L'aura del Campo

ASSIGNMENT for April from Emily!

Hello All.

I wanted to touch base with you all and say again how grateful I am to have your enthusiasm for taking more workshop classes.
Again, my apologies for capping the class at 12 and yes, all 12 attendees showed up last night.

Here is our hand-out from last night.
Finally, here is our assignment is you want to write along

Write a poem no more than 5 sentences and use short lines, or rather short-ish lines.
Please write about an event, moment or distilled experience that takes place in the immediate.
Meaning, write about one action/one moment/one distilled event.

Last but not least...have fun and keep writing.

fondly,
Emily

HANDOUT

Poetry Workshop: Missoula Public Library/ Line Breaks
April 9th/16th/23rd/30th/7th/14th Reading on May 21st@ 6:30pm to 8:30pm
“Poetry is the sound of language organized in lines.”

Homeland Security
by James Longenbach

The four am cries
of my son worm
through the double
foam of earplugs

and diazepam.
The smoke alarm’s
green eye glows.
Beneath the cries,

the squirm and bristle
of the night’s catch
of fiddlebacks
on the glue-traps

guarding our bed.
Necrotic music.
Scored in my head.
And all night columns

of ants have tramped
through the ruins
of my sleep, bearing
the fipronil

I left for them
home to their queen.
Patriot ants.
Out of republics

endlessly perishing.
If I can hold
out long enough,
maybe my wife

will go. If she
waits long enough,
maybe he’ll go back
down on his own.



Somewhere Holy
By Carl Phillips
for Erin, for others
There are places in this world where
you can stand somewhere holy and be

thinking If it’s holy then why don’t
I feel it, something, and while waiting,

like it will any moment happen and
maybe this is it, a man accosts you,

half in his tongue, half in yours, he
asks if maybe you are wanting to get

high, all the time his damaged finger
twitching idly like on purpose at a

leash that holds an animal you can’t
quite put your finger on at first, until

you ask him, ask the man, and then
he tells you it’s a weasel and, of

course, it is, you’ve seen them, you
remember now, you say Of course, a weasel.

There are men inside the world who, never
mind how much they tell you that they’re

trying, can’t persuade you that it isn’t
you, it’s life, it’s life in general

where it hurts, a fear, of everything,
of nothing, when if only they would name

it maybe then you’d stay, you all the
time aware it’s you that’s talking, so

who’s going anywhere but here, beside them,
otherwise why come, why keep on coming,

when you can’t get to believing what
they tell you any more than you believed

the drugs the other man was offering
wouldn’t harm you. Still, you think, you

took them and you’re still alive, enough
to take the hand, that wants, that

promises to take you to where damage is
a word, that’s all, like yes, so Yes you

say, I’ll come, you tell him Show me.

Section From Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out
By Richard Siken

You want a better story. Who wouldn’t?
A forest, then. Beautiful trees. And a lady singing.
Love on the water, love underwater, love, love and so on.
What a sweet lady. Sing lady, sing! Of course, she wakes the dragon.
Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly
flames everywhere.
I can tell already you think I’m the dragon,
that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon.
I’m not the princess either.
Who am I? I’m just a writer. I write things down.
I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,
I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow
glass, but that comes later.


What’s the technique?

Speed:

Sound:

Syntax:

Surprise:

Sense:

Space:

Let’s practice with the first stanza from William Stafford’s “Traveling through the Dark”
Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
The Journey
By Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
through the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with it’s stiff fingers
at the very foundations—
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
Enough, and a wild night,
And the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you stode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thin you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.