LARFP Lake Superior

This page is for participants in the Life as Rehearsal for the Poem workshop, Year 2, April. (How this got its name, here.) Each week’s course materials will be posted on this page requiring you to scroll down each week. (Make sure to try to click on any image. They usually have links.)

Dear LARFP People! The last five week workshop to happen via Zoom Sunday nights 4-6pm PDT begins April 27 and goes the next four weeks, May 1, 8, 15 & 22. We will focus on Lake Superior by Lorine Niedecker and on project/serial approaches/saturation job as a way to prepare you for the 2022 Poetry Postcard Fest.

(<<<— From KJ)

To help you, Wave Books says:

Hi, Paul,
Thank you for being in touch with us. I am delighted to hear that you are teaching Lorine Niedecker and also excited that you plan on interviewing Hoa Nguyen this month, too. I would be happy to provide a digital desk copy of Lake Superior for your class (see attached). Also, when the book becomes available again, your students can enjoy 30% off by using the discount code STUDENT_2022 at checkout. I hope this helps, and if you have any questions or would like to share the interview with Hoa, please don’t hesitate to reach out directly to me again.
Very best,
Catherine
* * * *
Catherine Bresner
(she/her)

WORKSHOP REGISTRATION IS HERE.

WEEK ONE, Sunday, April 24, 4-6pm PDT:

READ:

Jenny Penberthy’s essay Writing Lake Superior

Lake Superior by Lorine Niedecker. (At least the poem. Come to discuss it.)

LISTEN:

WATCH

(This interview will be available via podcast soon.)

WRITE

What I Take

FINALLY

Are you registered for the Poetry Postcard Fest? Thanks to Adelia MacWilliam, I am incubating an epic exercise to happen at the end of the postcard fest that will best be executed if you have participated in the fest and have sent the minimum 31 postcards. Stay tuned and maybe buy a used copy of this book.

WEEK TWO, Sunday, May 1, 4-6pm PDT:

Each hypertext link below (in color) is part of the course materials. Click on everything highlighted and all images.

WATCH:

Michael McClure interviewed about his play The Beard: (Watching the first 30 minutes is ok. The spark that became the play, Beast Language, Meat Science and Robert Creeley.)

READ

Lake Superior by Lorine Niedecker. (At least to page 27, Lake Superior Country. Come to discuss it. Think about her methods and how you might use them in your saturation job. Do you have ideas about that? Share them with the participants.)

The Unfinished Work of Muriel Rukeyser God bless the scholars who dig through archives. Have you ever done that? Have you a plan for your own archives? God bless the libraries who keep these materials available. Would we have appreciated Lorine Niedecker less if Jenny Penberthy had not dedicated a huge portion of her life’s energy to LN? Was Rukeyser neglected? If yes, why?

Read about Robert Creeley. Once known primarily for his association with the group called the “Black Mountain Poets,” at the time of his death in 2005, Robert Creeley was widely recognized as one of the most important and influential American poets of the 20th century. His poetry is noted for both its concision and emotional power.

Can a poem be both projective and concise? Is this poem (& others from Pieces if you have Creeley’s collected, or that book) written as McClure says “from the body?”

READ ALSO;

WRITE

If you have your saturation job going, feel free to read work from that in class.

Also, try THIS BANNED AMAZON WORDS EXERCISE.

WEEK THREE, MAY 8, 2022

READ: Lake Superior by Lorine Niedecker. (Through the essay by Douglas Crase: “Niedecker and the Evolutional Sublime.” Come to discuss that essay.)

Bernadette Mayer from “Midwinter Day.” https://poets.org/poem/midwinter-day-excerpt

Charles Wuorinen quote from obit (2020):

READ HIS OBITUARY:

LISTEN:

READ ALSO:

Wikipedia Geekery:

WRITE THIS EXERCISE (Ferropastoral &c)

#1 – Ferropastoral

#2 – If you could not do anything but a rant with the Amazon exercise, consider a sound poem in the mode of Jaap Blonk. “What the President Will Say and Do.” Notice how he starts with the phrase in its entirety and then chips away certain sounds until what is left sounds like madness.

Listen to a 2012 interview w/ Jaap here.