Assignments
You'll find all the writing assignments for the semester listed here. Due dates are for the first draft of your poem; reading needs to be done BEFORE the assignment due date, as listed on the syllabus.
WEEK 1--
DISCOVERING THE POWER OF METAPHOR
by Joyce Peseroff
Good poetry requires powerful language. Drafting a poem, we want our verbs to be energetic; our adjectives need to surprise as well as describe. A bright constellation of images, such as the ones readers find in any number of Shakespeare’s sonnets, allows a poem to develop its own imaginative landscape. And figures of speech allow the poet who creates them to extend this landscape further.
Commonly used figures of speech include simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and personification. Metonymy substitutes the name of one thing for another closely associated with it, often replacing an abstraction with a concrete noun, as when “birth to death” becomes “cradle to grave.” Synecdoche uses the part to stand for the whole; “Lend me your ears,” Shakespeare writes, when Antony wants the crowd’s entire attention. Personification can give a human face to the world, as when Jane Kenyon praises the “cheerful worm in the cheerful ground.” Simile and metaphor are both figures of comparison. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Shakespeare asks in his sonnet. His similes make comparisons by using the terms “like” or “as;” metaphors dispense with these words altogether.
It seems to me that the act of comparison is both preverbal and basic to human development. I watch a very young infant in her crib, gazing at the fists she brings close to her face, looking from one to the other. The hands are similar but not quite identical. When babies learn to talk, every animal is, at first, a “doggy” (or “kitty,” or “buh-ie”). Older babies learn to discriminate between doggy and kitty, horsie and moo-cow, elaborating distinctions that become more and more sophisticated. Like/unlike is built into the brain, and language that makes connections along these paths strikes deep into human experience.
Of the two figures of speech offering comparison, metaphor provokes more complex and various associations in the reader’s mind. Similes often associate themselves with one or two individual features. “Cheeks like roses” have petals but no thorns, and in the phrase, “small as the ear of a mouse,” no aspect of mousiness—color, scent, or the sound of one skittering across your kitchen counter—matters other than size. Or take the statement, “She’s like a sunset.” The reader may associate sunsets primarily with natural beauty, with pink and golden hues, or with a certain flamboyance. Compare this to the sentence, “She is sunset.” Added to the associations mentioned before, and deepening them, is the prospect of the day’s decline. Beauty and the end of beauty cohabit in metaphor.
Shakespeare’s sonnet, “That Time of Year” is an example of comparison without the use of “like” or “as”:
THAT TIME OF YEAR
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed by that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Each of the sonnet’s three quatrains employs a single metaphor. In the first four lines, the poem’s speaker compares himself to a time of year—early winter. In lines 5-8, the speaker compares himself to a time of day—twilight, after sunset, night coming on fast. In the last quatrain, the speaker is a dying fire on a bed of ash.
Imagine that Shakespeare had made a list of questions concerning his speaker and his predicament. His list might have begun like this:
If I were a time of year, which season would I be?
If I were a time of day, what hour would I be?
If I were a form of fire, what kind of fire would I be?
You can create such a list when you are contemplating a situation or individual you want to write about. Consider these questions:
If this subject were a form of water, what form would it be? Would it be a peaceful lake or spring freshet? Ocean or trout stream? Tap water or well water, waterfall, puddle?
If this subject were an animal, what animal would it be? A tiger or hare? A rooster or a jackass?
If this subject were a flower, would it be joe-pye-weed or rose? Burgundy lily or snapdragon?
If this subject were a form of shelter, would it be a tent, a mansion, cabin in the woods, penthouse suite, mobile home, or studio apartment?
Continue by responding, as quickly as possible and in the same manner, to the rest of this list:
Tree or fruit?
Form of transportation?
Kind of weather or climate?
Article of clothing?
Color of the rainbow?
Historical period?
Food or drink?
Musical instrument?
Art or sport?
Geographical feature?
Astronomical feature?
Room in the house?
Age?
Kind of work?
Depending upon the person or situation in your poem, you can vary this list to include books and movies, popular songs, kitchen appliances, comic book superheroes, vegetables, board games, cities…. Be careful to avoid familiar or overused phrases like “raging river” or “torrential rain;” don’t let your words congeal into dead metaphors. It’s important to finish with a list of at least twenty answers to your group of questions.
