Ken Craft

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“All Genuine Poetry in My View Is Antipoetry.”

Like Tony Hoagland, Charles Simic is no one-trick pony. In addition to his prowess in poetry, he knows his way around an essay, too. While reading “Notes on Poetry and Philosophy,” I noted much of interest, both from Simic and from the poets and philosophers he quotes.

For instance, Wallace Stevens once said that the twentieth-century poet is “a metaphysician in the dark.” Simic, not so sure, compares this idea to chasing a black cat in a dark room. Not only is poetry on the loose in there, but theology and Western and Eastern Philosophies as well. So if you’re bumping heads a lot, don’t be surprised. And if there’s no cat to begin with, don’t be surprised by that, either. It may be the trickster Devil and not the cat that’s truly on the loose in the dark.

Surprisingly, Simic does not believe that poets know what they are going to write about in advance, simply sitting down to execute those ideas. He says, “My poems (in the beginning) are like a table on which one places interesting things one has found on one’s walks: a pebble, a rusty nail, a strangely shaped root, the corner of a torn photograph, etc.,… where after months of looking at them and thinking about them daily, certain surprising relationships, which hint at meanings, begin to appear.”

He then shares the pleasing (to poets familiar with rejections) anecdote of the time he wrote a series of poems about ordinary objects such as knives, spoons, and forks. The poems were summarily rejected by a poetry editor who wrote back asking why the young Simic wasted his time on such topics.

Simic was struck by how an “insider” like this editor might consider certain topics worthy and serious enough to write about and certain others not. In his own defense, he quoted Husserl: “Back to things themselves” (reminding me of William Carlos Williams’ famous words: “No ideas but in things”).

Added Simic: “An object is the irreducible itself, a convenient place to begin, it seemed to me. What appealed to me, too, was the discipline, the attention required, and the dialectics that went with it. You look and you don’t see. It’s so familiar that it is invisible, etc. I mean, anybody can tell when you’re faking it. Everybody is an expert when it comes to forks. Plus, all genuine poetry in my view is antipoetry.”

The gist of Simic’s philosophy on poetry comes after he quotes Jack Spicer: “Poets think they’re pitchers when they’re really catchers.”

Simic riffs on this idea: “Everything would be very simple if we could will our metaphors. We cannot.

“This is true of poems, too. We may start believing that we are recreating an experience, that we are making an attempt at mimesis, but then the language takes over,. Suddenly the words have a mind of their own.

“It’s like saying, ‘I wanted to go to church but the poem took me to the dog races.’

“When it first happened I was horrified. It took me years to admit that the poem is smarter than I am. Now I go where it wants to go.”

The basis of all this talk? Simic’s love of philosophy—Heidegger in particular. Old Heidegger said that poetry could not be understood until thinking itself was understood. “Then he says, most interestingly, that the nature of thinking is something other than thinking, something other than willing.

“It’s this ‘other’ that poetry sets traps for.”

That’s philosophy for you. Something is what it is not. In short, according to Simic, “The labor of poetry is finding ways through language to point to what cannot be put into words….

“Being cannot be represented and uttered—as poor realists foolishly believe—but only hinted at. Writing is always a rough translation from wordlessness into words.”

I don’t know about you, but I have to open my poetry file now so my poems can write me.

Should be nice for a change, don’t you think? Like having your car tugged slowly through an automatic car wash, only with words and sentences instead of suds and brushes….

Mirror as Poem as Mirror

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Three Januaries ago, in the New York Times Magazine, Rita Dove selected a Jericho Brown poem about Jericho Brown called, quite simply yet not simply at all, “Dark.”

I say that because “dark” is one of those adjectives that can denote (and connote) many meanings, as certainly it does here. And though we often see identity poems dwelling on the concept of “self,” I have to admit that reading this poem makes me wonder whether it is really about “self” or not.

If the answer is “or not,” then Brown is onto something. Like race. And self-worth. And self-rationalizations. Even life! Here’s the poem:

“Dark”
by Jericho Brown

I am sick of your sadness,
Jericho Brown, your blackness,
Your books. Sick of you
Laying me down
So I forget how sick
I am. I’m sick of your good looks,
Your debates, your concern, your
Determination to keep your butt
Plump, the little money you earn.
I’m sick of you saying no when yes is as easy
As a young man, bored with you
Saying yes to every request
Though you’re as tired as anyone else yet
Consumed with a single
Diagnosis of health. I’m sick
Of your hurting. I see that
You’re blue. You may be ugly,
But that ain’t new.
Everyone you know is
Just as cracked. Everyone you love is
As dark, or at least as black.

