Poetry Portfolio

Please collect your poem drafts in your portfolio. Spend the first half of today's class gathering your poems together, revising them by adding sound devices, imagery, figurative language, sharpening diction, adding tone, creating a persona and/or voice, creating patterns using line or meter or stanza forms, and, otherwise, IMPROVING or CRAFTING your poetry.

What COULD you have in your portfolio?

00.03: Brainstorming techniques (if you wrote a poem or story/scene) please print this out and collect it in your portfolio.
00.05: Enemies of the Artistic Process (a letter--that could be changed into a poem addressing one of your creative writing enemies)
00.09: Persona & Mask poem
01.00: Ars Poetica poem
01.01: Voice poem
01.03: Theme & Message poem
01.06: Mary Oliver (Diction chapter ?'s) poem draft
01.08: Sound device poem draft
Any SECOND draft from assignment 01.05 or 01.07.
Any poem written in your journal during our nature walks
Any poem written for any other class
Any poem written just because you wrote it this year

RUBRIC: Poetry Portfolio
CONTENT:

• A: Awesome! You have more than TEN poems collected in your portfolio.
• B: Brilliant! You have 5-10 poems collected in your portfolio.
• C: Average! You have 3-4 poems collected in your portfolio.
• D: Below average! You have fewer than 3 poems in your portfolio.

CRAFT:

• A: Amazing! You have applied various poetry techniques learned in class to your second draft, overall making the poems stronger, more universal, more artistic, and overall excellent work!
• B: Better! You have applied some poetry techniques and strengthened your poem drafts, but poems may need some more work to make them amazing. Overall, good job!
• C: Constructive! You have improved your drafts, but may not be utilizing poetry techniques effectively, or your work is lacking something that would make the draft better. Your work was created, you did the assignment and will get average credit like an average student. Not bad.
• D: Developing! You have poems in your portfolio but many of them have not been revised or improved. If you had the time or inclination you probably would have been more constructive. You threw some words together like a passionate writer, but your work is either careless or lacking focus, making your work developing. Okay.

During the second half of class today, please form two sharing groups and spend some time reading and sharing your work. When the group has finished sharing, please come back to the lab and either begin Module 2: Fiction, or continue preparing and working on your poetry portfolio.

YOUR PORTFOLIOS ARE DUE NEXT CLASS!

HOMEWORK: None. Prepare your portfolio and turn it in.

Poetry Portfolios

This afternoon, please read the short chapter on "Revision" by Mary Oliver. After reading silently and chatting a moment as a class, please complete the following tasks today:

CLASSWORK:
Last class we started this in pairs or small groups. Please return and complete the assignment, then move on to the "writing task" described below.

FOR EACH POEM, please analyze and write 3-10 sentences about what you found in the poem by identifying any of the following: SOUND devices (alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, rhyme), DICTION (tone, mood, voice, etc.), LINE (meter, enjambment, rhyme, stanza form), IMAGERY (metaphor, simile, personification, allusion, figurative language). After completing this analysis, please turn in your work for participation credit.

My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke   

  The whiskey on your breath
  Could make a small boy dizzy;
  But I hung on like death:
  Such waltzing was not easy.
 
  We romped until the pans
  Slid from the kitchen shelf;
  My mother's countenance
  Could not unfrown itself.
 
  The hand that held my wrist
  Was battered on one knuckle;
  At every step you missed
  My right ear scraped a buckle.
  
  You beat time on my head
  With a palm caked hard by dirt,
  Then waltzed me off to bed 
  Still clinging to your shirt.

From: The Eve of Saint Agnes by John Keats 

I.   ST. AGNES’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told	5
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,
Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.

Preludes by T.S. Eliot

I THE WINTER evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps	5
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,	10
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
II The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer	15
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,	20
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms. WRITING TASK/Completing your revisions & poetry portfolio: Collect ALL your poems you wrote for exercises in MODULE 1 or during Marking Period One. Print out each poem and call these draft 1. THEN: after printing your work, go back through your written poems and add imagery, sound devices, fix diction, add tone, create line and meter patterns, and/or REVISE your work. Call these poems draft 2. You may, of course, ask a partner or trusted ally to give you some feedback between draft one and two. By helping each other, you are helping yourself. Of course, you may find that your "partner" is not really helping you, but distracting you. Try to notice the difference. HOMEWORK: None.

