POETRY WRITING HANDBOOK

 

written, collected, compiled, and edited by

 

William Greenway

When I Met My Muse

 

                   I glanced at her and took my glasses

                   off--they were still singing.  They buzzed

                   like a locust on the coffee table and then

                   ceased.  Her voice belled forth, and the

                   sunlight bent.  I felt the ceiling arch, and

                   knew that nails up there took a new grip

                   on whatever they touched.  "I am your own

                   way of looking at things," she said. "When

                   you allow me to live with you, every

                   glance at the world around you will be

                   a sort of salvation."  And I took her hand.

 

 

                              William Stafford

 

 

 

 

Sound and Sense


True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar;
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!

                                                                  Alexander Pope

CONTENTS

 

 

How To Annotate a Poem / 5

Analyzing Poetry / 7

Imagery and Figurative Language / 10

“Animals Are Passing from Our Lives” / 12

Sample Annotation / 13

Annotation #1: “The River Merchant’s Wife”/ 14

                             Preparing Your Poems for Class / 1

Writing Assignment #1 : Haiku / 16

“Ars Poetica” / 20

Annotation #2: “A Blessing” / 21

Sample Annotation / 22

                             Writing Assignment #2: “I Remember the River at Wu Sung” / 24

                             Annotation #3: “Virgo Descending” / 25

Writing Assignment #3: First House Poem / 26

Annotation #4: “Ode to a Dressmaker’s Dummy” / 27

Writing Assignment #4: Object Poem / 28

Annotation #5: “Richard Cory” / 29

Writing Assignment #5: Neighbor Poem / 30

Annotation #6: “Moon, Go Away, I Don’t Love You No More” / 31

                             Writing Assignment #6: Twenty Little Poetry Writing Projects / 32

Annotation #7: “The Dreams of Animals” / 33

“Pit Pony” / 35

Writing Assignment #7: Animal Poem / 36

“Wilderness” / 37

Annotation #8: “Traveling Through the Dark” / 38

Writing Assignment #8: Hugo Exercise / 39

Annotation #9: “The Martian Writes a Postcard Home” / 40

Writing Assignment #9: Alien Poem / 42

Annotation #10: “Man Arrested in Hacking Death . . .” / 43

Writing Assignment #10: Headline Poem / 44

Annotation #11: “Remembering Fire” / 45

Writing Assignment #11: Backwards Poem / 46

Annotation #12: “Horse Chestnut” / 47

“Double Feature” / 48

Writing Assignment #12: Ping-Pong Poem / 49

Annotation #13: “The Next Day” / 50

Writing Assignment #13: Store Poem / 52

Annotation #14: “Cinderella” / 53

                             Writing Assignment #14: Fairy Tale Poem / 56

More Poem Triggers / 57

                             Discussion Questions / 58

Poetry Anthology Guidelines / 59

Poetry Anthology Assessment / 60

How to Submit Your Poems / 61

Sample Submission Letter / 62

Sample Poem Submission / 63

Resources / 64

Reading Lists / 65

Poems Every Poet Should Know / 67

                             “By Heart: Curriculum for a Bardic School” / 68

                             On the Writing Life / 73

 

 

How to Annotate a Poem

 

An annotation is an analysis and explanation of a poem with special attention given to how it is made, how it works, and what makes it effective.

 

1. It is best to use the present tense (generally) in writing about literature.  (the woman is humble, Hardy implies, etc.)

 

2. Keep yourself out of the analysis.  Ordinarily, it is not necessary to say "I think" or "I believe."

 

3. Novel titles are underlined, while short story and poem titles are placed in quotation marks.  Commas and periods go inside close-quotation marks.  Skip one space after commas, two spaces after periods.  Dashes are made by two unspaced hyphens.

 

4.  Page numbers in parentheses are necessary for quotations taken from the piece of literature with which you are working, for example (42), which is followed by punctuation when the quotation is part of the sentence.  If the quotation is a complete sentence or sentences, concluding punctuation and one space precedes the page number.

 

5.  When you quote fewer than four lines from a poem, put quotation marks around it and use a slash (/) with a space on either side of it to indicate a line break.  Longer quotations (four lines or more) begin on a new line and are indented ten spaces.  When you present a quotation in this manner, do not use quotation marks.

 

6.  Quotations are an excellent way to support your argument, but don't just toss them into your annotation.  Use them as evidence for the point you are trying to make or as illustrations of your perceptions.  Quotations must either fit grammatically into a sentence or be introduced by a separate complete sentence.

 

7. Assume that I've read the poem and don't waste time stating the obvious. 

 

8. In writing about literature, your primary purpose or goal is to convince the reader that your idea (or thesis) about the piece of literature is a valid one.  First of all, you must have an idea (or thesis), whether it be about theme, character, setting, conflict, point-of-view, irony, symbol, etc. 

       Secondly, your entire annotation must deal directly and emphatically with that idea.  The most common deficiency in writing about literature is the loss of focus on the central idea; instead of using the materials in the work to show that the idea is reasonable and valid, the unthinking writer will often lapse into simply retelling the narrative, as if the idea were secondary to or self-evident from the plot line.  You must show that the materials from the poem are relevant to your idea (thesis).  This point cannot be over-emphasized.  If you do not make the connection between your idea (thesis) and the materials in the piece of literature, you will find in your margin a very large and disrespectful "So What?"  In order for your idea (thesis) to be convincing, you need to support important generalizations and observations with specific information and quotations from the poem with which you are dealing.     

       In your introductory paragraph you should tell your central idea (thesis), and suggest the importance of your idea (thesis) to the reader's general understanding of the poem.  In the body of your annotation, demonstrate your thesis, and then provide a brief conclusion in which you reiterate your thesis.  The largest question your reader will ask is this:  "Has the writer convinced me that his point is a valid one?"

 

9.  Double-space your annotations, with 1-inch margins all around to give me room for nasty red-ink comments. 

 

10. Don't include a cover page, but put your name on the first page, and staple your annotation in the upper left-hand corner. 

 

 

ANALYZING POETRY

(adapted from Kathy Porterfield)

 

(Inquiry techniques that help you figure out what’s going on.)

 

A poem is a statement in words about a human experience, real or imagined, with those words so chosen and so ordered that the emotional effect of the rhythm of their ordering reinforces the meaning.

 

The following questions and suggestions should help you as you prepare to write your annotations, or analyses.

 

1. Always notice the poet's name and the title of the poem. Think carefully about

the meaning of the title.  A good poem title has two functions: to introduce the poem or set the stage, preparing us to read the poem, and it also acts as the last line of the poem, acquiring additional significance it didn’t have at the beginning.  In other words, the title is both the first and last lines of the poem.

 

2. Assume that the work is unified: every character, scene, object, conversation, place, and word contributes to the meaning of the work.  Think of the work as a machine, and figure out how each part works and what it does.

 

3. Look for repetition, similarity, analogy, etc., between objects, scenes, words, etc. Watch for similar aspects of the poem that are changed from one place to another.  Look for a parallel with a difference. Notice anything that seems strange, that doesn’t seem to fit in, and watch for contrasts: loneliness vs. company; isolation vs. society; independence vs. dependence; love vs. hate; the known vs. the unknown.

 

4. Some parts of a poem carry more weight than others. What is the significance of the opening scene, images, lines, or whatever comes first? How does the work end?

 

5. Who is the speaker? What kind of person is he or she? To whom is he or she speaking? Is the narrator distant from the action and objective, seeing all sides, or are they a participant and perhaps biased?  Is the narrator reliable or unreliable (i.e., just imagining things, or even lying)?

