speach tree

Just finished reading A Van Jordan's MACNOLIA (2004). I thought this was a useful critique by Tim Morris. I agree with him that the more interesting poems were the dictionary-definition format poems "to", "with", and "from." Though I am no formalist, I am warming up to using forms to teach poetry. I don't know if persona poetry is considered formal, but it usually gets people to write. But I digress. Below is a sestina that I want to use in a lesson, but I'll have to work out the lesson later - too tired at the moment. NB: 1. Fanny Brice, the longtime star of the Ziegfield Follies, was known for her talents as a comedienne as well as a singer. 2. Princess Tam Tam was a film starring Josephine Baker, produced in 1935. 3. "My Man" was a popular song written by Maurice Yvain as "Mon Homme." Later, the English version was written by Channing Pollock for the Ziegfield Follies. 4. Pepito was Josephine Baker's fiance from 1935...

these days it's after i've had a shot of rum, after being out of the house from 10am to 11pm, after bouncing around a classroom feeding off the energy derived from a can of soda, instant coffee, bright-eyed young people fueled by their own youth. today i explained japan's cultural obsession with cherry-blossoms, how a tree totally devoted to the production of beauty (the absence of even a single photosynthesizing leaf) can inspire so much poetry. how entire offices will take an afternoon to picnic and get drunk under the falling blossoms, how some people will go flower-viewing just for the food. it was a "Namiko Abe" moment. (see my earlier post dated april 23.) i also succumb to these moments, although i do identify with the ones who show up just to get drunk and eat the rice cakes. i am learning that my writing identity is becoming more and more estranged from my daytime identity. is this a problem?

april: this is the month when hate blooms staining my gut but it is also the month of wisteria. april (08): I imagine the pink and white buds bursting out of trees this month as the knuckles on my flailing fists. I am furious. I bleed longer and more. I eat red things. I eat dark black and purple things. the teeth in my mouth sharpen around harsh words and hot thoughts that emerge as air. I hurt us because I hate us. this is the month I yearn to stab a blossoming tree into a white shirt. this abuse doesn’t hurt me more than it hurts you. the ovaries churn. the entrails heave. I am a rage that will leave me exhausted and spent, repentant, by may.

This is a great writing activity that I learned from DW, but I’ve modified it a little bit so that it will be easier to use with my poetry students. (D, please feel free to post your own version or other versions you have heard of.) materials: lined paper tracing paper instructions: at the top of the sheet of lined paper, write Dear ___________ (fill in the blank with whatever. this will be your reader, your audience, and you will write a letter as if to _______________.) write a secret message to someone that you’ve been meaning to tell but never had the guts to do it. (1 – 2 sentences, but they don’t have to be full sentences). write it on the lined paper so that the message is scattered on the page but so that you can still read it top to bottom and left to right. now forget your secret message when the moderator begins to keep time, start writing and don’t stop. write anything you want but don’t stop, even if you get stuck. if you can’t think of anything, just write nonsense until ...

text: how deep/ can this room grow as deep/ as deep as our voices/ as the Pacific/ and the words/ that wander and run into the walls like flies/ the fireflies,/ they rise up from the bog/ outside the Kaleidescope Room/ like spirits from their graves/ noting nothing/ after all they are not/ tourists falsh- ing shiny asses at the sun, / the moon/ and everything in between/ and meanwhile you/ and i we think of/ nothing, or anything, whichever/ you prefer because after all/ we are not fireflies/ and we can say/ whatever we can think of.

providence can be a brutal city, just like any other. in this glass box I watched the ocean fall in sheets outside computer clusters, braid inside the gutters. umbrellas made no difference. this is the version i actually ended up using: Providence can be and has been just as brutal as any other city in the country, but i was safe and desperately warm within the glass cage, watching the Atlantic fall in sheets, watching the acid rain braid itself into the gut- ters, wringing words like fair- trade coffee from my strained eyeballs to stain the imaginary page on my computer screen.

This is one of the retreats that gave me some real strategies to take back home... For those of you who don't know about Kundiman go to kundiman.org! This is a revised version of what I submitted to the directors as a testimonial: Language is my homeland, and even this landscape is always moving and changing. The Kundiman Retreat was like an unexpected homecoming. Unexpected because I never knew I could feel so much connection, despite the initial awkwardness. At first, I felt a little “out of place,” and was self-conscious about the fact that I had only begun to really embrace poetry within the past two years. I never doubted that I was a poet, but I didn’t feel comfortable connecting with other, more experienced poets about the process of creating it. But on the second day, my workshop faculty member brought about a huge movement in how we related to each other. Myung Mi Kim found what connected the very different poetics in our workshop, while recognizing the very different expe...