"Brain, shake out thy water, dog-like." -- Ron Padgett

Thursday, October 31, 2013

CLASS 7: Images, Metaphors, Things

The writing activities are below, but first, some concepts and examples.


A. "No ideas but in things," - W. C. Williams

T.S. Eliot's Objective Correlative:
The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.

B. Metonyms (link goes to list of metonyms)
A metonym" is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept."


Synecdoche: A part of something is often used for the whole, as when people refer to "head" of cattle or assistants are referred to as "hands." Also, the whole of something is used for a part, as when people refer to a municipal employee as "the council" or police officers as "the law".


C. Leaping Poetry: from the conscious to the unconscious (Robert Bly: “Looking for Dragon Smoke.”

*
Examples:

from Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock 
by T.S.Eliot 

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

*

Goodbye as
The eyes of a whale say goodbye having never seen
Each other

-W.S. Merwin

*

he had a smile like a deckchair

*

“As beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.” 
- Comte de Lautréaumont AKA Isidore Lucien Ducasse (1846 – 1870)

*

Kennings:
A kenning is a type of literary trope, specifically circumlocution, in the form of a compound (usually two words, often hyphenated) that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse and later Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon poetry. For example, Old Norse poets might replace sverð, the regular word for “sword”, with a more abstract compound such as “wound-hoe” or ocean as "wave road,"
Modern and historial examples

*
WRITING ACTIVITIES

1. Exercise: “Kenning-ize”

I drove in my car along the highway to get to the school.
When I got there, I ate a sandwich.
Then I climbed a tree and fell asleep.


2.  Ondaatje: Sweet like a Crow

NOTE: how the comparisons are the opposite, are generally negative, though said with a kind of loving irony
-
(compare to Gudding’s Defence of Poetry” http://www.wildhoneypress.com/Audio/defense.html)

Like Ondaatje, write apoem in the form of a list comparing things to the main thing described.

Your voice was like…

The …. was like…..

End with a ‘twist’ or surprise



3. LORCA ACTIVITY

Leonard Cohen: Take This Waltz. (based on Lorca)
Lorca original (English translation): https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/little-viennese-waltz/
Leonard Cohen's version "Take This Waltz"
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQm1OmLMNno



READ:

The Little Mute Boy
  by Federico García Lorca
translated by W. S. Merwin

The little boy was looking for his voice.
(The king of the crickets had it.)
In a drop of water
the little boy was looking for his voice.

I do not want it for speaking with;
I will make a ring of it
so that he may wear my silence
on his little finger

In a drop of water
the little boy was looking for his voice.

(The captive voice, far away,
put on a cricket's clothes.)


a. WRITE:

LIST:
--item of clothing
--unusual colour
-sound in nature that fits this colour
--a continent or country or place
--a texture

b. WRITE: a poem about a journey for your lost sense:


-use your list (in order, if possible) to write a poem

Think about:

-how would you compensate without the sense?

-repetition of lines that talk about searching

-looking in unusual places that turn out to have some connection to the sense

--a wish to do something with the sense that might emphasize its loss or how much  you miss it

-what does the lost sense do without you?

(-what is the function of the parentheses in the original?}

-who's voice is the poem in? is it the same throughout?

*


The Little Mute Boy by Federico García Lorca

The Little Mute Boy
  by Federico García Lorca
translated by W. S. Merwin

The little boy was looking for his voice.
(The king of the crickets had it.)
In a drop of water
the little boy was looking for his voice.

I do not want it for speaking with;
I will make a ring of it
so that he may wear my silence
on his little finger

In a drop of water
the little boy was looking for his voice.

(The captive voice, far away,
put on a cricket's clothes.)





Activity:

LIST:
--item of clothing
--unusual colour
-sound in nature that fits this colour
--a continent or country or place
--a texture

WRITE:

POEM about JOURNEY for your LOST SENSE

-use your list (in order, if possible) to write a poem

Think about:

-how would you compensate without the sense?

