ENG 221
Greg Martin

POETRY ASSIGNMENT

In order to complete this assignment, you will need to carefully read and understand the material in Chapter Nine of Imaginative Writing. The three poems below are due on the last regular day of class May 8th. Please format your poems according to the directions on pp. 333-334 IW.

As you are working on these poems, keep in mind five fundamental characteristics that distinguish poetry from prose:

• Using the poetic line rather than the sentence as the primary unit
• Relying more on images than abstractions, through the use of concrete, significant detail and through the use of figurative language: simile, metaphor, personification
• Cultivating the sounds of words
• Developing rhythms of language
• Creating density by implying far more than is stated. In this class, we've talked about this several ways, discussing the difference between the text and the subtext, between denotation and connotation

1. The Direct Address Poem: Emulate the poem, "Here and My Black Clothes" and write a poem in which the speaker of the poem directly addresses the audience (the reader). This direct address should be to a specific person, like the ex-lover in the poem "Here are My Black Clothes". Include enough significant detail in the poem so that the ground situation or history that informs the poem is clear to the reader. Also, emulate the poetic strategy of the poem, which is to use objects and images (black clothes) metaphorically to convey its meaning.

Your freewrite from 3/25, in which you described a person no longer in your life, might be helpful for this poem. Remember, though, that the poem does not have to be autobiographical. It's a poem, not nonfiction.

2. The Replacement Poem: As discussed on pp316-317 of IW, write a replacement poem in which you replace all the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs with other words that are, in each instance, the same part of speech. The goal of this poem is to move away from logic and sense and move closer to an affinity for the sounds of words and their associations. The poem you will be replacing is "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

3. A List Repetition Poem. The "Assumptions" freewrite is a list freewrite. The Exercise 9/7 on p323 is also a list freewrite. (Make a quick list of terms that relate to any subject you know well.) List making is not only an old device, it's also a powerful one, especially when you play with repetition, because the repetition of words, phrases, and clauses function as memory aids. Some of the earliest known poems--chants, hymns and epic verse--used repeatable, memorized units as building blocks. List repetition poems allow you to explore linguistic links: rhythm, line length, alliteration, repeated consonant sounds, assonance.

A generated freewrite list is a starting point for the poem, but not the poem. The poem, in the end, also has to say something about all of these things in the list.

Attached is an example of a list repetition poem called "They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine.

NOTE: Some other things to remember when crafting and drafting your poems: Avoid cliche. Avoid generalization. Avoid abstraction. Play with the sounds and associations of words.

Length: Poems should be no longer than two pages. (But do not have to be two pages.)

Due Date: May 8th, at class time. GOOD LUCK!