Week 6, Improv

"Einstein's Bathrobe" by Moss  (p. 153 in The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry)

"I wove myself of many delicious strands
Of violent islands and sugar balls of thread
so faintly green and small white check between
Balanced in the field's wide lawn, a plaid
Gathering in loose folds shaped around him"

"Sampson's Loin Cloth"
I wove myself of putrid animal strands
of greasy bones and flyaway tufts in stumps
so biblical and sexual. A small token of humor
balancing the flow of hair, and Delilah's intent
to trim and control gathering in the loose folds
and glistening shears around him.

Week 6, Free Entry

Oscar the Grouch Recycles

I don't wear pants, sing or count.
The galvanized plastic taps the
indiscretions of Elmo and the humans.
Bannana peels, moldy bird seed and
dry Count Chocular bars crowd around me.
Soon, I'll be on Hoarders: Buried Alive.
Don't be like me-the parents say.
The Baker Street dump-far from this place
crushes lessons and crayons.
The only trash here is me.

Week 6, Junkyard Quotes

1.

"Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,  
    Singest of summer in full-throated ease."

Keats--I was thinking today how well Keats can focus on one 

thing for so 

many lines and not be boring or repetitive.

2.  "She was danger on two legs."-Anthony Bourdain on Ava Gardner

3.  "satisfying flavors of blackberry and currant" -Wine Bottle 

4. "Yeah, I stay there." -My students don't live anywhere..

they just stay. At first, 

the transient attitude worried me, but now, 

I think that's a great way to say where

you live.   

Week 6, Calisthenics

I am kinda sad that my computer does not have a floppy disk drive because I wanted to pull up some of my poetry I wrote one summer at camp while reading a lot of Sylvia Plath and wearing my Smashing Pumpkin's t-shit. This will just have to do....

Love Song for a Loser in A Smashing Pumpkin's T-shirt-Draft 1

The lamenting moon shames me 
knowing what I did..
asking..why did you? how could you?
The shame cuts through the broken glass
of mirrors, lockers, and this letter.

My soul cries out to the blistering moon..
but no reply.
My voice sinks deeper into the cavern that is his heart.
Wishing, waiting for more..but only getting less. 
Wash me, clean me, make me whole again..

whole so I can be torn apart and wasted
like trash or chalkboard dust.  Will he love me?
Can he love me?  Silence.


Draft 2 
 The Cork Maker

The lamenting cork maker rolls the cask of impostors. 
The lime filled crust guts the smell of mold. 
Real of Plastic?
The facade of broken glass, floral notes, and this
takes away the stains.
The blistering of pulpy wood demands attention and

My voice sinks deeper into San Leolino .
Wasted like chalkboard dust,
labor and towel girls envelops the rotting flesh,
sealed with me.

Week 6, Response to Classmate's Journal

You're totally right about the five paragraph essay not providing a worthwhile framework for our students' writing skills. However, I believe that evaluators for statewide writing tests are specifically trained to target these kinds of formulaic essays and fail them! There is a move to grade these essays on their ability to express sound ideas with good reasoning that are organized efficiently and are interesting due to word choice, sentence fluency, voice, and conventions. Transitions are also highly important so as to increase the flow of the work.

I always tell my students that four paragraphs are just as good as five, so long as they are well-developed, reasoned, and interesting. As teachers we need to continue creating better thinkers as we teach writing, and quality writing will inevitably follow. As you say, "the signs are what is important." 

I'm so glad that both of you brought this up because it is still a battle zone at my school regarding this idea. If you look over the past decade, the standardized tests almost required a formulaic, 5 paragraph essay that followed the "I'm going to tell you about..Now, I told you about" method. However, if you look at the new rubric for the GHSWT, students will fail if they write in the traditional, formulaic method. The rubric uses language like "repetitive". So, what do educators do?  We create a new formula for students to follow that we know will get them the passing grade. I know this seems terrible and restrictive, but so many students do not know how to write for purpose.
Our conversations about writing in our department always lead to the same issue, Purpose. If we could teach students that different writing calls for a different purpose, then they could create their own formula for the writing test. For example, I'll have my students create a brochure persuading fellow students of the best food in the cafeteria. Then, I'll say, now you are persuading a foreign exchange student, a nutritionist, etc. This shows them that depending on who you are writing to, you change everything. For me, teaching purpose of writing would clear up all of these arguments based on "formulaic writing". 