Your responses—all of them concrete, specific nouns and adjectives—will provide the metaphors for you to work with. The longer your list, the more aspects of the subject your poem will reveal. The question, “What kind of animal would this subject be?” might suggest a physical resemblance: “John is a Florida panther.” Your answer to, “What form of water would this subject be?” might describe emotional depth with, “John is a still pond.” If your flower is a snapdragon, readers will be affected by the sound of the word as well as by its visual image.
Although this method might seem best for a poem with an individual as its subject, John Davidson’s ballad, “Thirty Bob a Week,” uses a series of metaphors to describe a situation—the plight of the underpaid British workingman:
It’s a naked child against a hungry wolf;
It’s playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;
It’s walking on a string across a gulf
With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck.
Davidson and Shakespeare suggest two ways of structuring a collection of metaphors into a poem. Davidson uses a simple list, rapidly making three metaphors in four lines. Shakespeare extends his into a fourteen-line sonnet by answering each question in gorgeous detail. Creating a narrative from your cache of words is a third strategy. I wouldn’t worry about how the narrative evolves—your Florida panther might yodel while rafting across a still pond—but it is important, in the first draft, to include every answer to the questions on your list. It’s fine if some of these look paradoxical: can that same John be a large wildcat and a placid lake? Perhaps, through these figures, you’ve discovered something about your subject you didn’t know before.
Assignment due Tuesday, 1/31: Read the essay "Discovering the Power of Metaphor" in your syllabus and complete the exercise given in the article. Create a poem by beginning each line with "He is," "She is," or "I am," depending on the person you've chosen to describe. Be sure to use the answer to every question in the exercise. TIPS FOR REVISION: 1) Select the most important metaphors and use just those; 2) Rearrange the order of your list of metaphors; 3) expand your chosen metaphors by adding more detail.
WEEK 2--Read the T.S. Eliot poem listed in the syllabus and, using it as a model, walk around the UMass campus and make a list of things you can hear, see, taste, smell and touch. Decide whether the late summer afternoon you want to describe is pleasant or unpleasant, and select only those details to include in your poem. Use only images--words that refer to the five senses--in this poem; no abstract language, please! You must include words referring to all five senses. TIPS FOR REVISION: 1) Add detail to your images; 2) Think about scale--include some very large things and some very small things.
WRITING YOUR SECOND DRAFT
1. Editing Marks
[omit]: Omit what’s within brackets
= underneath a letter: CHANGE TO UPPER CASE
/ through a letter: change to lower case
/ between words: Break the line here
Word circled: Check spelling
^: Insert
2. Suggestions For Revision
Avoid end rhyme: Good rhymes are hard to write. For now, I’d like you to concentrate on other aspects of your poem. Often, when reaching for a rhyme, you’ll find yourself inverting natural word order and writing something you’d never hear anyone say, or repeating what you’ve already said. We’ll be talking about rhyme and meter later in the semester, but for now I’d like you to avoid end rhyme.
Replace abstract words with imagery: Images are words that refer to one of the five senses—things you can hear, see, smell, taste and touch. Abstract words like “beautiful,” “mysterious,” “intelligent,” “lovely” are not images. If you find something beautiful, tell the reader what makes it so. Be specific—use examples. What was true in your composition class is true for writing poetry too.
Avoid repetition: Poems are succinct. They say as much as possible using the fewest words possible. A good poem keeps moving from beginning to end. Unless you use repetition for a reason—creating rhythm, emphasizing a particular word, or writing a sestina (check your dictionary of literary terms)—try to avoid it.
WEEK 3: Read poems by Gail Mazur and Langston Hughes (find links by clicking on Resources) as well as those in the textbook listed in your syllabus. Think of how you would complete the sentence, "Life is like..." Consider all the terms of comparison you can use to explain how life is like the simile you've chosen. Looking at Gail Mazur's "Baseball," for instance, list all the elements of a baseball game she mentions in the poem (you can do the same for all the elements of a staircase Hughes includes in "Mother to Son"). Generate as much langauge as possible associated with your chosen simile. Are there any specialized or technical terms associated with it? See how many baseball terms Mazur uses in her poem, and see if you can include similar kinds of terms in yours. TIPS FOR REVISION--1) What additional aspects of your simile can you explore? Or do you need to make your simile less general and more specific? 2) What have you included that people don't usually think about? Try to reach beyond the obvious.