 

6. How would you characterize the poem's tone? Is it casual and conversational, humorous, sarcastic, snobbish, angry, sad, affected, enthusiastic, chatty, outraged, blunt, abusive, serious, insane, patronizing, obnoxious, refined, urban or rural? Is the poem ironic?

 

7. What is the situation, the combination of circumstances out of which the action emerges.  What is the situation of the poem and how is it meaningful? 

 

8. What is the setting in time (time of day, season, century, and so forth)? What is the setting in place (indoors or out, city or country, nation, and so forth)?

 

9. What is the central purpose of the poem, or theme, a general idea which suggests the significance of the action?  What is the poem about? It can often be stated in terms of an argument, as in

a.   Pride is deadly.

b.   Experience is a better teacher than school or books.

c.   Equality and freedom are illusions.

d.   Once you discover your youthful illusions were foolish, you still have to adopt others to survive.

State the central idea or theme of the poem in a sentence.

 

10. Paraphrase the poem; i.e., rephrase the poem in your own words.

 

11. Discuss the diction in the poem. Are the words concrete or abstract; simple or complex and technical; slangy, very formal, or everyday; archaic or modern; abusive or polite; sacred or profane; foreign or American; vivid and “poetic,” or bland?  Is dialect used? Pay special attention to the poet’s adjectives: they are usually crucial to the meaning. Point out words that are particularly well chosen and explain why. Look up unfamiliar words in a dictionary. 

 

12. Syntax: Are the sentences long or short; choppy and frantic, or long and smooth; simple or complicated; easy to read or seemingly thrown together in a hurry?  Do they read quickly or slowly, or are they a mixture of the two for variety?

 

13. Discuss the imagery (mental pictures or sensory details; see below) of the poem. What kinds of images are used?

 

14. Point out examples of figures of speech (see below), such as metaphor, simile, personification, understatement, metonymy, synecdoche, and explain their appropriateness. Point out and explain examples of paradox, overstatement, and irony. What is their function?

 

15. Point out and explain any symbols, allegories, allusions (see below), or myths.

 

16. Discuss the adaptation of sound to sense. Does the poem use alliteration (repetition of consonant sounds), assonance (repetition of vowel sounds), sibilance (repetition of “s” sounds), and/or rhyme? (Poems should make a noise!) Point out significant examples of sound repetition and explain their function.

 

17. Describe the form or pattern of the poem. Is the poem written in closed or open form? Is the poem constructed as a sonnet, a sestina, a villanelle, an epigram, or a haiku? What is the meter of the poem? Are rhythm and meter regular or irregular? How do rhythm and meter reinforce the poem's central concerns?

If there are stanzas, why?  Do they act as paragraphs for subject changes; to facilitate reading, sound (rhyme), or rhythm; or suggest time lapses or passages, or setting or voice changes. 

Ask why the line breaks are where they are.  Do the breaks imitate some physical object, slow or speed up the reading, imitate movement or the passage of time?  How is the poem situated on the page: sometimes, the white space on the page can tell us a lot about the poet’s intention.

 

18. Criticize and evaluate the poem.

 

 

IMAGERY AND FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

 

Poets mean what they say, but they do not always say what they mean. For example, when Margaret Atwood writes, in her poem "You Fit into Me," "you fit into me / like a hook into an eye // a fish hook / an open eye," she means just what she says and wants the reader to experience the rightness of the first comparison ( a clothes fastener, as on a bra), with its suggestion of sexuality, and the shock and pain of the second comparison. If she were to say what she meant, then she would have written something like the following: "Though our relationship appears mutually supportive, it is actually destructive, especially to me." She would have made her point, but she would not have written a poem.

 

image: a literal or concrete representation of a sensory experience or of an object that can be known by one or more senses. Ezra Pound defines it as "a radiant node or cluster into which, out of which, and through which ideas are constantly rushing." Loosely, imagery may refer to all figures of speech in a poem. Atwood’s hooks and eyes are images.

 

simile: a figure of speech in which a similarity between two objects is directly expressed; usually the comparison is introduced by like or as. (“My love is like a red, red rose” [Robert Burns]). Margaret Atwood's "You Fit into Me" is based on a simile.

 

metaphor: an implied analogy which imaginatively identifies one object with another and ascribes to each the qualities of the other, or invests each with emotional or imaginative qualities of the other, “the ship plows the sea.” According to the critic R.P. Blackmur, all metaphors are made up of two parts: a tenor, which is the idea being expressed or the subject of the comparison (the way a ship goes through the water), and a vehicle, which is the image by which the idea is conveyed or the subject is communicated (a plow going through the soil). The word metaphor comes from the Greek and means transference, i.e., of the qualities of one thing to another. When Hamlet speaks of the “sleep of death,” he’s not only comparing sleep to death, but also comparing death to a sleep, which means there might be unwanted dreams, even nightmares, from which we can’t awake.

 

allusion: a figure of speech making casual reference to a famous historical or literary figure or event, or to another work of literature. An allusion appears in T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." When the speaker declares, "No! I am not Prince Hamlet," he assumes that we have read or seen a production of Shakespeare's play, and that we will know that in making his negative comparison (allusion is a kind of metaphor), he is saying that his indecisiveness has nothing like the tragic dimensions of Hamlet's.

 

personification: a figure of speech which endows animals, ideas, abstractions, and inanimate objects with human form, character, or sensibilities. Keats's "To Autumn" personifies autumn, who "conspire[s]" with a "bosom-friend," and "sits on a granary floor" while his/her "hair [is] soft-lifted by the winnowing wind."

 

symbol: literally, something which is itself and yet stands for or suggests something else, usually abstract. Housman's "Eight O’clock" uses the clock as a symbol: the clock is both a clock which tells the town what time it is, but it also stands for the abstract concept of time - here, a sense of obligation, or of  power and control.

 

synecdoche: a figure of speech which in mentioning a part signifies the whole or in which the whole signifies the part. An example of the former is the expression "All hands on deck," a “hand” representing a crew member; an example of the second would be “Here comes the law” (a police officer).

 

metonymy: a figure of speech which is characterized by the substitution of a term naming an object closely associated with the word in mind for the word itself, as in "In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread." Here, "sweat" stands for hard labor. In his sonnet 73, Shakespeare uses metonymy in line 8 when he identifies sleep as "Death's second self”; sleep is not equivalent or a part of death, but shares some qualities with death, such that to think of one is to think of the other.

 

The above definitions are derived in large part -- often verbatim -- from Poet and Vanderbilt Professor Mark Jarman, H. Holman's The Handbook to Literature, and Meyer Abrams's Glossary of Literary Terms.

Sample Annotation Poem

 

 

                   Animals Are Passing From Our Lives         Philip Levine

 

                It’s wonderful how I jog

                on four honed-down ivory toes

                my massive buttocks slipping

                like oiled parts with each light step.

 

                I’m to market. I can smell

                the sour, grooved block, I can smell

                the blade that opens the hole

                and the pudgy white fingers

 

                that shake out the intestines

                like a hankie. In my dreams

                the snouts drool on the marble,

                suffering children, suffering flies,

 

                suffering the consumers

                who won’t meet their steady eyes

                for fear they could see. The boy

                who drives me along believes

 

                that any moment I’ll fall

                on my side and drum my toes

                like a typewriter or squeal

                and shit like a new housewife

 

                discovering television,

                or that I’ll turn like a beast

                cleverly to hook his teeth

                with my teeth. No. Not this pig.

