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AssignmentsYou'll find all the writing assignments for the semester listed here. 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: 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 evening 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's true for expository prose is true for poetry too. Use strong verbs other than conjugations of "to be," "to have," "to happen." Action and imagery are the two most important elements in creating a poem that is not a description of experience, but experience itself. 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 go beyond the obvious. WEEK 4: Read the poems listed in the syllabus, 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.OR consider a myth or fairy tale you'd like to revise. Write details of the myth/fairy tale you wish to keep on one side of the paper, and details you'd like to change on the other. 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. 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. Free Verse: Some Notes on Line Breaks 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
Don't forget to bring your readings journal to our conference on Week 7! METER
Before the 20th century, almost all poems in English were written in a pattern called meter. 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.
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, 6 feet=hexameter. The names have Greek roots because the first modern English poets thought they imitated the meter of 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.
WORKSHOP: We begin our class workshop Monday, 11/6. 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: We'll be meeting at the Blacksmith House, 56 Brattle Street, Harvard Sq, at 7:45. From campus, take the Red Line from JFK/UMass to Harvard Sq. If you drive into Harvard Sq, you may find unmetered parking on Brattle Street, metered parking in the lot on Mt. Aubrun St. opposite the post office, or paid parking in the Church Street, Cambridge Galeria or Charles Hotel lots (all fairly expensive--be warned). Week 11: Book Review Assignment: In a short paper of 750-1250 words (3-5 pgs.), write a review of a book of poems published within the last ten years. Single volumes are best for this assignment; books of collected or selected poems involve questions of development and biography that you don't need to get into for this project. Choose a book by a favorite author, or by one you'd like to get to know better. Take notes as you read, poem by poem. Do certain images, themes, structures, forms, or subjects repeat themselves and emerge as important concerns for the poet? What does this poet do well? Are there any flaws you see repeated in the work? Would you recommend this book to a reader? Read some book reviews to get a sense of the form. Note that reviews follow journalism's "inverted pyramid" style, where the most important information is presented first, rather than the structure of a traditional analytical paper. The best source for a variety of reviews is Poetry Daily's "News, Reviews, and Special Features" section at <www.poems.com>. Scroll down to the bottom of the home page to find it. Read some of the reviews linked there to get a sense of what a poetry review should be. Questions? E-mail me if you don't catch me in class. In this poem, Steven Cramer took 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. 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”
You should be working on revising the 8-10 poems you've selected to include in your final portfolio. When you hand in a revision to me, write in the margin whatever comments or questions you have regarding your work, and I'll respond to them. Do the same with any new work you show me before including it in your portfolio.
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