2.5.19

From today's class I realized that writing a poem can actually be really challenging. Although our groups had set words to use for the poem, it was hard to arrange the words in a way that made sense. I cant imagine how authors write poems that are so deep without having anything to go by. I also realized that some poems can have plenty of meanings. When we read 'Love Poem: Chimera', it was clear to me that I had a different idea of what the poem was about, just like another classmate thought something different then the other. I think that the more we read poems in class and learn about how to dig deeper, we will start to interpret them in a similar way.

In Class Poem - Anyi Marin, Devonte Adams, Salomee Cecil, Nicole Horn, Vincenzo Ljuba

She sings sweet music 

A warm stare to manipulate those 

Delirious and ugly to bed 

Screaming and soaring through time

Inclass poem assignment

Names,

Shaista Jabeen
Joseph Woo
Nicole Martin
Andrew Mueller

The boy will not ask for a woman after delicate sleep near our sea

Urge is sad acheing eternity

We let shadows chant life

Poems

The three poems I asked you to read this week are pretty different from each other. So there are several ways you might approach responding to them on the blog.

• You might do a close reading of one of the poems (like we did w/ David Mason's poem last week)
• You might compare the poems. What similarities do they have? What differences do you notice?
• You might write about difficulties you have with a poem. Feel free to use the blog to ask questions. I value good open questions. (Open questions are subjective, they lead to exploration. Closed questions are purely factual ("What color is the sky?") or yes/no.) And yes, you get credit for asking good questions.
• Try to answer one of my open questions.
• Try to answer one of you peers' very good open questions. And yes, again, you get credit for responding to classmates' comments and questions. 
• Make connections between a poem and other texts you've read (or seen or heard).
• Make connections between a poem and your life experience. 

It helps to quote from the text if you're making a specific comment or claim about a poem.

Poet John Ciardi had these three rules for reading poetry:

1)  The poem is not to be confused w/ a paraphrase.

2)  Avoid speed-reading. Discover the natural rhythm of the work.

3)  Read it aloud.

 

Or we might consider what poet Richard Wilbur wrote about poetry (quoted in BAP 2018, p. xix): "A poem should not be like a Double-Crostic; it should not be the sort of puzzle in which you get nothing until you get it all." In other words, although a poem may puzzle you, it's not for you to solve. A truly rich poem should offer you something different every time you return to it. Shakespeare wrote his plays over four hundred years ago and people are still publishing books and articles about them. That shows you how rich some texts can be.

Foreword

I think it's instructive for us to read and think about David Lehman's foreword to Best American Poetry 2018, esp. since you all will have to write your own forewords. Some questions to consider:

• How does this foreword work in relation to the anthology of poetry that we're about to read? 
• What does the opening (introduction) do? How does it relate to what comes after?
• He's got three sections in the foreword which he divides with asterisks (***). What purpose does ea. section serve?
• What questions did you have after reading the foreword? Do you feel better qualified to write your own?

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My experience with reading and writing

Hi, my name is Nicole Martin. There was a point in my life when I loved reading but as for today it’s not exactly so. I do not dislike it, I just don’t have the passion as opposed to in my prior years. Lately I realize I have selective reading tendencies; to materials that is of interest to me. I normally liked writing reality pieces and poems too but I’ve become stagnant on that because I do not have the time sometimes among other things.
I am looking forward to what this class has in store for me and how it can help me to be better equipped in reading and writing.
As it relates to the poem we got on the first day about Christmas and Jesus, there were parts that did not come quite clear to me as I would have hoped but I hope as time progresses I will be able to understand various types of poetry and readings at large.