ASFA Poetry Workshop - Fall 2008

Frank X. Walker

2008-12-01T05:52:00.000-08:00

Friday's guest lecturer will be Frank X. Walker. Here's a link to his website. Mr. Walker is the author of four books of poems and the winner of a prestigious Lannan Foundation fellowship for his work in 2005. He has served as a teacher and arts administrator, perhaps most notably to us as former Executive Director of the Kentucky Center Governor's School for the Arts. He is currently the Writer in Residence and lecturer of English at Northern Kentucky University and is the proud editor and publisher of PLUCK!, the Journal of Affrilachian Art & Culture.

Here's a link to an interview with him on-line.

Here's the poem that coined the term: "Affrilachia."

And here's a Google-book version of his collection, Black Box.

Kenyon Review Contest

2008-11-24T06:57:00.001-08:00

Sophomores and Juniors: Click here to enter a poem in the prestigious Kenyon Review contest. Do it today. Submit a poem you haven't submitted elsewhere, as there's a chance it will be published in the Kenyon Review and that's a pretty big deal. Hence, no simultaneous submissions.

Mark Chagall: The Red Jew (1915)

2008-11-20T07:30:00.001-08:00

Hollins Poetry Contest

2008-11-17T07:59:00.001-08:00

For those of you who ARE NOT possesed of a Y-chromosome (i.e., everybody but Ramsey, Brookes, Tyler, and Michael), click on this link to submit some work to the Hollins Poetry Contest. Click the "Submit online" link on the right-hand column. Again: pay no attention to the deadline. It's all about mind-meld here.

Bennington Poetry Contest

2008-11-17T07:56:00.000-08:00

Click this link. Then click on the "submission form" link and follow the instructions. Pay no attention to the deadline. We don't need no stinking deadlines.

Here's some info you'll need to complete the form:

Alabama School of Fine Arts
1800 8th Ave N
Birmingham, AL 35203

CEEB Code 010326
Phone: (205) 252-9241
Fax: (205) 251-9541

Poetry Daily

2008-11-07T10:51:00.000-08:00

"The Wasp Queen" by Meirion Jordon.

Poetry Daily!

2008-11-05T06:40:00.000-08:00

Two poems by Marianne Boruch.

Folder Fodder Smorgasbord

2008-11-03T06:28:00.000-08:00

Pick three of the prompts you haven't done and do them.

Turn at least one in by today.
Turn at least two in by tomorrow.
Turn all three in no later than Friday.

Yay!

Poetry Daily!

2008-11-03T06:24:00.000-08:00

"Winter Trees Cough Like Old Men" by Eugenio Montejo.

Verse Daily!

2008-10-31T10:01:00.000-07:00

"The Sunset District" by Sarah V. Schweig.

Ilya Kaminsky

2008-10-14T13:33:00.000-07:00

Also take a look at this guy. He led a workshop at the conference I attended last week. He's big! He's Russian! He's deaf! Also he's an achingly good poet. He'll be reading in Tuscaloosa at the Bama Theatre on Nov 20 at 7:30 p.m.

Theodore Roethke

2008-10-14T13:31:00.000-07:00

Better late than never. Here's a little bit about Theodore Roethke. Ted to his friends.

More Prompts: da Vinci Style

2008-10-08T19:00:00.001-07:00

1. Write a poem to, for, or about Leonardo. (Be sure to click the link: he had a pretty madcap, zany life.)

2. No, not that Leonardo. Well, come to think of it, why not? Write a poem to, for, or about that Leonardo.

3. Write a poem that has a flying machine in it.

4. Let's turn to Leonardo's fellow Florentine, Dante, and write a poem in terza rima.

5. Finally, write a poem about this extremely famous building in--you guessed it--Florence.

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Some More Prompts

2008-10-03T09:14:00.000-07:00

1. Use any or all of the following words in a poem:

bedlam
urn
orphaned
trussed
pilgrim

2. Write a poem about this.

3. Or this.

4. Do any of the above in tercets.

5. Do any of the above as a villanelle.

Etheridge Knight

2008-09-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

Our latest installment of well-known American poets: Etheridge Knight. One of the things that I'm noticing about these folks is they are interested in the contemporary moment as it relates to some aspect of the broader culture. It all goes along with the Rushdie quote in the blog header. Poetry--at least to many of the dead poets we've encountered--has a role in the social framework. It is at least conscious of the social framework, conscious that whatever personal revelations and epiphanies the poem reaches happen in the context of the larger world, with its swirling madness and intractable conundrums. Let me ask you this: do many of the poems you read/write at ASFA take that notion to heart? (Here's a hint: No.) Why not?

