In some of the poems you've been exposed to thus far, meter and rhythm are the driving force of the poem. Imagist poets shifted attention from meter and rhythm to the power of the image. Image-driven poetry began with the Imagism movement in the early twentieth century. The movement began with poets such as Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) and eventually dovetailed into the Modernist movement as exemplified by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, for which Ezra Pound was the editor. There are three basic rules that the imagists followed:
Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective.
To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.
Ezra Pound’s most famous application of this concept was the poem: In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. The concept, as exemplified in Metro, was to reduce a poem down to its most essential images, leaving out all the chaff that traditional poetry, especially iambic pentameter, seems so prone to. This does not mean that most poems should only be two lines, but rather that poetry should not waste time or space.
The Imagist and Modernist movements led to today’s widespread use of free verse rather than meter and rhyme. While the Imagist movement itself was fairly short-lived and not widely embraced (Wallace Stevens famously commented that “Not all objects are equal. The vice of imagism was that it did not recognize this”) it opened up the possibilities of poetry and influenced future movements such as the Objectivists and the Beats.
Assignment:
Title should suggest the place or thing on which you are meditating.
The first line should concentrate on one portion of the whole thing you've identified in your title.
Notice that the first line is 12 syllables (5 + 7 or akin to the first two lines of a haiku).
The second line should compare that portion of the whole thing you've identified in your tile with something else. The comparison should be figurative rather than literal, and you should use a metaphor.
Write a sonnet. Subject matter is up to you. It can be "sugared" and romantic in subject matter, or you might take your cue from contemporary versions we looked at in your reading packet. Minimal requirements include:
14 lines
mainly iambic pentameter (u /)
a rhyme scheme and sections (octet and sestet or 3 quatrains and a couplet) that is suggestive of the rhyme and section requirements of one these specific types of sonnet:
Petrarchan/Italian Sonnet
Shakespearian/English Sonnet
Spenserian Sonnet
*SEE CLASS NOTES FOR SPECIFIC DETAILS...OR CONSULT YOUR TEXTBOOK.*
Assignment: Write the poem you didn't write for blog assignment #11. So if you wrote a sestina, write an ode. If you wrote an ode, write a sestina. For instructions, see instructions provided in blog assignment #11.
Some of you may have seen the film, American Beauty. It contains an odd but powerful scene in which one of the characters admits to filming 15 minutes of video footage of a plastic bag. In some ways, this scene is a visualization of the ode poem.
ASSIGNMENT CHOICE #1: Try writing an ode to something unexpected: a plastic bag, traffic jams, divorce, the flu, a cockroach, etc. Challenge yourself to describe your chosen object or idea through flourishes of romantic language. Aim to convince your reader of the true and hidden worth you've discovered. As for form, try your hand at the "skinny" lines favored by Pablo Neruda and Gary Soto (see below).
Step 1: Familiarize yourself with the purpose and history of the ode.The ode is about celebration and reverence.
"Ode" comes from the Greek aeidein, meaning to sing or chant. The ancient Greeks and Romans often sang their odes in celebration of great athletes, memorable events and magnificent places. Originally it was accompanied by music and dance; it was meant for public consumption. Later it evolved into something more meditative and private.The subject matter became less a matter of greatness or opulence and more a matter making the ordinary extraordinary.
There are three typical types of odes: the Pindaric, Horatian, and Irregular. The Pindaric is named for the ancient Greek poet Pindar, who is credited with inventing the ode. Pindaric odes were performed with a chorus and dancers, and often composed to celebrate athletic victories. They contain a formal opening, or strophe, of complex metrical structure, followed by an antistrophe, which mirrors the opening, and an epode, the final closing section of a different length and composed with a different metrical structure. The William Wordsworth poem "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" is a very good example of an English language Pindaric ode. It begins:
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The Horatian ode, named for the Roman poet Horace, is generally more tranquil and contemplative than the Pindaric ode. Less formal, less ceremonious, and better suited to quiet reading than theatrical production, the Horatian ode typically uses a regular, recurrent stanza pattern. An example is the Allen Tate poem "Ode to the Confederate Dead," excerpted here:
Row after row with strict impunity
The headstones yield their names to the element,
The wind whirrs without recollection;
In the riven troughs the splayed leaves
Pile up, of nature the casual sacrament
To the seasonal eternity of death;
Then driven by the fierce scrutiny
Of heaven to their election in the vast breath,
They sough the rumour of mortality.