 

Sample Annotation

 

“Animals are Passing from Our Lives” by Philip Levine

(annotated by Karen Schubert)

 

       This is a great poem about good pride, about doing the right thing, about facing up to one’s fate, though its ghoulish details and serious subject (death) don’t undermine the almost comic surprise at the end.  Perhaps we don’t feel the tragedy because the pig is a little too personified to evoke our pity.  (Or maybe the poem is about how we no longer are capable of feeling.)  But the day-to-day domestic detail of “hankie,” “housewife,” and “television,” remind us of the horror of the slaughter that makes our leisurely lives possible, and how it goes on while we preoccupy ourselves with these mundane activities. 

       It is written in normative syllabic verse, each line having seven syllables.   These mathematical, robotic syllables are the steadily turning mechanical cogs on the wheel that runs the conveyor belt in the slaughterhouse, and contribute to the prosaic tone, which is matter-of-fact, conversational, resigned, showing that this pig is going out with steady eyes open. 

       That the pig must “suffer” (i.e., put up with) the flies, consumers, and children,  echoes Jesus saying “suffer [let] the little children come unto me,” which suggests that, like Jesus, the pig is aware he is sacrificing his life so that we may live, and thus becomes heroic, a stature, ironically, that only humans are supposed to be able to attain.  Thus the traditional roles are reversed--the drover boy has teeth, and it’s not the pig who squeals and shits, but the housewife. 

Levine has given us a new angle on the discrepancy between the words “human” and “humane.”

 

Annotation 1

 

The River Merchant’s Wife        

 

 

        While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

        I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.

        You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

        You walked about my seat, playing with plums.

        And we went on living in the village of Chokan:

        Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

 

        At fourteen I married My Lord you.

        I never laughed, being bashful.

        Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.

        Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

       

        At fifteen, I stopped scowling,

        I desired my dust to be mingled with yours

        Forever and forever and forever.

        Why should I climb the look out?

       

        At sixteen you departed,

        You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,

        And you have been gone five months.

        The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

       

        You dragged your feet when you went out.

        By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,

        Too deep to clear them away!

        The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

        The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

        Over the grass in the west garden;

        They hurt me.  I grow older.

        If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,

        Please let me know beforehand,

        And I will come out to meet you

              As far as Cho-fu-sa.

                                                                            Li Po (trans. Ezra Pound)

 

Preparing Your Poems for Class

 

 

·        Type the poem.

·        Use a whole sheet of 8 ½ by 11 paper (colors are okay). 

·        Don’t use a smaller font than 10 pt.  If you can’t get the poem on one page, try printing it in two columns.

·        Put your name in the upper right hand corner to make it easier and quicker for the class to find your poem in the stack.

·        Title your poem.  Titles are crucial to an effective poem, for they serve as both the first line of the poem—often providing valuable information that needs to be put into the reader’s memory—and the last line of the poem, since readers always glance back to the title after they’ve finished reading the body of the poem.  A good title should mean more, or something slightly different, after reading the poem than it meant before the poem was read.

      

Writing Assignment 1: Haiku

 

(Some notes from Haiku in English and An Introduction to Haiku both by Harold G. Henderson, compiled by P.A. Hamilton)

 

1.   Haiku treat nature, or some aspect of nature, as an integral part of the poem.  They

often use juxtaposition to set up an internal comparison of the poet’s feelings with

nature:

 

                Library book

               overdue—

                slow falling snow                                               Gary Hotham

 

2.   The main objective of all haiku techniques is to recreate the circumstances that

aroused the poet’s emotion.  Haiku convey the emotions aroused by one particular event, and are never generalized:

 

Spring came into my room.

Black work-worn hands bore gently

The first blue Iris.                                                 Johanna Gravell

 

They are usually written in the present tense to recreate a particular moment of awareness:

 

Now the leaves are still—

                 and only the mocking bird    

                        lets the moonlight through!           O. M. B Southard

 

They often try to recreate the way the mind works, as Basho suggests:

 

How admirable!

To see lightning and not think

life is fleeting.

 

They often try to alter our perception of cause and effect:

 

                the fleeing sandpipers

                       turn suddenly

                      and chase back the sea                J. W. Hackett

 

They often call to our attention visual rhymes, or rhymes of meaning:

 

                Moon fades into dawn…

                An ivory moth settles

                Within the lily.                                            J. W. Hackett

 

3.    Haiku have a quality of growth—an ability to convey more emotion than is

experienced at the first reading:

 

The falling leaves

fall and pile up; the rain

beats on the rain                                                  Gyodai   

 

4.    Because the haiku is shorter than other forms of poetry it naturally has to depend for

its effect on the power of suggestion.  Owing to their shortness, haiku can seldom

give the picture in detail.  Haiku indeed have very close resemblance to the ink

sketches so dear to the hearts of the Japanese.  Really great haiku suggests so much,

that more words would lessen their meaning.

 

5.   There is no rhyme in classical Japanese haiku.  In English, those who are against the

use of rhyme claim that it tends to close a poem, and that haiku are open.  Some of

their opponents agree that this is true, but believe that rhyme is especially useful in

haiku that “close inward:”

 

On the weathered shelf

                 a self-cleaned cat in autumn

                        curls around itself.                        Thomas Rountree

     

Yet another opinion:   In Japanese the effect of definite form is given by an

alternation of five and seven syllables; in English this method is impossible, and the

use of rhyme or assonance, especially if it can be kept unobtrusive, is perhaps the

best available substitute.  All agree that there is danger in rhyme, that it may make a

haiku tinkly, or may cause the words to distract the reader from the emotion they are

meant to convey.

 

6.   Japanese haiku “syllables” used for the 5-7-5 count are not English syllables.  They

are rather units of duration.  Every Japanese syllable either is a short vowel or ends

with one.  Each is represented by its own kana symbol or “character” and is counted

as one unit.  It seems impossible to use the Japanese “syllable” or “duration-unit”

count in English, if only because of the concatenation of consonants that often occur

at the end of many English syllables.  Most American writers of haiku today do use

at least an approximation to a 5-7-5 syllable count.  But they also employ the devices

of stress and rhythm, traditional in English poetry.  Few, if any, have an absolute

fixed pattern of rhythm.

 

7.   Another question of form in which haiku written in English cannot possibly follow

their classical Japanese prototypes is in the use of conventional kireji (cutting-words)

such as ya and kana.  These are primarily verbal punctuation marks, for which we

have no exact equivalent.  Ya is often very much like a colon (:), but not always;

kana, which is usually used to end a haiku, is often very much like a row of dots, or

ellipsis (. . . .), but not always. 

       The “cut-word” of choice for English seems to be the semi-colon, which suggests two things are related, but not how.  Neither do we have the Japanese “sentence-ending” forms, but of course a period can always be used if desired.  On the whole, American poets do not seem to have been bothered by having no exact  equivalent to kireji.  They seem to have felt that the English language was flexible enough to provide adequate substitutes.  A few poets prefer to write without using any punctuation marks whatever, with pauses indicated only by the ending of lines; others feel this is an unbearable restriction.  The question of who is right (possibly both are) will have to be decided by the poets themselves.  

 

8.    Haiku usually have no titles, or if they do, they are part of the traditional haiku three-

line construction, as in Ezra Pound’s:

 

In a Station of the Metro

 

The apparition of these faces in a crowd;

Petals on a wet black bough.

 

 

9.  And there are other ways to be creative with the structure:

 

 

After weeks of watching the roof leak

I fixed it tonight

by moving a single board.

 

                                                          Gary Snyder

 

 

      

      

      

 

 

 

      

      

      

 

      

 

      

 

Ars Poetica       Archibald MacLeish

 

 

               A poem should be palpable and mute

               As a globed fruit,

 

               Dumb

               As old medallions to the thumb,

 

               Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

               Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

 

               A poem should be wordless

               As the flight of birds.