Assignment due Wednesday, 9/27.
WEEK 4: A narrative is a poem that tells a story. Read Elizabeth Bishop's "In the Waiting Room," Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays," and one other poem on the syllabus for Week 4, including George Bogin's "Cottontail' (below). Think of an incident from your own childhood that you consider important.Take a page and draw a vertical line down the middle. On the left side, write details you remember about the incident, and on the right side, things you don't remember about it. Using details from both sides of the page--and making up some things you don't remember but want to include--write a poem based on this single childhood memory. TIPS FOR REVISION: 1) detail, detail detail! 2) Does this poem tell a story? If so, make sure the story is clear to the reader.
Or, after reading Anne Sexton's "Cinderella" and Louise Gluck's "Circe's Power," consider writing a poem that retells a familiar fairy tale, folk tale, or myth. Think of how your retelling updates or changes the story in some way.
TIPS FOR REVISION: Eliminate every adjective in your poem to decide how many were truly necessary. Look at the verbs in your poem and see how many "is," "was," "were," "becomes," and other weak verbs you can replace with stronger, more active ones.
Assignment due Wednesday, 10/4
In the Waiting Room
Elizabeth Bishop
In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited and read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
"Long Pig," the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
--Aunt Consuelo's voice--
not very loud or long.
I wasn't at all surprised;
even then I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn't. What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I--we--were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.
I said to myself: three days
and you'll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
--I couldn't look any higher--
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.
Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How I didn't know any
word for it how "unlikely". . .
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't?
The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.
Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth
of February, 1918.
Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
Cottontail
George Bogin
A couple of kids,
we went hunting for woodchucks
fifty years ago
in a farmer’s field.
No woodchucks
but we cornered
a terrified
little cottontail rabbit
in the angle
of two stone fences.
He was sitting up,
front paws together,
supplicating,
trembling,
while we were deciding
whether to shoot him
or spare him.
I shot first
but missed,
thank God.
Then my friend fired
and killed him
and burst into tears.
I did too.
A little cottontail.
A haunter.
Circe's Power
Louise Gluck
I never turned anyone into a pig.
Some people are pigs; I make them
Look like pigs.
I'm sick of your world
That lets the outside disguise the inside. Your men weren't bad men;
Undisciplined life
Did that to them. As pigs,
Under the care of
Me and my ladies, they
Sweetened right up.
Then I reversed the spell, showing you my goodness
As well as my power. I saw
We could be happy here,
As men and women are
When their needs are simple. In the same breath,
I foresaw your departure,
Your men with my help braving
The crying and pounding sea. You think
A few tears upset me? My friend,
Every sorceress is
A pragmatist at heart; nobody sees essence who can't
Face limitation. If I wanted only to hold you
I could hold you prisoner.
Assignment: Write a childhood memory poem of your own, OR a poem based on a myth OR fairy tale OR Bible story. How does your retelling of the story change or add to our understanding of the story you choose to recast?
Assignment due Wednesday, Oct. 4
WEEK 5: Bring in a list of five two syllable words and five three syllabe words. Using the dictionary as your guide, hyphenate the words where they break into syllables, and mark the syllable that is accented with a stroke above it (') and the unacccented syllable(s) with a u. Using your words, and combining them with some one-syllable words, we'll write some nonsense verse in iambic pentameter in class
Before the 20th century, almost all poems in English were written in a pattern called meter. Many poets today still use metrical forms, and those who don't are alert to its patterns. Meter is measured in units called feet. A poetic FOOT is a group of two or three syllables in which one syllable is stressed, and the rest aren’t. You can see this in any two or three syllable word you look up in the dictionary for help in pronunciation:
MY-ste-ry O-range sup-PORT CAL-en-dar con-NECT
FOR-tu-nate PER-son mis-TAKE pot-pour-RI Ac-COUNT-ant
The stress falls on one syllable; the others are unstressed. Using your first and last name, see where the stress falls in each (JOYCE PES er off).
