English 204's Poetry Broadsides

As your PoetryBroadsides come in, I'll post them on the blog. Thanks for a great poetry reading this morning, and for a semester full of inspiration and risk!

"Anorexia," by Eavan Boland. Barbie Broadside by Amy Dawson.

"Blue Poles," by Inger Christenson. Broadside by Laura Campbell.
"This is Just to Say," by William Carlos Williams. Broadside by

POETRY BROADSIDES

Remember that first blog post, way back in September? I asked you to start thinking about a poem broadside to present at the end of the term. Well, here we are. Time to move from thinking to creating. [Also, all the actual broadsides that I brought to class to share are posted on or around my office door; come by anytime for another look.]

An on-line source for wonderful broadsides is http://guerillapoetics.org/whatisgpp/ ; be sure to click on the "Broadsides" link on the left side of their home page to see some amazing examples. A couple of my favorites (click on these photos for larger images):

Here is a great excerpt from "Poetry Broadsides:How-to and Why," from Pudding House Press (see their broadsides here http://www.puddinghouse.com/pub-guide.htm ):

What makes a poem worthy of a broadside?What makes a broadside worthy of a frame?

Message. Visual possibilities. Yes.

Name? The author’s reputation? Not important to us.

Message. It’s worthy if the message is great.

Great as in large. Especially if universal in the specific but not always.

Great as in classic quality but fresh.

Give it a door for us to walk into its room—a ready accessibility, such as has been the nature of Write, Dance, Sing, (some of my broadsides) and now many of our newest broadsides: Poetry is of Anything, The Age of Asparagus, Rain Dance, and Steve Abbott's Vespers to name a few. These have that accessibility but at the same time do not lapse into a prosy, narrative style. Not a format so much as an awareness that the piece will be, revisited.

Picture chunks of language that glimmer in the lake that is this broadside. We want always to be able to visually catch these fish time after time in their waters.

Here as much as anywhere, “make words dance together that have not danced together before.” This is my dictate for poetry, period.

If you’re going to enlarge it, hang it on a wall, it is especially so.

Pudding House is looking for poems suitable, no not “suitable” … let’s start over.

Not merely “suitable” for broadsides or posters. No no no.

We’re looking for poems to place on broadsides that will change people’s lives. That’s all.

It should work well on one large page, be visually interesting or attractive, and if you’re passing in front of it the eye should easily fall into it and remain.

The poem or language art must drive the reader to re-read,

to hover over the work for long periods of time,

to experience such emotion that the chest feels like it will explode

if you hold back any longer, or such laughter that you couldn’t possibly contain it.

Well, it should do that for a few people anyway,

and not simply the sentimental among us.The work should get better with each subsequent reading. One should never get used to the message, it should never wear out.

It must offer that and more. It has to work on your mind and body like a million dollar masseuse.

This poem does not merely be, but mean.I most appreciate broadsides that call us to action, that drive us to gratitude, or that change our minds or the direction we were headed. It should stop traffic, create controversy. Nearly everyone who passes it should scratch their heads or doubt or want to sign up for something they never wanted to sign up for before. People must NEED to own it.

Poet Dorianne Laux (her website is http://www.doriannelaux.com/) teaches poetry at North Carolina State University.

[BREAKING NEWS! New post by Dorianne Laux about her experiences with student broadside assignments, with more examples and some great commentary! See http://pionline.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/the-art-of-the-student-broadside-a-photo-documentary-by-dorianne-laux/ ]

She's been posting broadsides by her students, and I'm including a few here to give you ideas/incentives. As a broadside creator, your interpretation of the poem involved is key to the final look and feel of the broadside: you want to do the poem right. Laux's class produced some classic broadsides (those on paper with visual or graphic designs accompanying the text), as well as more innovated (using texture, 3-dimensional objects, or giving the poem a concrete context, like putting the Li-Young Lee's poem "Peaches" on a roadside fruitstand crate), are shown. Another example from Laux's class is a "video broadside" of Arthur Millar's "Names I'd Forgotten" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CndKke7ZAcE .
You may choose to do your broadside on one of your annotated poems, or you may choose a completely different poem. The key is to show your interpretation of a poem in a visual, textual way; let us know how you see that poem, how you see the work of the poem or the message of the poem.

Have fun! This is due the last day of class, during our poetry reading.

LOVE

Poet Nikki Giovanni says: "Writing a good love poem is like being a good lover. You have to touch, taste, take your time to tell that this is real. The Supremes say You Can't Hurry Love and you can't fake it, either."



Love


She tries it on, like a dress.
She decides it doesn’t fit
and starts to take it off.
Her skin comes, too.


by Lola Haskins


This poem performs the difficult but amazing task of describing an abstract concept in very concrete, tactile terms. We know exactly what kind of love this is: something that started casually, something that she thought would be reversible, or temporary; something that literally gets under her skin, becomes part of her. To remove it is akin to skinning oneself.

All in four lines!

Or check out how Billy Collins plays with cliches of love, then subverts them, twirls them around, and manages to sound romantic all at the same time:

Litany

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.

-Billy Collins


Your assignment this week is to write a love poem using the following rules:

1. do not mention the word love
2. stay entirely in the concrete
3. surprise us - reject cliches
4. You may use any form you like (you can try a new form, like the Villanelle, or stick with one you've already tried; you can also use free verse).

The problem with love poems, of course, is that so many have been written that we have a whole array of cliches, expectations, images and symbols that accompany our thoughts about love poems. These rules are designed to kick you out of those ruts, force you to be original, and encourage your personal originality.

In class today, we did freewrites about objects and nouns that you volunteered: rock, raspberry, window, chicken, footprint. the first prompt was, "Write about [pick one] as 'Love is ____.' Remember how many different kinds of rocks there are, how many origins, colors, sizes, weight. Remember that some rocks are alive with colonies of moss or lice or even animals. Go for 5 minutes. What is love? Don't use the word love at all."


The second prompt was similar; I asked you to take another word from the board, maybe one that hadn't appealed to you much, and write about it as if you were in love with it. What would it require from you to love a rock? What would your relationship with that rock be like? What kind of person would you be, or become?"


The results in both cases were great - surprising, startling, strange! Thanks to those who read their excerpts aloud - I think that helps us all take more risks.


Here are two freewrite examples (yes, mine), for those of you who were absent.


Love is a Window

"One of those old ones from colonial times, with wavery glass that distorts your vision. When you try to open it, to lift the sash, it sticks, goes up in little shudders of wood and old paint. The weights inside the side panels have long since broken, cords frayed or mouse-chewed. So you have to find a stick, or a book, or an old shoe, to hold the windo open. Then of course, it's too old to have a built-in screen, so you shove in or finesse in one of those expandable wooden-frame screens, hope no bugs get past, but know they will. You are in for a sweltering, buggy, breezeless night with this window. It won't be pretty. It might shove a splinter up your fingernail when you try to open it too far. The glass might crack if you push too hard. Don't even think about trying to lock it shut in winter."

I could have a good time with this free-write, coming up with the kind of love that a weary, worn-out, rode-hard-and-put-up-wet heart might feel.


Loving a Footprint

"You must love impermanence. It will appear suddenly, then become blurred, distorted, scuffed, gone. Other tracks will cover it up, obscure the fact of that shape. Only you will remember if it ever existed: the deep cup of the heel, long ridge of edge, delicate suggestion of an arch, five toes neat as peas. Loving a footprint means loving travel. You must have a willingness to go, to move, head out, keep on. Stay off the pavement if you want to stay visible. Hug the clay, sandy verges, muddy shoulders where you can follow with the eye what you love with your heart. Be observant. Make good guesses. Anticipate loss, the disappearance at the edge of streams. Loving a footprint makes you love fast, before something comes along to sweep it away. Remember those ancient human footprints in lava, hardened over millenia? We can't all be so lucky."