~

On Certainty

2008-09-22T05:57:00.000-07:00

"In your schooldays most of you who read this book made acquaintance with the noble building of Euclid's geometry, and you remember--perhaps with more respect than love--the magnificent structure, on the lofty staircase of which you were chased about for uncounted hours by conscientious teachers. By reason of your past experience, you would certainly regard everyone with disdain who should pronounce even the most out-of-the-way proposition of this science to be untrue. But perhaps this feeling of certainty would leave you immediately if someone were to ask you: "What, then, do you mean by the assertion that these propositions are true?" Let us proceed to give this question a little consideration."

--Albert Einstein from "Physical Meaning of Geometrical Propositions" in Relativity: The Special and the General Theory.

Yes. Let's.

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Lordy, Lordy, Here Comes Gertie

2008-09-22T05:49:00.001-07:00

Last week's Dead Poet o' the Week was Gertrude Stein. If Robert Frost is the king of Poems That Make Sense, then Stein's the, uh, reigning sovereign of Poems That Don't Make Sense. As the Academy of American Poets site states: "Her writing, characterized by its use of words for their associations and sounds rather than their meanings, received considerable interest from other artists and writers, but did not find a wide audience."

Yup, that pretty much covers it when it comes to Poems That Don't Make Sense.

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Another Open Invitation: Prompts

2008-09-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

To repeat: you can add poems to your folder at any time, remembering (of course) that all your critique poems must come from the folder and be re-seen. Here are a few prompts you can use if you want. Keep in mind that you don't have to add poems, and if you do, you don't have to use these prompts. They're just here if you need them.

1. Read this. Write a poem about it.

2. Write a poem about this.

3. Write a sestina using the following endwords: peace, music, clash, opposing, crimson, rejoicing. (Fun fact: Ezra Pound has already done this assignment. "A" for the day, Ezra! But don't read it, lest it impede you from "mak[ing] it new"...)

4. Wall Street is crashing! Run for your lives! But before you do that, write a poem about money.

5. Write a poem in rhyming couplets. Resist narrative at all costs. Include something that looks like this.

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Uncle Walt

2008-09-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

Little late in posting this. I figure I'll slap up a few links re: the poets we discover on Monday mornings. First up was the Good Gray Poet, Walt Whitman. Famous for more than just that crazy-cool beard, Whitman is if not the father of free verse, then he's certainly the stepfather of it. Long lines that echo prose rhythms, all about the American body politic. All America, all the time with this guy. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Woo-hoo! (We did win the Olympics, right?)

Anne "Don't Call Me Sylvia" Sexton

2008-09-14T17:19:00.001-07:00

Next up in our little game of poet-roulette was Anne Sexton, she of Confessional fame. I think it's important for you to get a sense of Ye Olde Confessional Poets because many of the tenets of Confessionalism are de rigeur in contemporary Poems That Make Sense. Certainly de rigeur for the ASFA Poem That Makes Sense. There's often a You and an I in the poem. It's a personal expression of Self, with allusions to an actual lived life. Hence, there's at least the veneer of autobiography. All of this stuff is taken for granted these days--almost to the point where it's a cliche that poetry is, by definition, "emo"--but there was a time when such things (supposedly) weren't in the purview of poetry. Interesting that Sexton's paired with Whitman, who also introduced "non-poetic" subjects and forms -- namely common people and language -- that otherwise hadn't been "allowed" in poems. In both cases, "real" things that "regular" people care about get to be in poems, and that can't be bad right? Anything less would be, well, unAmerican...

