Calisthenics, Week 7

Remembrance of Who I Am
-Britney Spears

No more chains
That you gave me.
Enough of pain
Now I'm craving
Something sweet, so delight
How do you stand sleeping at night?

Silly patterns that we follow
You pull me in
I'm being swallowed.
By the ones you think you love
They pull you down
You can't see up above.

Manipulation is the key
They screw it in
Because you're naive.

You come to me now
Why do you bother?
Remember the Bible
The sins of the Father.
What you do
You pass down
No wonder why
I lost my crown.


--------------------------------------------


Garbage Man


No more loose trash
That you leave in the can.
Enough of the banana peels
That don’t make it inside the bag.
Now I’m jogging
Up the street, hiding
From your son with the forgotten
sack. Something rancid in his face
Tells me its from a baby’s room.
How do you stand sleeping at night?
Those weekly patterns that we follow
You pull me in
I'm being swallowed.
By the garbage you think you love.
The trash can pull you down
You can't see up above.
Family is the key, the more
Kids, the more waste.
They pile it in
Because they’re naive.
You come to me now,
Why do you bother?
Remember the 60s,
The sins of the supermarket?
What do you pass down?
No wonder why
I lost my union card.

Response to student journal, Week 7

Randie,
This draft owns a great deal of valuable language that I think you can gather for an even tighter revision. Some of the best, most interesting lines in the draft are: my family standing together like paper dolls, looking back, my father could never look us straight in the eye, Spike, the Boston Terrier, trying to escape my sister’s grasp, her eyes always droop at the sight of a camera, etc. I think that these lines are great and you could even condense them a little bit further. For example, “Remembering that chimera of my family standing together like the paper dolls I used to cut out of stationary paper, bits of our address still peeking out from their feet.” This is a huge sentence! What about: In the photo, my family stands together like a chair of paper dolls. I like the part about the address peeking out from under their feet, but I really think that may not fit. I like the idea of a chain of paper dolls, because it seems this family is connected (like all families), but brittle and easy to tear. Another suggestion for condensing would be for the line: Looking back at how my father could never look us straight in the eye, his back always turned from us. You have look twice in the line. You could have thinking back or just leave it out all together, because it is understood that the speaker is looking back by the sheer act of viewing an old photo. What if it where something like, My father never could look us in the eye, his back always turned from us in every memory. Great possibilities here.

Sign inventory, Week 7

Empire of Dreams
-Charles Simic

*The poem notes several moments of negatation or a lack of something: I’m on a street corner where I shouldn’t be, alone and coatless, I am afraid to put [the mask] on, etc.

*The first line sets the poem in the “always present,” because it is always evening every time the speaker opens his dream book.

*The speaker’s dream is riddled with war/occupied terminology: in an occupied country, hour before curfew, all the houses are dark, storefronts gutted, on a street corner where I shouldn’t be, the speaker has to wear a mask.

*The title lends to a controlled environment in the speaker’s dream with Empire.

*The poem is set in an ominous light: hour before curfew, all the houses are dark, he is going out looking for a black dog, he wears “a kind of Halloween” mask.

*There are not many concrete details in the poem other than Halloween; the reminder of the poem is more general: in an occupied country, a small provincial city, I am on a street corner where I shouldn’t be, etc.

*The Halloween mask gives concern to the speaker’s need for concealment.

*The speaker and the dog have some kind of special connection because the dog only answers to “my whistle.”

*By looking for the dog, the speaker puts himself in a sense of danger, because he is out in the city at night when he shouldn’t be; and he is cutting it close to curfew.

*The speaker has the option to conceal himself with the Halloween mask, but is afraid to do so.

Improv, Week 7

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
-James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distance of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

---------------------------------------------------------------


Next to my bed, I watch a fly flirt with the rim
Of the coffee cup, the dog sleeps at my feet,
And a breeze lulls through the window.
Downstairs the children rattle their breakfast
Plates, the T.V. shrills just above their voices,
Somewhere a door slams.
Above the dresser hangs a necklace on a nail,
Wrapped in a coat of light from the window.
Last year’s dust still layers the picture frames.
I prop myself up, pull the covers to my chest,
A daughter barges into the room for lunch money.
I have nothing but this life.