-repetition of lines that talk about searching

-looking in unusual places that turn out to have some connection to the sense

--a wish to do something with the sense that might emphasize its loss or how much  you miss it

-what does the lost sense do without you?

(-what is the function of the parentheses in the original?}

-who's voice is the poem in? is it the same throughout?

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Class 6: On Form


Is the form something that you fit content in or is it part of the content?

What opportunities does the form provide - for 'shape of thought,' for drama?

What does the form itself say about the world-view or the assumptions of the writer/speaker?

How can the form and its implicit assumptions be played with/against?


David McGimpsey on the 'chubby sonnet':

DM: "I’ve always written sonnets. Sonnets and other fixed, sequential forms are helpful when you are possessed of many thoughts but are too high on them to give them shape and identity. The very first publication I had (in a small literary journal associated with McGill called Rubicon) were part of a sequence called "batman sonnets". Since my first book Lardcake I've always fooled around with a 16 line sonnet that I called a "chubby sonnet" and that this book would be all in that form is really, where it all begins. I'm interested in the relationship of form to sequence; how episodes create plot arcs (as in TV shows) but how narrative expectations are thwarted by character limits (as in a TV series where, say, if the boys in Big Bang Theory all decided to stop being nerds there would be no Big Bang Theory). "
I’ve used this sixteen-line structure in my first three collections of poetry and it definitely came out of interest in writing sonnets. When I was in my twenties, I was writing sonnets in a fairly intent and disciplined way and that was how, for better or worse, I developed the rhetoric of my poetry. I call it a ‘chubby sonnet’ not just because I’ve always been fascinated by the comedic betrayals of weight gain – but that’s part of it – but because I’ve always liked the episodic structure of the sequence of regularly paced poems. The sonnet’s speaker doesn’t end the condition of his care with rational dispersal: the sonneteer doesn’t just figure out their love or pain is not worth it and say, ‘Aha! Problem solved!’ The condition of the speaker’s personality continues and persists. Like a sitcom, the characters do not ‘change.’ Removing these poems from the traditional strictures of the sonnet with a capital ‘S’ hopefully gives enough relief from the more material expectations of that tradition – while engaging that tradition with more bluster and demand. The regularly paced sonnet-like sequence is, furthermore, my homage to John Berryman’s 
Dream Songs and Robert Lowell’s History, two books of poetry that had a strong influence on me.


A variety of forms:



Bhanu Kapil: Definitions in Urban Dictionary 

Hay(Na)ku,

http://www.baymoon.com/~ariadne/form/haynaku.htm#poem

Haiku: Lynn Crosbie, Carrie Leigh's Hugh Hefner Haikus

Jo Harjo: She Had Some Horses

Jon Paul Fiorentino, The Report Cards of Leslie Mackie

Matthew Rohrer, Greater Forces

Matthea Harvey, Lamb

Theodore Roethke, The Waking

David McGimpsey: The Chubby Sonnet: Here's one: here!

Ghazal:  https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/ghazal-poetic-form
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/wwe (Fatimah Asghar)
The Canadian Ghazal\

John Thompson: from Stilt Jack

Dorothea Lasky, Monsters.





Lunes, other forms



*

Activities:

1. Hay(na)ku: write five (or more!), linked or unlinked.

(also: see Lynn Crosbie's haiku above.)

2. Write some "definitions" for dictionary words, made up or re-visionedized. See Bhanu Kapil's examples in Urban Dictionary (above)

3. Write a Chubby Sonnet (see David McGimpsey above)

4. Seventeen lines about ________ (Include the word each line.) See: David W. McFadden's "34 Lines about Horses," and Jo Harjo's "She had Some Horses." (above.)
or Ghazal (the refrain repeats the same word/phrase)
[see Lasky's Monsters, above, for poem which more freely repeats the same words.]

3. Same Lines Sonnet. No rhymes except for the final couplet.  Each line a version of the one before. See this. Also, Stuart Ross's Sonnet (Hey, Crumbling Balcony, p.110)

3. Write "Short" Villanelle (in class & homework). The last three stanzas of the form. Rhyme only the last two lines, i.e. the two refrains. See here.