 

               A poem should be motionless in time

               As the moon climbs,

 

               Leaving, as the moon releases

               Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

 

               Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

               Memory by memory the mind—

 

               A poem should be motionless in time

               As the moon climbs.

 

               A poem should be equal to:

               Not true.

 

               For all the history of grief

               An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

 

               For love

               The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

 

               A poem should not mean

But be

 

 Annotation 2

 

 

A Blessing    James Wright

 

            Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

            Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

            And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

            Darken with kindness.

            They have come gladly out of the willows

            To welcome my friend and me.

            We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

            Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

            They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

            That we have come.

            They bow shyly as wet swans.  They love each other.

            There is no loneliness like theirs.

            At home once more,

            They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.

            I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

            For she has walked over to me

            And nuzzled my left hand.

            She is black and white,

            Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

            And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

            That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.        

            Suddenly I realize

            That if I stepped out of my body I would break

            Into blossom.

 

 

 

                                           

Sample Annotation

Valerie Prevosnak

Annotation of "A Blessing"

March 17, 2004

 

      In James Wright's "A Blessing," the narrator seems to be relating an actual experience, a reality added to by his provision of a specific place setting (in a fenced pasture just off the highway in Minnesota).  The poem's theme is the narrator's personal communion with nature in that moment that leads him to an epiphany regarding the spirit's ability to transcend death and rejoin that nature. The "blessing" of the title refers to the joy of both that communion and revelation.  Wright expresses this communion by raising the Indian ponies onto a plane of equal spirituality through a combination of realistic imagery, simile, and anthropomorphism.  His imagery paints the somewhat idealized scene for the reader, while his similes ("They bow silently as wet swans") add to the ponies' grace.  He also gives them a capacity for human emotions such as kindness, anticipation, love, and loneliness, showing this feeling of equality.   His tone seals the connection between narrator and nature as he describes the female pony with an attitude of awe and affection that one would generally reserve for describing a first love.

All this detailed description sets the reader up for the revelation of Wright's concluding three lines where the tone shifts to one of spiritual awakening and the narrator realizes that were he to "[step] out of [his] body [he] would break / Into blossom." Stepping out of the body signifies death, and the line originally leads the reader to believe for an instant that the preceding intimacy with nature signifies a deep attachment to life and the word break signifies the narrator's fear of breaking that attachment.  However, the meaning of that word shifts dramatically when the reader encounters the next line "Into blossom."  The narrator no longer shows fear of death, but rather a power over it and joy despite it.  He will transcend his own body to break into a beautiful part of the nature he's just connected with.  The enjambment of "break" provides it with a hint of ambiguity that allows readers to experience both feelings, while Wright's combination of this enjambment with the conciseness of the following line and the lack of punctuation in between causes the reader to feel the abruptness and intensity of the revelation.

The poem is written in free verse, an appropriate format for the free flow of the thought it expresses, but it is not without structure.  Wright uses repetition in his syntax with frequent simple clauses with a Subject-Verb-Object structure.  This provides the poem's rhythm and allows each statement to stand alone in its impact on the reader while remaining connected to the statements preceding and following it.  Wright's poem also has a sense of rhyme in his frequent use of assonance with similar if not exact vowel sounds.  An examples is "grazing all day, alone."

 

 

Writing Assignment 2: “I Remember the River at Wu Sung”

 

 

I Remember the River at Wu Sung

 

I remember once, on a journey to the west,

An evening at the mouth of the river, at Wu Sung.

Along the banks a fresh breeze blew against the current.

The pale moon rose between two willow trees.

A single night bird flew far away.

Fishing boats wandered on the river.

And who was with me then?

I weep and think of my dead wife.         --Mei Yao Ch’en  (Tr. Kenneth Rexroth)

 

 

Armature for “I Remember the River at Wu Sung”

 

1.  “I remember”: details of time and place (setting)

2.  Image: detail from inanimate natural world (elements: earth, air, fire,

 water)

3.  Image: detail from inanimate natural world (upper and lower: astronomical

body and vegetation)

4.  Image: detail from animate natural world (insect, bird, animal, etc.)

5.  Image: detail from human world

6.  Question related to the memory of the scene

7.  Indirect answer to the question

 

The poem can be as long as necessary, in any poetic form.  In first draft, concentrate on finding images with emotional resonance.  In second draft, concentrate on shaping the language, making the lines forceful, graceful, musical, concise, in a voice that feels natural and expressive.     

 

Elton Glaser

 

Annotation 3

Virgo Descending       Charles Wright

 

        Through the viridian (and black of the burnt match)

        Through ox-blood and ochre, the ham-colored clay,

        Through plate after plate, down

        Where the worm and the mole will not go,

        Through ore-seam and fire-seam,

        My grandmother, senile and 89, crimpbacked, stands

        Like a door ajar on her soft bed,

        The open beams and bare studs of the hall

        Pink as an infant’s skin in the floating dark;

        Shavings and curls swing down like snowflakes across her face.

 

        My aunt and I walk past. As always, my father

        Is planning rooms, dragging his lame leg,

        Stroke-straightened and foreign, behind him,

        An aberrant 2-by-4 he can’t fit snug.

        I lay my head on my aunt’s shoulder, feeling

        At home, and walk on.

 

        Through arches and door jambs, the spidery wires

        And coiled cables, the blueprint takes shape:

        My mother’s room to the left, the door closed;

        My father’s room to the left, the door closed—

        Ahead, my brother’s room, unfinished;

        Behind, my sister’s room, also unfinished.

        Buttresses, winches, block-and-tackle: the scale of everything

        Is enormous. We keep on walking. And pass

        My aunt’s room, almost complete, the curtains up,

        The lamp and the medicine arranged

        In their proper places, in arm’s reach of where the bed will go...

        The next one is mine, now more than half done,

        Cloyed by the scent of jasmine,

        White-gummed and anxious, their mouths sucking the air dry.

 

        Home is what you lie in, or hang above, the house

        Your father made, or keeps on making,

        The dirt you moisten, the sap you push up and nourish...

        I enter the living room, it, too, unfinished, its far wall

        Not there, opening on to a radiance

        I can’t begin to imagine, a light

        My father walks from, approaching me,

        Dragging his right leg, rolling his plans into a perfect curl.

        That light, he mutters, that damned light.

        We can’t keep it out. It keeps on filling your room.

 

 

Writing Assignment 3: First House Poem

 

 

Try to remember the first house you ever lived in.  Close your eyes and imagine going up the front steps, through the front door, from room to room, out into the yard.  Describe what you see, then tell a story about something significant that happened there.

 

 

Annotation 4

Ode to a Dressmaker's Dummy   Donald Justice

 

           Papier-mache body; blue-and-black cotton

            jersey cover. Metal stand. Instructions included.

                                                               —Sears, Roebuck Catalogue

 

O my coy darling, still

You wear for me the scent

Of those long afternoons we spent,

The two of us together,

Safe in the attic from the jealous eyes

Of household spies

And the remote buffooneries of the weather;

So high,

Our sole remaining neighbor was the sky,

Which, often enough, at dusk,

Leaning its cloudy shoulders on the sill,

Used to regard us with a bored and cynical eye.

 

How like the terrified,

Shy figure of a bride

You stood there then, without your clothes,

Drawn up into

So classic and so strict a pose

Almost, it seemed, our little attic grew

Dark with the first charmed night of the honeymoon.

Or was it only some obscure

Shape of my mother's youth I saw in you,

There where the rude shadows of the afternoon

Crept up your ankles and you stood

Hiding your sex as best you could?—

Prim ghost the evening light shone through.

 

Writing Assignment 4: Object Poem

 

 

1.   Think of an object.

2.   Describe it.

3.   Take the object back to where it came from—the original owner, the person who

      made it, the time it came from, etc.

