THREE WAYS OF LOOKING AT A LIST POEM

Read: 13 Ways Chapter 7, “Listing and Repetition – Catalog, Complicating, and Syncopating.”

ASSIGNMENT BASICS:  Choose one of these three options.

1.  Choose an abstract concept (such as fear, doubt, love, hope, grief, courage, joy, pain).  Address the abstract directly, as Harjo does in her Fear Poem (see below).  What do you want to tell that abstract?  What do you want to know about it?  What has it done to you, to the world?  What strengths might it have?  Be concrete.  Be specific.  Be clear.  Don't explain: SHOW.

2.  Write a "how to" poem, like Peter Kane's "Things To Do After a Break-up" in Sacrament of the Mundane.  Think of something you would like to know how to do:  make a million dollars, write a great paper, impress someone, save the world, bake great brownies, raise a child, survive a Monday, deal with a bully, write the great American novel ...  and create a list of instructions.  The goal is to ultimately transcend the list - find a revelation - through the concrete details and namings and objects.  EARN THOSE ABSTRACTS.

3.  Write a catalog about yourself at a certain age; or a catalog about yourself in one particular moment.  What did you do?  Where were you?  What was the weather like?  What state of mind were you in - fearful, happy, confused, angry?  Who did you spend time with?  What were they like?  What was the relationship like?  Childhood is a hurricane of sensory experiences: think TASTE TOUCH SCENT SOUND SIGHT.  You might include all of them, or only one.  BE SPECIFIC.

BACKGROUND
The list poem (also known as a catalog poem) consists of a list or inventory of things. Poets started writing list poems thousands of years ago. They appear in chanted lists of family lineage in the Bible and in rich, musical lists of Trojan War heroes in Homer’s Iliad. About 250 years ago, Christopher Smart wrote a famous poem about what his cat Jeoffrey did each morning. It starts with the cat inspecting his front paws and ends with the cat going in search of breakfast; it is utterly fascinating. Walt Whitman is known for the extensive lists in his poems and the inclusive, joyful relish he clearly felt by naming the many details of the world (see "I Hear American Singing" as just one brief example of his technique).

CHARACTERISTICS OF A LIST POEM
- A list poem can be a list or inventory of items, people, places, or ideas.
- It often involves repetition.
- It can include rhyme or not; often involves lots of slant rhyme, alliteration, other sound-related strategies.
- The catalog poem may start as a random list, but is ultimately well thought out.
- The last entry in the list is usually a strong, funny, or important item or event that brings everything else together; think of the “turn” in a sonnet.

WHAT THIS FORM OFFERS
an opportunity to obsess, obsess, obsess!
a structure which, when carefully crafted and revised, can result in a powerful statement
It lends itself to interests or passions you’d like to explore and articulate
really good for a rant, diatribe, manifesto or personal platform

WHAT THIS FORM REQUIRES
List poems make great performance and/or reading materials. Be sure to read your poem out loud as you draft; let your ear help you determine things like repetition, line length, internal rhyme, rhythm, momentum.

Remember to watch Joy Harjo perform “Fear Poem”
at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAYCf2Gdycc
and listen to her read "She Had Some Horses" at http://www.rhapsody.com/joy-harjo/she-had-she-some-horses (if you scroll down, you can also listen to her musical version - Harjo's playing the sax and speaking/singing the words).


READING
13 Ways Chapter 7, “Listing and Repetition – Catalog, Complicating, and Syncopating,” has several different kinds of example poems; as well as the List Poems in our class anthology, Sacrament of the Mundane.

Revision: "45 Mercy Street" by Anne Sexton

This is just one snippet of one poet's revision process.  Interesting that it includes much of what we've discussed: cutting, being specific, getting outside critique, reorganizing, cutting...

Here is the finished product:

45 Mercy Street

In my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill
searching for a street sign -
namely MERCY STREET.
Not there.