Friday, October 18, 2013

More about long lines: For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry

I am shocked at myself!

I can't believe that I didn't show you some Christopher Smart.

Christopher Smart was born in England in 1722. He is recently famous for a relatively newly discovered long poem called Jubilate Agno.

Thing is, Smart became insane, so consumed was he with religious fervour. But the guy could write. AND, he wrote about God, but also about his (Christopher's, not God's) cat, Jeoffry.

Really amazing stuff.

Here are two excerpts, both different, both using anaphora -- lines which repeat the opening few words -- and both with long lines.

Check it, lovers of cats and long lines:

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry

Let Helon rejoice with the Woodpecker



Marriage by Gregory Corso


Marriage

Should I get married? Should I be Good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustaus hood?
Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
and she going just so far and I understanding why
not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky--

When she introduces me to her parents
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where's the bathroom?
How else to feel other than I am,
often thinking Flash Gordon soap--
O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?
Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter
but we're gaining a son--
And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?

O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just waiting to get at the drinks and food--
And the priest! He looking at me if I masturbated
asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!
I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back
She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!
And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on--

then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes
Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!
All streaming into cozy hotels
All going to do the same thing tonight
The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
The winking bellboy knowing
Everybody knowing! I'd be almost inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
running rampant into those almost climatic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of
bigamy a saint of divorce--

But I should get married I should be good
How nice it'd be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting by baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!
So much to do! like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust--

Yet if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow
and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,
up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,
finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man
knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear not Roman coin soup--
O what would that be like!
Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
For a rattle bag of broken Bach records
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father
not rural not snow no quiet window
but hot smelly New York City
seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls
a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman
And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired
like those hag masses of the 18th century
all wanting to come in and watch TV
The landlord wants his rent
Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus
Impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking--
No! I should not get married and I should never get married!
But--imagine if I were to marry a beautiful sophisticated woman
tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves
holding a cigarette holder in one hand and highball in the other
and we lived high up a penthouse with a huge window
from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days
No I can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream--

O but what about love? I forget love
not that I am incapable of love
it's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes--
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there maybe a girl now but she's already married
And I don't like men and--
but there's got to be somebody!
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
all alone in furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All in the universe married but me!

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
then marriage would be possible--
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
so I wait--bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Leaf by E.E. Cummings

l
(a 
le 
af 
fa 
ll 
s) 
one 

iness 




 —E. E. Cummings

Dani Couture: Red Crown



RED CROWN

*

How a Toronto pigeon sold
for five thousand dollars,
is delicately inserted into a tube, sleeps,
and wakes in new hands in Dubai.

*

How the butcher bird skewers
its prey, impales it on thorn
or spike for later.

*

How coyotes have erased rabbits
and gophers from their holes,
but not wild turkeys from scrub
or low pine. Their toothy spurs,
hard breast plates, eagle eyes
in Sunday dinner dress.

*

How red-crowned cranes race
from Sibera to Korea and back again;
the flock in Eastern Hokkaido
who’ve shorted migratory switch.

*

How a black paper crane,
South Korea-sent, years late
is found pressed between
two books. Love, _____.

*

How the dead forever home,
like blind pilots for territory
real or imagined. An island
recorded, but long unseen.
Years of endless water.
Mongoose dreams.



bpNichol: The Book of Hours

bpNichol:

from the Martyrology Book 6
(from the Book of Hours)
Briefly
Hour 13.

Link


Class 5: Linebreaks


MOSS DOES NOT LOVE OTHER MOSS
Heather Christle
It isn’t dark yet though it should be dark
The grass is bright you can still see it
and warm and you can smell it and
elsewhere two people hold one another close
in a darkness they have created They can feel
their insides turning to olive oil and late late
afternoon light It’s hard not to be them
to be like a fallen off piece of the mountain
to have traveled so far and still without darkness
To see the whole system the houses
pulling up from the soil and to want
the stars out now To want the stars out now
like a linen bag over the head
In this class, we discussed the linebreak, line spacing, the stanza break, and how such things as indentation can influence the reading/pacing of a poem.

