Four Suggestions for Good Writing
1.
2.
3.
4.
Showing is usually better than telling.
Concrete language is usually better than abstraction.
Fresh language is usually better than cliché.
Good writing usually involves a process of discovery; you don’t
know what you’re going to say, then you find out what you’re
going to say.
5.
(temporary rule) Write complete sentences. Use verbs. No fragments
6. (temporary rule) Write free verse. No rhyme or meter.
1
DREAMS
I dream of a table and chair
I dream I’m turning over a car
I dream I’m filming a movie
I dream of a gas station
I dream I’m a first class tourist
I dream I’m hanging from a cross
I dream I’m eating a mackerel
I dream I’m crossing a bridge
I dream of a neon sign
I dream of a lady with a mustache
I dream I’m going down the stairs
I dream I’m winding a Victrola
I dream my glasses break
I dream I’m building a coffin
I dream of the planetary system
I dream of a razor blade
I dream I’m fighting with a dog
I dream I’m killing a snake
I dream of little birds flying
I dream I’m dragging a corpse
I dream they sentence me to hang
I dream of the Great Flood
I dream I’m a thistle bush
Translated from the Spanish
of Nicanor Parra
by Miller Williams
I dream, too, that my teeth are falling out.
2
In My Mother’s Drawer -- Richard Terrill
Lint roller
Packer decal
a bag of tops for lost pens.
Two opened rolls of peppermint BreathSavers,
“Works even after the mint is gone.”
4-in-1 screwdriver/bottle opener
for donors to the VFW
(“Good luck,” says the many-leaved clover on its face.)
Hand mirror from a long-merged building and loan.
Menthelatum stick best if used before….
Everything
is half gone, still good, thought worth saving.
Like the newspaper
clippings: Ghandi’s Seven Sins,
Dear Abby
from a May 31st (“Work as if
your life were in peril.
It really is.”),
Cousin Ralph’s obituary, time of visitation underlined in black.
And typed out on a scrap cut to fit these words:
1 box golden raisins
Gin—pour over to cover
Let stand (about one week) until liquor
disappears.
EAT ONLY 9 RAISINS A DAY.
Results in less than a month.
In a Station of the Metro –Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough.
3
GREEN-STRIPED MELONS Jane Hirshfield
They lie
under stars in a field.
They lie under rain in a field.
Under sun.
Some people
are like this as well—
like a painting
hidden beneath another painting.
An unexpected weight
the sign of their ripeness.
Five Reasons Not to Play the Tenor Saxophone – Richard Terrill
Its shape curved like grace turned back
on itself is like lost love
Its green brass lake and oil smell
remains all night on your hands
The cold mouth piece you must blow
into with an o of the
lips as one blows into a
fist on a cold afternoon
often produces music
you hadn't thought of before
The reed you must hold up to
light to see its cane heart--if
you put it in your mouth and
try to talk no one will know
what you are trying to say
The flowers etched in lacquer
on the gold bell
4
TO THE FIRE W.S. Merwin
How long have I been
looking into you
staring through you
into the other side
there is no way of telling
it appears to have continued
from an age of its own
this scrutiny of the bright
veil rising and the lit
corridors of the embers
in which I see the days
beyond touch beyond reach
beyond all understanding
beyond their faces
beneath your dangerous wings
you at whose touch
everything changes
you who never change
there in you one at a time
are the unknown days
turning the corners
the unseen past
the unrecognized present
familiar but already
beyond identity
expressions without selves
appearing finally within you
of whom the light is made
5
WRITE A POEM “AFTER” A PAINTING OR A PHOTOGRAPH
(adapted from Maggie Anderson’s “In a Dark Room: Photography and Revision”
Spend some time locating a photograph or a painting (or a scene from a classic movie—let’s say
one made before 1970) that holds a genuine and compelling interest for you. Portraits and still
lifes will be a bit harder to work with; shots/canvasses of people in action or in interesting places,
a bit easier. Avoid shallow artists like Escher or Norman Rockwell, and avoid an image from
advertising.
Spend some time writing out just what you see in the picture. Go into as much detail as possible,
but don’t feel that the language you use need be objective.
Then, free write from at least three of the following perspectives:
1. Speak from the point of view of the painter/photographer
2. Speak from the point of view of someone or something in the photo/painting
3. Speak from the point of view of someone or something in the photo/painting addressing the
painter/photographer
4. Describe the photo/painting to someone you know who hasn’t seen it
5. Address your writing to someone in the photo/painting
6. Address your writing to the painter/photographer
7. Write what happened just before the scene depicted
8. Write what happened just after the scene depicted
9. Write what was happening outside the frame of the painting/photo
Remembering what you’ve learned in class so far and poems you have enjoyed reading in class,
revise your writing into a poem.