It’s almost as if Brown has considered the navel-gazing question at great length, then wrote a poem about it through a looking glass darkly.

It’s something we all could do because, paradoxically, we often simultaneously love and loathe ourselves, being trapped as we are in these bodies we carry around each day (psychologists call it “baggage,” but that’s a heck of a word for a man’s mortal coil, don’t you think?).

As for self-loathing, I except, of course, those who live to be 100. The secret to their longevity? They don’t think too much, certainly about themselves. And they don’t write poems about mirrors looking back accusingly, either. That alone might cost you a couple of years.

“If It’s Darkness We’re Having, Let It Be Extravagant. “

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Christmas. It’s so entwined with childhood memories that people can get unreasonably sentimental about it. And while I like the look and the music and the food surrounding the holiday, I’ve never been a fan of all the work involved.

You know. Dragging out the boxes that either sit all year in the attic or the basement. Moving everyday items to make room for the four-weeks-only items. And, most feared of all, trimming the tree.

Putting the holiday dog on is one thing, but taking it down is another altogether. After the holiday passes, ye olde tannenbaum begins to feel like a visitor who’s overstayed his welcome. Moodwise, it no longer delivers because, without the anticipation, it has become stale goods.

It’s a cruel but necessary task, deconstructing a tree. And, once it and all the rest are finally done and packed and restacked in the attic / basement, there’s no cleaner feeling and no bigger sigh of accomplishment. Welcome, January! (Words you never thought you’d see.)

The poet Jane Kenyon decided to tackle this post-holiday mood in her poem below. Let’s read along as she conjures a few specific objects in the roles of the not-always-pleasant purveyors of memory:

Taking Down the Tree
Jane Kenyon

“Give me some light!” cries Hamlet’s
uncle midway through the murder
of Gonzago. “Light! Light!” cry scattering
courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,
it’s dark at four, and even the moon
shines with only half a heart.

The ornaments go down into the box:
the silver spaniel, My Darling
on its collar, from Mother’s childhood
in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack
my brother and I fought over,
pulling limb from limb. Mother
drew it together again with thread
while I watched, feeling depraved
at the age of ten.

With something more than caution
I handle them, and the lights, with their
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along
from house to house, their pasteboard
toy suitcase increasingly flimsy.
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.

By suppertime all that remains is the scent
of balsam fir. If it’s darkness
we’re having, let it be extravagant.

The last stanza says it all—and more: “If it’s darkness / we’re having, let it be extravagant.” This after the sound and smell of the needles’ death, hallmarks of the holiday’s annual demise, heralders of January’s annual welcome, winter notwithstanding.

The Cruelest Muse

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If you ask people what the top inspirations and subject matters of poetry are, they will likely guess first, love (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”), and second, nature (“Roses are red, violets are blue”).

Surprisingly, however, one of the most popular muses is the cruelest — death.

This came to mind yesterday when I picked up my copy of Marie Howe’s What the Living Do, an extended elegy to her younger brother John, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1989.

The collection contains snapshots of moments, both before and after his death, ones that collectively draw the reader deeper into her experiences, feelings, and self-doubts. Yes, it is love and nature, too — as all death must be — but the loss and the mystery are the drivers, the inspirations, and ultimately the beauty behind these works.

Here are two I read yesterday, the first about a dream after John’s death and the second a conversation with her brother before his death.

The Promise
by Marie Howe

In the dream I had when he came back not sick
but whole, and wearing his winter coat,

he looked at me as though he couldn’t speak, as if
there were a law against it, a membrane he couldn’t break.

His silence was what he could not
not do, like our breathing in this world, like our living,

as we do, in time.
And I told him: I’m reading all this Buddhist stuff,

and listen, we don’t die when we die. Death is an event,
a threshold we pass through. We go on and on

and into light forever.
And he looked down, and then back up at me. It was the look we’d pass

across the kitchen table when Dad was drunk again and dangerous,
the level look that wants to tell you something,

in a crowded room, something important, and can’t.

