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1 Writing Poetry Session 1

Icebreakers Objectives of Workshop Oral Nature of Poetry Physical Nature of Poetry The Writing Habit: Productivity The poet’s Passion Center Generating Ideas Qmfbtf!Tibsf!xjui!vt/// • the very earliest memory you can recall of your life...

• a time when your body was physically wrenched or cramped with ntro delight or laughter...

duct • a concrete, tangible aspect of a Iions person which freaked you out... • a word or phrase that prompts strong and inexplicable reaction in you, for better or worse Workshop Goals

to help participants develop an individual voice through careful selection of form, diction,tone and persona

to expose participants to the great range of themes and forms that poems may take

to help participants generate meaningful ideas for their poetry

to enhance participants’ observational skills

to enable participants to distinguish poetry from verse

to help participants identify which kind of poetry they most wish to write

to demonstrate the most appropriate writing techniques unique to the genre

to impart the artistic use of image, metaphor, symbol, sound and sense Baseline knowledge

Which of the following concepts are familiar to you:

Baseline knowledge

“Is this iambic pentameter or anapestic hexameter?”

The last time I taught Phonolexis: Poetry 101: October 5, 2009 “He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.”

~George Sand, 1851 Calibration Find the Rhymes

This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps, chaste Diana haunts the forest shade, and bats with baby faces in the violet light that in black ink under the glassy, cool, translucent wave Find Calibration the Accents what is poetry?

“News that stays news,” says Ezra Pound

“Anything a book store places in the Poetry Section,” so say others

Poetry is the expression of the emotional, sensuous, muscular, rhythmic nature of the human animal what is poetry?

Poetry is verse PLUS imagination, emotion, well-wrought language what is poetry? Poetry’s nature follows from our own nature: Human experience begins when the senses give us:

IMAGES of ourself or of the world outside (these images arouse) EMOTIONS, which (with their images) we express in WORDS, which are physically produced and have SOUND, which comes to our ear riding the air on waves of RHYTHM, The whole process, from the beginning, is fostered and overseen by an organizing MIND, acting with the common sense of our everyday life, even when dealing with the uncommon sense of dreams or visions. In a good poem the elements work together as a unit, proposition #1 Poetry is a Primitive Technology Poetry arose to:

• hold things in memory beyond the individual lifespan; • express ideas and feelings rapidly; • share experiences with both the dead and those who would come after

Poets were often the only means to transmit truth and transcendental experience beyond the range of the individual proposition #2

Poetry is a Vocal Art, a Physical Art proposition #2 Consider the Medium of Expression proposition #2 proposition #2 proposition #2 proposition #2 proposition #2 proposition #2 proposition #2 proposition #2

The Medium of Poetry is the Human Body...... of the Listener

Poets use the breath of their audience as their medium;

The hearing of the listener embodies the poets’ words, making them audible, individual, physical and intimate evaluating poetry Poetry or Verse?

Poetry Avoids: • Excessive Sentimentality • Overflown Rhetoric • Dogmaticism evaluating poetry Excessive Sentimentality

• indulges in emotion for emotion’s own sake; • expression of more emotion than is warranted; • primarily aimed at stimulating emotions directly rather than communicating honest and fresh experience; • relies on trite language; evaluating poetry Overflown Rhetoric

• is oratorical, overelegant, artificially eloquent; • language is loftier than the substance warrants; • deals in generalities; • often bombastic; evaluating poetry Dogmaticism

• primary aim is to preach, or teach; • didactic purpose supersedes the poetic purpose; • lacks specific situations, characters, settings; • relies on moral platitudes; • contains flat diction, impoverished imagery;

Go to Exercise >> evaluating poetry Excellence in Poetry: • unique combination of thought, emotion, language and sound

• avoids inexact language; • avoids trying to force words into a rhyme scheme or metrical pattern; • is multidimensional; evaluating poetry 4 Dimensions of Poetry:

• ordinary communication tends to be focused on one aspect of the audience; poetry is aimed at the whole person. evaluating poetry 4 Dimensions of Poetry:

• Intellect • Emotions • Imagination • Senses “ The poet is a professor of the 5 bodily senses...”

- Frederico Garcia Lorca “ The poet is a professor of the 5 bodily senses...”

- Frederico Garcia Lorca

“We think in generalities, but we live in detail....”

- Alfred North Whitehead 75% our brain area is given over to processing information about sight, sound and smell... Class Exercise Now, Close Your Eyes Track these! Enlarge the Class frame Exercise: Idea to Image amusement wretchedness velocity angel deception authority insufficiency mercy HW: Objects > Ideas Sound, Sense & Shape stress & duration O C E A N C E A O N Ocean it it ought it ought awed Lines Transformational Line Endings: Lines Transformational Line Endings:

He just laid bare Lines Transformational Line Endings:

He just laid bare his heart and the young woman Lines Transformational Line Endings:

He just laid bare his heart and the young woman kissed him until he yelled “Stop Lines Transformational Line Endings:

He just laid bare his heart and the young woman kissed him until he yelled “Stop fooling around and get down Lines Transformational Line Endings:

He just laid bare his heart and the young woman kissed him until he yelled “Stop fooling around and get down to business!” Proposition # 3 Language can become your enemy! • some poems are more thought than emotion • more concept than image,

• Th Poet should speak in images rather than sentences

• Free yourself from exposition, narration! Proposition # 3

“No surprise for the poet, no surprise for the reader”

- Robert Frost Home-Work Home-Work

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