Poetry Exercise #5: "Wild Nights! Wild Nights!" (#269)

(#269)
"Wild nights - Wild nights!"
 by Emily Dickinson

Wild nights - Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile - the winds -
To a Heart in port -
Done with the Compass -
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden -
Ah - the Sea!
Might I but moor - tonight -
In thee! 


Write a poem expressing overwhelming, unsettling, intoxicating, electric joy. Express joy with exclamation points and dashes, with unconventional capitalization, with rhymes and half-rhymes, and with an extended metaphor. You might also want to write the poem directly to the source of the joy.

Poetry Exercise #4: Kaddish

Here's a link to the poem.

Allen Ginsberg's "Kaddish" has the loss of his mother at its center. Write a poem that focuses on the loss of someone or something. The central loss might remind you of other people, places, things that you have lost. Jaclyn W. pointed out that the speaker of the poem reminisces about lots of specific details from the past. We get the names of people, the names of places, vivid descriptions. Try to include lots of very particular memories of who and/or what is no longer with you--no longer part of your material daily life. Then, explore your feelings and thoughts about your memories and about the loss. Danielle B. pointed out feelings of sadness and regret in the poem. I mentioned the sense of release that Ginsberg suggest comes with loss. Explore the feelings and thoughts even if they are complex and contradictory. As always, listen for what rhythms and words sound good together.

Poetry Exercise #3: Cloud in Trousers

by Vladimir Mayakovsky
translated by Peter Bogdanoff
 
[Part One]
 
You think malaria makes me delirious?

It happened.
In Odessa it happened.

'I'll come at four,' Maria promised.

Eight.
Nine.
Ten.

Then the evening
turned its back on the windows
and plunged into grim night,
scowling
Decemberish.

At my decrepit back
the candelabras guffawed and whinnied.

You would not recognise me now:
a bulging bulk of sinews,
groaning,
and writhing,
What can such a clod desire?
Though a clod, many things!

The self does not care
whether one is cast of bronze
or the heart has an iron lining.
At night the self only desires
to steep its clangour in softness,
in woman.

And thus,
enormous,
I stood hunched by the window,
and my brow melted the glass.
What will it be: love or no-love?
And what kind of love:
big or minute?
How could a body like this have a big love?
It should be teeny-weeny,
humble, little love;
a love that shies at the hooting of cars,
that adores the bells of horse-trams.

Again and again
nuzzling against the rain,
my face pressed against its pitted face,
I wait,
splashed by the city's thundering surf.

Then midnight, amok with a knife,
caught up,
cut him down
out with him!

The stroke of twelve fell
like a head from a block.

On the windowpanes, grey raindrops
howled together,
piling on a grimace
as though the gargoyles
of Notre Dame were howling.

Damn you!
Isn't that enough?
Screams will soon claw my mouth apart.

Then I heard,
softly,
a nerve leap
like a sick man from his bed.
Then,
barely moving,
at first,
it soon scampered about,
agitated,
distinct.
Now, with a couple more,
it darted about in a desperate dance.

The plaster on the ground floor crashed.

Nerves,
big nerves,
tiny nerves,
many nerves!
galloped madly
till soon
their legs gave way.

But night oozed and oozed through the room
and the eye, weighed down, could not slither out of
the slime.

The doors suddenly banged ta-ra-bang,
as though the hotel's teeth
chattered.

You swept in abruptly
like 'take it or leave it!'
Mauling your suede gloves,
you declared:
'D' you know,
I'm getting married.'

All right, marry then.
So what,
I can take it.
As you see, I'm calm!
Like the pulse
of a corpse.

Do you remember
how you used to talk?
'Jack London,
money,
love,
passion.'
But I saw one thing only:
you, a Gioconda,
had to be stolen!

And you were stolen.

In love, I shall gamble again,
the arch of my brows ablaze.
What of it!
Homeless tramps often find
shelter in a burnt-out house!

You're teasing me now?
'You have fewer emeralds of madness
than a beggar has kopeks!'
But remember!
When they teased Vesuvius,
Pompeii perished!