The Last Time
by Marie Howe

The last time we had dinner together in a restaurant
with white tablecloths, he leaned forward

and took my two hands in his hands and said,
I’m going to die soon. I want you to know that.

And I said, I think I do know.
And he said, What surprises me is that you don’t.

And I said, I do. And he said, What?
And I said, Know that you’re going to die.

And he said, No, I mean know that you are.

The last line of “The Promise” uses a concrete — the way close siblings learn to communicate silently with their eyes — to effectively speak to an abstract, death. What’s interesting is how she links it with secret passages of knowledge they shared in moments of high tension with an abusive father.

In “The Last Time,” death is carried from the brother to the sister to the reader. The punch comes in that last line.

The leap to a single last line after a series of couplets is a strategy that no poet takes lightly, because the lonely line, sitting in the open for emphasis, needs to be better than good if you’re going to try this strategy. Otherwise it looks like you’re trying to make something from nothing.

Two additional poems from this collection are shared in this NPR interview with Howe. If you don’t own a copy of What the Living Do, I’d say it’s in the Top Ten for poetry books you should. For reading. For rereading. And for further proof that death, for all its bad press, remains one of the most inspiring of the elusive muses.

When Something Strange Pounds on Your Door…

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In Gregory Orr’s 2002 collection of poetry-related essays, Poetry as Survival, he brings up a D. H. Lawrence poem I had not read: “Song of a Man Who Has Come Through.” Orr quotes the entire poem (see below) but is chiefly preoccupied with its last lines.

Let’s read it together first:

“Song of a Man Who Has Come Through”
by D. H. Lawrence

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the
world
Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;
If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge
Driven by invisible blows,
The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the
Hesperides.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them.

First off, you can tell this was written in 1914. Only then could a poet get away with such gratuitous exclamations (!!!). Or with the now-rare “Oh.” Or with side-by-side repetitions like “fine, fine.”

A closer look at some of the word choice brings us to some interesting themes. In L5-L7 we have “I yield myself and am borrowed / By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the / world.”

It is as if the world we construct (most ostensibly in the shape of houses we hide in) is too safe, as if we must yield ourselves to a wild wind that will bear us out into the chaos that is the world. Only then will we be rewarded: “The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the / Hesperides.”

Do you have the right stuff? Clearly Lawrence did, as evidenced by the second stanza where we find “wonder that bubbles in my soul.” Necessary, don’t you think, before jumping out the door and pulling the string for your parachute?

Then, the final two stanzas. The ones that fascinate Orr. It brings to mind “The Highwayman” with all that knocking. It is as if our speaker, despite having “the right stuff” and the perfect soul for adventure, second guesses himself when hearing insistent knocking.

Fear, after all, sounds like so: “It is somebody wants to do us harm.”

But therein lies the trap. After a while, we kid ourselves into thinking everything intends to do us harm. You could call it paranoia, or you could call it many less damning things, like the well-worn expression “comfort zone,” but they’re all part of the same constrictive family.

Then, the end that Orr so delights in: “No, no, it is the three strange angels. / Admit them, admit them.”

Who are these “three strange angels,” anyway? It’s one of those magical situations where the poet is better off not explaining. That way, the angels become many things to many readers.

Orr comments: “… in the poem’s final two-line stanza, it’s as if another voice, or perhaps the voice of some other part of him, answers his fear….”

He goes on to point out the magical properties of the number three. Religion, mythology, and stories from ancient times are all rife with examples of things that come in magical troikas: the trinity, the Graces, the Magi, etc.

The word angel, Orr reminds up, comes from the Greek for “messenger.” He marvels at the strength of an adjective (as a part of speech, so seldom lauded in poetry!). Without the word “strange,” the final stanza would wither and lose all effectiveness.

More Orr: “But it isn’t just the identity of the figures that makes the poem’s ending mysterious. We also note that the same someone who knows who is outside the door also tells us emphatically what we are to do in response to the knocking: ‘Admit them, admit them.'”

“We must,” Orr continues, “…become vulnerable to what is out there (or inside us). Not in order to be destroyed or overwhelmed by it, but as part of a strategy for dealing with it and surviving it. Lyric poetry tells us that it is precisely by letting in disorder that we will gain access to poetry’s ability to help us survive. It is the initial act of surrendering to disorder that permits the ordering powers of the imagination to assert themselves.”