Imagery in Poetry

Imagery comes in a few flavors: figurative language, metaphor, simile, personification, allusion, and then sound techniques (alliteration, assonance, consonance, cacophony, euphony, onomatopoeia, rhyme). These techniques help create sound and sight in a poem (two of our most important senses). Using diction, a poet can also recall senses of smell, touch, and taste, but these are harder to do. Here's an example:   

Root Cellar by Theodore Roethke

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

The reason poets rely so heavily on metaphor and simile as the common currency of poetry is that it relates to imagery. Metaphor and simile say with pictures and specific objects what abstract nouns cannot. They help clarify, focus, and bring an image to the foreground of a poem. This is necessary to communicate an idea.

"Metaphors set up precise identities between two halves of a comparison" - Ted Kooser

However, we don't want our comparisons to be either A). too obscure and difficult to understand or B). too obvious (bordering on cliche).

Its a fine strand of web the poet scuttles across to anchor two dissimilar points of space. When working with metaphor and figurative language in your own poems consider the relationship between the subject and the object (or setting, event, etc.) The most beautiful metaphors/similes are subtle ones that are both fresh and new, while also being familiar.

Pick words (particularly verbs and adjectives) that correspond to the main metaphor/simile working in your poem. This helps to create tone as well as picture the subject in an effective way. Try to extend your metaphors through at least a stanza, if not the entire poem.

Example:
Martin Walls' poem "Snail" is about a snail. There are a series of "snail-appropriate words found in the poem"

Snail
It is a flattened shell the color of spoiled milk, a bold
Swirl slowly stirred that charts the age of what's
Curled inside with the tension of a watch spring. A creature
That embodies the history of metaphysics: first it exists,
Then it doesn't, then it emerges once again, unrolls
One, then another, eyestalk, like periscopes breaking
The surface of its wet-life. And here's the tongue body
The petal-body, molding its shape to the world's shape.

The snail is compared to: spoiled milk, a horoscope, a watch spring, periscope, flowers, tongue, and the world. By writing about a snail, we consider it in its proper function as a comparison/contrast to other life, particularly ours. If a snail has purpose, then so do we.

Spoiled milk gives us a negative image, but the words bold, stirred, and curled (curdled) all seem appropriate word choices for the comparison. The snail furthermore encompasses the world in an orderly way. It is both a watch spring (human made and intelligently designed) indicating the spiral shape of a snail shell, but also a tongue (natural object) that goes along with wet and unrolls.

All in all there are snail words: eyestalk, swirl (the shell), shell, slow.
It moves slowly, and the pace of the poem is also slow: words like slowly, emerge, unrolls, molds (also connected to the smell in the first line as a double meaning), recall the movement of a snail, leaving a wet slime trail behind it. This disgusting invertebrate is compared to the function of the world--giving this little animal a metaphysical meaning that compares its life with ours.

Note that this is a small poem. It doesn't function as a grandiose political idea or earth-shattering observation. It compares (metaphor/simile) us and our human made world to its natural world linking us with nature, reminding us of our own value and worth. Sometimes that's all that's needed.

Imagery is usually broken down into the five senses, but can also include temperature and the sense of pain. Here's a web page that you might find helpful. Check it out!

Let's decipher one of these poems as a reader & writer. Elizabeth Bishop's narrative poem In the Waiting Room.

CLASSWORK:
Spend your time in the lab today to read more examples of poems. Here are a bunch of Robert Frost poems. He was an expert at imagery and sound. He often writes about nature and, of course, death. Pay this in mind when reading his poetry as it will help you understand it. Check out this web page for examples of Robert Frost's poems.

