Weeks 1-3

Weeks 4-6

Weeks 7-9

Weeks 10-12

Weeks 13-15

Assignment 
Guidelines

MAP Web site

Other Poetry 
Web Sites

Susan Tichy's
Main Page
 

Week 2: Feb 3 & Week 11: April 7: Getting Outside Yourself

Week 4: Feb 17: What's in a line?

Week 4: Feb 17: Testing the  line?

Week 5: Feb 24: Iambic pentameter: A Poem in Four Steps

Week 5: Feb 24: Iambic  pentameter: Put some life in it!

PC: Witnessing

The poem you will turn in in Week 11 will incorporate factual information about an event outside your own experience. You don't need to conduct a large research project, but you do need to start collecting information about your chosen subject: anecdotes, people, objects, places you might write about or use as vehicles to embody what you want to write about. Be sure to choose something entirely outside your own experience: a war, a place, a person, a historical event, an event in the news, etc. Your poem should include some information, not just react.

You may want to structure your poem according to the exercises on CP p.72-73. Choose from #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 9. The exercise called "Stardust", in the back of the book, may also provide a model. If you want to use #8 on p.73, remember that though you are using an object in your own experience, your poem should reach beyond the personal and tell us something specific about the object and its history and circumstances. Pinksy's poem "The Shirt" is a good example.

MAP provides many, many examples of poems on political and historical subjects, as this is one of the editor's chief interests. Many, perhaps most, of them respond emotionally and intellectually to events and issues, but don't incorporate information into the poem itself. Readers are presumed to know the same facts the poet knows. For this assignment, you should be looking specifically for poems where some descriptive or narrative information is included. If you want to write about some general condition, like race or consumerism, or some general historical circumstance, like the oppression of the Irish by the English, you must find a particular factual vehicle for what you want to say.

You may also get help from the MAP web site, which provides background information about many poems, including photos. Looking at a few of these pages may provide insight into how the structure of a poem arises from a large body of information and emotion. 

Here are some examples to read before Week 8:

Pinsky: The Unseen 1059, The Shirt 1060, Grahan: A Vietnamese Woman Speaks to an American Soldier 1069, Hass: Rusia en 1931 1075, Olds: the photo poems or Things That Are Worse than Death 1080, Hecht: More Light! More Light! 816, Merwin: The Gardens of Zuni 917, Levine: The Horse 925, Rich: The Power 953, Corso: Bomb 963, Taggard: Up State--Depression Summer 336, cummings: i sing of Olaf glad and big 349, Reznikoff: from Testimony 355, from Holocaust 364, Fearing: $2.50 495, Hughes: Come to the Waldorf-Astoria 510 AND 1230, Beecher: Report to the Stockholders 557, Rukeyser: The Book of the Dead 656, Hayden: Middle Passage 691, Runagate Runagate 696, Letter from Phyllis Wheatley 699, Howe: The Falls Fight 1036, Smith: Malcolm, first section 1062, Dove: Parsley 1172, Erdrich: Indian Boarding School 1189, Moss: Crystals 1196, Foster: Life Magazine December 1941 1208, Espada: Federico's Ghost 1212, Skull Beneath the Skin of the Mango 1214

1) A slumber did my spirit seal, I had no earthly fears; she seemed a thing who could not feel the touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force. She neither hears nor sees, rolled round in earth's diurnal course with rocks and stones and trees.

2) My Mama moved among the days like a dreamwalker in a field; seemed like what she touched was hers seemed like what touched her couldn't hold, she got us almost through the high grass then seemed like she turned around and ran right back in right back on in

3) The radio talk this morning was of obliterating the world I notice fruit flies rise from the rind of the recommended melon

4) As the cat climbed over the top of the jamcloset first the right forefoot carefully then the hind stepped down into the pit if the empty flowerpot

5) I married in the world's black night for warmth if not repose. At the close--someone. I hid with him from the long range guns. We lay leg in the cupboard, head in closet. A slit of light at no bird dawn-- Untaught I thought he drank too much. I say I married and lived unburied I thought--

Lessons in the uses of line can be gleaned from nearly all well-written poems. We'll use three fish poems to start with, and then a fourth with no thematic connection except, perhaps, the word "tank." 