I try the Back Bay.
Not there.
Not there.
And yet I know the number.
45 Mercy Street.
I know the stained-glass window
of the foyer,
the three flights of the house
with its parquet floors.
I know the furniture and
mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,
the servants.
I know the cupboard of Spode
the boat of ice, solid silver,
where the butter sits in neat squares
like strange giant's teeth
on the big mahogany table.
I know it well.
Not there.

Where did you go?
45 Mercy Street,
with great-grandmother
kneeling in her whale-bone corset
and praying gently but fiercely
to the wash basin,
at five A.M.
at noon
dozing in her wiggy rocker,
grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,
grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,
and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower
on her forehead to cover the curl
of when she was good and when she was...
And where she was begat
and in a generation
the third she will beget,
me,
with the stranger's seed blooming
into the flower called Horrid.

I walk in a yellow dress
and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,
enough pills, my wallet, my keys,
and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?
I walk. I walk.
I hold matches at street signs
for it is dark,
as dark as the leathery dead
and I have lost my green Ford,
my house in the suburbs,
two little kids
sucked up like pollen by the bee in me
and a husband
who has wiped off his eyes
in order not to see my inside out
and I am walking and looking
and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime.

Pull the shades down -
I don't care!
Bolt the door, mercy,
erase the number,
rip down the street sign,
what can it matter,
what can it matter to this cheapskate
who wants to own the past
that went out on a dead ship
and left me only with paper?

Not there.

I open my pocketbook,
as women do,
and fish swim back and forth
between the dollars and the lipstick.
I pick them out,
one by one
and throw them at the street signs,
and shoot my pocketbook
into the Charles River.
Next I pull the dream off
and slam into the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled up
notebooks.

Anne Sexton

Jasmin Darznik Reading (Counts as a Literary Event!)

Jasmin Darznik’s Memoir Reveals Her Mother’s Secret Life and a Half Sister in Iran

Jasmin Darznik 

Lexington, Virginia • January 21, 2011

Click here for an audio excerpt read by Jasmin Darznik

Shortly after her father died, Jasmin Darznik was going through some of her mother's papers when she found an old photograph of her mother as a child bride standing next to a man who was not Darznik's father.

"Here was proof of a life my mother had hidden from me," said Darznik. "Who was this man and why hadn't she told me about their marriage?"

Darznik, assistant professor of English at Washington and Lee University, tells the story of her mother's past and the sister who was kept a secret from her in "The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life" (Grand Central Publishing, January 2011).

Initially reluctant to tell her story, Darznik's mother eventually recorded ten cassettes and numerous interviews with Darznik to reveal her life in Iran as a vulnerable girl in an arranged marriage to an abusive husband. She gave birth to a daughter but was later forced to abandon the child in return for a divorce to escape her life of abuse and neglect. She had kept the secret for 30 years because of the stigma attached to a divorced woman in Iran.

She later married Darznik's father and the family lived in Iran until the onset of the Iranian revolution, when they moved to the United States.

Darznik, who was three years old when the family relocated, said that she was proud that she was able to tell a story that hadn't been told before. "It's an unflinching account of divorce, domestic abuse and alcoholism-taboo subjects in Iranian culture and literature-but it's also a story about the fortitude and ingenuity of Iranian women," she said.

Darznik teaches creative writing and literature and said the experience of writing a book has changed the way she approaches the writing of her students. "I understand much better now how difficult it is to begin telling a story. It's one thing to teach writing and quite another to attempt it yourself," she said. "I think writing the book has made me gentler with my students. I know that the kind and attentive reading of friends helped my writing and so that's how I try to approach my students' writing."

Darznik said that she also tries to relay to her students that it's doggedness that gets stories written. "I would sometimes sit for two hours twiddling my thumbs before inspiration came," she said. "It's really that daily plugging in that gets a book finished, that showing up for the task day after day."

