Week #10--Response to MacKenzie's FreeWrite

This is late, but my computer went down this morning and I could not complete my entries.

I really like the way you have woven a tragic family incident into a prose poem that deals with the mystical. It has a haunting, melancholic tone, and yet speaks to the realities of modern life. I question the "shift of yellow light" which made me think of the sunrise, but, since the moon makes an appearance later in the draft, I think it should be white. That's the only uncertainty I have. Nicely written, MacKenzie!
Pauline

Week #10--Response to Christine's Improv

Christine,
You have some really good imagery going in this improv. I love "bee's knees all rouged with ragweed" and "the gum in gumbo" plus others that add humor and roll off the tongue. It's fun to read and I really like the variety of items you have listed. Great job!
Pauline

Week #10--Junkyard Quotes

“Too bad your baby isn’t cute.”

Matt Lauer to parents of a baby.

“You sneeze and all the bacteria goes a hundred miles an hour.”

Regis Philbin on “Live”

Week #10—Improv

Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina

                        by Jack Gilbert

There was no water at my grandfather's

when I was a kid and would go for it

with two zinc buckets. Down the path,

past the cow by the foundation where

the fine people's house was before

they arranged to have it burned down.

To the neighbor's cool well. Would

come back with pails too heavy,

so my mouth pulled out of shape.

I see myself, but from the outside.

I keep trying to feel who I was,

and cannot. Hear clearly the sound

the bucket made hitting the sides

of the stone well going down,

but never the sound of me.

         Six Months on Pembroke Road

                                                     by Pauline Rodwell

There was no indoor toilet at my grandparents’

when I was five and would need to go during

the long, English winter night. Down the stairs,

through the kitchen, past their bedroom into

the damp night air. To lift the latch on

the wooden door of the outhouse. Would

shiver till my teeth chattered so loud my mother

standing outside the door would hurry me to finish.

I remember her voice but not my own. I keep trying

to hear it, to know if I even made sound. How quietly

we tiptoed back upstairs to bed, closing our

ears to the ghosts of her childhood,
whispering from the walls.

Week #10—Calisthenic (A ‘Thing’ Exercise)

Pollen

Everywhere in the air, outside and inside, inside and outside, on clothes, in hair, in eyes, in nose, blowing across the tennis courts, driveways, parking lots; collecting on the front porch, on cars, on rooftops, on picnic tables, on ponds and lakes, mailboxes and minnows—spring’s yellow fallout—choking lungs, throats, breathing mechanisms, air vents and ductwork, duck quacks and geese grunts; merging with cat fur and dog hair, ceiling dust and dryer lint; allowing writing on vehicles; providing pressure-washers with plenty of work; keeping windows and doors shut and millions of bees employed; preventing outdoor activity—like bike rides and joy rides in a convertible; sending thousands to doctors and pharmacies; eliminating joy for all who bear no immunity; aggravating wearers of contact lens; lasting longer than tax season but shorter than death. Pollen is like the opposite sex—necessary for propagation but prohibitive to peace of mind.

Week #10--Free Entry

This a rewrite of my calisthenic from Week #1.

                                          Discovery

An effigy of bare-breasted Diana perches atop a petite, verdigris moon,

her bow poised to penetrate the surrounding glass of the natatorium.

The steep slope of her back and the upward tilt of her nipples tell me

to follow the trajectory of the arrow she aims at dormant tree limbs

veining a vapid sky. I quiver at the prospect of melding with her arrow.

  

In the pool, ladies’ legs flick á tempo to the instructor’s constant count—

her sharp voice intruding on their compulsive badinage. Some fleshy,
some firm, they chatter, gyrating and gasping for breath, their
nervous din echoing all around the transparent enclosure. A sampling
of men have self-quarantined inside the lap lanes near the green goddess,
as if to guard her in seduced silence. Every few minutes, one or two
of them dive underwater, perhaps to escape the clamor, perhaps to
secretly stare at her nakedness. Another masticates a toothpick so as
to relieve his lifelong smoking habit, while yet another swims freestyle,

scorning any group activity.

Muting my muliebrity, I arc into the arbored maze and meld
with nature’s architecture. The morning’s low canopy of clouds
quells my inner disquiet. Seasoned palms caress the smooth skin
of leafless limbs as I swing primitively from oak to maple to birch
and embrace the cool November breeze. Pausing on a lofty branch,
I marvel at my expertise, for I have freed Diana from captivity and
returned her to the diaphanous world she loves. She smiles back
at me appreciatively.