Chaos. Disorder. Dionysus. As Nietzsche would put it, time to set aside our inner Apollos and let the messiness in. Then, as the Bible would put it, time to wrestle with our angels. That’s called writing poetry. Struggle. Bending disorder into submission, if temporarily, if but for one poem until next time.

Do you have what it takes to “come through”?

This Christmas Gift Comes Back Every Time You Return It

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In the UK, Dec. 26th is known as Boxing Day, a more relaxed extension of Christmas Day where banks close and folks take another day off to spend with (or recover from) family and friends.

In Ireland, the 26th is called St. Stephen’s Day, with much the same relaxed schedule. Once upon a time, “Wren Boys” would go out and stone to death wrens (just as poor old St. Stephen took it on the noggin, apparently), carrying the dead birds door to door in exchange for treats.

That tradition has died, much to the wrens’ delight, but the lasting tradition remains: eating holiday leftovers, enjoying family, connecting with friends or, for the misanthropes in the crowd, reading a book in peace.

Here in the States, it’s mostly a returns day, wherein people brave the roads and stores to return ill-fitting, ill-conceived, or just ill-looking clothes to beleaguered returns cashiers.

But really, let’s dial it back to the best part of Christmas gatherings: not the materialism, not the madness of keeping six dishes cooked and hot for serving, not the excessive drinking (euphemism: “cheer”), but the connections and reconnections made with family.

This emphasis is captured by Gary Short in his poem “Brothers Playing Catch on Christmas Day.” It’s one humble poem, focused on simple things that really matter. And though it’s a football that’s being caught, Short is really trying to capture a certain je ne sais quoi about brotherhood — the blood ties that bind.

“Je ne sais quoi-ing” is what good poetry does, no? Let’s unwrap this box and take a look:

Brothers Playing Catch on Christmas Day
by Gary Short

Only a little light remains.
The new football feels heavy
and our throws are awkward
like the conversation of brothers
who see each other occasionally.
After a few exchanges,
confidence grows,
the passing and catching
feels natural and good.
Gradually, we move farther apart,
out in the field,
the space between us
filling with darkness.

He leads me,
lofting perfect spirals
into the night. My eyes
find the clean white laces of the ball.
I let fly a deep pass
to his silhouette.
The return throw
cannot be seen,
yet the ball
falls into my hands, as if
we have established a code
that only brothers know.

The last two lines of the first stanza are the surprise you get when lifting a box’s lid and peering in: “the space between us / filling with darkness.” It works especially well in contrast to the ending of the second, where the ball-throwing leads to an unspoken connection, where they’re throwing a ball that cannot so much be seen as understood on an instinctive level:

“The return throw
cannot be seen,
yet the ball
falls into my hands, as if
we have established a code
that only brothers know.”

The darkness that separates brothers comes under many names: time, distance, misunderstandings. And yet the bond, forged by fire on the anvil of childhood, connects them no matter what. You go deep, look up into that good starry night, and a ball drops into your hands like some perfectly-boxed and wrapped gift.

American brothers wouldn’t know Boxing Day from Muhammad Ali (no connection), but they surely know the awkwardness of reconnecting and, once it’s done, how it brings you back to where you were so many years ago in simpler, more graceful times. Merry Christmas, readers. To you and your parents, brothers, sisters, relatives, and fellow men no matter what country they live in.

Imagery + Contrast = Effective

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As Confucius never said, “A two-fer is always better than a one-fer.”

In poetry-speak, this means it’s all well and good to strut your stuff with metaphor, alliteration, anaphora, et and cetera, but it always becomes that much more effective when you yoke two devices together like a pair of oxen.

As a brief example, see Athena Kildegaard’s poem, “Ripe Cherries,” below. Short and sweet, it marries imagery (the taste of cherries) with unexpected contrast (the firing of guns). Granted, you might not call “unexpected contrast” a poetic element, but I call it a tool that writers of all genres should have in their toolboxes.

Let’s see how it’s done:

Ripe Cherries
Athena Kildegaard

I read that the men,
on their way to Gettysburg,
stopped along the road
to pick and eat ripe cherries.

That the fruit should not
go to waste.

