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English 151/2/3
Weekly Writing Assignments 1-2: Poetry
Instructions for all the Weekly Writing:
· Read the “About Weekly Writing” sheet.
· Include your Reflection (See “About Weekly Writing”), the assignment itself, and any notes and drafts that went into it.
Formatting for poetry:
· The finished poem and the Reflection must be typed. If there are any notes or drafts, they will be however you created them—typed, scribbled on a napkin, whatever.
· Single or double-spaced.
· If one line of poetry is longer than the width of the page and so wraps around into a second line, indent the second line by five spaces (one tab) to show that it is really a continuation of the line above.
· All poetry assignments should use conventional punctuation and capitalization. True, some writers omit punctuation and capitalization, or use them unconventionally—but we will see that they direct readers nevertheless, by managing phrasing, grammar, white space, and linebreaks. We will practice these techniques while we use conventional punctuation to help us understand what we’re doing.
Weekly Writing Assignment #1
Due Date: Monday, October 3
Bring 3 copies. (Only one Reflection needed, for the one copy that you are going to turn in.)
Length: Use the poems from pages 9-26 in Leadbelly as your models, but yours can be longer if you have more to say.
Formal considerations: In these first poems of the book, the poems reflect the speech and language of the people who speak them. The poet uses all his language skills to create a new language that is like the language the characters might have thought in (as opposed to spoken in), coming up with, I think, a language that reflects dialect, race, region, and character, but is also intensified. Find a way of writing—words, sentence structure, line length—that suits the inner voice of what is speaking. Discuss your decisions in your Reflection.
Consider the sound and music of your language: NO EXACT RHYME ALLOWED for this assignment. (We will approach rhyme later, I promise!) But listen to the sounds of your words. Make the music of the language match what the poem is saying. Choose words that fit the mood of the speaker. Feel free to use words that sound, perhaps, like they almost rhyme—maybe they have similar vowels or similar consonants.
Enjambment and endstop: As you tinker with your poem, consider whether you want to end-stop or enjamb the lines. A poem can have all end-stopped lines, all enjambed lines, or a mixture of both.
An endstopped line is a line that ends in a pause—a period, a comma, or the end of a grammatical phrase. An enjambed line doesn’t stop at the end—the sentence or phrase runs over to the next line.
End-stopped example: Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” by Robert Frost
Enjambed example: Her body is not so white as
anemony petals nor so smooth—nor
so remote a thing. It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
the field by force; the grass
does not raise above it. [this line is end-stopped]
from “Queen-Anne’s Lace,” by William Carlos Williams
The assignment: choose one of the options below (Your Reflection should say which option you chose):
1. A poem in the voice of your mother or father, about you. (“sallie ledbetter: a mother’s hymn,” and “john wesley ledbetter.”)
2. A poem in the voice of a possession or object important to you (“colt protection special,” “mistress stella speaks.”)
3. A poem in the voice of a street, road, or neighborhood of importance in your life. (“fannin street signifies.”)
4. A poem about or in the voice of a teacher or leader of importance to you. (“leadbelly’s lessons,” “1912: blind lemon jefferson explaining to leadbelly,” and “blind lemon taught me.”
5. A poem in the voice of your (perhaps imagined) alias or alter-ego. (“alias: walter boyd.”)
6. A poem in the voice of a lover, spouse, partner, about you and the relationship. (“lethe on leadbelly.”)
Weekly Writing Assignment #2
Due Date: Monday, October 10
Bring 3 copies. (Only one Reflection needed, for the one copy that you are going to turn in.)
Formal Considerations:
· As before, let the music of the language—the choice of words, the sounds of the words, the sounds of the phrasings—fit the speaker’s voice, the mood, and meaning.
· As before, be deliberate with end-stop and enjambment. Experiment with what you think works best for your poem.
· Feel free to use space on the page, as in “bud russel, louisiana prison transfer man, 1920” (30) for musical and rhythmic effects, or for whatever other effect you feel it may have.
· Feel free to use slant rhyme! You can use it at the end of lines and/or within lines. Do not use exact rhyme.
· In your Reflection, discuss the decisions you made about all these aspects of the poem.
The assignment: choose one of the options below (Your Reflection should say which option you chose):
1. Write a poem that, like “bud russel, louisiana prison transfer man, 1920” (30), is in the voice of someone who looks down on, despises, or in some way does not respect the people he/she is talking about. Let the poem show what the person thinks of them, and, as it does so, perhaps the poem will reveal something about the speaker. Imagine the specific situation or job or circumstance of the person who is speaking, so it’s not just a generic person’s voice. For example, a customer in a restaurant could write critically of the waitstaff.
2. Or, you could write the opposite kind of poem—a poem in the voice of someone who is admiring or praising someone or a group of people. For example, in the voice of a son admiring/praising his father, in the voice of a fan praising a sports or music hero, team, or band. Or, for example, the restaurant customer is praising the waitstaff. Perhaps the community college instructor is admiring her students. Whatever you do, make the speaker a specific character, in a particular time/place/situation.
3. Write a poem that, like “martha promise: grown summer” (45-46), and “martha promise: what i knew”(48-49) shows a turning point in the speaker’s life. Let the poem give specific significant details of the time and events, showing that the speaker undergoes some sort of change or growth or transformation by the end of the poem.
4. In an interview (see link in our course website, in the “Resources and Links” module), Tyehimba Jess has said, “leadbelly is almost all prose poems when he is speaking. Partly because I thought of him in terms of prose, really simply and not all enjambed. You know, it is prosaic and it follows a particular arc. It is linear in that respect.” Using the prose poems in “the blood done signed your name” as models, write a short prose poem in the voice of a character (or yourself, even) remembering or describing an important incident. Let the poem contain specific images and significant details, and let these images do most of the work of showing what happened. Don’t overexplain or overnarrate—try to keep the piece very compact, dense, full of the character’s voice and the power of the event.