Magnetic Poetry; Poetry Chapbook

After a playful 15-20 minutes of magnetic poetry, please return to the lab and continue crafting your poetry.

Please read the article on revising. Use its advice to help you revise your own work.

IMPORTANT FIRST STEP:

• By end of class Friday you should have looked through ALL the poems you have written this year (go back to the first semester for example), and revise your poem drafts. 

When you have completed that step, please move on to the next step:

• Put all your NEWEST poem drafts into one Microsoft Word document file. 
• From your DOCUMENT ELEMENTS tab (located next to HOME/LAYOUT on the menu bar) add a cover and page #'s as a header or footer. Insert a page break between poems. 
• Please make sure you create a title for your "collection" and create a table of contents. The DOCUMENT ELEMENTS tab will help you do these things.
• You will be adding a short reflective essay to this chapbook Friday. Reflect on your poetry.

HOMEWORK: Make final revisions to your poetry. 

Poetry Samples:

• Kay Ryan: Thin
• Kay Ryan: Salvage
• James Laughlin: My Ambition
• Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Twelve Twelve Twelve
• Aimee Nezhukumatahil: Dear Amy
• Robert Frost: The Wood Pile
• Derek Walcott: The Bounty

Poetry prompts:

1. Write a list of words associated with a type of music and weave these words into your poem. To challenge yourself: choose a second genre or type of music that you don't always listen to and try again.
2. Using the poem "Blue" by Reginald Shepherd, write a poem in which you assign colors to different ideas or emotions. Try choosing only 1 emotion or idea per stanza.
3. Create a list of ten emotions and 10 unrelated metaphors, then use something on your list of metaphors to describe one of the emotions in a vivid, imagistic way.
4. Work with a partner. One person make a list of concrete nouns on sticky-notes. The other partner should write a list of present-tense verbs on another piece of paper. Collect the papers and randomly select a verb from the verb pile and a concrete noun from the noun pile. Combine and create a poem.
5. Create an unlikely speaker. Make this speaker mad or angry and write what they might say to the person/object/or event that is causing frustration. Then make this speaker happy or sad or worried or anxious or etc. (pick any emotion). Write a second poem from the same speaker's POV, but change the tone.
6. Go back through your poetry that you have written and add more images or imagery.
7. As 6, but add titles.
8. As 6, but change tense to present.
9. As 6, but write the poem from a different perspective or POV.
10. As 6, but cut the poem to no more than 10 words, keeping the essential conflict, meaning, and intention of the poem.

Lab: Write.

HOMEWORK: None.

Crafting Poetry

Take 10-15 minutes to print out and prepare your 3 poem drafts (see previous post for details).

Then, let's go next door for some crafting advice and work. You will be working alone and with one other person.

Then back to the lab.

Rewrite your drafts. Change your draft #'s. Let them sit for a few days and bake.

In the meantime, please complete the reading of the handout. Read the poems there. And write. Add material and poetry drafts to your portfolio.

HOMEWORK: None. See above.

Welcome Back to Poetry!

Well, you're back with me now. Mr. Ludwig will be stopping by at some point to return your stories to him. He says he misses you all. Feel free to keep in touch with him on his blog.

Any-hoo. Poetry. Remember that stuff?

It's been a little while since we played around with it, so let's get started!

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden
Tornado Child by Kwame Dawes
The Language by Robert Creeley
My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke
The Armadillo by Elizabeth Bishop
The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks, Audio file...

Now, let's read a little and learn about choosing subject matter. After learning a bit about that and avoiding cliches and other poetic advice, let's go next door and complete the writing of several poems.

Keep your DRAFTS. Write many poems. Choose at least 3 to complete from these prompts, then work on more and fill up your screen, journal, notebook, mind with poetry. Type these up. Be prepared to work on them next class.

Ideas:

• Consider Charles Harper Webb's poem and write a poem about your own name. Research the history and significance of your first, last, and/or middle name. Use your research to write a poem.
• Examine Claude McKay's poem: "Tropics in New York" and write a poem about a place you have visited. Make the setting as vivid as possible. What sights, sounds, smells, flavors come to mind as you recall this location? What images do you see? Make a concept map in your journal. Freewrite. Associate. Write a draft.
• Take a look at "First Death in Nova Scotia". What details does Bishop use that work simultaneously as symbols (objects that stand in for another idea or meaning) and metaphors (two unrelated nouns compared to show a connection)? Write a poem about a person in which you select objects that operate as details and symbols to develop this character. You may make up the character (it does not have to be taken from real life). 
• Make a list of activities, hobbies, information, etc. that you feel you are an expert in. After creating your list, choose one and write a poem using it as a central subject.
• After reading "Chrysanthemums" choose a flower and research its meaning. Then use this meaning to imply your poem's subject, message, or theme. Write that poem.

USE YOUR TIME IN THE LAB TO WRITE!

HOMEWORK: Write at least 3 poems and bring your first drafts to class Thursday. Read the poems in the packet. Learn from them as models. Use them as models for new ideas.