Meta's+Packet

**SJVWP – Summer Institute 2011 – Demonstration Lesson by Meta Schettler ** “//When I Am in the Kitchen…I think about the past.” Jeanne Marie Beaumont//
 * The Freshness of Green Things and Memories: Building Imagery in Writing **


 * Outline of Activities for Thursday, June 30th **
 * 1) Brainstorm word bank for “Your Mother’s Kitchen,” a prose poem to be revised for our anthology. – 10 to 15 minutes
 * 2) Draft “Your Mother’s Kitchen.” – 10 minutes
 * 3) Share a couple of poems aloud. – 5 minutes
 * 4) Read and discuss poems by Hayden/Bishop or Dove/Clifton at your tables in pairs with pairs of poems. Introduce image box and share back. – 10 to 15 minutes
 * 5) One word response – word circle/spontaneous poem.
 * 6) Exquisite Corpse exercise with image box—2 groups, 15 to 20 minutes
 * 7) Share a couple of poems aloud. – 5 minutes
 * 8) Writing reflection on Exquisite Corpse with share back. – 5 minutes
 * 9) Evaluation feedback form. Thanks for your comments!

Language that causes people to imagine pictures in their minds
 * Definition of imagery: **

1) To create concrete images in writing; <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">2) To communicate emotion through imagery in writing; <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">3) To engage students in collaborative writing;` <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">4) To tap the intuitive and nonrational aspects of writing.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Purpose of this lesson: **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Also, I am including in this packet more activities that I have used from //The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach//. As Behn and Twichell state in their introduction, their writing activities may yield multiple outcomes such as “a new understanding of the relation of image to meaning, or a way into the unconscious, perhaps a way of marrying autobiography with invention, or a sense of the possibilities of various kinds of structures, ways to bring a dead poem back to life, a new sense of rhythm, or a slight sharpening of the ear” (xiii). All of these results can encourage creative revision and the increased usage of descriptive language in expository essays.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Lesson Rationale: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> I teach parts of this lesson in an upper-division writing course which has a 5000 word writing requirement. We do this creative writing toward the end of the course while reading a memoir by Lauralee Summer called //Learning Joy From Dogs Without Collars//. I use it to give students voice to their own experience and to mirror Summer’s poetic prose from her memoir. In my syllabus I usually label this lesson, “Nurturing Creativity: Lessons for Revision and Style,” to encourage students to transfer these creative techniques to their expository essays. In his introduction to //Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process//, Peter Elbow links creativity to the critical thinking required in revision. He tells us, “you will increase critical revising skills by working on creativity” (10). For our Exquisite Corpse exercise in this lesson, Peter Elbow’s //Writing With Power// is again useful. In Chapter 9, “Writing While Not Thinking About Writing,” he suggests that “It’s a great relief to write seriously and usefully, without thinking about your writing. And it helps the rest of your writing. It makes you more comfortable putting words on paper and it makes those words more natural and lively” (95). The relative anonymity in this exercise and the low-level pressure of only writing one line at a time allows students to open up and risk more in their writing which usually creates satisfying results. This exercise also emphasizes one of Hairston’s twelve principles of a new paradigm for process writing: “It is holistic, viewing writing as an activity that involves the intuitive and nonrational as well as the rational faculties” (qtd. in Totten, 8). Our use of the image box comes from Barry Lane’s //After the End: Teaching and Learning Creative Revision// where he suggests teaching imagery through poetry with an image box and also the teaching of juxtaposition with the random drawing of images from the box (183).


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Five Essential Affirmations (from Peter Elbow’s introduction to //Writing Alone and With Others//): **
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Everyone has a strong, unique voice.
 * 2) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Everyone is born with creative genius.
 * 3) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Writing as an art form belongs to all people, regardless of economic class or educational level.
 * 4) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">The teaching of craft can be done without damage to a writer’s original voice or artistic self-esteem.
 * 5) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">A writer is someone who writes.

//Writing Exercise 1: Your Mother’s Kitchen// -- You must include something green, something dead, the oven, and a female relative walks into the poem. You are not in the poem. This exercise comes from Rita Dove in //The Practice of Poetry: Writing Lessons from Poets Who Teach,// p. 89. Definition of a prose poem from poets.org//:// Though the name of the form may appear to be a contradiction, the prose poem essentially appears as prose, but reads like poetry. In the first issue of //The Prose Poem: An International Journal//, editor Peter Johnson explained, “Just as black humor straddles the fine line between comedy and tragedy, so the prose poem plants one foot in prose, the other in poetry, both heels resting precariously on banana peels.” While it lacks the line breaks associated with poetry, the prose poem maintains a poetic quality, often utilizing techniques common to poetry, such as fragmentation, compression, repetition, and rhyme. The prose poem can range in length from a few lines to several pages long, and it may explore a limitless array of styles and subjects. []

For homework, you should revise “Your Mother’s Kitchen,” and you can add line breaks then if you wish.

September rain falls on the house.
 * Poem 1**
 * Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop**

In the failing light, the old grandmother

sits in the kitchen with the child

beside the Little Marvel Stove,

reading the jokes from the almanac,

laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears

and the rain that beats on the roof of the house

were both foretold by the almanac,

but only known to a grandmother.

The iron kettle sings on the stove.

She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child

is watching the teakettle's small hard tears

dance like mad on the hot black stove,

the way the rain must dance on the house.

Tidying up, the old grandmother

hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac

hovers half open above the child,

hovers above the old grandmother

and her teacup full of dark brown tears.