It is then that I realize: Somewhere, ages ago, I must have chosen to crawl.

Week #10--Sign Inventory

Things Are Disappearing Here

                                   

                                    by Kate Northrup

Things are disappearing here: a pale light

            spreads over the sea beneath which

X drops, falls back to the blind

            silences, to the undeveloped

secret fish which have been abandoned there

            and grow vicious.

And things are disappearing

also in the country. Already the roads

twist into the distance, rise

            into columns of smoke

and in the parking lots of a discount store,

            a sedan explodes. Then it happens that our fathers

fly off, a whole flotilla fills the sky,

their jackets and ties flapping

like the pages of books the[y] never read. Our fathers

            are disappearing yet they are not

ashamed. See, all things go: at the edge of the city, dogs run off,

they tear themselves from their lines

and in the middle of the night,

from neighborhoods more trenchant than ours, we hear their barks,

those clear openings that come to us

over the schoolyard, the homes boarded up, and then

            in through the windows. The sound of the missing dogs

for a while survives, and that is just enough

to cheer us.

Sign Analysis:

Confessional poem in first person plural.

Every line enjambed

Structured in eleven stanzas in a format of two couplets, three triplets, one single line, three triplets, two couplets. Reflect the poem’s theme of things diminishing into disappearance, but then it rebuilds “just enough to cheer us,” implying that if everything looks normal, all will be well.

The second lines in stanzas 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 10 indent while the only the third line in stanza 4 indents.

Several ‘i’ sounds at the end of lines, specifically lines 1, 3, 9, 13, 18, and 19.

Repetition of “us” at the ends of lines 21 and 25.

Use of italics for mantra “things are disappearing here”—except in the title

Like vowel sounds in “blind silences” and “just enough to cheer us.”

Alliteration  in “spreads over the sea,” “back to the blind,” “flotilla fills the sky,” and “clear openings that come to us.”

Printing error of “the” for “they” in line 15.

Response to Atara's "untitled"

Atara,
Repetitions of 'rush' in your first stanza work nicely, but I'm not sure repetition is needed in the first line of the third stanza. I like your intonations of feminine oppression indicated by the woman's carrying of his jacket and movies, but I don't get "Hissing for sharp notes" and think it doesn't quite fit in the draft's context; however, the "mocha frappucino" lends the draft a great deal of zeitgeist, and your last two lines are exquisite. I would like to see you add more text to this draft, in the way of descriptive scenes, or even conversation between the two characters, and capitalize on its feminist tone. Good start!

Response to MacKenzie's Calisthenic

MacKenzie,

You have some really good answers to your question, and I think you should play out the exercise and see what comes up. I can imagine some really good text coming out of some of them, especially numbers 7,9,13,& 18. Nice job. I look forward to more!

March 20, 2011 4:43 PM

Week #9--Junkyard Quotes

Week #9

“What we do in God's name shouldn't make God hard to find.”

taken from Forward Day by Day, Mar. 15, 2011

“This place looks like a screensaver.”

Zak Taylor on arrival at Lindisfarne, Scotland

“I’ve got so much metal in my body that magnets jump off the refrigerator when I walk by.”

Bob Crowe

“We weren’t as good as the Rolling Stones and not as painful as kidney stones.”

Kirk Curcutt’s description of the band he played in.

Week #9--Free Entry

Yehudi

Who is “they?”

my Daddy used to say.

You should not pay

attention to “they.”

Who are you?

We used to ask.

Yehudi,

he would reply

and never say why.

To tease was his way

and often he’d play

and get people to say

this ridiculous riddle

to bring on a giggle.

Three times repeat

“Lord Mathuid, what am I doing?”

And they would comply

knowing he was sly

and wait for the reply.

His thin lips would curl and

his blue eyes would twinkle—

he’d look down his great nose

in his uppity pose

and say in just the right way:

Making a fool of yourself.

Week #9--Sign Inventory

AGE-DEFYING, 1976

                                    by Amy Pence

The showgirls untime time, faces mirrored:  duplicating, re-duplicating—

       they’re set loose and iconic:  mid-seventies, the Lido de Paris,

            unclothed but for G-strings, Marie Antoinette beehives

                   frolicking in a set-up of Versailles or writhing

behind bars in the mass fluorescent jail scene, blinking.  No doubt

       the Stardust had the best signage:  its incremental diamonds

            zipping up into my panties, in the vulva of the young girl

                   lonely.  Backstage, their eyes were wedged

open by giant hideous lashes.  The moles and snagged body stockings garish.