4.   Tell how you acquired it or got interested in it.

5.   Bring it back to the present.

 

 

Annotation 5

 

 

Richard Cory    Edward Arlington Robinson

 

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

 

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

 

And he was rich-yes, richer than a king

And admirably schooled in every grace: in fine,

We thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

 

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

 

Writing Assignment 5: Neighbor Poem

 

 

Write a paragraph about a character you make up, imagining his or her life, occupation, hopes, dreams, etc.  Swap with a classmate.  Now write a poem about the character your classmate made up.

Annotation 6

 

 

Moon Go Away, I Don’t Love You No More      Jim Simmerman

 

1.    Morning comes on like a wink in the dark.

2.    It’s me it’s winking at.

3.    Mock light lolls in the boughs of the pines.

       Dead air numbs my hands.

       A blue jay jabbers like nobody’s business.

       Woodsmoke comes spelunking my nostrils

       and tastes like burned toast where it rests on my tongue.

4.    Morning tastes the way a rock felt

       kissing me on the eye:

5.    a kiss thrown by Randy Shellhourse

       on the Jacksonville, Arkansas, Little League field

       because we were that bored in 1965.

6.    We weren’t that bored in 1965.

7.    Dogs ran amuck in the yards of the poor,

       and music spilled out of every window

       though none of us could dance.

8.    None of us could do the Frug, the Dirty Dog

9.    because we were small and wore small hats.

10. Moon go away, I don’t love you no more

       was the only song we knew by heart.

11. The dull crayons of sex and meanness

       scribbled all over our thoughts.

12. We were about as happy as headstones.

13. We fell through the sidewalk
       and changed color at night.

14.  Little Darry was there to scuff through it all,

15.  so that today, tomorrow, the day after that

       he will walk backward among the orphaned trees

16.  and toy rocks that led him

       nowhere I could ever track,

       till he’s so faraway, so lost

17.  I’ll have to forget him to know where he’s gone.

18. la grave poullet du soir est toujours avec moi—

19.  even as the sky opens for business,

       even as shadows kick off their shoes,

20.  even as this torrent of clean morning light

       comes flooding down and over it all.

              

 

                                                  

Writing Assignment 6: Twenty Little Poetry Projects

by Jim Simmerman

 

1.    Begin the poem with a metaphor.

2.    Say something specific but utterly preposterous.

3.    Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered

randomly throughout the poem.

4.    Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).

5.    Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.

6.    Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.

7.    Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.

8.    Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.

9.    Use an example of false cause-effect logic.

10.  Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you   don’t understand).

11.  Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun)

               of (abstract noun) . . .”

12.  Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.

13.  Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in

               “real life.”

14.  Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.

15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.

16.  Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.

17.  Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.

18.  Use a phrase from a language other than English.

19.          Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).

20.  Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an

       image from earlier in the poem.

Annotation 7

 

 

The Dreams of Animals       Margaret Atwood

       

            Mostly the animals dream

            of other animals each

            according to its kind

 

                      (though certain mice and small rodents

                      have nightmares of a huge pink

                      shape with five claws descending)

 

             moles dream of darkness and delicate

             mole smells

 

             frogs dream of green and golden

             frogs

             sparkling like wet suns

             among the lilies

 

             red and black

             striped fish, their eyes open

             have red and black striped

             dreams  defense, attack, meaningful

             patterns

 

             birds dream of territories

             enclosed by singing.

 

             Sometimes the animals dream of evil

             in the form of soap and metal

             but mostly the animals dream

             of other animals.

 

             There are exceptions:

 

                       the silver fox in the roadside zoo

                       dreams of digging out

                       and of baby foxes, their necks bitten

                   

             the caged armadillo

             near the train

             station, which runs

             all day in figure eights

             its piglet feet pattering,

             no longer dreams

             but is insane when waking;

 

             the iguana

             in the petshop window on St. Catherine Street

             crested, royal-eyed, ruling

             its kingdom of water-dish and sawdust

 

             dreams of sawdust.

Pit Pony           William Greenway

 

There are only a few left, he says,

kept by old Welsh miners, souvenirs, like

gallstones or gold teeth, torn

from this "pit," so cold and wet my

                        breath comes out a soul up

                        into my helmet's lantern

                        beam, anthracite walls running,

                        gleaming, and the floors iron-rutted

                        with tram tracks, the almost pure

                        rust that grows and waves like

                        orange moss in the gutters of water

                        that used to rise and drown.

                        He makes us turn all lights off, almost

                        a mile down.  While children scream,

                        I try to see anything, my hand touching

                        my nose, my wife beside me—darkness palpable,

                        a velvet sack over our heads, even the glow

                        of watches left behind.  This is where

                        they were born, into this nothing, felt

                        first with their cold noses for the shaggy

                        side and warm bag of black

                        milk, pulled their trams for twenty

                        years through pitch, past birds

                        that didn't sing, through doors

                        opened by five-year-olds who sat

                        in the cheap, complete blackness listening

                        for steps, a knock.  And they

                        died down here, generation after

                        generation. The last one, when it

                        dies in the hills, not quite blind, the mines

                        closed forever, will it die strangely?  Will it

                        wonder dimly why it was exiled from the rest

                        of its race, from the dark flanks of the soft

                        mother, what these timbers are that hold up

                        nothing but blue?  If this is the beginning

of death, this wind, these stars?

Writing Assignment 7: Animal Poem

 

 

Complete the following stanzas:

 

 

There is a wolf in me . . .

 

There is a fox in me . . .

 

There is an ape in me . . .

 

There is a hog in me . . .

 

There is a fish in me . . .

 

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . .

 

O, I got a zoo, a menagerie inside my ribs, . . .

 

 

Wilderness          Carl Sandburg

 

There is a wolf in me .... fangs for tearing gashes .... I keep the wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me .... I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers .... I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me .... a machinery for eating and grunting, for sleeping satisfied in the sun - I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me .... I know I came from salt-blue watergates .... I know I scurried with shoals of herring before the water went down .... before Noah .... before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me .... hairy under the armpits .... here are the hawk-eyed hankering men .... here are the blonde and blue-eyed women .... here they hide curled up sleeping ready to snarl and kill .... ready to sing and give milk .... waiting - I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle and a mocking bird in me .... and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams .... and fights among the sierra crags of what I want .... and the mockingbird warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark Hills of my wishes - And I got the eagle and the mocking bird from the wilderness.

Oh, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie inside my ribs, under my bony skull, under my red-valved heart - and I got something else:  it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart:  it is a father and a mother and a lover:  it came from God knows where; it is going to God knows where - For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work:  I am a pal of the world:  I came from the wilderness.

 

Annotation 8

 

 

Traveling Through The Dark            William Stafford

 

             Traveling through the dark I found a deer

             dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.

             It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:

             that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

 

             By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car

             and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;

             she had stiffened already, almost cold.

             I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

 

             My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—

             her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,

             alive, still, never to be born.

             Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

 

             The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;

             under the hood purred the steady engine.

             I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;

             around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

 

             I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,

             then pushed her over the edge into the river.

Writing Exercise 8: Richard Hugo

 

 

tree                            kiss                               blue

throat                         curve                            hot

rain                             swing                            soft

rock                           ruin                               tough

frog                            bite                               important

dog                            cut                                wavering

pebbles                      surprise                         sharp

eye                             bruise                           cool

cloud                          hug                               red

mud                            say                               leather

 

Using five words—in any tense or form: noun, verb, adjective, participle [-ing], etc.—from each column, and any other words you wish, write an unrhymed poem beginning with as, when, though, if, for, because, since, or so.  Don't try to make sense.  Just have fun.  (By Richard Hugo)

 

Annotation 9

 

 

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home               Craig Raine

 

                Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings

                and some are treasured for their markings—

               

                they cause the eyes to melt

                or the body to shriek without pain.