Another way to approach this assignment, as we'll see on Friday, is to think about hearts. How do poets describe hearts in love, hearts surviving loss of love, hearts trying to bear grief? If hearts could speak for themselves, what would they say? Here are a few examples:


This is My Heart

This is my heart. It is a good heart.
Bones and a membrane of mist and fire
are the woven cover.
When we make love in the flower world
my heart is close enough to sing
to yours in a language that has no use f
or clumsy human words.

My head, is a good head, but it is a hard head
and it whirrs inside with a swarm of worries.
What is the source of this singing, it asks
and if there is a source why can’t I see it
right here, right now
as real as these hands hammering
the world together
with nails and sinew?

This is my soul. It is a good soul.
It tells me, “Come here forgetful one.”
And we sit together with lilt of small winds
who rattle the scrub oak.
We cook a little something to eat, then a sip
of something sweet, for memory.

This is my song. It is a good song.
It walked forever the border of fire and water
Climbed ribs of desire to my lips to sing to you.
Its new wings quiver with
vulnerability.

Come lie next to me, says my heart.
Put your head here.
It is a good thing, says my soul.


- Joy Harjo



Mongrel Heart

by David Baker

Up the dog bounds to the window, baying
like a basset his doleful, tearing sounds
from the belly, as if mourning a dead king,

and now he’s howling like a beagle – yips, brays,
gagging growls – and scratching the sill paintless,
that’s how much he’s missed you, the two of you,

both of you, mother and daughter, my wife
and child. All week he’s curled at my feet,
warming himself and me watching more TV,

or wandered the lonely rooms, my dog shadow,
who like a poodle now hops, amped-up windup
maniac yo-yo with matted curls and snot nose

smearing the panes, having heard another car
like yours taking its grinding turn down
our block, or a school bus, or bird-squawk,

that’s how much he’s missed you, good dog,
companion dog, dog-of-all-types, most excellent dog
I told you once and for all we should never get.


The Heart's Archaeology

by Maudelle Driskell

On some fundless expedition,
you discover it beneath
a pyracantha bush
carved from the hip bone
of a long-extinct herbivore
that walked the plains on legs
a story tall. An ocarina of bone
drilled and shaped laboriously
with tools too soft to be efficient
by one primitive musician
spending night after night
squatting by the fire.
No instrument of percussion:
place this against your lips,
fill it from your lungs to sound
a note winding double helix, solo
and thready calling to the pack.


Little Clown, My Heart

- Sandra Cisneros

Little clown, my heart,
Spangled again and lopsided,
Handstands and Peking pirouettes,
Back flips snapping open like
A carpenter's hinged ruler,
Little gimp-footed hurray,
Paper parasol of pleasures,
Fleshy undertongue of sorrows,
Sweet potato plant of my addictions,
Acapulco cliff-diver corazon,
Fine as an obsidian dagger,
Alley-oop and here we go
Into the froth, my life,
Into the flames!


Heart, My Lovely Hobo

Heart, my lovely hobo, you
remember, then, that afternoon in Venice
when all the pigeons rose flooding the piazza
like a vaulted ceiling. That was you
and you alone who grinned.

Fat as an oyster,
pulpy as a plum,
raw, exposed, naïve,
dumb. As if love
could be curbed, and grace
could save you from the daily beatings.

Those blue jewels of flowers in the arbor
that the bees loved. Oh, there’ll be other
flowers, a cat maybe beside the bougainvillea,
a little boat with flags glittering in the harbor
to make you laugh,
to make you spiral once more.
Not this throbbing.
This.


~Sandra Cisneros

Heart
By Margaret Atwood

Some people sell their blood. You sell your heart.
It was either that or the soul.
The hard part is getting the damn thing out.
A kind of twisting motion, like shucking an oyster,
your spine a wrist,
and then, hup! it's in your mouth.
You turn yourself partially inside out
like a sea anemone coughing a pebble.
There's a broken plop, the racket
of fish guts into a pail,
and there it is, a huge glistening deep-red clot
of the still-alive past, whole on the plate.
It gets passed around. It's slippery. It gets dropped,
but also tasted. Too coarse, says one. Too salty.
Too sour, says another, making a face.
Each one is an instant gourmet,
and you stand listening to all this
in the corner, like a newly hired waiter,
your diffident, skilful hand on the wound hidden
deep in your shirt and chest,
shyly, heartless.

· From Margaret Atwood's The Door, published by Virago

Heart to Heart

- by Rita Dove

It's neither red

nor sweet.

It doesn't melt

or turn over,

break or harden,

so it can't feel

pain,

yearning,

regret.

It doesn't have

a tip to spin on,

it isn't even

shapely—

just a thick clutch

of muscle,

lopsided,

mute. Still,

I feel it inside

its cage sounding

a dull tattoo:

I want, I want—

but I can't open it:

there's no key.

I can't wear it

on my sleeve,

or tell you from

the bottom of it

how I feel. Here,

it's all yours, now—

but you'll have

to take me,

too.

The Human Heart
- by Campbell McGrath

We construct it from tin and ambergris and clay,
ochre, graph paper, a funnel
of ghosts, whirlpool
in a downspout full of midsummer rain.
It is, for all its freedom and obstinence,
an artifact of human agency
in its maverick intricacy
its chaos reflected in earthly circumstance,
its appetites mirrored by a hungry world
like the lights of the casino
in the coyote’s eye. Old
as the odor of almonds in the hills around Solano,
filigreed and chancelled with the flavor of blood oranges,
fashioned from moonlight,
yarn, nacre, cordite,
shaped and assembled valve by valve, flange by flange,
and finished with the carnal fire of interstellar dust.
We build the human heart
and lock it in its chest
and hope that what we have made can save us.

Finally, in the following poem ("Broke"), I try to write about the hearts of people I know and love, people who seem to always get a raw deal, people who never seem to love wisely or get a good start on healthy relationships. Of course, I imagine myself as one of those hearts, at least in the moment of conceiving the poem, and create a community of other "broke" hearts to keep myself company. I play off the way "broke" also means "penniless" and "poor" also means living in poverty. If love were money, I wonder, how would we describe being broken-hearted? Is love a kind of currency that some of us will always be perpetually short of? Concrete imagery was the key to exploring those ideas.

Broke

Poor hearts rattle paper cups on the sidewalk,
earn rent limping in three-inch stilettos,

burn holes in their pockets with unrequited love.
Poor hearts slouch in the unemployment line every month,

have more lust than sense, believe tenderness
is the root of all evil. Poor hearts

support someone else’s illegal habit,
post bail for an unfaithful lover,

squander their savings on get-love-quick schemes in Florida.
They lose their shirts when the bubble bursts,

fall for counterfeit affections, don’t have
no change for the lonely bus home.

Poor hearts love under the table all their lives,
operate on the barter system, pray for fair trade,

believe if you love hard enough …
Poor hearts can’t budget for the long haul,

get lunch at St. Leo’s kitchen, recycle
the same cheap passion till it’s threadbare.

Poor hearts do the loving no one else wants to do,
avoid the dentist till the tooth’s rotted out,

moonlight with coyotes to make ends meet.
Poor hearts flutter so thin and faded

they just need to be taken
out of circulation altogether -

set fire, burned right
down to newborn ash.