Week 6, Sign Inventory

Page 366-367 in The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry
"Axe Handles" by Gary Snyder

In the spirit of "Thing Poems", I wanted to look at this one by Gary Snyder.

1. The mention of Ezra Pound instantly places this poem in literary history.

2. The tendency to mythologize past culture is strong here in this poem similar to Semaus Heaney's poem, "Digging".

3. The object is missing in the beginning of the poem. The speaker must go get the axe handles.

4. The idea of time moves from present "One afternoon last week in April" to "fourth century AD".

5. The speaker also moves place in this poem, from the stump to the shop, back to the stump. This enriches the reading of time movement because the speaker doesn't really go anywhere.

6. 7 lines begin with "and". This is the most consistent line beginning in the poem.

7. The use of "I" as the object: "I am an axe". The son becomes the object as well: "my son a handle". This metaphor confuses the simplicity of the object.

8. The speaker uses the axe to create it's handle. This poem makes a comment on the nature of creation.

9. The speaker references "Essay on Literature". Perhaps in the same way that "Digging" discusses the process of writing, this focuses on a different aspect, criticism.

10. Throwing hatchet heads with your son seems like a violent, manly, purposeless activity that leads to a cultural revelation. Why this activity specifically? 

Week 6, Pedagogy Forum

I really like Amy Ellison's idea of distributing her old papers to her class to see their comments. Often, I take off the names of students and distribute past work, but I have never shown the class any of my writing for workshop. I like the attitude that this process fosters in the classroom and the workshop environment. By giving students my work, it would allow them to see that no one reaches the perfect pinnacle of writing. I think in public education, we too often rely on the teacher as the authority and the students are expected to copy that perfection. That will never work with writing. I even notice this attitude in my comments to student writing and in my workshop comments. I use words like "I would," and "we should", etc. This language reinforces the idea that I have all the answers, and the students will just never understand. I am making a concerted effort to change this belief because it goes against the nature of teaching writing.

Week 5, Pedagody Forum

The exercise on pages 72-74 in The Writing Experiment made me think of all the uses of collage in the high school classroom. Everyday, we ask the students to collage by taking bits of information needed to pass a test. We ask them to paste the bits according to no real categories at all, but instead how it will be presented on the test. But, what if we asked them to collage in order to create their own relationship between literary periods, terms, and ideas? A collage to me, and in this exercise, is a way to take things you do not understand and arrange them in a way that gives it meaning to you. What a great solution for the cram sessions and study sheets we make for the students. Next week, we are preparing for the Georgia High School Writing Test. Due to this exercise, I'm thinking how I can apply this to analytical writing. I could have students cut out images and words that will give them a visual image of what they are being asked to do on the writing test. Perhaps some will relate to this relevant exercise.

Week 5, Improv

The Hanging Man by Plath

By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.

The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard's eyelid:
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.

Breakfast-R. Jones

By the crumbs in my toaster some thought done gone and done it.
I crinkled the dark char like a paper fan in a drain.

The eggs cracked out of the pan like an eyeball popping and clinging to the socket.
A place of carbs and grease in the plunge of 15 pounds.

