ENGLISH
397 :001

POETRY WORKSHOP
Monday 4:30-7:10 ~ Robinson A-245

SUSAN TICHY / SPRING 2003

Office: Robinson A-431
703-993-1191 / stichy@gmu.edu
 Monday &Thursday 3:00-4:00 & by appointment

397 Main

Weeks 1-3

Weeks 4-6

Weeks 7-9

Weeks 10-12

Weeks 13-15

Assignment 
Guidelines

MAP Website

Other Poetry 
Web Sites

Susan Tichy's
Main Page
 

Schedule, Weeks 1-3

Week 1: Jan 27: Introduction

Week 2: Feb 3: Images, Writing & Knowing

Week 3: Feb 10: Metaphors & Similes, Writing About Family

Abbreviations used:
PC=Poet's Companion, MAP=Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, PINSKY=The Sound of Poetry



Week 2: Feb 3: Images, Writing & Knowing

Reading:

PC: Writing & Knowing
PC: Images

Poems in MAP:

Images:
Dickinson: #465 I heard a Fly buzz when I died 11, Frost: After Apple-Picking 88, Birches 90, Sandburg: Muckers 108, Planked Whitefish 110, Stevens: 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird 128, Grimke: The Black Finger 145, Williams: Widow's Lament in Springtime 166, The Great Figure 167, Spring and All 167, The Red Wheelbarrow 170, Young Sycamore 170, Proletarian Portrait 192, Pound: In a Station of the Metro 204, HD: Oread 233, Sea Rose 234, Garden 234, Jeffers: The Purse-Seine 246, Vulture 248, Moore: The Fish 252, Peter 255, The Pangolin 269, cummings: in Just- 344, Toomer: Reapers 352, Bogan: The Dragonfly 380, Niedecker: Paean to Place 536, Rakosi: The Menage 547, Zukofsky: To My Wash-stand 551, Roethke: Cuttings 585, Cuttings (later) 586, Frau Bauman Frau Schmidt and Frau Schwartze 586, Meditation at Oyster River (1) 591, Olson: Variations Done for Gerald Van De Wiele 620, Bishop: The Fish 631, Japanese American Concentration Camp Haiku 717, Stafford: Indian Cave Jerry Ramsey Found 730, Bly: Looking at New-Fallen Snow from a Train 881, J.Wright: Lying in a Hammock 891, A Blessing 891, Snyder: Beneath My Hand an Eye 956, Knight: Haiku 968, Oliver: The Lilies Break Open Over Dark Water 1023, Black Snake This Time 1025, Inada: Listening Images 1054, Komunyakaa: Nazi Doll 1146

Browse through as many of these poems as you can, then go back and read about 10 of them closely. Choose poems that use different kinds of images (images of different things, but also some literal & some metaphoric, some realistic and some fantastical). Choose some short poems or poems made of short fragments, where images comprise most of the text, with leaps of white space or silence between them, and some poems in which images form part of a story, an argument, or an extended description. Choose poems from different decades. 

Make some notes on how the images are used, how connections among them are either spelled out or implied but not said. Notice, too, which senses are employed or called up and look for synesthesia, which you may look up in a dictionary, in your textbook from Introduction to Creative Writing, or on the web.

Use a comparable process in any week with a long list of poems to read.

Writing:

2 poems generated from PC  p.28-29 or p.92-93 

Begin 3 notebook projects, due in your first portfolio:

E-Mail:

We'll begin e-mail distribution of poems next week, when enrollment has stabilized.

Bring to class:

Choose 1 of your 2 poems & bring copies for your small group & a copy for me

In Class we'll discuss images & define some terms, workshop in small groups.
ICW: Free-write for metaphoric portrait



Week 3: Feb 10: Metaphors & Similes, Writing about Family

Reading

PC: The Family
PC: Simile & Metaphor

Poems in MAP: 

Poems about family
Baca: Mi Tio Baca 1175, Hongo: Ancestral Graves 1169, Olds: The Waiting 1080, Harper: 3 poems on the death of his son 1046-1048, Dumas: Knees of a Natural Man 994, Plath: The Colossus 975, Knight: Idea of Ancestry 969, Levine: On the Meeting of Garcia Lorca and Hart Crane 932, Sexton: Truth the Dead Know  922 & And One for My Dame 922, Merwin: Sun and Rain 919, Duncan: My Mother Would Be a Falconress 786, Stone: Pokeberries 738, I Have Three Daughters 737, Berryman: Dreamsong #384 728, Levertov: Olga Poems 808, Niedecker: Paean to Place 537 + some handed out in class

