Chapter 2
Writing exercise
Go on a walk and bring your notebook. Look around and take down some observations on the external stimuli around you—a tree, a person, a neighborhood, a pool. See if you can begin a poem by using some of these external elements. Once you’ve got the poem underway, have you made a decision about what your stanzas will look like? Will you use enjambment or will you use punctuation? Do you want the poem to go slowly or faster? Do you want to use long sentences or short?
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Writing exercise
Think about the stanzas as various “rooms” in the house of the poem. Imagine that the poet is taking readers through various rooms in a tour of a house. Now, read one of your own poems and look at the stanzas: in the margins of your poem, write down what each stanza or “room” is revealing.
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Reading exercise
There are two major things poets can learn from the short stories of Anton Chekhov. One is the use of very specific detail—the particulars of experience—to keep the story anchored to external reality. So too can poets use detail to anchor a poem. The other is the use of inconclusive or “soft” endings. Chekhov does not solve problems for the characters. Similarly, the endings of poems do not need to resolve things. A soft ending—when a poem just ends in an image—can work.
Read a short story or two by Anton Chekhov, keeping an eye for those literary techniques that you can apply to your poems. “Misery” and “The Lady with the Lap Dog” are highly recommended.
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Writing exercise
Write a few lines setting a scene that is easy to accept. Think about the example of snow on pine trees or a dog lying under a hammock. Establish a scene of your own. Then have your poem take a twist. Take your reader and yourself somewhere very different—spatially or thematically—from your original scene.
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Chapter 3
Writing exercise
Every literary age comes with its own understanding of what is the appropriate subject matter for poetry. In the Elizabethan period, the dominant subject was romantic or courtly love. In the age of the English Romantic poets, you were supposed to write about nature. Poetry advances when these rules of acceptability are violated. Think about Walt Whitman: when he should have been writing about nature, he wrote about machinery. Thom Gunn wrote a poem about Elvis Presley when pop stars were not considered appropriate for poetry. Both poets violated the literary decorum of their time.
In choosing what to write about, nothing is too trivial. Don’t censor yourself. Don’t feel that you have to be serious, or even sincere. You can be playful, even sarcastic in your poems. Think of a subject that may seem outside of today’s literary decorum and write a poem about it.
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Writing exercise
Choose an object close by—whether you’re in an office or a kitchen, a park or a library—and describe it. Start with a description of this object and see what it opens up for you. Does it evoke personal memories, have cultural implications, or elicit an emotion? Write a poem that starts with this object, then leads the reader into the more personal memory.
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Writing exercise
Make my hand-of-cards analogy concrete. Think of a topic. Take ten blank flash cards and on one side of each flash card, write a line about this topic. Use a mixture of emotional detail, concrete detail, and images when writing these lines. Now, put all these cards face down in front of you. Now turn five of these cards over, face-up. What kind of poem is this? What questions remain? Experiment with which five cards should be turned up in order to create a poem that is both mysterious and clear enough for the emotions to be anchored.
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Writing exercise
Chapter 4
Writing exercise
In the evening, write a list of twenty things you did that day. Use this form: “I did this, I did that, I washed the dishes, I ate an avocado, I read the newspaper,” etcetera. The only rule is: don’t list these things in chronological order. Review your list of twenty activities and see if any of them spark a line of poetry. Try to make use of one of these seemingly mundane (or not!) activities to write a longer poem (like me reading the word “lanyard” or Proust tasting a madeleine).
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Using your own words and memories, try to imitate some of these formal features. Could any of your lines become the first line of a poem? Once you have a direction, have a seat somewhere busy and write. This could be in the grass at a park, inside a noisy café, at a bus stop, et cetera. As you write, let certain distractions make their way into your poem. What do these distractions add? How do they surprise you?
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Chapter 5
Writing exercise
My writing process consists of two main steps.
Step 1: Make a mess. I write one or two drafts in long hand, making a mess as a I cross out words or entire lines. I don’t try to be tidy.
Step 2: Tidy it up. I type the poem up on a computer, tidying it as I make it into a printed object.
If this method resonates with you, write your next poem in long-hand in your notebook and feel free to make a mess with strike-throughs, asides in the margin, and the like before you type it up on a screen.
How does the typed up version look on the page? Is it thin, sprawling, even or jagged? Are you moved to make adjustments in the poem, such as shortening or lengthening lines, for the sake of giving your poem a definite shape?
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Chapter 6
Writing exercise
Look at one of your poems—one you’ve written previously or perhaps one generated for this class—and play with elliptical language. Are there are any words you might want to omit to heighten the sense of mystery? How does the omission of different words change the lines’ potential meanings?
