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WRITER'S NOTEBOOK PROMPTS:

 

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LESSON 1: Mimicry

We learn from our favorite writers

 

I like Galway Kinnell.  His poetry has a simplicity to it that captures emotion so perfectly.  One of my favorites is this poem simply titled "Oatmeal" in which he imagines having breakfast with a fellow poet - Keats.

 

Oatmeal by Galway Kinnell

listen to Kinnell read the poem by clicking HERE

 

I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone. 
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health 
if somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have 
breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary 
companion. 
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal porridge, 
as he called it with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him: 
due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, 
and unsual willingness to disintigrate, oatmeal should 
not be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat 
it with an imaginary companion, and that he himself had 
enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John 
Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as 
wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something 
from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the 
"Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it those were his words "Oi 'ad 
a 'eck of a toime," he said, more or less, speaking through 
his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his 
pocket, 
but when he got home he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas, 
and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they 
made some sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if 
they got it right. 
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket 
through a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas, 
and the way here and there a line will go into the 
configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up 
and peer about, and then lay \ itself down slightly off the mark, 
causing the poem to move forward with a reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about 
the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some 
stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat oatmeal 
alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words 
lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there 
is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field go thim started 
on it, and two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their 
clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours," 
came to him while eating oatmeal alone. 
I can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering 
furrows, muttering.
Maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion's tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneaously 
gummy and crumbly, and therefore I'm going to invite Patrick Kavanagh 
to join me. 

 

We can learn from our favorite poets by looking at what they do in terms of what they choose to write about and how they write about that subject.  Let's tackle the WHAT first.  We'll do that by writing our own poem about someone, living or dead, famous or not, that we imagine ourselves having breakfast with.  Here's my poem:

 

Sunday Morning by J. Ward

 

Fluffy warm pancakes stick in the throat without syrup,

which is why they should not be eaten alone.

A supervisor for the syrup is necessary.

Aunt Jermima will do.

She eyes me suspiciously from across the table.

She’s worried I will lose her cap,

having accidentally sent is skidding across the floor

when she handed it to me.

Later she reaches up to wipe the sticky rivulets

I’ve let drip into her hair.

She glares back at me with that

how-dare-you look,

and I know what’s coming:

a long lecture about the use of disparaging

racial stereotypes in advertising.

She’s right, but

not quite what I was hoping for over

Sunday morning breakfast.

She ticks off on her fingers all the ways

I’ve kept her oppressed in the pantry.

She’s planning a protest with Uncle Ben.

The Zataran’s band will play the marching music,

and Dr. Pepper will give the keynote address.

Tomorrow I think I’ll invite

Mrs. Butterworth instead.

 

Now let's look at HOW poets do what they do.  First, head to our stack of poetry books or go to Poets.org or Poetry 180.  Find a poem that you like.  Write the title and author of the poem into your Writer's Notebook.  If you find the poem online, print it out to add to your notebook.  Once you've found a poem you love, take a closer look at it.  In your Writer's Notebook, answer the following questions:

 

1. What do you notice about the title?  Does the poet use the title as the first line of the poem or does the title come from one of the lines of the poem?  What does the title tell you?
2. What does the poem look like on the page?  Is the poem centered on the page or left justified?  Are there multiple stanzas? Do the stanzas have the same number of lines? Are the lines long or short? Describe how the poem is formatted.
3. Does the poem have rhyme?  Do you notice rhymes at the end of lines or are there internal rhymes?
4. Does the poem have rhythm?  Read the poem out loud to yourself.  Do you notice a rhythm to the poem? Do each of the lines have the same number of syllables?
5. What sorts of words does the poet use?  Does the writer use a lot of vivid imagery and adjectives? Or, does the poet use slang? Does the poet use dialogue to give the poem voice? Or does the writer use very formal academic diction?
6. What literary devices does the writer use? Does the poet use a lot of similes and metaphors? Can you find alliteration?  Does the writer use sarcasm or irony?  Personification?  What literary devices do you notice?

 

 

Once you've analyzed the STYLE of the poem you've selected, now try to mimic that style in a poem of your own.  You do not have to write about the same topic as your selected poem.  Instead, try to mimic the style that your selected writer use.  Try to keep the same format, rhythm, rhyme, and diction.  Jot down and initial draft of your mimicry poem in your Writer's Notebook, and later use the computer to put together a more polished, typed copy. 

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LESSON 2: The Importance of Titles

 

This poem by Silvia Plath hinges on its title.  The title gives away the object described in this poem.  What do you think the title is?

 

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

 What ever you see I swallow immediately

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

I am not cruel, only truthful---

The eye of a little god, four-cornered.

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long

I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,

Searching my reaches for what she really is.

Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.

I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.

She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.

I am important to her. She comes and goes.

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

NOW write a similar poem, where you don't state what the object is that you are writing about, instead leaving it as the title.

 

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LESSON 3: Line Breaks

Where do you break your lines?

(original source for this lesson)

 

What is a poetic line?

A line is a unit of words in a poem, and it can vary in length. According to Oliver (1994), "The first obvious difference between prose and poetry is that prose is printed (or written) within the confines of margin, while poetry is written in lines that do not necessarily pay any attention to the margins, especially the right margin" (35).

 

An example

Here are three lines from Robert Creeley's poem "The Language":

   Locate I

   love you some-

   where in

 

Enjambment

What is enjambment?

Enjambment is breaking a line but not ending the sentence. Enjambment is when a poet carries over a sentence from one line to the other.

 

An example

There are multiple examples of enjambment in these lines from Robert Creeley's poem "The Language." Notice how this single sentence is carried over from one line to the next and over multiple stanzas, and all the lines break abruptly.

Locate I

love you some-

where in

 

teeth and

eyes, bite

it but

 

take care not

to hurt, you

want so

 

much so

little.

 

Robert Creeley and The Line

One of the masters of enjambment and the line is the poet Robert Creeley. As you can see above, Creeley's line breaks are often startling and unexpected. To find out more about Creeley's unique use of the line (or breaking the line):

• Read the section on "The Line" in How to Read A Poem, which you can find here http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19882.
• You can also find a brief biography of Robert Creeley and his poems here:  http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/184.

 

Robert Creeley's "The Language"

Here is the complete poem of Robert Creeley's "The Language":

 

The Language

 

 

Locate I

love you some-

where in

 

teeth and

eyes, bite

it but

 

take care not

to hurt, you

want so

 

much so

little. Words

say everything.

Ilove you

again,

 

then what

is emptiness

for. To

 

fill, fill.

I heard words

and words full

 

of holes

aching. Speech

is a mouth.

 

SOURCE: CREELEY, R. (1992). THE COLLECTED POEMS OF ROBERT CREELEY, 1945-1975. BERKELEY, CA: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

 

Robert Creeley's "The Language": An Animated Version

 

An animated poem of Robert Creeley's "The Language" read by Carl Hancock Rux:

open player in a new window

 

ASSIGNMENT: "Creeleyizing" A Poem

Look back at the poem that you wrote for today's Writer's Notebook entry. For the purposes of this assignment, it is best if the poem consists of lines at least ten syllables in length and/or heavily end-stopped lines (meaning that punctuation appears at the end of the line). After you have selected a poem, "Creeleyize" your poem. In other words, rewrite your poem by breaking your lines at unexpected moments (like Creeley does in a number of his poems), creating frequent enjambment and short lines.

 

Assignment Purpose:

The purpose of this assignment is to revise the line breaks of your poem, exploring ways in which your changes in line breaks and line length open up new meanings and points of emphasis in the poem. It might also suggest possibilities for further revision to imagery and sound.

Some Questions to Consider After Your Revision:

• Does the change in line breaks help reinforce the rhythm of the poem? Or does it seem distracting?
• Is the change in breaks in the poem appropriate for the meaning of the piece? In other words, does this new form enhance the content of the poem?
• What words and phrases stand out to you in this revision that did not stand out before? How does this change the poem?
• What additional ways might you revise the poem to explore other possibilities for making meaning, sound or word play?

Example

Take a look at this poem that Ms. Ward wrote, and then read through the revision she made when she "Creeleyized" the poem.  Which do you like better? 

 

ORIGINAL POEM

REVISED POEM

Speechless   Expecting the call                 yesterday, next week, in a year. Not expecting                 to hear my father’s voice quiver.                 no words                 eldest son to his eldest daughter.   Skin pulled tight,             knuckles white, grasping through the phone for a connection miles, states, ages away, wanting to reach through the line, to understand.   First thoughts do not fly to schedules, are not overwhelmed with how to tell the little ones,             or memories of summers spent playing croquet with Gramps in the backyard.   My first thoughts are                 what can I say to                 my fatherless father.

REVISED:  Speechless   Expecting the call              yesterday, next week, in a year. Not expecting              to hear  my father’s voice quiver. No words             eldest son to his eldest daughter.   Skin pulled tight,             knuckles white, grasping through the phone for a connection miles, states, ages away, wanting to reach through the line, to understand.   First thoughts do not  fly to schedules, are not overwhelmed how to tell the little ones,                          or memories summers spent playing croquet with Gramps in the backyard.   My first thoughts             what can I say to             my fatherless father.

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POETRY RESOURCES

• http://phillyyouthpoets.org/