Week 5, Sign Inventory

The Bean Eaters
by Gwendolyn Brooks
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair. Dinner is a casual affair. Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood, Tin flatware. Two who are Mostly Good. Two who have lived their day, But keep on putting on their clothes And putting things away. And remembering . . . Remembering, with twinklings and twinges, As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes. 1. The rhyme scheme is irregular. AABA , BCDB , etc.  2. Use of personification in the last stanza, twinkling and twinges.  3. Tone of a guided tour with the use of "they".  4. Impulse to count and separate: "two..two"  5. The last two lines of the second stanza begins  with conjunctions: "and, but". 6. The speaker only refers to the beans  one time in the last stanza.  7. It's interesting that the poem ends with a list.  Most poems that we have read in class or in the anthologies  either begin or have one in the middle, not the end.  8. "the rented back room": This poem emphasizes  the lack of ownership. 9. The poet uses many "to be" verbs.  The verbs are not very descriptive or active. 10. The tense shifts often from past to gerund form.

Week 5, Reponse to Classmate's Journal: Zac Cooper Sign Inventory

I really like how localized Zac keeps his sign inventory. Reading Dr. Davidson's comments in our email this week, I realized that I often miss all of the little things in class because I am trying to think globally. I challenged myself with Zac's poem to look at the small things. After I finished, I looked at Zac's and realized all of the smaller, local signs I missed. It really is a new way to read poetry because I think the common mythology of poetry is that the reader must look for deep meaning. Without the small signs, the process can not begin. It's too overwhelming. The smaller the sign, the richer it seems for interpretation. I think the way he categorizes the way that the poem describes earth is so pointed, but it calls attention to a really notable moment in the poem.  Thanks Zac for that close read and inventory.

Week 5, Junkyard Entries

*All of my junkyard quotes are things that I found not only interesting but

useful for my own writing.  

1. "Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood"

-The Bean Eaters by Gwendolyn Brooks 

*This discusses something plain, but it is not plain at all. 

2. "is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
    tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes."

-The Bean Eaters by G. Brooks 

*These lines are such a common place list done in an interesting way.

3. "Abortions will not let you forget."

-The Mother by G. Brooks

*This is so useful because of her tone here about such a huge issue, and I like

how she has abortions as a character of action. 

4. "It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried."

-The Mother by G. Brooks

*What an interesting way to look at life. 

Week 5, Free Entry

Keep moving-"900 times more!".
Sand tastes like the frog's freshly yellow guts
with pixie sticks.

Sex hates work more than AIDS and
the movement switches on the laugh
following the joke I never get.

We move from bar to bar, but I
can't see through the hair and motor oil
that seasons my thoughts.

I am trying to produce as much as I can because I just do not know what to bring to the workshop for next week.

Week 5, Calisthenics

Trans-Am Superman

We are ten and uber-nerds drumming and
conducting Latino music in our gold, fire bird Trans-Am
tuned to 105.3-The Heat Beat.

Queenie drives us to underwater
castle and causeways clinging with
algae that shiver with one stir of
Ursala's ventilation.

I wear Velcro camo with a fat,
Roma tomato belly
protruding onto the doughnut of flamingo floats.

Superman saves the silly straw-one sip at a time.
The viruses in multitudes choreograph a smile
to the click of the soggy box on that lazy river day. 

Week 4, Improv

From "Meaningful Love" by John Ashbery 

The Atlantic crawled slowly to the left
pinning a message on the unbound golden hair of sleeping maidens,
a ruse for next time,

where fire and water are rampant in the streets,
the gate closed—no visitors today
or any evident heartbeat.

The Cajun Critters chicken gushed openly to the first cousin

trapping the wrapper to the straggling wish of park rangers, 

a guide for every time

where fire and water never do the trick, 

"the gate closed-no visitors today"

or any use for the wildlife anymore.   

* I am trying to make objects do unxpected actions. 

Now, this is a little out there; 

I have to admit, but I am so often giving things actions that are expected.

Trees are swaying everywhere and dogs are barking. 

I am trying to use Ashbery to get me out of that habit. 

Week 4, Sign Inventory

"My Erotic Double" by John Ashbery
from The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, pages 284-285

1. The speaker speaks to and about another character. The double speaker seems unique in the context of Ashbery's other poems.

2. The beginning of each line is capitalized although the lines before it are not punctuated. The speaker does not complete the thought.

