AGENDA:
1. Review Course Criteria/Welcome/Google classroom (6r0mlef)
2. Morning Reflection: I'm Not Racisthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43gm3CJePn0
First Blog Quickwrite: Your thoughts and post a comment (5 minutes) for credit
3. Activity: Read "Why I Write" and "The Poet"
Write Your Own "Why I Write Letter to Your Self"/group Why I write
Date: October 10, 2011
Summary:
Prize-winning international poet, translator, and essayist Jane
Hirshfield's poetry speaks to the central issues of human existence:
desire and loss, impermanence and beauty, and the many dimensions of our
connection with others. She tells NWP why she writes.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
Why do I write?
I
write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to
cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery.
A thought was not there, then it is. An image, a story, an idea about
what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new
poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into
being. Any new metaphor is a telescope, a canoe in rapids, an MRI
machine. And like that MRI machine, sometimes its looking is accompanied
by an awful banging. To write can be frightening as well as magnetic.
You don't know what will happen when you throw open your windows and
doors.
To write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery.
Why
write? You might as well ask a fish, why swim, ask an apple tree, why
make apples? The eye wants to look, the ear wants to hear, the heart
wants to feel more than it thought it could bear...
The
writer, when she or he cannot write, is a person outside the gates of
her own being. Not long ago, I stood like that for months, disbarred
from myself. Then, one sentence arrived; another. And I? I was a woman
in love. For that also is what writing is. Every sentence that comes for
a writer when actually writing—however imperfect, however
inadequate—every sentence is a love poem to this world and to our good
luck at being here, alive, in it.
The Poet She is working now, in a room not unlike this one, the one where I write, or you read. Her table is covered with paper. The light of the lamp would be tempered by a shade, where the bulb's single harshness might dissolve, but it is not, she has taken it off. Her poems? I will never know them, though they are the ones I most need. Even the alphabet she writes in I cannot decipher. Her chair -- Let us imagine whether it is leather or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her have a chair, her shadeless lamp, the table. Let one or two she loves be in the next room. Let the door be closed, the sleeping ones healthy. Let her have time, and silence, enough paper to make mistakes and go on. Jane Hirshfield
Discuss her essay and poem.
Joan Didion:
http://genius.com/Joan-didion-why-i-write-annotated
RELATED ARTICLES ON NWP.ORG
- Why I Write: A Celebration of the National Day on Writing
- Poet Laureate Kay Ryan: Poet as Teacher, Teacher as Poet
- Billy Collins: A `Reader's Poet' Reads at NWP's 2009 Annual Meeting
4. POV Writing exercise
Write 4 paragraphs exploring point of view.
a. 3rd person limited
b. 1st prson
c. 3rd person omiscient
d. your choice--another character, second person/
example:
Her feet dragged in the dirt as she swayed back and forth on the playground swing set she used to soar on when she was younger. Her head hung low as she watched her dusty shoes trace circles beneath her. The rhythmic creaking of the rusted metal chains mixed with the patterns in the sand were enough to put her into a trance while she waited for a tap on her shoulder. When it came, it startled her, shocking her out of the coma she let herself fall into. His touch wasn’t warm like it used to be, the fingers that ran over her knuckles and along the lines in her palm felt forced, contrived. He sat beside her on the next swing and adjusted his feet to sway in sync with her. He smiled at her and she tried her hardest to smile back, feeling like the corners of her mouth were held up by string.
I made piles and lines in the sand with my shoes because they were dirty anyway. The screeching sound of the metal chain dug into my head. My hair would always get stuck in the links, ripping it out in pieces. The longer I swung back and forth the more my stomach would ache, but I couldn’t stop. The silence would be too much without anything to test it. I felt his icy fingers on my shoulder, exposed in the summer heat. My chest ached and my stomach fell into the dirt. I wish he didn’t come. I wish he never showed. There was no way to feel close to him anymore, even when he tried to swing in sync without me noticing. He was trying to get me to look at him. I could see from the corner of my eye, but I didn’t want to. Instead, I forced myself to smile, facing down the patterns in the dirt. I thought that would be good enough.
A girl hopped over the fence into the playground, then she looked around more a minute, grinning slightly when she saw that it was empty. She walked over to a bench that stood under a red maple tree. Her fingers glided over the bark as she passed it. She sat down on the bench for a moment, her legs crossed and her head resting in her hands, but she quickly got up, taking a new place on the swing set. She started to swing back and forth fast, her legs kicking back and forth to propel her higher and higher until there was slack in the chains when she went up. She smiled big as the wind whipped her hair back. After a minute or so she started to slow, eventually coming to a hard stop. Her face looked pale and her smile was gone. From then on, she just swayed slowly, dragging her white shoes in the dirt. A boy hopped over the fence behind her, but she didn’t seem to notice. He tapped on her shoulder and sat down next to her. That smile didn’t come back.
You hop over the chain link fence, expecting her to hear you. Of course she doesn’t though, she’s always lost in her thoughts. That’s one of the reasons you love her. You tried to make as much noise as you could as you walked up behind her, but still, she stared down at the ground. You didn’t mean to scare her, but when you tapped on her shoulder you could feel her jump with fear. You know that you should’ve just called her name, but you couldn’t bring yourself to say it without bringing tears too. You touched her hand as softly as you could because you know she loves it, holding on until you take the spot next to her. She didn’t notice as you adjusted your swing to align with hers. You stared at her as you swung in exact sync. She smiled and you smiled back because you knew that as long as she was smiling she was still yours.
5. Sign out books: Mudbound
HWK: Get Course Criteria signed for credit
READ: Mudbound Ch. 1