Junkyard Quotes 1-4, Week 7

"The pint-sized house of worship was built in 1989, and is just 3 feet by 6 feet and has only two seats."

"the tree's branches are draped with footwear"

-best roadside attractions

"Look at a satellite picture of Russia"
-The Washington Post

"A picture of a dog on a bike serves no social purpose"

Free entry, Week 7

There is a blue gleam in the alcohol
that swims in your eyes. I find it irresistible
not to put a straw in you and drink.
I want to put you in a pond so see if you will
float. It will only take a gentle heave
before you find yourself in a sea of starlight
and lily pads. I want to make a paper doll
of you, to keep in my nightstand to use
as a bookmark. I want to take you home
just as you are, but the empty glass in your hand
tells us we’re come to the end of the night.

I consider the flavor of your favorite ice cream,
what color it is against your tongue as I hug you
goodnight and hail a cab. You tell me not to
be so melodramatic-that there’s another bar
down the street. I consider this.
When something this good is happening,
you say, there isn’t any way to stop.
You haven’t been home in five months,
I remind you, our six-year-old started wetting the bed.

Now, I want to be the woman you took to bed
last fall, the leggy waitress with the birthmark
behind her ear. I want to remember the night
I found out, so that tonight I get in the cab.
I consider telling you that your mother called,
Thanksgiving is at Aunt Pauline’s this year.
I wondered why we never told her why
our six-year-old started wetting the bed.

Pedagogy forum, Week 6

One thing that I have been pondering over the past week or so is how to get students to understand how to give the best construction criticism to help peers in a workshop environment. This question stems from obsevering student comments in our own poetry workshop and working with Amy Ellison in 1101 English. There have been a few days of workshopping sign inventories as well as outlines from future essays in 1101 and more often than not students are afraid to ask questions of a peer’s paper. I think that the most important thing to do as an instructor is to push the students to ask questions and then based upon those questions ask themselves if it can be answered with evidence from the text. In a creative writing workshop it seems sometimes that there is an extra layer of inhibition when the work examined is thought to be “personal.” How can the myth be overcome? The myth of “well you’re the writer and if that’s how you wrote it then by all means keep it that way,” seems so hard for students to overcome. What is the reluctance for students to let this myth go?

Student repsonse, Week 6

Zac,

I really agree with your comment here, I think there is a tremendous amount of expectation for young students to read a poem and tell a teacher or write in an essay "what it all means." There is a great myth about there being one grand and ultimate meaning to a poem, but that is just not the case. Thinking small with the aid of sign inventory-ing really helps students, as you were saying, tackle the text in front of them. I have even found working with numerous students at the Writing Center here on campus that with most texts (not just poetry, but fiction, advertisements, film, etc) they have a difficult time narrowing down the focus of an essay when analyzing a text. I think that once students can begin to see that there are numerous, differing meanings to a text then they will be better able to pick one they agree most with and have the most evidence from the text to back it up, the technique of inventory-ing a text will be a great tool in making students better readers of a poem.

Sign inventory, Week 6

Morning Song
-Sylvia Plath


*The poem features a mixture of numerous elements of physical and enironvmental structure: statue, walls, the cloud, mirror, sea, window, etc.

*The poem is written in complete sentences except for "New statue," found in the second stanza.

*Actions and descriptions are often paired with animal characteristics: moth-breath, cow-heavy, your mouth opens clean as a cat's.

*The speaker claims no particular ownership of the child: I'm no more your mother / Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect it own slow / Effacement at the wind's hand.

*There is an occupation apparent in the poem with the celestial: took its place among the elements, the cloud that distills, swallows its dull stars, the clear vowels rise like balloons.

*There is a lack of emotion at the birth of the child: We stand round blankey as walls.