Metaphoric Portrait
Williams: Queen-Anne's Lace 166, Toomer: Portrait in Georgia 353, Her Lips Are Copper Wire 353, Duncan: My Mother Would Be a Falconres 786, Rich: VI from Twenty-one Love Poems 947, Plath: The Colossus 975, Cortez: Do You Think 1027, Inad: Listening Images 1057, Foster: Look and look again 1206, I'm always grateful 1207

Metaphors for Relationships:
Endrezze: Birdwatching at Fan Lake 1179, Louis: Wanbli Gleska Win 1130, Gluck: Quiet Evening 1084, Hass: A Story about the Body 1076, Shooting Script 935 & Trying to Talk to a Man 942, A. Lowell: The Letter 45,  Levertov: The Ache of Marriage 807, Rich: IX from Twenty-one Love Poms 948, XI 949, and others from that sequence

Other Metaphoric Poems:
Lowell: Opal 47, The Weather-Cock Points South 47, Stevens: 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird 127, Cisneros: Little Clown My Heart 1192, C.D. Wright: Over Everything & Song of the Ground 1159, Inada: Listening Images1054, Clifton: poem to my uterus & to my last period 1032, Lorde: Coal 1009, Dumas: Kef 16 993, Plath: Ariel 987, Lady Lazarus 988, Snyder: Riprap 955, Rich: Diving into the Wreck 943, Levine: The Flower 876, R.Lowell: For the Union Dead 759, Stone: Drought in the Lower Fields 739, Jarrell: Death of the Ball Turret Gunner 713, Rukeyser: Poem White Page 690, Creeley: The Flower 876, J.Wright: Autumn Begins 891, Merwin: For the Anniversary of My Death 915, Snyder: Riprap 955, Oliver: Lilies Break Open 1023, Komunyakaa: Fog Galleon 1147

Objects in a Room:
Sexton: The Room of My Life 924, Merwin: The Room 919

Two poems of the self then & now:
Rich: VIII from Twenty-one Love Poems 948, Snyder: I Went into the Maverick Bar 957

As  in last week's reading, read quickly through as many poems, and as great a variety of poems, as you can, then go back and read about ten of them more closely. As you read this set of poems, note three things about metaphors. 

First note how they are made. Note whether the metaphor is created by a noun, a verb, or some other part of speech, by an appositive phrase, or perhaps just by juxtaposing two images together. Try to find examples of each. 

Next, note how they are used in the ovarall structure of the poem. For example, does one metaphor structure  the whole poem (perhaps with related metaphors deployed to a unified effect)?  or does metaphor occur locally within a poem that is structured by narrative or a speaking voice or some other means? Where the metaphor is "local", note whether it is there to describe something, to convey emotion or a state of mind, or to amuse. Another way to get at this quesion is to note how metaphor relates to tone. Is it playful and hyperbolic? decorative? Or is it dramatic, allusive, emotional? How essential is metaphor to the poem's idea?

And third, consider whether the metaphor(s) take part in an archetypal metaphor such as time is a river, life is a journey, a lifetime is a year, death is a reaper, a lifetime is a day, death is sleep,  life is toil and death is rest, the unconscious mind is darkness, insight or epiphany is light, nature is innocent and human life "fallen," and so forth. You may have to work  out this question before you can decide how essential metaphor is to the poem's overall structure. General ideas like the ones I've listed  may not be directly expressed in a poem, but smaller, more specific metaphors may depend on these archetypes for their meaning.

Writing:

Metaphoric Portrait developed from in-class free-write last week
And a poem generated from PC p.37-38
Notebook exercise: p.36 #1: family traits, due in first portfolio

E-Mail

Poets in Group 1, send one of your poems from this week or last week to class list by noon Sunday.
Poets in Groups 2 & 4, send one of your poems from this week to your small group.

You need not write comments for members of your small group each time you receive their poems, but keep in mind that in the second half of the course most of your workshop time will be in small groups. Workshop will go more smoothly and prove more valuable if you have been reading each other’s poems and gaining familiarity through the first half of  the course.
Bring to class

Poets in Group 3, bring a copy of one of your poems from this week or last week to hand in to me.

All: Print the poems you receive from classmates, read them & make notes for discussion.

In Class we'll discuss metaphor & simile, then workshop poems from Group 1.



Back to Top