She shivers and says she thinks the house

feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.

I know what I know, says the almanac.

With crayons the child draws a rigid house

and a winding pathway. Then the child

puts in a man with buttons like tears

and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother

busies herself about the stove,

the little moons fall down like tears

from between the pages of the almanac

into the flower bed the child

has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.

The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove

and the child draws another inscrutable house. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Sundays too my father got up early <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">then with cracked hands that ached <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">from labor in the weekday weather made <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
 * Poem 2**
 * Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden**
 * (from //Every Shut Eye Ain’t Asleep//)**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">When the rooms were warm, he’d call, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">and slowly I would rise and dress, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">fearing the chronic angers of that house,

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Speaking indifferently to him, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">who had driven out the cold <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">and polished my good shoes as well. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">What did I know, what did I know <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">of love’s austere and lonely offices? <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">(Audio at <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">[] )

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">She wants to hear <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">wine pouring. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">She wants to taste <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">change. She wants <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">pride to roar through <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">the kitchen till it shines <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">like straw, she wants
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Poem 3 **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Sunday Greens by Rita Dove **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">(from //Thomas and Beulah//) **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">lean to replace <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">tradition. Ham knocks <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">in the pot, nothing <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">but bones, each <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">with its bracelet <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">of flesh.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">The house stinks <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">like a zoo in summer, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">while upstairs <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">her man sleeps on. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Robe slung over <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">her arm and <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">the cradled hymnal,

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">she pauses, remembers <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">her mother in a slip <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">lost in blues, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">and those collards, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">wild-eared, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">singing.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">curling them around <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">i hold their bodies in obscene embrace <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">thinking of everything but kinship. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">collards and kale <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">strain against each strange other <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">away from my kissmaking hand and <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">the iron bedpot. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">the pot is black, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">the cutting board is black, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">my hand, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">and just for a minute <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">the greens roll black under the knife, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">and the kitchen twists dark on its spine <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">and i taste in my natural appetite <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">the bond of live things everywhere.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Poem 4 **
 * Cutting Greens by Lucille Clifton**
 * (from //Every Shut Eye Ain’t Asleep//)**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Lucille Clifton and Rita Dove, photo from poets.org

//<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Writing Exercise 2: Exquisite Corpse – //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">this was a parlor game of the Surrealists, and it’s an excellent collaborative writing exercise that makes writing poetry as easy as pie. We will use an image box as suggested by Barry Lane in //After// //the End: Teaching and Learning Creative Revision,// Ch. 13, “Words in Collision: Revising Poems.” Each person will pull 2 images from the box to use in her first line.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Discussion question for poetry: What images are memorable or powerful in these poems, and how do the images reinforce or create meaning within the poem? **

//<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Writing Exercise 3 (for another time) //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">: //Ten-Minute Spill// (also from Rita Dove in //The Practice of Poetry, p. 13//). Choose 5 out of 8 words from the following list: cliff, needle, whir, voice, blackberry, cloud, mother, lick. Brainstorm with your class a list of vernacular sayings, proverbs and familiar phrases such as “between the devil and deep blue sea,” “kill two birds with one stone,” “she’s a brick house,” “don’t judge a book by its cover,” etc. Write them on the board. You must include ONE of these lines in your poem, and you must also __alter__ it in some way to make it new and make it your own. The poem should have ten lines, and you only have ten minutes. Go!

//<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Writing Exercise 4 (also for another time): //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> //Five Easy Pieces// (from Richard Jackson in //The Practice of Poetry, p. 40//—a challenging exercise because of the last required step, but my students have written beautiful poems with this exercise.) First, you need to think of a person you know well or invent a person, and also think of a context for this person, and then include the five following “pieces” in your poem: 1) Describe the person’s hands. 2) Describe something she is doing with her hands. 3) Use a metaphor to say something about some //exotic// place (my emphasis because “exotic” is a bit of a loaded term.) 4) Write a question you would like to ask this person in the context of 2 and 3. 5) The person looks up or toward you and gives you an answer that suggests that she only understood part of what you said.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Behn, Robin, and Twichell, Chase, eds. //The Practice of Poetry: Writing Lessons from Poets Who Teach.// New York: HarperPerennial, 1992. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Bishop, Elizabeth. //The Complete Poems: 1927-1979//. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1983. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Dove, Rita. //Thomas and Beulah//. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1986. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Elbow, Peter. //Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process.// New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Harper, Michael S., and Walton, Anthony, eds. //Every Shut Eye Ain’t Asleep: An Anthology of Poetry by African Americans Since 1945//. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1994. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Lamott, Anne. //Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life//. New York: Random House, 1994. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Lane, Barry. //After// //the End: Teaching and Learning Creative Revision//. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1993. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Rothman, Julia, Volvoski, Jenny, and Lamothe, Matt. //The Exquisite Book: 100 Artists Play a Collaborative Game//. New York: Chronicle Books, 2010. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Schneider, Pat, and Elbow, Peter. //Writing Alone and With Others//. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Totten, Samuel, “Completing the Paradigm Shift to Process Writing: The Need to Lead.” //The Quarterly//. Vol. 25: No. 1, Winter 2003.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Selected Bibliography **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">FEEDBACK QUESTIONS (please detach this page from your packet to return to me):
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">What did you enjoy most about the lesson? What did you enjoy least, and why?


 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Did you see a part of the lesson that might be adapted for your classroom and your particular student population? If so, what would you use?


 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Did the research provided give adequate support for the principles taught in the lesson?


 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Any other comments?