*The poem owns a preoccupation about sound-the sound of the mother and the child: your bald cry, our voices magnifying your arrival, I wake to listen: a far sea moves in my ear, one cry, now you try your handful of notes.

*Love is equated with time ticking: Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

*The poem lack minute specifics, except for Victorian nightgown, the reminder of the poem center on more abstractions: the elements, shadows our safety, the cloud that distills the mirror.

*The midwife and not the speaker/mother is the only one to touch the child in the poem: the midwife slapped your footsoles.

Junkyard quotes 1-4, Week 6

"a limitation that may frustrate hopes for spray-on trousers and other garmets."
-www.guardian.com

"Dancers are trained to land softly and keep any sounds inside them as they move with vigor around the stage. Even the stages are designed to suppress sound."

"The finding complicates the question of what happened[...]"

"Questions on Congo River Fishes."

-New York Times

"Who says making a cake is always an oven-required affair?"
-Women's Day

Calisthenics, Week 6

Armor vaccines can trip quiet problems
an orbit in linear falsehood proves,
for us, lethargic, veneer, menorah.
Mule tried idling at train
engines and outposts I surprise many
larvae mourning engines of Iran.
Muslims quote bellicose passages
from counterfeit urbanities, infectious
dollars lie, lean on us or don’t.
All banquet part tables
along money foam. Medusa,
million causes mill for a quail.
Number lassoes quiver doubtless
regions, dumb totals vent
pious valium, total arid banks
impure, tantamount animals
celebrate fire.

We are ten armoring ourselves in vaccine.
The problem of our orbit, of our linear falsehood,
proves for us, veneer. We are mule tried,
idling train stations, outposts of mourning.
We are ten and our counterfeit urbanities infect
dollar signs. We set out our money like we set
the table. All those dumb totals gather,
number after number like animals flocking
to the tantamount fire. And we celebrate.

Free Entry, Week 6

I found a garden in mid-air
and occasional under the table.
We bought supplies at the vending machine
next to the laundry mat, we popped gum
until all the pink was chewed out.
This is what it means to be a child,
to be yellow and new all over
like a coward or a virgin,
like a domino in a box-unused and cold
to the touch. The locusts left yesterday,
and the church bell disappeared
That is why the garden hung
mid-air,all sense was gone.
This is also what it means to be a child,
to lose and to like to lose
because losing means nothing
when you are five.

Improv, Week 6

The River of Bees
-W.S. Merwin

In a dream I returned to the river of bees
Five orange trees by the bridge and
Beside two mills my house

Into whose courtyard a blind man followed
The goats and stood singing
Of what was older

Soon it will be fifteen years

He was old he will have fallen into his eyes

I took my eyes
A long way to the calendars
Room after room asking how shall I live

One of the ends is made of streets
One man processions carry through it
Empty bottles their
Image of hope
It was offered to me by name

Once once and once
In the same city I was born
Asking what shall I say

He will have fallen into his mouth
Men think they are better than grass

I return to his voice rising like a forkful of hay

He was old he is not real nothing is real
Nor the noise of death drawing water

We are the echo of the future

On the door it says what to do to survive
But we were not born to survive
Only to live

----------------------------------------------------------------------

In a riverboat I returned to the cave of black coats.
My oars were not wooden but stoic arms of the world’s
Oldest statue. The fingers of my oars caught hold

On the river moss and were seasoned with algae,
Drawing a wayward map in my wake. Under a courtyard
Of stars I fished for the end of surprise.

But all I found was the end of my tongue.

The stars then collected into a tight fist.

I knew this was the end
That museums from now would display.
Instead the world waited to die
As a father waits on the arrival of his children
Before his that last labored breath,

Before death retrieves his black coat
From the closet and snugs it around
The shoulders of our last moments.