That they should take
such pleasure before battle.

That the oldest among them
should shake the trees
and the youngest gather
the fallen fruit.
That they should aim rifles
with the taste of cherries
against their teeth.

Simple, right? Plain-spoken and honest, the speaker gains our trust as someone who knows of what she speaks—Gettysburg. The anecdote sounds right, after all, given the specifics of old soldiers shaking cherries loose while young soldiers gather them from the ground.

Kildegaard also uses anaphora to good effect via four waves of “That the….”

What surprises nicely, though, is pairing the taste of cherries in one’s mouth with firing guns to kill your fellow man. Even if you are a veteran of the armed services, chances are you have never experienced that.

Thus does a simple technique, imagery, become a more complex one on the reader’s palate thanks to the well-aged (in oak barrels) surprise of juxtaposition.

Mmm. Two-fers are better than one-fers! Hats off to apocryphal sayings from The Analects, then!

Jane Hirshfield as Scheherazade

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hirshfield

In education, lectures are vilified with good reason. They are boring. They are so much bombast. They are inflicted by vainglorious pontificators on passive victims who must endure or find ways to daydream through it all.

What happens, though, when a speaker is so knowledgeable, silver-tongued, and interesting that the restless audience (or reader) begins to sit up and pay attention like the Sultan before Scheherazade? That’s what happens when I read a collection of Jane Hirshfield essays on poetry, last year Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and these past few days Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World.

The poetic title points to the ten essays, here as chapters titled “Kingfishers Catching Fire: Looking with Poetry’s Eyes,” “Language Wakes Up in the Morning: On Poetry’s Speaking,” “Seeing Through Words: An Introduction to Basho, Haiku, and the Suppleness of Image,” “Thoreau’s Hound: Poetry and the Hidden,” “Uncarryable Remainders: Poetry and Uncertainty,” “Close Reading: Windows,” “Poetry and the Constellation of Surprise,” “What Is American in Modern America Poetry: a Brief Primer with Poems,” “Poetry, Transformation, and the Column of Tears,” and “Strange Reaches, Impossibility, and Big Hidden Drawers: Poetry and Paradox.”

As you can see, Hirshfield covers a lot of poetic turf in this collection, my favorite being the lengthy section on the enigmatic but interesting 17th-century haiku master, Basho. Buddhism is a Hirshfield specialty, and if anyone can rescue haiku from American elementary school classrooms (where it is being held for ransom), raising them to the adult art form they were and still are, it’s Jane Hirshfield.

Equally compelling is the essay with the intriguing title “Thoreau’s Hound.” As a fan of Henry David Thoreau (my poetry collection features as an epigraph his famous line from Walden, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”), I wondered where this would doggone lead.

Turns out, the essay is based on another Thoreau line from Walden: “I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travelers I have spoken to concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.”

Hirshfield pairs this with a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: “Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir tree.”

The point? Mankind, as Jane Hirshfield points out, “wants to know,” yet there is an equal attraction to mystery, to not knowing, to the chase and the journeys such pursuits entail. This, too, is a province of poetry, which is forever looking at the intangibles of mystery and trying on various concrete forms. With metaphor and imagery comes the hunt for le mot juste, the baying of hounds on the scent, the nearness of capture… and yet, and yet, despite not finding our quarry, we are often grateful for the closeness, the magical proximity, we enjoy when reading a good poem.

Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of Hirshfield’s essay collections is the number of poems, both complete and excerpts, she introduces as concrete examples of her abstract points. Among these I find new poets, new poems, new possibilities to explore. One of my favorites in this book was an excerpt from Jack Gilbert’s “Going Wrong.” I found one line–about the eyes of dying fish, of all things–that led me to the entire poem online. I leave it for you to enjoy. The line “the grand rooms fading from their flat eyes” is worth the price of admission alone. Only a poet could conceive of the sea as “grand rooms” captured in the eyes of the fish who live there.