3. Uses words such as: Behind, Between and Before. Time and place shift several times.

4. The line "Throw some away, keep others." exemplifies simple language.

5. The speaker and other character have a conversation at the end without quotations. "Thank you" and "Thank you". A nice polite exchange.

6." hide, shade, protected" all suggest safety or danger.

7. Repeats "feeling" three times. This is contrasted with the use of "thinking" at the end of the poem.

8. Short, clipped sentences are used in relation to long, descriptive sentences.

9. "go-around, afloat, shot-through" are all types of movement. This poem seems occupied with physical movement and mental movement.

10. Latin words, like "pleasant" contrast with the more Germanic words in this poem. The Latin words seem fake in relation to more concrete images.

Week 4, Free Entry

Exercise: 
The Palmolive nectar hums down throats
as the oily dispersion fondles swamp waters.

The cinder block bark coating
the ball goal knows where the puss
filled claws live.

Signaling hate from the pissy woods
the primordial klan dusts the tables
knowing it never goes away.

The children near the port-a potty
stop the choking motors with cotton candy.

Meaning to lose themselves in the laughing
liquid and algae, the yellow jackets suck for
salvation.

Exercise 2: Expansion
The green Palmolive liquid encircles the sink with greasy lemons and plastic gloves.
The humming drains the dinner to China and further as it swirls and leaves us all clean.
Yet, the swamps, sitting silently, never knew clean. Covered in goop, wanting to be ignored, the
green grows without shame or Clorox.

The gray and green of the ashen bark crumbles like a cinder-block. Heavy as it is, it acts as plates and homes for snakes. Small, disease filled rodents scratch the bark to reveal the buffet of worms and death. Towering ball goals, nets filled with leaves, learn on the trees? The trees, becoming the goal grow like old man legs needing a cane.

The woods smell of piss and Coors and hate. The learning trees cover the sins of the past and give shelter to the haters of now. The dust of our history fills our lungs and clouds our vision as we try to climb out, to move on, to get a life. But, all we are left with are cliches and niceties. "How ya doing?" "Fine, and you?".

The purple and pink fluff of sweaty cotton candy sticks to the hair of the little girl wearing Hannah Montana boots--covered in glitter. The pinkness never goes away but is covered with the smells of the port-a-potty. Moving from place to place. Does it take the excrement with it? Or does it leave it for someone else?

Week 4, Pedagody Forum

I would like to add to Zac Cooper's comments. I couldn't agree with him more. So often, teachers focus on the breadth of information we should cover to prepare students for the standardized tests, that we often forget to focus on depth. By depth, I mean what Zac refers to in his last few sentences, skill based learning. I have noticed that almost all questions on the Georgia High School Graduation Test require the students to apply the skill of "reading", whether for comprehension or analysis on many different levels. We have found from our scores that our students are having difficulty with the questions that ask the students to read on a deeper, interpretive level, but they are correctly answering the recall or more basis summary questions. Using signs to teach the skill of reading gives purpose to reading for many of our students. It's almost as if we are teaching them to go on a reading mission or treasure hunt. Great point Zac. Thanks for that post.

Week 4, Response to Classmate's Journal: Jeff's Pedagogy Forum

I think that Jeff makes an excellent point regarding using the concept of a Triggering Town to involve students in the creative process. One of the most difficult concepts to teach when teaching writing is brainstorming. I have often wrongly left school, defeated, thinking "These students have no imagination!" Looking at his entry, I realize I haven't given them a framework within which to work. If we came in and Dr. Davidson said, "Just write a great poem full of great ideas--GO!", I would be so nervous I couldn't think. I might want to leave or just not do anything. Many of my students take this approach, and I can honestly say, I understand why. Using Jeff's method, I hope to employ this same method to help students determine a research topic and questions next week. 

Week 4, Junkyard Entries

No Parking. All Violators will be Baptized. 

-Church Sign in Murray County, GA. 

Ahhh, but I wore my debating jeans today! 