- Deborah Miranda

Poetry and Project Runway by Stephen Burt : The Poetry Foundation [article]

Poetry Meets Project Runway! Check out this article by Stephen Burt about how Tim Gunn's incisive critique (and the show's technique as a whole) is a good strategy for reading/teaching/critiquing poetry. Very entertaining.

Poetry and Project Runway by Stephen Burt : The Poetry Foundation [article]

The Number of the Beast: SESTINA

You know you really want to take on The Number of the Beast this November, right?! We'll be working with an ancient form of torture/I mean poetry, The Sestina. Some of the most contemporary and linguistically clever sestinas can be found online at http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/sestinas/ - including poems about Maidenform bras, domesticated sestinas, Christian pop-stars, fake sestinas, salvation, reluctant sestinas…

Writing Prep: Read the chapter on Sestinas in 13 Ways. Be sure to read at least one of these sestinas out loud, to feel the way repetition of the six words helps the poet gather momentum for the envoi.

Basic Sestina Etiquette: six words, each coming at the end of a line, are repeated in a pre-determined order, ultimately forming six six-line stanzas; all six words are included in a final, 3-line stanza commonly called the envoi. The standard "illustration" for the order of the six words is:

1,2,3,4,5,6

6,1,5,2,4,3

3,6,4,1,2,5

5,3,2,6,1,4

4,5,1,3,6,2

2,4,6,5,3,1

2,5,4,3,6,1

You can find a line-by-line template in 13 Ways.

However, if you are one of those people who have difficulty keeping numbers straight, even in template form, try this: a “sestina generator”! No, it doesn’t write the poem for you; but it does take your six key words and order them correctly into six stanzas, plus the final 3-line stanza called an envoi. http://dilute.net/sestinas/ is the place to go. Once you’ve got your words in order, copy them down, and start having fun.

Suggestions:

1. choose words that “cluster” together: for example, two nouns, two verbs, two adjectives. Example: fountain, clarinet, trickle, slide, soft, striped.

2. pick a topic you want to write about and create a list of words that refer to that topic. Example: insomnia: heartbeat, eyes, pillow, sheets, toss, breath, clock, tick, sigh, darkness, book, tea, mattress, frustration, curse … then choose the six words that you feel are most likely to help you write this poem.

3. freewrite about a topic of your choice. Go for ten minutes, or until you find the beginning of your poem. Maybe even write the entire first draft of a poem. Maybe even take an OLD poem that you don’t much like or never finished. Pick out six words. Start the sestina pattern using those words.

4. Choose six words from a poem (by someone else) that you really, really love. Try to write out a six-sentence story, ending each one with one of those words. Start the sestina pattern.

5. Choose words that can have more than one meaning (even if it means spelling the word differently), or that can double as noun and verb; for example: swallow, right, wind, ring, bell, loft, keep, leaves, may, long, saw, nail, wind, sail…

6. Read the sestina “Anna Karenina (or, like, Most of It)” by Jonah Winter (below). Notice how Winter uses the repetition to his advantage by making some of his six words slang or idioms. Try a mix: nouns, adverbs, verbs, conjunctions, prepositions, articles, interjections. Consider trying to summarize one of the “greats” like Moby Dick, Last of the Mohicans, The Snows of Kilamanjaro, The Invisible Man, On the Road; a fairy tale; a TV series; a series of unfortunate events...

Anna Karenina (or, like, most of it)
by Jonah Winter

So, like, I read this really cool novel that was like
all about these different relationships?
You know like there were these different couples and like
some of the couples were like, okay, or whatever, but, there was this one couple that was like so
unhappy! I mean, it was like, WOW,
you know? The wife was like, married to this big dude

who was like, you know—real intense. Dude,
I'm serious, this guy was like
majorly into making money and like, ignoring his wife, until she was just like: "Wow,
this is NOT what I signed up for," right? I mean, like, their relationship
was like—Oh. My. God. —TOTALLY unfulfilling. TOTALLY!!! So,
like, then there are these other characters too? And they've all got these like

in-CRED-ibly long names, and things like that. (I think they're like
related or something.) Anyway, like, so, this wife falls in love with this other dude
who's like, I guess, *totally* amazing—and they are like SO
into each other it's not even funny. Seriously. She's just like
"Oh my God this is like a real relationship.
Wow."

And then like, she goes to visit her brother or something. Wow.
This is such an incredibly intense novel, it's hard to like
remember stuff. Okay. So, anyway, her brother's like also having problems in his relationship
with his wife. And his wife is like, "Dude,
what the fuck?" And he's like
"What?" And she's like, "That is just SO

uncool to just like, SMILE right now." Cause you know like he was like SO
busted when his wife you know like caught him with the maid? And his sister was like, "Wow,
so, I guess you can't help me." And he was like,
"What-Ever." Or, you know, "RELAX." And she was like,
"Later, dude."
So then like her husband finds out about her relationship—

and THAT is DEFINITELY not cool with him. And so then like THEIR relationship
actually gets like, even worse? Cause he is just like SO
telling her what to do and stuff, how he's gonna like, hurt her, and stuff, and she is like "Dude," I'm outta here." And so like she goes back to the other dude, and he is like "Wow,
it's really great to see you!" And so like
I guess they're not, like, using protection that night? and so she gets like,

you know—pregnant. And that's when things get like really fucked up in their relationship. Cause you know like they're not married or anything and so
she just goes "Wow. Now I'm gonna have to OFF myself... DUDE!!!"



7. Just for fun, try this “Mad Libs Sestina” by Leah Fasulo. It gets your juices flowing and yes, it’s okay to laugh.

A Mad Libs Sestina


BY LEAH FASULO


Mad Libs Sestina: __exclamation__!

She steps out onto the yellow __noun (2 syllables)—A____
adv (2)__. "Goddamn you, __noun (3)__!" she shouts,
And her words ring like __adj (1)__ __noun (1)__ through the night.
The water is still but the lights are __adj (1)—B__.
And with every step, she __verb (1)__ __adv (3)—C__:
"Is that God's __body part (2)__ or is it my own?"

It isn't hard to __verb (2)__ on her own.
She just needs a __noun (2)__ on the __repeat A__.
Two suns and a moon have passed __repeat C__
But she feels like a __noun (2)__ when she shouts,
So she __verb (3)__ instead and feels __repeat B__
Like __adj (2)__ __color (1)__ at the end of the night.

Was her __noun (2)__ __adj (2)__ the other night?
Or did she just __verb (1)__ the __noun (1)__ of her own__
body part (1)__? The answer is in the __noun (2)__ of __repeat B__
Which is hidden deep under the __repeat A__
In the realm of __made-up word (3)__. If she shouts
__adv (1)__ enough, it will come out __repeat C__.

Rarely does she __verb (1)__ __plural noun (2)__ __repeat C__,
So instead she lies down for the __adj (1)__ night.
If she can't __verb (1)__ the __noun (2)__ with her shouts,
Then she'd rather just __verb (2)__ on her own.
Pulling a __noun (2)__ onto the __repeat A__,
She falls asleep, feeling __adj (2)__ and __repeat B__.

Once asleep, she __verb (2)__ and dreams of __repeat B
__Angels, each looking at her __repeat C__.
They __verb (1)__ their __adj (1)__ __body part (2)__ at the __repeat A__
And whisper, "__verb (1)__ the __noun (1)__, __girl's name (2)__. The night
Is __adj (2)__, and you surely do not own
The __noun (2)__." She awakes to her own shouts.