GOING WRONG

by Jack Gilbert

The fish are dreadful. They are brought up
the mountain in the dawn most days, beautiful
and alien and cold from night under the sea,
the grand rooms fading from their flat eyes,
Soft machinery of the dark, the man thinks,
washing them. “What can you know of my machinery!”
demands the Lord. Sure, the man says quietly
and cuts into them, laying back the dozen struts,
getting to the muck of something terrible.
The Lord insists: “You are the one who chooses
to live this way. I build cities where things
are human. I make Tuscany and you go to live
with rocks and silence.” The man washes away
the blood and arranges the fish on a big plate.
Starts the onions in the hot olive oil and puts
in peppers. “You have lived all year without women.”
He takes out everything and puts in the fish.
“No one knows where you are. People forget you.
You are vain and stubborn.” The man slices
tomatoes and lemons. Takes out the fish
and scrambles eggs. I am not stubborn, he thinks,
laying all of it on the table in the courtyard
full of early sun, shadows of swallows flying
on the food. Not stubborn, just greedy.

from The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992 (Knopf, 1994)

Writing Prompts for Every Vignette in Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street”

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Although they are technically vignettes, the short chapters in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street are deeply poetic in their use of figurative language. And why wouldn’t they be? Cisneros herself is a poet as well as a prose writer who has a solid collection of poems to her credit.

My teaching history includes a long stretch of years teaching Mango Street. During that time, I invited my students to write as well as read. In fact, they named their short collections after their own homes’ street names and selected a number of prompts below for inspiration. Once the prompts were selected, students reread the Cisneros vignette that inspired the writing prompt, pointed out to their groups (or the class) their favorite lines (often writing techniques, which they then identified), then used the vignettes as a model to write their own.

The result? A greater appreciation of Cisneros’ style and no small amount of pride among student-writers once their little books of five vignettes (though teachers can pick any number) were written, critiqued, revised, published, and shared not only with the class but with their own families and friends.

“The House on Mango Street” (p. 1)

Describe your house in detail. Include the sounds and smells typical of your home, and perhaps how certain structures/objects feel in it or outside of it. Use figurative language to describe a few of its features (windows, doors, etc.). Finally, embed one brief anecdote in your description that shows something about your house (like the nun anecdote in Cisneros’ vignette).

“Hairs” (p. 6)

Use personification and/or a series of similes/metaphors to describe your hair and the hair of other members of your family. Make sure your figurative language is both original and accurate.

“Boys & Girls” (p. 8)

How are boys and girls different socially? In what ways do they “live in separate worlds,” in your opinion? Bring to life a brief example.

“My Name” (p. 10)

What does your name mean? How did you get it? Do you like it? Why or why not? Do you have a nickname? What would you name yourself? Why? Any stories associated with how you got your name?

“Cathy, Queen of Cats” (p. 12)

Describe in detail a neighbor who is special in some way OR a friend you had when you were younger. Tell what the person looked like and, using dialogue and actions, show what made that person unique.

“Our Good Day” (p. 14)

Choose a “good day” from your childhood or more recent days where you and some friends had an “adventure.” Zoom in to the highlight of this day (the best part) and tell the story of what happened. Be sure to embed important descriptions of the characters involved, the setting, and dialogue. Use a few original similes/metaphors as well.

“Laughter” (p. 17)

Write a vignette describing what your laughter is like. Pick a few friends’ or family members’ laughs to describe with figurative language, too. How are they all similar or different?

“Gil’s Furniture Bought & Sold” (p. 19)

Choose a place that’s cluttered and describe it using specific nouns and figurative language. It could be a store like Gil’s, a room, a garage, a closet, a basement, or an attic.

“Meme Ortiz” (p. 21)

Describe a person who owns a cat or dog (or other pet). How are the person and pet alike? How are they different? Compare and contrast; include an anecdote about the person and pet.

“Louie, His Cousin & His Other Cousin” (p. 23)

Either describe a favorite car (old car, cool car, junk car) in your family OR tell the story of a fender bender or any other car-related incident you’ve been in or witnessed.

“Marin” (p. 26)

Describe someone who has great dreams. Be sure the reader can see both the character AND his or her great dreams.

“Those Who Don’t” (p. 28)

Are you afraid of cities or certain other locations? Of people in some way different from you? Why? Tell a story of an encounter with people you felt uncomfortable around. How did you behave and, in retrospect, how did this make you feel? Did you overcome your fear? Share details on how.

“There Was An Old Woman…” (p. 29)

Were there ever kids who your parents warned you to stay away from? Describe a few of them and, briefly, how they looked, spoke, and behaved.

