Blog #20: Experimental Poem

Assignment: Re-read the handout you were given in class on 12/3/13. Select and execute ONE of the experimental poetry activities.

If the activity asks you to work with a source, be sure that your blog entry includes that source as well as the end result/product of your activity. It may be useful to take a photo or even a screen shot of your process and upload it within your blog entry. Let me know if you need help doing that.

Blog Assignment #19: Prose Poem

ASSIGNMENT: On the reading schedule, you were assigned to read Carolyn Forche's "The Colonel". Re-read that poem. Then review the following notes and examples of prose poems. Finally, write one of your own. Subject matter is your choice. Remember, however,  that while your prose poem might resemble a paragraph or paragraphs, it should contain one or more of the poetic qualities listed below.

PROSE POEM:

• Originated in 19^th century France and Germany as reaction against typical poetic form
•   Arthur Rimbaud, Stephan Mallarme, Rilke, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, James Wright, Russell Edson, Charles Simic, etc.
• Neither poetry nor prose but essentially a hybrid or fusion of the two.
• lacks the line breaks associated with poetry
• poetic qualities:
• fragmentation
• compression
• repetition
• rhyme (internal or external)
• assonance (repetition of similar vowel sounds)
• consonance (repetition of similar consonant sounds)
• images
• heightened attention to language
• prominent use of figurative language (metaphor or simile)
• story qualities: expectation of an objective presentation of truth/reporterly

 “Warning to the Reader” by Robert Bly

Sometimes farm granaries become especially beautiful when all the oats or wheat are gone, and wind has swept the rough floor clean. Standing inside, we see around us, coming in through the cracks between shrunken wall boards, bands or strips of sunlight. So in a poem about imprisonment, one sees a little light.      But how many birds have died trapped in these granaries. The bird, seeing freedom in the light, flutters up the walls and falls back again and again. The way out is where the rats enter and leave; but the rat's hole is low to the floor. Writers, be careful then by showing the sunlight on the walls not to promise the anxious and panicky blackbirds a way out!      I say to the reader, beware. Readers who love poems of light may sit hunched in the corner with nothing in their gizzards for four days, light failing, the eyes glazed . . .      They may end as a mound of feathers and a skull on the open boardwood floor . . .

“The Bait” by Jon Davis

This is not an elegy because the world is full of elegies and I am tired of consoling and being consoled. Because consolation is unsatisfying and even tenderness can do nothing to stop this loss, this dying, this viciousness among men. And god just complicates, offering justice like the cracker I place in this mousetrap. Then the frantic mouse hands pushing against the metal bar, the kicking and bucking, the fall from the shelf, more kicking, one eye bulging, the lips lifted and the little yellowed teeth clamped on the small crumb of goodness that was not goodness but something alluring and, finally, dumb-without equivalent in the human world. Just food he couldn't have. My food and what that means in the scale of human affairs. I didn't want to listen to this mouse scrabbling among the graham crackers, chewing into the can of grease, leaving a trail of greasy, orange, rice-like shits in the cabinet under the sink. I didn't want to clean those up every morning; I didn't want to be awakened in the night. I set the trap; the trap smashed his skull; he kicked awhile and he died. I tossed him, trap and all, into the dunes. But I was saying something about god and justice. I was saying this is not an elegy and why. Because pain is the skin we wear? Because joy is that skin also? Because . . . look: I had a brother and he died. I didn't cause it; I couldn't stop it. He got on his motorcycle and rode away. A car turned in front of him and that began his dying. How terrible for everyone involved. Do I sound bitter? I felt the usual guilts: Did I love him enough? Did I show it? It happened eleven years ago and what I remember: Looking out at the lawn, September and a breeze; watching him ride-flash of red gas tank, brown leather jacket; the sound of the bike; what we said, which I recall as a kind of gesture, the sound of what are you doing, some dull rhythm and see you later. The phone call. The drive to the hospital. I think I drove but I can't be sure. We drove the wrong way down a one way street and I remember feeling responsible. I cried most of the time. I knew he was dying. My brother's girlfriend asked me Why are you crying? and I couldn't say or else I sobbed It's bad I know it's bad. Then we were taken into a green room and he was dead. I curled on a red plastic chair. My body disappeared or seemed to. I was looking for my brother; a nurse called me back: Your family needs you. I came back. But why am I telling you this? Because I want you to love me? To pity me? To understand I've suffered and that excuses my deficiencies? To see how loss is loss and no elegy no quiet talk late at night among loved ones who suddenly feel the inadequacy of their love and the expression of that love can take it away? Or give it back? Perhaps even loss is lost? My brother is gone and the world, you, me, are not better for it. There was no goodness in his death. And there is none in this poem, eleven years later and still confused. An attempt, one might say, to come to terms with his death as if there was somewhere to come to, as if there were terms. But there is nowhere to come to; there are no terms. Just this spewing of words, this gesture neither therapy nor catharsis nor hopelessness nor consolation. Not elegy but a small crumb. An offering.