And to hers join other __adj (3)__ shouts,
Billowing into __ plural noun (1)__ of __adj (2)__ __repeat B__,
Reminding her that her __noun (1)__ is her own
Worst __noun (3)__, and she should __repeat C____
verb (2)__ the __adj (1)__ and __adj (1)__ __ plural noun (1)__ of the night:
At last, she __verb (3)__ the __repeat A__.

All night, the __adj (1)__ shouts of friends __verb (1)__ her __body part (1)__,
But she lets them __verb (2)__ __repeat C__ __repeat B__,
Ready to __verb (2)__ life on her own __repeat A__.

Don't be afraid of the Sestina form. It is well-suited to rants (or what some poets call "Rantinas"), descriptions of ritual, and to long, cyclical, repetitive patterns about human relationships, physics, biology, and the cosmos. Your aim here is to go with the flow. Don't resist. But stay directed and focused. Sestinas are a little like riding the rapids of a very fast river. Grab your life-jacket.

Give me a sonnet with a twist

The schedule this week has changed. In lieu of class on M & W, you will have two projects to work on: 1) this week’s poem, a Sonnet (see below), and 2) the second set of annotated poems (due on Friday in class, 11/13). We WILL meet on Friday, 11/13, and start workshopping Group B’s Sonnets.

“Give me a Sonnet with a twist”

No, that’s not a new kind of cocktail. This week you’ll be playing with the sonnet form(s), reading everything from poems that strictly follow classic sonnet form(s) of structure and content, to sonnets that challenge the Petrarchan “beloved” as object, to sonnets that are quite badly behaved and probably aren’t invited to family reunions (but oh, their parties are so much more interesting).

Your assignment is to write a sonnet – in any of the various forms below – with the subject of either a Personal Ad, or an Insult (prep for assignment! Read: 13W, read Chapter 12, “Sonnets: Exploring the Possibilities of Fourteen Lines;” sonnets in SM Poetry Anthology, and Karenne Wood's ME “Smoke” (43). Also, read SM poems for “Personal Ad” and “Insult”).

In other words, this can be a kind of love poem (as in, looking for love), or an anti-love poem (as in, you suck, and here’s why). It just needs to be in sonnet form.


STRUCTURE
Most of you are familiar with, at the very least, the Shakespearean sonnet. Wendy Bishop’s chapter in 13 Ways gives examples of more traditional sonnets such as “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” and “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” This form uses the English sonnet, what Bishop calls “a small, often passionate or philosophical song” of 14 lines in iambic pentameter, with the usual suspects in rhyming patterns. However, she also notes these kinds of sonnet possibilities:

a sonnet written in couplets
a personal (invented) rhyme scheme (called a ‘nonce sonnet’)
sonnet sequences, such as a ‘crown of sonnets,’ using the Italian form (see page 318)
a monorhymed sonnet
double sonnets (28 lines)
reversed Shakespearean sonnet
retrograde sonnet (reads the same backward as forward)
non-rhyming sonnet of 14 lines
shorter lines (a ‘skinny’ sonnet)

CONTENT
Traditional sonnets developed as a vehicle in which male poets praised their female beloveds in a predictable and objectifying manner, or as Julia Alvarez says, “The sonnet tradition was one in which women were caged in golden cages of a beloved, in perfumed gas chambers of stereotype … a heavily mined and male labyrinth.” Although few men complained about the male-centricism of sonnets, perhaps Shakespeare himself rebelled against the necessity of constant praise when he wrote “my mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,” a sonnet that paints a less than flattering picture of the supposed-beloved.

Like Shakespeare, if you can’t find the form you need, tweak the one you have. Bishop’s chapter contains sonnets about rape (“Leda and the Swan”), a sonnet that won’t behave (“The Bad Sonnet”), the loss of a finger while shoeing a horse (“One Morning, Shoeing Horses”), a diabetic seizure (“Fourteen”), and so on.

On the web, check out http://www.sonnets.org/newsonnets.htm which has many links to contemporary sonnets.

Here are other examples that might inspire you.

Margaret Melamin’s collection Blue Collar Sonnets gives us the sonnet in a new light:

The Hobo

Deep in the vast Missouri’s slimy silt
there lies what was a man. He has been dead
these seven decades, and his flesh has fed
huge catfish and a boxcar rider’s guilt.
There were no jobs. My uncle slept in trains
that ran along the river in KC
where hoboes gathered. It was here that he
jumped from a car and panic filled his veins
as someone stepped from shadow. It was here
he pulled his gun and dropped the man forever.
Quickly he rolled the body to the river
and watched it sink. He lived in guilt and fear
from that day forward, dreamed of Cain and Abel.
Who was the man? Who missed him at the table?

Plumbers

Up to their shins in human nastiness
of every ugly kind, how do they keep
from choking on their vomit when they sleep?
How do they free their nostrils of the mess
and find their appetites at dinner hour?
Do they just wash their hands of all of it,
the hairballs and the condoms and the shit,
and think of lilacs while they’re in the shower?
These are the men we call when septic tanks
rebel, when sewer lines regurgitate
their stinking contents. They investigate
our murky underworld for little thanks
beyond their union scale, but when they’re through
they know more secrets than the tabloids do.

The Molly Maguires
John “Blackjack” Kehoe Speaks

Oh yes, our hands were bloody, but in part
from lifting murdered brothers off the ground.
We came to this great promised land and found
that we were beasts of burden, saw the heart
of Ireland being trampled in the mud
by ruthless men who broke us, showed us hell
and left our shriveled bodies where they fell.
I’ll not deny we shed some rich men’s blood.
We wanted schools and doctors, shoes and bread.
We got betrayal, treachery and filth
while villains bribed our priests with tainted wealth
and winked at murderers who blamed their dead
on Mollies. It was perjured oaths alone
that hanged us not for our crimes but their own.

Marilyn Hacker’s amazing collection Love, Death and a Changing of the Seasons chronicles a love affair from first blush to final break-up:

“Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?”

Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?
Before a face suddenly numinous,
her eyes watered, knees melted. Did she lactate
again, milk brought down by a girl’s kiss?
It’s documented torrents are unloosed
by such events as recently produced
not the wish, but the need, to consume, in us,
one pint of Maalox, one of Kaopectate.
My eyes and groin are permanently swollen,
I’m alternatingly brilliant and witless
—and sleepless: bed is just a swamp to roll in.
Although I’d cream my jeans touching your breast,
sweetheart, it isn’t lust; it’s all the rest
of what I want with you that scares me shitless.

And Eavan Boland’s fascination with mythology and metaphorical descriptions of what’s been lost shows up in this one:

Atlantis—A Lost Sonnet

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animals—had all
one fine day gone under?

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city —

white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe
what really happened is

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of

where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.

Finally, if you are in dire need of an insult jump-start, try the Insult Generator at http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker/ which pulls up random insults from Shakespeare for your enjoyment. Thou unmuzzled guts-griping popinjay! See also the Shakespeare Insult Kit link on that page at http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/shake_rule.html

And on the Personal Ad front, an excerpt from Poplicks.com:

I read a collection of personal ads in Sunday's LA Times Magazine that I assumed was the brainchild of a creative genius.On second read, I realized that the ads were real personals pulled from various sources spanning several years. (I confirmed that a few were from Craigslist.)