 

                I have never seen one fly, but

                sometimes they perch on the hand.

 

                Mist is when the sky is tired of flight

                and rests its soft machine on the ground:

 

                then the world is dim and bookish

                like engravings under tissue paper.

 

                Rain is when the earth is television.

                It has the property of making colours darker.

 

                Model T is a room with the lock inside-

                a key is turned to free the world

 

                for movement, so quick there is a film

                to watch for anything missed.

 

                But time is tied to the wrist

                or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

 

                In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,

                that snores when you pick it up.

 

                If the ghost cries, they carry it

                to their lips and soothe it to sleep

               

                with sounds. And yet, they wake it up

                deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

 

                Only the young are allowed to suffer

                openly. Adults go to a punishment room

 

                with water but nothing to eat.

                They lock the door and suffer the noises

              

                alone. No one is exempt

                and everyone’s pain has a different smell.

 

                At night, when all the colours die,

                they hide in pairs

 

                and read about themselves—

                in colour, with their eyelids shut.

Writing Exercise 9: Alien Poem

 

Write a poem in which you are from another planet, visiting the earth for the first time.  Write a letter home describing what you see when you land in the backyard of an American home and then walk (or crawl or slither, whatever) around inside the house.  Remember, you don’t know the names of anything.

 

Annotation 10

 

 

Man Arrested in Hacking Death Tells Police     

He Mistook Mother-in-Law for Raccoon            Susan Ludvigson

 

 

                Every morning she'd smear something brown

                over her eyes, already bagged

                and dark underneath, as if that would

                get her sympathy. She never slept,

                she said, but wandered like a phantom

                through the yard. I knew it. Knew

                how she knelt beneath our bedroom window too,

                and listened to Janet and me.

 

                One night when again Janet said No

                I called her a cow, said she might as well

                be dead for all she was good to me.

                The old lady had fur in her head

                and in her ears,

                at breakfast slipped and told us

                she didn't think the cows would die.

 

                Today when I caught her

                in the garage at dawn, that dyed hair

                growing out in stripes, eyes

                like any animal surprised from sleep

                or prowling where it shouldn't be,

                I did think, for a minute,

                she was the raider of the garden,

                and the ax felt good, coming down

on a life like that.

 

                                   

 

Writing Assignment 10: Headline Poem

 

 

Write a poem based on a real newspaper or tabloid headline.  For example, “WEREWOLVES UNITE TO STOP DESTRUCTION OF THE MOON!”

 

Annotation 11

 

 

Remembering Fire   Rodney Jones

 

            Almost as though the eggs run and leap back into their shells

            And the shells seal behind them, and the willows call back their

                driftwood,

            And the oceans move predictably into deltas, into the hidden

                oubliettes in the sides of mountains,

            And all the emptied bottles are filled, and, flake by flake, the snow

                rises out of the coal piles,

            And the mothers cry out terribly as the children enter their bodies,

            And the freeway to Birmingham is peeled off the scar-tissue of fields,

 

            The way it occurs to me, the last thing first, never as in life,

            The unexpected rush, but this time I stand on the cold hill and

                watch

            Fire ripen from the seedbed of ashes, from the maze of tortured glass,

 

            Molten nails and hinges, the flames lift each plank into place

            And the walls resume their high standing, the many walls, and the

                rafters

            Float upward, the ceiling and roof, smoke ribbons into the wet

                cushions,

 

            And my father hurries back through the front door with the box

            Of important papers, carrying as much as he can save,

            All of his deeds and policies, the clock, the few pieces of silver,

 

            He places me in the shape of my own body in the feather mattress,

            And I go down into the soft wings, the mute and impalpable country

            Of sleep, holding all of this back, drifting toward the unborn.

Writing Exercise 11: Backwards Poem

 

 

Write a poem in which something happens backwards, as if a video tape were being rewound.

 

Annotation 12

 

 

  Horse Chestnut      Gary Miranda

 

                 I fell from one once.  Judy Cole

                 used to put five of them, whole,

                 in her mouth.  My brothers ran to tell

                 my mother: It’s Gary—he fell

                 from a tree but he isn’t dead

                 yet.  As I write, there is one outside

                 my window.  I have a weakness, still, for

                 women with large mouths.  The doctor

                 put two fingers into my head,

                 tingly with Novocain, and said

                 to my mother: Look, you can see

                 where the skull is chipped.  Sometimes we

                 made pipes, or necklaces.  My mother

                 groaned and looked away.  I could never

                 figure out what connection they had

                 with horses.

 

                 Later, Judy Cole was named Miss

                 Seattle.  Mostly, what I remember is

                 blood all around and me lying

                 there thinking: so this is dying.

                 Every one of them has two inside,

                 like testicles.  I wasn’t afraid

                 really, just convinced.  By the time I began

                 to think I loved her we had been

                 children too long for it to matter.

                 Sixteen stitches.  I saw her once later,

                 when she was married.  My mother

                 said: I don’t want to see you near

                 that tree again—understand? I still tend

                 to confuse dying and love.  And

                 no one I’ve ever loved has died,

                 exactly.

 

 

Double Feature      William Greenway

 

                             Tonight they're running it again:

                             I ran in the back yard for days yelling

                             Shane! Come back Shane! after I

                             saw it, and just remembered where:

                             we'd leave the house to get there

                             before dark, cool at night in the summer

                             and I cried quietly, mosquitoes and voices

                             in the back seat with me,

                             where I saw The Thing,

                             huge and strong, vegetable, almost

                             unkillable.

 

                             Those were the good old days before

                             I got disconnected, like Alan Ladd only

                             far less fast or blonde,

                             more like James Arness, stranded and vicious,

                             bleeding dust when cut.

 

                             He wore a buckskin shirt and went

                             away because he loved his best friend's

                             wife. When they found him

                             under the ice, my hair

                             rose as they held hands and spread

                             out across the snow, making a hushed

                             circle of that shape, everything

                             I ever wanted to be inside.

 

Writing Assignment 12: Ping-Pong Poem

 

 

Write a poem which goes back and forth between two different experiences or memories.

Annotation 13

 

 

Next Day        Randall Jarrell

 

            Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,

            I take a box

            And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.

            The slack or shorted, basketed, identical

            Food-gathering flocks

            Are selves I overlook.  Wisdom, said William James,

            Is learning what to overlook.  And I am wise

            If that is wisdom. 

            Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves

            And the boy takes it to my station wagon,

            What I’m become

            Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

 

            When I was young and miserable and pretty

            And poor, I’d wish

            What all girls wish: to have a husband

            A house and children.  Now that I’m old, my wish

            Is womanish:

            That the boy putting groceries in my car

 

            See me.  It bewilders me he doesn’t see me.

            For so many years

            I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me

            And its mouth watered: How often have they undressed me

            The eyes of strangers!

            And, holding my flesh within my flesh, their vile

 

            Imaginings within my imagining

            I too have taken

            The chance of life.  Now the boy pats my dog

            And we start home.  Now I am good.

            The last mistaken,

            Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind

 

            Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm

            Some soap and water—

            It was so long ago, back in some gay

            Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . .  Today I miss

            My lovely daughter

            Away at school, my sons away at school,

 

            My husband away at work—I wish for them.

            The dog, the maid,

            And I go through the sure unvarying days

            At home in them.  As I look at my life

            I am afraid

            Only that it will change, as I am changing:

            I am afraid, this morning, of my face.

            It looks at me

            From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,

            The smile I hate.  Its plain, lined look

            Of gray discovery

            Repeats to me: "You’re old."  That’s all, I’m old.