U-S-A! U-S-A!

PS...The thing that separates a legit "Confessional" poem from a cliche "emo" poem is, primarily, a heightened attention to craft (form, line, rhythm, sound, etc).

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An Open Invitation: Prompts

2008-09-12T07:41:00.000-07:00

To repeat: you can add poems to your folder at any time, remembering (of course) that all your critique poems must come from the folder and be re-seen. Here are a few prompts you can use if you want. Keep in mind that you don't have to add poems, and if you do, you don't have to use these prompts. They're just here if you need them.

1. Write a poem to, for, or about any one (1) of the following:

2. Open to a random page of the dictionary. Read all the definitions on that page and pick your favorite word. Use it as the first word of a poem. Try to pick a word that has more than one meaning and, if you can, play with that ambiguity in fruitful ways. Or not.

3. Write about this!

More where this came from periodically...

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A Word about Critique

2008-09-08T06:28:00.000-07:00

This week we crank it up -- madcap critique fun. In your written critiques, I expect you to address the major areas we have touched on so far: intention, sound, and meaning. Always seek to answer the following three sets of larger questions:

What is the poem trying to do? Where is it achieving that intention? Where could it do more to achieve it? Is there a latent intention that could be teased out of the poem?
How is the poem working on the level of the syllable? word? phrase? line? Does the poem's form fit its function?
How does the poem communicate -- is it logical/literal (makes sense) or intuitive/figurative (doesn't make sense) or somewhere in between? Where do you need more of one or the other communication style (i.e., more logic or more leaping)? Here focus on metaphors, images, symbols, connotations, allusions...those sorts of things.

Your written critique needs to convey a thorough consideration of these basic elements of the poem. The standard is to make comments on the line-level where appropriate and to provide an end note of a few fairly detailed paragraphs. You can't go wrong taking a paragraph to address each of the three areas above.

Those will be our areas of focus in oral critique as well. Remember, poets, it's your job to make sure we answer any additional concerns/questions you have when we turn it over to you at the tail end of your critique.

REMEMBER TONE. Your word choices matter. "Annoying" is a case in point -- it tends to crop up here and there. I find it particularly annoying. Avoid it and any other word that conveys a similar adversarial tone.

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And Betty When You Call Me You Can Call Me Al

2008-09-08T06:21:00.000-07:00

"Einstein was neither a competent experimenter nor a high-powered mathematician. His intuition about scientific concepts was unequaled, and when logic was on his side he would stick his neck far out, even when his conclusions ran counter to the received wisdom. A reinterpretation of the photoelectric effect was his first spectacular contribution, proving that light can behave as if it consists of particles, not waves."

--from Nigel Calder's introduction to Relativity: The Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein.

Your Mission: Sonnets!

2008-09-01T19:13:00.000-07:00

Read this. Also this, this, and this. We'll talk about all of it on Thursday. And you may even have to write one or something. So, you know, get ready.

da-DUH da-DUH da-DUH da-DUH da-DUH...

(What rhymes with "DUH"?)

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Conferences

2008-09-01T18:32:00.000-07:00

So I'm reading Group A's poems and I'm thinking: okay, two poems, no sweat. But as I've read and re-read the poems, I'm having two competing thoughts.

1. Man, this is cool. Lots of stuff to consider because this whole "re-seeing" thing really did interesting things to the poems. Can't wait to talk about them.

2. Wait...how exactly are we going to do that?

Seems like it'd be simple but now I think it's opened things up exponentially--in a good (if logistically challenging) way. I think we're going to have to build this airplane at 40,000 feet, and here's how I propose we start. I'm going to present you with the following questions:

What do you think these two poems are up to? Is it the same thing or two different things? If they're different, which one is more interesting to you now? If they're the same, which one achieves your intention most fully?
I'm noticing that, without exception, both poems have strengths. So what are they? Do the poems share strengths? What are their different strengths? Are those different strengths mutually exclusive?
Pick a favorite line/phrase/image from each poem.
Pick a least favorite line/phrase/image from each poem.
Consider sounds on the micro-level (syllables, alliteration) and macro-level (phrases/lines, rhythms/rhymes).
Consider meaning on the literal level (sense, logic) and the figurative level (metaphor, symbol, conceptual leaps).

