Poetry Class

Ivory Tower Wins Tony Diggs Innovation Award Ivory Tower, the literary and arts magazine created for and by undergraduates at the University of Minnesota, has won the Tony Diggs Innovation Award from the Student Activities Office. These Excellence Awards are intended to recognize student group achievements; the Innovation Award specifically recognizes student groups that have displayed innovation and/or fostered creativity through their program/events. Ivory Tower, which is edited and produced through the year-long English course Literary Magazine Production Lab, this year introduced the “Write and Return” program: circulating notebooks to encourage student writing and drawing on campus, as well as to boost submissions to the journal. Ivory Tower also helps organize the Writer’s Block writing workshops, among other activities. The new issue of Ivory Tower is celebrated 7 pm, Wednesday, April 25, at the Whole in Coffman Union with readings, music, and art. Congratulations http://english.umn.edu/news.php

A Prodigal
The brown enormous odor he lived by
was too close, with its breathing and thick hair,
for him to judge. The floor was rotten; the sty
was plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung.
Light-lashed, self-righteous, above moving snouts,
the pigs’ eyes followed him, a cheerful stare—
even to the sow that always ate her young—
till, sickening, he leaned to scratch her head.
But sometimes mornings after drinking bouts
(he hid the pints behind the two-by-fours),
the sunrise glazed the barnyard mud with red
the burning puddles seemed to reassure.
And then he thought he almost might endure
his exile yet another year or more.

But evenings the first star came to warn.
The farmer whom he worked for came at dark
to shut the cows and horses in the barn
beneath their overhanging clouds of hay,
with pitchforks, faint forked lightnings, catching light,
safe and companionable as in the Ark.
The pigs stuck out their little feet and snored.
The lantern—like the sun, going away—
laid on the mud a pacing aureole.
Carrying a bucket along a slimy board,
he felt the bats’ uncertain staggering flight,
his shuddering insights, beyond his control,
touching him. But it took him a long time
finally to make up his mind to go home.
The Unbeliever
He sleeps on the top of a mast. - Bunyan

He sleeps on the top of a mast
with his eyes fast closed.
The sails fall away below him
like the sheets of his bed,
leaving out in the air of the night the sleeper’s head.

Asleep he was transported there,
asleep he curled
in a gilded ball on the mast’s top,
or climbed inside
a gilded bird, or blindly seated himself astride.

“I am founded on marble pillars,”
said a cloud. “I never move.
See the pillars there in the sea?”
Secure in introspection
he peers at the watery pillars of his reflection.

A gull had wings under his
and remarked that the air
was “like marble.” He said: “Up here
I tower through the sky
for the marble wings on my tower-top fly.”

But he sleeps on the top of his mast
with his eyes closed tight.
The gull inquired into his dream,
which was, “I must not fall.
The spangled sea below wants me to fall.
It is hard as diamonds; it wants to destroy us all.”
-Elizabeth Bishop

From: http://www.poemhunter.com/elizabeth-bishop/poems/… (poemhunter.com)


“….Born in 1911 in Worcester, Massachusetts. *When she was very young her father died, her mother was committed to a mental asylum, and she was sent to live with her grandparents in Nova Scotia. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College in 1934.*She was independently wealthy, and from 1935 to 1937 she spent time traveling to France, Spain, North Africa, Ireland, and Italy and then settled in Key West, Florida, for four years. *Her poetry is filled with descriptions of her travels and the scenery which surrounded her, as with the Florida poems in her first book of verse, North and South, published in 1946.*Bishop was a perfectionist who did not write prolifically, preferring instead to spend long periods of time polishing her work. She published only 101 poems during her lifetime. Her verse is marked by precise descriptions of the physical world and an air of poetic serenity, but her underlying themes include the struggle to find a sense of belonging, and the human experiences of grief and longing.*She was influenced by the poet Marianne Moore, …a close friend, mentor, and stabilizing force in her life. Unlike her contemporary and good friend Robert Lowell, who wrote in the “confessional” style, Bishop’s poetry avoids explicit accounts of her personal life, and focuses instead with great subtlety on her impressions of the physical world.*Her images are precise and true to life, and they reflect her own sharp wit and moral sense. She lived for many years in Brazil, communicating with friends and colleagues in America only by letter. She wrote slowly and published sparingly (her Collected Poems number barely a hundred), but the technical brilliance and formal variety of her work is astonishing. *For years she was considered a “poet’s poet,” but with the publication of her last book, Geography III, in 1976, Bishop was finally established as a major force in contemporary literature.She received the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for her collection, Poems: North & South/A Cold Spring. Her Complete Poems won the National Book Award in 1970. That same year, she began teaching at Harvard University, where she worked for seven years.*She was awarded the Fellowship of The Academy of American Poets in 1964 and served as a Chancellor from 1966 to 1979. She died in Cambridge, Massachussetts, in 1979, and her stature as a major poet continues to grow through the high regard of the poets and critics who have followed her.”
From:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&gbv=2&gs_nf=1&gs_l=hp.3..0l10.1913.4864.0.6607.16.13.0.2.2.1.663.2811.2-4j1j2j1.8.0.2l2wDxKZ91Q&rlz=1R2DKUS_enUS395&q=cache:eTDa5793-vMJ:http://www.poets.org/ebish/+Elizabeth+Bishop&ct=clnk
and
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/elizabeth-bishop