       Their mouths laughed, clutching cigarettes.  They brought kittens,

            casseroles.  My step-father called them the girls—though some—

                   the ones who sang—were way past their prime. Love

had its way, crept in to the Lido themes:  fiery, jealous tiki dances

       a languorous etude with a wig-bedecked couple on a swing.

            Archival & quaint those towering, melon-breasted beauties—

                   so sexless, they generate remorse, implode their dark stars

when the Stardust goes down, when what we build goes down, soft

                   in the roof of my mouth.

Prose poem

Title bolded in all capital letters, like a neon sign.

Confessional in 1^st person

Four 4-line stanzas, then one 2 line stanza.

Form is balanced but incremental, like the diamonds.

Syntax has a disjointed tone, line endings are mostly feminine.

Line enjambment and run-on stanzas

Long sentences bookend short, choppy ones.

Polarized phrase:  “untimed time”

Metaphoric phrase:  “incremental diamonds zipping up into my panties.”

No end-rhyme or internal rhyme

Week #9 – Improv

This is a short riff on “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath, which is too long to copy here.

Thumb-uppance

You ask too much, you ask too much

Every day, Daddy-poo,

And everything I ever do will not do

For you, try as I might,

It just will not do.

Daddy-poo, I have wanted to kill you,

But you will not die----

You just keep popping up

Like weeds in early springtime,

and that is why I

Never prayed for you,

Even when you were sick,

Preparing to pass away,

I only called to see what

I could do to make it quick.

I heard that you never asked for me.

They said you continuously refused
to relent and let me visit you.

That’s OK, Daddy-poo,

Because I’m not confused

About my role in this world.

I can live without you

And your relentless “because I said so”

rule of thumb. So long,

Daddy-poo. Toodle-loo!

Week #9--Calisthenic

The 'why' exercise (starred lines are the ones I drew from for elaboration)

Why the Green Light is on the Bottom

*1        Because the higher positions were already taken.

*2        Because it makes other folks see red.

 3        Because it wants distance from red.

 4        Because it’s closer to the road.

*5        Because it’s a go-go dancer.

*6        Because red is on an ego trip.

*7        Because yellow likes the middle.

 8        Because it can’t stay turned on long enough.

*9        Because it has no control over its place in the grand scheme of things.

*10.      Because it hangs cool.

*11.      Because it likes to swing harder.

 12.      Because it likes colorful hats.

*13.      Because it failed to make the primary color palette.

*14.      Because it likes to make cars screech when it goes out.

 15.      Because it’s more prone to vertigo than the other colors.

*16.      Because it needs to be wanted.

 17.      Because it likes to keep people waiting.

 18.      Because it likes to play hide and seek.

*19.      Because it throws caution to the wind.

*20.      Because it likes being the underdog.

 21.      Because it’s a downer.

*22.      Because it’s too set in its ways to change.

 23.      Because it feels under the weather.

*24.      Because it makes the earth a greener place.

 25.      Because it befuddles the colorblind.

*26.      Because the DOT ordained it.

*27.      Because it hangs out in gangs of three.

 28.      Because it likes to get things rolling.

*29.      Because it thinks it’s stacked.

*30.      Because it likes kitschy eye shadow.

Recursive approach:

Because red is an ego trip.

Because yellow prefers the middle.

Because green hangs cool in the breeze,

I stay blue most of the time.

Because blue is not cool and red is too migraine

to the mind, I’ll try to sit cautiously in the middle

of my palette, while all the secondary

hues spin around me. I will try to glimmer like a golden

ball of butterscotch until my center dissolves

into a miniscule core of tartness and my flavor

fritters away onto the wide, blank palette

of the day. One lazy summer evening, while waiting

for the babysitter to come, my brother pushed me too

hard on the swingset, and I swallowed a lollipop.

It hurt so bad I couldn’t speak, but no one seemed

to notice. I realized then that bad things can happen

and no one will care. Unless you holler.

Hollering sounds like red. Crying does, too.

Silent tears are yellow.

I stay blue most of the time.

