Assignment #2

1.) Read: HANDOUT; HOLLANDER 26-30; PAM-- Olson 613-21, Morley 51-3, Guest 62-7, O'Hara 129-30 ("Why I am not a painter"), Eshleman 306-13, Silliman 490-3 (from Tjanting), Gustaf Sobin 320-2 ("11 Rock Poems"), Equi 599 ("A Bouquet of Objects"); PACKET-- pp. 36, 48-55.

2.) Write: Gloss (1-2 single spaced pages) your partner's poem. Line edit the others (thoroughly). Complete the assignment below.

#2- IMAGE... and TRANSLATION THRU the SENSES

This week we will work not on line length or on any overtly formal element, but rather we will elevate the senses and the objects involved in the poem above all else. There are ten thousand ways to do this. We will read a few of them. As WCW wrote: "No ideas but in things." We are moving away this week from syntactic discursivity, from arguments made of logical lines of (commonly) abstract language to arguments woven of juxtaposition of the concrete, of sensory evidence. Image in this instance need not be merely read as visual (that is simply shorthand)-- please do also/or explore the tactile, olfactory, kinesthetic, aural, as well as the bitter-, sweet-, or tartness of the object.

What should such a poem look like? It can look like a haiku or a series of haiku (Wallace Stevens "13 Ways..." Sobin's "11 Rock Poems"), a "field" poem (Hollander 29/Sobin here too), it could even look like a psalm (although many of the poets who choose to write thing poems also favor concision, it is not a prerequisite). This type of poem exploded into American writing with Pound's "Cathay"--and his cribbing of Fenellosa's notes toward translation brought with it the romantic notion of "Oriental minimalism." Deep image poets of the sixties and seventies (Bly, Eshleman, Wakoski, etc.) admired the impact of the image, but tended to combine it with the influence of surrealism and symbolism and romantic excess. Deep attention to observation/experience is what we are after, but whether the experience of the object is scientific, meditative, ecstatic, impressionistic, or workmanlike is all about you. Or, correction: all about your particular conception and representation of your object/s. Like Olson, we are attempting to avoid so much/too much self (think excessive patchouli use).

Directions: For this simple limitation exercise there are two rules only: 1.)Choose one concrete object to write about (no poems about multiple objects or about abstract concepts like love, war, or fly-fishing). Many of the poems I've assigned for you to read for next class address several objects and even meditate on process (Silliman) or event/place (Hopkins, Eshelman) rather than on discrete things... but our assignment is to choose ONE THING. 2.) NO SIMILES NO METAPHORS (I know the examples use them but I need to impose severe obstacles--my objects of choice--and the removal of figurative language will no doubt cripple some of you to the point that you must grow wings or learn to crawl interestingly)... such as pleases my devious heart.

TURN IN NEXT TIME:
1. Group A (who was workshopped today--new sets of poems)
2. Everyone-- Line edits from the poems wkshopped today and for 1/30 shd be handed to the poets themselves.
3. Everyone shd turn in a gloss of their writing partner's work as they receive the pieces.

*Note: you will not always present your gloss in class but you and your partner shd be passing back and forth poems/glosses of the non-wkshopped assignments informally.

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