Fink English 271

Apr. 17: YouTube video on Timothy Liu's Hard Evidence and Collage Poetry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iQaBBRgRzg Collage poem                and            List poem (catalogue)                 Mostly not narrative—fragmentary stories                 Mostly not meditative—fragmentary thinking Collage poem                          versus          List poem (catalogue)  Reader has to figure out or                   The connection betw elements intuitively feel relation b...

See only comments section

We have just completed Wednesday's class. See the discussion in the comments section: TWO ANNOUNCEMENTS: The next assignment due is this Friday; have a draft ready for your peer-critiquing partner at 1 pm.  For the ekphrastic poem choice, I am reducing the required length to 14 lines, not 18. For the Dickinson quatrain poem, I am reducing the required length to 3 quatrains, not 4. Longer is not always better. If enough students want to have a place to talk online without my presence, please let me know, and I will collaborate with several students to arrange it within the next week. I've divided Poem 2 into 2 posts because there were so many wonderful comments in the Ekphrastic part! If you're looking at this and haven't sent me the REVISION of poem 1 in the body of an email, along with the original, please do so ASAP (i.e. by tonight or tomorrow).             As you know, you have a choice for Poem ...

THE TWO FRIDAS   by Aliyah Brown, Janessa Graham, TF*, Brianna Hobson, Erika Perez, Manuel Pomposa, Anabel Sanchez, Melanie Tapia, Milady Torres [and one other person who didn't identify themselves] Gray skies behind  their backs  with a hint  of black  united by touch.  Bloody scissors stain her skirt. Scissors will not resuscitate,  what dies in vein.  A loose  vessel caught in space  between two hearts but one spirit. Old and new connect through red  that stains when slit. The blood stains white and clean on blue. She is me. I am her.  Bound by a string. So close yet so apart.  Only one  can survive with a beating heart. Red string of fate,  tying two halves. * I can only take credit for the meter and tercets; all the words are by the other 9 poets. This is the web address for my YouTube video on Ekphrastic Poetry and Diana Chang's "What Matisse Is After"; when you watch the video,...

PLEASE NOTE:  There is an error on p. 4 of the course schedule (syllabus) for Wed. March 25 for 11:45-12: It speaks of "Poem 1" post, but it should read "Poem 2" post. Sorry for my error. Examples of Dramatic Monologue: Lucille Clifton, "1994" -Repetition of "my fifty-eighth year" which is also the only time there is mention of an "I" -The "you" she addresses throughout the poem seems to be other black women. -She uses winter/cold as a group of tropes. -No punctuation until the end of the poem. -Does not use uppercase letters. -Uses body parts such as: "nipple" "breasts" skin" for imagery. -First few stanzas have three lines (tercets) until the end of the poem where the last three stanzas have two lines (couplets). As a practitioner of free verse, Clifton uses a lot of enjambment here--for example, in the first tercet (three line stanza). The Poetry Workshop Textbook describes different...