To achieve that goal, we completed several mini-lessons.
First, we worked on writing narratives based on research into an aspect of Gloucester: describe a character (real or invented), describe a setting, and narrate an event involving the character and setting.
Second, we worked on writing poems about the aspects of Gloucester we studied and researched. (The poetry exercises are below*.)
Third, we created satirical maps of Gloucester (or parts of Gloucester) using "Judgmental Maps" as a model.
Fourth, we studied seven Gloucester painters, eventually focusing on one painting by one artist. (Artists and questions are below+.)
You've handed in the satirical maps. Make sure you share the other activities with me by Wednesday, June 18.
**************************************************************************
+ Fitz Henry Lane
Mary Blood Mellen
John Sloan
Marsden Hartley
Edward Hopper
Theresa Bernstein
Stuart Davis
Nell Blaine
What do you notice about the
painting? (subject, line, shape, color, composition)
What sort of choices is the painter
making?
As a whole, what do the choices
suggest? How do they affect you? (This can be quite subtle. It doesn’t have to
be spectacular.)
What aspect of Gloucester is depicted? How does the painting
affect how you see that aspect? (This can be quite subtle. It doesn’t have to
be spectacular.)
*
Writing Poetry for the Cape Ann Multigenre Project
Write 2 poems that
in some way address your topic.
- Spontaneous Poem
To
activate your subconscious mind, do the following:
·
Free write about
your topic for five minutes. (This is stream of consciousness writing.)
·
Pick ten vivid,
interesting, revealing words from your stream of consciousness free-write.
·
In five minutes
write a ten-line poem in which each line contains at least one of the ten words
and in which each of the ten words is used at least once.
·
Make a title
using a phrase from your stream of consciousness free-write.
·
The point of this
poem is to emphasize spontaneity, whimsy, seeming randomness, linguistic
daring, absurdity, surreality, etc.
- Metaphor Poem
·
Start with your
topic. Brainstorm aspects of the topic (for example, Fitz Henry Lane=schooners,
house atop Harbor Loop, oil paint, crutches, apple-peru, etc.) as well as
feelings and concepts associated with the topic (for example, Fitz Henry
Lane=luminism, beauty, realism, observation, etc.)
·
Then create
metaphors for items in either list. For example,
o
Lane’s crutches =
Lane shed wooden legs to sit and paint.
o
The discovery of
Lane’s real middle name = Lane became a
new person though he’d been dead for decades.
o
Luminism = The sky swallowed a light bulb.
o
Attitude of
scholars who thought Fitz Henry Lane’s middle name was “Hugh” = A boy wearing a dunce cap proudly stands at
a podium to tell everyone who can hear
him, “This dunce cap is not mine.”
·
String the
metaphors together. Edit them. Revise them. Expand them. Contract them. Use
your ear, your mind’s eye, and your sense of the language of images to guide
your revision.
·
Your poem should
include at least three metaphors.
- Ekphrastic Poem
·
Choose an object
or work of art (a photograph, statue, song, film, poem, story, painting, etc.)
related to your topic.
·
Write a poem in
which you respond to the work of art as if you were speaking directly to it, or
as if you were an outsider (a newcomer, a tourist, a foreigner, an alien)
seeing it for the first time without context, or as if you were inside the art,
or as if you were the art/object.
·
In the title of
the poem let the reader know what object or work of art you are responding to
and from what perspective you are responding to it.
There’s a photograph-poem exercise and a poem
responding to an Escher drawing later in the packet.
- Poem-based-on-another-Cape-Ann-poem Poem Write a poem in response to one of the poems in the Cape Ann poem packet. (In the poem, in the title, or in a note, let the reader know to what poem you are responding.)
I put an example of a Kenneth Koch poem based on a
William Carlos Williams poem at the end of the packet.
- Traditional Form Poem (Italian sonnet, English sonnet, villanelle, sestina, tanka): Write a poem about your topic using a traditional poetry form.
Directions for traditional forms can be found at the
end of the packet.
- Create-Your-Own-Form Poem
·
Choose a form
(tanka, haiku, acrostic, mesostic, double acrostic, sonnet, villanelle,
limerick, sestina, etc.) and revise the
rules so there are at least three constraints* (rules), or invent a form of
your own with at least three constraints* (rules).
·
Use the
constraints to write a poem in response to your topic or some aspect of the
topic.
·
In a note below
the poem write down the three rules.
* Constraints
can refer to rhythm and sound: rhyme scheme, alliteration, syllable count,
stressed syllable count, etc. Constraints can refer to words and concepts: a
particular word has to be in each line or stanza, a particular word cannot be
used, a particular type of word (a color, a season, a name, etc.) must be used,
etc. Other constraints: no words with the letter “e” or every line must have
one word than the line previous or the words on the page must be arranged to
look like the object being described.
7. Visual-Found
poem using your research
- Take five sentences directly from your research and/or from anything you’ve already written for the Gloucester Project.
- Make the sentences into a poem by using a title, arrangement, line breaks, spacing, and font size and type. The purpose of this activity is to emphasize the visual aspect of poetry.
- Create a title.
8. Erasure poem using your research
* Begin with a passage of text from your research.
* Erase, cross-out, or color over text to create a poem comprised of the words left behind.
Another Ekphrastic
Exercise (Alternative Version of Option #3)
If you
like photography you might try this…
Go Inside a Photograph
by Hoa Nguyen
For this exercise, you will
need a photograph. This can be a photo of yourself, family members, or
strangers. I find it most generative if there is some temporal distance between
yourself and the subject of the photograph i.e.: an archival or historical
photo for which you have no direct memory.