Some of the poetry I have read of hers have longer phrases – perhaps living on the borderline between prose or narrative and poetry.  To me, “A Prodigal” makes me think of the story of “The Prodigal Son” from the Bible in which a son leaves his father/home, is irresponsible with money, makes mistakes, but returns home to his father, who welcomes him with open arms – a story about humility, love, and forgiveness.  I especially love the last line of “A Prodigal”.  I often look for the poems that have particularly striking endings.  Poems that have a powerful ending/last line are the ones that really stick out to me and become my favorites.  
Both “A Prodigal” and “The Unbeliever”, at least for me, resonate with the concept of dreaming.  The “Prodigal” is living in his own illusion; he is in denial about his rotten situation and it takes him “a long time” to swallow his pride and/or become disillusioned.  To me, the (main) character in  “The Unbeliever” is sort of hallucinating – imagining something that does not actually exist, which leads him/her to shy away from trying something new.  
The mind is so powerful; we create things virtually out of nothing.  We make assumptions, we imagine.  If we believe long and earnestly enough, as they say, even potentially ridiculous circumstances and ideas can seem completely plausible and sensible to us.  In this way, then, the capacity of our brains can lead us toward destruction or to the manifestation of beautiful dreams.  
Try writing a poem about the “realest” moment you have ever experienced (whatever “real” means to you in light of these poems, what Anne Carson poses in “Decreation”, and what I have mentioned. OR: Anne Carson writes about Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “Man-Moth”: “The Man-Moth is not sleeping, nor is he a dream, but he may represent sleep itself – an action of sleep, sliding up the facades of the world at night on his weird quest….” And she says that she “wishes to praise sleep, as a glimpse of something incognito…unrecognized, hidden, unknown.”  And she says, “What could be more hopeful than this story of an empty eye filled with seeing as it sleeps?  An analyst of the Lacanian sort might say that the one-eyed man has chosen to travel all the way in the direction of his dream and so awakes to a reality more real than the waking world” (Carson 20-22).

examples ofchapbooks: http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/catalog/online-reading/

your own printer or school printer: you can google or youtube for instructions as well on different folding techniques, etc.

kinkos for printed chapbooks/pamphlets with binding options (or a campus print store)

lulu.com (makes ebooks and books for free)

issuu.com (free)

http://www.pw.org/content/diy_how_to_make_and_bind_chapbooks?cmnt_all=1 

blogs or free website makers are useful if you want an ebook that uses the webpage as a medium (not just putting a “book” online) examples are blogspot, wordpress, weebly, etc. ***I recommend weebly because it’s easy to use.

You can also create your own pdf with pdf converter or adobe and upload this to a fileshare or your own website/tumblr. 

*There are site online where you can download templates for printing back to back for folding into chapbooks. I recommend this if you don’t want to use indesign and want to print out something that will fold into a book without messing up the pages and without tons of blank pages. 

http://www.ehow.com/how_2145307_poetry-chapbook.html

chapbooks are similar to zines so researching zines would be the same thing, maybe even more helpful.

Tonight @ Groundswell Cafe in St Paul OPEN MIKE 6:30 PM

Wednesday, April 25
Ivory Tower 2012 Launch Party
7-9 pm, The Whole, Coffman Union
Celebrate the new issue of the annual undergraduate literary and art magazine of the University of Minnesota,Ivory Tower. Readings from featured poets, fiction and nonfiction writers, plus art from the issue. Refreshments and music too! 

Thursday, April 26 12:30 PM 207A Lind Hall
Grad student books reading (me, Sarah Fox, and a medieval studies lady)

Saturday, April 28th

dislocate’s Booties & Blankets Benefit Reading
4-7 pm, Minnesota Room, St. Paul Student Center (St. Paul Campus)

Join dislocate literary journal and the Student Parent HELP Center in celebrating writing and art for all ages. With special guests MFA alums Molly Sutton Kiefer and Kate Hopper, plus current student Elisabeth Workman and more! Please bring baby booties, blankets, or diapers to donate at the door. Children are welcome but not mandatory. Refreshments will be served. 