There are four 2-syllable feet (iamb, trochee, spondee, pyrrhic) and two 3-syllable feet (anapest, dactyl) in English, but we’re going to concentrate on the most common, the IAMB. An iamb is a foot made of two syllables, the first unstressed, and the second stressed. Which words listed above are iambic?
A poem’s METER describes a regular, repeated number of the same kind of foot in each line. In a sonnet like Shakespeare’s, and in the other sonnets in your textbook, there are five iambs per line, hence the name of the meter: IAMBIC (name of the foot) PENTAMETER (5 feet in a line). 2 feet=dimeter; 3 feet=trimeter; 4 feet=tetrameter, 5 feet=pentameter; 6 feet=hexameter. The names have Greek roots because the first modern English poets to employ iambic meter in the 15th century thought they were imitating the sound patterns in Homer’s epics. Although the terms may look complicated, the idea behind them isn’t.
But poets aren’t accountants, though in Shakespeare’s time, poems were also called “numbers” because poets did count the number of feet in a line. But regularity breeds monotony, so most poems stray from metrical regularity in one way or another. Notice how Shakespeare establishes his iambic pentameter meter in the first three lines, then alters it in the fourth:
That TIME of YEAR thou MAYST in ME beHOLD
When YELlow LEAVES, or NONE, or FEW, do HANG
UpON those BOUGHS which SHAKE aGAINST the COLD,
BARE ruined CHOIRS where LATE the SWEET birds SANG
or
BARE RUINED choirs where LATE the SWEET birds SANG
Shakespeare has dropped the first, unstressed syllable in the first foot (called a “beheaded iamb,” it’s common in his poems and plays). And maybe he’s also reversed the order of syllables in the second foot, substituting a TROchee for an iamb. Are there other ways to read this line?
But notice Shakespeare did not write
The BARE ruined CHOIRS where LATE the SWEET birds SANG
He could have made the line perfectly regular by adding “the” at the beginning. Why didn’t he? Often poets will establish a metrical pattern then break it. This changes the pattern of sound, and also gives certain words more emphasis. Why would Shakespeare want to do either in the final line of his sonnet’s first quatrain?
Not all syllables in the same order sound alike. The second syllable of “broadband,” “hardball”or “snowman” is stressed more heavily than the second syllable of “yellow” or “woman.” Some iambic pentameter lines are made up of one-syllable words, like this one from Milton’s Paradise Lost:
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death
If this were the poem’s first line, you’d have no way of knowing it was iambic pentameter (other than the clue that the line contains 10 syllables). After 100+ earlier lines of Milton, though, the iambic pentameter pattern is established, and the reader hears this line in context of what has come before.
Week 6: Screening of "A Life Together":
A LIFE TOGETHER
DVD of poets Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon from “Bill Moyers’ Journal”
Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon moved from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Wilmot, New Hampshire, in 1975. He was a respected poet who had by then published five collections of poems, edited many anthologies and textbooks, and written several nonfiction books; Jane was just beginning her career and would publish her first book, From Room to Room, in 1978. This tape was made in 1992, after Kenyon had published her fourth books of poems, and broadcast in 1993. In January 1994, Jane Kenyon was diagnosed with leukemia. After completing a bone marrow transplant, she died in April 1995. Donald Hall celebrated his 77th birthday in 2005, and became US Poet Laureate this October.
Vocabulary: Know the definitions of ‘oxymoron’ and ‘syntactical.’
What to watch for: What do these poets explain about their own work?
Whom do they write for?
What do they feel is important about their work? About poetry in general?
Notice the exchange between Bill Moyers and Donald Hall regarding the poem “White Apples.” What does this tell you about how poets do their work? Compare “White Apples” to the handout, “The White Closed Door.” What does this suggest to you about the way some poets work?
Which poems are your favorites?
What’s different about the way these two poets read their work?
A transcript of Moyers’ interviews with both poets is published in Bill Moyers’ The Languag of Life (New York: Doubleday, 1995). The segment with Jane Kenyon is available in A Hundred White Daffodils, by Jane Kenyon (St. Paul. MN: Graywolf, 1999).
WEEK 7: Short Paper Assignment
Writers are always reading, and learning from what they read. This paper asks you to think about how your reading has influenced you as a writer. Choose a poem from the syllabus, from the anthology 250 Poems, or from your own reading (including reading you’ve done for other classes) and discuss how this poem has affected you as a developing poet.
