Assignment #1: ARS POETICA

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Ars Poetica: the art of poetry. A poem about poetry. Some people consider this an exercise in navel-gazing gone terribly wrong. However, it is almost irresistible for poets to try and describe what it is about poetry that is so compelling, and writing an ars poetica is almost a rite of passage. You will understand ars poetica much better once you’ve read the poems in SM (they start on page 20); read them all a few times, see how the poets are painting you a picture of “what poetry is” by saying “Poetry is …” or “reading poetry is like …” As marginalia, try to write a brief summary of what you think each poet tries to communicate.


A. - Al Zolynas says poetry is “a pile of clothes on an empty beach at dawn” and our job as readers is to investigate that pile of clothes, try to extrapolate who wore them, what they mean.


B. William Stafford contradicts the old staying that art must come from suffering; to prove his point (stated only in his title), he imagines writing a poem to be like climbing a mountain – it takes self-motivation, the desire to work hard, and willingness not to wait for inspiration, but to MAKE a way, make a trail. The mountain won’t come to you!


C. Ethna McKiernan, too, names her purpose in her title (“Beginning to Name It: Poetry”), then just starts her metaphor as “It is the strange vegetable/that grows outside the garden” and goes from there, expanding the metaphor for awhile, then switching to another metaphor, “It is the mystery scientists/ spend late-night hours researching” and takes off again. She does this several times, trying to find a way to describe what she thinks poetry is. Great way to express what isn’t really expressible!


D. In Maxine Kumin’s “Ars Poetica: A Found Poem” she uses a note left for her by a friend as her jumping off place. She realized that the friend’s comments about a horse being “broken” or tamed could be applied to the writing or “taming” of a wild poem! She uses that metaphor throughout the poem, subtly comparing the hard, tedious, gentle work of breaking a horse with the hard, tedious, gentle work of “conquering” or capturing the wild words of a poem, getting them to settle down and BE a poem.

Reading down the list of quotes by various poets (below), keep a list of comparisons that strike you as interesting or bizarre. For example: poetry is a journal of a sea animal living on land, a healer, a machine, a skeleton… start with one of those and freewrite on it. What would the skeleton of poetry look like? Would sonnets be ribs, would verbs be fingerbones, would metaphor be the skull, or the breath? Once you’ve done this for two or three of the metaphors, read your freewrites over and see what seems most powerful. Follow that thought in another, longer freewrite.  Then, go back and cull the very best of your images, and follow them.  Extend the metaphor!

 (Another way to approach this assignment: what is a poet? The same list of poets give various definitions of a poet, or what a poet’s job is. Write a job description for a poet. What would be required? What would not be useful? What temperament should they have? What skills?)

Please feel free to email me your ideas for this assignment if you need someone to give you feedback. Also, please contact each other and start forming those smaller, outside workshops that can give you such great comments!


More Examples Online


Below you'll find a few links to poets reading their Ars Poeticas, as well as a list of poets trying to come up with a one or two line definition. Steal from them! There are some great lines to start you off on your own crazy ricochet here.

Listen to Archibald MacLleish read "Ars Poetica": 

 



Watch Victoria Chang read "Ars Poetica as Birdfeeder and Hummingbird" from Salvinia Molesta: 

or listen to Elizabeth Alexander's 'Ars Poetica #92':

And if you'd like to hear to GORGEOUS Spanish original of Neruda's "Poesia," listen to this!

Notice how these writers return again and again to the concrete in order to make their point; pay attention!

What is POETRY?

Poetry is life distilled.  ~ Gwendolyn Brooks~
It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically. ~ Jean Cocteau ~
If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. ~ Emily Dickinson ~
Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild. ~ Denis Diderot ~
Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words. ~ Paul Engle ~
The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation. ~ James Fenton ~
[poems are] Imaginary gardens with real toads in them.  ~Marianne Moore
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.  ~Jean Cocteau
Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition.  ~Eli Khamarov
Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.  Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.  Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.  ~Carl Sandburg
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat. ~ Robert Frost ~
Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does. ~ Allen Ginsberg ~
Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject. ~ John Keats ~
The courage of the poets is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness. ~ Christopher Morley ~
Poetry is the special medium of spiritual crazy wisdom, the form of expression that comes closest to creating a bridge between words and what is wordless. ~ Wes "Scoop" Nisker ~
Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. ~ Carl Sandburg ~
Poets are like baseball pitchers.  Both have their moments.  The intervals are the tough things.  ~Robert Frost
Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.  ~Rita Dove
Poetry . . . is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before . . .  poetry is not a luxury.  ~Audre Lorde

ASSIGNMENT  IN A NUTSHELL:

Take a line, phrase or idea from one of these quotes about poetry, and write an ars poetica:  a poem about poetry.  Your poem is concerned with the following questions:  What is the work of poetry?  Of a poet?  Of language?  Of love of language?  What does poetry make happen?  Prevent?  Witness?  Destroy?  If poetry were a ______ (toad, backwoods still, soldier, sea turtle with wings, baseball pitcher, lie, explosion in the head, bridge, cornstalk, sapphire, weapon, medicine, fire, Great-Aunt, Shaker basket, ocher, frost …), how would you describe it to us?  How would it look, feel, taste, sound, move, affect us, frighten us, heal us, amuse us, change us?  Make your vision of poetry  personal (by this I mean, speak from your heart about what you want, need, or feel poetry does).  Take us by the throat! 

Again, for this assignment, form and length are up to you.  This may be free verse, rhymed, in a form (such as sonnet or villanelle), a prose poem – whatever works for you, for this poem.  See me if you’d like more structure – I’ll be happy to give you some ideas!  mirandad@wlu.edu

Also, remember to: 

***email the poem as an attachment (with your name etc.) to Professor Miranda and the entire class via our class email list.   

***print out each poem, comment ON the poem itself (in writing), and bring it to class for workshopping.