Study your photo in detail.
Imagine what is just beyond the borders of the frame. If it is in black and
white, imagine it in color. Assign it smells, textures, sounds. Imagine that
you can step inside the frame and walk around, experiencing that moment in
time.
Now begin to write. Include
as much sensory detail as possible; make up other detail, speculate. Be sure to
pay attention to the rhythm and sound of your lines as you lay them down. If
you get stuck, try repeating a word or phrase. Read your text out loud and
strike out any awkward sounding lines. Arrange the lines on the page, give it a
title and call it a poem.
Here is my attempt. I chose a
black and white photograph of myself as an infant, taken in Vietnam circa 1968. Notice my use
of rhyme and slant rhyme (side/wide, hammock/hot/ work/ merchant, Minneapolis/ violence) and
repetition (formula, white).
BABY
WITH STRAW HAIR (SAD EYES)
I'm
banana shaped in the baby hammock
The
floor is woven I'm crying it is so
hot
and
formula fed formula so mother can work
The
"papers" say occupation = merchant
she
might have been a "bar girl" stepfather is white
&
black grey & white white things come
in
snaps pictures a dirt road is wide
for
military vehicles oxen on the side
This
is a penny strung on thin rope
Press
a penny to your mouth avoid corners
Pierce
a cold cold coil (Minneapolis)
Violence
contained in mashed potatoes
Ekphrastic Example (example
of option #3)
Art by M.C. Escher, Copyright
1999 Cordon Art, B.V.-Baarn-Holland
Rind
The
critic
resolves
her sonnets
into empty
feet.
The boss
rejects
proposals
he has
barely skimmed.
The
husband
compares
her pilaf
to swill
for hogs.
The gas
she
hopes will kill her
leaks
away.
The
analyst
unpeels her
till she disappears.
Poem by Catherine A.
Callaghan, Copyright 1999 Catherine A. Callaghan
Poem based on another poem (example of option #4)
The first poem inspired
the second poem.
This Is Just to Say
by William Carlos
Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
***
Variations on a
Theme by William Carlos Williams
by Kenneth Koch
1
I
chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I
am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and
its wooden beams were so inviting.
2
We
laughed at the hollyhocks together
and
then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive
me. I simply do not know what I am doing.
3
I
gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the
next ten years.
The
man who asked for it was shabby
and
the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.
4
Last
evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive
me. I was clumsy and
I
wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!
Poetic Forms (directions for option #5)
Sestina
Length: 39 lines (six
six-line stanzas with a final stanza of three lines)
Rhyme scheme: none
Rhythm: varied
Other: 123456, then the words
ending the second stanza's lines appear in the order 615243, then 364125, then
532614, then 451362, and finally 246531. These six words then appear in the
final tercet as well, with the tercet's first line usually containing 1 and 2,
its second 3 and 4, and its third 5 and 6.
Italian Sonnet (in
English)
Length: 14 lines
Rhyme scheme: ABBAABBA CDECDE
Meter (rhythm): iambic
pentameter
Other: volta
(shift) at line nine
English Sonnet
Length: 14 lines
Rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF
GG
Rhythm: iambic pentameter
Other: volta
at line nine, couplet provides closure or resolution or twist.
Ballad
Length: varies
Rhyme scheme: usually ABCB
Rhythm: four-beat line
followed by three-beat line, etc. (Beat=stressed syllable)
Other: ballads tell a story
Villanelle
Length: nineteen lines
Rhyme scheme: ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA
Rhythm: usually tetrameter or
pentameter
Other: The first and third
line in the first stanza are repeated in several places. The first line is
repeated at the end of the second and forth stanzas and in the third line of
the last stanza. The third line is repeated at the end of the third and fifth
stanzas and in the very last line of the poem. Here’s the scheme: A1bA2
abA1 abA2 abA1 abA2 abA1A2.
Limerick
Length: five lines
Rhyme scheme: AABBA
Rhythm:
anapestic (unstressed,
unstressed, stressed syllables: da, da, DUM)
or amphibrachic (unstressed,
stressed, unstressed syllables trimeter: da, DUM, da)
with three stressed syllables
in lines 1, 2, and 5; and
two stressed syllables in
lines 3 and 4.
Other: Limerick’s
are usually playful, often absurd.
Haiku
Length: three lines
Rhyme scheme: none
Rhythm: five syllable, seven
syllables, five syllables
Other: traditional haiku
refer to the seasons directly or indirectly (kigo), and include a “cutting word,” a break in the text (kireji).
Tanka is a variation with the following syllable pattern:
5-7-5-7-7.
Renga is linked “tanka” 5-7-5, 7-7; 5-7-5, 7-7; etc.;
finishing with an additional 7-7.
Other
Poetic forms
Acrostic variations:
end-acrostic, double acrostic, mesostic
Anaphora (repetition of line
or sentence beginnings), epistrophe (repetition of line or sentence endings)
Kerouac’s book of blues: one
page poem
Olson’s projective verse
(composition by field): treat the page like a musical score and/or artist’s
canvas
Oulipo Experiments:
N+7:
where each substantive or noun in a given text, such as a poem, is systematically
replaced by the noun to be found seven places away in a chosen dictionary.
George
Perec’s La Disparition (A Void in
English): no words in the work include the letter “e”
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