car covered with snow

I really like the poem Car Covered With Snow. I’m really jealous too. I once tried to create a similar scene in a short story: the character sitting inside a car whose windows are blocked by dew and hesitating to hit the wipers. Needless to say, Boruch did it much better.
She really captured that safe other-world you find yourself in when you sit in that kinda car-cave. “the stillness is such/that I lose how the day works.” Shit. that line is just too much. “I lose how the day works” isn’t that true? for those few seconds you sit in that little steel cabin and forget about the school or
work you’re running late for, and it’s great.
the she brings her kid into the scene. and he’s got those great lines: it’s like “we’re/in a closed fist, Mama./Or, it’s like the car’s eyes is closed.” personally, i like the closed fist one better. I’d maybe say “yes, it’s a closed fist” cause that’s it. you feel safe and protected and sense that the snow knows what it’s doing out there, wrapping around the car.
I also love the lines were she mentions the cardinal making noises outside the car. those familiar sounds you’re now blind to that remind you that you can’t sit in the car all day. and you probably wouldn’t want to because what is perfect for a few seconds soon may lose that something special. In a subtle way Boruch gets that idea across. that those awesome moments only happen in those few seconds that you stop to take a breath and notice them.

-wes edmond

Images

The Robert Hass quotation about Images from "The Poet's Companion" handout really caught my attention. The part about images haunting one is true, I think. Also, the moment where he quotes one of Tu Fu's colleagues, who said, "It's like being alive twice," is pretty powerful. Hass also says "[images] do not say this is that, they say this is."

I think this is essential to poetry. The exploration of images can transmit so much more to a reader than an idea can. Ideas, as Hass says, have "implications outside themselves." Images simply exist; they can be more, but they don't have to be. An image gives your reader a concrete thing to cling to, to focus upon, to think about. The chain reaction that this can cause can be used effectively in poetry.

If, in a poem, one says "freedom," a dozen different readers will get a dozen different thoughts. If one says, "I've heard the lock/Come undone/And seen the paleness/Of skin once beneath shackles," then the image a reader has is of the pale skin and of the fallen shackle, and freedom is suddenly defined instead of just introduced.

Capturing images because they haunt you can be a way to make the meaning behind them clear to other people. Getting an image down is a way of making the image that haunted you become a poem that haunts a reader, and things that haunt us make us think.

-Audrey Guire

Suggestions List

From the list of suggestions we got for writing poetry, one thing that really stuck out to me was the Linda Gregg quote, suggestion number 60. She wrote: "It is not that the darkness/ must be here, but that it sometimes is."

This line really resonates with me in relation to my fiction prose and my poetry. It pretty much sums up what I want to do with my writing. I want to expose darkness for what it is, but I want to leave people with hope. I would hate to know that all someone got out of one of my poems was that darkness exists.

I don't even think we live in a universe that demands the presence of darkness to balance things out. I think that darkness in the world is imbalance, not the leveling of something. Perfect balance is found in perfect goodness. I'm aware of what a high and lofty goal this is, but the presence of a possibility is what I want to convey when I write.

As a Christian, my goal in writing anything is to glorify God. That sounds complex, but to me, it simply means to expose the darkness for being untruth, and also relate the simplicity of truth. We are a broken people, us humans, but I would be amiss to only study our brokenness. I would also be amiss to ignore it. For me, the purpose of writing is to acknowledge my own bruised and broken nature, and to acknowledge the Christ who saved me from that misery.

I think that is why the Linda Gregg quote means so much to me. What she says is what I want to convey with all my poetry and all my prose; that the darkness is sometimes there, but that it doesn't have to be, and that there is hope beyond it.

-Audrey Guire

What I Learned From This Class

I don’t consider myself a poet because I think in terms of prose (I’m a fiction writer outside of this class), but I am getting more comfortable with poetry. At the beginning of the semester, I felt like such an imposter to be in a class with so many talented students. Everyone seemed to take poetry so seriously and put so much work into it, and their poems turned out so impressively. I couldn’t even read a poem without feeling like the line breaks and rhymes were making me dizzy. Now, I am more confident in reading poetry and find writing poetry to be more and more enjoyable.

I am still working on finding an effective process for writing poems. In my past amateur experiences with poetry, I had the most success when I saved writing for when I was most emotional. They weren’t necessarily the most profound poems, but they were easier to get out and then I had something to work with. Unfortunately, I’m not generally a very emotional person so I don’t often feel driven to write poems. Half the time I am uninspired and it takes me forever to write anything, even in fiction. It is definitely a big challenge, and I think the process may be different depending on the poem. I am certainly still learning and it is thanks to this class and the people in it that I haven’t sworn poetry off, which I am really quite grateful for.

~Nicole Bartow

Random Poem

In the 418 class, some of the grad students gave short lectures on different aspects of writing, such as editing, dialogue, fantasy, etc. The lecture that stuck with me the most was Jason Freeman's lecture on adaptation; although I used to think of adaptations as being books to film, we learned that adaptation can take place in any medium; drawing, music...and poetry. We had recently played with repetition in poems in this class, so I tried to write my own adaptation poem. This is based off of the book "The Looking Glass Wars" by Frank Beddor, which is actually based off of the Alice books by Lewis Carroll, and it's very rough.

"Alyss"

The cards are shuffled
Shuffled across the chessboard
Black and red
And I stand on the mirror clock, on the five
And at eleven I have to begin.

Eyes on the edges, colors waiting to be marched
She isn’t here but the Queen’s cards are shuffled.
Black oval heads, black hands, feet
Black lips
Red eyes
Red eyes on the clock where I stand
And everything is caught in my throat.

The mirror reflects blue smoke over the squares.
Shuffled across the chessboard, red eyes on the clock,
I move to eleven.


~Nicole Bartow

On a "Spirit ditty of no fax-line dial tone"

Bob Hicok's poem "Spirit ditty of a no fax-line dial tone" does an excellent job of taking us through a familiar situation to get to a meaningful point. He uses emotion that is familiar and accessible to us to get through a frustrating situation and reach a profound conclusion.

The detail makes us laugh and feel at ease. Descriptions like "hula skirt of tools" and "or a taser from hair caught in the drain and the million volts of frustration popping through my body," work really well for this poem. At first, I wasn't even sure I wanted to call this poetry, but I gradually came to the realization that this couldn't be anything else. It wouldn't work as well in prose essay form.

By the time Hicok gets to the end of the poem, we're waiting to see what he will do about the lousy AT&T service and he whiplashes around into a startling conclusion: the broken line is a blessing in disguise. Maybe we've neglected something crucial about nature, about a slower pace, about patience and the steadfastness of weather.

I'm willing to accept this from him because the poem shows him realizing in a way I sympathize with. I have been drawn into this moment by his humorous approach to frustration with technology and the people who claim to fix it.

Along with these things, he also uses some poetic devices rather well. The repetition of "Up to a work order. Down at a phone jack." several times is brilliant because it's not just emphasis; it's narrating emotion in a very visual way.

After thinking it wasn't really poetry because of the conversational tone, I might end up claiming it as my favorite of the semester!

-Audrey Guire

Waltzing 'Round the Lightning Bugs

Near the beginning of the semester we looked at Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" and another version of the poem called "His Father's Dance." These two examples were a great study in what Twain called "the right word" and the "almost right word."

In the two versions of the poem, though, it goes beyond mere words. It is the phrasing itself that is different. Roethke's carefully assembled poem says things far better than the imitation.

The very way things are phrased can increase the clarity of a mental image. For example, a line in Roethke's last stanza is "With a palm caked hard by dirt." In the imitation, this line has become "With his very dirty hand." There are two different realizations of an image here; one is still true, but vague. The other gives us not just visual information, but information about how something feels and even more detail about how it looks.

This is consistently true about the original and the imitation. Lines like, "My right ear scraped a buckle" are far more informative than "He bumped painfully into him." The comparison was a great exercise in seeing how much difference finding the right string of words can make.

The other interesting thing about the Roethke poem is that he doesn't have to use bigger words to convey a clearer meaning. He just uses simple, everyday language. The difference is how specific the language is, not how obscure it is. Also, the concreteness of his phrasing makes a big difference.

These two poems say a lot about three things important to poetry: the right phrasing, specific words, and concrete descriptions.

-Audrey Guire

WingDings: An Exercise in Nonsense

I Don't Really Care How You Send It, Just Send Me A Letter
by Audrey Guire


We briefly joked in class about WingDing poetry when we were talking about postcard poems. I scribbled a frantic note to myself to try it sometime. I thought that today would be a good day to see what happened. WingDings were rather familiar to me because of how much I played with them when I was in first grade, right after my family got our first computer.

When I started, I had to decide what I was going for. Was I going to write a poem in "normal" English and then just change the font? Or was I going to assemble a poem using the WingDing images to compose the poem itself?

I tried both. The top image is WingDings poetry using the font to convey a meaning, rather than mask it. The following is a poem I wrote in a normal font and then switched to WingDings. I made it short, for the purpose of space. Also, to make comparison more effective, I wrote the poem on the same theme as the WingDing poem above: communication. (I've also provided the translation, since image-posting was the only way to get WingDings on blogger, rendering copy/paste useless.)

