Thursday, May 5, 2016

Creating "Poetry Problems"

Create three “poetry problems” that are more interesting and challenging than the best of the problems I’ve given you so far.

For this post, I decided to create two shorter, more thought-provoking prompts, and one longer one that is more group interactive. I tried to make all of them as challenging and fun as ever. 

(1) Pick a poem that we've read this semester. If you had the impossible task of summarizing this poem in just one word, taking into account all of it's substance and subtext, what would it be and why? 

(2) Take a poem that we've read in class and ask yourself, if it were to fall apart, how would it do so? Would it disintegrate or explode? (Was the theme of the poem bold and powerful, or was it passive and light?)

(3) As a group, take into consideration all of the poems we've read this semester. Decide on two of your favorite poets, as well as your favorite poem. Take a section of this poem, and rewrite it as a two voice poem. Each "voice" is an interpretation of how you think each of the two poets would have written this section. Was it easy or difficult trying to imitate the writing style of these poets? Does writing it in different perspectives, and as a two voice poem, add depth or change the overall theme of the section?

9 comments:

  1. I really appreciate the simplicity of #1 and #2, it's very satisfying for me. I would suggest Majerus to maybe even use one of them next year! I think reading the explanation for the one word chosen in #1 would be really interesting

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  2. I really like how these poetry problems, unlike many others we have seen, involve reflecting upon the poems we have read in class. I also like #2 the best, because I would have never thought about how a poem would explode!

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  3. Number two is my favorite also! I'd love to do number three also, although not in a group (but that's mostly just me hating group-work). I do like how you've focused your prompts around poetry that we've read in class - I like to create my own poetry but not everyone is into that, and especially for people who like to create poetry, it's important to study the voices of other authors and try to recreate them, in the process of discovering your own voice as a writer.

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  4. The second prompt is my favorite, as it is so open and there are so many different ways to interpret it, especially when thinking about the theme as influencing how the poem explodes. The last prompt seems to be the most difficult for me, as trying to replicate another poet would be really difficult.

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  5. These are really interesting prompts! I really like the second one about how it would fall apart. I think a lot of the poems we've read would go out with a bang, while others would just fade away. It'd be interesting to see if there would be other ways that it would fall apart.

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  6. These prompts are so cool! They seem simple, but are actually quite difficult, and I could imagine spending tons of time trying to pick just one word to describe a poem. I also like how they are centered around poetry we've read in class.

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  7. I'm still thinking about number one, which seems to be a really difficult but interesting prompt. Most of the poems we read are already economical with their language to the point that just cutting to one stanza would be hard, so asking for word is challenging.

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  8. I like all of these, but I agree with many of the comments above that #2 is especially interesting. I definitely plan to use it in the future, giving Lina credit, of course :)

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  9. I love the idea of number two so much. I honestly haven't read option three yet, because I'm blown away by how many different ways one could go to answer problem two. It's such a complex question in that you have to base the destruction of the poem based of the tone and impression it gives the reader. Many people could interpret the same poem very differently.

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