writing prompt: learning disobedience

Find a copy of Animal Eye.  Read it and savor.  Photocopy the first poem.

Or find it here: "Why Some Girls Love Horses" by Paisley Rekdal.

Peel it apart if you so desire.  Ask questions like:  What is the relationship of the speaker to is subject?  Do you get the sense that the horse is personified (perhaps a bad word--maybe ask if the horse is a character or--) or is it more of a portraiture (an object)?  How does the poet use action to lead us to the concluding lines?  What are the sensory images that stand out most to you? 

Or go straight to the prompt, which, I would say, could be:  write a poem that is about "the image / of the one who taught me disobedience / is the first right of being alive."  Add in that the students certainly don't have to write about "the one" as a person or even an animal--this could be an experience, or a place, or something else that evokes that first memory of disobedience.

Another option:  Write a poem that reflects "the livingness" of something.

ice breaking: periodic table of elements

I think we all know the typical ice-breaking activities on the first day of class:  there is the classic two truths and a lie (which worked really nicely in a Journalism class I taught and the students got to interview one another to find out the lie), there's interviewing a partner and having the other introduce that person (and it can even be as specific as interviewing that person about their name, so the name becomes more memorable), there's the game where you toss a ball around the room and the students have to answer whatever question the thrower asks, there's the activity where you are to give your partner three objects from your bag and use those objects to create a poem from them and read it to introduce your partner.  Etc.

But I love this one from the poet Danielle Pafunda, and I can imagine adapting it in a myriad of ways. Print out a blank copy of the periodic table of elements and have the students fill them out:  they can use clippings (perhaps bring magazines or newspapers?), words, quotes, etc.  I imagine they could do it in partners or solo, then gradually bring it to a large group creation (turn into an overhead, or, if that is too antiquated, some kind of fancy computer projection, or--in the university I taught at, in some of the nicer buildings, there was a camera-projection so anything you wrote on or placed beneath the lens would get projected onto the screen).  Perhaps the instructor might want to make a version of his or her own to share with the class--a way to introduce poetic terms, key concepts for the class, crucial figures to you in the poetic world.

writing prompt: filtering present through the past

1/  Distribute copies of the poems:  "Staff Sgt. Metz" by Dorianne Laux and "The Writer" by Richard Wilbur.  Introduce these pieces by explaining the interest in filtering the present through a past moment.

2/  Start with Laux, and read without the past moments.  There is a beautiful description of the moment, but one note, missed opportunities to step into the figurative.  Read again and read the full poem, including the past bits.  There we have the hinge.  How does this change the poem and its meaning?  Examine first line:  "Metz is alive for now" and later, earning "I don't believe in anything anymore: / god, country, money or love. / All that matters to me now / is his life"

3/  Turn to the Wilbur.  Read aloud with only present moment.  Read again with past included.  See how Wilbur uses the frame of the present.  See his use of enjambment to create urgency in the center of the poem, the memory part.  Ask students about the extended metaphor:  we start "at the prow of the house," we get the gunwhale and the passage.  How does Wilbur return to this metaphor, what physical image?  "clearing the sill of the world"--there it is, the horizon for the bird, for the daughter.  It is in this way that Wilbur deals with cliches without having to completely eradicate them.

4/  Assignment:  create your own poem, which takes on the past to filter through a present moment.  Don't be shy--one expects at least a typed page, but no more than two.  That space is enough for the two moments to marry one another well.  Consider, too, the marriage of form and content, knowing what's at stake.  These poems don't need that left-justified treatment.  Take advantage of white space, of line breaks, of couplets, of tercets, of prose blocks.

All credit for writing exercise goes to Jude Nutter, who brought it to our full group poetry session at the Loft Mentor Series this weekend.