I Pray For The Phone to Ring
by Audrey Guire


It just looks like a mess. In English, this poem reads:

Silence scares me.
Just let me know you’re alive
And that we’re okay.
But I know it’s my fault
I hear anger in quiet and
Your words sound like love.

It's not the best poem, but it was enough to see that assembling poems in WingDings is probably better for artistic value than just cryptically translating them. It sort of makes me want to keep trying, to see what other meanings I can pull out of well assembled strings of WingDings. I might have to try mixing it with English next.

Anyway. I think it's pretty cool, but any thoughts? Is this really poetry, or is it just modern art? Is it even that?

-Audrey Guire

Phone Call

Tony Hoagland has written a very nice poem here. It is a great admittance of that guilt you feel when you offend someone close but aren’t ready to admit it to them and apologize.
Instead, he admits it to us. Right at the beginning he writes, “Maybe I overdid it/when I called my father an enemy of humanity.” With these lines he sets up the entire emotion conflict for the poem. we know what he did, who he did it to, and that he isn’t quite sure how he feels about what he did or, maybe, even why he did it.
Then, the next stanza gives us a great deal of information is just a few good lines. we learn that they live miles away from each other, that the speaker has been through therapy when he was younger, and that this conversation just took place on the phone. each of these points puts added distance between the speaker and his father.
The next two stanza are my favorite. he explains that there are two parts to his father. the part he is angry at/the part he also recognizes in himself, is described as some disembodied spirit that crushes and destroys. Hoagland gives us tons of action. The second part, the part which he feels sorry for treating the way he has, is described is simple descriptive terms: “standing...in Wyoming/with bad knees and white hair...”
The way Hoagland chose to describe each part of his father shows how he sees him. As a human who can’t always control what consequences his actions have, nor can he control what other project on to him. I think that Hoagland know that the second father is much closer to the real thing, and is therefore described in completely concrete terms.
I would give anything to be able to develop relationships btw characters that well.

-wes edmond

I Go Back to May 1937

When looking over the poems in the large packet of poems we received earlier in the semester, the one poem that intrigued me was “I Go Back to May 1937” by Sharon Olds. I have read this poem previously, and did not understand the poem the first time I read it a few years ago. But then again, I was around 11 when I first read it. When I read it this time around I was very intrigued about how the poem revolved around time. And more specifically the marriage and break up of that marriage of the poet’s parent’s. The poet writes the poem as if she were a bystander in the meeting of her parents. She speaks in third person, and pleads in vain to her parents not to get married.

“They are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
Innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
Don’t do it – she’s the wrong woman.”

She goes through the way her parent meet, to their first date, and their “wide eyed innocence” when they rush into their marriage. This phrase is so integral to the meaning of the poem that it’s hard to over look. The speaker of the poem is trying to convey the thought that even when two people are young and “so in love” that sometimes they are not fully mature enough to understand the entire scope of their feelings.

I also like how the speaker is willing to let her parents go through future unhappiness and further traumatic events to occur just so she can be born. I also really enjoyed how she (in my opinion) thanks her parents at the end for doing all that they did wrong like getting married, doing cruel and terrible things to each other, and finally letting their marital problems affect the children of the marriage.

I thought the poem was unique in the way that the subject matter was presented.

Oh and this is my 8th blog post... Go me! :)

*Donya Botkan*

The Crowds Cheered As Gloom Galloped Away

Martha Harvey’s poem tells the story of tiny ponies who seem to cure sadness. It opens by telling us that a month’s supply of pills came with six small ponies, which are then played with by children and eventually left to their own devices. People seem to refer to the ponies manifestations of gloom. The line “people would smile & say, ‘This would have been an awful month for me,’ pointing to the glossy palomino trotting around their ankles” makes me think that the stronger and prettier the ponies look, the worse the sadness is. But the people don’t feel sadness if they’ve had anything to do with ponies and pills. The poem seems to suggest that misery is an attractive thing to the masses, and the more depressing something is, the more people will cheer for it. I can’t help but relate this to nonfiction novels, many of which tell the true hardships of the writer. You don’t read much nonfiction that doesn’t deal with some sort of tragedy or seemingly impossible circumstance. People do tend to be attracted to the sorrow of others, for whatever reason.

Because this piece reads so much like a story, and because it is formatted as one long paragraph, I wonder what makes it a poem. It seems more like poetic fiction to me, and I can’t think of how to re-format it without drastically changing the sentence structure. Generally, I like for poems to appear as poems, and while I enjoyed reading this, I don’t understand why it is written the way it is.


~Nicole Bartow

Cinquain

I took a creative writing course during my senior year of high school, which was geared more toward poetry - specifically, poems with a certain format. Although we covered sonnets, the poems I remembered and most enjoyed writing were cinquains. In the traditional style, cinquains are five-line poems that follow a syllable pattern - two syllables in the first line, four in the second line, then six, then eight, and then two syllables again. I haven't seen anyone write one in the four years since then, so I've always felt kind of bad for the neglected cinquain and favor them. I haven't written many, but this one is the only one that I halfway like.

"Picnic"

In the
road you meet it.
The bite of three choices,
sharp to the stab, not silver, but
plastic.


~Nicole Bartow

"How to" Poem

I found this exercise one of the easy and more free flowing exercises we have done in class; which is to say that I enjoyed it. When I was sitting there trying to think of something I knew well enough to describe I sort of drew a blank at first. Like the “bragging” exercise, it’s hard to find something that I know well enough to tell people that I know it well; if that makes any sense. After a few minutes of racking me brain for something I do well I came to “songwriting” While I may not be good at it, I realize that I do know the popular format and basics of songwriting. Below is the rough draft of my “how to” poem.


Writing a Song
Start with a subject
the subject could be a feeling or observation
Recall a specific moment
when the subject’s intensity is at its greatest
Write it down like a Jesus parable
concise.
The fewer the words
demonstrate a better understanding of the material
The story is told in verse
The moral is told in chorus
Digress at the end
with a prelude to another planet
Bringing it back with the chorus
shows the listener you are serious
Your song is a journey
like being John Malkovich
it puts another in your place
A common tactic of escaping life
For 3 to 5 minutes.

Like I said, I really enjoyed this exercise and once I found a topic, it flowed like the Nile. Again, this copy is just a rough draft but I figured since I wasn’t going to workshop it I might as well post it here. The hardest part about writing a “how to” poem for me isn’t the fact that I know how to do something, its describing it to make sense to someone else who has never done it. For example, have you ever tried to describe a pie to someone that has never seen a pie before, it comes out just awkward. The trick is that you have to use descriptions that other people have felt of heard before. That is why I threw in the “Being John Malkovich” movie reference.

Have a nice day,

Jay
Jaywoodward.com

Brandy Leigh Hoover's poem "God at the Fruit Stand"

This year's Calliope magazine features Brandy Leigh Hoover's poem "God at the Fruit Stand." I was part of the poetry staff and got to evaluate this poem before it was published, and I considered it exceptional from start to finish.

"Every time I spend a dollar I cross
off your name. It offends me to see it, like faith
is something we can trade for California oranges
on a hot highway shoulder."

The first line break severs the phrase "cross off" so the reader ends on the word "cross," which can also mean the symbol of Christianity. The second line connects the two words and the reader goes from a symbol of Christianity to removing something, in this case the name of god.

The second line ends on "like faith" and without the rest of the clause, it connects faith to being offended. It reads: "...it offends me to see it, like faith." This sets another tone about hostility toward religion.

The description of trading California oranges on a hot highway shoulder gives a powerful visual. My boyfriend Bryan and I went to Disney World in Florida this Christmas/New Years, and we bought the most delicious hot dogs and fries on the planet at a little shop off the side of the road. This image reminds me of the sun searing my shoulders and brings me into the poem.

"When I was nine, Sister Sandra cut
an apple in half and said that your story was there
in a circle of seeds. I almost believed her - except

fragile flesh, rigid core, small round infants deep inside,
and a skin speckled brown with the sun.
An apple is the fruit of a mother."

Hoover describes an apple and its seeds but she separates it from the prior stanza. Therefore, the description seems to stand on its own and when I read it, I associate the imagery with a pregnant woman: flesh, small round infants, and skin speckled brown can all describe a human as well as an apple. Hoover affirms this with the third line, connecting an apple to a mother. Hoover doesn't believe Sister Sandra's explanation of god creating life like the seeds in an apple because "an apple is the fruit of a mother." Hoover might not have considered many goddesses or dual deities many religions worship.

"You can burn a bush or part a sea, but you can never know
how it feels to grow a universe, to feel him curled
asleep in your middle, pressing your hand from inside, to weep
and curse and part like the sea to bear him"

This stanza makes two references to the Bible: the burning bush and Moses parting the sea. Hoover connects the latter with delivering a baby in the fourth line. I also consider this stanza the poem's center because it is the only one with an extra line. The second line compares the creation of a universe to the birth of baby: "...to grow a universe." In the fourth line, Hoover criticizes the Christian god for having never suffered to create life.

The third line presents an image where I find a deeper meaning. A baby presses the mother's hand from inside, which is feedback. Most people never receive direct feedback from God, and those who claim to hear voices actually suffer from psychological disturbances.

"How can I trust you with eternity when you've never
felt agony in creation, never risked
your existence for the sake of bringing forth?"