At the end of all that, we'll make a tentative call on which one you want to use as your baseline for revision, then we'll read it line-by-line, both of us posing/answering questions as they arise.

Most important thing to keep in mind: this is an interactive process. It's on you as much as it is on me. More, in fact. It's your poem(s). I just work here.

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And the Winner Is...

2008-09-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

Kim Addonizio! Yee haw. I'll do a little investigating and order one of her books for us.

As for the other poet, I'm still dithering. (Is that a word? Yes!) I like to zag when folks think I'll zig. I'm half-a-mind to pick Jackie Gilbert, just cuz he got the second highest number of votes. I'll think about it some more and let you know.

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Your Mission: (Re)Write

2008-08-25T06:37:00.000-07:00

From the Department of Fiendish Plots:

You know those five poems you just wrote? That was awesome, right?

Here's how we're going to proceed with them. I want you to revisit those five poems throughout the semester. Actually, I want you to wholly re-see (i.e., revise: [Origin: 1560–70; revīsere to look back at, revisit, freq. of revidére to see again;]) these poems. To that end, you will apply any one of the following strategies to each of the five poems:

1. If it's 25 lines or less, double it.

2. If it's 25 lines or more, half it.

3. Add two syllables to each line. You can add lines but you can't subtract them.

4. Make the first line the last line of a new poem OR make the last line the first line of a new poem.

5. Make it a sonnet.

6. Make it a ghazal.

7. Make it a sestina.

8. Make it a prose poem. Eliminate 25% of the words.

9. Make each line the same number of syllables. You can add lines but you can't subtract them.

10. Cut 3 syllables from each line. You can cut lines but not add them.

When we conference we'll talk about both poems: the original and the re-seen version. You will then pick one to revise for critique.

Your Mission (Part I): Read

2008-08-25T06:31:00.000-07:00

You are now in proud possession of a packet of poems (not quite as fun as a pack of pickled peppers, but close). Read them. Read them again. Then I want you pick six poems from the packet: listing your three favorite Poems That Make Sense (as you understand that concept) and your three favorite Poems That Don't Make Sense (as you understand that concept). E-mail your selections to me by the end of the period on Wednesday and we'll read and talk about them on Thursday.

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Bread Loaf Blog #5: Endgame

2008-08-21T10:56:00.000-07:00

I'm fittin to come home here soon. Just wanted to make sure everybody's on the same page with what you're supposed to be doing so we can hit the ground running on Monday. A reminder, also, to put your completed folders in the wire basket on the table near my desk. I don't care which one--just pick one as a class and put them all in the same one.

Also wanted to express (as I did on the Nonfiction blog) the fact that I have a new appreciation for what you guys do. Bread Loaf is not unlike ASFA. Imagine instead that everybody is a creative writer and they're all twenty, thirty, even fifty years older than you are now. All the same things apply, though--not least mental exhaustion.

In eleven days or so we've done the work of half a semester. Today we had a workshop in which we discussed three 25-page stories. In 45 minutes, I'm going to a class on line-by-line editing. This morning there was a lecture on Shakespeare. Tomorrow is a class on plotting a novel, and we'll talk about three more stories in my workshop--only one of which I've read, much less commented on--on Friday morning. And, of course, there are readings, readings, and more readings.

ASFA-CW on steroids. But older.

In all, it's been pretty awesome, and I'm looking forward to getting back to apply some of my newfound perspective.

And don't forget to vote about the apples!

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Bread Loaf Blog #4: Robert Frost's Apples

2008-08-19T11:22:00.001-07:00

Check out this post from the Nonfiction blog. It's interactive and everything -- you get to vote! They took us to Robert Frost's farm down the road yesterday, and I filched some apples that had fallen in the orchard. I mean, it's not even a big deal -- even Frost says in his famous poem "After Apple-Picking" that the ones that fall on the ground go "surely to the cider heap / as of no worth."