 

            And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral

            I went to yesterday.

            My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,

            Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body

            Were my face and body.

            As I think of her I hear her telling me

 

            How young I seem; I am exceptional;

            I think of all I have.

            But really no one is exceptional,

            No one has anything, I’m anybody,

            I stand beside my grave

            Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

Writing Exercise 13: Store Poem

 

 

Write a poem that takes place in a store (K-Mart, Giant Eagle, etc.), using real brand names (e.g., Joy, All, Cheer) or products (e.g., bacon, hairdryer).

Annotation 14

 

Cinderella     Anne Sexton

 

You always read about it:

the plumber with the twelve children

who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.

From toilets to riches.

That story.

 

Or the nursemaid,

some luscious sweet from Denmark

who captures the oldest son's heart.

from diapers to Dior.

That story.

 

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,

eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,

the white truck like an ambulance

who goes into real estate

and makes a pile.

From homogenized to martinis at lunch.

 

Or the charwoman

who is on the bus when it cracks up

and collects enough from the insurance.

From mops to Bonwit Teller.

That story.

 

Once

the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed

and she said to her daughter Cinderella:

Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile

down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.

The man took another wife who had

two daughters, pretty enough

but with hearts like blackjacks.

Cinderella was their maid.

She slept on the sooty hearth each night

and walked around looking like Al Jolson.

Her father brought presents home from town,

jewels and gowns for the other women

but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.

She planted that twig on her mother's grave

and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.

Whenever she wished for anything the dove

would drop it like an egg upon the ground.

The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.

 

Next came the ball, as you all know.

It was a marriage market.

The prince was looking for a wife.

All but Cinderella were preparing

and gussying up for the event.

Cinderella begged to go too.

Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils

into the cinders and said: Pick them

up in an hour and you shall go.

The white dove brought all his friends;

all the warm wings of the fatherland came,

and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.

No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,

you have no clothes and cannot dance.

That's the way with stepmothers.

 

Cinderella went to the tree at the grave

and cried forth like a gospel singer:

Mama! Mama! My turtledove,

send me to the prince's ball!

The bird dropped down a golden dress

and delicate little slippers.

Rather a large package for a simple bird.

So she went. Which is no surprise.

Her stepmother and sisters didn't

recognize her without her cinder face

and the prince took her hand on the spot

and danced with no other the whole day.

 

As nightfall came she thought she'd better

get home. The prince walked her home

and she disappeared into the pigeon house

and although the prince took an axe and broke

it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.

These events repeated themselves for three days.

However on the third day the prince

covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax

and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.

Now he would find whom the shoe fit

and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.

He went to their house and the two sisters

were delighted because they had lovely feet.

The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on

but her big toe got in the way so she simply

sliced it off and put on the slipper.

The prince rode away with her until the white dove

told him to look at the blood pouring forth.

That is the way with amputations.

They just don't heal up like a wish.

The other sister cut off her heel

but the blood told as blood will.

The prince was getting tired.

He began to feel like a shoe salesman.

But he gave it one last try.

This time Cinderella fit into the shoe

like a love letter into its envelope.

 

At the wedding ceremony

the two sisters came to curry favor

and the white dove pecked their eyes out.

Two hollow spots were left

like soup spoons.

 

Cinderella and the prince

lived, they say, happily ever after,

like two dolls in a museum case

never bothered by diapers or dust,

never arguing over the timing of an egg,

never telling the same story twice,

never getting a middle-aged spread,

their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.

Regular Bobbsey Twins.

That story.

Writing Exercise 14: Fairy Tale Poem

 

 

Write a poem based on a myth (e.g., Icarus, Orpheus, Maeve), Bible story (David and Goliath, Adam and Eve, Lazarus), or fairy tale (e.g., King Midas, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel).

More Poem Triggers

 

Write a poem

 

1)    in which you are your own ancestor.

2)    which incorporates two different movie classics (i.e., King Kong and Casablanca).

3)    in which you are a “good” historical character (Marie Curie, Louis Pasteur, Jesus,

etc.).

4)    in which you are a “bad” historical character (Hitler, Attila, Billy the Kid, Marie

Antoinette, Lee Harvey Oswald, etc.).

5)    in which you reveal something about yourself by describing an animal (you may not,

however, actually refer to yourself).

6)    in which you reveal something about yourself by describing a place (you may not,

however, actually refer to yourself).

7)    in which you are a monster (vampire, werewolf, Frankenstein, etc.).

8)    that incorporates something overheard—in conversation, or on radio or TV.

9)    that contains dialogue.

10)  in which you are someone of the opposite sex.

11)  in which you are someone of another race.

12)  which takes the form of a catalogue or list (i.e., “Things You Shouldn’t Do On

Sunday”).

13)  in which you are an astronaut away from the earth for the first time.

14)  a how-to poem.  (How to write a poem?)

15)  about, or containing, a song 

16)  about a word or words.

17)  that is a letter to someone you haven’t seen for a long time, or who is dead.

18)  on or to a part of your body.

19)  that is an elegy to someone you admire (Elvis Presley, Van Gogh, etc.).

20)  about a dream, but do not say that it is.

21)  about a cliché or saying (i. e, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”).

22)  using an extended metaphor (i.e., life is a tree, love is a river).  The comparison must

be implied, not stated, implicit, not explicit.

23)  about a past life.

24)  using an epigraph from literature, song, conversation, etc.

25)  in imitation of a famous or favorite poet (e.g., Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, e. e.

cummings, T. S. Eliot, or W. B. Yeats, etc.)

26)  using metaphor(s), describe what poetry is and what it does.

Discussion Questions

 

·        What is poetry? (a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” “emotion recollected in tranquility,” “The best possible words in the best possible order,” “What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed,” or none of the above?) Is poetry any different from the best prose?  Is there a difference between poetry and verse?

·        What makes a “good” poem?

·        Can poetry writing be taught?  Is there such a thing as talent?

·        Is any subject inappropriate for poetry?  Is anything “too personal” for poetry?

·        How do poems get written?  Is there a compulsion?  Is there a muse, and what is its nature?

·        Is there such a thing as absolute truth, and what is poetry’s relation to it?  What is beauty, and poetry’s relation to it?  Are truth and beauty related?

·        Can poetry teach?  Can it make us “better” (Sir Philip Sydney called it “a medicine of cherries”?)  Should it? Can it make us worse?  Can it be used in the service of the dark side?  Can poetry be prejudiced, or biased, in terms of race or sex, or religion? 

·        What is a poet?  What is the stereotype of the poet? 

·        Does poetry have a role in society?  In politics? (Shelley called poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”)  Or should poets remain aloof.  Can poetry change anything? (Auden said “Poetry makes nothing happen.”)  Is poetry supposed to do anything at all, and, if so, what?

·        Are poetry and poets becoming obsolete in an increasingly electronic and visual

      society?  Can they adapt?  Should they?

·        Is it true that “no one reads poetry anymore”?  Did they ever?  Is poetry by definition elitist, or has it become elitist?  Does it have something to say to everyone, or is good poetry always “difficult”?

·        Can we judge value in poetry?  And if we can, is poetry writing for everyone, or only for those who are “good” at it?  If poetry writing is for everyone (i.e., children, the elderly)?

·        Do poetry readings eliminate the need for people to buy and read poetry themselves?  Are they commercials for poetry?  Are they helping poetry or hurting it?

·        What is the relationship between writing poetry and publishing it?  Is it a healthy one?

·        Should poets read other poets?