A whimsical approach:

Because Brad was too green to qualify for the higher positions

at the office and because he did not enjoy being the underdog,

he threw caution to the wind and took a job as a go-go dancer in

a gang-infested neighborhood. Consequently, he discovered

his deep need to be wanted by men; but, being too set in his

ways to change everything about his life, he decided to swing

harder and have it both ways. During the day, he wore his ‘man

hat,’ but whenever he went out on the street at night, cars screeched

to a halt as passers-by stared in amazement at his stacked bosom

and kitschy eyeshadow, as he crossed the intersection in a red bustier

and yellow mini-skirt. Because cross-dressing made the mayor see

red, Brad thought he could avoid persecution by serving on the City

Planning Commission, which enjoyed its own ego trip of having

control over the grand scheme of things. However, he was not aware

that the mayor and the head of the DOT were old friends, and one

night, Brad stepped into a manhole and was never seen again.

They say the sewer plant has had some stoppage problems recently. . .

Spring Break Wk--Junkyard Quotes

“Flying improves my prayer life.”

Rev. Hazel Glover in her Sunday sermon 3/6/11.

“Herbal wisdom in a cup”

Printed on a teabag.

". . . whoever is responsible for this universe has a great sense of humor."

Brother Guy Consolmagno, curator of meteorites at the Vatican Observatory

"Gresham, Meyer, Brill, and Toodles"
March 13 page of my Cat Calendar. (Receptionist answering phone with sleeping cat on desk.)

Spring Break Wk--Calisthenic

Ekphrasis exercise from the Plath class, looking at painting by DeChirico

                Abstract Art

Oh, Roman knight, you are a sight!

Your sinewed legs like molded clay,

your macho-male identity

confounded by your décolleté.

Your eyes on vines drape ‘round your neck,

your Leggo parts netted up front,

bare feet, bare head, oh, what the heck,

you’re just a heap of silly junk.

Centered in perfect symmetry,

you stand for all the world to see.

Just why your maker painted you

is sheer befuddlement to me.

Week of Spring Break--Free Entry

I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip:

After a heavy rainfall, poems titled RAIN pour in from across the nation.
                from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

                                March

The rain blows aslant outside my bedroom window.

The daffodils’ fried-egg faces lie over-easy on the ground,

too dim-witted to fight back. Thor’s goat-drawn chariot

chases Mjollnir across the sky, causing the cats to hunker down.

Up by the road new shoots anticipate spring’s approach,

withholding their colorful charms until the all clear

shines for them to exit their dark shelters and bloom.

To the scent of their song, late winter turns a deaf ear.

I wonder why so many people die at this time of year.

They, too, must get beaten down by winter’s maelstrom

and lose their impetus to burgeon into another spring;

or perhaps they surrender, forgetting that spring will come.

O Sunna, let me die in the summertime when the land is lush;

Let me lie, not like the droopy daffodils who lack the right stuff,

but sunny-side up, gazing through a plethora of pink mimosa poms

as I levitate languidly into uncomplicated clouds of fluff.

Cradle me forever in sweet summer’s fertile womb.

Sing me your lazy lullaby through the starlit, balmy night.

Carry me far away from winter’s cruel, callous tomb

where your nemesis ‘Despair’ eclipses warmth and light.

Week #8--Response to Ebef's Improv for Week 7

Elizabeth,
You have some nice lines in this draft. Line five, "aching at the thought of absence" is my favorite.
You have copied verbatim "the horizon's white sails" and "they who never even knew us" but I would prefer your own language in their place, something perhaps that clarifies who the "you" of line one might be and who the "they" of the last line might be. I like the sand and sails imagery but need more pointers to make a clearer meaning for the poem.

Week #8--My Response to MacKenzie's Improv for Week 7

MacKenzie:
You have some nice alliteration in this piece-- "anticipatory ache," "brittle broom bristles, and "clouds of chalk"--and several more that tickle my tongue. Others, like "big beautiful body" and "burning blue fluid" sound vague and unequal to your more descriptive alliterations in the draft. "[R]ed robust lungs" might be overkill but your 'foreign' imagery is quite entertaining.
"Berta" and "Bertha Weathersbee Elementary" are  too close in spelling, as the similarity made me wonder if you had mispelled one or the other. Obviously, the janitor lady would not be likely to have the school named after her, but I think a different name might save confusion.
I realize you have copied the narrative structure of Fairchild's poem, but I think dividing yours into verses might make some of the more colorful language stand out; however, it's a great start as it is now and you have written some very imaginative text.