Here are some other famous poems. Please read them and open your mind. Pay attention to how talented writers write and craft their poems by applying the knowledge you have learned about poetry to noticing how each poet creates an effective poem using devices like sound, line, meter, tone, persona, theme, diction, etc. For today's task, you may work with a partner. FOR EACH POEM, please analyze and write 3-10 sentences about what you found in the poem by identifying any of the following: SOUND devices (alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, rhyme), DICTION (tone, mood, voice, etc.), LINE (meter, enjambment, rhyme, stanza form), IMAGERY (metaphor, simile, personification, allusion, figurative language).

My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke  

 MY PAPA'S WALTZ
 
  The whiskey on your breath
  Could make a small boy dizzy;
  But I hung on like death:
  Such waltzing was not easy.
 
  We romped until the pans
  Slid from the kitchen shelf;
  My mother's countenance
  Could not unfrown itself.
 
  The hand that held my wrist
  Was battered on one knuckle;
  At every step you missed
  My right ear scraped a buckle.
  
  You beat time on my head
  With a palm caked hard by dirt,
  Then waltzed me off to bed 
  Still clinging to your shirt.

From: The Eve of Saint Agnes by John Keats 

I.   ST. AGNES’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told	5
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,
Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.

Preludes by T.S. Eliot

I THE WINTER evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps	5
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,	10
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
II The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer	15
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,	20
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms. WRITING TASK: After reading and analyzing the poems above with your partner, go back to your own computer and collect ALL your poems you wrote for exercises in MODULE 1. Print out each poem and call these draft 1. THEN: after printing your work, go back through your written poems and add imagery, sound devices, fix diction, add tone, create line and meter patterns, and/or REVISE your work. Call these poems draft 2. HOMEWORK: None.

Sound in Poetry

Robert Frost: The Sound of Trees
Robert Frost: Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost: Acquainted with the Night
Edgar Allan Poe: The Bells

Today, we are going to cover sound and rhythm in poetry. There's a lot here and many terms and literary devices you will need to know. I'd suggest you pay attention and take notes. Expect to be tested on key terms soon.

After reading Mary Oliver's discussion about SOUND, please look at the following links (you may use your headphones). For each, try to notice sound imagery, rhythm and cadence.

Other poems to listen to:
Wallace Stevens: The Emperor of Ice Cream
Mary Oliver: The Summer Day
Mary Oliver: Wild Geese
Edgar Allan Poe: Annabel Lee
Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven

When you have listened and examined these poems, please go back to eLearning (lesson 01.08) and complete the sound poem exercise. 

Intervention; Modules 0 & 1 Due; End of Marking Period

Looking at the work still left to do on elearning, please use your time in the lab to complete these assignments.

For students who need direct instruction, please join me next door in room 238 to walk you through the assignments and answer your many questions about poetry. We will be covering:

• The writing process
• Where to find help!
• The difference between poetry (verse) and prose
• How to break a line in poetry to create a pattern
• Meter & rhythm
• Free verse and pattern poems (open versus closed forms)
• Tone/Mood
• Diction
• The speaker in a poem (character)
• Voice & persona
• Theme & message
• denotation & connotation
• Sound devices: onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance
• Vowels/consonants
• Ars poetica
• Revising a poem
• Common imagery: metaphor, simile, allusion, personification, figurative language

HOMEWORK: Please READ and highlight the important advice or vocabulary terms in the chapter on SOUND and the chapter on IMAGERY. You will turn in your copies of your chapters for credit. I need to see that you are reading and working with these concepts.

OMG! So Much to Do! Poetry Unit End Looming!

You should work today in the lab to complete modules 0 & 1 of the poetry unit. Please use this time in the lab to complete your work. Many of you are very far behind. These modules are DUE by end of next class!

Additionally, save any of your poetry and print out copies for your portfolio.

HOMEWORK/CLASSWORK: We have a little more to cover in regards to poetry and the poetry unit. Please read the chapter by Mary Oliver on SOUND and SOUND DEVICES. As you read, note and be able to define the following key techniques of sound in poetry:

• vowels, consonants, semivowels, mutes, etc.
• Onomatopoeia
• The analysis of Robert Frost's poem
• Alliteration
• Assonance

I am pushing the unit test on poetry off a week so that we can complete the unit. Some of you may need to complete homework to get caught up with the rest of the class. Complete modules 0 and 1 by Friday.