Pedagogy forum, Week 5

Reading “The Day Lady Died” for class this week I, of course, had to look up several references that I was not familiar with and make the correct notations on my copy of the poem. I started to think about how this particular poem would read to a beginning poetry class with, assumedly, young, inexperienced students. It would almost be too idealist of me to assume that when a student doesn’t know a word, place, or person mentioned in a poem that they would immediately go look it up. Unfortunately, I know that most don’t. I run across this problem a lot in the Writing Center. Students, more often than not, fail to do the extra work and look up what they don’t already know. The O’Hara poem is heavy with references and not only that but the references hold certain connotations that guide a reading of this piece. These connotations are important to the reading if only on a surface level understanding of the poem. How would one teach this poem to young students (or even adult students unfamiliar with these references) that the connotations that go along with the references should be understood? There are always going to be references and connotations that students will not get without being directly informed or looking them up, but this piece seems heavily invested with an almost “stilted” reading—it is very aware of its own “intellectualness.”

Sign inventory, Week 5

Retrospect in the Kitchen
-Maxine Kumin

*The "you" addressed in the poem is addressed also as Earth Wizard and Limb Lopper.

*The poem exhibits barriers not only in life and death, but time: "stand at midnight-nine o'clock / your time".

*The speaker plans to ingest "things / unsaid" between herself and the you.

*The speaker is concerned with numerical markers and is also concerned with quanities: "forty pounds of plums," "three thousand miles," "stand at midnight," "nine o'clock your time," and "the fourth day of your death."

*Culinary items act as a connection to the speaker and the you: "I pick / forty pounds of plums from your tree," "putting some raveled things / unsaid between us into a boiling pot / of cloves, cinnamon, sugar."

*The final couplet is the only sentence that is incomplete and the least correct grammatically.

*The first two stanzas are one long sentence, the three stanza poem is composed of two sentences.

*The poem is focused on specifics (40 pds., DC 10, 3,000 miles, 4th day of your death, cloves, cinnamon, sugar, etc) yet the speaker just puts "some raveled things unsaid" into the boiling pot.

*There is a concentration on physical and intimate distance in this poem: three thousand miles and things unsaid between us.

*The you, the poem's deceased is referred as "behind" the speaker, she stands at midnight whereas the "you" would have been only at nine o'clock.

Response to classmate's journal, Week 5

Rachel,

I love this exercise that you have given yourself to find unexpected language. You have found some truly fresh images and revisited language in a new light. What really strikes me as interesting is:"the straggling wish of park rangers". A straggling wish is totally unexpected, at least for me, and I think that you could go even further with this exercise: the straggling wish of the gate, the straggling wish of chickens, of first cousins, of wildlife, and see where that exercise takes you from there. I would suggest to reconsider some other things in this draft too: fire and water never do the trick--fire and water is an expected combo and "never do[es] the trick is somewhat cliche. I think its awesome that realize a recurring "expectation(s)" in your drafts and you are addressing it through various other exercises. Sometimes, I've been told by other poets, that when you revise a draft it helps some days to not look at the whole thing, but put on your "verb glasses," or "syntax glasses," or "line break glasses,"--you get the point. Awesome work. I love what you've come up with here.

Improv, Week 5

Bread
(excerpt)
-W.S. Merwin


Each face in the street is a slice of bread
wandering on
searching

somewhere in the light the true hunger
appears to be passing them by
they clutch

have they forgotten the pale caves
they dreamed of hiding in

their own caves
full of the waiting of their footprints
hung with the hallow marks of their groping
full of their sleep and their hiding

[...]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Each rosary in the gift shop is one penny closer
to God
or even better,

closer to the urn brimmed with prayer.
Somewhere the hat walked out
without its head

and then followed the cane
without its hand.
Somewhere in Italy a preacher
forgot Latin and all his memories

where in Chinese, hiding amongst
the caves of language.
Prayer’s footprints are pale on earth,

next to sleep, its something
that they still arrive every night,
full of words that cost a penny.

Junkyard Quotes 1-4, Week 5

“All nicotine will have left your body.”
-anti-smoking website

“Maybe it’s quite good we’re no longer geographically close.”
“Giving an audience your inner monologue.”
-lettersillneversend.com

“A voice like toasted almonds coated in bourbon.”
-AJC movie review

“Know your apples.”