Hey!
Gentlemen!
Amateurs
of sacrilege,
crime,
and carnage,
have you seen
the terror of terrors
my face
when
I
am absolutely calm?

I feel
my 'I'
is much too small for me.
Stubbornly a body pushes out of me.

Hello!
Who's speaking?
Mamma?
Mamma!
Your son is gloriously ill!
Mamma!
His heart is on fire.
Tell his sisters, Lyuda and Olya,
he has no nook to hide in.

Each word,
each joke,
which his scorching mouth spews,
jumps like a naked prostitute
from a burning brothel.

People sniff
the smell of burnt flesh!
A brigade of men drive up.
A glittering brigade.
In bright helmets.
But no jackboots here!
Tell the firemen
to climb lovingly when a heart's on fire.
Leave it to me.
I'll pump barrels of tears from my eyes.
I'll brace myself against my ribs.
I'll leap out! Out! Out!
They've collapsed.
You can't leap out of a heart!

From the cracks of the lips
upon a smouldering face
a cinder of a kiss rises to leap.

Mamma!
I cannot sing.
In the heart's chapel the choir loft catches fire!

The scorched figurines of words and numbers
scurry from the skull
like children from a flaming building.
Thus fear,
in its effort to grasp at the sky,
lifted high
the flaming arms of the Lusitania.

Into the calm of the apartment
where people quake,
a hundred-eye blaze bursts from the docks.
Moan
into the centuries,
if you can, a last scream: I'm on fire! 

Exercise [beginning with ideas from Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell in Sleeping on the Wing but extended by the Gloucester High students of Creative Writing]

Write a poem that begins with your anger for someone or something and allow that anger to take over the poem as if floating on a flaming stream of consciousness. Fill the poem with vivid, suggestive disturbing, upsetting, aggressive; these images might even surprise you with their fierceness and grossness. (Images of sickness and the body are often particularly effective.) In this poem you can mix long and short lines. Long lines are great for rants. Short lines can be used to pick up the pace and for turning words into punches. Use varied punctuation, including exclamation points and question marks. Keep you ear tuned to cool sounding phrases, like "cloud in trousers." 

Poetry Exercise #2: A Supermarket in California

A Supermarket in California

Allen Ginsberg, 1926 - 1997

 

  What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, 

        for I walked down the sidestreets under the 

        trees with a headache self-conscious looking 

        at the full moon.

  In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I 

        went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming 

        of your enumerations!

  What peaches and what penumbras!  Whole families 

        shopping at night!  Aisles full of husbands! 

        Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--

        and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down 

        by the watermelons?

  I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, 

        poking among the meats in the refrigerator and 

        eyeing the grocery boys.

  I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the 

        pork chops?  What price bananas?  Are you my Angel?

  I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans 

        following you, and followed in my imagination by 

        the store detective.

  We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary 

        fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen 

        delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

  Where are we going, Walt Whitman?  The doors close in a 

        hour.  Which way does your beard point tonight?

 (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the 

        supermarket and feel absurd.)

  Will we walk all night through solitary streets?  The 

        trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, 

        we’ll both be lonely.

  Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past 

        blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent 

        cottage?

  Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, 

        what America did you have when Charon quit poling his 

        ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood 

        watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

--Berkeley, 1955

Write a poem with very long lines and lots of alliteration, assonance, and consonance but no rhyme scheme. Write the poem to someone whom you've never met but who has influenced you in some significant way. Pretend you're speaking to them while both of you are in a place that is familiar to you. Include lots of vivid, suggestive imagery. Use the person's name in the poem. Ask them questions.  

This exercise is adapted from Sleeping on the Wing, written by Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell.

Poetry Exercise #1: This is Just to Say

"Tell all the truth but tell it slant"
         Emily Dickinson

In the following William Carlos Williams poem the speaker expresses the truth that we often enjoy things for which we are later compelled to apologize. A complexity of human emotion is that the enjoyment can be sincere and the apology can be sincere despite seeming to contradict each other. Here WCW gets at this complexity not by directly stating it but through a deceptively simple apology note. In other words he finds a "slant" way to tell the "truth."
(This exercise is adapted from Kenneth Koch's Rose, Where Did You Get That Red.)