The process of writing the book also brought her closer to her mother. "We think we know our mothers only to realize, years later, how very little we in fact understand about their lives," she said. "The mother I knew was fierce, strong and utterly unsentimental, but the revelation of her secret marked the beginning of knowing her more fully and more compassionately. As a teenager and a young woman I had bitterly resented her protectiveness, but I understand now that the surrender of her first daughter totally shaped-I would even say warped-her love for me."

A book reading and launch party for the release of "The Good Daughter" will be held Thursday, Jan 27 at 4:30 p.m. in the Washington and Lee University Elrod Commons, room 345.

"The Good Daughter" is available in the University Bookstore and will be available at Amazon after January 27.

IN THE WORKSHOP AFTER I READ MY POEM ALOUD

Here's a great Ars Poetica about workshopping one's poem!  How do you feel about workshopping poetry so far?


IN THE WORKSHOP AFTER I READ MY POEM ALOUD
by Don Colburn

All at once everyone in the room says
nothing. They continue doing this and I begin to know
it is not because they are dumb. Finally

the guy from the Bay Area who wears his chapbook
on his sleeve says he likes the poem a lot
but can't really say why and silence

starts all over until someone says she only has
a couple of teeny suggestions such as taking out
the first three stanzas along with

all modifiers except "slippery" and "delicious"
in the remaining four lines. A guy who
hasn't said a word in three days says

he too likes the poem but wonders why
it was written and since I don't know either
and don't even know if I should

I'm grateful there's a rule
I can't say anything now. Somebody
I think it's the shrink from Seattle

says the emotion is not earned and I wonder
when is it ever. The woman on my left
who just had a prose poem in Green Thumbs & Geoducks

says the opening stanza is unbelievable
and vindication comes for a sweet moment
until I realize she means unbelievable.

But I have my defenders too and the MFA from Iowa
the one who thinks the you is an I
and the they a we and the then a now

wants to praise the way the essential nihilism
of the poem's occasion serves to undermine
the formality of its diction. Just like your comment

I say to myself. Another admires the zenlike polarity
of the final image despite the mildly bathetic
symbolism of sheep droppings and he loves how

the three clichés in the penultimate stanza
are rescued by the brazen self-exploiting risk.
The teacher asks what about the last line

and the guy with the chapbook volunteers it suits
the poem's unambitious purpose though he has to admit
it could have been worded somewhat differently.

POEMS AND GRADES

POEMS AND GRADES IN ENGL 204/D. MIRANDA

1.     refer to the syllabus for poem criteria in my grading process (i.e., what I am looking for in a student’s poem).

2.    here is the general procedure for revision and grades:

·         Bring a solid rough draft to workshop in class

·         receive comments from peers and myself

·         revise poem on your own or with peer(s), let it rest, revise again* (see #3)

·         at the midterm mark, give me revised drafts of all poems completed to that point; schedule a conference with me to go over them; receive ‘fake grades’ for each poem.  This is the grade the poem would receive if turned in as is. 

·         Revise again.  Meanwhile, continue working on and revising the poem assignments from the second half of the semester.  On the Monday of the last week of the term, turn in just those 2^nd half poems, revised, for me to review; schedule a conference with me about them.  Revise all poems again. 

·         Turn in all poems (plus major revisions of each poem) in your portfolio during finals week for your final, ‘real’ grade.

3.      *Form revision groups outside of class!  Partner up with someone whose work you admire or whose comments during workshop are especially useful.  Run rough drafts and revisions by each other via email or over coffee!  Give each other good feedback, or just encouragement to keep working.  Writing is at once a solitary task, and a communal task.  Be sure to get a little of both in your writing experience.

NOTE:  you may conference with me about any of your poems at any time in the semester, during my regular office hours, or by appointment.  The two conferences (one at midterm, one last week of term) are the only REQUIRED conferences. 

Revision may well be the toughest part of writing.  Read what Pulitzer Prize winning poet Donald Hall has to say about it, in the interview "Flying Revision's Flag."  Here are a few of my favorite bits of advice/insight from that interview:

How do you decide when to stop revising? Can one revise too much?