“Write it in the butter, on the shaving mirror, stick notes in the cereal boxes.”
-notes for improving your handwriting

Free entry, Week 5

They couldn’t prepare her for the chase, she had to
do that on her own. To be careful where she stepped
each foot in danger of sliding in mud. And then the fall,
never wanting the fall. In the woods she found an old mattress,
greened with moss, specked with ticks. Fuck,
graffitied in blue, covers the entire mattress, as if whoever
sprayed it didn’t want someone to doubt its purpose.
Her father breathes heavy and quick behind her,
belt in hand. She had hid Pete McQueen in her closet.
Pete now has a black eye, her father doesn’t want a slut
for a daughter. She stops and runs her hands over her thighs,
Her dress is torn just at the hip. She remembers the mossy
smell in her room mixing with her own
shampoo. She remembers her legs tangled in the sheets
and her 4-H trophy that fell from the shelf. Now, her cheeks
are pink like bubblegum from running, no longer flush with sex.
She lied when she told Pete it was her first time,
She lied when he asked if her Pa was home.

Calisthencis, Week 5

But the rabbit's foot
yellow and birthing pollen,
with the hands of children.
Women, that is,
in December when ice forms on their teeth
full of sour and wristwatches,
belts graze their dinner plates.
Until wheels were invented
the rabbit's mouth was full of night
and hummed of disrespect,
toothpicking the dirt from our routine.
I bite your shoulder and touch your hair
under the whirl of the ceiling fan.
The collective cry of the maternity ward
crashes into the bumper of my solitude.
What do I see when I stare at concrete?
Polaroids and cheap dinners,
footprints criss-crossing the pasture
and out into tomorrow?
How can you rest?
How can I sleep tonight?
A tooth that I can't pull
from the left side of my mouth
Is that the rabbit or just a cavity?

Response to classmate's journal, Week 4

Jonette,

I really enjoyed reading this free entry. There are many sturdy images here that create exactness in the reader’s head. For example, “I watch water swirl around the clothes in the washer,” and “Your favorite walking sticks still stand in the corner by the front door, leaning against the wall to listen for your footsteps”. I particularly like the last line here because it is interesting that it is the walking stick itself and not the speaker in the poem that is mourning a loss. It might be interesting to further this draft about this walking stick and/or other items that would miss a person instead of people—personal items that mourn, a hair brush, a divot in the living room recliner, the handle of the fridge, etc. Just a suggestion, I think it could be really a great exercise to play around with anyway.

Pedagogy forum, Week 4

I have been wondering ways in which to encourage future students in workshop, as instructor, while still giving valid criticism. I feel that I have the tendency to not be mean or give criticism without reason, but that I do not encourage the positive enough in student work. In talking to fellow poet, Nick McRae, he stated that he was actually the opposite—that he was more encouraging and less critical (constructively) when it come to other’ s work. We were attempting to talk over the delicate balance of rewarding and critically illuminating some aspect of writing to a student or even fellow classmate that they may not have had experience with yet. Neither of us came to a clear answer on how the balance could precisely be achieved, but I vowed to be more encouraging when it comes to student drafts. When thinking about future students in my own classroom I feel that I can be more beneficial to them and perhaps bolster their writing or their want to write if I posit my criticism in a more encouraging light.

Sign Inventory, Week 4

Edge
-Syliva Plath

*The poem is written in short, violently enjambed couplets.

*There is a volley of images and words that suggest a tension between releasing and coiling: flows in the scrolls of her toga, each dead child coiled, a white serpent, she has folded, stiffens, etc.

*Images of once living giving elements are mentioned as dead or empty: a dead woman and an empty milk pitcher.

*There are numerous ambiguious accomplishments and ownerships: smile of accomplishment (of what?), we have come this far (how far?), the moon has nothing to be sad about, She is used to this sort of thing (what sort of thing?), her blacks crackle and drag.

*Known and unknown objects are personified: blacks crackle and drag, the sweet, deep throats of the night flower, feet can speak of distance, etc.