Poetry and hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you.  And all you can do is go where they can find you.                                                                                                                                                                       —Winnie-the-Pooh, A. A. Milne

 

Celebrating Poetry: The Anthology

The object of this assignment is to involve you deeply with poetry, to get you into the pleasures of poetry in all its varieties. The final product will be your very own anthology of poems.

(1) Go to where some poems are, and stay long enough to find some that get you. Collect them. Aim for a minimum of 20 poems, aim for a variety -- humorous, serious, rhyming and not. You may photocopy poems or copy them by retyping them. Be sure to include the source of your poems (the book(s) or periodical (s) they come from), and the authors' names. You might want to include a date for a particular poem, if it is readily available. Get your poems from a variety of books -- at least 3, and more is better.

(2) Sort your poems out and reflect on why you collected these particular poems. Think about ways you might want to organize them. The end result should be your own poetry anthology, arranged attractively. Decorate it as lavishly as you'd like. Put it together in any way you please. You might want to include a table of contents, and a pretty cover. You might want to make the book flexible enough so that you can add to it at a later time. Give your anthology a name. As you look at the ways other anthologists have collected poems you will get many ideas.

(3) At the end of your anthology include a bibliography of favorite poetry books, including the ones your poems have come from.

(4) Write an introduction to your anthology, discussing what you looked for in assembling your poems. You may wish to discuss your categories, your organization, your methodology, or specific poems that attracted you. Consider how grouping the poems in various ways affects their meanings. If you'd prefer, write introductions to various groups of poems or "chapters" of your book.

(5) Include the checklist on the back of this sheet with your book.

On poetry project day, be prepared to display your anthology, and also be prepared to read aloud at least one favorite poem in a small group. (Make extra copies of this poem.)

Poetry Collection (Anthology) Assessment

 

Author’s Name: _______________________________

Date:_________________________

Title of Collection____________________________________________________________

Guidelines: 25 should mean truly outstanding in this area, 22 good, 19 adequate, 16 could be better, 0 not done

1.    Appearance of the book: neatness, attractiveness, binding, cover, design, title

25   22   19   16   0

2.    Introduction: Why I chose these poems and how I chose to organize them and

       why. What I have learned and what I have attempted to communicate. Clarity of

       expression, mechanics, logic, neatness:

25  22  19  16  0

3.    Organization: Neat, attractive, easy to follow, logical/imaginative. Poems

        correctly copied and attributed to author and source. Care and thought put into

        selection:

25  22  19  16   0

4.  Bibliography: At least 3 sources, conventionally listed:

   25  22  19  16  0

Total points: _______

 

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR POEMS FOR PUBLICATION

 

Ms. Preparation:

 

·        Type your poems, space-and-a-half, or double spaced, on good paper.  No onionskin, and certainly no erasable bond.

·        Put your name and address on every page.

·        3-5 poems in every batch

·        Include an SASE (stamped, self-addressed envelope).

·        Include a cover letter addressed to the poetry editor or to “Editor.”  Your cover letter should say

a)    “Please consider these poems for NAME OF MAGAZINE”

b)    Who you are (a creative writing student at YSU? an English major? member of

the Youngstown Writers Group?)

c)    Where you’ve published

 

Avoid these pitfalls:

1)    Don’t be pretentious: no long statements of artistic intention—the poems either

work or they don’t.  No use “explaining” them.  Ask them to consider your

poems, tell them who you are, and then bow out gracefully. 

2)    Find the right tone: humble, but not crawling, confident but not boastful.  Don’t

flatter.

               

Increasing Your Chances of Getting Published

·        Submit near, but before, deadlines.

·        Find out who needs poems by watching for special announcements.

·        Read poetry magazines. Target the magazines that publish your kind of poems.

·        Try local things (i.e., The Penguin Review) to get started and get some publication credits.

·        Try everything legitimate: contests, submissions, grants.  You miss 99% of the things you try for, but you miss 100% of the things you don’t try for.

·        Be a professional—few can write well as a hobby, and no one can publish.

       

    

Beware!

·        Avoid big splashy contests, unless underwritten by reputable mags.

·        Pay entrance fees to contests, but don’t promise to buy any issue of anything your work will appear in.  That’s just vanity publishing, and you won’t like the company your poem will be keeping.

 

 

SAMPLE SUBMISSION LETTER

 

 

       February 29, 1998

        

       

       Christian Wiman, Editor

       Poetry

       1030 North Clark St., Suite 420

       Chicago, IL 60610-5412

 

Dear Christian Wiman:

 

Please consider the enclosed poems for Poetry.

 

I am a creative writing student at Youngstown State University, and have only just begun trying to publish, although a poem of mine recently appeared in the student literary journal The Penguin Review. 

      

Thanks,

 

 

 

Ernestina Starter

How Your Submitted Poem Should Look

 

 

William Greenway

English

Youngstown St. U.

Youngstown, OH 44555

                                                                                                     willgreenway@neo.rr.com

 

Advent

Kids have sprayed the boulder

orange, given it

black eyes, a stitched

mouth.  My neighbor tells

about the ferry, how

birds at the edges of great

bodies of water, whirling

in the white skies like pepper,

wait for blue weather, play

statues with a winter

that can open one gray eye

and freeze them halfway

across.  We hang out suet,

sow millet, as if winter

were another crop, snow warm

as cotton, sleet nourishing

as rice we would die without.

The leggy marigolds we pulled up

lie on the driveway

still pushing out their suns,

and we begin piling leaves,

stuffing them in plastic

sacks, stacking

the pillows so high

it must seem to the circling

birds, to the squirrels in their

holes, to the knuckleheaded

jack o’lantern in the park,

that we are hoping someone

will fall and save us.   

 

       

       

 

 

 

RESOURCES

 

Book:

The Poet’s Market.  F & W Publications/ 9933 Alliance Rd./Cincinnati, OH 45242/ $16.95/ ISBN 0 89879 1979 (any bookstore will order this for you, or get it from Amazon.com). Describes all of the literary journals and provides a sample of the kind of work they publish.  This is probably the handiest, most reliable resource, and the easiest to find.  New editions published yearly. 

 

Periodicals:

Poets and Writers Magazine/201 W. 54^th St./N.Y., NY 10019.  News on submissions,

contests, and grants.  Lots of tips on every aspect of writing.  The best, and a must. 

$15/yr. (6 issues)

The Writer’s Chronicle/ Old Dominion U./Norfolk, VA 23508.  $15/yr. 

Ohio Writer/P.O. Box 79464/Cleveland 44107. $8.50/yr. (6 issues)

      

READING LISTS

 

 

Criticism/Theory

 

Stafford, William.  Writing the Australian Crawl

_________________.  You Must Revise Your Life

Wright, James. Collected Prose

Gallagher, Tess. A Concert of Tenses

Hall, Donald.  Goatfoot Milktongue Twinbird

____________.  The Weather for Poetry

Kumin, Maxine.  To Make a Prairie

Bly, Robert.  Talking All Morning

Simpson, Louis.  A Company of Poets

Bell, Marvin.  Old Snow Just Melting

Sexton, Anne.  No Evil Star

Simpson, Louis.  The Character of the Poet

Hall, Donald, ed. Claims for Poetry

What Can You Say About Poems? Essays by Poets on Poetry, Juniper Press.

Bly, Robert.  Leaping Poetry

Dillard, Annie.  Living By Fiction.

______The Writing Life

Oates, Joyce Carol, ed. First Person Singular: Writers on Their Craft

Hugo, Richard. The Triggering Town

Hass, Robert.  Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry

Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction

Rilke, Ranier Maria. Letters to a Young Poet

Woolf, Virginia. Letter to a Young Poet

Jarrell, Randall. Poetry and the Age

Matthews, William.  Curiosities, The Poetry Blues

 

 

POETRY READING LIST