Hoover questions why she could trust god with everything when he hasn't suffered the same way as other mother's do. In her mind, god has never risked his life - his "existence" - to create new life.

"How can I do anything but cross you off
every time I spend a dollar
and buy a roadside orange?"

The last stanza brings the end back up to the beginning, providing closure. I like this poem's themes and how it uses line breaks and imagery to describe such an abstract concept.

--Jessica Murphy

Line Breaks and More...

I’m sort of going to hit on what Jessica was talking about with line breaks and my interpretation of poetry formats. I am a big fan of line breaks for two main reasons. One, I’m not very good at following the strict rules of punctuation, and two, I think creative spacing and lines breaks make the piece of work more appealing.

First I’ll talk about how I’m not very good at punctuation. I’m no english major so I am still trying to figure out when to use commas and apostrophes. Like most people I put them in wrong places and end up saying what I don’t mean. Creative line breaks and spacing takes care of this problem. When I want the reader to take a break from the subject without completing the sentence I can just put in a nice size line break or even throw in a space to make them a page apart. This way it takes the reader some time and a brief break in thought to get to the point. I could throw in a comma or a . . . to do the same but is it really the same. If it were up to me I would use this kind of creative page spacing for every written work I do, but my teaches and some environmentalists probably wouldn’t be very happy.

The second reason I like creative line breaks and spacing is for its artistic appeal. Lets be honest, when you are scanning through 20 poems and you come across one that has a nice border around it or has a unique look due to spacing you are more apt to like it. Like when eating food, half the taste is in its visual appeal. I don’t know about you but I get bored reading the same line after line format. Creative spacing is like jazz music; Jazz music takes your mind to places its never been before, it’s a stimulating journey through someone else’s mind. After all that is what poetry is, isn’t it? Well we could argue all day but the fact is
spacing is good.

Love,

Jay
Jaywoodward.com

CREATIVE LINE BREAKS

A line break does more than separate lines and start new ideas. It can emphasize meanings, change a reader's first interpretation, alter a poem's tone, and form a visual picture.

Emily Dickinson's poem "Parting" uses line breaks and rhythm to emphasize the word "parting" and it's reference to death. All other lines begin with an iamb: "My life," "it yet," "a third," "so huge," "as these," "and all." The first syllable is unstressed while the second is stressed. Then comes the "parting" line and throws off the rhythm because "parting" is stressed-unstressed. This discomforting change, a "parting" from the set pattern, drives home Dickinson's theme of death.

Line breaks can also change a reader's interpretation. In his poem "Intimations of Codependence," the poet Matt DeVore describes Demeter's tears but splits crucial words between the third and fourth lines: "As she wipes the sweet/Red juice from her fingers." We assume the tears are saltwater at first but realize they are blood when "sweet" is followed by "red," which offers a startling change of interpretation.

Normal line breaks occur at the end of a complete phrase or idea, which gives the reader a feeling of comfort and harmony. If they interrupt a phrase or disrupt the flow of a poem, it can emphasize discord or chaos. Matt DeVore also wrote a poem about panic attacks and sickness in which he uses disruptive line breaks:

"like chai tea and whiskey at 2:
00 am and the sheetsticking
humidity of fever dreams at 4:
00 like pneumonia churning
in pitch with the tea
kettle like dementia...
view like a vein tinged tunnel
vision spiderlegs...
gasping through the psycho
somatic tension..."

DeVore splits hours, adjectives that describe words on the next line, compound words like "tea kettle," and even whole words like "psychosomatic." The line break that severs that last word is fascinating because it ends the line on "psycho" and emphasizes the meaning of that separate word. This use of line breaks creates a sense of discord.

(In his own words: "I was trying to break the lines in such a way that the reader's eyes would have to slant back to the left more drastically than usual. Hence breaking up times, words, prepositional phrases, etc. I wanted to make it sort of jagged...")

Line breaks can create a picture, a form of poetry called either picture, concrete, or graphic poetry. The poet arranges line breaks to form a picture, usually relating to the poem's theme or meaning. Here is a picture of George Herbert's poem "Easter wings" which Herbert printed sideways to reveal 1) the shape of a pair of wings, and 2) the rhythm of beating wings: http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/EasterWings.jpg

I like experimenting with line breaks. Hopefully other poets will read this post and experiment too, using line breaks to emphasize meanings, change initial interpretations or tones, or paint a picture.

--Jessica Murphy

First Line Poem

DR.FARNSWORTH, A CHIROPODIST, LIVED IN OHIO, WHERE HE WROTE ONLY THE FIRST LINES OF POEMS is another extremely abstract poetry form, similar to True/False in a sense. My initial reaction to this poem is to despise it; in all honesty, I was planning to write solely of how much I disliked it. But as I began writing the title, a certain interesting quality struck me. The title is truly crucial in making this poem, because it gives the reader a peek into the life of Dr. Farnsworth. It shows that he is the type of man who can never get anything finished, and who abandons projects the second he is presented with an obstacle. And truthfully I find that fascinating, and as I’ve said it didn’t dawn on me until I began writing this. I guess that initially I more or less ignored the title, because although a title can do a lot to enhance a poem, typically the body of the poem is where the true information lies. But in this case, the title is the poem, and the body only enhances the title. The body shows how sporadic Dr. Farnsworth’s thought process is, and shows his attempts at poetry, but the title holds all the important information. I don’t know about anyone else but I was rather unclear about the true definition of a Chiropodist. Apparently it’s the Canadian/ U.K. term for a podiatrist, or someone who is concerned with the care and treatment of feet. This fact also plays a crucial role in deciphering this poem because, in my opinion, doctors tend to be a bit spacey and bizarre, especially a foot doctor. So thanks to this ingenious title I have created Dr. Farnsworth in my mind, and I can perfectly picture him sitting at a desk writing first lines of poems, then quitting, only to begin a new poem.

Daniel Pilla

true/ false

True/False has proved to be a rather controversial poem amongst our class, therefore I felt obligated to give my opinion on it as well. My feelings are extremely mixed in regards to this poem. I feel the concept is brilliant; he’s trying something never done before. As a result of this fact I find I am a bit more sympathetic with the author. By this I mean that I can’t just write it off and say “this isn’t poetry,” or “ He took the easy way out,” because if this was truly the easy way out, why hasn’t anyone done it before? Therefore I applaud his originality and the effort he put forth. But, although I do commend the uniqueness of this poem, I cannot honestly say I am a huge fan. I find the majority of the “poem” consists solely of random thoughts, which are impossible to group into a solid idea. I believe I would have been far fonder of this poem if it had come to a plausible conclusion. Not to appear overly contradictory,(as I said I have mixed feelings on this poem) but there are quite a few lines which I was rather fond of. The ingenuity behind certain lines was unparallel to any author I’ve ever encountered. For example: “there’s a number missing,” this was such a brilliant maneuver, it truly sparks the readers interest. Another great example is “sometimes I get feelings of déjà vu.” In all honesty when I read this poem the first time, and I encountered the second “sometimes I get feelings of déjà vu,” (number 71) I did get a feeling of déjà vu, and I had completely forgot that I had already read that line (number 10). Therefore in regards to this poem I can’t come to one solid conclusion, there are pieces of it I like and others which I dislike.

Daniel Pilla

instructions to the director of an unfilmable film

Tom Andrew’s poem is incredibly interesting. I like how strangely abstract the content of the poem is, while at the same saying things and describing scenes that, if we really think about, are almost perfectly tangible.
each line describes what a shot in a proposed film should be like. and, as the title states, a film made up of such shots would be impossible to make.
one line: the fifth shot is like swimming in the open sea and remembering you have to make a phone call.
another line: the eleventh shot is like a sudden precipice.
I like to spend my time soaked in film— whether watching, reading, or writing. The problem that always comes up however is when I realize that the perfect shot in the perfect film may be impossible because it is something that can’t be expressed in words or pictures, but the weird and often unexplainable feelings we get.
like the line: the second shot is like a name overheard in a restaurant. when we overhear a conversation in public, or simply just the mention of a familiar name, for a second it feels like we are part of some fleeting narrative that only exists in someone else’s world. but how do you convert that to the screen or the page.
or how do you properly relay that awkward feeling of part shame/part disconnect we get when we hear our own disembodied voice: The twelfth shot is like hearing your own voice played back on a machine.
Andrews does a great job of taking those odd moments that are usually gone before we even process them and make them familiar. each shot contains those feelings that move like ghosts in and out of us and he asks us to questions what it is about moments like that which make them so weird and enigmatic and special.

-wes edmond

Sean Penn Anti-Ode

After reading through True/False over and over again, I became curious about Dean Young’s other poetry. I went searching through the Poetry Foundation’s website that was posted on the blog and found this awesome poem by Dean Young:

Sean Penn Anti-Ode
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=178396

Although the Sean Penn Anti-Ode does not structurally resemble True/False in any way, both poems have that same “preachy” (could not think of a better word) tone to them; the “this is what I am saying”, and “this is how it is” attitude.

