Goal for the day: To work on speeding up and slowing down your poems
Today we start poetry week. For some this will be a relief. For others, a seeming burden. But the burden will be light as prose and poetry do a lot of fooling around underneath the covers.
Much of what we've discussed thus far applies to poetry as well and so my focus this week is introducing you to the elements that are more strictly poetic: sound, rhythm, and form.
This is all happening at the close level of writing and it's pretty easy to get overwhelmed in techno jargon about language and syllables and accents. This stuff becomes more interesting once you are actually trying to get a certain effect in your own writing. That's how we're going to roll this week.
First, though, you need something to write about. I started today asking people to powerwrite about a theme they want to poetize to this week. By the end of the week you're going to turn in very drafty drafts of five poems about a single theme or question. The idea is that writing, and especially poetry, is about discovery. You have to find something vital to write about otherwise you're just playing with language.
What question about yourself demands an answer? This was the prompt for the powerwrite. You might not walk out of class today with a theme for your five poems, but at least you'll have a seed planted.
Why do you have to write about one theme? Why can't you just write about whatever you want? If you find the right theme or question, you can. Everything that you want to write about will be connected to that theme. And the theme will hold the poems together. The poems will start to talk to each other, feed each other. Poets are both a meditation and a distillation. You need one thing to meditate on.
After the powerwrite we talked about "quick" words and "slow" words, and I reviewed strategies for speeding up and slowing down your writing. People then chose either a "fast" poem to slow down or a "slow" poem to speed up. In your own poetry, you'll think about what pace you want the lines read at and if you want a reader to linger and ponder or get on the roller coaster and go for a ride. Both can make great poetry. It just depends on what you're writing about and what you're trying to accomplish.
Homework for Tuesday, October 7th
Get all your unfinished work to me. Points start coming off what you turn in after Tuesday.
Choose a theme for your poems and start writing.
Today we start poetry week. For some this will be a relief. For others, a seeming burden. But the burden will be light as prose and poetry do a lot of fooling around underneath the covers.
Much of what we've discussed thus far applies to poetry as well and so my focus this week is introducing you to the elements that are more strictly poetic: sound, rhythm, and form.
This is all happening at the close level of writing and it's pretty easy to get overwhelmed in techno jargon about language and syllables and accents. This stuff becomes more interesting once you are actually trying to get a certain effect in your own writing. That's how we're going to roll this week.
First, though, you need something to write about. I started today asking people to powerwrite about a theme they want to poetize to this week. By the end of the week you're going to turn in very drafty drafts of five poems about a single theme or question. The idea is that writing, and especially poetry, is about discovery. You have to find something vital to write about otherwise you're just playing with language.
What question about yourself demands an answer? This was the prompt for the powerwrite. You might not walk out of class today with a theme for your five poems, but at least you'll have a seed planted.
Why do you have to write about one theme? Why can't you just write about whatever you want? If you find the right theme or question, you can. Everything that you want to write about will be connected to that theme. And the theme will hold the poems together. The poems will start to talk to each other, feed each other. Poets are both a meditation and a distillation. You need one thing to meditate on.
After the powerwrite we talked about "quick" words and "slow" words, and I reviewed strategies for speeding up and slowing down your writing. People then chose either a "fast" poem to slow down or a "slow" poem to speed up. In your own poetry, you'll think about what pace you want the lines read at and if you want a reader to linger and ponder or get on the roller coaster and go for a ride. Both can make great poetry. It just depends on what you're writing about and what you're trying to accomplish.
Homework for Tuesday, October 7th
Get all your unfinished work to me. Points start coming off what you turn in after Tuesday.
Choose a theme for your poems and start writing.