We spoke of how the default position is the left margin and any variation on that is read as a pause, a moment. It is as if the entire page is a grid notating time. We generally read from top to bottom and from left to right. The space between one element and another vertically or horizontally typically represents time, something like a 'rest' in music notation.

So: word placement can notate: rhythm and pacing by grouping words or elements into lines or segment.

It can group elements by thought, image, or sound. (Sometimes this is both a rhythmic and a visual technique.)

Placing can determine how one reads or joins together one line to another (so a word which is dropped from a line down onto the line below and indented, can be read as if a colon lead to it. The word is 'placed' with particular attention.)

1. We looked at how linebreaking can create possibilities for additional, punning, or more complex meanings. Cf. The Anne Carson examples on the blog.

2.  We looked at the E.E. Cummings "Leaf" poem (on the blog) as an illustration of punning, slowing down reading, making the reader have to puzzle through the text and become part of meaning-creation.

3. The Snail by Souvankham Thammavongsa

3. We looked at bpNichol's The Martyrology: The Book of Hours, Section 13 (on the blog, scroll down through the link to find it) as an example of a text which uses many different linebreaking techniques for rhythmic control, increased drama and parsing out of the meaning (in this case, the grief-filled recollection of a stillbirth.)

4. As a class, we explored breaking the lines of the W.S. Merwin poem, Sunset after Rain.


SUNSET AFTER RAIN
W.S. Merwin

Old cloud passes mourning her daughter can’t hear what anyone tells her every minute is one of the doors that never opened. Little cold stream wherever I go you touch the heart night follows. The darkness is cold because the stars do not believe in each other.

We started with the words of the poem as a block of prose and then played with where we might break the lines to explore various effects. Then we looked at what Merwin did. Sunset after Rain.

5. We each did the same thing with the Ko Un poem, Diamond Cave. See the poem as a block of prose to be lineated, below.

6. HOMEWORK:

Find a piece of prose around a paragraph in length. It can be from a newspaper, book, instruction manual, bad tattoo, transcription of an interview with a duck, or anywhere on the internet.

Break it into lines as in a poem. Consider what opportunities linebreaks might bring to the text in terms of rhythm, pacing, bringing out buried or alternative meanings, visual representation, etc.

You can alter any words in the original you want. For fun. For profit. For poetry.

7. By class 7, please bring in a handful (3-5 depending on whether you are saurian, simian, porcine, ursine, feline, or robotic) of poems for me to formally examine, grade, give feedback, steal, tattoo, etc.

8. We listened/watched to Jaap Blonk perform the Ur Sonata by Kurt Schwitters, an example of sound poetry.

9. We read a bit of Gregory Corso's "Marriage" as an example of a narrative which used poetic techniques, is funny, and uses long lines.  (It's posted on the blog.)

10. We wrote a poem based on thinking about going 'inside' something. The poem was based on Charles Simic's "Stone" (posted here on the blog.) I did one, though I didn't quite follow the rules. It's about Stephen Harper. I've posted it here. And yes, you have permission to tattoo it onto your forehead.

*



1.  Keumgang-Gul / Diamond Cave by Ko Un.



What a relief you cannot live everywhere all at once. Today, here in Diamond Cave, there's no longer any reason to live. Stay one or two days: this world & the Other are drained of difference. Wind blows. As a pearl is born at seabottom in agony out of oyster flesh from within the most obscure darkness here the wind blows from the depths. I want to travel far & then return. The wind blows as if I were eighty-five, maybe eighty-seven.

Link to original poem.



2. “March 12, 1992” (from Fear of the Ride) by Ronna Bloom 


The men shovel. Sound of crunch and fall. The men in suits and gray faces dig. The thin crust of March cling to trees. The earth closing one spoon at a time. My father digs with his whole body, born to this gesture. 