 “Bread” by Russell Edson

I like good looking bread. Bread that's willing. The kind of bread that's found in dreams of hunger.      And so it was that I met such a bread. I had knocked on a door (I sometimes do that to keep my knuckles in shape), and a women of huge doughy proportions (she had that unbaked, unkneaded look) appeared holding a rather good-looking loaf of bread.      I took a bite and the loaf began to cry . . .

  “Sleep” by Russell Edson

There was a man who didn't know how to sleep; nod-ding off every night into a drab, unprofessional sleep. Sleep that he'd grown so tired of sleeping.      He tried reading The Manual of Sleep, but it just put him to sleep. That same old sleep that he had grown so tired of sleeping . . .      He needed a sleeping master, who with a whip and a chair would discipline the night, and make him jump through hoops of gasolined fire. Someone who could make a tiger sit on a tiny pedestal and yawn . . .

 “The Goldilocks Compulsion” by Russell Edson

An old man wearing a wig made of yellow yarn is eating porridge as he waits for the three bears to come home. He knows they will punish him. And why not? Hasn't he earned it?                He wonders if the papa bear will simply give him a good spanking? He's certainly earned it.                Perhaps they'll make a meal of him. Bears are omnivorous. Whatever they decide is okay with him.                Perhaps they'll keep him as a love slave. That's okay, too. It's their right. Good Lord, if he's nothing else, he's certainly a fair-minded old man.                And so he waited for the three bears with an almost unbearable excitement .

 “Hammer and Nail” by Naomi Shihab Nye

"Would you like to see where our little girl is buried?" my friend asks as we walk between stucco shrines and wreaths of brilliant flowers. Even a plane's propeller is attached to a pilot's grave as if the whole thing might spin off into the wind. One man's relatives built a castle over his remains, with turrets and towers, to match the castle he built for his body in life. If you stand at a certain angle you can see both castles at once, the bigger one he lived in off on the horizon. An archway says in Spanish, "Life is an illusion. Death is the reality. Respect the dead whom you are visiting now." We hike down the hill toward the acres of "free graves." Here people can claim any space they want without paying, but also risk having someone buried on top of them. In the fields beyond the cemetery, women walk slowly with buckets slung over their shoulders on poles. Black cows graze on knee-high grass. The crossbar from the marker to my friend's child's grave has come loose and lies off to one side. My friend kneels, pressing the simple blue crossbar back into the upright piece, wishing for a hammer and nail. The cross has delicate scalloped edges and says nothing. No words, no dates. It reminds me of the simplicity of folded hands, though I know there were years of despair. My friend says, "Sometimes I am still very sad. But I no longer ask, 'What if . . .?' It was the tiniest casket you ever saw." On the small plots in either direction, families have stuck tall pine branches into dirt. The needles droop, completely dried by now, but they must have looked lovely as miniature forests for the first few days.

 “Ahead and Behind” by Francis Picabia

I had a friend once, a Swiss fellow, Hans Bonkers by name. He was living in Peru, twelve thousand feet up. He had gone there exploring a few years before, and had lost his heart to the charms of a strange Indian woman, who had driven him utterly out of his mind with love unrequited. Little by little he had begun to waste away until, finally, he was too weak even to leave his cabin. A Peruvian doctor who had accompanied him on his travels treated him as best he could for a dementia praecox, which he felt, however, to be quite incurable.      One night, a sudden influenza epidemic struck the little Indian village where Hans Bonkers was being cared for. Every one of the natives contracted the disease, without exception. In a few days, of the original two hundred, one hundred seventy-eight were dead. In a panic, the Peruvian doctor hurried back to Lima . . . My friend, stricken like all the rest, lay languishing with fever.      Now, it happened that all of the Indians had one or more dogs, who soon had no choice, if they were to survive, but to eat their dead masters. And so they proceeded to dismember their cadavers. One of them came trotting into Hans Bonkers' hut, carrying in its mouth the head of the Indian woman he adored . . . He recognized it at once. The shock, I imagine, was so intense that it jarred him back to his senses, curing him of both his fever and his madness. He took the head in his hands and, with renewed vigor, playfully threw it across the room, telling the dog to "go fetch!" Once, twice, three times . . . And the beast would dutifully retrieve it, clutching it by the nose, in its teeth.      But the third time Hans Bonkers bowled a little too hard, and the head smashed against the wall. As the brain rolled out he was delighted to observe that it consisted of two smooth, rounded hemispheres, that looked for all the world like a pair of firm buttocks . . .