Please begin this assignment this week and finish or refine it by week 6. We may discuss part of this in class during any of these three weeks on the Line and I may call on you to do it. I will look for this exercise, complete, in your SECOND portfolio, not the one you'll be turning in soon. In answer to the questions I ask you to consider in each case, you can make a few handwritten notes on the poem

First, read or reread Marianne Moore's "The Fish" MAP p. 252, Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish" MAP p.631, Raymond Carver's "Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year in the handout, and Creeley's "The Window" in the handout. You will need to photocopy or type out the poems on separate pages so you can hand them in with your portfolio.

In Moore's poem, count the syllables in each line, mark the rhyme scheme, and determine the pattern she has used to make her lines and stanzas. Now examine the way the sentence is deployed across this pattern. Consider how the sentence and the form interact. What are the effects of this interaction? How is meaning created? You may also want to consider the extent to which the poem's effects are made by and for the ear or by and for the eye. 

In Bishop's poem, mark the strongly stressed syllables in each line through Line 28 ("packed in like feathers"). Do you find a pattern? Circle each terminal punctuation mark (period, semicolon, colon, etc.) whether at the end of a line or mid-line. Where you find a terminal mark at the end of a line, use a parallel line through the text or brackets in the margin to mark off that block from the blocks above and below it. Consider what is accomplished in and by each of these blocks of lines. How does the making of such blocks correspond to development of the poem's description and narration? Bishop was a student and friend of Marianne Moore -- how do you think her poem speaks to Moore's poem of the same title? 

In Carver's poem, begin by circling the terminal punctuation marks and bracketing each block of lines as you did for Bishop. Most terminal punctuation is at line-ends; where are the exceptions? Using arrows and small x's, mark the ends of the lines that run-on or pause, then examine how the use of enjambed or end-stopped lines corresponds to the sentence blocks. Now, consider the rhythmic differences between lines 3-5 and lines 11-13 which revise our view of the photograph. What meaning is created by that difference? Why is line 14 the longest? and why does line 14 contain the most formal syntax?

In Creeley's poem you can see very quickly: that he uses no terminal punctuation at line-ends until the poem ends. Find and circle the terminal marks where they occur. Next, examine each line as a line without reading over the line-breaks. If you've typed the poem out on your word processor, you may want to add extra space between the lines so you can literally see them in isolation, or rearrange them into a different sequence. What pieces of visual perception or intellectual suggestion are created by the lines in isolation? Go back to the whole poem and consider how the lines as lines join or angle against each other. What new effects are created? 

Now, circle the verbs and draw boxes around any other verbal constructions. How does the placement of verbs pull us through the sentences? How does this pull interact with individual lines? What is the subjective affect of these two competing forces? As with Moore's poem, consider the roles of eye and ear in reading this poem. 

And, finally: Consider the titles of these four poems. The title of this poem appears to be a "label" in the same fashion as Bishop's or Carver's. Where in the poem do we find 'the window'? Of what is it made? Moore's title is also the beginning of a sentence. If it is also a label or pointer, to what is it attached? 

Try several of these exercises in your notebook and see which lead to a poem.

1. Write a free verse poem in which line breaks are determined by phrases.

2. Write a poem in which decreasing line length is used expressively. Now try another in which line lengths expand.

3. Write a poem in which line breaks separate parts of speech that normally stay together: subject from verb, verb from object, preposition from object, adjective from noun, adverb from verb.

4. Use line break and line placement to register one of more of the following experiences: alienation, interrupted sleep, attending to one person or task while remembering another, a scene of confusion.

These exercises are adapted from Creative Writer's Handbook by Philip K. Jason & Allan B. Lefcowitz. Prentice Hall, 1999 [1990].

This exercise will be useful to those who have not written iambic lines before, or who feel they write iambic lines badly! As you move through the steps you may re-use or adapt lines from previous steps, or begin fresh, as you wish.

1) Write two pairs of lines in iambic pentameter. In the first one, use an end-stopped first line as well as an end-stopped second line. In the other, let the first line run on to the second, which will then be end-stopped. Do not use full end-rhyme, though you may use internal rhyme or a light slant rhyme.