Let me start out by saying that this is the funniest poem I have ever read. I have always thought of Sean Penn as rather “pompous,” so I had to see what this poem was like. Right off the bat, the first three lines immediately made me think of Sean Penn’s face. When I read Young’s interpretation of Sean Penn’s face and imagined what his face actually looks like, I chuckled due to the surprising accuracy. It does have that “scrunched up” look to it. This particular line is very comical but it is also wonderful image. He then pinpoints Penn’s very whiney and uptight personality by connecting him to a child who looks as though he is about to explode if he does not get “the first whack of the piñata.” He also states that there is enough pressure in his pinky finger that could kill a gorilla. I really like how Young used the “pinky finger” concept because people usually associate the pinky finger as being weak and useless; but in this case it is capable of killing a gorilla. The lines that talk about the young brat growing up to be Sean Penn to “straighten us out about weapons of mass destruction” made me think of every celebrity who tries to be an activist of some kind. The lines that almost seem as though they are trying to give advice, such as making sure you never bump your car door into Sean Penn’s car, are trying to say more than what is on the page. When I read these lines, it made me think of Penn as an activist but also a man that is too self important to ever be bothered.
This poem seems more like a story the more I read into it.
I definitely feel the best lines of the poem are:

The second DVD only the witlessly bored watch.
Some architectural details about Batman’s cape.

I found it funny that he comments on the video by saying that only the bored can watch it, yet he knows what the movie is about. One of my favorite things about poetry is unique randomness; how much more random can you get than “architectural details about Batman’s cape”. This is also where the poem begins to go in another direction, steering away from ridiculing Sean Penn and almost seemingly begins to discuss how mundane and ordinary life is. The second half of the poem may still be discussing Penn, but it is too subtle for me to pick up on. For me, I wish that there would have been more descriptions of Penn himself, perhaps introducing what his hair looks like in a silly way.

In general, this poem is a unique interpretation of a person. I found this type of poetry to be much easier to interpret because you already know the subject matter; ridiculing Sean Penn.


----Albert Sementa

first line poem

"Dr. Farnsworth, A Chiropodist, Lived in Ohio, Where He Wrote Only The First Lines Of Poems" what a title that is. It's about as specific as you can get, and I found this poem (if that's what you even call it) by Tom Andrews to be weird, but interesting. The first line of a poem is pretty important. Well, every line is important. And when you think about it, every word, even, is important. But I think the first line is especially important. It lets the reader in on the tone of the poem, it allows the reader to get a feel for the language, the rhythms, the beat, everything. Also, a first line of a poem can just grab the reader by the shirt collar and demand their attention. "April is the cruelest month" is a great example, in The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. Why is it the cruelest month? Because that's when Lincoln got shot? Or because the weather is a tease? Easter? I don't know; I want to read on. So this poem, made up entirely of first lines is a great idea. Even though it really doesn't read too well (I tried finding some strange connections between the poem, but I just couldn't make the stretches), the poem isn't about that. It is about the need for a strong first line, and it is about, I think, the need for each line of a poem, especially the first line, when the reader's brain is fresh and his/her idea of what the poem entails is not at all conceived. I thought the best lines were the fifth, "The smell of God in wood." and the twelfth, "Say of me that I am living still." These two stuck out for me, for some reason. Maybe because they have more finality because of the periods at the end makes them concrete statements. Some of the lines, like number 9, "The sun, lost" seem just a little too vague for me, though I understand their nature as a first line, I am looking for a little bit more than a three word ambiguity. This poem overall, though, is quite interesting, and it shows how even the first line, or first two or three words of a poem can entice a reader to keep on reading.
*Michael McCune

Sharon Olds "I Go Back to May 1937"

This poem is great. Somethings I enjoy about it: 1. It is a lot more clear than a lot of the poetry we have read in class, yet it is extremely interesting nonetheless. 2. The poem has a narrative that includes setting, time, weather, characters, and a narrator. 3. The poem contains, at least the way I read it, a really weird, frightening, but ultimately reassuring idea behind it. If anyone has seen Sean Penn directed film "Into the Wild," I think you will recognize that this poem is read by the main character early on in the movie. In that movie, the images in the poem are shown on the screen as the poem is read in the background: "red tiles glinting like bent/plates of blood behind his head" (I love that line by the way), "the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its/sword tips aglow in the May air;" maybe it's cheating, but seeing the images of the poem shown on screen in the movie really allows me to visualize this poem. The poem works with characters, a girl and a guy eventually to be husband and wife and mom and dad. The narrator is there kid, warning them about the "things/you cannot imagine you would ever do,/you are going to do bad things to children,/you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,/you are going to want to die." This is a very strong warning from their kid. He or she is seeming to say that the guy and the girl in the story has hurt them, that they have dome something, be it divorce, abuse, whatever, that makes this kid question if he even wanted his parents to meet in the first place. This poem is different from a lot of the work we have read this year based on the work it does on a narrative that invites a lot of speculation and questions. The idea I mentioned earlier that, for some reason, I attach to this poem is the idea of me, and everybody else in this world, being born. Are we only born because, over the history of mankind, random men and women met at random times and places and ended up having a kid, and this kid met someone of the opposite sex and produced another one of my ancestors (I know, confusing and weird)? But, more simply put, are we only who we are because of who each and every one of our ancestors met and reproduced with over the history of man until it led to our parents? The speaker in this poem says he doesn't stop them from marrying: "but I don't do it. I want to live." For some reason that line makes me think of that very, absurd digression I just went on. I'm not crazy, am I?
*Mike McCune

Mary Ann Samyn's "Beneath Speech"

I really like Mary Ann Samyn's poem "Beneath Speech," which is contained in the thick packet of poems Matt gave to us quite a while ago. The first line hooks you right away: "--She lay very still, looking up at the undersides of words." At first, I thought this was very strange. I was thinking about words written out on the ceiling in block letters and turning my neck up and I was kind of stuck. But then I continued. I think sometimes with poetry we have to read all the way to the end before we start asking questions. Something that always kills me when I'm watching movies with my dad: whenever anything remotely vague happens and he is stuck for a second, he will start asking questions, "What was that?" "What just happened?" I find myself doing this a lot with poetry. But I have found it helps to read to the end; a good poet won't leave any stones unturned, no questions unanswered. Mary Ann Samyn adds clarity to "the undersides of words" phrase in the second stanza. "Pink was pink all the way through, like any organ might be,/plucked from the body and held quiet on a little tray--" Here I get an idea of where the poem is going. Something I learned in a linguistics class is the arbitrary nature of words, that is, there is no real correlation between the word and the thing in the world that it signifies. But when you really think about language some words just seem better tailored to the thing in the world they represent. I think, as Mary Ann Samyn writes ("Pink was pink all the way through") pink is a word that just seems like it represents the color somewhere between red and purple, and that match is perfect. On the flip side, I always thought the word "koozie" was a weird one; it sounds way to exotic for something to keep your hand warm when drinking a cold beer. I can't be sure, but I think this is the idea that Mary Ann Samyn is trying to get at in this poem (another example "Night was a starry dish."). I really like this poem because she does such a great job of intertwining a really cool, interesting idea about language wit striking images, "like any organ might be..."
*Michael McCune

How to poem

I saw that Rachel blogged about the "how to" poem, so I'll take a stab at it. I actually had a little trouble with this exercise, not from a writing standpoint, but because when I started thinking about it, I couldn't come up with anything of any particular interest that I can do that would make a good poem. Honestly, it frightened me at first. It had me thinking: gee, are you really that uninteresting that there is not one thing you can do that is worthwhile to write about? When I cook, I microwave hot dogs, so I couldn't write about any cool family recipe like the example we read in class. I really don't have any particularly cool talents like juggling or flipping my eye lids inside out or anything of that ilk. I settled on how to hit a baseball, which is probably as vanilla a topic as I could have come up with. But when Matt read his accidental how to poem aloud in class, it opened up the exercise for me. Just because it was a how to poem didn't mean it had to be something people would understand, like cooking, in fact, it didn't even have to be something real. I could have written it about how to walk on water, how to disappear, how to hook a mermaid. So, coming away from the "how to" poem, at first I felt a little nervous, but after some further thought, I was able to convince myself that just because something isn't real doesn't mean there isn't a way to do it. That is invention, isn't it?
*Michael McCune

Dean Young's "True/False"

Two things stick out to me in Dean Young's "True/False." The first is format. The second is the line to line content of the poem. First the format. By numbering his lines 1 to 100 (although one is missing (its no. 25, by the way) as he notes with no. 54), Young gives each line its own self worth. Each line is introduced with a number, its own little title, and I think this, along with the title, allows the reader to grasp the gist of the poem a bit more. I think if these seemingly random lines were thrown down on paper without an organizational tool, such as numbering, that the poem may seem quite disjointed. But by using numbers, Young helps the reader along and gives the poem a playful vibe, something that is also aided by the title. And I love the line to line content of this poem. So much of the content seems like throw away material. But too often I think we look for the profound in poetry. I think this stuff is supposed to be fun. So when I read "2. I want to break things," it just makes me want to laugh. Plus, I actually have broken things, and it is a blast. Young also throws in a little John Donne, or it could be Marlow, I forget which one, on "64. Stay with me and be my love." I remember a line Matt talked about in class that is rather striking is "68. We are shadows thrown against a cave wall." It sounds good, seems mysterious and glib, but at the same time, I feel like I can't take this guy seriously because he also writes "35. I like sponge cake," and "44. I would have been a good cowboy." The point is I think, this poem is fun to read, it is interesting, the format makes it playful, but, more importantly, it is good poetry when I read it, I'm having fun.
*Mike McCune

The How To Poem

So I really enjoyed writing How-To poems. I wrote mine on optical illusions. When I was little, I used to have optical illusion books,(the kind where the pages were filled up with little dots, and an image was supposed to pop out in 3D) and neither my parents nor siblings could understand how-to see them. I remember the trick was to cross your eyes a little and stare at the page, but with your eyes unfocused. They just couldn't get it no matter how I tried to explain it. For some reason writing How-to poems reminded me of that, so I went with it. (I am aware that other normal people probably have no problem seeing optical illusions)

Anyway, once I was at the last stanza, and two lines before the ending, it hit me. This poem could be about open mindedness. The word "Slow" was repeated a few times, and that indicates patience. When I revised it, I tried to play up this element by working with pace.