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten 
the plums 
that were in 
the icebox 

and which 
you were probably 
saving 
for breakfast 

Forgive me 
they were delicious 
so sweet 
and so cold

Exercise #1: Write an apology in the form of an unrhymed poem. You (or a fictional speaker) are apologizing even though you are either not entirely sorry or not just sorry but also in some way still pleased with what you did. Write the poem in very short lines (three words or so at most). Use plain and precise language; plums, icebox, breakfast, delicious, sweet, and cold are all precise words in WCW's poem. You might also experiment with line breaks and stanzas. Williams often breaks lines in the middle of phrases and clauses--"in/the icebok" "and which/you were probably/saving..."--but then in the last stanza each each line break comes at the end of a complete phrase. Finally, you might also want to avoid using punctuation especially if it isn't needed.

Poetry Genre Study: What is Poetry anyway?

What is Poetry anyway?

A Mosaic of Responses

Read the following passages about poetry. Pick three comments you agree with strongly, two you disagree with, and one that you're not sure about. Tell me a little bit about your choices.

 

1. Ezra Pound, early twentieth century USAmerican poet

Here’s my paraphrase of what Ez sez:

It’s useful to think about all poetry as having three aspects though some poems emphasize one aspect more so than others:

Phanopoeia = description = the poem throws images on the mind

Melopoeia = musicality = the poem’s sounds & rhythms evoke emotional correlations

Logopoeia = mindfulness = the poem stimulates thought (and feeling) in relation to the poem’s words & word groups

2. W’ei T’ai, 11^th century Chinese poet

Whaddya say W’ei?

“Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling, for as soon as the mind responds and connects with the thing the feeling shows in the words.

“This is how poetry enters deeply into us. If the poet presents directly feelings which overwhelm him and keeps nothing back to linger as an aftertaste, he stirs us superficially; he cannot start the hands and feet involuntarily waving and tapping in time, far less strengthen morality and refine culture, set heaven and earth in motion and call up the spirits.”

3. Louis Zukofsky, twentieth century US American poet

What’s the news, Lou?

“I'll tell you. / About my poetics— / music / speech / An integral / Lower limit speech / Upper limit music.”

(from “A12” a poem)

Like this:

     Music

     Speech

4. In a poem called “City Midnight Junk Strains” Allen Ginsberg, twentieth century USAmerican poet, says that Frank O’Hara, another twentieth century USAmerican poet, has a “a common ear for our deep gossip.”

In a book called Quote Poet Unquote someone named Liam Rector is credited with the statement “Poetry is deep gossip.” Sadly neither Ginsberg nor O’Hara is mentioned by Rector or the book’s editor, Dennis O’Driscoll.

Here are several more statements about what poetry is from Quote Poet Unquote book:

5. DAVID GASCOYNE, Stand, Spring 1992

Poetry is like a substance, the words stick together as though they were magnetized to each other.

6. SEAMUS HEANEY, Sunday Independent, 25 September 1994

Poetry is language in orbit.

7. YVES BONNEFOY, Times Literary Supplement, 12 August 2005

Poetry is an act by which the relation of words to reality is renewed.

8. MARK DOTY, The Cortland Review, October 2000

Poetry is an investigation, not an expression, of what you know.

9. LEONARD COHEN, The Sunday Times

Poetry is a verdict that others give to language that is charged with music and rhythm and authority.

10. UMBERTO ECO, The Independent, 6 October 1995

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

11. CHRISTOPHER MIDDLETON, PN Review, March-April 1993

Poetry is language wrought by feeling and imagination to such a pitch that it enacts and embodies the thing it says.

12. DAVE SMITH, Local Assays, 1985

Poetry is a dialect of the language we speak, possessed of metaphorical density, coded with resonant meaning, engaging us with narrative's pleasures, enhancing and sustaining our pleasure with enlarged awareness.