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Play with your own ambiguous meanings. Create a sentence that could be interpreted at least two ways. (Think of the word “blue”—is it indicating a color or a mood? Or consider using qualifiers like “perhaps” or “should.”) Let this sentence constitute the first few lines of a new poem, and keep playing with this concept of double interpretation throughout.
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Reading exercise
Read my poem “Introduction to Poetry” and take notes in the margins. Write down what memories or feelings are being evoked, what’s surprising, and what’s confusing. Now, looking at both the poem and your reactions in the margins, arrive at your own interpretation of the poem. What topics does it discuss? How does your understanding of its subject change from the beginning to the end of the work?
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Chapter 7
Writing exercise
Remember how Marie and I noted that Dickinson doesn’t title her poems—instead, the first line serves as the title. Write a first line that could also work as a title, and write a poem under this line.
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Think about the nouns Dickinson does and does not capitalize. In your own poetry, do you ever play with the capitalization of untraditional nouns? Write a poem that gives weight to unexpected words by capitalizing them.
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Dickinson ends “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” with a deliberately elusive last word and syntax: “-then-.” In this way, she keeps readers guessing and alludes to a continuation of the poem just off the page. Think of different words or short lines of syntax that might serve the same purpose in poetry, then write a poem with an ending phrase that alludes to a continuation we don’t see.
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Chapter 8
Writing exercise
Write a poem of any length on whatever subject or subjects you choose (and it doesn’t need to rhyme), looks around and says, but try to make each line in iambic pentameter. Remember, this means five iambic feet (da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM).
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Write a traditional Shakespearian sonnet, using iambic pentameter and the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
Make sure your poem has exactly 14 lines, and use the last 2 lines to make a “turn.” Remember that the turn often has the poet looking back at the previous 12 lines and making a 2-line comment on them.
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Chapter 9
Reading exercise
Take a look at the highlighted anaphora in parts 1-3 of “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” On your own, go through parts 4-9 and highlight the anaphora (a repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of consecutive clauses) you see yourself. What other forms of repetition do you notice? What impact do these devices have?
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Writing exercise
Write a poem of at least seven lines, using anaphora at least once.
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Now, write a poem of over 15 lines in which you use anaphora several times, switching the words being repeated over the length of your poem. Let the development of your anaphora tell another story or add another layer of detail and depth to your poem.
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Writing exercise
Carry your notebook with you as you go about your daily tasks and write down interesting things you overhear. At the end of the day, go over the snippets of conversation you wrote down and, rather than thinking about the content of the conversation, analyze how it was said. What have you learned about the way people speak (speech rhythm)? Incorporate this speech rhythm into a new poem.
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Chapter 10
Writing exercise
Using my “Questions About Angels,” Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” or Charles Simic’s “Bestiary for the Fingers of My Right Hand” as a model, write a poem whose title lets the reader in on how the poem is going to proceed by indicating what lies ahead. Then, write this poem, making sure to both deliver on the promise of the title while complicating its meaning.
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“Questions About Angels” leaves its reader with a startling and surprising image: it comes in the form of an “answer” to the questions previously posited and paints an intimate portrait of an angel dancing to jazz in her stockinged feet. Write a poem and, taking a cue from “Questions About Angels,” end your poem with a specific image. Make this visual fitting for the poem but somewhat unfamiliar, balancing between expectation and surprise. Try going inside the image and fleshing it out. Make the image come to life the way I tried to make that dancing angel come to life.
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Chapter 11
Writing exercise
Try an exercise in association. Look around you—wherever you are—and identify an object or concept to be your “seed” concept. What associations come up when you think of that object? What associations stem from those associations? Do a free write detailing the concepts (objects, events, etcetera) and various associations they generate. Now, are any of these associations particularly interesting? Try to write a poem using this exercise as a prompt.
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In “Wan Chu’s Wife in Bed,” Richard Jones sets us up with tender images throughout the poem, and then you find out in the end that his wife is a habitual adulterer. Try, as Jones does, to turn a poem with a shock ending.
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Chapter 12
Writing exercise
Start a letter to someone you know, would like to know, or once knew. The rule is: assume that they won’t see it. Start this letter by addressing this person directly (think “Dear X,” or “X,”). After you’ve written a few lines or sentences, begin breaking your letter into poetic lines and finish your epistolary poem.
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Chapter 13
Writing exercise
Try playing with diction. What are some words that, for some reason, make you laugh when reading them? (Think, for example, about fork, nose, potato, peas…) Write a poem that deliberately uses these words to create a tone.
