Today we read the poem "Things I Know" by Joyce Sutphen. We noted that the poem has a "turn" in it in the final two stanzas when the speaker of the poem says, "I slip/ through the fence and into the woods,/ where I know everything: trunk/ by branch by leaf into sky." Up to that point, the poem was about small concrete images (sensations) that the speaker knew from the farm, but with the turn the speaker shifts our focus to the continuity and oneness of the natural world and how knowing is really part of our being in the world and being a part of the world (the trunk is connected with the branch bone, the branch bone connected to the leaf bone, the leaf bone connected to the sky bone).
Another name for poetry is verse which means "to turn." Once a poet has learned to use concrete images to create a sensory experience for a reader, her next task is to get those images to add up to something meaningful, avoiding the dangerous pitfall of hitting her reader over the head with a moral-of-the-story anvil. Introducing a turn is essential to making it all "add up." The turn shifts our perspective, enlarges our field of view, contextualizes the poem. In jokes, it is the punchline. A poem without a punchline is just as sad.
We continued hearing students read their poems and providing feedback. This is a critical process for all involved for honing our poetic ears.
So far students have completed one assigned poem. By Wednesday, they should complete another. By Friday, a third. One of the next two poems needs to be an imitation of "Things I Know." Please write about something you know intimately, just as the speaker in this poem knew the farm, something you have spent hours, and days, and even years doing so that no one else could know it the way you do.
No comments:
Post a Comment