6
My Father’s Back -- Edward Hirsch
There’s an early memory I carry around
In my mind.
like an old photograph in my wallet,
A little graying and faded, a picture
That I don’t much like
but nonetheless keep,
Fingering it now and then like a sore tooth,
Knowing it’s there,
not needing to see it anymore….
The sun slants down on the shingled roof.
The wind breathes in the needled pines.
And I am lying in the grass on my third birthday,
Red-faced and watchful
but not squalling yet,
Not yet rashed or hived up
from eating the wrong food
Or touching the wrong plant,
my father’s leaving.
A moment before he was holding me up
Like a new trophy, and I was a toddler
With my face in the clouds,
spinning around
With a head full of stars,
getting so dizzy.
A moment before I was squealing with joy
In the tilt-a-whirl of his arms,
Drifting asleep in the cavern of his chest . . . .
I remember waking up to the twin peaks
Of his shoulders moving away, a shirt clinging
To has massive body,
a mountain receding.
I remember the giant distance between us:
A drop or two of rain, a sheen on the lawn,
And then I was sitting up
in the grainy half-light
Of a man walking away from his family.
I don’t know why we go over the old hurts
Again and again in our minds, the false starts
And true beginnings
of a world we call the past,
As if it could tell us who we are now,
Or were, or might have been . . . .
It’s drizzling.
A car door slams, just once, and he’s gone.
Tiny pools of water glisten on the street.
7
Linda -- Richard Terrill
We mistook each other for unneedy people then,
two separate hands
on which no fingers were missing.
There was no groping
for neutral language. "Life," you said,
"is a war,” and
“I’m not a very trusting person.”
I was impressed by that: a first date
like a job interview for the Nixon administration.
One week later, your grad student apartment
was stuffed with everything you'd brought from Hong Kong
and two sons, 8 and 10.
They quickly ate their ribs and rice,
spun around the kitchen
like roaches in the light.
I was astounded that all my life
I'd never touched you.
But with the kids doing dishes in the other room,
I placed a hand on yours;
you slapped it as kindly as if
we were living in the nineteenth century.
The kids went off to bed.
Very soon it was the future
and it's stayed so ever since.
8
1926
by Weldon Kees
The porchlight coming on again,
Early November, the dead leaves
Raked in piles, the wicker swing
Creaking. Across the lots
A phonograph is playing Ja-Da.
An orange moon. I see the lives
Of neighbors, mapped and marred
Like all the wars ahead, and R.
Insane, B. with his throat cut,
Fifteen years from now, in Omaha.
I did not know them then.
My airedale scratches at the door.
And I am back from seeing Milton Sills
And Doris Kenyon. Twelve years old.
The porchlight coming on again.
9
November 22 –Richard Terrill
You remember where but not who you were
--ten years old and waiting on the steps
outside Norwood school just after lunch,
the old part of the building, which dated from the teens,
and a girl named Jane Process running up saying,
“I hope he dies!” And you, playground-wise,
knowing a story when you heard one. Then
Miss Parliek—an old woman (all were)
who looked, you thought, like a large thumb,
frumpy and well-intentioned, your fifth grade teacher,
coming out to tell the children it was so.
They let you in, all of you, and through
what should have been math, the scratchy intercom’s
radio accounts, events unfolding
like books you hadn’t read. You remember
sitting at your desk (but not just how
--hands folded, fidgeting with a ruler,
kicking mud flecks fallen from your shoes?).
And when they let out school, Miss Parliek looking through
the window at the flag, which happened
to be waving. Her short neck slouching out,
the old part of the building, a dark day. About to rain some more.
10
TWENTY LITTLE POETRY PROJECTS
Jim Simmerman
1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered
randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you
don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: "The (adjective) (concrete
noun) of (abstract noun) . . ."
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do
in "real life."
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no
sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that "echoes" an
image from earlier in the poem.
Open the poem with the first project and close it with the last. Otherwise use the
projects in whatever order you like, giving each project at least one line. Try to use
all twenty projects. Feel free to repeat those you like. Fool around. Enjoy.
Choose six nouns, six verbs, and three adjectives. Write a poem using these words. One of the
nouns will be your title
11
NOUNS
art
cities
continent
day
disaster
door
fluster
gesture
hour
houses
intent
keys
losing
loss
names
ones
places
realms
rivers
something
things
voice
watch
VERBS
accept
be
bring
is
isn’t
lied
lose
lost
lost
love
master
meant
miss
owned
practice
seem
shan’t
was
wasn’t
went
will
write
ADJECTIVES
evident
filled
hard
joking
last
lost
loved
lovely
many
mother’s
next-to-last
some
three
two
vaster
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