13. JOSEPH BRODSKY, The New Yorker, 26 September 1994

Poetry is a dame with a huge pedigree, and every word comes practically barnacled with allusions and associations.

14. CAL BEDIENT, Denver Quarterly 39, no. 2, 2004

Poetry is the eroticization of thought—psychic vitality.

15. MATTHEW HOLLIS, Poetry Book Society Bulletin, Spring 2004

Poetry is... a kind of leaving of notes for another to find, and a willingness to have them fall into the wrong hands.

16. CHARLES WRIGHT, Quarter Notes, 1995

Poetry is language that sounds better and means more.

17. ANNE ROUSE, The Sunday Times, 28 January 2001

Poetry is about the intensity at the centre of life, and about intricacy of expression. Without any appreciation of those, people are condemned to simplistic emotions and crude expressions.

18. FRIEDA HUGHES, The Guardian, 3 October 2001

Poetry is a way of communicating a vast array of thoughts and feelings by concentrating them into minimal, or even single, points which describe the whole.

19. JOHN SIMON, Dreamers of Dreams, 2001

Poetry is the meeting point of parallel lines—in infinity, but also in the here and now. It is where the patent and incontrovertible intersects with the ineffable and incommensurable.

20. DON McKAY, The Toronto Star, 4 June 2007

Poetry is language pointing beyond its own capacities.

21. HAROLD BLOOM, The Art of Reading Poetry, 2006

Poetry essentially is figurative language, concentrated so that its form is both expressive and evocative.

22. PETER FALLON, The Poetry Paper, no. 3, 2006

A poem is words at work, on us and for us.

23. ÁGNES NEMES NAGY, A Hungarian Perspective, 1998

A poem is partly grace, partly discovery, and partly a struggle to squeeze out a little bit more, to conquer another foot of territory from the unconscious.

24. P.J. KAVANAGH, BBC Radio 3, December 1990

A poem is an attempt to find the music in the words describing an intuition.

25. NUALA NÍ DHOMHNAILL, RTÉ I television, July 1995

A poem is a smuggling of something back from the otherworld, a prime bit of shoplifting where you get something out the door before the buzzer goes off.

26. WILLIAM H. GASS, The Georgia Review, Spring 2004

A poem is like a ghost seeking substantiality, a soul in search of body more appealing than the bare bones mere verses rattle.

27. CAROL ANN DUFFY, Out of Fashion, 2004

A poem... is the attire of feeling: the literary form where words seem tailor-made for memory or desire.

28. JAMIE McKENDRICK, The South Bank Show, October 1994

Every poem is an answer to the question what poetry is for.

29. After I thought I’d finished this collection I found this statement from Audre Lorde’s Power, Oppression and the Politics of Culture: a lesbian/feminist perspective:

“For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.”

30. &, finally, this statement on poetry by Paul Celan* is part of my friend Pierre Joris’s email signature:

“The poem is the detour from you

to you; it is the route. It is also the

route of language toward itself, 

its becoming visible and 

mortal: wherewith the poem 

becomes the raison d’être of language.”

Celan was a German-speaking Jew in Eastern Europe. He survived World War II. His town in a place called Burkovina that was then Romanian and now Ukrainian was first occupied by the Soviets and later by the Nazis. He spent much of the war in Nazi-run labor camp. His parents were handed over to the Germans and killed.

Fiction Revision and Reflection

Reflecting on Fiction Final Drafts

1. Make sure you've shared your "Fiction Final Draft" Google document with me at jcook@gloucesterschools.com

2. At the end of your fiction write the word "Reflection". Then, write our your revision process: everything you did with your story from the day of your workshop until you finished revising your story. Be specific.

3. Then, do some metacognition. Think about your thinking. Why did you make the decisions you did? What helped? What didn't help? What are you still unsure about?

All of the above is due Wednesday, September 24 for people who had a workshop last week and Thursday, September 25 for people who had a workshop this week.
 
4. Read the fiction writing advice found here. Pick three comments you agree with strongly, two you disagree with, and one that you're not sure about. Tell me a little bit about your choices.

#4 is due by Thursday, September 25 for everyone.