approaches to writing and composing / how to draft then write poems
  • • different poetic formats and layouts, as well as lining and titling poems
  • • work-shop approach to writing poems: drafting, revising, peer-editing,
  • teacher/student conference time, and then sharing
Major Sections of the Course:
  • • Daily writing time
  • • End of week read-arounds: students share their own polished, original work
  • • Weekly time to peruse poems and poets of your own choice from any era, classical to modern
  • • Weekly assignments relating to the poet’s craft and literary techniques
  • • Weekly work within a writing workshop group for peer feedback, support, revision, and editing
  • • Conference time with teacher to get feedback on poems and projects in progress
  • • Handouts pertinent to the course of study
Major Assignments:
  • • Writing of two to five original, polished poems every two weeks
  • • Sincere writing workshop participation
  • • Preparation for class discussion of poems
  • • Modern Poet Presentation
  •  Spoken Word CD Project
  • • Final Portfolio Project

Course Outline (subject to changes and tweaks ☺):

Key Concepts:
  • • Why poetry?
  • • When and how poems resonate
  • • Guidelines for reading poems
  • • Finding topics and suggestions—Poem Ideas List
  • • Models for approaching writing
  • • Writing Territories
  • • Lining and titling
  • • Format and layout; rhythm and rhyme; free and blank verse;
  • • Poetic elements
  • • TPCASTT
  • • How to choose a workshop group
  • • How to be an effective workshop participant

Weekly units (based on Kevin Clark’s The Mind’s Eye):
  • Unit 1 Words That Paint, Colors That Speak
  • Unit 2 The Lively Image vs. The Deadly Cliché
  • Unit 3 The Sound of Contemporary Poetry
  • Unit 4 Conflict and Transformation
  • Unit 5 Do Poems Have Plot?
  • Unit 6 Empathy and Creativity
  • Unit 7 Leaping Through Time and Space
  • Unit 8 Frames and Forms
  • Unit 9 Stanzas, Prose, and the Field of the Page
  • Unit 10 Surrealism
  • Unit 11 Writing About Sadness
  • Unit 12 Poetry and Eros
  • Unit 13 The Poetry of Witness
  • Unit 14 Stretching the Imagination
  • Unit 15 Breaking the Rules, Nurturing the Weird
End of semester—Focus on class anthology, final portfolios, and spoken poetry CD recording

• EXAM PORTFOLIO=25% of final MP grade