Complete your reading of your poetry collection(s). 

eLearning: Module 1 Due Next Week

Module 1 is due next week. Please use this time in the lab to complete your work. Next class we will have a pre-assessment test for CW. 

During the last 1/2 of period 8, please select your new poetry book. The goal of reading all these poets and books is so that you have a variety of contemporary poets' work to use as models for your own understanding and crafting of poetry. 

As you read the poems in your new selection, consider and examine how the poet is using: line breaks, patterns/meter, syllables, tone, diction, voice, and so forth to create an effective poem. Notice style and themes. 

HOMEWORK: Read your poetry books. Read your poetry chapter assignments. Complete module 1.

Tone, Mood; eLearning & poetry collection activity

Please get into groups of 1-2. Take the first 15-20 minutes of this class to read and complete the handout on TONE & MOOD and An Introduction to Stress & Meter. Turn in your papers at the end of 15-20 minutes.

When you have completed your TONE/MOOD and Stress & Meter exercise, please select one poem from your poetry collection and read it quietly to your partner. If you have no partner, join another group for this part of the assignment today. 

After sharing discuss the poem by identifying the tone, mood, whether it is written in meter or is a free verse poem, and what the theme of the poem might be.

Then move to your own seat and read and complete the analysis of diction, tone, mood, and meter. Hand this sheet in by the end of class today. 

If you finish these assignments before period 8, please continue to work on your eLearning modules. During period 8, continue your eLearning assignments.

HOMEWORK: Continue to read your chosen poetry collection.

ELearning; Diction, Tone, Voice

Today, please select a new poet's work to read and work with. In the lab, please complete the following tasks:

1. Continue working on the eLearning module 1. If you haven't started this module yet, you are falling far behind. Please use the time in the lab to get caught up.
2. Read your poet's collection of poems.
3. Type up poems you have written in your journal. As you type up poems, consider the FORM and STRUCTURE of your lines (consider meter, rhythm, length of line, use of patterns or type of poem like lyric, narrative poems, or prose poem) as well as the diction, tone, and voice of your work. Avoid inversion and informational language. Check your own grammar and syntax.

Poetry Vocabulary: PLEASE STUDY THESE TERMS!

Diction: word choice. Select words in your poem carefully to carry the most meaning. All words have a denotative meaning and a connotative meaning. Understatement, euphemism, and other rhetorical strategies may be used to affect a poem's diction. Speaking to your elderly grandparents uses a different diction than speaking to your "homies".

Voice: The agent or "speaker" speaking through the poem. Also called the "persona".

Tone: Often the attitude of your speaker or the voice. Identified in a poem by diction.

• Tone can be formal or informal depending on the diction a poet uses.
• Tone can be ironic, sarcastic, serious, pedantic, or hyperbolic depending on the voice a poet selects.
• Tone can be positive or negative or neutral. Selecting one of these tones can or should affect your diction.

Metrical Feet: Two classifications of poetry: open forms; closed forms.

A closed form (traditional poetry), cadence groups form a pattern.
An open form (free verse, mainly), cadence groups do not form a set pattern.
Poetry in open forms tends to stress meaning over versification.

Syllables: individual units of rhythm in a word or line.
Stress: this class. Also, the emphasis placed on a syllable in a word.
Unstressed: lighter stress, not so heavy as the stress above.

Metrical feet:

1-foot = monometer
2-foot = dimeter
3-foot = trimeter
4-foot = tetrameter
5-foot = pentameter (the meter used in sonnets and blank verse lines; very common)
6-foot = hexameter
7-foot = heptameter
8-foot = octameter
9-foot = nonameter
10-foot = decameter

2 Syllable Feet:

Iambic: stress is on the second of two syllable words: ex. reTURN, beCAUSE, atTACK, etc.

Trochee: reverse of the Iambic, stress is on the first of two syllables: MOTHer, SISter, BORing.

Spondee: Both syllables are stressed.