2) Write four lines of iambic pentameter, with no line end-stopped but the last.

3) Repeat step two, but this time make sure the caesura falls in a different place in each of your four lines. It may fall between feet, as in

I said: "A line will take us hours maybe;

That beautiful mild woman, your close friend.

4) Lastly, write a short iambic pentameter poem using what you have learned in the first three steps. 
Return to Week 9 Revised Syllabus

If you find when you write iambic lines that they are too sing-songy, it is probably for one of these reasons:

1) You use too many words that are perfect iambs, such as alone, extend, upon, against, enlarge, impose, aghast, remove, regret;

2) You pad out the meter with unnecessary words, or with words you wouldn't normally use, like "upon" where "on" is more natural, or "that" where it isn't needed;

3) You distort pronunciation of words, like "into" to get the stress where you want it;

4) You use all iambic feet with no reversed feet or anapests; or

5) Stress and duration of syllables always coincide.

Two things are needed to get past this stage. 

First you must read a lot of good iambic verse. Your ear can learn faster than your conscious mind, however, so start by reading aloud, without analyzing. Once you have identified some poems you especially like, type them out and examine all the issues I've raised above: diction, scansion, and the interplay of stress with duration. Interplay of meter with line is also critical.

Second, you must analyze your own lines. Look at these lines as an example:

I sat upon my chair and gazed into
the dark until my soul was filled with dread
and fear of what I could not touch or see.
I thought I heard a monster or a bear.
The night had never seemed so large before.
I could not hear my father anywhere.
I heard the wind and knew I was alone.

In addition, this poem cannot decide if it wants to be enjambed or end-stopped. The first three lines are formlessly run-on -- one senses they run on by accident -- with no effective caesura to control and shape rhythm. Thereafter, the lines are rigidly end-stopped. They also seem to make some attempt at creating a childish tone -- or is that an accidental side effect of sing-song, end-stopped lines with no metrical interest? Every foot in this passage is iambic (with the possible exception of the end of line one, where "into" is used to problematically right after "gazed" which is not firmly either one syllable or two). This extreme regularity is the chief flaw. Let's look at what a few minutes of rewriting might do.

I sat on my chair and gazed into the dark.
My soul filled with dread of what I could not
touch or see. Perhaps a monster, perhaps
a bear. Never before had nighttime seemed
so large. I listened for my father, but
only the wind answered: I was alone.

The two anapests (2nd foot of line 1, last foot of line 3) are hardly audible. The monosyllabic foot "filled" in the second line is perhaps a glitch to be fixed, perhaps a strong point, depending on your taste: in either case it roughens the line into some genuine emotion. The trochaic "Never" as the second foot of line 4 is in the same metrically sensitive position, but by falling after a caesura it functions almost as smoothly as a trochaic foot at the start of a line. Line 6 is where the meter is most irregular, with substitutions in the first, third, and fourth feet outnumbering iambs. Appropriately, this also the emotional finale of the poem.

You may have noticed, too, that the second version has more words that are neither monosyllabic nor iambic, that is, more trochaic words: into, monster, never, nighttime, listened, father, only, answered. Using words of different lengths and stress patterns provides a subtle crossgrain to the meter, even when the lines scan regularly. 

Similarly, the new version makes more use of the duration of its stressed and unstressed syllables. In line one, "chair" and "gazed" are the longest words, to the line slows in the middle, then accelerates toward "dark", slows again at the start of line two, then accelerates more rapidly until we reach the word "see". In the next few words, unstressed syllables are almost as long as stressed ones, and they all rhyme: "per", "ter", "per", "ver", all  in a half rhyme with "bear" and "before". The next really long syllable is "seemed," which shares its vowel with "see". After the long "large", the 5th line is very quick, slowing slightly on "father" but ending with the shortest stressed word in the poem: "but". The last line is framed by two long syllables with a shared vowel sound: "only" and "alone". All stressed syllables in this line end with the letter "n" except "I", which slows the line even more. 

So, though we are still some distance from the realms of high art, our passage is greatly improved.
 Return to Week 9 Revised Syllabus

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