On Writing Poetry

"The trick is to find out what we know, challenge what we know, own what we know, and then give it away in language."

"Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's."

Begin with what you know, and then let yourself move out from what you know into the larger questions. This is when you will enter into the world of discovery and imagination. Robert Frost said, "No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader."

"As the minutes of your own life open and fall, catch them in poems. You've been given one life, one set of unique experiences; out of those particulars, make the poems only you can make."

~The Poet's Companion

Can you write a poem in 40 minutes? Maybe. It's tough. We are going to try. In an effort to give us direction and focus, I want to guide you through the beginning of your poem; after the first few lines, you are on your own: go where you want to go. Don't worry if what comes out is messy, shapeless, or different from what you intended; we can revise. The point today is to get a complete draft written.

1. Begin your poem with "I am from..."
2. Include at least three concrete details (proper names, specific objects) in the first five lines of the poem.
3. For at least the first ten lines of the poem, you cannot end a sentence at the end of a line.
4. Either the first or the second sentence in your poem needs to be short.
5. Go into depth and specific detail about at least one item/place/person in the first 10 lines of your poem.

Here is the beginning of my draft:

I am from a land where the grass is blue and the bourbon is strong,
where Light Up, Louisville! has more to do with tobacco than fireworks,
where thoroughbreds and basketball and Wendell Berry coexist in rolling harmony
because the hicks are also poets and the poets love to gamble
and everyone, yes everyone, agrees that the sun shines bright
on My Old Kentucky Home. With every visit, it looks even older.

**If you are having trouble, try...
1. asking a question
2. using personification or alliteration
3. changing your mind in your poem.
4. using italics or bold or all-caps
5. stating something plainly and boldly--even if it scares you
6. including dialogue
7. including lyrics from a song
8. responding to what people think about you or where you are from
9. use a cliche in a fresh way
10. replace adjectives with active verbs

Mad ME-taphors

MAD ME-TAPHORS!
Challenge: Create a metaphor that reveals something creative and concise about the REAL you…or the UNREAL you, if that’s better!
Due Date: This Friday!September 24, 2010…DON’T FORGET!

Simply fill out the mad lib below and submit it to the River Review website by the date above!
I am (noun), (present participle phrase)
Like (noun) (prep.) a (adj) (noun)

It makes more sense when you try it, so try it! Here’s a few samples from Ms. Berotti:
I am a student, staring at her assignment like a cow outside a new gate.
(okay, but it’s actually not so much a metaphor, though it does have a simile… try again:)
I am a cow, staring at each new gatelike suduko from the “difficult” book.
-----------------------------
How to submit: Click this link: http://staff.gps.edu/RiverReview/submit2010.html
And simply fill out the form with your submission!

Leads

Right after I reread Zinsser's chapter on Leads and Endings today, I flipped through this week's Newsweek. Guess what caught my attention?

The following are the opening sentences of all essays in the Sept. 13 issue:

People started jumping almost immediately.

Nine years after 9/11, can anyone doubt that Al Qaeda is simply not that deadly a threat?

Barack Obama's redecoration of the Oval Office includes a nice personal touch: a carpet ringed with favorite quotations from Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, both Presidents Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

One of the most startling things about the post-crisis landscape is how tone-deaf the wealthiest Americans remain to outrage over their Croesus-like pay packages.

As 56 million children return to the nation's 133,000 elementary and secondary schools, the promise of "reform" is again in the air.

Is there a company on earth, in any industry, that is as restless and innovative as Apple?

The name Ground Zero conjures up a vast emptiness, and for years, the site in fact did remain desolate, a public emblem of our grief.

The incident didn't get much international attention at the time: just another Predator strike on suspected jihadis in the mountains of North Waziristan.

In late January, Osama Bin Laden released an audiotape praising the Nigerian who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the 82-year-old firebrand of France's far right--the man who for decades has played on the inchoate fears, xenophobia, knee-jerk racism, and ill-disguised anti-Semitism of many of his supporters--had just finished speaking to the faithful on a farm not far from the English Channel.

It had all the trappings of a globally significant confab: big-deal appearances (by Google, BBC), a weighty theme ("the digital age"), and speechifying by international pooh-bahs.

Given a choice, no one would opt to get cancer.

In America's cultural life, there are foxes, there are hedgehogs, and there is Stanley Kauffmann.

It may have occurred to you that our culture's attention span for all things Justin Bieber knows no limit.

In 1934, when Gertrude Stein was invited to return to America from Paris to deliver a series of lectures, the thing that troubled her most, according to her companion, Alice B. Toklas, was "the question of the food she would be eating there."

John Grisham on Writing

In today's NYTimes, John Grisham reflects back on the jobs that preceded his fame as an author. I found the entire OpEd interesting, but I especially appreciated his closing paragraph:

I had never worked so hard in my life, nor imagined that writing could be such an effort. It was more difficult than laying asphalt, and at times more frustrating than selling underwear. But it paid off. Eventually, I was able to leave the law and quit politics. Writing’s still the most difficult job I’ve ever had — but it’s worth it.

To check out the entire essay, go here.