SUPER COOL

and how writing is near and far at the same time.

Here is some info and boring lecture-y stuff that I’m going to post here to supplement your reading and our discussion in class:

Facts and opinions:

Carson has been described as a passionate writer who “keeps her feelings on a leash,” or, in my words, buries her feelings by wrapping them in layers and layers of subliminal surfaces. She is not a leaky writer like Hyesoon or Reines, but emotion is conveyed effectively nonetheless.

She is embraced by many academic circles as well as non-academic because her subject and style, no matter how experimental, is always rooted in the classical. She is a translator of Sappho and a number of Greek plays. There is no getting more classical than that.

In many ways she serves as a contrast to the last two writers on our syllabus. Not only is her book about DE-creation, or disembodiment, but she is also a formalist, albeit one that pushes at the limits with a scary, amazing voice.

She is not as interested in power-play between the speaker and the reader.
She is also a different kind of performer than Hyesoon, who obliterates the self through synesthetic sensational overload… Carson writes with the heart of a romantic and purposefully avoids inserting her “I” into her work with much struggle and hysteria. She is a “cool” writer whose style gives a sense of distance and polish.

Reines as an alchemist takes the body through its own dregs into an implosion of subjectivity.

Hyesoon grinds the body through everything, passes through everything in a very similar way.

Carson doesn’t deal with mess by jumping in it and eating it. Rather, she looks at it. In her ideal universe, “to look is to eat.”

“A writer may _tell_ what is near and far at once.”

If Reins and Hyesoon are near, Carson is near and far.

FINAL PORTFOLIO/CHAPBOOK

Requirements in bulletpoints

• Summary of project
• 1 page short summary explaining themes, intentions
• Table of contents
• 14 pages of poetry
• at least 12 poems, can include mixed media
• Statement of aesthetics or short manifesto
• Longer description explaining your formal choices and influences
• length is up to you
• Can be written as a creative piece
• Neat, orderly presentation. Properly staple or bind your work.
• You will share your final chapbook with the class.
• You can either do this by printing and binding copies of your chapbook (simple fold and saddle stitch is cheapest), and/or creating a pdf file to distribute via tumblr or email
• For ebooks, I recommend using some kind of ebook technology like issuu.com—there are many free sites available you can do this with if you don’t do HTML
• For printing, using a copy center to print chapbooks might be more economical than regular printers
• There are online resources and tutorials on how to create printable books, which I recommend perusing before trying
• FINAL IS DUE IN CLASS ON MAY 9! This is when you will share your physical or digital creation with the class. We will have a short reading and party.

Poems should be revised and thoughtfully put together. Some part of Summary or Statement should touch on your work’s relationship or opposition with some or any of the texts you read this semester, as well as your experiences archiving material on tumblr or elsewhere. If your work is influenced by outside texts or media, please briefly explain. Both the summary and the statement/manifesto can be written creatively. None of the papers need to conform to classic essay form, but whatever suits your style or expression. I highly encourage experimentation with hybrid forms, images, or digital platforms. If you are thinking of pursuing scholarly studies in literature, however, writing in MLA format and traditional essay would be helpful in the long run.

DECREATION WORKSHEET Due next Monday, (latest by next Wednesday)

Decreation is a chimera of a book. It has been described as an amazing “a hybrid of poetry, essay, libretto, screenplay, oratorio and illustration” and also a “stage-y” overwrought mass of high literature.

There are many sections in the book, many genetic origins.

For the final reading response, either:

• write a creative response adopting one or more of Carson’s experimental forms,
• OR discuss the sublime in her work. What is Decreation’s sublime? The sublime occurs in places not just under the section labeled “sublimes,” for example, sleep functions as a kind of sublime…
• OR pick out one or two names in the book you have not previously encountered and research them (could be mythical or real).

One of the most interesting techniques she employs is the allusion to and manipulation of the play and screenplay as a platform or a format for poetry. This in itself is nothing new, but her unique style has a strange, very ancient quality. It not like the instagram type of nostalgia, but I would explain it as something that treats classics like Sappho as peers, but manages to keep the voices contemporary.

We will work through sections in class. By Monday, you should have read up to page 115. This takes us through the first five pieces in the book.

REMINDER: next wednesday is group workshop. You will be assigned to new groups this time. As always, bring 4 copies of your poem to be workshopped.