Assignment #4

Hello...

This week is a reflection/revision week. But that doesn't mean we won't be working. In addition to memorizing a 14+ line poem for recitation to the class (and please bring a copy of that poem for me to keep), I will be asking you to go back over the readings for the first four weeks and bring in a discussion-starting question about a poem (or bit of poetics) you find there. We will begin with Casabianca and go on to a few pieces that stir you, so please, BE stirred (otherwise I'll choose what and how to discuss the work and you'll lose a valuable opportunity to hush me up and to talk about wk you find compelling or problematic or magnetically repugnant--my fave).


ASSIGNMENT#4

Beyond that, you will need to complete a specific revision/version of one of your first four assignments... Take one of the assignments that you don't know how to revise, or haven't really thought about yet and alter its line-lengths drastically. By this I mean: re-write psalms in three-beat OR two-word lines, OR rewrite ballads as psalms, OR vary line-length in any poem to make it wildly fluctuate, OR re-create a left-justified poem as a field poem, using the page as landscape. As you do this work, language changes will occur to you, or they will demand to happen against your will--so go with that. This assignment is all about altering the line, so the only no-no is to take the same lines and position them differently or to make an 8-line ballad into a 4-line poem--TOO EASY. The name of this game is to actively go against your original instincts. Radically break lines where it seems "wrong." Take out precious line breaks and hide them within a longer line, etc. Find NEW music in your work... who wants to hear a remake that sounds exactly like the original? BORING. On the other hand... DO find new music. Don't get angry about doing a version that isn't what you envisioned... keep a copy of the original. Think of this as letting your poem try on outfits he would never wear in public, but that strangely suit him nonetheless. And always personify your work, it makes it more satisfying to torture...oops... I mean aggressively interrogate.

Speaking of which, we will also be doing an in-class assignment for which you will need a few items.

EVERYONE SHOULD BRING:
1. A pair of scissors. Some of you (and you know who you are) should procure a pair with the blunted-safety end.

2. A medium-length poem (14-25 lines) that you adore for its rhythm or syntax or its use of repetition (this could be the poem that you memorized or another one). In other words--a poem you are drawn to for its FORM (not sound...but structure), although not necessarily that it be an easily replicated or a recognizable one.

3. A page or two of text (prose probably, although it doesn't matter) that contains vocabulary that intrigues you (words you love, hate, that enthrall or disgust or confuse you--just make a passion-driven decision and you'll be fine). You will be cutting this text up so please print out a large-fonted copy of it to make things easier for yourself.

EVERYONE SHD LINE EDIT: Sam's, Olivia's, Hannah's, Amy's, Josh's

EVERYONE NOT MENTIONED ABOVE: please bring in poems for wkshp on 2/20

GLOSSES PASSED BACK AND FORTH AS ALWAYS.

email me any confusions.