For Thursday

Please do email me the poems/poets that you’ve found that you think you might want to imitate if you haven’t done it already. If you’re having trouble thinking of someone take a look at this: www.howapoemhappens.blogspot.com

Also, for Thursday read the chapter on Setting (ch. 5 in 3rd edition) in the Burroway.

Read the Sherman Alexie poem, “At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School”  and the Appleman “Nobody Dies in the Spring”(Those are both in the book, if they’re not in the 2nd edition, shoot me an email)

Read this poem by Levine:

http://howapoemhappens.blogspot.com/2009/04/philip-levine.html

and these two:

Boy and Egg

A Summer Garden

 

If you have questions or are behind, it’s on you to email me and ask what’s up and how you can catch up.

Thanks,

Andra

 

For Tuesday, February 21st

I had a lot of fun this morning talking about sentences. I hope that you did, too. Remembering to go through a draft and make sure that each sentence, each word is really pulling its weight will make both your poetry and your fiction SO much stronger and more interesting to read.

**Write a piece of flash fiction like the ones we read in class today. I want it to be between 50 and 300 words. Think about framing a moment of connection or disconnection.

**Read Incarnations of Burned Children by David Foster Wallace (who also wrote “The depressed person” sentence) on p. 180 of the 3rd edition of the textbook.

**Also read Reunion by John Cheever.

**In reading the DFW story, I want you to think about sentence length and tension. Reading Cheever think about the pattern of connection and disconnection between the two main characters and how Cheever shows that to us as readers.

**ALSO! IMPORTANT! Your imitations, imitation presentations, and poetry papers are coming up! (They will be due on March 8th.) Go to poetryfoundation.org  and/or poets.org and/or read through the book and find a few different poems you like by different poets. Email me about it by Tuesday night, with links to the poems, and a sentence or two about why you like them.

Have a great weekend, email me if you have any questions!

For Thursday

For Thursday:

Write four to five lines of blank verse, which is unrhymed iambic pentameter, if you have questions send me an email. If you missed class today, print out the Frost poem and write in the stresses on the first stanza. If you’re confused by what I’ve said so far, look at Appendix A and get as far as you can.

Read the Nick Lantz poem and write comments on it thinking about the list of things below, as though Nick were a student in the class. Then read your peers’ poems and write similar comments.

If you didn’t hand out poems today, either because you were absent or there was a printer-apocalyse, be sure to bring in copies on Thursday.

Let me know if there are any questions,

Thanks,

Andra

Things to consider writing comments for peers:

** Start with a description of the poem, write a sentence or two describing it.

** The poem’s beginning. What did the opening do for you? What did it promise? Did the poet follow through on that promise?

** Form. What is the structure and form? Does it add to the subject?

** Point of View. Can you define it? Is it consistently employed throughout the poem, or does it wobble and shift?

** Detail, Imagery, Setting. Are the details sharp? Are the senses employed? Are the details and images necessary to the intent? Is there anything extraneous? Or not adequately developed? How does place benefit or detract from this poem? Please be very specific!

** Language, Style. Often it is the poet’s language that makes a poem seem rushed or predictable, melodramatic or self-indulgent. Where is the writer’s voice at its most believable? Where does it sound like the voice of a living, breathing person? Give a specific example or two. Where has the writer fallen into overwriting, generality, abstraction, cliché?

** Does the poem seem summarized rather than alive on the page? Where could the writer slow down? Does the progression of the poem make sense to you? Why or why not?

** Does the ending both surprise you and seem inevitable?

 

Tuesday’s Reading

On Tuesday we’re going to spend some time workshopping your poems and we’re also going to talk about iambic pentameter. You’re going to write some.

We’re going to rock it.

-Andra

As a reminder, please bring in 11 copies of the revision of your poem.

Also read:

Burroway, “Poetry,” p. 294-319, also look at Appendix A – I’m not sure what the corresponding pages are in the 2nd edition, but if you’re unsure of what to read, shoot me an email.

Please print these poems, but you don’t have to read them before class:

Nick Lantz’s “Of the Parrat and other birds that can Speake”

Stopping by Woods on A Snowy Evening

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why

Sonnet

Sonnet CXXX