Pedagogy Forum, Week 7
Considering what Zac wrote in his pedagogy forum, I also began to think of how a creative writing class may be taught and what texts to use in such a class. The anthology does have its benefits as far as providing a variety of poems and poets a student can study, yet I also find it beneficial to provide small collections of several poets so that a student may study poems as part of a collective whole. So, I would perhaps consider using an anthology for, perhaps, a less experienced introductory class while in an advanced class, I would introduce a set of poetry collections to create a more focused outlook on a few particular poets so that students can get at least some sense of each poet’s style and context of writing.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Response to Zac Cooper's Improv, Week 7
Introduction to Exposition
I ask them to take their favorite pen
and place it in front of the paper background
like an object which provides scale
or knock on the cover, and notice
that it never sounds hollow.
I say drop a lab-mouse into a paragraph
and watch him weave in and out of letters,
or mingle through the sentences’ bedrooms
and study the wallpaper for symbolism.
I want them to dislodge from plot,
badgering meaning from white spaces
instead of black ink.
But all they want
is to untie themselves from this chair
and flee to the nearest synopsis.
The draft seems to acutely mimic the voice of Billy Collins in which it often takes the poem it improvs from and slightly shifts it into the context of writing a paper rather than a poem. Future drafts could try to shift away for the more overt use of Collins’ poem in which the voice could, perhaps, highlight a more heavy tone as compared to Collins’ lighter tone in his poem. A way to expand on the draft, then, might be to evoke a more descriptive account of the writers themselves or perhaps create a juggling act between the perspective of the speaker and the perspective of the writer to highlight a deeper connotation to their relationship.
I ask them to take their favorite pen
and place it in front of the paper background
like an object which provides scale
or knock on the cover, and notice
that it never sounds hollow.
I say drop a lab-mouse into a paragraph
and watch him weave in and out of letters,
or mingle through the sentences’ bedrooms
and study the wallpaper for symbolism.
I want them to dislodge from plot,
badgering meaning from white spaces
instead of black ink.
But all they want
is to untie themselves from this chair
and flee to the nearest synopsis.
The draft seems to acutely mimic the voice of Billy Collins in which it often takes the poem it improvs from and slightly shifts it into the context of writing a paper rather than a poem. Future drafts could try to shift away for the more overt use of Collins’ poem in which the voice could, perhaps, highlight a more heavy tone as compared to Collins’ lighter tone in his poem. A way to expand on the draft, then, might be to evoke a more descriptive account of the writers themselves or perhaps create a juggling act between the perspective of the speaker and the perspective of the writer to highlight a deeper connotation to their relationship.
Free Write, Week 7
Improv: “The Best Slow Dancer” by David Wagner
Under the sagging clotheslines of crepe paper
By the second string of teachers and wallflowers
In the school gym across the key through the glitter
Of mirrored light three-second rule forever
Suspended you danced with her the best slow dancer
Who stood on tiptoe who almost wasn’t there
In your arms like music she knew just how to answer
The question mark of your spine your hand in hers
The other touching that place between her shoulders
Trembling your countless feet light-footed sure
To move as they wished wherever you might stagger
Without her she turned in time she knew where you were
In time she turned her body into yours
As you moved from thigh to secrets to breast yet never
Where you would be for all time never closer
Than your cheek against her temple her ear just under
Your lips that tried all evening long to tell her
You weren’t the worst one not the boy whose mother
Had taught him to count to murmur over and over
One slide two slide three slide now no longer
The one in the hallway after class the scuffler
The double clubfoot gawker the mouth breather
With the wrong haircut who would never kiss her
But see her dancing off with someone or other
Older more clever smoother dreamier
Not waving a sister somebody else’s partner
Lover while you went floating home through the air
To lie down lighter than air in a moonlit shimmer
Alone to whisper yourself to sleep remember.
Revision:
She always moved through the kitchen as if she danced
a slow dance, a slight flick of the wrist to wipe down
the marble table with cigarette in hand. The pots and pans
hung as suspended as her belated gate, not so much
of a time in the 50s where gin and tonic would have clung
to her breathe. No. She always knew how to answer the call
of the written word each night, another dance all together
as she never saw the eyes within the yellow wallpaper
or the shadow of a woman shaking the cell bars outside
her windowsill. Her bated breath waited still for a time
held in the photograph. She was nine then as her mother
held her with a crooked smile. What figure stood there,
so melancholy still, who did not know that she was the best
slow dancer who danced alone to whisper herself to sleep and remember.
Under the sagging clotheslines of crepe paper
By the second string of teachers and wallflowers
In the school gym across the key through the glitter
Of mirrored light three-second rule forever
Suspended you danced with her the best slow dancer
Who stood on tiptoe who almost wasn’t there
In your arms like music she knew just how to answer
The question mark of your spine your hand in hers
The other touching that place between her shoulders
Trembling your countless feet light-footed sure
To move as they wished wherever you might stagger
Without her she turned in time she knew where you were
In time she turned her body into yours
As you moved from thigh to secrets to breast yet never
Where you would be for all time never closer
Than your cheek against her temple her ear just under
Your lips that tried all evening long to tell her
You weren’t the worst one not the boy whose mother
Had taught him to count to murmur over and over
One slide two slide three slide now no longer
The one in the hallway after class the scuffler
The double clubfoot gawker the mouth breather
With the wrong haircut who would never kiss her
But see her dancing off with someone or other
Older more clever smoother dreamier
Not waving a sister somebody else’s partner
Lover while you went floating home through the air
To lie down lighter than air in a moonlit shimmer
Alone to whisper yourself to sleep remember.