Taking it a step farther, I then re-read the poem with its open mindedness theme in mind, and made some other connections. Symbolically, the term optical illusion really conveys a lot of meaning to the topic of being open minded. Also, having to force your eyes to stretch in a direction that feels uncomfortable or "abnormal" (Crossing them or un-focusing them) connects to the topic well too. Lastly, the fact that it is a how-to poem really brings about some meaning and makes a statement about those who are less open minded or who try to be more open minded.

It was cool to make these types of connections after writing the majority of the poem. I was really happy with the outcome, so that makes me a big fan of How-to poems. If anything they are a great starting point to generate ideas get really concrete detail from the start.

-Rachel

The Class Poem from A WHILE Back

Here is the class poem we did when everyone wrote one line and folded it up to cover the previous lines...

My hair is soaked and I found
An evil eye bracelet enclosed on my wrist
Then, to my surprise,
the downpour of the ice and quiet
on my way home they sit laughing
like knives, the yellow eyes cut through
the night, the trees,the soft lamplight.
It's a perfect day for singing a song about Obama,
Or anything else,
I stop my words wishing for
the sun, and trees and flowers,
that i seemed to have misplaced,
That I learned from Shakespeare, who
screams with sorrow, "I am fortune's fool"

*Donya Botkan*

Poem for Underdog

Matthew Rohrer
This poem is really great. After the first line where Rohrer sets up the strange scene by writing that he has seen what other people “have only dreamed they’ve seen,” he writes one of the best lines of the poem: “I have seen underdog in startling full-color/on a black and white TV.” The structure of the line works very well to state an impossibility as a matter-of-fact situation that creeps up on the reader.
The poem is filled with references and allusions to drug use, some more obvious than others, but the poem stays away from being dopey (no pun intended, kinda). Even with the specific mention of “illicit mushroom activities” Rohrer keeps the poem grounded and interesting.
Some of the reasons this poem stays solid and accessible are the lines which deal more with issues of the everyday and are placed effortlessly in the mix. Like the line which references the cashier at Sears. This line presents a tangible scene and a person who everyone can picture if not remember even.
The line that follows gives the poem a personal touch. It relates an image of an odd cloud hanging over the house of the speaker’s grandparents. This is unsettling and a little foreboding. It makes the reader wonder about the speaker’s connection to his family and what happened at the house.
The last stanza is very comforting and ties the poem together. It references back to the first line by repeating the idea that he has done what other people have only dreamed they’ve done. and the fact that the line refers to looking in a mirror ties in the idea of a better sense of self-awareness and inward perspective that is often found through psychedelics.

-wes edmond

Writing Suggestions

We got a packet earlier in the semester with suggestions to keep in mind while writing poetry. Some were fairly simple bits of advice, others were a bit more complex, but for the most part I understood and agreed with many of the suggestions.

One that I had a harder time accepting was “Don’t worry about approval from a workshop. Imagine, instead, wining approval from professional poets.” I am not typically a poet and intend to revert to nearly full-time fiction after this semester (although I have enjoyed poetry and will likely still try it from time to time!) so I had a tougher time looking beyond the workshop. Although I think it’s true across all genres, professionals aren’t the only ones with opinions. Even though it made me feel that much more justified to hear that Stephen King thinks Stephanie Meyer “can’t write worth a damn,” I already knew that and didn’t need to hear it from him. I have a friend who writes amazing fiction and has never been published or otherwise recognized, but I don’t need someone well known to tell me that what she writes is good. And I don’t think I should gear my writing to the liking of “professionals” just because they are who they are. If I can write a poem that somebody can enjoy, who ISN’T a professional poet, or a poet at all, or maybe they have a particular distaste for poetry as some people do, then I think that would be more rewarding than pleasing some higher-ups. Not that I can’t be a terrible suck-up, but I would rather write something for a larger audience to relate to and enjoy. Besides that, my experience in workshops so far have been fairly serious, especially in this poetry workshop where everyone else is really quite good at what they do; I’m quite content trying to write something pleasing there.

~Nicole Bartow

Poem for Portfolio

This poem is quite a bit different than when I first wrote it, thanks to a very helpful friend, but I think it could still use some work. I was quite frustrated and annoyed when I wrote it, and I was hoping it would sound sarcastic but I'm not sure if it does.

"Phases"

Blunt, scratching
Paper clips bite;
Etching suicide letters
On limbs.
Arms and legs
Grafted onto sickly wraiths.
You wanna pity them?
The ones who just love to hurt?
The Dark, the Reclusive, the Bitter -
Drenching their bodies
In a new war paint,
Crying for salvation - understanding -
Through the sunlight.
Through makeshift wire knives,
They carve superficial please for attention.
Writing their own obituaries,
While humming joyous madrigals of sorrow.
Don't you want to hug them?
Dry their Visine tears?
Then succumb and join the thriving cult;
Carve the mantras into a leg.
It's the cool thing to do.

~Nicole Bartow

Waiting for my foot to ring

After reading and commenting on Grooming and My New Neighbor, I have definitely gotten used to Bob Hicok’s style of writing. I know I have said this before, but if his poems are not a great representation of a stream of consciousness then I do not know what is. Waiting for my foot to ring is no exception. If I had to describe this poem as a whole, it almost seems that each line represents a different reaction to an ink blot test. It may sound strange, but I have no other way to describe the sheer randomness of this poem. Although I feel this way, the first fifteen or so lines actually produce a remarkable image. The first two lines depict a man worrying/thinking about someone having surgery on their stomache. Instead of making this image simple, Hicok makes the voice of the poem wonder whether his stomach is being held by a nurse or placed on a table “built to hold the stomach.” A strange image for sure, but it definitely held my attention. The next two lines read:

The operation began an hour ago when an eastern blue jay
landed on the gate that belonged to a fence years gone.

These two lines, for me, were my favorite of the entire poem. First off, they depict a clear image of an eastern blue jay perching on a gate. But these lines also reference back to the operation in the first two lines. I was unable to connect the operation to the timing of the blue jay on the fence, but then I realized how simple it really was. Instead of saying the operation began an hour ago, the voice of the poem linked the timing of the operation to an event he remembers happening an hour ago. This may be too simple to comment on but I could relate to this phenomenon quite well. How true is it that when something memorable happens, we can remember even the most subtle of details. I could imagine that the voice of the poem would not have remembered this bird if he would not have had the operation on his mind.

It’s interesting because as I write down my thoughts about this poem, it seems to be making more sense to me. The multitude of strange images may represent the strange things we notice when we are worried about someone or something. This point is even further strengthened through the line, “It could be true that most operations are common;” this shows that the voice is obviously worried about the operation and is convincing himself that it is common surgery and it will turn out fine. The ending just seems too perfect now, “This is the working hypothesis of my waiting.” After placing all of the pieces together, you learn the person having surgery is his father.

The title obviously points to the line in the poem that says the voice of the poem has his foot on the phone he stole from the University of Michigan. The phone is described as black with a dial; like it wants to be a safe. This is why I have taken a liking to Hicok’s writing; he does such a fantastic job of turning the mundane into the extraordinary.

-----Albert Sementa

The Progress of my Poetry

I don't usually sit down to write a poem; I develop it over time. I can write a rough draft during a class and return to it every few hours, days, or weeks. I've even returned to poems written in high school and revised them because my knowledge of poetry and style of writing changes constantly.

When I get an idea for a poem, I plan it in four stages: brainstorming, outlining, writing the rough draft, and revising it into a “final” draft. No poem is ever "final" though, and I agree with my Nonfiction Workshop professor Ethel Morgan Smith when she says, "writing is rewriting." I revise essays, poems, and stories months or even years after I supposedly finish them.

Brainstorming is scribbling words, phrases, or ideas. I'll use one poem as an example. The brainstorming started out with the following scribbles:

"Firestarter, Rainbird?, watching when life dies from eyes, follow back to start, Frankenstein, kill to save."

It reads like garbled shorthand but I understand the gist of it. Next, I elaborate this brainstorming with a paragraph:

"Murderer, narrator, strangle, watch eyes, (describe irises, pupils, gleam, motion), want to see where life goes (like water/drain, follow, black hole?), follow to root/source (discovery), like finding heart of death and run it in reverse, kill to save; consciousness fades with oxygen but death occurs below the surface out of sight."