Anne Carson: Some Linebreaks


Love Town

She ran in.
Wet corn.
Yellow braid.
Down her back.



Wolf Town

Let tigers.
Kill them let bears.
Kill them let tapeworms and roundworms and heartworms.
Kill them let them.
Kill each other let porcupine quills.
Kill them let salmon poisoning.
Kill them let them cut their tongues on a bone and bleed.
To death let them.
Freeze let eagles.
Snatch them when young let a windblown seed.
Bury itself in their inner ear destroying equilibrium let them have.
Very good ears let them yes.
Hear a cloud pass.
Overhead.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Juliana Spahr: The Connection of Everything with Lungs and Fuck You, Aloha, I Love You

Here are some of the chant-like poems of Juliana Spahr. They are beautiful, powerful poems which build and build and have a strong vision.


Here are some links.

Gentle Now, Don't Add to Heartache
http://lemonhound.com/2013/09/27/jaime-lee-kirtz-on-juliana-spahr/

http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Summer05/Spahr/Juliana_Spahr.html


The Connection of Everything with Lungs
http://library.globalchalet.net/Authors/Poetry%20Books%20Collection/Juliana%20Spahr%20-%20This%20Connection%20of%20Everyone%20with%20Lungs%20Poems%20New%20California%20Poetry.pdf

(These are audio recordings of her reading:)

http://mediamogul.seas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Spahr/wkcr/Spahr-Juliana_02_Poem_wkcr_2002.mp3

Fuck You, Aloha, I Love You:
http://mediamogul.seas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Spahr/wkcr/Spahr-Juliana_01_Things_wkcr_2002.mp3

Class 4: Rhythm, Density, Flow


 
In this class, we spoke about metrical feet (iamb what I am...), and mentioned W.C. Williams notion of the variable foot. We could also have spoken about Hopkins' idea of 'sprung verse,' which is interesting. We did speak about Ginberg's idea of the 'breath line' -- a line that is as long as the breath.

Accentual Verse
Sprung Verse
Variable foot

Mainly, we talked about density and flow. Poems which are dense in both the pile-on of language (adjectives, adverbs, nouns-used-as-adjectives) -- and often, though not always -- have long(er) lines -- we looked at Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Harryette Mullen's Sleeping with the Dictionary in this regard.

We looked at some examples of the opposite of this. W.C. Williams and well as Souvankham Thammavongsa and Nelson Ball.


Here are the writing activities:

1. After W.C. Williams/Souvankham Thammavongsa: a small poem about observing something small, something (in this room, which maybe only might notice) which might not be noticed. Use "variable foot" trimeter.

2. Breath line: write a poem influenced by the long, expansive line of  Howl version – lines as long as the breath. What might you choose to express in big lines? Maybe use anaphora.

3. Write a poem where the first line is one word long, the second is two lines, the third is three lines, and so on, until at least the tenth (and ten-word line.)


The homework was to work on/finish the long poem that we began in class.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

The Snail by Souvankham Thammavongsa


Obituaries by Nelson Ball

Obituaries


Lately
I've been reading obituaries

don't quite
know why

lives are
always ending

always

Ginsberg and also Patti Smith perform from Allen Ginsberg's Howl




And here's Allen Ginsberg reading the poem and the text of Howl 1 & 2.

Harryette Mullen: Sleeping with the Dictionary


Muse & Drudge [just as I am I come]
by Harryette Mullen

just as I am I come
knee bent and body bowed
this here's sorrow's home
my body's southern song

cram all you can
into jelly jam
preserve a feeling
keep it sweet

so beautiful it was
presumptuous to alter
the shape of my pleasure
in doing or making

proceed with abandon
finding yourself where you are
and who you're playing for
what stray companion


From Sleeping with the Dictionary:




Form by Mark Truscott

FORM


These

two

words

Two poems by William Carlos Williams


This Is Just To Say


I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox



and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast



Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold


2.