*Children become white serpents, pitchers of milk, and petals from a rose.

*Greece and allusions to Greek culture appears as illusionary.

*The moon is gendered as female.

*Lines volley from short: Her dead--to--body wears the smile of accomplishment. There is also a tension between line lengths.

*The two shortest lines refer to the "perfected woman" in the poem: "Her dead" and "Her bare".

Calisthenics, Week 4

When we go to Asia i will stop dreaming
about molars and cuspids that fall out.

When we go to Asia I will wear the body
of a tiger and the head of a mountain top.

When we go to Asia you will find your feet
can't define the ground, that dirt is only

what you knew yesterday. When we go to Asia
we will die as elephants and be reborn

as the coarse split haris on a coconut.
When we go to Asia all that is unfolded

will crease itself into tiny triangles
and fill a pond like Koi fins.

We will go to Asia, we will be the children
of carpenters and learn to hammer the door

shut on the grass hut of prayer.
When we go to Asia the year is 1950

and the first manniquin will speak.
When we go to Asia we will file

into the sacred room and give up speech,
when we put your mother's heart in the other hand.

This will then be Asia.

Improv, Week 4

Intrusion
-Denise Levertov

After I cut off my hands
and grown new ones

something my former hands had longed for
came and asked to be rocked.

After my plucked out eyes
had withered, and new ones grown

something my former eyes had wept for
came asking to be pitied.

------------------------------------------------------

After I attacked you in bed
and spun like an alligator

with its prey clenched in jaw,
salty flesh felt between each cuspid,

I trusted you would drown in the sheets.
You didn't. My fingers lost

grip and broke off into the mouth
of yesterday. The skin of yesterday

is dry with sand bumping over its back.
I grit my teeth and try to pluck

each grain to collect and rebuild
the hourglass for tomorrow.

Free Entry, Week 4

Some women marry fetishes.
Martha, for instance, dallies in yellow latex
gloves and feather dusters to keep her husband
coming home. And putting them back
each morning under the kitchen sink
next to the Brillo pads and Lysol, she smiles.
Some days she can’t wait for her husband,
for his red pick-up to roll up the driveway.
Naked, she layers herself in dish rags,
each one pinned to the next and stretches the gloves
up to her elbows to stroll past all her windows
waiting for mowers to start or dogs to be walked.
Her neck cranes at each rumbling motor that sounds
down the street, eager for her husband’s pick-up.
The street lamp clicks on, lightening bugs rise
then fall across the yard. He never shows,
never calls, and Martha unpins herself.

Junkyard Quotes 1-4, Week 4

"Please wake up in the morning speaking Slovak."
-Nick McRae

"Since 1995, twenty-four elephants have found sanctuary in Tennessee."
--The Elephant Sanctuary website

"the inventor of clouds"
-Comedy Central

"Let us now raze famous men."
-rumpus.net

Response to Classmate's Journal, Week 3

Darin,

I find this free write to have a lot of potential for future drafts. If you chose to expand on this particular writing a suggestion that I would like to make that could potentially make the draft stronger is to go through and highlight and/or circle all the abstractions. I do this all the time and sometimes I amaze myself with how much I can let slip by. Like Dr. Davidson said in class though you have to write it all out first and not think too much. In revision we go back and weed out the least strong of all the images. For example, in your draft you have the line: My heart ached. As we talked about in class, think of how many people have said this and how often. We’ve heard it so many times in poetry, prose, and everyday life that we glaze over and cannot compute what the writer tried to convey. It’s hard to convey pain without using the word “pain” sometimes, but what other ways can we think of pain where the images are more concrete. I was also looking over your calisthenics exercise from this past week and was wondering if you could pull any lines from that into your free entry, such as: “I pound at my clay, I pound the air,
Lugging my bucket back to the noisy clearing.” I wonder if you could use this line and images to portray pain or an aching heart. Maybe another way to portray pain or an aching heart would be to think about the actions that somebody would do if they were feeling this way? Just some things to think about.