With brainstorming over, I begin forming my outline in either a journal or the Notepad program on my laptop. I use the typical essay format to develop an outline that looks like this:

"I. Description
A. Strangled (eyes - emphasis)
1. Fingers (iron wires, press hard until arms shake)
2. Neck (flushes red/hot, then purple)
3. Face (Swells, lips purple, nose bleeds, eyes bulge)
4. Blue irises bright like crystals, quiver, darken to indigo hemorrhaging)
5. Pupils dilate like pools, want to plunge deep into their darkness, to the bottom out of sight.

II. Theory
A. Life (flares up in front)
1. When life drains, I want to follow it
i. through channels (crimson) that echo a pulse (feel in self, echoes own life force, parallel/repetition)
ii. to source/root and discover the "fountaining" heart of death, which lies in life.
2. I want to take that flow and run it in reverse.
i. Kill to save.

III. Death (contrast hot/active/life with cold/still/death)
A. Man (dies)
1. But consciousness fades with oxygen while death seizes beneath the surface.
2. Bloodstream frozen on whiskers, eyes fixed and glazed.
3. Don't get to see last drop of life drip down the drain inside
i. My stomach sinks. I missed it."

After I finish this general outline, I have an idea of how to start my poem. I write my rough draft by following this outline without any revision, just writing while I am on a roll:

"My fingers like iron wires
press against the man's neck
hard enough to shake my arms.

I focus on his eyes, even though
his neck flushes red and fever-fleshed,
then turns a bruised, throbbing purple.
Tighter, and his round face swells further.
A red ribbon of blood runs from his nose
and eyes like eggs bulge from their sockets.

Crystal blue irises quiver and darken to indigo
and his pupils open into pools with no end in sight.
I want to plunge into them when his life drains,
follow it through crimson channels
that echo the pulse in my veins,
follow the life flow to its source.
The heart of Death lies in life.
I want to take that flow and run it in reverse.

But consciousness fades with oxygen
while death seizes beneath the surface.
The ruby stream freezes on his whiskered lips
and his twitching eyes grow fixed and glazed.
I don't get to see the last drop down the drain.
My stomach sinks with the cold corpse in my hands.

I missed it."

Not the best rough draft but I consider that the hardest part: Finding the motivation and time to put an idea into words. The only thing left to do is revise and name this poem.

I choose titles based on their meaning and sound. This one should have to do with the source of life/death for the purpose of reversing it. Maybe intentions that are opposite of an action like killing to save lives in the end – an idea that came from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Stephen King's Firestarter. The scientist in Frankenstein searches for the source of life in order to achieve immortality, and Firestarter features a character named Rainbird who looks into people's eyes when he murders them.

At first I consider a few titles for my poem, such as "Kill to Save," "From Frankenstein to Rainbird," and "Finding the Fountain." The title "Kill to Save" sounds cliché and "From Frankenstein to Rainbird" too cluttered, even though the latter references my two inspirations. Over the weekend, I revise my poem several times and get this "final" version:

"My fingers wrap like iron wires
around the man's neck
and press hard enough
to shake my arms.

I focus on his eyes, even though
his neck flushes like a fever, red and hot,
then turns a bruised, throbbing purple.
I hear crackling and feel vessels pop inside.

Tighter, and his round face swells.
I focus on his eyes while
a red ribbon of blood runs from his nose
and eyes like eggs bulge from their sockets.

I focus on his eyes:
Crystal blue irises quiver and darken to indigo.
His pupils dilate to the size of quarters,
opening into deep black pools
that seem to sink forever.

I want to plunge into those pools as his life drains,
follow the flow through their crimson channels
and feel them echo the pulse in my own veins.

I want to follow the flow to its source
because Death drains
from the fountain of life,
and I want to take that flow
and run it in reverse.

But his consciousness fades with oxygen
while death seizes beneath the surface.
The ruby stream freezes on his whiskers
and his twitching eyes grow fixed and glazed.

I don't get to see
the last drop
go down the drain.

My stomach sinks
with the cold corpse
in my hands.

I missed it."

I think "Finding the Fountain" is the most meaningful, aesthetically pleasing title. I'll continue revising this poem for weeks, months, and maybe years. I might enter it in a writing contest or a magazine because it never hurts to try.

This process - brainstorming, outlining, making a rough draft, and revising - takes me from an idea in my head to a creation on paper. The best part about writing poetry is bringing something to life, like painting a picture or giving birth. You create something with a life of its own.

I hope this helps anyone who finds writing poetry difficult.

--Jessica Murphy

Oranges

Oranges by Gary Soto is pretty awesome. There are many things I would like to talk about as far as this poem goes, so I am just going to talk about them in no specific order.

First are the very interesting uses of rhyme. One of my favorite lines in this poem is a line which just sounds awesome because of this rhyme usage, and it starts on the fifth line. It reads...

"December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then done,
As I walked toward
Her house"

I'm not completely sure what is so captivating about that one simple line, but just the way it sounds and is presented is very moving for some reason.

The use of images in this poem (well it is in the packet about imagery after all!) is also pretty amazing. The last six lines about him peeling his orange and how bright it is compared to the gray atmosphere around him, and how someone might have thought he was making fire in his hands is very interesting. It captures exactly how my memories of my childhood are recalled to me. Some details are so extremely vivid that they seem unrealistic, and yet others are just gray and barely retained.

I could go on and on about little things such as this, but I think that anyone who reads this poem will have to make their own discoveries about what it holds, because there are tons of cool things happening here.

`Brian Michael Dunar

Farewell to Love

Farewell to Love by Michael Drayton is quite an interesting sonnet. It draws an interesting parallel between the death of love, and perhaps the death of a lover. Or at least so it seems. The speaker in the poem talks about not being able to stop the inevitability of love ending by using some morbid thoughts that link it to death. Yet being able to get over the feelings he/she is having is not impossible.

For instance about half way through the poem the speaker says "Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath, when his pulse failing, passion speechless lies, when faith is kneeling by his bed of death, and innocence is closing up his eyes;". These images, while somewhat beautiful are quite sad and morbid in some ways.

The entire poem's meaning does not seem to be sad or morbid in the slightest however, as it seems to be dealing more with the fact that if love is strong that it persists even after death, and that the feeling the speaker has toward whomever the poem is referencing can stay, even if the other has moved on, and that the speaker will get through it. This can be seen a few lines before the last quote where the speaker says "And when we meet at any time again, Be it not seen in either of our brows that we one jot of former love retain." and the last line "From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.

Over all this is a very interesting and meaningful poem about getting over a former love, and that all is not hopeless... yet it is presented in a somewhat depressing manner which makes it much more emotional than it would be otherwise.

`Brian Michael Dunar

Reaction to February

I just finished reading the poem "February" by James Harms and I must say that I am a bit confused by the way he writes this. I envisioned it being a poem all about winter and the stereotypical things that one would expect: snow, cold weather, and misery. However, this poem being how creative in that it stays away from that definitely is the reason that I am deciding to write about it.

I love the beginning, where he starts off mentioning the things in the male’s pocket: the magnifying glass, poker chips, and the toy dinosaur. All of those things considered it led me to believe that the main character was probably a young teen and he probably was a bit “nerdy”. He was also probably up late because it says he has a partially unfinished sandwich which is what I picture when somebody has had a long night working and is just worn out.

February, is an enormously descriptive poem in that for everything that is mentioned seems to have some sort of description tied in with it. I was interested in the part where he mentioned the carnations being the color of plums because from what I remember in high school we had carnations that were pink, red, or white, but never a plum color. He then mentions how the socks that are being folded are blue and that every shirt has a hat to go with it. This reaffirms the aforementioned that nearly every fact has some sort of addition to it where it enhances the poem in my mind.

The end of the poem has me a bit torn as to whether I enjoyed the poem or not. I felt that the part with the postman ringing the door to let the family know he’s late is on one hand unrealistic because nobody would ever ring a doorbell to say they’re late with that type of job and I felt the postman was part of the poem that didn’t need to be mentioned and could have been left out and the poem probably would have been better off. Contrarily though, the last sentence or thought I felt was quite simple yet perfect. The phrase “something always moves” is so true to real life and makes me feel like I am part of the story and really made me think to myself “wow, that is so right because something is always moving, whether we are aware or not, it’s happening”, it’s funny how something that basic can make the reader think so much.

This poem is definitely cute and something I’d recommend to others. Plus the fact that he mentions WV means you gotta read it! Even though he talks about sunlight in February which I am yet to see here haha.

By: Perry Wertheimer

Hate Hotel

I first took a glance at this poem thinking that it would be extremely creative, yet not as angry as it actually was. I also was believing that the Hate Hotel was not going to be an actual place and thought it was a bit comical that it was an actual place where he was staying. I found it incredibly creative how there were so many different ways in which Tony Hoagland described his hate. It was also rather interesting how he was able to find hate out of a lamp that was in his room, just think about it, how can one man honestly find something that negative out of a lamp!?

Although there were so many metaphors for hate my personal favorite was when he mentions soaking in the Jacuzzi of his hate. It was an awesome metaphor because I just envision somebody sitting outside on a rainy day when they wish all their problems would get solved yet is doing nothing about it therefore they are just getting worse. Everybody has been in the situation where they have wanted to have their problems solved however are not the one’s willing to solve it and would prefer others to do it. In addition, I felt the part we he mentions “hate bombs falling in silence” directly related to my life. I don’t know about others, but I have been in the situation where I’ve been surprised by things that happen and come out of nowhere that are just drastic and completely unnecessary.