Week #8--Junkyard Quotes

“I can’t get attracted to a girl who smells like my grandmother.”

Male student talking to female companion on campus.

“…because my brother was killed by a tulip.”

Dr. Davidson, improvising in our Plath class as we analyzed “Tulips”

“God loves you whether you like it or not.”

Church sign on Hwy. 61.

“All pants ½ off”

Sign in store window in UK.

Week #8—Sign Inventory for Dan Alberghotti’s “Song of the Gods”

 Narrative style, monological tone

Unrhymed couplets (13)

Some enjambment

First person plural voice adopts personae of the gods until last line when it seems to speak for the collective “they”.

Irony, in that love, war, and desire seem to act as the gods of the poem’s title from human perspective but not from the gods’ point of view.

Tone moves from a ‘heavenly’ location to an ‘earthly’ one.

Alliteration:  “live in the light” (1,26); “war as the light grows weak” (8-9); “the only song is this song” (16-17); “that light that lies across sand in silence” (20-21); “everything else” (23) “Madness, Music” (24).

Repetition of “live in the light” in first and last lines. Also: “we are not seen” (4) and “do not see” (6-7).

Recursive motif of “desire in the morning, love in the afternoon, war as the light grows weak” (7-8) changes to “[l]ove in the morning, war in the afternoon, desire as the light fades” (17-19).

Detachment from familiar through indirect reference to humans as “those” (5,15) and “they” (6,9).

Week #8--Calisthenic

Lexical accretion

It’s fun to do bad things

It’s bad to do fun things

It’s things that make bad fun

It’s things that make fun bad

It’s fun to do bad things

It’s fun when the fat lady sings

It’s fun what Spring Break brings

Its fun when the postman rings

It’s bad to do fun things

It’s bad when a computer pings

It’s bad what sickness brings

It’s bad to hurt saplings

It’s things that make bad fun

It’s things that use a gun

It’s things that annoy a nun

It’s things that weigh a ton

It’s things that turn fun bad

It’s things that start a fad

It’s things that make us sad

It’s things that keep me mad

Week #8--Improv

From John Berryman's "The Dream Songs"

1

Huffy Henry hid     the day,

unappeasable Henry sulked.

I see his point,—a trying to put things over.

It was the thought that they thought

they could do it made Henry wicked & away.

But he should have come out and talked.

All the world like a woolen lover

once did seem on Henry’s side.

Then came a departure.

Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.

I don’t see how Henry, pried

open for all the world to see, survived.

What he has now to say is a long

wonder the world can bear & be.

Once in a sycamore I was glad

all at the top, and I sang.

Hard on the land wears the strong sea

and empty grows every bed.

My riff:

-1

Clepto Carrie caught    the time,

incorrigible Carrie lied,

I get her drift,—a ruse for running the show.

It was the dare that they dared

her to do that made Carrie greedy & unkind.

But she could have let go and tried.

All her dreams plush as a down pillow

used to float in Carrie’s head.

Then hit a tornado.

Subsequently everything got helter-skeltered.

It’s a miracle that Carrie, scattered

among so many, isn’t dead.

All she can manage now is to cry

quite loudly for more dreams to come.

Once on a golf course I barefoot leapt

across the green, and I got high.

Earth spins tight around mother sun

and time is all that can be kept.

Week #8--Free Entry #1

Visitation

An hour into the visitation she seems to be holding up pretty well. Her son, not his, introduces himself to me and I reciprocate. I see the recognition in her face and smile. We hug. I’m so sorry. Thank you, she says. I heard you sold a painting on Sunday. Her eyes glaze over. I shrivel. Yes, she answers. I struggle. It doesn’t compare, does it? No, she said. I wither. I know you’ll manage. She nods, her eyes welling. Mine well, too. It just doesn’t sound like him. He was always smiling. It’s not like him, she says. That’s why he doesn’t look like himself now, because he isn’t smiling. Oh, I say, looking to my left. Thank you for coming, she says, and turns away to greet the next person. I move to the coffin and view the waxen, non-smiling face. Thanks for those funny jokes in typing class. Everyone here loves you. See how many? Didn’t you know? I stare and well again. Please forgive my lack. I maneuver through people I don’t recognize and some I do to watch the memorial video playing in the corner of the parlor. I recognize the uneven teeth. I look for answers in the choir robe shot, the wedding dance scene, the son’s graduation picture, but he’s smiling in every photo. Damn it.