Poem (As the cat)


As the cat

climbed over

the top of



the jamcloset

first the right

forefoot



carefully

then the hind

stepped down

into the pit of

the empty

flowerpot







The Tartar Swept by August Kleinzahler


[The poem begins at 1'15"]

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Class 3: The Acoustic Ecology of Sound


POETRY CLASS 3: Acoustic Ecology of Sound in Poems.


Why rhyme?

What other sound relations are available?


assonance
alliteration
internal rhymes
half rhymes


What do sound relations bring?
Weight, characterization, tone, music

Read Eunoia (on blog): you can really hear the difference in sound.
What’s the difference between the Chapter E and U excerpts?



Don Coles, on rhyme: "If that search for the rhyming sound to end your line with, that clink that locks the rhyme in, isn't a true search, i.e. if it doesn't send the shaft down to the deepest level this poem you're working on can live at, deeper than you could have without this self-imposed rhyme-search, then you stopped digging too soon, you accepted a word merely because it rhymed, it simply slid into place without making anything new happen; and if this occurs even twice, no, even once, your poem's probably already dead in the water, it's already, flottaison blême et ravie, [entranced in pallid flotsam] lost to human sight."

Read/look at:

1. Inger Christensen Alphabet (an excerpt)

2. See Nikki Sheppy, Rows and Columns

3. Seamus Heaney: The Barn (see blog)

Lorine Niedecker, Poems

3. Gwendolyn MacEwan: Dark Pines (see blog)


Poetry title exchange. Use these titles for the titles of the poems to be written below.
Or....ekphrastic. Inspiration from the visual.

1. Write a poem with nonsense words:  Write a poem with "nonsense" words or near-words (what are they?) or words used on the limits of intelliglibabblility.

(cf. "Jabberwocky" on blog)
(cf. Nikki Sheppy: (from poppycockhttps://jacket2.org/commentary/nikki-sheppy-three-new-poems

use alliteration, rhyme if wanted-use a kind you haven’t used.
-be aware of the sounds of the words

2. Write lines in-between these lines/stanzas. (See Nikki Sheppy: Rows and Columns 


2b. Write a poem infused with (or entirely with): One syllable words
or:
 - words of a certain letter from The Phrontistery.
 - B-words. Or three letter words.


3. See Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool." (on blog)

Write a "we real cool" poem.
rhyme AA BB CC etc.
but also alliteration each line
repetitive line: anaphora

3.  Lisa Jarnot list poem (see "They Loved Paperclips" on blog)
with anaphora and attention to sounds.
(note internal sound relations in her poem, though it doesn't rhyme and this is “free verse”

4. More writing in between

Keep the whole shebang, or else erase these lines.


for skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow

rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim

fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
 
landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;

swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;


Break.

Workshop Poems.

Writing in Between


Write lines in-between these lines.
Keep the whole shebang, or else erase these lines.



for skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow

rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim

fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
 
landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;

swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

LitLive Reading Series: October.


Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll


Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll


`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.


"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought --

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'

He chortled in his joy.


`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.


_______________________
Rhyme scheme: ABCB

We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks


We Real Cool

Gwendolyn Brooks



The Pool Players. 

Seven at the Golden Shovel.



We real cool.
We
 Left school.

We
 Lurk late.
We
 Strike straight.

We
 Sing sin.
We
 Thin gin.

We
 Jazz June.
We
 Die soon.

______________________
Rhyme scheme: AABBCCDD


Compare with this poem:

A "Golden Shovel" poem -- a poem based on the Brooks' original. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/detail/92023

Here's Terrance Hayes writing two poems around Brooks' original. And it's amazing!

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/55678

And here is Joy Harjo's version: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/92063

Here's a different kind of a version that I did:

We Eighteen
(Gary Barwin)



We lurk
                        We cast dark
We sing
                        We cauldron morning
We glitter seas
                        We hook
We eye
                        We insubstantial blue
We arrow
                        We do
We die soon
                        We fat black heart
We do not do
                        We speak hard
We cool
                        We brindled wing
We blood mouthfuls
                        We ran raven sweet
We through