In the opening days of my Modern American Poetry class I have been trying to get across three things: 1) What we mean by “modern” in the course title; 2) a sense of Whitman & Dickinson as founders; 3) some basic information about versification, which some of my students have but others don’t — the course has non-majors as well as majors. I think we’ve been pretty successful so far in accomplishing these goals & today, as a kind of pedagogical surplus, we concluded with a very interesting discussion of Dickinson’s ability to portray altered states of consciousness, or consciousness in extremis. And this led to a reflection on the first point above — we noted that both poets face the problem of the isolated self’s relationship to nature & to other people. The insights, which are hardly original, are not so extraordinary as the intensity with which the class seems to be pursuing them. One of my students said that modern poems don’t try to make death pretty. I added a little aside about the loss of teleological certainty, which ultimately amounted to restating her point in grander philosophical terms. I do a lot of that. On Wednesday, we take up some poems of E.A. Robinson, the neglected master of the early 20th century American lyric poem (the “epics” stink). In some ways, Robinson is an easier poet; unlike Whitman & Dickinson, his sentences don’t require quite the same kind of unknotting.

I’m going to spend the next five Saturday mornings teaching a poetry writing workshop to fifteen-year-olds. My university runs the a program for local students in which we bring students to campus faculty teach them something about their discipline. Tomorrow morning, my wife Carole is going to come along and show the students how to stitch together a blank book with a handmade paper cover to use as a journal / notebook. Then, I’m going to give them a first exercise which tries to channel the spirit of Kenneth Koch without literally copying one of his exercises. Here’s the exercise:

First Exercise: Words & Things

Part 1.

Poetry is a special use of language that often concerns itself with the specific details of the world we live in – trees, rocks, doorknobs / running, closing, sleeping – in order to make the reader of the poem feel and understand something more clearly. And even though it seems strange, the more concrete and specific the language, the stronger the feelings to poem evokes in the reader. Surprisingly, abstract words like love or courage or beauty usually don’t work as well in poems (or stories) as more concrete and active words like the ones listed above.

For this part of the exercise, then, I want you to take a fifteen minute stroll – walk slowly – by yourself around the building. (If the weather was nicer, I’d send you outside.) Use your notebook to make a list of at least twenty things (physical objects). You may use single words or short phrases.

Part 2.

When you come back to the classroom, we are going to do a speed-write a poem according to the following pattern:

I saw a __________ [doing something] to a ____________ . Where you fill in the blanks with one of the words you have connected.

Examples:

I saw a doorknob watching a chair.

I saw a window breathing like a student.

I saw a carpet bouncing like a computer.

Notes & Advice:

• Don’t worry about rhyme. If something rhymes, okay, but don’t go looking for rhymes.
• Don’t worry about making literal sense.
• Feel free to write things that seem silly or even stupid.
• Avoid the words be, being, am, are, were, & is.

Follow-up:

There is no official homework in this class, but if you want to use your new notebook to collect some more words and to try out some more lines, that would be great. You might also try rearranging your lines to give them an interesting shape or to tell a story. You can of course put anything else you want in your notebook.

Update: My 11 students were delightful. The followed through beautifully as Carole showed them how to sew up the pages of a journal. They were smart & funny — & by the time the left the each had a hand-sewn notebook made from really nice paper & the beginnings of a poem. I’m looking forward to the rest of the sessions.