Here are some of the more delicious ones:

Liberal man seeks a conservative (neocon or better) woman for discreet affair. You blast Sean Hannity while dominating me in the back of my Prius. Weekdays only.

Young man, moderate circumstances, with glass eye, would like to make acquaintance of young girl, also with glass eye or other deformity not more severe, for matrimony.

Portly screen legend, reclusive, with unabashed Japanese fetish wishes to turn over new leaf and find a nice Chinese girl to spend remaining days with.

My name is Bubbles. I reside in a shed with 28 kitties. I refurbish grocery carts, which I steal from the local Wal-Mart. Just kidding. I'm Tom. I'm looking for local female for coffee and maybe more.

Broken guy with only a guitar and a Dodge Dart, looking for barely legal runaway who won't judge him for being an abject failure.

SWM cultural imperialist foodie seeks goofy hipster chick to drive to San Gabriel so we can brag about being the only white people at a filthy C-grade restaurant.

Stoner seeks same.

Monacan poet Karenne Wood's Reading on Wednesday!

What: Poetry Reading

When: November 4, 2009

Time: 4:30

Place: Northen Auditorium (Leyburn Library)

Who: Open to the public

KARENNE WOOD is the author of Markings on Earth, which won the North American Native Authors Award for Poetry. She holds an MFA in poetry from George Mason University and is an enrolled member of the Monacan Indian Nation, where she served on the Monacan Tribal Council for 12 years. She directs the Virginia Indian Heritage Program at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and is currently a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Virginia, working to revitalize indigenous languages and cultural practices. She was previously the Repatriation Director for the Association on American Indian Affairs, coordinating the return of sacred objects to Native communities. She has worked at the National Museum of the American Indian as a researcher, and directed a tribal history project with the Monacan Nation for six years. Recently, Wood edited The Virginia Indian Heritage Trail, a guidebook now in its third edition.

We've read some of Wood's elegies for class this week. Read more at her NativeWiki: http://www.nativewiki.org/Karenne_Wood

Elegies

Read: 13 Ways, Chapter 4, "Elegies and Aubaudes" as well as Elegy poems in SM. In Karenne Wood's Markings on Earth, read "Fire and Water" (39), and "For My Ex-Husband," (40), and "For Them," (48).

The Academy of American Poets defines elegies:

The elegy began as an ancient Greek metrical form and is traditionally
written in response to the death of a person or group. Though similar in
function, the elegy is distinct from the epitaph, ode, and eulogy: the epitaph
is very brief; the ode solely exalts; and the eulogy is most often written in
formal prose.

The elements of a traditional elegy mirror three stages of
loss. First, there is a lament, where the speaker expresses grief and sorrow,
then praise and admiration of the idealized dead, and finally consolation and
solace.

One of the most famous American elegies was written by Walt Whitman, upon the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Whitman includes the final stage of "consolation and solace," while still allowing a sense of devastation that cannot be assuaged:

O Captain! My Captain!

1
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.


2
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head;

It is some dream that on the deck,

You’ve fallen cold and dead.


3
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;

From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!

But I, with ­mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.


For this and other elegies (often poems about funerals), see the AAP site at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15754 . Incidentally, while Whitman's poem was understandably popular at the time, and remains so, Whitman felt it was not one of his best efforts. He rarely wrote in rhyme, and felt the popularity of this piece misrepresented his body of work in general.

Elegies do not always follow the three stages listed above; as you read through some of the elegies in our anthologies and online, notice how each poet negotiates the difficulty of grieving, praising, and coming to resolution.

An elegy is not always completely serious: elegies for pets, for love affairs, for lost parts of selves, for the end of an era, often use humor and/or sarcasm.

Paula Meehan writes about the loss of open spaces in her poem, "Death of a Field." She makes use of lists here in an elegy about a kind of death that ripples from the very smallest being to the much larger ecosystem and human communities. Her use of contrast is striking: "the end of primrose is the start of Brillo" puts the delicacy of a flower next to the rough artificial brutality of a cleaning pad, and forces us as readers to face the reality of this loss.

DEATH OF A FIELD


The field itself is lost the morning it becomes a site
When the Notice goes up: Fingal County Council – 44 houses

The memory of the field is lost with the loss of its herbs

Though the woodpigeons in the willow
And the finches in what’s left of the hawthorn hedge
And the wagtail in the elder
Sing on their hungry summer song

The magpies sound like flying castanets

And the memory of the field disappears with its flora:
Who can know the yearning of yarrow
Or the plight of the scarlet pimpernel
Whose true colour is orange?

And the end of the field is the end of the hidey holes
Where first smokes, first tokes, first gropes
Were had to the scentless mayweed

The end of the field as we know it is the start of the estate
The site to be planted with houses each two or three bedroom
Nest of sorrow and chemical, cargo of joy

The end of dandelion is the start of Flash
The end of dock is the start of Pledge
The end of teazel is the start of Ariel
The end of primrose is the start of Brillo
The end of thistle is the start of Bounce
The end of sloe is the start of Oxyaction
The end of herb robert is the start of Brasso
The end of eyebright is the start of Fairy

Who amongst us is able to number the end of grasses
To number the losses of each seeding head?

I’ll walk out once
Barefoot under the moon to know the field
Through the soles of my feet to hear
The myriad leaf lives green and singing
The million million cycles of being in wing

That – before the field become solely map memory
In some archive of some architect’s screen
I might possess it or it possess me
Through its night dew, its moon white caul
Its slick and shine and its prolifigacy
In every wingbeat in every beat of time

© 2005, Paula Meehan


As you read the assigned elegies:

1. notice where each of the three stages fall;
2. notice the speaker's choice of nouns, verbs, and tone towards the departed;
3. notice who or what the "departed" is - a person? a lover? a relative? a pet? an era?
4. notice how the departed is remembered: as a complicated human being? as a simplified, stereotypical image? specific memories of the departed?

Tips: if you have trouble getting into your draft, try these exercises:

• an imitation of someone else's elegy;
• a humorous elegy for the "death" of a relationship, food that has spoiled, a favorite t-shirt that has finally disintegrated, a lost shoe;
• a list poem (list the good and bad qualities of the departed, what you miss, what is now possible, what you hope for in the new situation);
• try writing out a list of all the things that can be lost in a typical lifetime. Use the phrase "I lost" and keep going. People lose their minds, their train of thought, their keys, their dogs, their virginity...
• borrow a technique from a poet's elegy. For example, Paula Meehan's contrast repetition: "the end of ___________ is the start of __________." Endings and beginnings are, indeed, intimately related, although in elegaic fashion, it is the ending we mourn. What beginnings, good or bad, might also be a part of ending?

In your revisions of free writes and drafts, think about all the ways each poet has made his or her elegy belong to their loss, their grief, their specific situation. References to specific eras, time, place, cultural or regional information, personal favorites (songs, food, religion, physical characteristics). Grief is a complicated emotion, especially if the relationship to the departed has not been easy. Below is my elegy for my father, in which I make lavish use of repetition, metaphor and concrete imagery to "say" some of the more difficult things about the scope of my father's immense personality.

Ghost Road Song
Deborah Miranda

for my father

I need a song.
I need a song like a river, cool and dark and wet,
like a battered old oak; gnarled bark,
bitter acorns,
a song like a dragonfly:
shimmer - hover - swerve -
like embers, too hot to touch.

I need a song like my father’s hands:
scarred, callused, blunt,
a song like a wheel,
like June rain, seep of solstice,
tang of waking earth.