I still am not quite sure how I feel about this poem. At times it tends to be negative and take it to extremes where it just is not needed. Nevertheless, the creativity and imagery that comes about from the metaphors really got me interested in the poem and provided outside meaning that allowed me to interpret it in the way that I wanted. I tend to enjoy poems like that where creativity is in the mind of the reader not the writer forcing it upon you. On the other hand, I am a bit confused by the end, I’m not sure if he’s trying to end it on a positive note or if he’s saying that the hate will never leave. I feel that should be somewhat concrete so the reader can finish the poem with a certain feeling. If that was cleared up a little bit I would definitely recommend this poem to others.

By: Perry Wertheimer

"How To" Poems

The poems that are labeled the “how to” poems have a lot of potential in my opinion. There is so much you could do with them. For example, they can be perfectly satirical to be able to convey a message. When I wrote my “how to” poem, I turned it into a joke about my culture. I was able to look upon the stereotypes of being Persian and turn them into something funny and amusing. I also think they could be turned into political messages that might be able to convey more to our politicians. One example of this is Dr. Seuss. He wrote his children’s stories in particular rhymes that would be fun for the child to read, however with most stories there was a political undertone. The story, The Butter Battle Book, is all about the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Butter Battle Book, perhaps the most controversial of all his books, was written in response to the arms buildup and nuclear war threat during the Reagan administration. Published in 1984, Butter Battle sheds light on the growing threat of war between the Yooks and the Zooks. The threat stems solely from the way Yooks and Zooks choose to eat their bread: butter-side up and butter-side down, respectively. Similarly, the story, Yertle The Turtle, was a social commentary against absolute monarchies as a form of government. Honestly, writing “how to” poems opens up so many possible opportunities to express higher meanings. You’re able to express what you actually think in a healthy manner.

Like the poem we read in class that was a simple recipe for bread soup, it was appealing because the final lines wrapped up the entire poem and it was beautifully quaint. The poem in all its simplicity has a heavy meaning.

*Donya Botkan*

Heat from Denis Johnson

Imageries first.

This is the initial impression of mine to this poem. The naked lover tipping the glass high and let the ice cubes fall against her teeth is undoubtedly a seductive and hot imagery to fit its title. It seems that almost nothing happens in this poem; the time seems nearly static to the readers, and what we know about are only imageries.

To set her as a character on the Album Cover is a clever choice since it easily links the poem to her beautiful image and also the subsequent dynamic melody, in which the poet also uses vivid and bright images to present. The sentence "full of spheres and zones" is kind of hard to interpret, it seems to be used to describe the month "August," but on the other hand it is on the same line with "and such a last night." However, depicting August as "an erotic hallucination" and relating it to "feverishly produced kazoo music" also connects, August, sex, music, and heat together, thus tightening the internal connections of the poem.

This poem is quite powerful and expressive, especially because of the word choice (letting nouns and verbs be stem) form and the rhythm it takes. It is also impressive to me since it contains many big words in it. Personally I repel big words as a writer; even when I am not composing a sonnet, I just find that small words are much easier to manipulate and often allows more space of interpretation to the readers since these words usually already contain multiple meanings and definitions.

After learning how to write a sonnet, small words' usage seems to me more justified. I can save the time of considering the stress of the words and focus on the other aspects of the poem. Small words seem more reader friendly also, because sometimes the meaning of the poem itself, is already deep and mysterious enough. But still I highly appreciate the skill and proficiency of the poet to be able to use such long words and fit them in a poem, and at the same time, balancing the imageries and meaning.

Chan Wing Hong

Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe

I also wanted to respond to Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe. After first glance, I would definitely say that the poem, as a whole, is rather ordinary. I remember when we first read through it during class; I honestly didn’t even notice how the last several lines were supposed to deviate from the rest of the poem. After reading through it several times, I now see how the last couple lines sum up how one would feel if they ate this soup. The line “will sing inside of you after eating for a long time” seems simple enough but is a perfect description of how delicious warm and tasty soup can be. But in all honesty, I would have preferred a different ending to this poem. I can understand how it does justice to make this poem more into a “poem” and less of an actual recipe, but it just takes way too much emphasis away from the rest of the poem. There is just so much great imagery in the rest of the poem that seems to go unnoticed. Perhaps he could have extended the body of the poem and added more steps to the soup making. But that’s just me.

Holm uses the simplest of words, but they do a fantastic job of creating a vivid image in my mind. For example, consider the phrase “the square heavy loaf;” something about the word “heavy” makes me think of the same dry, dense bread that my family uses in this special Easter Soup every year. That’s another interesting thing about poetry, a writer may be thinking about a particular moment/object when using a particular image, but the reader may look at that image and reminiense about something within their own life; imagery is rather subjective (end of digression…). What I did was, I found an actual recipe for soup (not Icelandic bread soup) and put it alongside this poem. Now obviously there are going to be a lot of differences, but this truly helped me notice how Holm took something as unexciting as a bread soup recipe and made it into a beautifully written poem. Let’s take the use of time for example. In an actual recipe, a certain step would read “soak the bread for 24 hours” or “let the bread age and dry for 30 minutes.” I never really thought about this before but I have never noticed the use of numbers in poetry before. Now that I think about it, the use of numbers and numerical time would seemingly tear the audience away from the poem. Instead he used the phrase “dry for a little” or “soak for a whole day”. It makes obvious how the writer wanted to bring more emphasis to the actual imagery than specifics on how to make Bread Soup; which seems to be the main point of the “How To” poem. Holm also uses metaphor, such as “thick as molasses” to help the poem seem less of a recipe and more of a poem.

One last thought about the “How To” poem is how great it works with recipes. Perhaps I feel this way because the example given is based on a soup recipe, but I did not feel that the topic I wrote about had as many opportunities for creativity as a topic about food would. There are so many more detailed and interesting steps in making food than there are in brushing your teeth (my poem).

----Albert Sementa

Ruin Outlasting Sorrow

im really getting pretty fascinated/obsessed with this poem.

I read it again and i begin to understand more, i think. and i begin to make some connections. but most of all i love how patient Olsen is. Maybe it is because he wrote a poem which, in some regards, is unfinished. There is no need to rush to the end.

whatever the reason, Olsen takes his time in this poem. He explores each aspect, each scene and thought with out belaboring.
it is very nice to read a poem that isn't pretentious; it doesn't highlight the highlights (get it?). instead of trying to rush between the solid images/scenes and great language he paces the poem, causing us to let our guard down then stumble into great little traps like the plane trip or the bear dissection.

the repetition of the word 'root' is very cool to read in the 6th stanza. it gives a quick rhythm to the stanza and before it's slowed down again in the last line 'climbing the walls they'd taken into their flesh'.

referring to the 'church and inn and pub and piggery' as chess pieces which no one has 'moved in centuries' is great. it seems to place blame somewhere for the lack of mobility in the immobile.

there are other awesome parts of this poem (almost every part) but im just gonna finish with the 'bear' part near the end. a scene that is very clinical, sterile and often gross is given in a very comforting and somber way. i think this is the best example of Olsen's patience. he has this great scene, one that the average person may base the poem around. but instead he waits it out. he keeps it in his pocket till the perfect time and simply lays it down. its great.

-wes edmond
currently spinning: Daniel Rossen (of grizzly bear) - Graceland (beautiful paul simon cover that (almost) makes me cry)

Bread Soup

The poem Bread Soup by Bill Holm produced mixed emotions for me. I must admit that upon first reading it, I found it rather bland (no pun intended), yet parts of it have slowly grown on me. Initially I saw it as being far too simple. I felt that one could simply look up the ingredients for an Old Icelandic bread soup recipe, and he or she could write this poem. In truth, part of me still feels that way, yet the last four lines truly save this poem in my eyes. This is because for the most part this poem is producing an image; it begins with the bread, and then goes to letting it soak in raisins and lemon slices, then the image of it being molasses, lastly the white whipped cream. And these images are very solid, because they are images which have very concrete colors attached to them: lemon- yellow, bowl-white, bread- brown, sugar-white etc. But as previously stated they are very simple to produce, anyone can simply look up a recipe, write it down and call it poetry. But not just anyone can produce those last four lines and tie them so ingeniously to the whole idea surrounding this poem. Holm has taken the tradition of his people (I assume) and has brought it to life through his poetry. He describes what process of eating and making bread soup does for him. Had he simply listed ingredients this poem would have been boring, but he chose to break each detail down further “ boil until it is a thick as molasses” or “ Ladle.. whipped cream to melt in its brown belly,” are both great examples of this. Then by stating “the soup is alive as any animal and the yeast will sing inside you after eating,” he is describing the personal pleasures the bread soup has brought him, and the potential pleasures the reader could receive if he/she chose to follow his instructions.
Daniel Pilla

