A Poetry Lab, week 5

I lost my notes for this meeting due to a computer problem (I had to reformat my hard drive!), so I will simply say that this week we chose exercises from writing “self-help” books like those authored by Natalie Goldberg and wrote poems based on those exercises. Here’s one of our results:

Intro to Suck My Kiss

well, I'm Sailinnnnnn yeah
Durn ba BAH durn ba Yeah!
Durn ba BAH durn ba Oh Yeah!
Durn ba BAH durn ba
Da ba da ba Da ba da ba Da ba da ba Da ba da ba
Durn ba BAH durn ba Yeah!
Durn ba BAH durn ba Oh Yeah!
Durn ba BAH durn ba
Da ba da ba Da ba da ba Da ba da ba Da ba da ba
HIT ME!

The challenge in this assignment was to pay attention to rhythm, which challenge was taken up literally in “Intro to Suck My Kiss.” This poem provoked some discussion of how to approach rhythm in poetry and of how difficult it was to determine rhythm. So I asked that we attempt to mark up our poems for rhythm for our next meeting—not using any traditional way of marking stress but our own notation.

Eleanor Roosevelt

        — for A.

Four
Sometimes you just have to try it. Will it open for you?
Will I open for you? Is that who you want here? To hear?
There is so much more. Such as Eleanor
Speak. And my liver too.

Five
You are from so far away, and here you are.
I know you are, but where am I?
Applecore, Baltimore. . .
We have eaten sin and beauty and
We do not know. Is I your best friend?

Six
Eyes in a mirror see so little, and some is me.
A mirror is a little door dimly loving who
It cannot see, the child, adult, or mystery.
Sidewalk chalk brightly tracing hopscotch.
And we dance a dance we hope to dance well.
Sometimes you have to try it. Will it open?

Pick up sticks.

A Poetry Lab, week 4

Our experiment for this week was to take some text that we had written or that appealed (or both) and then to babelfish it, that is run it through the babelfish translation service a few times. The resulting text was to be shaped into a poem.
        Some of the comments about what happened in this process were: that language becomes “more poetic; that you can no longer be so sure what the meaning is, and the author has less control and less certainty; and that language was “turned-around just enough to make it something else.”
        And here’s this week’s sample of our work. This poet offers a series of comparisons of the original English and the post-babelfish English.

I pledge allegiance
to the flag of the United States of America,
and to The Republic
for which it stands,
one Nation under God,
indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.

I connect myself accurately
with the signal of inscription of the states of America,
and in republic
for which one is,
a nation between the God,
indivisible
with liberty and law for everything

Hello, my name is Derek Otte
Hello, is my name Derek Otte

I like lasagna, cupcakes, and good times.
I want that lasagna, cupcakes and good time.

Where is the bathroom?
Where is he the place of bath?

I am twenty-one
I am veintiuno

How is the weather?
How it is the time?

Are you single?
Are you individual?

A Poetry Lab, week 3

Well, I was pretty disappointed in my teaching in the last meeting of the Poetry Lab. I’d had pneumonia and was more than less dead. The students’ poems, however, were lively. One student’s poem was assembled from pieces of Roethke and Frost’s. The smallest phrase of these ubiquitous poems recalled the whole, and the wholes wrestle against one another, but the poem held them together by their ears. Another poem was composed of many pieces, some slam poetry, some more canonical works: Regie Gibson, Tennyson, Dan Arnold, Vincent Reyes, Mike Elliot, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Robert Frost. It was, to my mind, also very successful piece, if for no other reason than the match it proposes between “Persian kings” and “the stars / I’ve never seen.” I’ve received permission to publish them here (both are untitled at this point).

[Untitled]
I have miles ahead before I sleep
promises to unkeep
and I am waiting in a dream within a dream
to learn by going where I have to go
through early childhood to youth's dumbgreen fields—
I take my waking slow and find I sleep to wake,
waiting happily for things to get much worse before they improve
to those so close beside me—where are you?
How they creep, through my fingers to the deep
whose woods these are I think I know,
I stand amid the roar—     kept steady by the shaking


[Untitled]
once i glimpsed you
waving at me from her
mouth as dawn met
our shoulders
The earliest pipe of half-
awakened birds
to dying ears
MUSIC—the only air I breathe!
the Last Temptation carrying secret
baskets filled with
miniature gardens of
Persian kings
While sleeping
the deep dark alps,
all the stars I’ve
never seen.
Februaries shudder and are
gone. Aprils
Fret frankly, lilac hurries on.
And lay lodged, though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.