“Information” by David Ignatow

This tree has two million and seventy-five thousand leaves. Perhaps I missed a leaf or two but I do feel triumphant at having persisted in counting by hand branch by branch and marked down on paper with pencil each total. Adding them up was a pleasure I could understand; I did something on my own that was not dependent on others, and to count leaves is not less meaningful than to count the stars, as astronomers are always doing. They want the facts to be sure they have them all. It would help them to know whether the world is finite. I discovered one tree that is finite. I must try counting the hairs on my head, and you too. We could swap information.

 “All Over the Lot” by James Tate

We were at the ballgame when a small child came up to me and thwacked me in my private area. He turned and walked away without a single word. I was in horrible pain for a couple of minutes, then I went looking for the rascal. When I found him he was holding his mother's hand and looking like the picture of innocence. "Is that your son?" I asked of the lady. She shot me a look that could fry eggs, and then she slapped me really hard. "Mind your own business," she screaked. The boy grinned up at me. My old tweed vest was infested with fleas. I started walking backwards. People were shoving me this way and that. To each I replied, "God, I love this game, I love this game."

Baudelaire's “Be Drunk”

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

Campbell McGrath’s “The Prose Poem”

On the map it is precise and rectilinear as a chessboard, though driving past you would hardly notice it, this boundary line or ragged margin, a shallow swale that cups a simple trickle of water, less rill than rivulet, more gully than dell, a tangled ditch grown up throughout with a fearsome assortment of wildflowers and bracken. There is no fence, though here and there a weathered post asserts a former claim, strands of fallen wire taken by the dust. To the left a cornfield carries into the distance, dips and rises to the blue sky, a rolling plain of green and healthy plants aligned in close order, row upon row upon row. To the right, a field of wheat, a field of hay, young grasses breaking the soil, filling their allotted land with the rich, slow-waving spectacle of their grain. As for the farmers, they are, for the most part, indistinguishable: here the tractor is red, there yellow; here a pair of dirty hands, there a pair of dirty hands. They are cultivators of the soil. They grow crops by pattern, by acre, by foresight, by habit. What corn is to one, wheat is to the other, and though to some eyes the similarities outweigh the differences it would be as unthinkable for the second to commence planting corn as for the first to switch over to wheat. What happens in the gully between them is no concern of theirs, they say, so long as the plough stays out, the weeds stay in the ditch where they belong, though anyone would notice the wind-sewn cornstalks poking up their shaggy ears like young lovers run off into the bushes, and the kinship of these wild grasses with those the farmer cultivates is too obvious to mention, sage and dun-colored stalks hanging their noble heads, hoarding exotic burrs and seeds, and yet it is neither corn nor wheat that truly flourishes there, nor some jackalopian hybrid of the two. What grows in that place is possessed of a beauty all its own, ramshackle and unexpected, even in winter, when the wind hangs icicles from the skeletons of briars and small tracks cross the snow in search of forgotten grain; in the spring the little trickle of water swells to welcome frogs and minnows, a muskrat, a family of turtles, nesting doves in the verdant grass; in summer it is a thoroughfare for raccoons and opossums, field mice, swallows and black birds, migrating egrets, a passing fox; in autumn the geese avoid its abundance, seeking out windrows of toppled stalks, fatter grain more quickly discerned, more easily digested. Of those that travel the local road, few pay that fertile hollow any mind, even those with an eye for what blossoms, vetch and timothy, early forsythia, the fatted calf in the fallow field, the rabbit running for cover, the hawk's descent from the lightning-struck tree. You've passed this way yourself many times, and can tell me, if you would, do the formal fields end where the valley begins, or does everything that surrounds us emerge from its embrace?