So I've saved these apples from the cider heap but now I don't know what to do with them. Help!

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Bread Loaf Blog #3: Two Young Poets

2008-08-19T11:09:00.000-07:00

This place is wall-to-wall readings. I'm not even kidding. There are at least four readings every day. Sometimes more. There are some big-name authors -- Edward P. Jones, Edward Hirsch, Louise Glück, Charles Baxter, et al -- but there are also up-and-comers.

Two of the up-and-comer poets who interested me were Darcie Dennigan and Amaud Jamaul Johnson. I've bought their books and will bring them back to school for you to borrow if you're interested. And guess what: One of 'em writes poems that make sense and one of 'em writes the other kind!

Actually, what makes them both good is that, while they both have their predispositions (I'll let you decide which is which), they both also dip their figurative toe in the water of the "other kind" of poem.

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Bread Loaf Blog #2: Poetry & Walking

2008-08-15T07:24:00.000-07:00

Just got out of a lecture from Edward Hirsch, who talked about the link between poetry and walking. A few interesting highlights:

1. He talked about the word saunter and its origins: (v.) c.1475, santren "to muse, be in reverie," of uncertain origin. Meaning "walk with a leisurely gait" is from 1667, and may be a different word entirely. Some suggest this word derives via Anglo-Fr. sauntrer (1338) from Fr. s'aventurer "to take risks," but OED finds this "unlikely." The noun meaning "a leisurely stroll" is recorded from 1828.

2. A quote: "A walk, like a poem, takes place for its own sake."

3. He focused on two aspects of walking and poetry -- A) walking as a stimulant to the imagination, how it encourages associative thinking and digression, a drifting state of mind, and B) the tradition of poems about walking. Some very few of the many poems/poets he referenced:

A. R. Ammons -- "Corson's Inlet"
Elizabeth Bishop -- "The End of March"
Langston Hughes -- "Harlem Night Song"
William Wordsworth -- "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"
Basho -- Narrow Road to the Far North

4. Fun-fact: Hirsch said Wordsworth coined the term pedestrian.

Okay, so here's my thought on the whole thing: If you feel stuck with writing your drafts for this class, why not set aside some time for a walk this weekend? Walk (in a safe place!) for an hour. Don't take a notebook. Just let your mind wander. See if something gets sparked. If so, come back and write it. Put the walk itself in the poem if you want to.

And if nothing gets sparked? Well, a walk, like a poem, takes place for its own sake.

Have a good weekend...

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Bread Loaf Blog #1: Getting Acclimated

2008-08-14T06:46:00.000-07:00

Here are just a few things I've noticed/learned so far about Bread Loaf:

1. People around here like to talk about books and stuff.

2. It smells good. Not like bread, though. Like cut grass.

3. Earlier this year, a bunch of kids busted into the nearby former home of Robert Frost (who sort of "founded "Bread Loaf) and vandalized the place. They were caught and prosecuted. Their sentence? They had to complete a course on the literary and historical significance of one Robert Frost (who, PS, is like the King of Poems that Make Sense). Around here they get a kick out of calling that "poetic justice." Get it?! Because it's poetry and justice all wrapped into one!

Hope everybody's thriving in my absence. I'll leave you with a Frost poem. Couldn't help thinking about this particular poem on the drive up here from the airport. Lots of white birches, which was pretty cool, considering they might actually be the birches Frost writes about in his famous poem called, aptly enough, "Birches."

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What You're Supposed to Be Doing

2008-08-12T06:31:00.000-07:00

Just a quick sum-up/reminder:

Your folders are due by the end of specialty period on Friday, Aug 22.

They should include stuff that you've written and stuff that you've read.

I'll be blogging on occasion whilst I'm away. So that'll be awesome.

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A Word About Grading Criteria

2008-08-12T05:42:00.000-07:00

I'll evaluate you in each of the three categories listed in the right column (TCOB [see below], Essay Drafts, and Critiques) twice each quarter. That effectively gives you six grades each nine-weeks, all weighted evenly. I'll also provide you a narrative assessment at each progress report and at the end of each nine-weeks.