Difficult question. Galway Kinnell believes that one can revise too much; I'm not certain that I can. Sometimes I worry that I may change a word simply because, having stared at it for five years, I'm bored with it. Sometimes I fear that I keep the poems at home because I don't want them to grow up and go away to school. Mostly I think I do the right thing by keeping them around, tinkering and tinkering.

To try drawing a reasonable template: At first the poem is volatile and changeable in the extreme; from time to time it slows down and stops. When it stops and will not move again, I show it to Jane and to other friends, and either they tell me to leave it alone, or they show me errors, which I change, or they make demands upon the poem that seem irrelevant to its identity. I finish the poem, with the help of my friends, publish it, it comes out in a magazine--and when the magazine arrives in the mail I tinker with the poem some more.

What do you want to accomplish when you revise? Obviously, you hope to improve the poem, to discover its ideal shape or expression. Would you describe specific goals?

I guess I can't describe goals other than the ones you mention. I'm not discovering "its ideal shape" exactly. I used to think that the statue was there inside the stone and I needed only carve down to it. Now I understand that new things come into the poem during revision . . . Poems are ongoing improvisations toward goals we identify when we arrive at them.

Is revision necessary for poetry? Should every poet revise?

Every poet should revise. Revision is not necessary for every poem. It's been necessary for every poem of mine--but I believe the testimony of some poets (and the evidence of manuscripts) that some great poems have arrived spontaneously, or almost spontaneously. Keats seems to have written great poems in a sitting. I find it hard to believe that Allen Ginsberg doesn't revise, as he sometimes claims. I don't want to believe it! . . . but it does happen, to other poets.

And finally, this great quote:

How can you make yourself revise if you don't want to, if your temperament works against your inclinations to revise? Should the poet force himself to revise?

Sure. If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn't wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.

And what do other poets and writers say about revision??? 

Truman Capote:  "I believe more in the scissors than in the pencil."

Naomi Shihab Nye: "Now I see revision as a beautiful word of hope. It's a new vision of something. It means you don't have to be perfect the first time. What a relief!"

Georgia Heard: "To revise is a poet's life. To see and then to see again is what a poet's life is all about. I revise my poems not for the sake of revising, but to clarify what I see with my eyes and what's in my heart."

Nikki Grimes: "Good poetry requires a great deal of revision! Most of my poems go through ten drafts, minimum. (Groan.) That said, if you don't write honestly, no one will care what your poem has to say, no matter how cleverly written or technically competent it is."

Adam Ford: "It's always exciting when a poem tumbles straight from your head onto the page, but sometimes it still needs a little extra work. It's a rare poem whose first draft is as good as it could ever be."

Ben Hurst:  “When you revise a poem, you take the rough edges of a diamond and you polish them to the point that someone [else] can plainly see the clarity of the raw material.”

Bobbi Katz: "Be prepared to revise. And revise. And revise."

Mark Doty:  "I learn about new poems in the process of reading aloud. You listen differently when you're reading to an audience - it's as if part of you is in that audience listening to that new poem. You hear weaker lines, glitches, rhythmic problems, and that helps in the revision process.”

Josephine Jacobson.  “I hate revision. It’s a labor I loathe but I practice it always . . . because the poem that you read a month after you’ve written it, is not the poem that you think you’ve written. You think 'what! Somebody has come in the middle of the night and tampered with my work of genius. This can’t possibly be what I wrote.' Because things spring to your eye that you should have seen at first and didn’t; and so though I dislike revision intensely -- It’s like operating on somebody while they’re alive -- I do practice it always before I let a poem go on its own, for better or worse.”

Billy Collins:  “One thing I’ve told my poetry students is that revision should always be taking away. Always be taking away. No, don’t add a new stanza. Don’t stuff a stanza in the middle, because you lose this organic flow. So knowing what to leave out is very important…”

Lillian Moore: "I tend to write poems slowly because I enjoy seeking the right word and revising until I think I have it. For almost every poem I have written over the years there has probably been a wastebasket filled with rough drafts. Most of all, I want a poem to say what I really felt or saw or heard--that is, to be true."