I need a song like a seed:
a hard and shiny promise,
a song like ashes:
gritty, fine, scattered;
a song like abalone, tough as stone,
smooth as a ripple at the edge of the bay.

I need a song so soft, it won’t sting my wounds,
so true, no anger can blunt it,
so deep, no one can mine it.

I need a song with a heart wrapped in barbed wire.

I need a song that sheds no tears,
I need a song that sobs.
I need a song that skates along the edge of black ice,
howls with coyotes,
a song with a good set of lungs,
a song that won’t give out, give up,
give in, give way:
I need a song with guts.

I need a song like lightning, just one blaze of insight.

I need a song like a hurricane,
spiraled winds of chaos,
a snake-charming song,
a bullshit-busting song,
a shut-up-and-listen-to-the-Creator song.
I need a song that rears its head up like a granite peak
and greets the eastern sky.

I need a song small enough to fit in my pocket,
big enough to wrap around
the wide shoulders of my grief,
a song with a melody like thunder,
chords that won’t get lost,
rhythm that can’t steal away.
I need a song that forgives me my lack of voice.

I need a song that forgives my lack of forgiveness.

I need a song so right
that the first note splinters me like crystal,
spits the shards out into the universe
like sleek seedlings of stars; yes,
that’s the song
I need,
the song to accompany you
on your first steps
along the Milky Way,
that song with ragged edges,
a worn-out sun;
the song that lets a burnt red rim
slip away into the Pacific,
leaves my throat
healed at last.


*

FYI: Your annotated poem presentation dates

Annotated Poem Presentation Dates

(first batch of annotated poems due on Monday, 10/19)

name date

Ryan 10/14
Wilson Monday 10/19
Zoe Wednesday 10/21
Steven Monday 10/26
Maggie Wednesday 10/28
Laura Friday 10/30
Cameron Monday 11/2
Allison Friday 11/6
MacKenzie Friday 11/13
Katie H. Monday 11/16
Amy Wednesday 11/18
Katie S. Friday 11/20
CJ Monday 11/30
Morey Friday 12/4
Meghan Wednesday 12/9

Creating a Credo - What do you believe?

The word “credo” comes from the Latin, and literally means, “I believe.” You may be familiar with it as a religious term. Do you really know what you believe – in general, or about a specific issue? How does what you believe define who you are? A credo can also be written as an instructional piece of material, like the Desiderata: here’s what you should believe, here’s what you should strive for. What would you advise others about how to survive this world?

First: read the Credo poems in our class anthology, SM. Read them carefully, note what the poets are doing to create a definition of one's identity. Look at this Credo:

Credo

I believe in the testament of bones, their tensile strength.

Little girls jumping rope, boys with hockey sticks,

leap moons every day. They whirl like planets

and their bones turn the wheel of the universe.

I believe in the torso, ankles, spine, and those small

sticky ribs. I rejoice in my bones each morning,

rise from bed on legs that hold me straight,

walk me to the kitchen. I lift my coffee cup

with a slender filigree of fingers. My hat

fits my skull and I dare the world with my chin.

At night, my bones retract into a thin skin of dreams.

These, too, I believe. An undercut of sorrow

runs beneath. I accept the slow dissolve into mineral.

I touch my knees, my breastbone, feel the outward scars,

believe that mysteries are happening deeper than skin;

so soon bones diminish and fall away.

I believe nothing is wasted: calcium-crumble,

grate of shale, arrowheads once lost now found,

even shiny leaves, the pointed blades of grass.

Everything that has moved in the rain.

-- Jennifer McPherson

McPherson combines elements of praise, list, and ethics with her very close and appreciative musing on bones. Her amazement at the hard work of bones, the movements that specific bones let us make, and the mystery of how bones fade away with time, all come through with her concrete details, her carefully chosen images, and her concise use of the phrase "I believe."

Credo

by Judith Roche

I believe in the cave paintings at Lascaux,
the beauty of the clavicle,
the journey of the salmon,
her leap up any barrier,
the scent of home waters
she finds through celestial navigation.
I believe in all the gods –
I just don’t like some of them.
I believe the war is always against the imagination,
is recurring, repetitive, and relentless.
I believe in fairies, elves, angels and bodisatvas,
Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
I have seen and heard ghosts.
I believe that Raven invented the Earth
And so did Coyote. In archeology
lie the clues. The threshold is numinous
and the way in is the way out.
I believe in the alphabets - all of them -
and the stories seeping from their letters.
I believe in dance as prayer, that the heart
beat invented rhythm and chant –.
or is it the other way around –
I believe in the wisdom of the body.
I believe that art saves lives
and love makes it worth living them.
And that could be the other way around, too.

-- Judith Roche

Roche's poem looks at the larger mysteries of the universe - Creation, Prayer, Wisdom, Art. But she still uses very particular images, unpredictable combinations, and specific details to create her sweeping statements. Hers is an inclusive belief system that, like McPherson's, accepts even the endings of mystery.

These pieces require their authors to be honest and unpredictable, mundane and risky, thorough and concise. A credo is your definition of self: it may be your self at any given moment, the self you aspire to become, the self you used to be, or the core self that never changes. It is both a concrete assertion, and an imaginary, abstract thing. To write a Credo requires time, passion, and craft. Don’t skimp on any of these ingredients.

Here are some exercises to get you started. Try at least two of them, even if you think you know what kind of credo you want to create - you want to make use of the unpredictability of language to help hit that magic combination of words.

Exercise A

Start each line below with “I believe.”
1. Write down five specific things you believe about one or all of these topics: religion, politics, nutrition, a particular sport, sex.
2. Write down five specific things you believe about one or all of these topics: asparagus, birds, sweatshirts, small appliances, personal hygiene.
3. Write down five things you do NOT believe in, from any of the above categories.
4. Write down three things you WISH you believed in (no limits).
5. Write down two things you USED TO believe in, but don’t any longer (no limits).
6. Write down what you believe is THE MOST AMAZING thing or event in the known or unknown universe, or simply in your own personal experience.
7. Use these lines to construct a poem that starts, “I believe…”
8. Revise: start adding in WHY you believe these things for all or every other line. See what happens to the poem. Remove some of the “I believe” statements to create a list-like tone. Check on your choice of verbs, words, clichés, unintentional repetitions, predictability. Strive for your own, unique voice in every possible way.

Exercise B

1. Do Exercise A, but start each line with “I don’t believe” instead of “I believe” (Sarah Lewis Holmes does this in her poem (above) with great effect, building a semi-absurd but also serious commentary on how to live one’s truest life). When you get to #6, tell us the most heretical, incredible, inhumane, unconscionable thing you don’t believe in: for example, “I don’t believe in flossing,” or “I don’t believe in an omniscient God,” or “I don’t believe in stretching before exercise.” This line is totally personal, and completely up to you, but remember: it still needs to make good poetry.

Exercise C
1. Write a credo from someone else’s perspective, Examples: Janitor’s Credo. Code-writer’s Credo. Fraternity/Sorority Credo. Designated Driver’s Credo. The Good Son’s (Daughter’s) Credo. The key here: GET INTO CHARACTER.

Exercise D
1. Write a credo that is about only one specific topic or event. Check out the infamous “Crash’s Credo” from the movie Bull Durham at watch the “Bull Durham” scene on you-tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBfdl6hNZ9k - this would be an example of a very specific life philosophy! Ex: Vacation Credo. Lawn-mowing Credo. Cheater’s Credo. Dog-owner’s Credo. Sex Credo. Sunday Credo. Exam Credo. Hangover Credo. The key here: FOCUS.