-Student upon finding that the debate scheduled for that day was going to be moved. 

"Like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves"

-"Nothing but Death" by Pablo Neruda 

"death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,"

-"Nothing but Death" by Neruda 

Week 4, Calisthenics

 "Meaningful Love" John Ashbery 

My words in BOLD.   

What the bad news was

 conducts curses worse than

became apparent too late

the sailors too late for morning coffee 

for us to do anything good about it.

who whistle and spit on rocks. 

I was offered no urgent dreaming,

although I applied for one and an American Express,  

didn't need a name or anything.

that requested no name or even existence.  

Everything was  taken care of.

Everything was played and plundered. 

In the medium-size city of my awareness

In the rack room city of blues 

voles are building colossi.

where sweating mats fill with bulk.  

The blue room is over there.

Out of the red one. 

He put out no feelers.

Pinching the ass of the waitress.  

The day was all as one to him.

Having just begun with her 

Some days he never leaves his room

covered in coffee and baby saliva 

and those are the best days,

before noon. Who could pass up? 

by far.

Near to no one. 

Draft 1:  

Sailors too late for morning coffee
conduct curses and hock in dishpans.
Everything, quilted and plundered went to AMEX holders,
smiling with green, plastic teeth in the rack city of blues.
Rooms, squeezed with sweaty mats gulp and bulk.
The red one pinches her ass-covered in grease and baby sweat.
She wonders, "Who else?" Near no one could. 

Week 3, Response to Classmate's Journal: Darin M. Pedagody Forum

A valuable lesson brought up in class this week was the concept of letting a student learn for themselves. A mistake that teachers can sometimes make is ‘over teaching’. They drown the students in information and directives, which robs the student of the experimental learning process. From what I’ve seen of education, far too many teachers will not allow their students to realize concepts for themselves, but rather cram information into them which is to be regurgitated a designated time in the future, and then very often forgotten forever. However, if a teacher is available to offer guidance to the student as they stumble and find their footing within a given subject or concept, the student can make mistakes for themselves and learn from them. The student should hopefully not only be able to reproduce the information from memory, but understand it as well, which can only come from within. 
Darin M. 

Although I said something similar in my Pedagogy Forum, I really appreciate how you isolate one of the main issues in teaching writing. I have students who complain all of time, "But, so and so told us to do it that way!"-crash of pencil, paper in floor, student leaves mad and defeated. Teachers, myself included, so often get wrapped up in writing for a specific purpose (the Georgia High School Writing Test, Writing Contests, the SAT, etc) that we forget to teach students the actual purpose of their own writing at all. Students are always amazed when we take time to actually discuss what writing can be, a dialogue, a process, a learning tool, an outlet, etc. Students fail to understand the differences in writing for purpose because they do not understand the fundamentals of why they write in the first place. Wouldn't it be great to have students write their own writing mission statement at the beginning of  a class?  Then, as facilitators, we could help them reach their goals. Thanks for that insight Darin M.

Week 3, Pedagody Forum

As a public school teacher, I do not give my students enough one on one instruction and discussion about their writing. I noted this because this week, as a student, I was feeling insecure and unprepared for this class. I'm sure that many of my students feel this way as well due to years and years or bad scores, failed tests, and teachers telling them "No, that is not how we write".  Instead of giving up, as many of my students do, I was able to meet with Dr. Davidson to discuss the particulars. I left the meeting re-energized about my writing and confident that I could do this and maybe even do it well. As I walked back to my car, I thought about how many students feel as overwhelmed as I did on a daily basis but have no outlet for it because of the type of whole class writing instruction I often offer. This week, we are writing a paper for a school wide writing contest, and I am going to take the time to sit down with each and every student, one on one, and discuss their writing. Some may love it; some may hate it, but at least I have given them the opportunity to voice their ideas and opinions about their own writing. I spoke in one of my fist journals of letting the students "speak the language of writing". I think this is a perfect opportunity. 

Week 3, Improv

"Her Kind" by Anne Sexton

I have gone out a possessed witch
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming of evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman quite.
I have been her kind. 