Revision:
She always moved through the kitchen as if she danced
a slow dance, a slight flick of the wrist to wipe down
the marble table with cigarette in hand. The pots and pans
hung as suspended as her belated gate, not so much
of a time in the 50s where gin and tonic would have clung
to her breathe. No. She always knew how to answer the call
of the written word each night, another dance all together
as she never saw the eyes within the yellow wallpaper
or the shadow of a woman shaking the cell bars outside
her windowsill. Her bated breath waited still for a time
held in the photograph. She was nine then as her mother
held her with a crooked smile. What figure stood there,
so melancholy still, who did not know that she was the best
slow dancer who danced alone to whisper herself to sleep and remember.
Sign Inventory, Week 7
Poem: “Einstein’s Bathrobe” by Howard Moss
1. The poem seems to bookend with the speaker as the active agent while the bulk of the poem consists of the speaker providing a fly on the wall view of the subject.
2. The speaker of the poem seems to mythologize the simple acts of the subject as the subject would “fly down from the heights to tie his shoes/ And cross the seas to get a glass of milk.”
3. The poem seems to shift its register from a more simplified aesthetic of space with the speaker’s notions of average morning rituals, which moves towards a larger one when the speaker notes on physics leading into thoughts on the universe, and then shifts back into the space of tea time.
4. The poem seems to shift between the domestic space of morning ritual, the pastoral space, and the cosmic space.
5. The beginning and end of the poem seems to indicate the speaker as an active agent of self creation that shifts into the speaker’s perspective on the subject as a creator.
6. The speaker seems to highlight and mythologize the furniture as a shipwreck in the beginning of the poem, yet uses the surrounding furniture and domestic space as irrelevant to the larger world.
7. The impact of the subject as a silent figure seems to juxtapose to the enormity of the mythologized element of his actions and description through the voice of the speaker.
8. The domestic atmosphere of the poem seems to shift most prominently when the speaker compares the subject to a pre-Raphaelite, shaman, and a Frankenstein.
9. The image of the dawn becomes a catalyzed agent as the speaker shifts from the dawn of the domestic space to that of Europe.
10. The speaker seems to use the descriptions of domestic acts as a refrain from the heavy register of the language in the poem, yet also blurs the line between the two within the bulk of the poem.
1. The poem seems to bookend with the speaker as the active agent while the bulk of the poem consists of the speaker providing a fly on the wall view of the subject.
2. The speaker of the poem seems to mythologize the simple acts of the subject as the subject would “fly down from the heights to tie his shoes/ And cross the seas to get a glass of milk.”
3. The poem seems to shift its register from a more simplified aesthetic of space with the speaker’s notions of average morning rituals, which moves towards a larger one when the speaker notes on physics leading into thoughts on the universe, and then shifts back into the space of tea time.
4. The poem seems to shift between the domestic space of morning ritual, the pastoral space, and the cosmic space.
5. The beginning and end of the poem seems to indicate the speaker as an active agent of self creation that shifts into the speaker’s perspective on the subject as a creator.
6. The speaker seems to highlight and mythologize the furniture as a shipwreck in the beginning of the poem, yet uses the surrounding furniture and domestic space as irrelevant to the larger world.
7. The impact of the subject as a silent figure seems to juxtapose to the enormity of the mythologized element of his actions and description through the voice of the speaker.
8. The domestic atmosphere of the poem seems to shift most prominently when the speaker compares the subject to a pre-Raphaelite, shaman, and a Frankenstein.
9. The image of the dawn becomes a catalyzed agent as the speaker shifts from the dawn of the domestic space to that of Europe.
10. The speaker seems to use the descriptions of domestic acts as a refrain from the heavy register of the language in the poem, yet also blurs the line between the two within the bulk of the poem.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Improv, Week 7
Poem: “For the Record” by Adrienne Rich
The clouds and the stars didn't wage this war
the brooks gave no information
if the mountain spewed stones of fire into the river
it was not taking sides
the raindrop faintly swaying under the leaf
had no political opinions
and if here or there a house
filled with backed-up raw sewage
or poisoned those who lived there
with slow fumes, over years
the houses were not at war
nor did the tinned-up buildings
intend to refuse shelter
to homeless old women and roaming children
they had no policy to keep them roaming
or dying, no, the cities were not the problem
the bridges were non-partisan
the freeways burned, but not with hatred
Even the miles of barbed-wire
stretched around crouching temporary huts
designed to keep the unwanted
at a safe distance, out of sight
even the boards that had to absorb
year upon year, so many human sounds
so many depths of vomit, tears
slow-soaking blood
had not offered themselves for this
The trees didn't volunteer to be cut into boards
nor the thorns for tearing flesh
Look around at all of it
and ask whose signature
is stamped on the orders, traced
in the corner of the building plans
Ask where the illiterate, big-bellied
women were, the drunks and crazies,
the ones you fear most of all: ask where you were.