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On a sheet of paper, brainstorm a handful of words that use a similar vowel sound. Now, using this brainstorm as a guide, write a poem that utilizes assonance in one or several places (or even throughout the poem). As you read over your draft, ask yourself how these sounds add a musicality to the poem, acting as a kind of sound-glue that holds the poem together.
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Chapter 14
Writing exercise
Think of some of the poets or poems you admire. These could be poems you’ve discovered in this course or longtime favorites. Pick one of these poems and read it over and over again, noting the methods the poet uses to achieve his or her voice. Notice how the poem develops stage by stage. How does it find its way through itself? See if you can write a poem that follows a similar style of organization or path of development.
This is more than an exercise; it’s a way of opening yourself to the influences of other poets. It’s a state of mind that you should cultivate in your reading of the poems of others and seeing what you can learn (i.e. steal) from them.
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Chapter 15
Writing exercise
Does your personality make its way into your poems? Think of what kind of social person you are and consider the feedback you get from others about your personality—from family, friends and others. Write a poem that is spoken in your natural speaking voice. This poem need not exhibit your best self. Try allowing the poem to be controlled by a voice other than the one that shows you off. Write a poem that lets the raggedness of your life drive the voice.
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Chapter 16
Writing exercise
Notice in Ruth Schwartz’s “The Swan at Edgewater Park” how she uses humor in a strategic way. About half way in, she makes a deliberate joke at the expense of “Clevelanders,” who point and exclaim, “Look at that big duck!” The line occurs deliberately just as the poem switches from the swan (its provisional subject) to Lorie (its discovered or true subject). The laugh line relaxes us and thus makes us more surprised by the serious turn the poem takes as it details the grim scene that is Lorie’s life. This is an excellent example of a poet using humor with serious intent. Warning: if you are not naturally funny as a person in your life, don’t try to be funny in your poems.
Chapter 17
Reading exercise
One of the notable things about Sarah’s reading was the way her speech reflected the physical spacing of the poem. Read one of your poems out loud, and mark where the rhythms change. Where should you slow down? Where should you pause? Where should your pacing gain momentum? Practice an oral reading.
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Writing exercise
“My (Muslim) Father Seizes the Thing on my Nightstand” uses space to create suspense, putting the reader on the same level of knowing and not knowing as the speaker. Write a poem that describes one large action and uses spacing as a way to force the reader to pause, creating tension and suspense as the action of your poem progresses.
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Chapter 18
Writing exercise
Try learning from Paul Epland’s poem “The Crash” by describing a disturbing occurrence with an uninvolved distant voice—that of a neutral observer. Remember that the point of poetry is to make the reader feel something, not for you, the poet, to get emotional.
The best way to do this is to write “cold.” If you are doing the feeling, the reader will pull back because all the emotional work has been done by you. An example of “cold,” is the false, seemingly throw away final line in Schwartz’s swan poem. “That’s the kind of swan this is.” The line suggests Lorie’s only purpose in the poem is to make us better understand the swan, but, of course, we know the poem’s true subject is the woman’s plight with the asthmatic kid.
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Chapter 19
Writing exercise
Take Marie’s advice and do a free write. In your notebook, give yourself 10 minutes to simply write whatever and feelings by just comes to mind, not letting your pen or pencil leave the page, and not revising. After ten minutes has passed, review what you wrote. How does the subject and tone change from the beginning to end? Is there anything you might want to lift for a new poem?
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Write a haiku. Let the subject take on any topic you want but limit yourself strictly to the haiku form: three lines with the first line having five syllables, the second containing seven syllables, and the last containing five. How did this exercise make you revise your language?
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Reading exercise
Read one of your poems aloud at least ten times to yourself. As you read, mark your paper, noting where you stumble over your words.
Now, read that poem aloud to another person. (Try to give the dog a break this time, and find a trusted confidant.) Mark your poem where you stumble. Do these areas differ from where you stumbled when reading aloud to yourself?
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Writing exercise
Examine the poem you just read out loud, noting where you made your marks for fluency. Now, make revisions based on these marks. Consider editing for diction, pacing, and clarity. Even consider cutting the nonessential lines and phrases.
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Chapter 20
Reading and submitting exercise
Go through your own work and come up with a handful (even just one or two) of poems that you think set the standard for the quality of your work. Now, submit three or four poems to one of the literary journals you respect, or others that you can find listed in the helpful trade magazine for writers Poets & Writers. Try not to let your nerves get ahead of you—forge ahead and submit. Now, if you get accepted, congratulations! If you get rejected, you should feel energized to write more. To move forward as a writer, rejection should move you to write more poems.
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