You may explain how the poem has influenced your interest in a particular theme, subject, or form. You may discuss an image series of images the poet uses that you admire. You may explain how the sound or rhyme in the poem affected you, or what you’ve learned from the way the poem is structured. Please be specific—though this isn’t a paper for a literature class, and I’m not asking for a complete analysis of the poem you choose. I’m interested in hearing how a single work has affected your desire to write your own poems.
Please limit your discussion to one poem. Poets are influenced by many things, including works of prose, plays, music, visual art, movies, friends, and TV (yes, recent poet laureate Robert Pinsky has written an ode to television, and his favorite TV show is The Simpsons). I’m interested in a single, particular poem that has meant something to the way you see yourself as a writer.
Song lyrics are not acceptable for this assignment. We may agree or disagree as to whether certain song lyrics are, in fact, poems. Many poems have been set to music, and many songwriters are also poets. But for the purposes of this paper, song lyrics are excluded.
Be specific, be succinct, and tell me what’s important to you when you read a poem. Writers are always looking at and learning from other writers, and if you haven’t thought about how this applies to you, a short paper is a good place to start.
LENGTH: 500-1000 words (2-4 pages)
FORMAT: Leave 1” margin on all sides. Use 12 pt. type, double-spaced. No fancy typefaces, please. You don’t need a folder; you can clip or staple pages together. Makes sure your name is on each page. If the poem is one I’m not familiar with and is not readily available on line or in anthologies, include a copy with your paper.
WEEK 8 & 9: Free Verse
When you write haiku, the form tells you to break the line after the fifth syllable in the first line, the seventh syllable in the second line, and the fifth syallable in the third line. If you write a sonnet, the form tells you to end the line after the fifth iamb, or the tenth syllable, in each of the 14 lines. But what if you're writing free verse? Here are some suggestions on how to decide where to break the free verse line.
Note the difference between this sentence:
So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens.
and the poem:
The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams
So much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Line breaks affect:
Rhythm
Melos (pitch patterns)
Perception
Visual symmetry
Line breaks create a counter-rhythm to the grammatical, phrase-by-phrase rhythm of the sentence.
…it allows the reader to share more intimately the experience that is being articulated…by introducing an a-logical counter-rhythm into the logical rhythm of syntax…(Levertov)
Line breaks create patterns of sound (melos) that alter if you break the line differently.
…the way lines are broken affect not only rhythm but pitch patterns.
The voice revealed…[is] the inner voice, the voice of each one’s solitude made audible and singing to the multitude of other solitudes. (Levertov)
Line breaks keep the poem moving
1) from perception to perception, often by using enjambment
..Such [free verse] poetry…incorporates and reveals the process of thinking/feeling, feeling/thinking, rather than focusing more exclusively on its results…
…the line-break…can record the slight (but meaningful) hesitations between word and word…characteristic of the mind’s dance among perceptions…(Levertov)
The form of a poem exists in the relation between its music & its seeing. (Hass, from “One Body--Some Notes on Form”)
2) from inception to completion in a way feels discovered rather than given.
A sonnet may end with a question, but its essential, underlying structure arrives at a conclusion. (Levertov)
In the early 20th century, painting got ride of perspective, music of tonality and poetry of meter and rhyme so they could tell what ending felt like again, and give it again the feeling of making. (Hass, “Listening and Making,” p. 120)
Line breaks communicate meaning through shape on the page.
…I care aesthetically for the visual, for the look of the lines on the page…Extreme asymmetry can be handsome, if it is consistent and never confuses audibility…The unacceptable visual mode is almost-but-not-quite. The asymmetric poem collapses into quatrains for a moment. The poem of six line stanzas goes to seven lines once, four lines elsewhere.
Visual shape is not just the number of lines, but their length. If a poem of 25 lines has 17 lines which are 8 to 11 syllables long, don’t let the next 6 lines each be longer than the one before…The chinless poem is also deplorable. Any of these departures from norms…scream inadvertence. Any notion of inadvertence diminishes art.
“The line gets longer because I needed more words.” Such a reason shouts out that the poet cares for what he or she might call meaning rather than song or art or form. The only implacable demand of art is that it remain a single whole thing: shape and song, aesthetics and import, must be one.