“Untitled” by Gary Young

My son is learning about death, about the possibilities. His cat was killed. Then Mark died, then Ernesto. He watched the news, and saw soldiers bulldozed into the earth after battle. Down the road, a boy his age was found floating in a pond. My son says, we're careful about water, and splashes in his own warm bath. We don't want to die, he says, we want to live forever. We only just die later, he says, and nods his head. Death is comprehensible; what comes later is a week away, or two, and never arrives. “My Invisible Valentine Facts off CNN, February 14” by Nin Andrews 84% of Americans say they're in love this morning.  16% say they're not.  No undecideds, unlike every other poll.  People are evenly divided over whether Valentine's Day matters, though one reporter said she felt sorry for all those who have nobody to be their valentine.  Even if it's true that only 4% say the day is bad, and only 1% actually dread the date, making it more popular than Thanksgiving or Christmas.  The reporter added that over 60% of women say they would give up sex for a year for a date with Brad Pitt.  But men will never give up sex, period.  No one dares ask them to.      But there was one man who said it's possible to make love even when you never make love.  He said it's possible to carry someone in your mind, your heart, to feel her skin across miles and years, to hear her voice when the birds stir in the trees or the dishes clatter in the sink.  To taste her mouth every time you talk, closing your own mouth into a soft kiss when you say your m's and b's, or harder kiss of your p's, every time you lick an l or nibble on an f, or a  v, every time you are lost and open in a w or an o . . .      Okay, I admit it.  No one said this.  No one ever does.  But I am thinking of him.  The man who was not on CNN.  The man who is not here but is somewhere far away thinking of me thinking of him thinking of me.  The man who makes me one of the 84% to be envied instead of the 16% to be pitied, or instead of the woman I really am.  A man can do that to a woman.  He can change her into other things.  Even now he is tracing my skin with his lips.  He is writing my name with his tongue.  When I wrap my legs around his hips, he lifts me up and up until we drift across the sky, leaving a trail of sparks in our wake.  Sometimes we spin on the currents and eddies of airs like Frisbees.  And he tells me the secret of secrets.  His secrets are for me.  Only me, or the woman who would never give up sex for a single date with Brad Pitt.  Who will never betray her invisible man.

“The Threat” by Denise Duhamel

my mother pushed my sister out of the apartment door with an empty suitcase because she kept threatening to run away my sister was sick of me getting the best of everything the bathrobe with the pink stripes instead of the red the soft middle piece of bread while she got the crust I was sick with asthma and she thought this made me a favorite I wanted to be like the girl in the made-for-tv movie Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring which was supposed to make you not want to run away but it looked pretty fun especially all of the agony it put your parents through and the girl was in California or someplace warm with a boyfriend and they always found good food in the dumpsters at least they could eat pizza and candy and not meat loaf the runaway actress was Sally Field or at least someone who looked like Sally Field as a teenager the Flying Nun propelled by the huge wings on the sides of her wimple Arnold the Pig getting drafted in Green Acres my understanding then of Vietnam I read Go Ask Alice and The Peter Pan Bag books that were designed to keep a young girl home but there were the sex scenes and if anything this made me want to cut my hair with scissors in front of the mirror while I was high on marijuana but I couldn't inhale because of my lungs my sister was the one to pass out behind the church for both of us rum and angel dust and that's how it was my sister standing at the top of all those stairs that lead up to the apartment and she pushed down the empty suitcase that banged the banister and wall as it tumbled and I was crying on the other side of the door because I was sure it was my sister who fell all ketchup blood and stuck out bones my mother wouldn't let me open the door to let my sister back in I don't know if she knew it was just the suitcase or not she was cold rubbing her sleeves a mug of coffee in her hand and I had to decide she said I had to decide right then

“The List of Famous Hats” by James Tate

Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all honesty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The first one isn't even funny: Simply it was a white rubber bathing cap, but too small. Napoleon led such a hectic life ever since his childhood, even farther back than that, that he never had a chance to buy a new bathing cap and still as a grown-up--well, he didn't really grow that much, but his head did: He was a pinhead at birth, and he used, until his death really, the same little tiny bathing cap that he was born in, and this meant that later it was very painful to him and gave him many headaches, as if he needed more. So, he had to vaseline his skull like crazy to even get the thing on. The second eccentricity was that it was a tricorn bathing cap. Scholars like to make a lot out of this, and it would be easy to do. My theory is simple-minded to be sure: that beneath his public head there was another head and it was a pyramid or something.

Blog Assignment #18: "A Blessing" Imitation

Assignment: After reading James Wright's "A Blessing," write an animal-inspired poem in which your observation and/or interaction with an animal teaches you something or brings about an emotional response (positive or negative) of some kind. Your muse can be any kind of animal (domesticated, wild, an animal whose story made it into the news, etc.).

In terms of construction, take your cue from Wright's poem:

1. Your poem should be 24 lines long.
2. In terms of content for each line, try to reproduce the poetic move made by Wright. For example, the first line explains the setting. Thus your poem should clue the reader in on setting. Likewise, lines 18 and 19 are physical description of the animals. Therefore, your lines 18 and 19 should provide physical description of the animal or animals.
3. Finally, pay attention to line length and any metrics (number of syllables) Wright is using and try to use them as your own.