Exercise E.
1. Steal a great line from the credo poems in SM. Use it as your jumping off point for a topic-specific poem. For example, Jennifer McPherson’s line, “I believe in the testament of bones” would be a great start to a poem about the qualities, importance of, work of, dreams of, or memories of, bones.

Exercise F.
Go to http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=4538138 and choose one of the “This I Believe” audio essays from NPR to listen to; freewrite on what the essay evokes in your mind about the topic (whether it be something about race, forgiveness, good neighbors, or ghosts); use some of the lines to write a “found” credo; write ABOUT the essay (“Amy Tan believes in ghosts; she believes in scary ghosts that lurk under chairs, she believes in baby ghosts that cry out for lost mothers…”).

I have tried my hand at writing a credo several times. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. This is an older effort, meant to focus on my move to Virginia from the west coast. Now that I’ve been here awhile, it might be time to try this exercise again.


Credo
-- Deborah Miranda

I believe that the scent of ions bristling on the tip
of a thunderstorm chemically alters our brain cells

like the breath of a passing god.
I believe that round, olive-green hills trigger

the heartsongs of ancestors still dwelling
in the ridges of blue mountains.

I believe in robins, their liquid jungle cries overflowing
from ancient fountains of praise.

I don’t believe in promises pulled from weeping children,
or lovers. I don’t believe in the noble poor,

the noble savage, or the born-again politician.
I believe in a brilliant, distracted Creator

who’s forgotten to feed the kids but snags
a Pulitzer with that terra cotta sculpture. I believe

in the languid lure of purple phlox on the road home,
forget-me-nots sprouting in abandoned yards

and the fervent green cries of a thousand acorns
all sprouting at once, in love.

"Praise the Mutilated World"

“Trying to Praise the Mutilated World”

Read: 13 Ways, Chapter 8, "Odes and Praise Songs." Also, see praise poems in SM. New!: In Karenne Wood's book, Markings on Earth, read "Celebrating Corn," (15), and "Making Apple Butter," (61).

For the past few years, I've been working on a poetry manuscript of praise poems. In some ways, it started soon after my last book was published. I always give a copy of my books to my children (they’ve always asked for one – they see me signing copies for other people and want one of their own). I don’t think either one of them read the poems immediately, but over the years, I’d see Indian Cartography sitting around their rooms, and as my children grew older, eventually we’d talk about one poem or another; it was the same with The Zen of La Llorona. In fact, soon after Zen came out, my son Danny (then about 15) asked me, “Mom, why do you always write such sad poems?”

Zen is full of poems about the loss of a childhood, loss of my mother, and loss of a beloved. Indian Cartography explores the mutilated world of post-missionized California Indians, mourns loss of relatives, language, religion, culture, land, freedom. How could such poems not be sad?! Yet somehow my usual reply, “Well, a lot of sad things have happened in the world,” was not enough for Danny this time. He said, “But you’re happier now!” and I realized, with a shock, that I am. It was a revelation. Yes, my tribe was nearly colonized out of existence, and we will never be the same. Yes, my life has been “mutilated” by alcoholism, abandonment, fear, poverty. Yes, poetry is a fine instrument for making music out of pain. But I am no longer living each day with the absolute goal of simply staying alive another 24 hours. I am no longer living by the skin of my teeth, as my mother used to say. Although I still battle fears engrained in me by the past, those fears do not guide my every move, or word. For the first time in my life I have room to breathe, time to give thanks, and the energy to accommodate gratitude. And, I decided, this survival requires - deserves - intentional praise of the same world that has given me so much grief.

About the time my son made his remarks, I was teaching a beginning poetry writing class here at Washington and Lee, and using, as I always do, some of Pablo Neruda’s odes. Edward Hirsch writes of Neruda’s praise poems,

The list of their subjects is dizzying. Nothing ordinary was alien to Neruda,
or, for that matter, ordinary -- everything was magical. He wrote separate odes
to tomatoes and wine, to an artichoke and a dead carob tree, to conger chowder,
to a large tuna in the market, to his socks and his suit, to his native birds,
to light on the sea, to the dictionary, to a village movie theater. He wrote an
ode to time and another to the Earth, an [ode entitled] "Ode for Everything." .
. . The first poem, "The Invisible Man," is explicit in its sense of the poet's
urgency: "what can I do,/everything asks me/to speak,/everything asks me/to
sing, sing forever." . . . The odes are funny, fiery and exultant, savagely new
and profoundly ancient.

This time, I read Neruda’s odes with completely new eyes. I’d always been aware of the praise poem tradition in Western literature – "Ode to an Athlete Dying Young," "Ode on a Grecian Urn." And I’d read about the African tribal tradition of praise poems, with their powerful animal and elemental imagery. I’d even named my beginning poetry workshop after a poem by contemporary poet Al Zolynas, because his line “ah, gray sacrament of the mundane!” gave me the perfect theme for young writers: learn to see the sacred in our everyday lives. The moment Zolynas describes glancing down as he washes dishes had always illuminated for me a way of seeing, an attitude, a shift of perspective, but in light of Danny’s comment and Neruda’s odes, I actually understood that seeing as praise in a completely new way. Here’s Al Zolynas’ poem:

THE ZEN OF HOUSEWORK

I look over my own shoulder
down my arms
to where they disappear under water
into hands inside pink rubber gloves
moiling among dinner dishes.

My hands lift a wine glass,
holding it by the stem and under the bowl.
It breaks the surface
like a chalice
rising from a medieval lake.

Full of the gray wine
of domesticity, the glass floats
to the level of my eyes.
Behind it, through the window
above the sink, the sun, among
a ceremony of sparrows and bare branches,
is setting in Western America.

I can see thousands of droplets
of steam --each a tiny spectrum --rising
from my goblet of gray wine.
They sway, changing directions
constantly--like a school of playful fish,
or like the sheer curtain
on the window to another world.

Ah, gray sacrament of the mundane!

So I resolved to practice writing praise poems.

First I played around with the usual praise topics – praise of a lover, of a child, of a beautiful flower – and of course, thanks to Neruda and Zolynas, praise of “mundane” beauty too easily overlooked, as with the jewel-like flesh of watermelon, the pleasure of salt, or the perfect steel edge of a pair of scissors.

But I soon realized that the world is too complicated for these to be the only praise poems I needed to write. The world is simply not constructed of inoffensive, neutral beauty – especially not for a Native woman in a colonized culture – and not for anyone who admits honestly to the brutality of being sentient. Beauty is not created out of a lack of pain, the absence of grief, the denial of ugliness. The triumph of beauty is when we take the destruction we are dealt, recognize its transformative power, and then – if we are brave, and lucky, and persistent – choose to push that transformation into praise rather than grief. At least, this is what I thought I had finally begun to learn.

This isn’t a new thought, nor is it a foreign thought: most indigenous peoples hold the belief that we are surrounded by power all our lives, but that since power is neither good or evil, but simply is, it must be treated respectfully and responsibly, and we must realize that power exists in all things – both the palatable and the poisonous, visually pleasing and the visually repulsive, the perfumed and the stinking. Respect is closely related to praise. Eagle, for example, is the most highly revered spirit for most North and South American tribes. As a powerful bird of prey, and as the hero of many myths and stories, Eagle commands great respect. Yet, Eagle is also a scavenger, closely related to Vulture, and certainly is not above taking advantage of carrion, eating dead or decaying animals, fish, even other birds. In a whole-world view, scavengers are not seen as ugly or disgusting; they are necessary, efficient, desirable and in fact a vital link to allowing life to flourish. Native peoples know this, and many tribes have songs that praise such unlikely candidates as Fly, Louse or Vulture for their crucial role in the cycle of our existence.