The Irregular ode has employed all manner of formal possibilities, while often retaining the tone and thematic elements of the classical ode. For example, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats was written based on his experiments with the sonnet. Other well-known odes include Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," Robert Creeley's "America," Bernadette Mayer's "Ode on Periods," and Robert Lowell's "Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket."
Step 2: Watch this video of Lucille Clifton's poem, "Homage to my Hips":
Step 3: Read these poems by Pablo Neruda and Gary Soto:
Ode to my Socks
by Pablo Neruda
Maru Mori brought me a pair of socks that she knit with her shepherd's hands.
Two socks as soft as rabbit fur.
I thrust my feet inside them as if they were two little boxes knit from threads of sunset and sheepskin.
My feet were two woolen fish in those outrageous socks, two gangly, navy-blue sharks impaled on a golden thread, two giant blackbirds, two cannons:
thus were my feet honored by those heavenly socks.
They were so beautiful I found my feet unlovable for the very first time, like two crusty old firemen, firemen unworthy of that embroidered fire, those incandescent socks.
Nevertheless I fought the sharp temptation to put them away the way schoolboys put fireflies in a bottle, the way scholars hoard holy writ.
I fought the mad urge to lock them in a golden cage and feed them birdseed and morsels of pink melon every day.
Like jungle explorers who deliver a young deer of the rarest species to the roasting spit then wolf it down in shame, I stretched my feet forward and pulled on those gorgeous socks, and over them my shoes.
So this is the moral of my ode: beauty is beauty twice over and good things are doubly good when you're talking about a pair of wool socks in the dead of winter.
Ode to Pablo’s Tennis Shoes by Gary Soto
They wait under Pablo’s bed,
Rain-beaten, sun-beaten,
A scuff of green
At their tips
From when he fell
In the school yard.
He fell leaping for a football
That sailed his way.
But Pablo fell and got up,
Green on his shoes,
With the football
Out of reach.
Now it’s night.
Pablo is in bed listening
To his mother laughing
to the Mexican novelas on TV.
His shoes, twin pets
That snuggle his toes,
Are under the bed.
He should have bathed,
But he didn’t.
(Dirt rolls from his palm,
Blades of grass
Tumble from his hair.)
He wants to be
Like his shoes,
A little dirty
From the road,
A little worn
From racing to the drinking fountain
A hundred times in one day.
It takes water
To make him go,
And his shoes to get him
There. He loves his shoes,
Cloth like a sail,
Rubber like
A lifeboat on rough sea.
Pablo is tired,
Sinking into the mattress.
His eyes sting from
Grass and long words in books.
He needs eight hours
Of sleep
To cool his shoes,
The tongues hanging
Out, exhausted.
Ode to Pomengranates
by Gary Soto
Just as fall
Turns the air
And the first
Leaves begin
To parachute
To the ground,
The pomegranate
Bursts a seam
And the jewels
Wind a red message.
The Garcia brothers
Have been waiting.
All summer
They have lived
On candies and plums,
Bunches of grapes
From their tio
In the San Joaquin Valley.
Now it’s time
On this bright Saturday
When they’ll jump
The fence of Mrs. Lopez
And pluck off
Six pomegranates.
It’s six sins
Against them,
But they just can’t help
Themselves.They
Love that treasure
Of jewels glistening
Through cracked husks.
Sitting at a curb,
The Garcia bite
Into the pomegranates,
And their mouths
Fill with the shattered
Sweetness.The blood
Of the fruit runs
Down to their elbows,
Like a vein,
Like a red river,
Like a trail of red ants.
They eat without talking.
When they finish
With four of the six
Pomegranates,
Their mouths are red.
As the laughter of clowns.
And they are clowns.
Mrs. Lopez has been watching
Them from the windows.
She can see that they
Are boys who live
By the sweet juice on tongues.
From her porch,
She winds up
Like a pitcher
And hurls a pomegranate.
It splatters
In the road,
A few inches from them,
The juice flying up
Like blood.
The boys run down
The street,
With shame smeared
On their dirty faces.
Ode to La Tortilla
by Gary Soto
They are flutes
When rolled, butter
Dripping down my elbow
As I stand on the
Front lawn, just eating,
Just watching a sparrow
Hop on the lawn,
His breakfast of worms
Beneath the green, green lawn,
worms and a rip of
Tortilla I throw
At his thorny feet.
I eat my tortilla,
Breathe in, breathe out,
And return inside,
wiping my oily hands
On my knee-scrubbed jeans.
The tortillas are still warm
In a dish towel,
Warm as gloves just
Taken off, finger by finger.
Mamá is rolling
Them out.The radio
On the window sings,
El cielo es azul . . .