QUICK & DIRTY REVISION STRATEGIES:

MURPHY’S STYLE SHEET FOR REVISING POETRY

[also works well for critiquing rough drafts!]

by Peter E. Murphy (with adaptations by Deborah Miranda)

1. Cliché
Eliminate clichés, which are the vermin of imaginative writing. Initially fresh images, clichés have been taken over and made mundane by too frequent usage. They have lost their original authority, power, and beauty. They raise their predictable heads (!) in the early drafts of even the most experienced writers. Turning a cliché against itself by intentionally using it in an inverted form can revive it. Puns can give a cliché a renewed life. However, if a poem is merely going to repeat a cliché, cut it.  If you are very attached to a certain cliché in a certain poem, try this:  freewrite on what it is that the cliché expresses that appeals so much to you.  Chances are you’ll come up with your own fresh image that blows the cliché out of the water.

2. Abstract
Identify all abstract or general nouns and replace them with concrete or specific ones. Words like "love," "freedom," "pain," "sadness," "anger," and other emotions and ideas need to be channeled through the physical imagery of the five senses: Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, Taste. A caveat:  carefully chosen,well-timed abstracts can be okay.  Natalie Goldberg says, “You have to earn the right to make an abstract statement.  You earn this right by using the concrete bricks of detail.  After much original detail, you can take a little leap, step away, and make a statement:  ‘Ah, yes, life is good,’ or ‘Life sucks.’  But you can’t say ‘Life sucks’ until you have given us a picture of it: a man lying in the gutter, mosquitoes feeding at his open sores, the tongue of his right shoe hanging out, his pockets turned inside out, his eyes stunned close, and his skin a pale yellow.”

3. Verbs
Fortify the physical character of the poem by using strong action verbs instead of linking verbs in the passive voice (i.e., “she runs” rather than “she is running”). Because active verbs and concrete nouns are more visceral, dynamic, and persuasive, they reduce the need for modifiers. Avoid overusing the "-ing" form of verbs because it dilutes and reduces their strength. It is like driving a speedboat without raising the anchor.   When you sense that a poem is good but still not capturing the intensity of what you want to convey, try making a list of all your verbs.  Evaluate them: are they up to the job?  do they drag too many anchors?  are there more original verbs than the ones you are using?  have you chosen verbs that are too complex for the imagery?  Verbs literally get your poem up and running.  Make sure it’s not stumbling over verbs that don’t fit or can’t keep up.

4. Compress
Cut, compress, and condense!  Delete conjunctions, articles, excess pronouns, ‘so,’ ‘very,’ ‘because,’ and so on.  Make every word count.  Imagine that you must pay your reader a dollar a word to read your prose. Then, imagine that you must pay your reader five dollars a word to read your poetry. Compress, especially when the progress of the poem is impeded by imprecise or indecisive language. Cut everything that can be cut until what's left penetrates the flesh with its sweet, burning flavor.  Most poets tend to fall in love with our own words; that’s why we’re poets.  Remember:  if you cut it, and the poem doesn’t work, you can always add it back in.  Save all your drafts.  After any major cuts, put the draft away and look at it in a few days, a week, or even later, to see how the cut ‘heals’ – the poem can actually grow during such a rest period, while your vision expands.  

5. Risk
Be daring in your writing. Experiment and take chances. Risk-taking adds originality and spontaneity to the poem, which leads to imaginative and linguistic breakthroughs.  When you refuse risk, you refuse the possibility that language, and not your own brilliance, is in control of imagery.  Risk applies to the content of a poem as well as to the form, style, tone, or other technical aspect.  Monitor your internal editor:  if she starts to say, “Oh, you don’t want to write about THAT” or “isn’t that a little ugly/too personal/embarrassing/scary?” – then go for it.  You’re about to hit a vein of potentially explosive creativity.  It may or may not result in a great poem.  But it will definitely feed you as a writer.