1. Review Course Criteria/Welcome/Google classroom (6r0mlef)
2. Morning Reflection: I'm Not Racist
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
- Why I Write: Jane Hirshfield Writes about Life's Profound Mystery
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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.
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.
https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3660
Joan Didion:
http://genius.com/Joan-didion-why-i-write-annotated
RELATED ARTICLES ON NWP.ORG
About the Author Jane Hirshfield is the author of seven collections of poetry, including After (shortlisted
for England's T.S. Eliot Prize and named a "best book of 2006" by the
Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the London Financial
Times), Given Sugar, Given Salt (finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award), The Lives of the Heart, and The October Palace, as well as a book of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. Her most recent book, a collection of poems entitled Come, Thief was
published in August 2011. Hirshfield has taught at UC Berkeley, Duke
University, Bennington College and elsewhere, and her many appearances
at writers conferences and literary festivals in this country and abroad
have been highly acclaimed.
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