Revision:
Ask where you were when they built the wooden bridge
across the Chattanooga creek, built from the leavings
of old railroad tracks and the shed long abandoned
along the untouched acreage, just across the border
of Alabama in that liminal space of illiterate signatures.
What pine or oak originated from those pillars? Whose
saw slides through the chest of every ring? The homeless
old women who have no names sleep under the age marks,
remnants of what we might call the crows feet of the wood
cut in their prime. Atlanta bridges made of mortar and stone
never saw such a sight as these. The sunset across Appalachian
Mountains are not at war with the sunset of skyscrapers. Yet
we ask ourselves: Whose side are we really on when the inanimate
stage of city lights hide the stars so well, yet their reflection always
catches its gaze upon the breathe of the Chattanooga?
The clouds and the stars didn't wage this war
the brooks gave no information
if the mountain spewed stones of fire into the river
it was not taking sides
the raindrop faintly swaying under the leaf
had no political opinions
and if here or there a house
filled with backed-up raw sewage
or poisoned those who lived there
with slow fumes, over years
the houses were not at war
nor did the tinned-up buildings
intend to refuse shelter
to homeless old women and roaming children
they had no policy to keep them roaming
or dying, no, the cities were not the problem
the bridges were non-partisan
the freeways burned, but not with hatred
Even the miles of barbed-wire
stretched around crouching temporary huts
designed to keep the unwanted
at a safe distance, out of sight
even the boards that had to absorb
year upon year, so many human sounds
so many depths of vomit, tears
slow-soaking blood
had not offered themselves for this
The trees didn't volunteer to be cut into boards
nor the thorns for tearing flesh
Look around at all of it
and ask whose signature
is stamped on the orders, traced
in the corner of the building plans
Ask where the illiterate, big-bellied
women were, the drunks and crazies,
the ones you fear most of all: ask where you were.
Revision:
Ask where you were when they built the wooden bridge
across the Chattanooga creek, built from the leavings
of old railroad tracks and the shed long abandoned
along the untouched acreage, just across the border
of Alabama in that liminal space of illiterate signatures.
What pine or oak originated from those pillars? Whose
saw slides through the chest of every ring? The homeless
old women who have no names sleep under the age marks,
remnants of what we might call the crows feet of the wood
cut in their prime. Atlanta bridges made of mortar and stone
never saw such a sight as these. The sunset across Appalachian
Mountains are not at war with the sunset of skyscrapers. Yet
we ask ourselves: Whose side are we really on when the inanimate
stage of city lights hide the stars so well, yet their reflection always
catches its gaze upon the breathe of the Chattanooga?
Calisthenic, Week 7
Exercise: Building language with synecdoche
The arm of the papier-mâché doll, the scented glue, the headline print, the ink sticking to the whitewashed kitchen floor, the button eyes, the strings of newspaper clipping hair, the dried glue on the hands palm, the stained apron, the wet mud under the fingernails, the molding hands.
Papier-mâché
You pinched the end of its body, the arm an extension to the bite of glue without a scent, blurring the headline print: New York Pizzeria, The Bees Knees. The ink smears the white tiled floor as your creation stares blankly through baby blue buttoned eyes. The precision of snipping through layer after layer of paper hair as the mud dries through each palm, wiping the dried clay over your apron. The mud plasters in between fingers as the creators, the hands mold until nothing remains.
The arm of the papier-mâché doll, the scented glue, the headline print, the ink sticking to the whitewashed kitchen floor, the button eyes, the strings of newspaper clipping hair, the dried glue on the hands palm, the stained apron, the wet mud under the fingernails, the molding hands.
Papier-mâché
You pinched the end of its body, the arm an extension to the bite of glue without a scent, blurring the headline print: New York Pizzeria, The Bees Knees. The ink smears the white tiled floor as your creation stares blankly through baby blue buttoned eyes. The precision of snipping through layer after layer of paper hair as the mud dries through each palm, wiping the dried clay over your apron. The mud plasters in between fingers as the creators, the hands mold until nothing remains.
Junkyard Quotes 1-4, Week 7
Junkyard Quotes, Week 7
1. Blame the vain for what we wear, and blame the blind when we can’t see.
Song lyric, “Blame the Vain”
2. I just realized my hair is feathered. I must be out of date.
random conversation
3. I don’t need no makeup, I got real scars.
random conversation
4. When there's no future how can there be sin we're the flowers in the dustbin.
Song lyric, “God Save the Queen”
1. Blame the vain for what we wear, and blame the blind when we can’t see.
Song lyric, “Blame the Vain”
2. I just realized my hair is feathered. I must be out of date.
random conversation
3. I don’t need no makeup, I got real scars.
random conversation
4. When there's no future how can there be sin we're the flowers in the dustbin.
Song lyric, “God Save the Queen”
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