“Alicia Who Sees Mice” (p. 31)

Share a story that illustrates one of your fears or, if you prefer, one of someone you know.

“Darius & the Clouds” (p. 33)

Describe a time when someone surprised you by saying something enlightening, revealing, or just plain cool.

“And Some More” (p. 35)

Tell an anecdote (using dialogue, actions, description) of a time when you and some friends got in an argument over something stupid.

“The Family of Little Feet” (p. 39)

Can you recall a time when you played dress up or did something that made you feel much older and more sophisticated? Show (vs. just tell) the story.

“A Rice Sandwich” (p. 43)

Bag lunches and school cafeterias. Describe in detail some unique sandwiches and designs, some interesting foods and surprises, you’ve found in your brown bags/lunch boxes or pouches at school lunch. Ever trade foods? Which ones and why? Do you have any funny cafeteria stories? Share your story using showing details, figurative language, and sensory details.

“Chanclas” (p. 46)

Describe a time when you were mortified by having to wear clothing you considered to be ugly, inappropriate, or embarrassing. Where were you and why did you feel this way? What happened?

“Hips” (p. 49)

Create some jump-rope rhymes (or “Choosing It” rhymes) of your own. Share a few actual ones (like Nenny does) that you used when you were a kid.

“The First Job” (p. 53)

Describe a situation when you were shy almost to the point of self-conscious embarrassment.

“Papa Who Wakes” (p. 56)

Has there ever been a death in the family? Describe your emotions. How did you deal with the pain or help others deal with it? How did others help you? What did you gain from the experience?

“Born Bad” (p. 58)

Have you ever picked on someone only to be torn by guilt for doing it? Describe the incident and the feelings it caused.

“Elenita, Cards, Palm, Water” (p. 62)

Describe a memory involving a superstition, astrology, or fortune telling.

“Geraldo No Last Name” (p. 65)

Has an interesting stranger ever passed in and out of your life in one day? Provide details.

“Edna’s Ruthie” (p. 67)

Describe an adult who behaves like a kid. Show the reader how this person acts and remains young.

“The Earl of Tennessee” (p. 70)

Read the quote on p. 71 that begins and ends with the following words: “At night Nenny and I can hear… lets loose its sigh of dampness.” Using the sense of sound only, describe a daily ritual someone goes through at home or elsewhere that you can recognize by listening from another room.

“Sire” (p. 72)

Describe a time when you had to force yourself to be brave around people who made you nervous.

“Four Skinny Trees” (p. 74)

Use personification and simile/metaphor to describe an inanimate object.

“No Speak English” (p. 76)

Have you ever met someone who could not speak English or been in a country where you could not speak the native language? Share your experience with a brief anecdote.

“Rafaela Who Drinks…” (p. 79)

Rafaela wishes she were Rapunzel. Describe a fairy tale character or a mythological character you wish YOU were. Explain.

“Sally” (p. 81)

Write a monologue to a person (real or imagined) you have frequently seen but never met. What do you already know about this person? What speculations do you have about him/her? What would you ask him/her? Add a description of the person.

“Minerva Writes Poems” (p. 84)

Write a letter of advice to Minerva. Include an original poem of your own about something cheerful.

“Bums in the Attic” (p. 86)

Who (or what) might you invite to sleep in your attic? Why?

“Beautiful & Cruel” (p. 88)

Write about ways you have tried to show your independence by doing things your own way.

“A Smart Cookie” (p. 90)

What lesson about life has YOUR mother or father tried to share with you? Bring the reader there through dialogue and description.

“What Sally Said” (p. 92)

Detail a time when you or your family had to help someone in trouble. Use the key moments only.

“The Monkey Garden” (p. 94)

Describe in detail a garden or other secret spot you visited or hid in (or still go to now) as a kid.

“Red Clowns” (p. 99)

Use description and imagery to make an otherwise common location seem scary.

“Linoleum Roses” (p. 101)

Tell a brief story that uses irony to make a point.

“The Three Sisters” (p. 103)

Share a story where the supernatural plays an important role.

“Alicia & I Talking” (p. 106)

What might your home and your town look like if you returned to it after 20 years away? Describe your return and the surprises it might involve.

