This page is for participants in the Life as Rehearsal for the Poem workshop, Year 2 (2021/2022). (How this got its name, here.) Workshops will happen from 4-6pm Sundays:
January 16, 23, 30 & Feb 6 & 13. Registration is open HERE.
WEEK ONE Jan 16, 2022
https://www.studentwritingcenter.us/american-poetry-4/charles-olson.html
READ THIS ARTICLE:
Can you write a blunt statement such as Kruger’s response to the Pledge of Allegiance “Untitled (Our people),” 1994/2017? Could you write a blunt statement with the opposite tone?
Does your house/writing space have a name? If no, consider naming it. If yes, use it each time during your check-in. We resume meetings January 16, 2022.
WRITE:
Barbara Kruger Endlessly Memeable Blunt Speaking Poem
How did your Autumn 2021 piece go? Have you started a serial poem/saturation job? Can you articulate a goal for your 2022 poetry practice?
READ THIS:
EXERCISE:
Start writing a poem called 2022. You can change the title later in the year, or add a subtitle. This will be a poetic journal of your work. Occasionally there will be exercises assigned that will be part of this journal. Best to open a file, Word, Pages and start there. If you have a subject that interests you, or is in the news, or something you’ve ever wondered about, you can use that as a subject. Extra points if you include history, your place, indigenous history of your place and always luminous details. Feel free to explore past forms/prompts from this class, or look elsewhere on this site for writing prompts, such as Haibun or American Sonnet, or Berrigan Collage Sonnet. It will not be necessary to share work in the class. In the weeks ahead there will be some examples of journal-style poetry. Ping me if you have questions. Come to class ready to discuss materials.
WEEK TWO January 23, 2022
WATCH:
LISTEN:
READ: Here is the Joanne Kyger chapbook I mentioned. Notice her journal-style, her weaving of the everyday into the poems, the references to Buddhist practices & other artful subtleties. Feel free to use the Cover Poem exercise using any of the poems in this chapbook to build your 2022 serial poem. You don’t have to agree with her, or you can go off on your on tangent.) Also read this: Joanne Kyger Phenomenological from A Curriculum of the Soul. (Some background on A Curriculum of the Soul is here.) How her journal practice, her inclusion of history, her luminous details, the personal myth of dreams all winds up as part of her assignment of the phenomenological. Did she succeed with the assignment? This short video on the philosophy of phenomenology may be of use.
EXERCISE:
CLICK ON THIS: Stefanie Heine/Paul Celan Recycling Cannibalizing (Ricercar)
Also, add to your 2022 poem and consider reading some Sunday.
WEEK THREE, 30-JAN-2022
WATCH:
LISTEN: b.p. nichol
After listening, think about the element of sound in your poems. Have you ever recorded yourself reading a poem? Sony IC Recorders are WONDERFUL and cheaper now than when I bought mine 20 yrs ago. Of course you can use your cellphone and Imovie is decent software that can allow you to make a videopoem and Audacity is good FREE audio editing software. Consider playing with sound recordings of a poem.
READ:
Intro to Basho’s Ghost by Sam Hamill
https://medium.com/thinksheet/the-first-painting-of-impressionism-9bd04e28ac6
Poetry as Healing, Poets as Healers: The Legacy of Robert Bly (1926-2021)
For anyone who has not tried this: https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/
For those who were intrigued by Kyger’s Phenomenology and/or those who carry the Olson legacy: https://paulenelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/A-Curriculum-Of-The-Soul.pdf (No one mentioned this in the last session and I think it is an amazing project.)
Challenge: Can you put a line from HERE in a poem? Extra credit for making it pop with Surprise Mind.
WRITE:
WEEK FOUR, 6-FEB-2022
READ/WRITE/LISTEN:
READ:
Also:
“Against the Source”:
Daphne Marlatt’s Revision of Charles Olson
& 
Daphne Marlatt – Imperial Cannery, 1913
Carlton recommends:
WEEK FIVE: 13-FEB-2022
WATCH:
READ:
Beyond Perception: Toward A Proprioceptive Poetics
The Return of the Urban Firestorm: What happened in Colorado was something much scarier than a wildfire.
WATCH:
IMMORTAL CUPBOARD: In Search of Lorine Niedecker (Excerpt)
Exercise/Listen to:
Two ways to do this exercise. 1) Put the music on in the background and when a tune catches your ear, note the title, write it down and do some research on the “topic” or inspiration it alludes to. You can search the tune, get personnel and other info about it at: https://www.allmusic.com/
When you get a chance to write, write a poem using that title while listening to it over and over. Note the little green 1 on the right side of this which indicates the tune will repeat:
2) You can also use this playlist as background to write, can incorporate the title into a segment of a serial poem on which you are working, can add associations that come up for you when listening, research the biographies of the key personnel on the tune and incorporate that, incorporate multiple song titles &c.
After our last meeting, February 13th, we will resume March 6 and go 6, 13, 20, 27 and April 3. Register HERE. Thank you for allowing me to be your guide for this work!