Blog Assignment #17: **Extra Credit**

Assignment: For 5 points extra credit (above and beyond the 10 points of extra credit possible, according to the syllabus), respond to one or more of questions below.  In particular, I'm interested in the effect of the allusions a reader finds within the poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

Length Requirement: equivalent to one MLA-format, typed, and double-spaced page

Due Date: no later than 12/3 before midnight. That gives you the opportunity to work on it during Thanksgiving Break, if you so choose.

1.  Read the translation of the quotation in Italian from Dante's Inferno that serves as our epigraph, and return to it once you have finished the whole poem. Why do you suppose T.S. Eliot wants to begin the poem this way? How is the damned soul speaking his secrets from the flames of hell in a similar situation to J. Alfred Prufrock? How is the audience of that damned soul (Dante's persona) in a similar situation to the audience listening to J. Alfred Prufrock's frantic confessions?
2.  Explain the biblical allusion to John the Baptist in lines 81-82.
3. Explain how Prufrock is connected to Lazarus in lines 94 et passim? How does this reference to coming back from the dead also connect with Dante and the initial epigram at the beginning of the poem? 
4.  What do we make of Prufrock's protest that he is not "Prince Hamlet"? Why is it ironic or appropriate that Prufrock thinks of Hamlet as his epitome of a great hero? (Think back to Hamlet's nature in Hamlet....)
5. Who or what is "The Eternal Footman"? Why is this footman or servant snickering at Prufrock?

Blog #156: Can Poetry Matter?

Assignment:  Given our in-class discussion about poetry's place in pop cutlure, wherein I was angling hard to establish that poetry is firmly entrenched in areas of our lives that extend beyond classrooms, I'm wondering how you all are feeling about the genre. Does poetry have a place? Does it matter? Would you read it or expose yourself to it if you weren't exposed to it via English teachers? Is it alive? Is it dying? Can it be revived or made more interesting or applicable to the average Joe?

Before responding, I'd like you to read Dana Gioia's essay, "Can Poetry Matter?" (See link below).  After reading, I'd like you to respond to Gioia's argument either sympathetically (agreement) or in opposition. Even if you do agree with the author, use your own original reasoning and evidence from personal experience and observation in order to make your point.

Aim for around 250 words, which is the equivalent to a typed and double-spaced 1-page document.

You can find Gioia's essay HERE: http://danagioia.net/essays/ecpm.htm

Blog Assignment #15:Everyday Iambic Conversation

Assignment:  You've been told so far that the iambic foot (u /), an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, is the pattern of everyday speech. Robert Frost, especially, showcases this idea--that even when we are having simple conversations which are not meant to be especially poetic or flowery or of elevated diction, our natural conversation rhythms fall within that pattern.

We talk essentially in iambic pentameter.

I'd like you to prove (or disprove) that theory. Here's how. Sometime between now and when the blog entry is due, I'd like you to go to a public place and capture word-for-word a conversation you overhear. Perhaps this is a teacher's lecture. Perhaps this is a conversation among dorm mates.Maybe you decide to write down a conversation you and your mother have. Maybe you record a fight between you and your sweetheart. You get the picture.

Be as thorough as you can in getting as many direct quotes as you can. This won't work if you are simply summarizing a conversation.

Then....

Type up that conversation within this blog space and put it to the test. Scan the conversation. Try to assess where unstressed and stressed syllables go.

Do the work of the scansion in the space of your blog entry.

p.s. I suppose this would also work if you wanted to capture some dialogue from a the local or national news, a political speech, a movie or a TV show. If you're diametrically opposed to playing spy to your unsuspecting friends, family, loved ones, teachers, etc., then you are welcome to snag something via media.

Let's aim for at least 14 lines/sentences to analyze.

Here are some examples of iambic pentameter (or close to it) overheard in daily conversation:


"I went and threw my uke so he fell
and hit the mat with a god damned bang."


"This choc-filled bun is wonderfully yum"

"I wait and wait: my mobile didn't ring."

"The dogs were running up and down the stairs."

"I can't believe she's *always* late, and then
she goes and does it yet again..."

"I try and try but nothing's going right
My boss is hurting not helping my confidence."

Blog Assignment #14: "In the Station at the Metro" Imitation

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:

1. Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
3. 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:

1. Title should suggest the place or thing on which you are meditating.
2. The first line should concentrate on one portion of the whole thing you've identified in your title.
1. Notice that the first line is 12 syllables (5 + 7 or akin to the first two lines of a haiku).
3. 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.
1. Notice that the second line is 7 syllables long.