“A House of My Own” (p. 108)

Give readers a tour of your dream house – one that reflects your interests as a person. Avoid describing cliché mansions where every detail is provided via endless sums of money. Rather, let even humble details show readers something about YOUR personality and values.

“Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes” (p. 109)

Write a vignette showing how much you care about someone from your present or past. “Rescue them” by bringing their hidden, unknown, or misunderstood story to life for others to see and appreciate.

*****

Enjoying this and other lesson-related posts for the English classroom? Wish you could show your appreciation in a small way?

Go to the BOOKS page and purchase a collection of poems for your classroom library (or yourself). It’s the little gestures that go a long way!

Lunch with Frank O’Hara

poetry poetry books

blue angel

What will you have for lunch? The filling and beautifully-messy pastrami and rye? The “who-am-I-kidding?” rabbit-food special of salad and soup? The send-me-back-to-the-60s special of three martinis?

For Frank O’Hara, I’m seeing on my reread of Lunch Poems, it’s a deceiving mix of prepared nonchalance with a dash of oxymoronic condiment. Seemingly off-the-cuff, many of these poems likely took more time and revision than first glance might indicate.

A good example is his poem called (exotically enough) “Five Poems,” which looks suspiciously like one poem divided into a 5-layer cake by dividers. In the first, O’Hara alludes to a “white night,” which brings Russia’s white nights and Dostoevsky to mind for this reader. It also contains two wonderful similes: “calm as a rug or a bottle of pills.” Valley of the Dolls, anyone?

Stanza (er, Poem) #2 has a line in all caps, showing that O’Hara would be a natural in the Age of the Internet (pass the emoticons, please). What I love here is how he draws a lesson from his lack of money. The guy has 16 cents and a package of yogurt (spelled the British way, yet: yoghurt) and what does it bring to mind? A leaf falling in Chinese poetry. But of course! Li Po in Central Park!

Poem #3 really hits it out of the park. O’Hara struts his learned ignorance big-time, playing casual while casually dropping names: Cadoret, Varése, and Adolph Gottlieb. Cadoret is a name recognized by connoisseurs of oysters and fine wines, Monsieur (which is why I didn’t recognize it). Et Edgar Varése was a French composer (who is now decomposing, no doubt). Gottlieb? An American abstract painter. How’s that for an unlikely holy trinity at noon? O’Hara ends this poem sleeping on the British yoghurt and dreaming of the Persian Gulf (pre-Revolutionary Guards, I take it).

In Poem #4 we get the lines “I knew why I love taxis, yes / subways are only fun when you’re felling sexy / and who feels sexy after The Blue Angel / well maybe a little bit.” Funny, but esoteric, too. More “prepared nonchalance” for the reader, thank you, The Blue Angel being a 1930 German film starring the lovely Marlene Dietrich.

What I like is the prophetic final poem, the one-liner: “I seem to be defying fate, or am I avoiding it?” Poor guy. Given his tragic end, being run down by a beach taxi only a few years after this collection came out, I’d say he was only avoiding it, as fate–greedy as it is–will not be denied. Fate and fatal are not second cousins twice removed for nothing!

Here is the poem in full, con brio!

“Five Poems” by Frank O’Hara

Well now, hold on
maybe I won’t go to sleep at all
and it’ll be a beautiful white night
or else I’ll collapse
completely from nerves and be calm
as a rug or a bottle of pills
or suddenly I’ll be off Montauk
swimming and loving it and not caring where

—

an invitation to lunch
HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT?
when I only have 16 cents and 2
packages of yoghurt
there’s a lesson in that, isn’t there
like in Chinese poetry when a leaf falls?
hold off on the yoghurt till the very
last, when everything may improve

—

at the Rond-Point they were eating
an oyster, but here
we were dropping by sculptures
and seeing some paintings
and the smasheroo-grates of Cadoret
and music by Varese, too
well Adolph Gottlieb I guess you
are the hero of this day
along with venison and Bill

I’ll sleep on the yoghurt and dream of the Persian Gulf

—

which I did it was wonderful
to be in bed again and the knock
on my door for once signified “hi there”
and on the deafening walk
through the ghettos where bombs have gone off lately
left by subway violators
I knew why I love taxis, yes
subways are only fun when you’re feeling sexy
and who feels sexy after The Blue Angel
well maybe a little bit

—

I seem to be defying fate, or am I avoiding it?