Thursday, April 8, 2010

Poetry of Place (Characterizing Place Poem)

Places hold great significance to our lives. Locations can reflect or even affect our own moods. They are often the catalyst that opens the vein of memory. Poets use place to represent ideas, or personify them to make these inanimate objects or locations more human-like. Many of these type of poems also deal with nature or recall natural surroundings, similar to the natural metaphor poem you have written.

Here are a few examples of famous poets characterizing place:

Dawn in New York by Claude McKay

Mercy Street by Anne Sexton

At Pleasure Bay by Robert Pinsky

Daybreak in Alabama by Langston Hughes

Midsummer, Tabago by Derek Walcott

A Sunset of the City by Gwendolyn Brooks

Today, by the end of class you should write your first draft of your Characterizing Place poem. Read the models and reread the article we read last class to help inspire you.

If you finish early, please go to the workshop folder and choose 3 students and workshop their NATURAL METAPHOR poem drafts. These could be found in each student's folder or in the workshop folder. Like before, open a draft and save it with your name on it. Insert comments where appropriate.

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About this course!

This course stresses understanding the characteristics & techniques in the literary genres of fiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. This course will continue to build on students’ reading and writing skills begun in previous creative writing classes. Readings and discussions of works by major writers in the field will be examined as inspiration and models of fine writing. This educational blog is designed for the use of the students at the School of the Arts in Rochester, NY.