*Playing with the anaphora by keeping it the same made me think within the confines of the form. After doing a sign inventory on this poem, the specific form and lapse in form seems vital to this poem, so I kept it in my improv.

I have ridden shotgun a dressed Barbie doll
seeking trophies and funnel cakes, chubbier than most;
dreaming beauty, I have done my call
around the dirty fairgrounds, post by post:
sexy little thing, eyelashed, teased, out of mind.
A girl that goes from coast to coast.
I have been her kind.

Week 3, Calisthenics

Draft 1: 

When we go to bed, the frogs moan
and I think of Venice, glass and laundry.

When we go to bed, did I brush the dog's hair
until it was fine with the butcher I pay Tuesdays?

When I go to bed, the fox tickles
the broom, the moss and her-all asleep.

When I go to bed, the elves buzz
the cave with slut's work.

When I go to bed, the faded flower linoleum
curls and rusts for her. 

Draft 2: 

Here, where the frogs moan and the springs ask for more,
I think of Venice and laundry hung to dry like days old communion bread.
The pale chips of shirts, socks, and his girlfriend's underwear try to rustle-but fail.
The bribing salt and heat of the canal cook the sardine linens like chalk.

And there, on Tuesdays, the butcher sells the hanging feet and brains
to the old woman covered in burlap looking for a steal. The haunches
of her gondola colored mutt tumble with life wanting escape--and kibble.
The days old wounds heal too fast.

But here, the faded linoleum curls and rusts looking for the magic
of magnolias and pale blue chickens to restore the glory before grease traps
and washing machines. Humming with slut's work, the termites cuss
the melting of their yawning oaks.

Week 3, Free Entry

The one wheeled Mazda rattles
and the stick rubs my leg.
We go everywhere in that damn thing.
Over the chicken house, through flea markets
and the drive thru, on one side.
The rubber escapes the horse.

The man without a family takes
the Walkman, the girl, and the vomit pink Barbie car.
We all go for a ride to the lichen filled sping
where the Indian headdress wears us out.
Poor Lucy covered in TB rags
rides all night.

The loamy dirt swallows the blood
while the grass puts left foot on blue.
The bologna sandwiches feed the flies
and history drinks the Jungle Juice.
The meaning of colors in nature?
Ask the man in the ditch-he's been there.

Week 3, Sign Inventory

"Her Kind" by Anne Sexton
The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry p. 304

1. "twelve fingered, out of mind" - The mythology in this poem seems rich as it does in many of Sexton's poem. 

2.  The next to last line of the stanza breaks with the rhyme scheme. Otherwise, the rhyme is regular.

3.  The poem searches for place. "I have gone out", "I have found", "I have ridden" at the beginning of each stanza.

4.  The mix of words like "whining, rearranging the disaligned" seem to suggest a jump in time from present to past.

5. The movement of the poem suggests where women fit in. Wondering the moors like a witch?  The caves of domesticity? Riding in the cart with a man driver?

6.  Simple rhymes at the end relate to the idea of fairy tales. 

7. As a confessional poet, the speaker seems to reveal something secret. " I have been her kind".

8. "I have been her kind" suggests that she is not anymore. In fear of intentional fallacy, the author's obsession with her own death and later suicide, seems to suggest a definite confessional nature in "have been".

9. "innumerable goods" seems so general when the rest of the poem is interested in specificity. It's just a better way of saying stuff, but in an interesting, obvious way.

10. the speaker flies over houses in stanza one, the speaker lives and creates meals for elves in stanza two, the speaker rides through and is crushed by the villages. The movement of home to the relation of the speaker....

Week 3, Junkyard Entries

1. Is that the Jesus dragon?
Student during a discussion about "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"

2. "Female Dudes"
Dr. Charlesworth

3. A lot of boning in that temple!
Anthony Bourdain "Beirut Episode"

4. There's the pool where we spent the war.
Bourdain "Beirut"