My first independent reading list is done for the semester. I do six reading assignments throughout the semester (though this time they’ll all read the same book for the third assignment), and students are expected to write about the books they read four times. There were a couple of books I was hoping to assign […]
Though you hardly notice a difference, I’m now running a more advanced version of WordPress, which is pretty great on the back end. In my Intro to Poetry class, we spent some time last week on Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” giving it a close reading and looking for ways that the sonnet form provides some tension with […]
One of the first poems I teach in my intro to poetry classes is William Carlos Williams’s “This is Just to Say.” It’s a short poem with an amazing amount going on, though at first glance, many students dismiss it as slight or unworthy of being a poem. My favorite thing about teaching it is […]
Thirty seconds after receiving one acceptance, another came in. I figure that if I blog this one, too, more will arrive before the end of the day.
I had cause to quote this poem today. Dan Albergotti turned me on to it last weekend. It is the first poem in Jack Gilbert’s first book. In Dispraise Of Poetry When the King of Siam disliked a courtier, he gave him a beautiful white elephant. The miracle beast deserved such ritual that to care […]
When successful, a short poem immediately launches into its lyrical potential; any narrative grounding happens in service to the lyric. (I don’t think there’s such a thing as a successful short narrative, at least not one in less than ten average-sized lines or so. That’s just not enough to tell a complete story in verse.) […]
You feel guilty about the time you spent folding laundry even though you’re going to have to have something to wear tomorrow. You start thinking that a poem about lo mein isn’t such a bad idea. It’s Sunday night and you’re wearing the same shirt you woke up in Saturday morning. You’re logged in to […]
The following is stuff that sort of bubbled up to the top when thinking about the essay “The Intentional Fallacy,” and while it speaks to the difficult of any evaluation of poetry, it’s not something I’m willing to stand by, just something I present for argument. The idea of intentional fallacy seems to me inescapable […]
I know that grad school asks me to write papers about craft so that I can learn from what I am reading, but sometimes, when you really, really love a poem, you don’t want to look under the hood. You know it works. You wish you didn’t have to think about why. As if knowing […]
Very Like a Whale makes the case for a gestation period for your poems.
I got a response (a super-fast one, at that) from my advisor, Mr. A. Van Jordan, today, and folks, I have assembled the first version of my petition to graduate. I’ll have another look at it tomorrow, just to make sure that after sleeping on it, I don’t freak out about any of the selections. […]
We are lucky to have to the occasion and desire to write poems… RELICS WITH OLD BLUE MEDICINE-TYPE BOTTLE: TO X This old blue medicine-type bottle, unburied From your garden last year’s the perfect centerpiece To suit our supper—the totem-trope we need Across this kitchen table, to show how dangerous It is where we sit […]
Here is a poem that have been wanting to share with you for a few days: Logical Games for the Unbeliever All night I kept solving for G. Now, through this dark morning, the equation escapes at the set speed of light. There are so many things I don’t understand. The future comes and it’s […]
I have not titled entries in this blog for a long time. I have not been titling my own poems well, either. So, since today is a writing day focused on annotations, I’m going to distract myself with some thoughts on the Science of Titles. Keep in mind that the advice which follows is written […]