In grading your poem drafts, here's what I'm looking for:

Your conference draft should be a completed draft. I don't expect conference drafts to be perfect, but you do need to show me you've made a good faith effort. If you do that, you'll get full credit (100 points).

Your critique draft should show progress from your conference draft. I see myself as an editor in this process, and in any editor-writer relationship, there's a give-and-take. The process is organic, and it's different for different poems, but in a nutshell it goes like this: I give you my educated opinion, and you do the hard work of sifting through it to take out whatever nuggets of wisdom you can find. I don't have all the answers, and the final product is always up to you.

Now I can't tell you exactly what I mean by "progress" because that too is different for different poems. Show me that you've really gotten back in under the hood. Also, critique drafts should be basically free of grammatical errors and typos. I'm not a freak about that, but it does save you the tedium of sifting through a million comments pointing out the same surface-level error. Plus it's a mark of self-respect to show some care in the work you present to your peers. You have a right, then, to expect that very same level of care and respect in return. Do all that and, again, you'll get full credit (100 points).

When it comes to critique, we'll talk specifically about what I'm looking for right after I get back from Vermont. But, you know, the basics are the basics. I'll evaluate you on both written and oral components of critique. In both cases, I want an insightful, articulate account of your reading experience. Two other adjectives: honest, authentic. And a noun: empathy.

Then, of course, your final portfolio will count for 20% of your final semester grade. The portfolio will consist of seven to ten poems: five fully revised critique poems and at least two new poems that have not been critiqued.

TCOB?

2008-08-12T04:54:00.000-07:00

TCOB: It was Elvis's motto, and if it's good enough for The King, it's good enough for me. It stands for "Taking Care of Business." For our purposes, it's "Class Participation" on steroids. The trouble with your everyday, garden-variety "Class Participation" is it sort of implies that if you just do your work and don't make somebody cry, you'll get full credit for it. Yes, I want you to do your work. No, I don't want you to make anybody cry. But that's an exceedingly low bar, is it not?

What I really want is for you to be a writer:

Writers show up to do the work.
Writers engage. Ideas. The human experience. The world.
Writers have empathy for anyone brave enough to stake a claim to what she/he thinks.
Writer's know they don't know everything. Not knowing is the fun part.
Writers pay attention.
Writers are curious.
Writers read.
Writers listen.
Writers think.
Writers write. A lot.

Okay, maybe not all writers do all those things. But if you're doing all those things, then you, my friend, are definitely TCOB as far as I'm concerned.

A Typical Week

2008-08-11T17:28:00.000-07:00

As this is a workshop, our main concern is writing and critiquing poems-in-progress. We will, of course, supplement that work by considering published poems and talking about poetics in general.

Here's how a typical week will go:

Monday: Individual Conferences / Receive Critique Packet
Tuesday: Individual Conferences
Wednesday: Critique
Thursday: Critique
Friday: King for a Day / Conference Drafts Due

Critique drafts must arrive in my ASFA e-mail account [tjbeitelman(at)asfa.k12.al.us] by 8 p.m. on Sunday evenings. No exceptions.

A few other notes:

Sometimes on Mondays and/or Tuesdays we'll talk about published poems and/or craft issues.

"King for a Day" is a reference to Stephen King. He says the only -- only -- way to learn how to write is to write a lot and read widely. I don't know about "only," but I take his point. Most Fridays will be reserved for you to do one (1) of two (2) things: write or read.

You can read anything (within reason), provided it's a book. Fiction, poetry, nonfiction. Whatever.

You can write anything, provided it's creative writing. Note that doesn't mean it has to be in response to a creative writing assignment, though it can be if that's what you want to work on.

You can spend some of the time reading, some of the time writing, or all of the time doing just one of them. It's up to you.

An Important Early Programming Note

2008-08-11T05:53:00.000-07:00

The first two weeks are going to be anything but typical: I'm going to Vermont.

