POEM CLASS #2

4-18-17

 

Find your poetry magazines in the basement.

 

The words you choose. 

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Write a poem about the following objects:

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Four points (this)

Fire, Water, Wind, Earth.

Every stab it’s worth. 

 

Silver and unique (this)

Use to get the treat

Check to see if the meat

Is pink,

Hear, take a seat. 

 

The fork. 

An instrument 

That we invent

 

Most used as a boon

The poor little spoon. 

 

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What are the different approches you have seen?

 

Using metaphors. One surrounds the objects, related around it. A relic of those moments, than trying to articulate what it looks like.

 

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Fork by Charles Simic 

 

Read this poem is about a fork. Compare it to yours own observation. 

 

…What are the words that stick out at you?

 

“Cannibal.” “bleakness.” “Right out of hell.”

 

Strong words, allow the emotions, to gain more meaning, by contrast. The fork is bleak.

 

These are techniques you can apply to be a better artist. 

 

Word scientist word juggling. 

 

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“What are some approches to write about a box?” 

 

Can you write a shorter poem about a box. More vivid and buzzing about the poem. Appearance, sensory, arousing… how can words do that as a reader to you? 

 

The poet reader is different from the average reader. THe poet reader is a viewer of fine art. He treats text as looking at fine art. 

 

What are different apporches might make it less about the box and more about aesthetics? 

 

A poem that will make a box that is present to use but leaves us with a specific feeling. What is that feeling you wish to convey to the observer? 

 

Try and feel the box. 

 

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Shark tooth ribbon 

Compass of the north

Lavendar rug

Pointing to the south

 

That’s the secret.

Not what we known, 

But the esoteric images

Best bet, a treasure lays

 

Hidden in an ocean

Far off, 

On an island

With lot’s of sharks

And huts made of bark

 

The box is a key,

Of buried treasure 

Own by a lost Space cadet.

 

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What are the images that you used?

 

What is the difference between adjatives and uses them in the world? 

 

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An assorted collection of scabs picked off,

Smashed with a stick till the skin was soft,

Which his client drinker, and then fatally coughed. 

(dusty cup?)

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Now, pick a poem from one of these books, choose / steal the words. And use them in a poem you made. Choose words. Cut and paste. 

 

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(84)

seventy million

 

(117)

The city like a stone

dancer’s blood.

 

(44)

Life is not just sand and sun

for the crocdiles

 

(29)

a shadow stream.

 

(The penguin book of modern Urdu poetry. Selected and translated by Mahmoud Jama)

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The Dancer’s blood

Soaked naked in the mud 

Majuranja smoke

The city is a stone

 

Our sins are condone

Life is not just sand and sun

Sex and games are always fun

For the crocodile,

Lives in a shadow stream. 

 

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seventy-million—

crocodile—

stream—

sky —

sea—

god—

vanurable

throat 

lily—

embrace—

toxic— 

inuratah

 

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The crodile god

That killed seventy-million

As the hindu gods embraced, a lily

From the sky, 

down onto a toxic stream

 

The sea of lost souls.

Vanauble to those who

drink the water, as they will get sick

Of soar throat.

 

The inurasha of four marble 

Bonging after one another.

 

Do not disobey

The crocodile’s leisure

…Ribirth and resseurction.

  

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The word selection created it’s own shape. Did someone use it in a word that you never used it before? 

 

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John Hogson: Upon reading love letters

 

…You should also look into lounge twisters and incorpparate them into your own poems. 

 

Dylan Thomas - Poem on his birthday 

 

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Poetry: Either clear, or is it dense… all words with meaning buried under it? 

 

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. Hidden meanings, words used out of context, narrative like a barque fantasy, but means something else. 

 

Lisa Garley - Box of Blue Horses

 

She used the same method… she couldn’t write anything… and she saw a box with blue horses on it… and heres the poem!

 

How simple poem design can be. The differnce between poetry written on the spot vs. poetry written as a collection of words that sound simulating and collecting. 

 

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Samus Healy - Badgers 

 

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Do drugs and read Finnigan’s Wake. 

 

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Poets like talking about words and getting high off words. Like smells, tastes, seeing, hearing, it takes a certain perversion to be a poet. 

 

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What is the feelings that the poet is trying to get across for the observer? Will the obersver actually “read” the text? Or is the text just pretty and aesthically pleasing? 

 

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You next assignment: Use a notepad, or your phone, and record in your memo… a word you like. Collect these words. As your collecting these words, put them together to make a poem. 

 

Buy a small notebook. Use your phone. If you like the word “meandering.” Record it… and put it in a favorite word dictionary… or make a verse with it. 

 

(save your word bank file. send it through email.)

 

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