--Donald Hall, “Knock Knock II,” p. 15, APR, Jan./Feb. 2006
WORKSHOP: We begin our class workshop this week. When you read the posts, consider these questions:
1. What kind of poem is this? Does it remind you of anything you've read before?
2. How is it structured? Is it in form or free verse? Is it a narrative/story? Is it descriptive? Does is compare two things, like now/then, before/after, me/you, he/she?
3. What is the poem about? This is its subject.
4. What does is say about what it's about? This is its theme.
5.How does the poem's imagery relate to its theme?
6. What is the poem's attitude toward its subject? This is its tone.
7. What is the point of view--first, second or third person? How does it contribute to tone?
8. What effect on the reader does the poem seem to want to produce?
Week 10: Here's another example of a found poem. Steven Cramer collected words from soldiers quoted in local newspapers and made a collage of their many voices.
HERE
By Steven Cramer
We are kept kind of busy for the most part
I’m glad to have a chance for even this
Santa came to see us riding on a tank
A guy dropped a grenade off a roof about four feet away
Luckily
it was a crappy Egyptian grenade some big shot
is coming here to visit
Christmas was weird remember
after we opened presents Mom would make cinnamon rolls
I guess there really are good things happening
I tell you what
I’m very excited about life in general
I’m not one for writing
I’m more of a caller
I want to be more than a voice on a phone
I’m sure you’re wondering what it’s like here
I’m healing rather fast and should be back in the fight soon
I thought we were under attack but it was all the Marines saying Happy New Year
The computers are slow today and my time’s just about up
but here are some PICS
So now I have a new job hey babe this is my element
Everything Dad tried to help me avoid
came true
These snipers know where to get us
through the vests
There are lots of dogs here and lizards and flies
If only everybody over there could have such a reality check
As you know the referendum has come and gone
There are no lakes but we do have the Euphrates River
The quality of life is improving
We’ll be getting some revenge very soon
Other than that things here are going by slowly
Remember time is a gift
Alright I got to get going I’ll see you soon love you PS tell the guys I said hello
Here's an excerpt from a poem made of fractured proverbs and quotations, from Lloyd Schwartz's third book of poems, Cairo Traffic:
PROVERBS FROM PURGATORY
It was déjà vu all over again.
I know this town like the back of my head.
People who live in glass houses are worth two in the bush.
One hand scratches the other.
A friend in need is worth two in the bush.
. It was déjà vu all over again.
Week 11: Here's an example of a "found form," Fibonacci Poems, or, "Fibs":
One
Small,
Precise,
Poetic,
Spiraling mixture:
Math plus poetry yields the Fib.
What’s that, you ask? That’s the very first Fib I wrote. What’s a Fib? Well, first a little backstory….
At the 2005 SCBWI-LA Writer’s Day, poet-novelist Ron Koertge mentioned the idea of “warming up” each day by writing haiku. To paraphrase what he said, writing haiku keeps you in tune with the importance of word choice and how you can say so much with so little… with the goal being that subconsciously you will continue to be aware of both points whenever and whatever you write.
I was intrigued, but my geeky mind immediately began to churn. Why just haiku? I wanted something that required more precision. That led me to a six line, 20 syllable poem with a syllable count by line of 1/1/2/3/5/8 – the classic Fibonacci sequence. In short, start with 0 and 1, add them together to get your next number, then keep adding the last two numbers together for your next one. It’s a wonderful sequence, and it’s one that is repeated in nature (most famously in nautilus shells). Heck, some folks use it in knitting and music,… and, as much as I’d like to say I invented a new form of poetry, these sequences have been part of various poetic structures since before Fibonacci’s time. However, "the Fib" is my take on the idea, complete with a wicked cool name, if I say so myself.
I’ve found writing Fibs helpful, as they really do make me conscious of word choice in everything I write (which is particularly critical in my poetry, picture book manuscripts, and e-mails to Mom). Also, I’ve found kids respond well to the form, especially when they hear that “Ewww. Worms.” can be 1/3 of their poem. So, I think it’s time for the Fib to gain more exposure.
Greg K., GottaBook/blog, found by Googling “Fibonacci poem”
|