Sonnets

The introduction to sonnets offered in class has been the key I’ve been desperately hoping for from this class. In all honesty my prior knowledge of poetry was rather minimal. I’ve always been a poetry enthusiast, beginning in fourth grade with Shel Silverstein. And although in the past few years I have began to greatly enjoy formal and stylistic poetry, I had no direct knowledge of the rigor which is required in their creation. Recently I tested the waters by writing a ghosted pantoum. It was difficult, yet I found its structure provided a clearer flow to the poem overall. So when the idea of writing a sonnet was proposed in class, naturally I was all for it. But when I looked at the contents of a proper sonnet I was truly shocked. I had always thought Shakespeare’s writing was genius, yet I never appreciated how truly difficult the sonnet style of poetry is. Naturally when I decided to dive in to writing my own sonnet, its difficulty was astounding. It wasn’t the rhyme scheme which produced any problems; personally I’ve found it’s far easier for me to write in rhyme as opposed to not rhyming. The true test was the task of utilizing meter. The concept of meter seems simple, but when broken down, I was shocked how many words wouldn’t sound properly in iambic pentameter. For the most part I was forced into using single syllable words, because anything larger didn’t seem to work. In my final draft of the sonnet I completely gave up on meter, because I couldn’t produce the quality I desired. The next challenging task, although not nearly as bad as meter, was producing ten syllables a line. I found that a ten syllable line was just slightly longer than I am comfortable with, so for the most part I was producing only eight syllables. Then I would try to fill in words, and I would produce too many syllables. It was rather frustrating, yet the toil which this poem entailed has only proved to make it one of my most cherished poems. I feel that poetry which one labors over is far more rewarding then a poem just slapped together. Therefore I look forward to dabbling further in form.
Daniel Pilla

Ruin Outlasting Sorrow

Upon reading “Ruin Outlasting Sorrow,” I experienced an overwhelming rush of emotions. It was shocking because, honestly, the first time it was read I only comprehended bits and pieces, I still believe I only comprehend bits and pieces. Yet these pieces have woven themselves so deeply into my thoughts that I find myself constantly contemplating them. The image of the black bear on the gurney is such a strange and beautiful comparison to a cloud, that upon reading one can not help but to say “Wow.” The emotions which were so intricately sowed into this poem are so well hidden, that if one did not read this with open ears, they could be overlooked. The sorrow he feels upon viewing that bear is depicted so simply and tastefully that I am truly in awe, as I am sure one could ascertain by the way I am speaking. Another stanza which particularly resonates in my mind is the stanza discussing the jet. In my opinion he utilized the jet to portray time, and or life. I feel this way because he states “Whenever anybody turns backward, it doesn’t delay the flight.” I look at this line as depicting those who reminisce. As one looks back on their lives, on their prior accomplishments, on the struggles they have faced, it does not stop time from continuing on. We can look back on our past, but those who obsess, lose the present. This poem has also mastered the three requirements of a “good” poem according to Frost. It has an overstatement in the first stanza by stating that “if we ever get free of our hungry world” all we will have is “The body.” He has a statement in the line “it looked like a cloud on a gurney. It looked intact,” he is stating how he feels. Lastly he has a giant understatement in the line “I still feel the desire to bury it.” There is so much emotion in that line, so much pain which still afflicts him to this day, yet he covers it up so brilliantly and simply in this line.
Daniel Pilla

Grooming

Bob Hicok’s Grooming is just as unique and strange as My New Neighbor. From what I’ve read of Hicok, his poetry is very surreal and bizarre; it almost resembles a stream of consciousness, as he writes down whatever pops into his head. As for Grooming, it starts out with the line, “I shave my hair closer to my thoughts.” This line still bothers me because I find it to be rather ambiguous. At first I understood it as a reference to the scar later in the stanza; as he shaves his head he gets closer to a forgotten scar, which unravels forgotten memories. My second idea seems rather strange but it could also mean----as he shaves the hair on his head he gets closer to the place where his thoughts are; his brain.

The most popular compliment given to any poem usually deals with some sort of concrete imagery, and Grooming definitely has more than enough to comment on. In the first stanza, he talks about the scar on his head and how it is “whiter than the uncut parts of me.” We all know that scars are always a different hue than the rest of our skin, but he goes even farther with the image by describing it as a blood pact to snow angels. This seemed to be an interesting use of juxtaposition because I never really used the words “blood pact” and “snow angels” in the same sentence. The next line/image that caught my eye was at the bottom of the second stanza where he talks about the missing girl. I found the line about the girl “and I believe in God for three seconds in case it helps” to be such a great description of how a person feels when they see a sign about a missing child. The speaker is obviously hinting at atheism/agnostic by this statement, and goes as far as believing in God for a while just in case it might help in her discovery. Atheist or not, he hints at the fact that whether there is or isn’t a God, only a divine being would have the ability to undo certain injustices/tragedies. There were a couple of images near the end that I found interesting as well, such as the ant who visits the speakers shoe as a vacation spot. The second stanza also contained some ambiguous imagery which I had some trouble understanding.

As a whole, I took this poem as a man who is getting older and looking back on his life. From the scar he forgot he even had, to the reference of “his head being more naked than it was an hour ago (reference to balding?),” I definitely see some evidence to support it.

---Albert Sementa

On Sonnets

So after many years in the dark, I was formally introduced to sonnets last week, and for the most part I'd say I appreciate this new acquaintance. (too corney? Sorry, but I love corney-ness. I'm actually the queen of corney.) Anyway, being that I didn't know anything at all about sonnets until the Mr. Matt Buchanan did some fine teaching and I read the handout from class, I feel like I learned a lot. And though my sonnet wasn't much of a success by any means, I still found it fun to write. Don't get me wrong, I found it slightly frustrating also, but overall the challenge of writing with limitations was kind of enjoyable for me. (yes, I'm aware that finding challenges "enjoyable" qualifies me as nerd status. I'm cool with it.) Though something tells me I shouldn't admit this, to make it easier, I actually numbered cells 10X14 on Excel, and labeled the rhyme scheme down the side, to write my sonnet. Now I'm super nerd status, right? Whatev, it helped me map the syllables out better.

Sure the concept of limiting, may seem like it's confining or discouraging creativity in some ways, but in my opinion, it also forces us to be even more creative than usual. It forces us to try different ways to accomplish something, and it forces us to work with what we've got. All of these things probably make us better writers in the long run. It's better to say more with less, right?? I'm reminded of Hemmingway. With a background in Journalism, he was trained to write within space/character limits and supposedly his short fiction was influenced by that. His stories often accomplish a great deal of description and characterization in only a few words. So, I'm pretty sure that striving to write like Hemmingway is a good thing. With only 14 lines, and 10 syllables per line, this is good practice.
Now word on the street is we're supposed to use concrete rather than abstract in our poetry. That said, I found that writing with sonnet limitations left me no choice. (Though I'm sure some abstract managed to find its way into my poem) For the most part, I felt like I used more concrete descriptions and words than usual in my sonnet because I had no time to drift in the world of intangible. And that has certainly got to be a good thing!

When it come to rhyming, my sonnet lacks. I thought the words rhymed, and when you read them separately they do, but for some reason when you read the sonnet itself they don't. I can't explain such a phenomenon, but I have more than enough proof. The thing that matters here is that rhyming was yet another limitation that forced me to be creative with my words. It was cool to see how something like rhyming affected my poem so much. Just be glad I'm not in the hip-hop business.

And as for stressing and un-stressing every other syllable... yeah, I couldn't handle that, but I did try. Shortly after, I gave up. But at least I've got a new appreciation for poets/sonnet writers that are successful with this part, which brings me to my conclusion. Appreciation. When I read sonnets I can now count lines, count syllables, check for stressing, check the rhyme scheme, and appreciate the work more thoroughly. Even if I don't get the meaning of the poem at all, I know the work and thought behind the form, and that's something to appreciate alone.

Overall, I think sonnet writing is good practice, if anything. And even if a sonnet is a total failure, it probably stirred up some cool phrases, ideas, or lines. As for my sad little sonnet, I think I will revise it without some of the limitations, and hopefully come out with a decent totally rad poem.


-Rachel Alberico

About February

It is a poem from James Harms in which a lot of typical imageries are used. From the first three sentences, the magnifying glass, two poker chips and the plastic dinosaur in the packet of sleeping Walt, supposing to be a child, the poet has formed a kind of quiet and peaceful atmosphere in Spring.Other nouns here include bologna, noon, carnations, plums, daisies, petals, sunlight, pine floors, a basket of warm clothes. The nouns are so
powerful that they almost support the whole central theme of the poem.

Another interesting thing is the structure of the poem. For most of the poems. I like their sentences are short and has special spacial arrangement for line breaks. This one is an exception, as mentioned before, a large part of the attractiveness of the poem lies on its vivid and typical imageries. The sentences in this poem are actually quite long, but it does not produce any difficulties for the readers to read it.

The last thing is about the whole concept of the poem. The nouns are almost displayed in a way of listing, except for some of them there are really good verbs to link them. It seems to be that nouns and verbs are more important than adjectives and adverbs. A good poem can be written with verbs and nouns only, but not only with adjectives and adverbs. It may also relevant to the use of concrete language, since nouns and verbs are definitely less subjective, and hence less abstract than adjectives and adverbs are. I do not personally oppose poems composed of imageries or narration, as long as it has good choice of verbs and nouns to support the whole central idea or theme
of the poem.

* Chan Wing Hong