3 Syllable Feet:

Anapest: stress is on the last syllable of a three syllabled word. Ex. Chevro-LET, rockandROLL

Dactyl: stress on first syllable followed by two non stressed. Ex. BU-da-pest, FOR-tu-nate

Caesura: (plural: caesurae) a pause separating cadence groups (however brief) within a line. If the pause is a result of the end of a line pause, then this is end-stopping.

Enjambement (enjambment): If a line has no punctuation at the end and runs over to the next line, it is called run-on or better yet, enjambement (enjambment).

HOMEWORK: Read your chosen poet's chapbook. Bring your book to next class to work with it. 

Poet Report; eLearning Module 1

This afternoon, please take 5 minutes to gather your notes from last class and prepare the following:

• A brief biography of your chosen poet
• Identify the poem you will be reciting/reading to the class from your chosen collection
• Print out or prepare a copy of your original poem draft

While you are preparing, I will assign you a color and a number group. After 5 minutes of prep time, please go next door to a238 and sit in your assigned grouping.

Example: Robert Bly: Best known for his book Iron John, Robert Bly lives in Minneapolis, MN, and grew up in the countryside. His poetry often includes images of nature. He is a poet laureate of the United States and has won many awards for his poetry. His most recent collection of poetry is "Talking into the Ear of a Donkey" published in 2011. He is now 86 years old. "After Long Busyness" was taken from the collection: Silence in the Snowy Fields.

After Long Busyness

I start out for a walk at last after weeks at the desk. 

Moon gone, plowing underfoot, no stars; not a trace of light!

Suppose a horse were galloping towards me in this open field?

Every day I did not spend in solitude was wasted.

In timed intervals, share your poet's biography, read aloud a sample poem, and share your own poem with your group. When the bell rings, two members of the group will move on to the next station and repeat the process. During the lesson, please listen for further instructions.

After the exercise today, please return to the lab to complete the following:

1. Continue your assignments on eLearning. 

2. Complete your reading of your poet's book. 

3. Write or type up poem drafts you have left in your notebook.

HOMEWORK: Read the article by Mary Oliver on "Diction, Tone, and Voice." Take notes on key important vocabulary and techniques in the chapter including: diction, tone, persona, negative capability, the lyric poem, narrative poetry, long poems, prose poems, poetic diction, cliche, inversion, informal language, syntax, and effective writing.

Poetry Report: Poets A-E

This afternoon, please go to the library and choose a book (or collection of books) by one of the appropriate poets.

Read one collection (or section/unit) for your chosen author. We will be going outside to read and write, as we have done in the past few classes.

• Outside, please stay away from each other. 
• Shut up. (Please be quiet!)
• Read.
• When you are tired of reading: write.

When we are INSIDE in the LAB: please research your chosen poet.

HOMEWORK/Classwork: Please complete the poetry book you selected; complete your research of your poet and be able to do the following next class:

1. Provide a background on that poet: who are they, what did they write, what awards or publications have they accomplished, etc.?
2. Select one poem to read ALOUD in class. Prepare and rehearse your reading so you don't bore us. Look up words you don't know, etc.
3. Write a poem draft IN THE STYLE of YOUR CHOSEN POET. This will be due next class.

A Note About Lines

In poetry, we don't just break a line wherever we want to, unless we are only writing free verse. Free verse allows us to write in any pattern or structure we would like, but we should know enough to make informed choices about the length of our lines.

Short lines, for example, can make a poem go faster.
Long lines, on the other hand, slow down a poem.

Thus, I can control the speed at which a reader reads my work by adjusting the length of a line.

Sometimes we want to break our poem into stanzas or create a rhythm for our poem (just like in music). Creating patterns based on syllables (beats), a poet can make their poem more musical, allowing it to flow better.

Information about Rhythm, Meter, and Scansion can be found here. And another one, just in case you need more explanation: Meter in Poetry and Verse. Read the chapter by Mary Oliver on "The Line", "Some Given Forms", and "Verse that is Free".

HOMEWORK: Read and save your iamb, trochee, spondee, dactyl, anapest example sheets.