And so I began to write lists of those things we don’t usually think to praise, things we don’t want to praise, but to which we owe our identities, the evolution of our souls. And during freewrites in the poetry workshop, during hours in my office at home when I should have been grading, during journaling sessions with myself, I took up whichever topic was closest to me at the moment, and I explored it with praise as my template.

During this initial writing period, I started collecting praise poems by other poets that seemed to echo what I was trying to write, and I found a few that have caused me to shout bingo! For example:

poem in praise of menstruation

by Lucille Clifton

if there is a river
more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon if
there is a river
more faithful than this
returning each month
to the same delta if there

is a river braver than this
coming and coming in a surge
of passion, of pain if there is

a river
more ancient than this
daughter of eve
mother of cain and of abel if there is in

the universe such a river if
there is some where water
more powerful than this wild
water

pray that it flows also
through animals
beautiful and faithful and ancient
and female and brave

Clifton's poem reminds me of Anne Sexton's, "In Praise of My Uterus," and another Clifton poem, "Homage to My Hips," both of which praise parts of women's bodies (and lives) that are frequently blamed for much trouble, or which negatively affect self-esteem.


Homage to My Hips

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

Listen to Clifton belt this one out at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMChVe6IKsw

But by far, my favorite is this poem by Komunyakaa, which feels deeply indigenous, and at the same time, completely inclusive. (Note: there isn't a video of Komuyakaa reading this poem online, but several other poems ARE available; if you're still looking for a presentation poem, try listening to them - he's amazing.)

Ode To The Maggot

By Yusef Komunyakaa


Brother of the blowfly
And godhead, you work magic
Over battlefields,
In slabs of bad pork

And flophouses. Yes, you
Go to the root of all things.
You are sound & mathematical.
Jesus Christ, you're merciless

With the truth. Ontological & lustrous,
You cast spells on beggars & kings
Behind the stone door of Caesar's tomb
Or split trench in a field of ragweed.

No decree or creed can outlaw you
As you take every living thing apart.
Little Master of earth, no one gets to heaven
Without going through you first.

This was exactly the kind of transformative moment I sought to articulate: the way the boundary between ugly and beautiful shifts when you hold the wholeness of the world in your mind. We cannot have life without death, even if it is the little death of a woman’s unfertilized egg each month; we cannot have death without decomposition, and we cannot have decomposition without those like Komunyakaa’s maggot, which does the work of decomposition which is, by definition, the work of re-creating life. If life is beautiful and praiseworthy, then so it are the many thousands of small acts that culminate in life, and later take it apart for recycling. Like Eagle, the power of life and death exists as one. For another great poem about vermin, see Muriel Rukeyser's "St. Roach" at http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/kunkel/rukeyser.html

In her article, "What Praise Poems are For," Susan Stewart writes that Pablo Neruda purposely experimented with the ode as a new form not just because the newspaper columns dictated short line breaks, but because the

short metre and a pleasing colloquial tone … were meant for collective public
readings, hence the simplicity of language and the expression of solidarity with
the pain and suffering of the collective. The individual is subsumed in the
collective . . . This distinction helped Neruda understand that poetry by nature
cannot be a private act, being a form of speech meant that it belonged to the
public domain.

I agree. I think that praise poems carry within them that transformative energy that can change the world, charge it with goodness, absorb and reform the mutilations of evil. In his Memoirs, Neruda asserts: "Poetry is a deep inner calling in man; from it came liturgy, the psalms, and also the content of religions. The poet confronted nature's phenomena and in the early ages called himself a priest, to safeguard his vocation . . . . Today's social poet is still a member of the earliest order of priests. In the old days he made his pact with the darkness, and now he must interpret the light."

Other praise poems that have encouraged me:

Ferocious Ode

by Steve Scafidi

It tells you the name of the flower you love.
It takes the shape of an old woman working
a pitchfork in the hay of a garden growing
voluptuously every day in your heart; that is
to say it, being mysterious, is difficult to
describe simply and with candor. It grabs
children in their dreams like tigers grab
gazelles. It grabs tigers. It makes me say
the sweet convolutions of poetry are not so
sweet sometimes and my grandfather claws
the red clay walls of hell for what he did to
my father. And I am happy on summer days
when the lily that I love bobs and sways
in wind like fire on a ladder. It matters.
Like a ladder on fire, it is spiritual. Like
the simile in which a house burns down
inside a boy, it is tragic. It turns and turns,
laughing like a nun. It is nonsequential,
baffling, and close to death, like a woman
turning a pitchfork in her garden. Her diary
says, "I loved him." It is one page after
the last page in my grandmother's diary.
It is the afternoon, and the sun is setting
coldly over my father's head - the oval
of which he has passed down to my sisters.
It is a family drama. It breaks dishes. It
runs to me with kisses, soft. And with claws.
It blooms at night also. My Tiger-Lily. Loss.

And of course:

Try to Praise the Mutilated World
- Adam Zagajewski

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

Translated by Clare Cavanagh

If you like Zagajewski's poem here, read the article "Risk, Try, Revise, Erase" (with links to other poems): http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=178036

Your assignment!

Try one of these prompts as your starting point:

1. Pick something we normally don't praise. Think about unsung heroes. These can be people, objects, events, ideals, concepts, even a certain time of day or year. It could be something we would normally never think of praising, or at least not praising lavishly; it could be something often praised, but for completely different reasons than those you are citing. Maggots? Big hips? How about fruit flies? Sweat? horse manure? oil? Smog? Fear? Ice storms? Janitors? Baggage handlers? Or, as Peter Meinke writes in 13 Ways, "Ode to Good Men Fallen Before Hero Come"?

2. Poems in praise of a mundane person, object, food, or ideal. Pablo Neruda (see SM) has a long series of “Odes” in which he praises common, everyday objects such as a Tuna, Salt, Wine . . . each object is given a voice, a history, a personality, a vision, as when Neruda says salt “sings” in the mines, “with a mouth / smothered / by the earth,” “a / broken / voice, / a mournful / song” (to hear poet Philip Levine read "Ode to Salt" in English, go to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5038243 ). In 13 Ways, be sure to read "Ode to Okra" (226) and "Praise the Tortilla, Praise the Menudo, Praise the Chorizo," (233).

To start this exercise, you might empty out your backpack, purse, or pockets (fridge, cupboard, or sit in front of the sandwich case in Cafe 77) on the table in front of you. Randomly select one item and display it in front of you. Remember: each object deserves praise. In the style of Neruda, choose an item and freewrite an Ode to that object. Do this several times, each time remembering to turn off your ‘inner editor’ and let the beauty of the object take over. Hyperbole is your friend! Unconditional admiration is an enlightening thing. Recognizing the dignity of an object is an act of gratitude. Also, think about the objects upon which our lives depend, and give them a twist. Faulty kitchen appliance? Rabid animal? Least-favorite relative?

3. Pick a particularly evocative word for your ode, as in "Ferocious Ode" above. "Obsequious Ode"? "Reticulated Ode"? "Vegetarian Ode"? Then try to create a description of that ode based on the word. How many ways can you praise "ferocious" without re-using that word? How can you personify it? How can you make it appealing, admirable, desirable? Obviously you need to stay concrete, use metaphor, sensory images, and allow for leaps of impossible.

Go forth, and praise.