Lesson #4-
Aim: How can we use the
poem, “This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams as inspiration
for [our] own poems?
Class Discussion:
We started off class
with a discussion on when we did something inappropriate but didn’t feel sorry
for it, much to the amusement of us with siblings. A personal experience would
be when my brother had ruined a 5-page essay I had been writing for several hours
by accidently spilling water over it, so in order to retaliate I replaced the
paprika in a dish he was making with chilli powder. Much to my amusement, he
immediately ran for the milk and wondered if he had accidentally mistook the
paprika with chili powder as I proceeded to insinuate that he was foolish for
mistaking those two and making him blame himself for it. Ms. Peterson had
likely done this as a leadway to “This is Just to Say” by William Carlos
Williams, which focuses on a non apologetic husband who eats the plums his wife
was saving for breakfast and is not truly apologetic for it.
The piece, “This is
Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams, is a free verse poem that is a piece in the Imagist movement and
shares those characteristics; instead of being a poem that focuses on ideas and
can be quite vague, it focuses on physical objects and sharing a clear image to
the reader while being concise. This helps us, as students, understand another
form of poetry than the one we were more acquainted with.
We were then given some
example poems to analyze.
|
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 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. 3 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! -Kenneth Koch |
Poem Challenge:
We were then supposed to create
some poems using the previous poems as a format. I believe Ms.Peterson’s
intention was to challenge us into finding the most amount of answers and to
motivate us using team points. This would then help train us in a certain style
of poetry.
The poems made by me team were
the following:
I ate the ice cream in the freezer
Forgive me the cookie and cream was
So cold and delicious.
Forgive me I crashed your car
The joyride was fun
Forgive me I drank you coke
It was so sweet and bubbly
I spent your life savings
Forgive me
The chopsticks were worth it
We were then supposed to
watch a four minute and twenty six second video on the use of imagery, which is
what these types of poems attempt to focus on. Imagery is a device used by
writers, and distinctively poets, that attempts to use the reader’s senses in
order to capture the quality of an object or scene. It achieves this by being
detailed and/or specific about what it is describing.
We were then shown some
examples of imagery in poems, namely "Fast Break" by Edward Hirsch.
“A hook shot kisses
the rim and
hangs there,
helplessly, but doesn’t drop,
and for once our
gangly starting center
boxes out his man and
times his jump
perfectly, gathering
the orange leather
from the air like a
cherished possession
and spinning around to
throw a strike
to the outlet who is
already shoveling
an underhand pass
toward the other guard
scissoring past a
flat-footed defender
who looks stunned and
nailed to the floor
in the wrong
direction, trying to catch sight
of a high, gliding
dribble and a man
letting the play
develop in front of him
in slow motion, almost
exactly
like a coach’s drawing
on the blackboard,
both forwards racing
down the court
the way that forwards
should, fanning out
and filling the lanes
in tandem, moving
together as brothers
passing the ball
between them without a
dribble, without
a single bounce
hitting the hardwood
until the guard
finally lunges out
and commits to the
wrong man
while the
power-forward explodes past them
in a fury, taking the
ball into the air
by himself now and
laying it gently
against the glass for
a lay-up,
but losing his balance
in the process,
inexplicably falling,
hitting the floor
with a wild, headlong
motion
for the game he loved
like a country
and swiveling back to
see an orange blur
floating perfectly
through the net.”
Group Work:
We were supposed to analyze
this specific text and find literary devices as well as some examples of
imagery. The reasoning for this is quite obvious, the use of these devices is
quite necessary and important in poems, especially imagist poems.
For homework, we wrote a
poem to whatever pastime we wanted. This would help us understand what we were
writing about as it connects to us personally.
Lesson #5:
Aim: How has poetic expression evolved in
the 21st century?
We began by discussing
whether or no technology had a negative impact on literature as a group. The
common consensus amongst our class was that yes, it did. The reading of
literature was diminishing as other forms of media were being used that forced
the user to write within a limit, notably social media. This is a segway to the
use of micro poetry.
To better understand the
use of micro poetry we had watched and read a few of Rupi Kaur’s interviews as
well as her poems. We then saw how there are other examples of micropoems in
things that aren’t always supposed to be poetic, such as songs.
Since the definition for
“small” or “big” is always relative, we compared it to a longer type of poem,
the epic poem, which is a poem that is of great length and has a narrative,
similar to that of a novel. Examples of the types of poems include Epic of
Gilgamesh, The Iliad ,and the Odyssey.
#Micropoem Challenge:
We were tasked with
writing a poem that was brief and suited for social media. This helped us
understand what the current movement of poetry was.
The icing covers the cake
Hiding many flaws
And their broken clauses
too
Reflection: I believe this lesson has helped me a lot. I was
better able to understand and use imagery as well as figurative language in my
own poems. I also learned more about imaganist poems and drew inspiration from
them. The micropoetry also taught me about how poetry has evolved in the
current day as well as the current movement. I believe that I could have done a
better job regarding using figurative language, however.
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