From Aug 13 through Aug 24, I'll be attending the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Eleven days of workshops, craft lectures, and readings by a range of well-known writers in all genres. Indeed, timing could be better and I apologize for the disruption, but this is a unique opportunity for me. I'm looking forward to getting back on the other side of the workshop table, so to speak. I'm prepared to be humbled and inspired. And, yeah, I hold out hope for a little validation. All necessary fuel for any lifelong student of writing. I'll let you know how it goes.

So what does all that mean for you? Means I'm out of your hair until Aug 25, and you'll have plenty of time to read, write, and think in the interim.

Poems That Make Sense & Poems That Don't

2008-08-11T05:13:00.000-07:00

If you've been in one of my poetry workshops before, you may be familiar with my working hypothesis on poems in general: There's two (2) basic kinds, POEMS THAT MAKE SENSE and POEMS THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE.

Oversimple? Sure.

True? Yeah. A lot of oversimple things are.

It's important to keep in mind that I use these rubrics as descriptions. There's no value judgment attached. I've written both kinds. I like to read both kinds. Both kinds are difficult to do well. Both kinds have long, venerated, and multicultural histories. One's not better than the other, at least as far as I'm concerned. (Others disagree, sometimes with great vigor.)

On Day Two (2) or thereabouts, we'll talk more about what I mean. But just to get you started, here are two examples.

A POEM THAT MAKES SENSE: "Domestic Work, 1937" by Natasha Trethewey.

A POEM THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE: "The Circle and the Circle's Argument" by Tomaž Šalamun.

What do you notice?

Your Mission (Part I): Read

2008-08-10T07:28:00.000-07:00

Find two (2) poems, preferably ones you haven't encountered before. Peruse the links to the right and the books above the back-corner cubicle, the one that houses the printer.

One (1) of these poems should be a POEM THAT MAKES SENSE (as you understand that concept) and the other should be a POEM THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE (as you understand that concept).

Don't just pick the first two (2) poems you find. Meander. Wallow. Ruminate.

Once you've chosen your two (2) poems -- and can explain what drew you to them and why you think they fit the particular rubric you've chosen for them -- type them up, word-for-word, line-by-line, typo-free, and include them in the folder you submit on Friday, Aug 22. Put each poem on a separate page; for efficiency purposes, please be sure that each poem does, in fact, fit on a single page using 12-point Times New Roman. Be sure also to include your name, the title of the poem and the name of the author.

Your Mission (Part II): Write

2008-08-10T07:11:00.000-07:00

Ten days. Five poems. Simple. The only other requirement is that all of the poems must be at least ten (10) lines long and no more than fifty (50) lines long. Oh, and they all have to have titles.

There's an oft-quoted story about the poet William Stafford. Stafford's writing regimen consisted of writing a poem a day. He'd wake up, maybe grab a cup o' Joe, and start writing. Around mid-morning, he'd put the poem-in-progress down and go about his day. Run errands. Read. Eat lunch. What have you. After lunch, he'd revisit the poem. Jot a few more lines. Tweak some of the ones he'd already written. Put it down for a while longer. After eating dinner and doing the dishes, he'd sit back down with the poem and bring it to fruition. Then he'd go to bed, wake up the next day, and do it again. Upon hearing about this system -- a finished poem a day, every day -- that's a lot -- somebody asked him how he did it. "I lower my standards," he said.

Moral of the story? The real work of writing is confronting the blank page and filling it. Genius is overrated.

These five poems are due no later than Friday, Aug 22. When I get back, I'll read them and we'll conference individually to help you prepare for your first critique submission.

Your Mission (Part III): Think

2008-08-10T07:01:00.000-07:00

I want you to think about two things. Words and Form. Whatever those two concepts mean to you, particularly in the context of poetry.

And here are a couple of related exercises to sorta get you started:

oceanic
"particular sophistication" vs. "particularly sophisticated"

What do you notice about the word "oceanic"? Do you like it? Do you not like it? Is it "poetic"?

How are the two phrases -- "particular sophistication" and "particularly sophisticated" -- different?

Be prepared to talk about this when I get back.