I look in the black pan:
The face of the tortilla
With a bubble of air
Rising.Mamá
Tells me to turn
It over, and when
I do, carefully,
It's blistered brown.
I count to ten,
Uno, dos, tres . . .
And then snap it out
Of the pan.the tortilla
Dances in my hands
As I carry it
To the drainboard,
Where I smear it
With butter,
The yellow ribbon of butter
That will drip
Slowly down my arm
When I eat on the front lawn.
The sparrow will drop
Like fruit
From the tree
To stare at me
With his glassy eyes.
I will rip a piece
For him.He will jump
On his food
And gargle it down,
Chirp once and fly
Back into the wintry tree.
Key words in describing a sestina are "obsession," "repetition," and "complexity." The poetry form is attributed to Arnaut Daniel, the Provencal troubadour of the twelfth century. The name "troubadour" likely comes from trobar, which means "to invent or compose verse." The troubadours sang their verses accompanied by music and were quite competitive, each trying to top the next in wit, as well as complexity and difficulty of style. Troubadours often wrote poems about courtly love. Later, the sestina migrated to Italy, whereDanteandPetrarchpracticed the form with great reverence for Daniel, who, as Petrarch said, was "the first among all others, great master of love."
ASSIGNMENT CHOICE #2: Write a sestina. A sestina consists of 39 lines. Those 39 lines should be broken up into 6 (SIX) stanzas and a 3-line envoi. The end-words of the first stanza through get repeated in different patterns throughout the next 5 stanzas and the three-line envoi. The form is as follows, where each numeral indicates the stanza position and the letters represent end-words:
The envoi, sometimes known as the tornada, must also include the remaining three end-words, BDF, in the course of the three lines so that all six recurring words appear in the final three lines. In place of a rhyme scheme, the sestina relies on end-word repetition to effect a sort of rhyme.
STEP 1: It might help to preselect the 6 words that you'd like to be emphasizing in various patterns at the end of your 39 lines. Most of the time, you want those to be nouns or verbs. Some poets find it helpful to choose words that are HOMOGRAPHS - words that have the same spelling but are pronounced differently and have different meanings. This allows a poet to use the same word but to extract multiple meanings from that word. You'll find a link to some examples of homographs:HERE
STEP 2: Once you've selected the 6 words, you might want to use the Sestina Generator website. Plug in your 6 words, and the sestina generator will do all the work for you of showing you how the end of each of your stanzas will look. You can find the sestina generator at: http://dilute.net/sestinas/
STEP 3: To get a feel for the form, read some examples of sestinas. Ezra Pound and John Ashbery were poets who took on the form. See Pound's "Sestina: Altaforte."Pound chose: "peace," "music," "clash," "opposing," "crimson," and "rejoicing." The words, while general enough to lend themselves to multiple meanings, are common enough that they also present Pound with the difficult task of making every instance fresh. Here are the first two stanzas (after a prefatory stanza which sets the scene):
I Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace. You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let's to music! I have no life save when the swords clash. But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson, Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.
II In hot summer have I great rejoicing When the tempests kill the earth's foul peace, And the lightnings from black heav'n flash crimson, And the fierce thunders roar me their music And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing, And through all the riven skies God's swords clash.
For the sake of this assignment, I'd like you to practice the point-by-point comparison structure we talk about in class in order to talk about similarities and differences you find in how TWO of these 3 short stories talk about work:
"Orientation" by Daniel Orozco
"A & P" - John Updike
"Bartleby, the Scrivener" by Herman Melville
I'm not interested in a comparison in plot, as obviously the plots are very different. Instead, I'm interested in the author's treatment of a theme: work. What kind of arguable claims or underlying messages are these two authors building regarding that theme? What does each author want his reader to understand about what it means to work?
In answering these questions, I'd like you to offer a total of 3 paragraphs. Each paragraph should follow this structure:
Write a topic sentence that identifies the nature of your comparison. What is being compared?
Make a claim about what "Orientation" does and provide textual evidence as proof. Quote. Supply parenthetical page numbers for where you found the data.
Make a claim about what "Bartleby, the Scrivener" does and provide textual evidence as proof. Quote. Supply parenthetical page numbers for where you found the data.
End the paragraph by talking about the significance of the comparison. Try to answer: So what? and What's the effect of that?
If it's helpful, you might think of your comparisons as a means of answering one or more of the following questions:
What do these stories tell us about the role of a boss or manager?
What are we meant to understand about interactions between co-workers?
What do these stories say about productivity or lack of productivity?
What do these stories say about the value of a job for the individual?
